Commentary – Page 89

community networks

Friday last I took an hour or so out to help Andy McMillan (@goodonpaper) with a presentation on social networking at the Community Arts Forum. Andy didn’t need help but it was a worthy cause – and ended up being interesting enough. We started with a brief intro to FaceBook, punctuated with the question, “How … Continue reading “community networks”

About half the room raised their hands which rendered a little of what we were planning to talk about obsolete and in order to move things along we had to improvise – Andy had thoughtfully added an extra slide at the end detailing WordPress and Ning which we explained would possibly be useful tools in constructing a social network for the community.

We also covered peripheral subjects like security ( not telling everyone on FaceBook that you’re off on a two week holiday with your address displayed and photos of your expensive equipment on show, making sure the people you friend are people you trust ) and also appropriateness (employers and recruiters sometimes look at FaceBook -at least the good ones do) and they’ll not want to see updates about your drunken debauchery at the weekend, skiving work on a Monday or Friday or the game you play with your old college mates which involves posting pictures of rutting canines on each others Walls).

I’d be happy to repeat the experience, covering some subjects maybe in more depth and, hopefully with Internet access this time.

Do something…

Jeff LaMarche, one of the authors of “Beginning IPhone Development” writes about possible benefits resulting from an economic downturn. A hundred years ago, only ten percent of people in the United States were employed by someone else. Roughly ninety percent of people owned their own business or were self-employed. … Today, those numbers are pretty … Continue reading “Do something…”

Jeff LaMarche, one of the authors of “Beginning IPhone Development” writes about possible benefits resulting from an economic downturn.

A hundred years ago, only ten percent of people in the United States were employed by someone else. Roughly ninety percent of people owned their own business or were self-employed.
…
Today, those numbers are pretty much reversed. Over ninety percent of people work for someone else, and most of those people work for corporations.
…
Society would benefit from more entrepreneurs and less corporate drones. I could write a book on the potential impact of even ten percent of current corporate employees becoming self-employed.

It’s more worrying here. Across the UK, the average number of people who work in the public sector is around 20%. In Northern Ireland it’s 30%. A lot of this is due to siting the call centres for may of the public sector services in the province.

While being stuck in a dead-end job in a $BIG_COMPANY may seem to some to be uninspiring or even dangerous to the health of a society, having thirty percent of your workforce working for the government has got to be worse. For the most part these individuals will be unable to innovate, unable to make a major difference, unable to make change. But you see, the government is a safe job. They’re not going to be enamored of risk, not going to consider going ‘all out’ as a viable path and at the end of it you can retire with a nice pension and spend your autumn years tending a raggedy allotment.

Not for me.

I’ll leave you with this…

It’s your life…

Make the fork not hurt

“Being in IT is kind of like being a doctor with a patient who complains that “It hurts when I stick a fork in my eye.” John C. Welch writes a quick intro for people new to being a SysAdmin We, of course, being the logical sort, reply back, in all sincerity and earnestness, “Well, … Continue reading “Make the fork not hurt”

“Being in IT is kind of like being a doctor with a patient who complains that “It hurts when I stick a fork in my eye.”
John C. Welch writes a quick intro for people new to being a SysAdmin

We, of course, being the logical sort, reply back, in all sincerity and earnestness, “Well, you should stop sticking a fork in your eye then.”

The user, or patient will then look at us like we really are the idiots they believe us to be and say: “No, you don’t understand…I want you to make it stop hurting.“”

I looked at Jack for a minute, like he was fucking crazy, until he said, “The whole problem with IT is that some days, we just can’t make the fork not hurt, and that’s always going to be our fault. It’s why so many IT people drink like fish.”

It’s always been my contention that being a good sysadmin is a vocation rather than a job. Working in IT is 70% personality and 30% technology. You have to fix the problem while, at the same time, making the end user realise that it wasn’t their fault.

And that’s true. If computers worked properly then there’d be no need for sysadmins.

But yes, when a senior manager reads the sentence “clicking this button will overwrite your profile with an older, saved version” and goes ahead, it’s not necessarily the computer’s fault. But when working as a low level IT employee, your manager will receive a call from that senior manager, it’s not the computer’s fault and it’s damn sure not the managers fault, it’s your fault.

Even if you weren’t there, it’s your fault.

You see, you failed to walk on water. You failed to do the impossible.

Geek from "Beauty and the Geek", used without permission

You suck.

