In future I would like an application or social network that allows me to rate headlines according to whether they are sensationalist, informative, emotional informative or other. The aim of this network or app would be to discourage article writers from re-using the same phrases over and over. It would encourage writers rather than marketers to provide headlines that article readers want to follow.
I often see articles that I would find interesting but because of the way the headline is written I avoid it. I don’t want to give marketers a victory for condescending to their audience. I also worry about the article’s informative value. Will the article provide me with some new information or is it so general that I already know this.
Articles need to provide me with a return on investment. I want to be informed, educated and entertained.
I feel absolutely no need for a free SMS application when I have something as powerful as twitter. If more people would use it then I would have a lot more IRL friends following my moves. As things are the idea of sending short messages to just one or two individuals at a time seems and feels so old fashioned to me that when it does occur it’s from another time.
If I’m at the computer I’m not going to waste time sending an SMS: I’m going to write you a message on any of a number of social networking websites and I will understand that a global audience may see that. That’s what I want. I really like twitter and i wish more people would use it. There’s no guarantee I’d follow some of my friends of course, but having two or three more friends use it wouldn’t go amiss.
Content creation and distribution has become far cheaper than it was in the past. Whereas in the past you’d have tons of equipment to create television programs today the barriers to entry are lower as a result of which the cult of the amateur is allowed to flourish. As the technology is adopted by more people those who have never studied the theorie point and shoot. What this means is that there is a huge amount of mediocrity on the web. Some like to say that it’s ninety nine percent crap and they’d be right. Why else use a search engine?
The cult of the amateur is a great thing because it encourages those who have no training to produce content for others to enjoy. The problem is that they’ve had no training. As a result they’re sloppy. They don’t shoot b-roll. They don’t edit anything and then they put it on the web. What’s worse is that it’s long.
Andrew Keen concentrated on audio and really wanted it to promote the sharing of great works and high culture. Instead there has been a steady rise in low culture. This is a debate that goes back to the days of Adorno when public literacy for all became a hot topic. Over time the general level of knowledge increased and so the natural balance returned.
Professional journalists are investigative, going out and doing their own research before digesting this information out and writing their pieces. They have an in-depth knowledge of their topic and rather than go off on tangents they are going to backup everything they say with facts.
I listened to a woman present her theories about one topic a few days ago and she always said “I did this” and “I did that”, a few days letter I listened to journalists, ambassadors and other professionals speak about how “we did these things” and “we did those things”. They often looked at creating a sense of a community or group of people working on an idea.
The point is that whilst everyone has opinions which they want to share not all of them have the credentials to provide the content. Whilst as individuals our knowledge is not detailed enough to be of value if all of us work together towards a common goal then that work is of a greater value, hence the reason behind wikipedia’s success as a resource.
During the Andrew Keen conversation talent was discussed and whether it is natural or whether it takes years to aquire. The discussion focused on the gatekeepers and how they were there to find talent, polish it and then commercialise it. He saw the value of transparency for trust. Both evidence and backing up the information help make resources more reliable. As a student you learn that there is no point in writing something down until you have found someone to backup your sentiment with research.
Andrew Keen, to get a definite rise out of the crowd referred to bloggers as a mob and who can blame him. Whilst Journalists go out and interview people and do a lot of background research before writing about their topic of interest bloggers tend to go on what others have written. Whilst listening to this it brought up thoughts about how blogging would be better for content analysis since it is easier to read a collection of articles and write about them than to go out and get access to all those of interest. Andrew Keen made the remark that many blogs do not have original content, recycling what they found on a variety of resources.
At one point Keen did accept that his book was written tongue in cheek and that whilst the book had a lot of success in Canada and England the Americans did not understand his point of view. He went on to say that he knew who he was writing it against rather than who he was writing it for. He said that it was a response to digital eutopians. At this point he made clear that he was not a technological determinist but a social one. In other words he believes that people, rather than technology determine the type of life and interaction we have with our environment.
