webponce rants

I blogged this over at the Disposable Memory Project, but I think its neat idea, and I know the founders of the festival would love as much coverage as possible, so I’m reblogging with a bit more gusto this time. Eric Slatkin and Carlton Evans started the Disposable Film Festival in 2007 to celebrate the ‘artistic potential of disposable video’:

“Everyone has become a Disposable Filmmaker: directors of Saturday night cell phone videos, actors under the eyes of security cameras, and narrators before their webcams. Let’s face it - we live in an age of disposable film. Now it’s time to do something creative with it.”

I couldn’t agree more, and I love it! This new world in which we live of such throw-away-able technology is truly awful - I can’t remember the last time i got something repaired over just buying a replacement, but the low cost of these devices (and increasing quality) also brings with it a generative side which is wonderful, and projects like the Disposable Film Festival bring the more talented homebrew film-makers to light. Being disposable and often low quality (in terms of their technical capability: grainy, blocky, jerky, poor zoom, poor focusing) often forces the producer to abandon all hope of making their work glossy and polished, and focus on the content and narrative. Whilst the ‘realness’ of the format has always given this sort of content a voyeuristic feel, which often seems to engender a certain type of story to be portrayed, increasingly talented people with nothing more than just a great idea or narrative they want to capture are doing just that. I think it helps bring forward the soul of the story. Surprise surprise, simplicity creates something special, yet again!

I went to listen to Clay Shirky yesterday afternoon, who very kindly signed my copy of ‘Here Comes Everybody‘ and I managed to have a brief chat with until Bill Thompson careered in and gave Shirky a bearhug. The majority of his discussions were over topics covered in the book, of how the cost (in pure economic terms) of creating groups or group activity has been so substantially lowered in recent years, that projects like this are bound to spring up. The rule for most is failure, perhaps only a half baked idea, or even just a great idea which doesn’t reach the audience it deserves, following a rough power law that only a tiny percentage of these generative and collaborative projects will succeed. Well, here’s hoping for success for the Disposable Film Festival, and any of its film-makers.

In other news, its the second week of my underemployableness. Last week was intentionally empty and devoid of activity. I took delivery of my new coffee machine (yom), played hours of XBox, watched all of the first season of Arrested Development, even went for a swim and ate copious amounts of food (in that order). This week, I shall mostly be doing ’stuff’. I was planning on taking a trip to Brighton (ice-cream, The Werks, the beach, and I like being on trains) this morning, but the weather is looking a bit crappy. Oh, and my iPhone needs charging after only a day of use. Lame.

Cat Support from matthew knight on Vimeo.

Happy Fourth of July.

Adobe have announced today their partnership with Google and Yahoo in order to advance their ability to index flash websites. Everyone seems rather excited by the prospect, but I’m less so. Why? Well, I think its potentially a bad thing for people in my industry.

“If our flash is indexable, why create an HTML alternative?”

I can’t help thinking this question is going to be asked, and decisions based upon this will be made. Building an HTML alternative is not only for SEO, it is primarily for the sake of accessibility, and users who don’t have, or choose to have Flash installed. Many people often used SEO as the reason to create an accessible site. I never mind this approach, as at least we can build the HTML alternative. There are approaches to building flash using screen-reader technology, but nothing does the trick like some good ol’ semantic HTML in this case.

Not to mention, a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. Clients will read this tidbit of information from Google, and expect their flash site to suddenly appear at the top of Google. Wrong again - most enterprise or substantial sites are not built using static SWF files, but utilise on-demand loading of assets and database calls. These sites will not magically appear in Google’s index.

I’ve yet to see how this integration works, but what about precedence, level of importance and semantic data? Those who will automagically appear in the listings are those developers who built their content in static SWF - and are less likely to have marked up the content in any sensible format.

Who gains from this the most? I think Google, in being able to inspect the content of flash sites, rather than users who are looking for content rich flash sites, are the main beneficiary. I hope I’m pleasantly proved wrong.

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The decon crew are on their way to Valencia this afternoon for a weekend of sight-seeing, sunbathing, cultural persuits and maybe a drink or two. If you hear any stories of this lovely coastside town being invaded by helvetica clad warriors, don’t worry, we’re leaving on Sunday, hangovers in tow. I’m (frustratingly) not taking a camera as my digital compact is dead. I might buy a couple of disposables and go old school.

We’re quite mainstream really.

1. The Beatles
2. Various Artists
3. Red Hot Chili Peppers
4. Massive Attack
5. Jay-Z
6. Groove Armada
7. Air
8. The Killers
9. David Bowie
10. Zero 7

See more at our last.fm account

More Zittrain goodness, add Colbert, a bit of D&D and you have the Colbert Bump for Firefox 3.

Lovely lovely wordie.
Create visually stunning tag clouds from any source of text.

