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On the Importance of understanding what you are writing about

Byrichard

Nick O’Neill needs to do more research. Most of what he writes is speculative based on two or three months of research rather than sociological research. He goes after trends and gut feelings. As a result whilst his content is interesting to keep a track of it’s not relevant to the type of content I am looking for.

Podcasters and social media people need to take a more academic approach to their writing. I’ve found myself angry with what Leo laporte and other podcasters have said. Some of them are really pro certain technologies and boasting about their advantages without taking a media tech and society view.

What I mean by this is that technology and communication are cyclical. What was really common in older media is going to become common in new media as more people come to use it. Radio and letter writing are what podcasting and e-mail are to their contemporary period.

It’s the same with the iphones being bricked. There was such an outcry within the early adopter crowd that you’d think technology has never evolved. We all know that more apps would be created for the Ipod touch and iphone for example.

It’s interesting to see how things are evolving and how by looking at previous technological trends we can see how the future will take place. Those who write about technology need to have a media studies background for a proper, well based understanding of their topic of conversation.

If you want historical information you want to find professors and their PhD thesis, the same should be true about technological writing.

Wifi detection

Byrichard

Twice yesterday I was surprised at how fast the new ipod detects networks. The first time was in one of wagamama’s restaurants. It found ten within two seconds of opening up the application. The second time was in a block of flats. Both times it detected the networks within a matter of seconds.

It’s a shame youtube isn’t working on the Touch Ipod at the moment.

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Travian, an online game

Byrichard

Travian is one of those games you would have loved to play after reading a few Asterix comics. There are three civilisations you can be, Gaul, Roman or Teuton. Each player starts off with one village and expands from there.

There are four types of resources. These are wood, clay, iron and wheat. As your village begins you need to decide on what resources you want to grow. Click on the land type and you will see a display with the amount of time it will take for the order to be completed. The next step is to look at your town. Build a granery, a cranny, a warehouse and other buildings that make a village what it is. Overtime as your buildings improve so the town is large enough for more buildings. These are stables, palaces, residences for kings and more.

Getting your village to expand is just one step. The next step is to make sure that you’re safe. Around you are many other villages and some of these players have been playing for a number of months. As a result they have amassed many resources and alliances. They will attack and pillage you therefore you must defend your land with troops. As you expand and form alliances so the game becomes more interesting. At this point you are competing not just as a village but as alliances to see which can be the most prestigious.

It’s a fun game, reminiscient of such games as Civilization amongst others. If you need a two minute break whilst working on a long project then this may be the game for you. I’ve enjoyed it and so may you.

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The “Jobs” sense

Byrichard

If you’re the head of a company that’s doing as well as Apple there’s something you’ve got to be admired for. It’s the ability to sell a phone with no keyboard and get people to love it. It’s also about selling it for $599 and taking it back down to $399. What appears to be an act of generosity is a great PR stunt. Everyone that got an iphone and saw the price drop was angry so they wrote complaining. Steve jobs then “decided” to take the price down.

The effect of such a move is clear. He’s proved to his shareholders that the market was ready for a device that was $200 higher than it needed to be. Investors have a boost in confidence in the company and he gets glowing reviews from the blogosphere.

No power

Byrichard

Something you hardly ever think of when you’re in economically more developed countries is electricity because it’s always there for you to use. This was not the case yesterday afternoon when coming back from an interview. Due to some roadworks or the rain (not much but apparently poor maintenance makes things worse) the power down the whole street was shorted for at least six hours, which is a long time.

A machine was digging up the road and a second worker was digging. At moments he pulled on a cable, then pulled on another. Occasionaly they beeped at some people in a van before getting back to work, then they’d come back. The whole time they were seeing this as a little bit of fun.

Whilst this was going on outside many homes had no power, no refrigeration, no television, no safety alarms and more. It’s somethng we’ve grown unused to since power cuts are usually so rare.

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There Are Two Parts To The World Wide Web

Byrichard

the future of the web

the search engine was the king, now it’s social networking.

People had their own home page, now it’s grown to their own website. The blog was grown and grown, replacing webrings

to be developed

For several years the search engine was king. This was the place where everyone went to find content because all the information was so disorganised. Recently though this has changed. The way people use the world wide web has evolved. Whereas people in the past would create just one webpage with a little content people are now creating entire websites.