Towards the end of his conversation he spoke about web 3.0 as the rediscovery of expertise and professionalism, point which agrees with one of my earlier posts. He wanted the information economy to be about distributed trusted content. He also wanted it to be given a solid backbone.
During the Q&A one person asked him whether he was a troll searching to annoy people through the writing of his book. He answered humourously that bloggers don’t read books. It was a clear and deliberate provocation but it was clear that he meant this as a joke rather than a direct attack.
I don’t agree with all of the points made by Andrew Keen but he does make some interesting and valid points about the future of the media. it’s something that we must all think about. Culture production is an important aspect of our lives and it would be a shame, after centuries of hard work, to promote works of mediocrity.
Finally if you would like to listen to the speech in person it can be found at this address
The Garmin Vivosmart 4 is the first activity tracker that I see tracking descent as well as ascent. It is yet another fitness tracker and in theory I had no need for it as my Suunto Spartan Wrist HR Baro and my Apple Watch Series 4 do almost the same thing.
I was curious to play with this device for two principle reasons. The first of these is the body battery functionality that looks at the energy we use during the day and the sleep we get at night to say whether we need a rest day or not and because I wanted to fill the daily activity metrics in the Garmin connect app.
Some of you might like this fitness tracker because it looks tiny on the wrist, is waterproof and because the battery lasts for days rather than hours. This means that you can hike for several days and track your activities before you need to recharge it. it automatically detects walking and other sports.
Ups, downs, and intensity
At the moment when I sat down to write this blog post I had walked down 29 floors and walked up 25. A floor is usually a standard three metre elevation change. This is a nice feature because when you’re hiking in mountaineous places it’s nice to see the full vertical movement, i.e. 54 floors today. When you’re hiking you will see why descending is just as interesting as ascending.
Intensity minutes are good too. According to this article in the Guardian: “A Public Health England survey last year found that people in England are becoming so inactive that 40% of those aged between 40 and 60 walk briskly for less than 10 minutes a month.” With a cheap device like the Garmin Vivosmart 4 and the Garmin Connect app people will see that the standard intensity goal per week is 150 minutes per week. That’s around 22 minutes a day. The article goes on to say that training as an athlete is not what improves overall health but rather the habit of walking from 15,000 steps a day onwards.
I am currently reading “The Story of the Human Body” and this book, which looks at human evolution, also explores the importance that movement has on the health of individuals from our species. Many modern diseases are due to how sedentary we have become. By walking and by being active throughout the day we alleviate many health issues because we our bodies have not had time to evolve to the lives that we currently live.
The energy imbalance
Humans evolved from hunter gatherers and their bodies were optimised for a diverse diet of fruits, vegetables and meat. The shift to agriculture diminished the diversity of foods we ate and led to certain health problems. The shift to industrialised societies led to more health problems, some of which were mitigated by advances in healthcare and medicine. The move from industrialisation to office work led to yet more health problems and evolutionary mismatches.
We have the ability to ingest more energy than previous generations and we have the ability to save energy thanks to cars and other technologies. It is now easy for us to spend hours at a time sitting. This means that we consume more energy than we need.
By moving every hour, and by practicing sports as simple as walking at a brisk pace we give the opportunity for our bodies to do what they were designed for. I recommend reading the book as I’m doing a poor job of explaining the theory behind why physical exercise is so important.
Step Auto Goal
The Garmin Vivosmart 4 detects how many steps you do on a daily basis and according to this adjusts the goal for the following day. In less than a week the goal has gone from 5000 steps in a day to 6000 and today up to 7430. I took 12,939 steps so far today so I will have a new goal for today. The advantage of such a system is that it adapts to what we do on a daily basis, rather than a static goal.