Flickr image from arcticpenguin used under a CC License

I was in the audience for last night’s debate between Professor Jonathan Zittrain and Bill Thompson, on the subject of his new book “The Future of the Internet and what we can do to stop it“, hosted by Becky Hogge and the good people at the Open Rights Group. Having not read the book yet, there was fortunately a primer into his concerns over the “inevitable” reduction in freedoms we currently enjoy online, whether those freedoms come from threats such as malicious cracking, viruses and spam, tethered platforms, regulatory bodies or walled garden / happy valley situations like Facebook. Its a very interesting topic of debate, and I look forward to reading the book when the postman brings it next week. I can’t help feeling that some of Professor Zittrain’s points were a little ‘fear culture’ish to make people aware of the issues - in the same way that the instigator of the Y2K stories played up the significance of the problem to make sure it reached a wider audience (but of course turned into a media/social frenzy), but there is definately a great deal of truth in some of the points raised by both Bill, Johnathan and some of the questions posed by the audience. I’m not going to say anything more until i’ve read the book though, and he was an extremely interesting speaker - I can’t help thinking it will provide an interesting follow on from Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody which i’m reading currently.

As if by some form of perfectly organised timing though, RWW and the Guardian are running articles today about the public’s desire for some form of regulation into social networks like Facebook. I realised last night that regulation does not always have to mean restriction, and Sir Christopher Meyer of the PPC’s comment that “There is a need for public awareness about what can happen to information once it is voluntarily put into the public domain,” is absolutely correct, but I’m not sure that means OFCOM need to step in.

‘Public’ conversations in real life are aimed at the person or people you’re standing next to in your social circle and they can be overheard, but social norms mean we tend not to listen too intently to a mobile conversation taking place next to you. However, online, the flawless reproducability of digital conversations which also take place in this “public” arena added to the thought that a conversation online is therefore for “public consumption” make for bad juju. You wouldn’t photograph or record someone sitting opposite you on the train, but you might happily link to their twitter conversation, and that is quite a social disconnect. I think that might, in time, change, but whilst we’re learning new social mores to deal with this public/private dichotomy, self regulation is far more practical and relevant.

If you don’t want people to see it, don’t post it - even if you have privacy turned up to 11. That’s the rule. There are enough channels to privately get something from A to B without resorting to Facebook or similar, and that is about education. Teens are extremely savvy when it comes to privacy and posting on their social spaces, us adults are less aware. The Guardian article mentions journalists facebook doorstepping and whilst I can totally see how invasions of privacy are upsetting, if you’ve posted something on Facebook and haven’t considered who can access that, is that really private?

If regulation is placed on the social networks, it should be security focussed, imposing penalties for flaws in the code and the ability for crackers to get in and show supposed ‘private’ content, not user regulation.

Update: You can listen to an audio recording of the debate over at the Open Rights Group site. You might even be able to hear me ask about sewers.

Franz Aliquo has been holding flavortripping (sic) parties in NY. The evening begins with passing around a small red berry called ‘miracle fruit’ which messes with the taste buds, and makes everything taste sweet, working especially well with sour flavours.

“He ushered his guests to a table piled with citrus wedges, cheeses, Brussels sprouts, mustard, vinegars, pickles, dark beers, strawberries and cheap tequila, which Mr. Aliquo promised would now taste like top-shelf Patrón.”

From a New York Times Article

Awesome. The world’s first ‘live ad’ last night on Channel 4.

“Tell me and I’ll forget
Show me and I’ll remember
Involve me and I’ll understand”

I love that.

Well done to unclephil for passing the 1000 images mark. He’s been a long time supporter of the visual dictionary, so a few months back we interviewed him:

1. How did you first find the visual dictionary?
   My friend Paul Burgess, the illustrator, sent me the address, knowing I had an abiding interest in recording lettering.
2. I assume you’re into photography?
   I have always enjoyed photography, but this is more about the word itself. My earlier interest (still ongoing) is in finding and recording interesting and unusual examples of lettering from wherever, especially examples of vernacularity, such as hand-made signs.
3. What keeps you coming back to the visual dictionary?
   The challenge of finding new words. Now that I am a contributor, sometimes the most ordinary word will jump out at me from the midst of a sign. Yesterday, while my wife was buying a ticket at the railway station, I spotted ‘approach’, ‘stay’ and ‘disabled’ all in the space of two typographically unremarkable signs.

