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June 21, 2003
iPod business plan
Another throwaway business plan: a super-premium service that takes all your CDs, rips them, and puts them on your computer format of choice (iPod, hard disk, DVD).
I've got 7.2 days worth of music in iTunes now, and I haven't really made a dent on my music collection. But this service wouldn't be aimed at me. It would be for those that are time-poor/wouldn't know an MP3 from a doorhandle.
So, you pick up the CDs, rip them, add any info that CDDB doesn't have, and then copy the files over to the iPod (or supply the iPod for them). Charge 5 pounds a CD - this sounds a lot, but it's not aimed at the poor people that would read my weblog ;)
Super-super-premium services could include ripping vinyl, and adding other music similar to their collection that they might like. You could even tie it into a monthly music subscription (in which they're really just buying CDs).
You could probably do a no-frills service for the rest of us - say 2 pounds a CD - using downtime/nights, no checking...
I'm sure there's a market for this, I'm even tempted to set it up myself. The trick is to make it a luxury service, and not get caught in a price war with the inevitable competitors. And whilst it seems like it would be a limited market, by the time you've done it for everyone that might want it, portable video players will be here, and you diversify into videos, DVDs, and even photos. Media conversion is always sold as a b-to-b (hilariously expensive) service, but people now hoard extremely large amounts of media that they don't know what to do with.
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June 15, 2003
walking north greenwich
As it's so sunny, I've decided to get out and about and go walking. I've done pretty much everywhere possible by foot from London Bridge (and the West End), so I bought a few books to give me ideas - I've got the Jarrold Short Walks book for North and South London. These seem pretty good, as the walks normally start and finish at public transport, and have a good range of subject matter, from central London to Zone 6(ish). I thought I'd publish addendums and errata as I go...
So yesterday I covered The Dome, Walk 10 in Jarrold Short Walks South London. I was expecting North Greenwich to be desolate these days, and whilst it was empty, there were enough people and places to make it really nice. It's good being so close to the river. The Millennium Village is springing up, but I don't think they have the views they hoped for. There's now a nice ecology park by the Village (C on the map). Certainly the only place I've seen bluebottles in London.
Being more used to psychogeographic walks*, rather than a strict map, it's hard not to wander off. An interesting addition to the walk would be from the ecology park to the Thames barrier - it's only a mile (so 2 miles extra for a round trip). I find most of the walks in these books a bit short (this was 3.5 miles), especially compared to crisps walks, so it's nice to investigate ways to extend. In the end, rather than veering back to North Greenwich tube, I continued along the Thames Path to Greenwich proper - about an extra one and a half miles. I did consider the 6 miles to Tower Bridge...
A nice suprise was how industrial the walk was. The Thames Path round here is not the countryside that the name conjures. The smells are amazing, chemical sweet wine, bread, nearly rotten eggs... I found the good ship GPS (but forgot to take my GPS with me, to create routes from the walks), and a rather doleful Alan Bennett.
All photos here.
* Guy Browning is so wrong. He's talking about strolls, not walks. And walks really really do not have to have an object.
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mobile life
I went to Mobile Life on Friday, the UK's first consumer mobile exhibition. Generally very disappointing - it was very small. Most of the stands seemed to be trade show stands rejigged slightly, revolving around seats and a few phones to play with.
This really doesn't work for a public event - each exhibition space should tell a story, and lead you through from start to finish (rather than going on the stand looking around, and leaving before a salesdroid approaches).
In this spirit, the VIP 3 stand was good - the other Three stand was just phones to play with, just the NEC 606 oddly, and even though there appeared to be 3G coverage, none of the services were working - the Nokia nighttime stand was ok, with a nice competition, and free glowsticks, but kudos goes to Virgin Mobile, for eschewing handsets altogether, and bringing a typical summer music festival indoors. The choice of the Cuban Brothers was good too - funny and different, and appealing to both the 16 year old base of the attendees through to media types. It was probably cheaper than all the other stands to create, and benefitted from being in a prime position, outside the FHM pub.
Pictures here, including stalking of Eric Bristow, Stewart Hall (who tried to get in the portaloos on the Virgin Mobile stand, but found them locked), and the presenter of News 24's ClickOnline...
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June 05, 2003
no entry
Few updates, little email, no web/RSS... real life has intruded. Apologies if I'm random or unresponsive.
Firstly, a week in Boston, and meetings and workshops in Birmingham and Leeds. On a more personal note, fate has a very dry sense of humour, with my grandmother dying on my birthday, which is tragic, if not unexpected.
I'm sinking at the moment.
I can sort of see a way out of it, but there's lots to do, and correspondingly large apathy.
Blah.
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June 04, 2003
towards a london data garden
the problem
Collaborative mapping is a fine idea - but how (or where) do you start? One person cannot map an area large enough to be useful to anyone other than themselves. People cannot collaborate without some kind of structure to organise activity, prevent duplication, and cross-check data quality.
chunking
London is big. Really, really big. Every one of us is small. Really, really small. How can one person contribute effort into a larger system? Simply getting people to record what they want will cause data gluts in some areas, and paucity in others. People will not contribute if they feel they are not contributing, but merely repeating work others have already completed. Also, the amount of effort required to contribute must be small enough to carry out almost on a whim.
