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When User Experience experts have a “UXFAIL” event on their website, it gives me a little smile. Reading Christian Lindholm’s blog about Mobile User Experiences, I felt urged to comment. Quick tap, hit Post and … So, what’s wrong with my data? Is it because I’m Irish? Related posts: ERP! Pardon me! Wherein I ridicule … Continue reading “Usability Rant #UXFAIL #ROFL #ZOMG”
When User Experience experts have a “UXFAIL” event on their website, it gives me a little smile.
Reading Christian Lindholm’s blog about Mobile User Experiences, I felt urged to comment. Quick tap, hit Post and …
So, what’s wrong with my data?
Is it because I’m Irish?
Today I was complaining about the poor suite of features in the default Mac OS X Twitter client, Twitterific. @IanRobinson pointed me at this from Otter Software which also has the bylines… Spring 2009 will see the arrival of a new way to integrate your Address Book with Twitter. and In the summer of 2009 … Continue reading “Something new for Twitter in ’09?”
Today I was complaining about the poor suite of features in the default Mac OS X Twitter client, Twitterific.
@IanRobinson pointed me at this from Otter Software
which also has the bylines…
Spring 2009 will see the arrival of a new way to integrate your Address Book with Twitter.
and
In the summer of 2009 we will be launching Digestive, a fresh approach to Twitter.
Now I’m all excited…
{You can follow Simon Wolf on Twitter)
Tonight is the February 2009 NiMUG meetup being held at Windsor Lawn Tennis Club in Belfast. The topic tonight will be iPhone development (because last Thursday night, 20 people gathered in Roast on the Lisburn Road and bumped heads together about iPhone development – so it seems timely). Tomorrow, the 24th February, is the Innovation … Continue reading “It’s a busy week….”
Tonight is the February 2009 NiMUG meetup being held at Windsor Lawn Tennis Club in Belfast. The topic tonight will be iPhone development (because last Thursday night, 20 people gathered in Roast on the Lisburn Road and bumped heads together about iPhone development – so it seems timely).
Tomorrow, the 24th February, is the Innovation Accelerator being held in the Radisson SAS Royal Hotel in Dublin’s city centre. It’ll be rounded out by an XCake Dublin meetup for people interested in iPhone development in the Sky Suite of the Radisson at 7 pm. I’m going down for the full day.
On Wednesday the 25th, 4IP is hosting some New Media Workshops at NIScreen in Alfred Street. Designed for indies and individuals in Northern Ireland, this is a morning of discussion around the elements and ingredients of projects and platforms that can change the face of public service media, with a view to putting forward a proposal to 4iP. The content of these workshops is up for discussion.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned that my better half’s blog dressjunkie.com has reached the final of the Irish Blog Awards – She’s only been running her blog since November last year but already has more readers, more comments and more subscribers than I do. I’m incredibly proud. She’s an incredibly strong contender and much more … Continue reading “Irish Blog Awards ’09”
I don’t think I’ve mentioned that my better half’s blog dressjunkie.com has reached the final of the Irish Blog Awards – She’s only been running her blog since November last year but already has more readers, more comments and more subscribers than I do. I’m incredibly proud. She’s an incredibly strong contender and much more readable than my oft-ill-informed rants from here!
We won’t be going down to Cork for the awards (as @dressjunkie works) but we’ll be having our own mini-celebration up in Belfast when we’re with @theronster and @karenquinn. Apparently the bubbly will be out whether there’s a win or not. I love the attitude!
Good luck to the other folks who made it to the finals. We’ll be watching Twitter and living vicariously off your achievements!
Robin Wauters of Techcrunch writes: At the Mobile Word Congress in Barcelona, Nokia has unveiled its initiative to try and repeat the runaway succes of Apple’s App Store with its own mobile storefront dubbed Ovi Store. This was an expected move… …because we can’t expect Nokia to innovate, only copy. Developers of the apps will … Continue reading “Nokia to launch Ovi Store. Bored Now.”
Robin Wauters of Techcrunch writes:
At the Mobile Word Congress in Barcelona, Nokia has unveiled its initiative to try and repeat the runaway succes of Apple’s App Store with its own mobile storefront dubbed Ovi Store. This was an expected move…
…because we can’t expect Nokia to innovate, only copy. Developers of the apps will retain 70% of revenues (which might be enough to help people put up with developing on Symbian S40 and S60
The Ovi Store does include this feature:
Ovi Store is unique in its ability to target content based on where you are, when you’re there, why you are where you are and who else has downloaded similar content.