These websites are not websites  in the sense that they were back in the late nineties, rather they are profiles. It used to be that you’d create a static HTML page that would need to be updated manually through the hot metal code. With CGI-bin and later technologies, the nature of the homepage has changed.

Remember Geocities? It’s been replaced by myspace. Remember the discussion about web portals and yahoo and google were trying to corner the market to get the highest audience. That has changed. Look at Digg, Facebook, Bebo, twitter, Jaiku and Pownce. All of these websites are about one thing. Community. They are only interesting as long as your friends are members; no friends means no way of using it. I was a member of myspace for months before anyone I knew joined and by the time had joined I re-created a profile having forgotten the other profile.

It’s the same with Facebook. I joined it a few months before anyone from my environment started using it but recently everyone has started using Facebook to communicate. Not just this, they’re also uploading their lives to the web. So am I. There are two issues that are interesting to look at. For anyone wanting to do a dissertation why not look at the changing nature of privacy with the rise of the social networking website. When I was studying for my HND privacy was key and release forms were essential. Now it’s as though everyone is a publisher and the nature of privacy has changed. It goes along the lines of “Don’t upload anything too compromising or embarrassing”. Your network of friends can see everything. Friends from your high school days can see all your university friends and vice versa.

This promotes the expansion of social circles. Whereas in the past networks of friends were mutually exclusive due to location they are joined online. Take some videos of when you’re at a party in Switzerland and those in England can see it, and so can their friends if you so choose. It’s a shame you can’t select for only one network to see videos rather than others, for example, only London friends can see the London videos and Switzerland friends can see those. It would make uploading certain videos possible.

Anyway, the web has become personal. Within the last 6 months or so I’ve seen the web go from being about avatars and nicknames to being about real names and real networks. It’s about bringing the offline world online and vice versa. This is where I believe for there to have been a shift in perception of what the web is for. Almost everyone I know and see regularly is now on Facebook. It’s amusing to see how it’s become mainstream.

It’s as though Facebook has become a portal although not in the 1998 sense of the word. There is a new part of the internet. If you imagine the web to be like drupal then imagine that Yahoo and Geocities are the old gateways to the World Wide Web whilst various social networking websites are a new ad important portal with one major difference. These portals aggregate and distribute your content to your friends around the world. You’re no longer going online for research. You’re going online because you’re socialising. It’s replaced, at least partially, socialising in the real world whilst nonetheless providing a great way of sharing content. Both “user-generated” and “interactive” have become keywords in describing what the web is today.

In summary, whereas two or three years ago the Web was somewhere people came to find information for future use the web has evolved into an interactive user-generated medium. As a result of this, I think the world wide web has added another node to what purposes it serves.

Web 1.0: static and hard to interact anonymously vs web 2.0: highly interactive user-generated content where real names are now used, especially in places like Facebook.

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Digitising Old Videos

Byrichard

I have spent a few hours this morning and part of this afternoon digitising videos from a few years ago and it’s a time warp. I have one or two fashion shows on tape. I have at least ten theatre pieces. I have two or three field weeks and I have the 2000 graduation trip to Crete on tape. Those are moments that are not just static, in an album. They are alive. They are moving and they are nice to keep.

I would often spend weeks and weeks with the camera on me all the time, whether in a pocket or a bag. I would film life as it happened. I have a pre-show video of the Ramayana. I have a video of post-Ramayana drinks when the characters are still in character. I have some of the best nights I’ve spent in geneva on tape. I also have conversations.

Does anyone remember the suction pump s****tal scratcher? Do you remember why people were perplexed? I do. It’s on tape and I want to digitise and share them with the people concerned because they are nice to have and there’s a guaranteed laugh that would ensue. There are about 22yrs of my life on video and the past decade is shot mainly by myself.

At one party I was busy and someone filmed me whilst I was occupied with what I was doing. I can see how I appear to other people. I can also see how other people interact. It’s from a barbecue video that was had at home. That video won’t be going online anytime soon, in fact, there’s little chance of others seeing it.

It’s great to go through your own video archive, seeing your life as it happened whilst still a teenager. I’m going to go through some more tapes now, to find some footage that may have relevance to my showreel. It’s the turn of the Tanzania footage now.

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People From The Past

Byrichard

Since I started using the world wide web one thing has become clear over the past year. The web has become personal. We have seen a migration from a worldwide web of strangers where everyone is hiding behind an avatar to a worldwide web where no one is hiding behind an avatar, where everyone wants to be seen.