Capture the Flag

Today I started a discussion on 38Minutes called International Capture the Flag ARG. With a radius of 10 km, you should probably aim for 20 flags and maybe up to 10 players. With a radius of 5000 km, you’d probably only want 20-50 flags and maybe 100 players. The idea is that games can work … Continue reading “Capture the Flag”

Today I started a discussion on 38Minutes called International Capture the Flag ARG.

With a radius of 10 km, you should probably aim for 20 flags and maybe up to 10 players. With a radius of 5000 km, you’d probably only want 20-50 flags and maybe 100 players. The idea is that games can work globally – the only needs would be a GPS-enabled smartphone (smart enough to run the client). Players should be divided into teams and the web site for the game should provide an overview of the flags in real time.

It’s not an FPS, it’s just a Capture the Flag. you go to the location and hit update. The client tags your location and sends it to the server. Bing, you have the flag. Note, the flag location is just going to be based in LONG/LAT so some locations might be harder to achieve than others (ie, middle of a private estate, in a hospital). The GPS location needs to be fuzzy – because GPS not work so well indoors 🙂

If two people update in the same time period (say, 5 minutes?) then the flag should go GREY on the map until they’ve timed out (5 mins?) and one goes back to reclaim it.

To be honest, this is a casual game. The server would host (and maybe send out) daily reports on the number of flags captured

Alternate Reality Games really give me a buzz. I’m not 100% sure how they make money (it could be the dreaded advertising).

Simon Meek asks: What are you thinking the pay off will be? And where will the community needed for it come from?

I haven’t worked a lot of that out yet. A lot of this I’m assuming will come from good design, a great interface and the expansion of local games. To sweeten the pie, wouldn’t you dedicate any sales of the client (yeah, sell it, why not?)

The game only works if you convince others to play and only gets interesting when there’s lots of people doing stuff so updates need to be relatively frequent (ooh, tie it into a Twitter ID which broadcasts updates, I like it!). By itself it should be relatively viral.

Columbia University includes iPhone in Syllabus

Kevin Hoffman (dotnetaddict) writes about lecturing on the iPhone: I’ve been asked to do a couple of guest lectures for Columbia University’s upcoming mobile programming class on various topics involving iPhone programming. Before I discuss the actual material here, let me just take a moment to point out that allowing someone like me to speak … Continue reading “Columbia University includes iPhone in Syllabus”

Kevin Hoffman (dotnetaddict) writes about lecturing on the iPhone:

I’ve been asked to do a couple of guest lectures for Columbia University’s upcoming mobile programming class on various topics involving iPhone programming. Before I discuss the actual material here, let me just take a moment to point out that allowing someone like me to speak in front of young, impressionable minds is somewhat like allowing the wolf in the hen house. I seem to have lost all of my subliminal message PowerPoints, but rest assured that I will be making every effort to corrupt, taint, twist and otherwise warp the bright potential of these students into my own dark, twisted army of developers….

Are Queens’ or The University of Ulster doing anything for mobile at all?

SlingPlayer for iPhone: March 2009!

At home I have a Slingbox Classic which, to be honest, does not get used enough. The reason is because it’s connected to our Sky+ box which is in the ‘kids living room’ and in ‘our living room’ we have another TV with Freeview built in. The downside is that we have a limited number … Continue reading “SlingPlayer for iPhone: March 2009!”

At home I have a Slingbox Classic which, to be honest, does not get used enough. The reason is because it’s connected to our Sky+ box which is in the ‘kids living room’ and in ‘our living room’ we have another TV with Freeview built in. The downside is that we have a limited number of channels to choose from. As I don’t watch much TV, this isn’t an issue.

But still, it’d be nice to have SlingPlayer on my iPhone. And apparently it’s coming.

We’ve been working hard to bring the SlingPlayer Mobile experience to the iPhone and iPod Touch, and we are almost there! By Q1 this year we will submit our first release of our application to the iPhone App Store. Take a sneak peek!

Open a New Window with a Sneak Peek

The Creative Industries Innovation Fund

I attended the Creative Industries Innovation Fund breakfast briefing with Kate Keys (Sectoral Business Development Manager at the Arts Council) this morning at The Presidents Club in Belfast. It was hosted by The Creative Entrepreneurs Club, a networking group funded by Belfast City Council. The CIIF provides access to funding for many who would not … Continue reading “The Creative Industries Innovation Fund”

The CIIF provides access to funding for many who would not normally be able to access funding. For one thing, it covers:

services
content
events
originals

– a lot of which cannot be covered by InvestNI’s funding charter due to the type of work (content, services, events) or the expectations (forecasting of Â£100K revenues). The CIIF is therefore an important part of the framework – and for this reason, existing INI clients may not be eligible. This has to be taken with a pinch of reason – someone who attended the Start A Business programme 7 years ago is an INI client but would not be restricted from applying for this grant but someone who is in receipt of an InvestNI grant in the last three years may not be eligible – in all cases, talking to your client executive is important (and even dragging him or her to the discussion with the Arts Council might be useful).