Nokia estimates that this will reach 300 million users by 2012 which essentially means that we’ll be inundated with tat because everyone around us will be downloading it. Depending on where you live it’s going to be classical music or something tremendously chavtastic. It’s a bit like the Welcome to the Social feature of the Zune. I frankly don’t care what my neighbours are downloading, I want to know what’s good and I feel this feature will not build upon the wisdom of crowds but mob stupidity. I won’t even go into the privacy concerns of an online store front having your location and using that information to inform your neighbours what to buy.
Of course this will be a success. The model has already been proved (though whether the UI sucks will be another thing)
…and some things didn’t get done. Tomorrow brings more paperwork and a photoshoot which will mean scraping a razor over this chin and wearing a shirt and trousers. At the moment I’m a little deflated – I’m reading one of the ‘prose’ sections of the book and it’s quite dry and means a lot of … Continue reading “rough day”
…and some things didn’t get done.
Tomorrow brings more paperwork and a photoshoot which will mean scraping a razor over this chin and wearing a shirt and trousers.
At the moment I’m a little deflated – I’m reading one of the ‘prose’ sections of the book and it’s quite dry and means a lot of flicking back and forth. But this, and the stuff I’m reading on Cocoa-Dev is starting to make sense. I’m buoyed ( and at the same time incredibly intimidated) by the fact that there are people who’ve been doing this stuff for 30 years and they don’t know all of the answers.
Friday was meant to be the gateway to a 4 day weekend but work commitments mean I’m only going to be able to get 3 days out of it. I don’t mind too much because the stuff on the agenda is personally interesting to me. Suffice to say – it’s making big waves (and yes, that’s an in joke).
Anyway. Best of luck everyone. Let’s hope tomorrow is good.
Paul Malone sent me this link to an article on euroGamer. The article points out the rise of the smartphone in gaming and the inevitable changes this will make to the gaming industry. No-one would have guess that Apple’s iPhone would be the third place mobile console (behind the Nintendo DS and the Sony Playstation … Continue reading “Mobile Console Gaming”
Paul Malone sent me this link to an article on euroGamer.
The article points out the rise of the smartphone in gaming and the inevitable changes this will make to the gaming industry. No-one would have guess that Apple’s iPhone would be the third place mobile console (behind the Nintendo DS and the Sony Playstation Portable) – both of which have been out for much longer. Microsoft has yet to enter this market though they, with Sony and Nintendo, are still warring over the static console market.
“The latest shot to be fired in this unusual war came this week, when digital research group comScore revealed its latest figure for mobile phone game consumption. Yes, mobile gaming; the videogames industry’s unloved stepchild, launched to so much fanfare and so much subsequent disappointment. The sector has been quietly marshalling its resources and building its revenues for some years now, but it’s still never quite had the breakthrough which would make up for all the overstated ambition of its early years.”
…
“comScore’s figures show that the overall number of people downloading mobile games last year grew 17 per cent, to 8.5 million. In itself, that’s respectable growth – but the real news here is that this growth was in spite of a 14 per cent decline in those downloading games on traditional mobile phones.”
…
“Those pundits who looked at the early sales figures for games on the iPhone’s App Store, tapped their noses and predicted that this device would have a huge impact on the whole world of gaming on the go have, thus far, been proven correct. It’s hardly stunting the growth of the DS yet, but even at this early point, the iPhone is making waves.”
The iPhone is making waves. I love that turn of phrase.
Tonight was the Tuesday Night Cocoa group meet. Half a dozen hairy blokes sitting in the Mac-Sys Ltd offices with instructional PDFs up on a projector and open books in front of them. I’m very keen on this – this is a small cadre of fellahs, some of whom work in Mac-Sys and some … Continue reading “Tuesday Night Cocoa”
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Tonight was the Tuesday Night Cocoa group meet. Half a dozen hairy blokes sitting in the Mac-Sys Ltd offices with instructional PDFs up on a projector and open books in front of them. I’m very keen on this – this is a small cadre of fellahs, some of whom work in Mac-Sys and some of whom don’t, taking the time of an evening to fix issues with their coding projects and leaving with homework which they’ll work on during the week. To a degree I’m envious but I’mr eally glad I was able to help them get this started. |
None of the guys there had any coding experience and yet they’re tackling the iPhone SDK in their spare time. They’ve buzzed me a couple of times in the last week or so with compile errors which they couldn’t debug (simply due to their lack of experience) but tonight they didn’t need to ask once – the previous nights and afternoons they have put into this have started to pay off.