The solution for our problem is to chunk geographically into arbitrary units of data, that, joined together form a useful whole. This raises another problem - how do you chunk geographically when you have no map to start with? Like compiling a compiler, you have to start somewhere: Whilst actual map data is copyright, metadata about the maps are not (IANAL), especially when used in abstract form. We have a good, universal map to start with - the A-Z (other countries and cities may have comparable universal maps, or get around the situation another way - grid cities could use streets as bounding entities for blocks).
In particular, the pink/red central pages offer squares that are very geographically managable (less than 0.5 km x 0.5 km I think - I haven't an A-Z to hand). The squares are referenced by page number, a number and a letter (and an edition number - squares in each edition cover the same geographic area, but there will need to be some manipulation of pages/square co-ordinates). The idea is for each participant to only have to cover the area in one block for each data collection project. Rather than collecting all data wanted at the same data, the task is chunked into small seperate pieces of useful data. This should take 2-3 hours at most.
The initial data collection would consist of street names, numbers, road intersections. Other information would be gathered in additional data collection projects. These could be:
GPS readings of roads/boundaries
public transport nodes (bus stops, tube, rail, river, taxi ranks)
postcodes
photos of every building
wireless LAN points (and open access)
mobile phone cell IDs
information for openguides (pubs, restaurants etc.)
Each project is separate, but based around the grid system specified. Therefore data from each project can be interrelated.
It is very important that this information is captured on-the-street, or by word-of-mouth (e.g. asking people for their postcodes). This information *must* not be copied from existing maps or databases.
organisation
To ensure data quality, there has to be some level of organisation. The data is only as useful as its most inaccurate data. I suggest devolved local power for most decisions, with a big stick for those that cause trouble.
My analogy is a garden, like Kew or Hampton Court. They cover a large area, require lots of care and attention (continually), and lots of different skills. The whole is better than the parts, but the parts are pretty damn fine too.
- gardeners
Gardeners are in charge of a particular square on the map. They input the initial data about the square, and have responsibility for checking new data about that square. Gardeners arbitrate any disputes in data quality. There is one gardeners per square, and people may garden more than one square. However, if their work is not kept up-to-date, they may lose gardening privilidges, and new gardeners would be found.
- planters
Planters provide the majority of the information into the system. Each new project is available to be taken in each square - different projects may require different skills or technology, such as a GPS or a digital camera. All data input by planters is checked by the gardener before it becomes available for collecting. Gardeners may plant in their own square, and in any others. Planters can provide information in any square.
- weeders
Any information present in the system can be questioned, disputed, or replaced by a weeder. Weeders do not need to plant or garden. The gardener of the square where data is disputed decides whether the data needs to be replaced, re-collected, or destroyed.
- head gardener
If there are big disputes between a gardener and a planter or weeder, the data will be referred to a head gardener. They may get independent corroboration of data quality. Head gardener decisions are final.
- visitors
Visitors do nothing but look at the data. They can register to receive updates if information in a particular square changes.
- collectors
Whilst most of the effort has been expended on the data entry system, what is actually most important is that the data can be reused in other projects, and that adequate data exchange facilities are available. Collectors have access through APIs to the data, and also to the raw databases themselves. They can download a snapshot of the entire database. They can also propose additional projects - if they write the code and db table to handle it, and there is a general consensus that It Is A Good Thing.
data quality/refresh
For each project, a period of time is set before the information has to be collected again (and a time period after which the data should be thrown away). These would appear on the square's page as they become available, and the gardener and previous planters/visitors would be informed.
ownership of data
(this bit is controversial, and I could do with feedback)
Data is given to the garden through a with-attribution licence. This means that the planter and gardener are shown on pages containing data they produced.
Other people/projects can use the data in the garden on a non-commercial/with-attribution/with-similar-rights licence (i.e. other projects have to mention the data garden project, and then cannot provide the data on to a paid app on different rights).
There will be times and places where this data would be useful in commercial applications (pay-for sites and software). I kind of feel this should be paid for, with money divided between those that have provided the data (gardeners and planters). I want to avoid a CDDB-style calamity though.
why would someone participate?
I don't have a complete answer to this. Some people just will (I know I would). Others may be forced to - this would make some nice cross-curricular school projects (*prods Jo about Nesta*). It would be nice to offer something to those that participate - some community stuff, message boards/mailing lists - but it would be great if projects that use the data could offer some extra functionality/beta testing to participants. I've also thought about league tables of those who participate most. Nothing like stroking egos to get things done. The potential monetary remuneration may also be compelling, but I don't want people to participate because of that.
changing scale
Another worry is what to do when all of central London is mapped. Sure, there's always more data to collect. But how to move to the blue square pages? I don't think there's any way to correlate the two... start the blue map as a completely seperate entity?
next steps
God knows. It's just an idea. Please feedback. I'd love to program it, but my skills are very rusty. I have drawn out pretty detailed screen flows and wireframes. I'd like people to spec out db schemas and useful interfaces to get data out (and maybe in). Then it's a case of programming muscle. If people want to get involved, holler.