In the early days of the world wide web when no one was sure what the world wide web was about many people created websites and web rings and such were formed. Webrings were an early form of tagging whereby a list of websites on a particular subject would be put together to help promotion between websites. Over time this disintegrated.

Another difference is the mentality of webmastering. Whereas before a website was designed to provide text-based information within the smallest amount of data (due to network limitations) it has gone the other way. From HTML pages to Flash-based video players. The Web has become a far more important tool now that broadband is so popular.

At the same time, broadband and “always-on” connections have meant that whenever you turn on the computer you’re online. In the early days, I had a friendship with a Swedish girl, via e-mail. The friendship was an interesting one because it was one thousand word e-mails one to two times a day for an entire month before it ceased completely. That’s a lot of communication between two countries at a time when social networking was in its infancy, at least online.

Remember the Geocities chatrooms, those that were text-based were a popular question was A/S/L… Those days were more interesting. In those days you’d chat with someone and try to keep them interested and establish a friendship which would result in getting an e-mail address to stay in contact. Profiles and logins became more advanced and chatrooms are now designed so that everything about you is clearly visible (that you choose to make public) therefore some of the more basic questions are no longer needed.

I have been a member of many online forums and I have seen how they have changed from being fairly simple places for people to share ideas a post at a time to massively complex social networking websites such as myspace, Facebook and others. This brings me to the idea of portals.

I remember when companies like yahoo attempted to give you as much information as possible on their main page and the most activities to enjoy were numerous so that you would stay there. A few years later and one of the top social networking websites is Facebook where not only do you have all your friends as members of the network but additionally they may choose how much they share with others. It’s become a central node for the web-based user experience.

In this time those networks have demonstrated one thing, the ability to re-establish links. On Facebook it’s getting back in contact with school friends I haven’t seen for more than a decade whilst in other situations, it’s about people we met during vacations in another country. It’s a way for friendships to be created and to remain alive thanks to the virtual communities that have formed.

I wonder how long it’ll be before my friends use Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce or other SMS enabled social networking communities online. In America, with Facebook, this is already a reality. For other countries with patience, it will be a reality as well and we will be truly connected.

I’m already experimenting with that idea via twitter.

O2 and iPhone

Byrichard

According to a number of articles, 02 and Apple are in final discussions about the iPhone and how they will distribute it within the European Union. So far we still have to wait until December of this year to get it in Europe.

I don’t think I want to own this particular phone because the one I have now has almost all these functionalities to start with. I also like having a qwerty keyboard for ease of typing whilst on the move, unlike the iPhone.

The browser is probably the strongest feature of the iPhone but this is irrelevant for most websites. Both Google and Facebook, two of the only websites I’m interested in using on the move have created useful interfaces for those on the move. in the case of Gmail, it’s the interface that allows you to check and send e-mail within their own java applet which is installed on your phone.

In the case of Facebook, their strength is in giving you just the features you want, i.e. what your friends are doing, the latest news, and more. It’s great to get some quick information whilst unable to go online.

I want to try out the iPhone and see how great and easy it is to use. Apple loves making software that is simple to use, without submenus as you find with windows mobile so for newbies it’s better.

In a few months, I may get to see the iPhone in person and see how good it is…. unless I fly to the US or go to one of the EU Macworld.

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I’m A Martial Artist Typist.

Byrichard

Sometimes you hear about writers and how they fall in love with their machines. I think I’ve begun to love my laptop. I’ve just spent an extraordinary amount of time writing so many words over such a period that the laptop has use marks.

If you look at the trackpad you see that the right side is smoother. If you look at the keys they’re also smooth with use. The space bar has smoothed out where I always press with my thumb. There’s a dark mark where I rest both my hands when I’m typing. The monitor shows signs of degradation.

The repetitive motion of the fingers has developed muscle reflexes that mean that as I sit in one place from which I see people walk by I can observe people and continue writing at the same time. In effect I’ve been touch typing for a year and every computer develops a certain amount of time for the reflex to be perfect. I’m a martial artist at the art of typing 😉

Laptops are great because they become such a big part of your life. You use them every day, from the bad times to the good times, from nice locations to some of the worst. They’re there whatever the weather. They’ve got all your music, all your photographs, possibly some of your video projects and more.

They’ve also got all the software you need from day to day work practices. They’re reflective of the person that uses them.