Last: February 2005
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March 23, 2005
find myself a city to live in
How do you judge a city? It seems every week there's some study, adding together 300 datapoints about places, and coming up with a list of 'most livable' cities. Does a countries' debt have an effect on living? How about percentage of GNP on military spending? Cost of a green pepper? Air quality? Humidity?
I've boiled it down to just two elements that I think reveal a lot about a city, plus a few niceties.
So, the big two:
Is there good street food?
Are there gates on the public transport?
The first implies either a good indiginous food culture, or at least appropriated from immigrants, accessible to all. It also indicates some amount of living outdoors. I find it's a good indicator of culture in general.
The second goes to the heart of the matter - does the Government trust you? Installation of gates on the metro or railways means that someone is scared - of lost revenue, of free movement, of the general public.
So how do some example cities do?
London
food: yes - fish & chips (for a start)
transport: yes - gates everywhere
Helsinki
food: ish - a grilli culture emerges after 11 at night
transport: no - there is one gate in one station, but when used they don't collect fines
New York
food: yes - every countries' street food available
transport: yes, gates
Los Angeles
food: not really - drive thru isn't exactly street food
transport: no gates (and one of the best bus systems I've come across)
Berlin
food: yes - a vibrant currywurst scene
transport: no gates!
The supplementals:
Are there maps on the bus stops?
Or in other words, is public transport actually usable.
Does a river run through it?
For some reason I've always preferred cities with rivers, then ones with water around them, and worst of all, those with no water.
How would you judge a city?
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March 22, 2005
these are the days of miracle and wonder
Currently in a phase of taking melatonin at night to combat jetlag, and then burning it off with a SAD light in the morning. Which means lucid thought is at a slight twist.
So instead you get another penny in the evergrowing pile about the iPod shuffle.
First the bad points. Two crazy design decisions.
#1 - It's 2mm too wide. Which means if you plug it into an iBook, it stops you using the other USB port (and FW port if plugged in between the two). Nuts. Bad industrial design thinking.
#2 - iTunes can't read from iPod shuffles. I plugged it into my PC laptop this morning, after filling it at home on my iBook. You get this horrid little dialog box:
From the faq:
Can I transfer data to iPod shuffle from multiple computers when in disk mode?
Yes. If you put iPod shuffle in disk mode, you can transfer data from multiple computers from the Finder (Mac) or Explorer (Windows). You can only load music from one computer, using iTunes.
...
Can I use iTunes to view the songs on my iPod shuffle like I can with other iPods?
No. The iPod shuffle icon that displays in the iTunes Source list is actually a special playlist (like Party Shuffle).It lists which songs in the library are currently configured to be sent to iPod shuffle, but not what's currently on the unit.
As a minor third, an album skip function would be great - I've been trying to listen to new albums on it, and it's really very bad for that. Load it up with, say, Wire, The Fall and Talking Heads greatest hits, and it will be spectacular.
Now the good.
Quite simply, it's magic.
The feel of using one for the first time is quite crazy. It's hard to imagine how you can get music out of the thing. It feels impossible - it's just a stick of plastic. It still feels like something new, something unexpected. It's the kind of rare technology experience when you realise something has changed - price, power, smallness and new technology combined. I think the last time I experienced that was wifi or 3g.
Not the iPod, though. It's a heavy brick, that looks like a computer. The lack of screen, the lightness, the plasticity of it - this is what makes the shuffle seem like magic. They can fit all this music in this... this tiny precious thing! It's crazy!
I've heard others report a similar feeling. It's what can't be quantified about Apple design, and why competitors get it so very very wrong. Its use, more than buying, looking, or holding, makes your heart flutter. Intangible goodness.
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March 20, 2005
jurassic and emerging technology
Really back from Etech (sitting in my living room as I type). Photos being uploaded. Never done West Coast to Helsinki before, it is a bit brutal - I have no idea of time or even day. At least I get a few days before heading off: I feel sorry for Matt's head as he just keeps going past Helsinki to New Delhi.
Etech was a bit more chilled than the last two years (even though there were, seemingly, more people than last year). More emphasis on 'this is what I've done' rather than 'this is what I'm going to do' - in the case of Neil Gershenfeld, I saw him speak at the last Doors of Perception about opening fablabs in the developing world, and it's great to see that he has done just that. Less academics (both a good and bad thing). Less newness, probably. No topics discussed that I didn't expect. Importance of design in technology once again left to the Brits to champion.