Apple watches have the same feature but rather than measure steps it measures calories burned. This is interesting if you do a multitude of sports, like cycling where “steps” can be low despite a high energy expenditure. I put a fitbit tracker in my trousers when cycling to get a more accurate step count. This isn’t ideal but it works
Limitations
Activity trackers do not have a way of converting exertion whilst cycling into “number of steps taken”. I’d love to go on a one hour bike ride and for that hour of cycling to be counted as a certain number of steps. It’s superficial but frustrating to see that you have 2000 steps for a day despite cycling 30+kms, especially if there was a lot of climbing
The second frustration is that Fitbit, Suunto, Garmin and Apple all count steps but none of them speak with each other. This means that if you want to feed each network you need to carry a device from each brand. I don’t want to wear an Apple Watch Series 4 when I’m climbing because I know that their screens are not well suited to this sport. I don’t want to wear the Suunto Spartan Wrist HR Baro to work because it doesn’t fit under my shirt sleeve. I have no problem carrying the Garmin Vivosmart 4 in any context because it’s tiny. Its limitation is that it has limited functionality, especially when you like to work out.
Conclusion
The Garmin Vivosmart 4 is a small fitness tracker that is easily worn alongside the Suunto Spartan Wrist HR Baro for days at a time. It provides a lot of data to the user without requiring an entire wrist. It is no wider than bracelets supprting a variety of causes. With being so small you can easily wear it beside your watch or hidden under a sleeve during the winter months.
This is a device you can forget about for five to seven days a week. If you’re the type of person that wants a smart device but without the tedious task of taking it off to shower every morning, and taking it off to swim, and taking it off to charge on a daily basis then this is better than the Apple watch. Add to this that the screen is small so you won’t be distracted, especially when you’re driving. The series 3 and 4 have that drawback.
If you’re really adamant about it not distracting you you can even turn off haptic feedback and just check it on the phone at the end of the week. This being said you can also check it every morning to get an idea of how well you slept without sharing your bed with a phone. It also tracks you in those moments when you’re walking around the office or home without the phone, giving you a more complete appreciation of how much activity you are up to.
This Week in Media 85 is an interesting conversation about media news for the past week with a technological slant. This week’s interesting is particularly interesting as it explored the future of television and how people consume media. From the PVR and the ability for people to discuss the content they enjoy to machines that talk to each other they cover many topics.
They also discussed computer literacy and whether the youth of today are as computer litterate as previous generations. That’s an interesting point. The idea is not whether someone can get a computer to do what they want but rather whether they know how to set it up. Think of Linux. Would you be able to setup a linux box.
It’s the type of discussion that’s good to follow to give you a number of points of view.
Last night I went to the London twitter meetup and enjoyed the event. I’m used to going out and hearing people talk about music and other things but here is a community that was talking about technology and internet-based activities. Sizemore and Trusted Places organised the event which took place at the Ishtar restaurant.
As a result of my taking my camera with me I was put in charge of covering the event whilst Jess interviewed people about how and why they use twitter. We got some interesting responses from those who use it heavily, less frequently, or have just heard about it. All of this footage is now digitised and should be worked on tomorrow afternoon. Once the footage is edited it may appear on Geek entertainment TV as a four or five-minute piece.
What I liked about this event is that its people are interested in and active in new media activities. As I spoke to Loud Mouth Man he told me of his show called the Old Grey video test. It’s an interesting program where a group of people with webcams in a number of locations talk to each other via video chat. What makes this particularly interesting is the fact that they’re switching from one camera and one person to another camera and another person. It means that you can watch the speakers as they address the issues they have decided to cover for that specific episode. As of yet I’ve only watched one episode but I will definitely watch the second one very soon.
I also spoke to Walid of Trustedplaces and he told me about how they were moving to video reviews as mentioned in their blog. Here is one example of the work they’re doing.
Overall the night was well received by the people who participated and I’m already looking forward to the next one in the near future I hope. I’ll work on getting the video ready as soon as possible so that you may hear for yourselves what people had to say.
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