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I'm now a proud owner of a Pacemaker

[ Italic dj ]

Yes I did get one. You can see the unboxing sequence here if you like. For me its the thing I've always been waiting for. I never quite understand why anyone would want a ipod or mass storage music playing device. I mean playing music can be done by your phone and when I tend to listen to music, its mixed up. Most of the time I would like to mess with the music, remix it maybe even just speed it up a little or slow it down. Well with a ipod or even a phone you can't (without some extra software). So the pacemaker is the ipod of the remix generation. Yes its expensive (but not bad value compared to the top of the range ipod), yes its going to get out paced by something better in the future and yes its 1st generation so theres lots of tweaks I'd like to see but it bloody works and is addictive.

I did a mix last night at 2am while lying on the bed (yes its super-light to hold) and got my first proper sounding mix going using A9 (original mix) and Body of Conflict (cosmic gate mix). The controls are tricky at first but now I'm pitching and control the tunes like I've been doing it for years. Actually the pacemaker is comparable to virtual turntables or VTT which was the first dj application on the market (way back in 1997). There seems to be no auto BPM but it does give you a BPM counter which you can use as guidance. I am still a little confused about looping and cueing but I can mix in the headphones and put out a decent mix. I expect to be doing more complex mixes pretty soon. I'm just transferring the rest of my tunes over as I type.

Which leads on to some issues I've had already. First thing I did was plug in the power and USB lead (yes it charges over USB and uses a standard usb to mini-usb cable, same as my phone and my bluetooth headset using a adaptor) it pops up as a mass storage device with a folder pointing to a executable for mac and pc. So I ignore that and copy some tracks over to a folder. Eject the device using the standard eject and the pacemaker complains its hard drive needs checking. 1min later its checked and said everything is fine, but can't see the music. So this time I install the pc application using Wine (windows emulator for gnu/linux, although it actually standard for wine is not emulation - those crazy guys). Anyway luckily it runs and doesn't require any weird libs. I load my music in and it starts to work out the BPM and lengths, etc. Then I start to transfer tunes. It only transferred the ones which it had analysed and look inside the .pacemaker folder I could see it wasn't just dumping the mp3 file somewhere. Nope it was renaming them, creating a xml file and adding them to a SQLlite3 database for quick look up. This now means you must use the editor to drag and drop files which is painful. I also can't seem to eject the device from the editor due to wine hardware support I guess, so I end up checking the disc everytime. Its no big problem now because I finally have everything on the device (all 1733 tracks, 15gigs). I'll have to start ripping stuff in FLAC because I got a stupid amount of space left over, plus it does support FLAC, Ogg, Wave, Mpeg3, AAC, etc.

That's my main issue really, but it would have been nice to have a bigger instruction Manuel or even a PDF. All the docs are online and I'm still not online. So generally I'm impressed by the speed and implementation of everything I've seen online in videos. There is another room to plug in a Bluetooth adaptor if I wanted to. It also does charge over USB, so no need to carry any big power adapter ever. My 3 hour train journeys between London and Manchester are going to get more musical it would seem.

BBC Worldservice win Sony's new multiplatform award

[ Web 2.0 ]

BBC Worldservice won Sony's first Multiplatform award just recently. The project was the Bangladesh Boat Trip which involved a team of people from across the new media space. Ben Sutherland along with many others internally and backstage's own Premasagar & Annesley of Dharmafly created a complete experience across different platforms. From James Cridland's blog.

As Ben Sutherland says on the BBC Editors blog: If predictions about sea level rises come true, much of Bangladesh will simply be erased from the map. Our aim, therefore, was to hire a boat and use it to travel the long, wide rivers of the country to meet the people most at risk. There were amazing stories [...] but not only was the method of getting these stories remarkable, but so was our way of getting it out. We weren’t just using tri-media, and we weren’t just World Service. We were on Radio 5 Live, News 24, Radio Scotland - and on Twitter, iTunes, Google.

In the words of the judges, “it embraced everything from podcasts to GPS and Googlemaps to add value to the listener/user experience and met those listeners where they really lived using third party sites such as Flickr.” They even had the foresight to put those photos under a CC licence, to enable people like me to use them again.

James is right, the foresight to put them under a CC licence but I would also say they went one step further by creating the API for the website. This meant people could look directly at the data underpinning the whole project. How many people did? Who knows, I assume not many. But having the foresight to do this is great and a true testament to the move from Radio to true multiplatform. Excellent work.
I'd better also say I use to work for the Worldservice and have many friends who work there.