It’s a great example of grassroots doing it for themselves – this is what I love about the current industry – people doing it without asking permission – whether they’re running a code class for the iPhone, running a coffee meetup for tech-heads just because they’re in the right place and the right time or knocking brains together to create a mashup of two useful services – it’s great.
Kudos to them and I can’t wait to see what they’re working on next.
From Wikipedia A facilitator is someone who helps a group of people understand their common objectives and assists them to plan to achieve them without taking a particular position in the discussion. The facilitator will try to assist the group in achieving a consensus on any disagreements that preexist or emerge in the meeting so … Continue reading “Facilitation”
From Wikipedia
A facilitator is someone who helps a group of people understand their common objectives and assists them to plan to achieve them without taking a particular position in the discussion. The facilitator will try to assist the group in achieving a consensus on any disagreements that preexist or emerge in the meeting so that it has a strong basis for future action.
“The facilitator’s job is to support everyone to do their best thinking. To do this, the facilitator encourages full participation, promotes mutual understanding and cultivates shared responsibility. By supporting everyone to do their best thinking, a facilitator enables group members to search for inclusive solutions and build sustainable agreements” – Kaner
Sometimes, if you’re working in an area that you are personally passionate about, it can be very easy to be caught up in the flow and be contributing. For the most part – especially when dealing with a small facilitated group and a larger group of onlookers, I find myself constantly defending the decisions of other, justifying the fact that change takes time and that if the process itself is not the full time work of those involved then the process may take an order of magnitude longer.
In many areas it’s not my place to make the decisions. I can work on two levels – helping the core group to get to their destination and also making life easier for the wider audience. An example of this is currently in operation – the core group has a set of tasks to do and little spare time to do it however, in the absence of directed action, it’s possible to work on things and organise events which benefit the wider community that do not take a high level of participation from the core group.
Today I posted a quick note about a workshop being held in the OhYeah building (with special thanks to OhYeah and NoMoreArt for helping pull it together). The event itself was conceived during an OpenCoffeeMorning conversation between myself and Marty Neill of NoMoreArt – as he puts it, democracy without bureaucracy. The workshop is designed … Continue reading “Creative Industries Innovation Fund Workshop – Thursday 29th Jan”
Today I posted a quick note about a workshop being held in the OhYeah building (with special thanks to OhYeah and NoMoreArt for helping pull it together). The event itself was conceived during an OpenCoffeeMorning conversation between myself and Marty Neill of NoMoreArt – as he puts it, democracy without bureaucracy.
The workshop is designed to help those in the “creative industries” find the time to fill in the forms for the Creative Industries Innovation Fund. I’ve spoken to a lot of people about this Fund and extolled it’s virtues and I hear a lot of the same story – it’s something they’ll get around to.
Well, time is up. The closing date for this first call is Thursday the 5th of February and if you miss this one it’s months until the next. And the best reason in the world to hold a workshop is to help people focus the mind. Ideally we’re aiming for a largish group of people all focussed on filling in their forms and getting the paperwork out of the way.
There will be two sessions: one from 11 am to 1 pm and the second from 4:30 pm to 6 pm. The content for both is the same and it straddles part of lunch and just after work so that people from all walks of life can make some time to come in and at least get the forms.
The workshop itself is not about guidance – it’s not about trying to ensure success – it’s about getting the forms in on time, because if they’re not in then you’ve got no chance. I have invited representatives from the Arts Council (who are managing the fund), NIMIC and NIScreen (who are especially relevant to the digital content industry) and the Digital Circle Steering Group – hopefully an individual might be able to talk to these representatives and maybe get some guidance or inspiration from people who have experience with this sort of thing.
It’s meant to be collaborative, it’s meant to be a learning experience and it’s meant to be a shared social experience. At the most basic level it’s a heap of forms and pens and desks and chairs. What’s more is that it’ll be a collection of people who all have something creative inside them which they feel is deserving of public funding in order to have it realised.
There’s a form for registry – just to help us get an idea of how many people will turn up so I’d appreciate it if people could register beforehand. The format will be informal and it will be about completing forms.