The subject of ‘not being eligible’ drew some fire from the crowd but there are very good reasons for it.

This fund is for people and companies who cannot normally avail of InvestNI funding for whatever reason. InvestNI cannot normally invest in content creation or fund the running of an event highlighting creative work – this attempts to cover that.
EC Regulations regulate the amount of support that a company can receive in three fiscal years to â‚¬200 000. There’s a detailed page at the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform which explains this fully.
There’s degrees of interpretation here. Again, if you received the Â£400 marketing grant as a startup, you may indeed be eligible. If your company is a new startup based around a “Collaborative Special Purpose Vehicle” then it may be fine even if some of the collaborators were previous recipients.

There are two calls remaining for CIIF applications. One started on the 5th January and ends on the 5th February. The last call starts on the 7th September and ends on the 8th October. Applications will take approximately 8 weeks to process and feedback will be given if your application is unsuccessful – the guidance was to speak to them first, apply in the first call and if unsuccessful, obtain the feedback ad re-apply for the second calls.

The judging panel for these applications will have input from the Arts Council, InvestNI, the Department of Employment and Learning, The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Industry and the Department of Culture, Arts and Learning.

The CIIF is a part of the funding ecosystem of the Northern Ireland marketplace. It fits around the funding available from InvestNI, NIScreen, the Arts Council and other funding bodies.

I found it incredibly encouraging to be in a room which had run out of seating, where I was sitting beside an award-winning clothes designer and someone from an award-winning design and branding company. There were a few familiar faces as well – all keen to find out how their next great project can be turned into a reality.

60% of the fund will be going to fund 143 individual projects over the next two-and-a-bit years to March 2011. The remaining 40% will be distributed to Sectoral Bodies ( councils, universities, sector leads ) to run projects which will help focus on the themes of innovation, creativity, collaboration and entrepreneurship. The Arts Council are urging individuals to apply early and apply often. The demand received for this fund will help indicate a further and/or extended funding requirement for the future.

iBlogging

I was inspired by TheRonster to try out iBlogger after being faintly disappointed with the native WordPress application. The results are pretty encouraging though I’m not 100% sure that I like the editor – aren’t I a fussy bugger? Anyway – testing out a link and photo. Aha – links are listed at the bottom … Continue reading “iBlogging”

I was inspired by TheRonster to try out iBlogger after being faintly disappointed with the native WordPress application.

The results are pretty encouraging though I’m not 100% sure that I like the editor – aren’t I a fussy bugger?

Anyway – testing out a link and photo.

Aha – links are listed at the bottom unless you hard code them and photos are at the top, again, unless hard-coded. Not bad. Will give it a go on the road tomorrow during Open Coffee.

Mobile Blogging from here.

Digital Circle

Is crowdsourcing fundamentally flawed?

Giles Bowkett wrote When you build a system where you get points for the number of people who agree with you, you are building a popularity contest for ideas. However, your popularity contest for ideas will not be dominated by the people with the best ideas, but the people with the most time to spend … Continue reading “Is crowdsourcing fundamentally flawed?”

Giles Bowkett wrote

When you build a system where you get points for the number of people who agree with you, you are building a popularity contest for ideas. However, your popularity contest for ideas will not be dominated by the people with the best ideas, but the people with the most time to spend on your web site.
…
Even if you didn’t know about the long tail, you’d look for the best ideas on Hacker News (for example) not in its top 10 but in its bottom 1000, because any reasonable person would expect this effect – that people who waste their own time have, in effect, more votes than people who value it – to elevate bad but popular ideas and irretrievably sink independent thinking. And you would be right. TechCrunch is frequently in HN’s top ten.

It also speaks poorly for crowdsourced ideas. People who put a lot of time into these things need to be ranked by authority in some way, but how do you verify the authority, how do you independently value someone’s time? And how do you tell that one person spending five minutes on a subject is worth considerably more than another spending five days? It’s the same effect, I think, that has made Sourceforge almost useless – projects get ranked by releases and activity which means little in a world where all projects are treated equal regardless of actual quality.

Then again, this is a world where a fart noise application makes someone a years salary in two weeks.