The Thinking Digital Conference - 21st - 23rd May

[ Socially Offline ] | Tags: thinkingdigital  ted  conference  barcamp  northeast  newcastle  gateshead 

I've been meaning to blog about this conference for bloody ages, everytime I go to do it. I remember I'm still offline most of the time. Anyway hopefully this blog post will attract a few last minute choosers and attract more people to the several days of events.

So when I first heard about the thinking digital conference I was in a innovation lab in the north west. Herb Kim of codeworks was saying a bit about codeworks supporting BBC innovation labs and then at the end he did a sneaky pitch about the singularity and it all ended on a slide for a conference he was planning. When I spoke to Herb afterwards, he explained how he had gone to TED in the states last year and wanted to run something like TED in the UK. Those words I have heard else where but when he talked about some of the speakers he had at the time, I was much more convinced this could be closer that anything else I've been to before (i've never been to TED and I've only watched Pop!Tech streamed). So anyway I wanted to help make this a reality and part of that was telling people about the conference, recording it and sponsoring a couple of the events surrounding the event. So we came to conclusion which fit both parties.

So not only is there the conference which may seem quite high cost but actually isn't for the amazing array of speakers from across the world and ideaophere (yeah I just made that up) but its in Newcastle/Gateshead so the hotel prices are not stupidly priced and hell its good to get out of London sometimes people. Lets be honest, its only 3 hours on the train from Kings Cross and that train has plugs in every seat and free wireless unlike the bloody Virgin train which has 2 power sockets per table and no wireless at all. But another reason to go up to the conference is that on the Friday is there will be a geekdinner sponsored by Backstage.bbc.co.uk and then BarCampNorthEast on the Saturday and Sunday. The very first 2 day overnight stay barcamp in the North of England so far. This is a great chance to experience barcamp as it could/should be. I know quite a few Londonerners are traveling up for the whole thing, conference, geekdinner and barcamp, so thats great. But why haven't you signed up? Do you really have something better to do? Didn't think so.

There are still some tickets left over for the conference. Look at these great names.

• Greg Dyke , former Director General of the BBC.
  I came in when Greg decided to leave. It was a shame because I heard so much about him afterwards and I would have liked to have worked under him.
• Doug Richard , formerly of The Dragons' Den on BBC2 and founder of Library House
  I've spoken Doug before but not at length and I've not heard speak for a while now. So it would be good to see wheres he at now
• Ray Kurzweil, noted futurist & author of The Singularity is Near
  Do I need to say anything about Ray?
• The Fake Steve Jobs aka Dan Lyons, senior editor of Forbes Magazine & author of Options.
  I'm interested why a journalist would do this and whats been the outcome of this since. I also think this will be a session I would like Sarah over at reading the cluetrain to maybe hear.
• Steve Clayton, Microsoft Partner Group, UK CTO
  Self confessed geek in disguise, this guy is a good guy making waves in Microsoft.
• Tara Hunt, founder of Citizen Agency, San Francisco.
  Tara is simply awesome, every time I hear her talk she fill my mind with so many things that I had only briefly thought about. I also like to think of Tara as a friend so it will be good to catch up. I also know she'll be at the barcamp, which is great news.
Posted by ianforrester at Fri, 16 May 2008 02:29

Feedback (3) blogging it? digging it? googling it?

Redbull Cola

[ Just plain life ]

Seen in Dublin... Redbull Cola in 355ml cans. Be afraid...Never seen anywhere else I've been, maybe I could be wrong.

The apprentice, goodbye to the ice queens

[ All media ]

There was something in I think episode 1 and 3 which made me feel uneasy about the two Jennifers (Jennifer Maguire and Jenny Celerier). They ganged up and no douht bullied Lucinda. Serious you could see how upset she was and other housemates did little to help her. I think there was a point when even Sara, turned her back because she knew it wasn't possible to get a word in between the two Jennys. Anyway, when Sir Alan Sugar changed the teams Lucinda showed what she was capable of, and boy oh boy did she do a amazing job. So good that Lee was singing her praises. She made management look easy and she did in a way which wasn't aggressive or bullying. There's no doubt her management and style was different but in a good way. Shes always colorful and her honesty is unlike anything else I've ever seen.

Anyway, so this week both Jenny's got sacked, which was great to see. They both deserved to go and I'm surprised Sir Alan didn't sack Micheal too. The *uckup over Kosher chicken was beyond laughable. The turning point was when Sir Alan noticed the way both Jenny's used his words against the other housemates. The turn around meant goodbye.

Yes I know Lucinda, isn't going to be hired by Sir Alan, but no one deserves to be bullied and no I don't think shes like Katie from last year.