Two things remain in my head - the ability to hack and make hardware is increasing quickly (many hardware fabrication talks), and I'm pretty psyched by Danny and Merlin's talk on Life Hacks. Interesting from both some hard UI ideas I've had, and also a bit of a plan for myself actually getting things done.
Spent a quick day in LA, revelling in the insanity. I hope someone is documenting and studying the use of puns in American retail names (my favourites this year - Friar Tux Rental, and The Merchant of Tennis). There's some psychogeographical exploration to be done there. Went to Amoeba Records and spent far too much once again, and a wonderful impromptu MapclubLA meeting at the Museum of Jurassic Technology, which is, I think, my favouritest place in the world, and the Center for Land Use Interpretation, which has one of the best bookshops for psychogeographical needs I have ever seen. I unfortunately had to catch my plane - the others went on to the L Ron Hubbard Scientology Experience in Hollywood (only possible from the mindshield that the MJT installs after a visit).
Oh, I'm really getting into aerial and satellite photography - if anyone has ideas or contacts, please let me know.
Books taken and not read: 3
Books procured: 6
Mac Minis bought: 0 (see, I can be prudent)
Trips to Apple Store: 2
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March 16, 2005
tangible computing
Our Emerging Technology talk is over, the demos worked, all seemed to go well. Got the most comments that we would make a good comedy double act if the interaction design work dries up...
The slides are available in Powerpoint (3Mb) and PDF (8Mb). My two top links mentioned are Pasta and Vinegar and Near Near Future.
Alice, our offical stenographer, has her notes here. Webb.
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March 09, 2005
behold flame
The happy-go-lucky devil-may-care programmer elves of 2lmc have released a new little Rendezvous/zeroconf browser called Flame.
It lets you see what services each machine is offering (and therefore what content is sharable) - should be useful at the imminent e[tech|tcon] (where, incidentally, I am speaking). More info on the inspiration, and how it was created.
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March 07, 2005
Hong Kong and Tokyo
A brief request -
I'm likely to be in Hong Kong and Tokyo very briefly at the end of March. I'm currently working on a project looking at the broad subject of personalisation of mobile phones and consumer electronics, and I'm looking for interesting people, companies and places to talk to. Especially interested in any ethnographers or trend research about keitai culture, self-expression, or subcultures - or not about these subjects at all! If you have any suggestions, or want to meet up, please get in contact.
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March 01, 2005
not quite the end of email
If you've emailed me in the last 3 months, you probably think I've fallen off the end of the earth. A hard disc failure meant a loss of some vital chains in my email setup, which took a few months to restore, and now I start blankly at 3 months of email, which scares me, as there's lots I want to respond to, but I just don't know where to start.
To be honest, email has become a pain for the last 3 years. I've tried everything - multiple spam traps, different readers, online and offline, but nothing helps me tame the constant flow of flotsam with occasional gems of real messages. There are so many people I regret not writing to, it's just become a big burden.
Someone I know summed it up - email means work. I'm on IRC and IM to keep in contact with a number of people, passive attention on others from weblogs, RSS and flickr. I now spend my day in an RSS reader, not an email program.
So, what to do.
Well, don't stop sending me email. It does get read, eventually, even if my heart turns in gordian knots at not being able to keep up with replying. For quick attention pricks, please use my new plinger on my website. It's a tiny bit of shiny javascript and XmlHttpRequest (admittedly, hacked from the flickr code - mea culpa) that pushes your message into my RSS reader - by far the most likely place where I'll be. If email is the best medium, email me and then prod me with the plinger. Hey, pling me just to say that you're there.
This is how it appears in bloglines (and yes, it's password protected):
This initially came out of a thought about how such a system could be used in many ways - especially small groups, and one-to-many communications. RSS is great for this - bloglines et al let you save important messages, and you can always go back to the whole rss file to get all context. This also show why river of news or one-pane reading isn't appropriate now really important stuff comes in via syndication. I'll write that up soon, I guess - but rather than trying to build a serious scalable service, I just hacked something up for myself first.