…over Christmas Eve and Christmas day, more than 58,000 people purchased a copy of iFart, netting him over $40,000 dollars in just two days.
…
It was initially released on December 12th…
In the two weeks following its release, itâ€™s been downloaded 113,865 times, netting the creators $78,908 in the process. 78 grand is higher than the average income per capita for every country in the world – and this guy surpassed that in two weeks.

I guess this is why I had a meeting last week entitled “A Better iFart App” which was, in part, ironic and in part, totally serious. Someone out there is sitting on a goldmine idea which will net him or her thousands upon thousands times more than the actual monetary input (in terms of developer hours). It won’t see the iFund VC fund, it won’t enable someone to retire but it will mean that someone can spend two weeks building something and then spend the rest of the year trying to think of an interesting followup.

Crowds are stupid. Farts are funny. And because of this, we may find ourselves constantly disappointed by the world.

2008 in review

January started with getting a new boss in $BIG_CORP who turned out to be one of the worst I’ve had – it’s one thing being a tough boss, it’s another thing treating second line support like first line support, depriving them of comforts they’d enjoyed for six months and altogether being ‘weak’. I was glad to be rid of it, to be honest, though it gave me a few friends. January also had the Spice Girls gig over in the O2 – @dressjunkie and I took the train over from Belfast, down through Scotland and England and finally arrived in London, staying at the Britannia International – mere metres away from $BIG_CORP headquarters. That wasn’t entirely welcome. And in January we moved to our new house in Bangor.

February brought some welcome changes. $BIG_CORP decided to address some of the issues in their previous employee satisfaction survey and grouped people who cared about it into rooms for meetings in order to find out what was needed. In the end, they decided to do nothing about it so it was kinda wasted.

In March was Mike’s stag do. And the first meeting with my new boss’ boss. It went well enough – but it was evident that the company was in trouble. Bleeding people and sticking it’s head in the sand about it. I started planning an escape – it wasn’t enough to just leave, there were three team members who needed to be considered – so they were volunteered for development jobs elsewhere.

April brought me the news that $BIG_CORP didn’t care about the results of the study we were doing – they’d decided that the best way to deal with bad news in a survey was not to run a survey. This didn’t ruin my faith in the company – that had already gone. But it resolved me to make sure that I didn’t stick around.

Mid-May and I’d received notice of this Digital Circle role – it seemed like a good fit – it needed someone who had a background in digital media but who wasn’t necessarily a creator. As I’d had five years working in Mac support for most of the designers, TV companies, animators and media folks in the province – it seemed like a good fit.

In June, @dressjunkie decided that she’d had enough of her iPhone and really wanted to switch to a HTC Touch Diamond. We did so and it took three hours for her to confess that the Windows Mobile based device was but a poor shadow of the iPhone. And this was before the App Store opened. The Diamond was returned and the lesson learned. June also brought us BarCampBelfast which was fun.

July brought us the App Store and the iPhone 2.0 software upgrade. We were, of course, waiting for the Push stuff – which we’re still waiting for. I took five others down to Terryglass for OpenCoffee BBQ and paid out a small fortune to make it a fun trip. I also handed in my resignation to $BIG_CORP and the boss said I could take Garden Leave – woohoo – a month off. I also picked up my suit…

…because on the 1st August I got married to @dressjunkie. And on the 3rd August we left for our honeymoon. We drove down to London, did a little shopping in the big smoke, caught Wicked in the West End and drove through the darkness to Harwich, stayed the night in a motel and then, next morning, caught the boat. The next two weeks were spent being shipped around Northern Europe – six countries in twelve days. It was the best holiday I have ever had. I got back to discover that PJ and Phil, who met at my wedding, had written the Infurious Comic Reader while I was off gallivanting around the world. And then I started the new job…

September I attended IBC in Amsterdam and spent an afternoon sailing. I also attended the 25K Awards. The month itself was filled with meeting people working in the Digital Media space. I met some of the most interesting get-up-and-go-ers in the country. Infurious released EyeCandy #1 and we got some phone calls from some big companies who wanted to talk licensing. Naturally we said yes.

October brought more meetings, more events, training in Facilitation and techniques to inspire creativity and escaping the possibility of going to a networking event in Capetown.

In November, I visited Google, Microsoft, the National Digital Research Centre, the Media Cube at the Institute of Art, Design and Technology and the Digital Hub. There were a heap more meetings with some fabulous companies and startups in the province.

In December, all things kicked off. It’s been a tough month with deaths in the family, missed opportunities and failures. Christmas was good – but it was in spite of everything and not because of it. It was my first Christmas as
@dressjunkie‘s husband, my first in this new house, our home.

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