4. You and minorbug are going head to head at the moment. Have you any strategies for domination?
   That would be telling. I am flattered that minorbug’s contribution remained dormant for about a year until I began assailing that third place in the pantheon. It all helps in the finding of words, though. I am sometimes less likely to go for words than I should be, simply because they don’t make interesting images: I will have to get over that.
5. What is your favourite word and why?
   Palimpsest. I like the way it bobbles around the mouth and engages many parts of the speaking process. I also like what it means: a re-used parchment, erased and containing a new message. This notion of a second layer of meaning within a sign or a word is a crucial one to me as a typographic designer.
6. What is your favourite image on TVD, and why?
   I have many. A favourite among my own is ‘bookseller’, painted on a silver globe in a bookshop window in Brighton. In the TVD as a whole it is a difficult question to answer, but I enjoy the contributions of scannedinski, particularly his commentary. I made a comment on his ‘grand’, but I think my favourite of his images is ‘pain’, about which he says: ‘I love France: you can buy ANYTHING.’
7. And finally, anything you’d like to see the visual dictionary do as future functionality?
   It does bug me that somebody is daft enough to enter 38 images of the word ‘Madrid’ and they all get put onto the site. Perhaps there could be a block on multiple images of ‘exclusions’ only (multiple images of every other word is a good thing). Although on reflection, it does make the look of the A-Z ‘cloud’ more interesting!

Thanks to Unclephil for his time chatting to us, and of course, his effort in building up the dictionary.

Hardly anyone knows that a secret tunnel runs deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean. In May 2008, more than a century after it was begun, the tunnel has finally been completed.

This is such a beautifully simple yet well executed idea. I’ve seen the concept a dozen times before, yet this is on a global scale, and with Artichoke’s delightful exuberance and finesse, it makes something just that extra bit special. I’m planning on going to see it this week in London, and in a few weeks from the New York side when I’m visiting the US. I wonder how many people have looked in from both ends?

“If you quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.” If you’re willing to take the company up on the offer, you obviously don’t have the sense of commitment they are looking for.

US etailer Zappos have a number of positive and refreshing approaches to running a business, being an employer and customer service. Their take on “you’ll love working here, or your money back” is an interesting method of weeding out those who just aren’t right for the company. Filling your organisation with like-minded (and that’s in terms of passion, enthusiasm not picking people who agree with you) people or even just individuals who have excitement and energy is a hard task no matter what your group does. Being open like this is just one of many ways to help find the right colleagues.

Hasbro are giving away free cash! Print it out, and spend it whenever you please - providing you’re a little pewter boot, car, iron or dog.

New site from de-construct.
A brand piece for Panasonic - Everything Matters

http://everythingmatters.eu/

Brandon’s band - The Outside Royalty - and their debut single video on the ‘tube

My wife is running two (count them, two!) Race for Life 5K runs this year in aid of Cancer Research, something which has affected, and is affecting both of us. Give her a little cash to help her towards her £10 target. Who said she has low ambitions?

I’ve mentioned on this blog before about barriers to entry for innovations like opensocial or openid - and how some things are just too technical to become interesting to the mainstream. here is something which is lowering that barrier - and possibly (until tonight) the most anticipated 404 page i’ve ever bookmarked - http://www.google.com/friendconnect.

FriendConnect promises to offer social tools through basic embeds and snippets of codes, allowing content developers who aren’t necessarily the most technically savvy, to still enable their site with the power of social networking.

David Glazer, a director of engineering at Google, explains “Many sites aren’t explicitly social and don’t necessarily want to be social networks, but they still benefit from letting their visitors interact with each other. That used to be hard. Fortunately, there’s an emerging wave of social standards — OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial, and the data access APIs published by Facebook, Google, MySpace, and others. Google Friend Connect builds on these standards to let people easily connect with their friends, wherever they are on the web, making ‘any app, any site, any friends’ a reality.”

Watch this, and many other spaces.

Occasionally I remember how much of a geek i am, and worry myself. This is one of those times, normal people don’t/shouldn’t get so excited about web analytics tools. However, i’m not normal, so http://piwik.org/ has made me sit up and say ‘oooh’. I’ve long wished i could do something more with the data *inside* google analytics, and piwik seems to solve that problem, not to mention using open source and non-prop software. I’d worry a little about constant hits to a db, and its scalability (as i’ve seen with slim’s implementation of mint) - but its certainly worth a punt on a smaller site, and the API is worth looking at. Watch this tiny space.

A new product from the innovation masters, Schulze and Webb, supported ably by my good friend Amy T. and her team at BBC Audio & Music Interactive R&D.

Olinda is a prototype digital radio that has your social network built in, showing you the stations your friends are listening to. It’s customisable with modular hardware, and aims to provoke discussion on the future and design of radios for the home.

http://schulzeandwebb.com/2008/olinda/

Succinctly elegant as ever, Clay Shirky talks about why participation is the revolution

I’ve been walking around the office barefoot for almost ten years - apparantly I’m not mental, but doing myself some favours.

http://nymag.com/health/features/46213/

I don’t know if you’ve been following the ASLEF and RMT protests towards the new Mackenzie Crook film, but this response from the film-makers is pure joy

Awesome! (I know how it feels)

http://leavemealonebox.com