Data Availablity?

[ All types of Social Software ] | Tags: dataportability  data  myspacedataportability.org   

So i read Myspace have joined the Dataportability group, but then I spotted via Techmeme that they were also launching Data availability? There seems to be little detail about the whole thing now, but it looks closely related to the Data Portability effort.

Anyway, here's part of the alleged leaked press release.

Data Availability is about enriching existing Internet destinations with social functionality and valuable pre-existing user generated content and data. By empowering users with the ability to dynamically share, those destinations will create deeper levels of social engagement and new functionality throughout their site. As the online home to 117 million users worldwide, this groundbreaking initiative enables the larger Web to leverage the highly engaged and passionate MySpace global community.

To ease implementation for participating sites, the MySpace Data Availability initiative uses OAUTH and Restful APIs as its core technology underpinnings. MySpace is using open standards in an effort to embrace the open source community and allow the implementation to be as non-proprietary as possible. Today’s announcement is the first step of MySpace’s larger data portability initiatives coming down the pipeline. MySpace is officially joining the Data Portability Project demonstrating our continued commitment to openness and open standards.

Is facebook poking dirty or just clean fun?

[ Socially Online ] | Tags: poking  facebook  video  poke 

I've been poking people on Facebook for a long while now, but I was talking to Kate on the weekend and she seems convinced its slightly dirty. Now this might just be Kate's strange but fascinating mind, however I got to say I'm going stop poking some people from today.

Computer science has an image problem

[ Socially Offline ] | Tags: computerscience  podcast  geek  wired  wiredmagazine  stereotypes 

John White, CEO and executive director of the computing trade group, says fewer students are studying computer science in college , and too many tech jobs are going unfilled, because young people don't have an accurate picture of the computer scientist.

Hummm, I wonder why? Could it be anything to do with stuff like this?

My Broken Diabolo

[ Just plain life ] | Tags: diabolo  diabolism  jugging  broken  dead  juggling 

This is what happened after I attempted to pull off the next generation of tricks in the world of Diabolism. They take diabolos from Vertical to Horizontal and are usually called Vertax or Excalibur. If performing a suicide and genocide was bad enough, don't even attempt one of these Vertax's. I kind of got it going then it went flying, hit the ground and bounced straight into a brick wall. But to be honest, I think dropping the Diabolo at six stories a few times maybe wasn't that good for it either. So much for diabolism while in Dublin... Can someone tell me how on earth you perform a Genocide Vertax without turning the diabolo into its original purpose of killing people?

The Sexy little HTC Touch Diamond

[ Mobile and Wireless ] | Tags: iphone  htc  windowsmobile  touchdiamond  orange  mobile 

Via Engadget, iI'm not the biggest fan of the touch range of HTC phones, but this one looks great. I would get one if I was upgrading my phone. And you iphone owners have to admit this phone does look great and has a pretty impressive 3d accelerated interface. What makes it great is its spec, VGA screen, Bluetooth 2.0, Wifi, HSDPA/3g support, GPS (a-gps?), 4gig of storage, MicroSD card support for more storage, 3.2mpx camera, 3D graphics chip, FM radio and Accelerometer. It looks like a LG Viewty but runs Windows Mobile 6.1, how much better can you get? Well I guess we'll find out in a special HTC press launch today in London. Best thing about HTC phones, is there usually priced below Nokia's and always available on Orange first.

Geek Stereotypes

[ Socially Offline ] | Tags: wired  wired  magazine  geeky  geek  geekness  stereotypes 

I was reading wired on the plane to Dublin today and came across a rather amusing piece about different types of geeks. It had a range of geek stereotypes including the Fanboy (1), the gadget guy (4), the gamer (3) and the hacker (5). What was interesting was the other two, the music geek (2) and the otaku (6). These two are usually forgotten when it comes to geek types, and it was interesting to see Wired magazine made them women.

When I was Futuresonic over the weekend, I certainly met quite a few women who could be loosly termed as Otaku geeks. They even had the super coloured hair and well interesting clothing to go with it. But what I wonder is where is the Dj geek? Designer geek? Movie geek? Mobile phone geek? (which I would argue, isn't the same as gadget guy). Anyway, its all stereotypes and not real. We're all a combination and we all wear better clothes and don't look like we just left college. Embrace your geekness...

revealed: My New Manchester Flat

[ Just plain life ] | Tags: flats  manchester  living  renting  apartment  boxes 

Sorry to everyone for the long delay in blogging but you need to feel the pain of not having broadband at home. Some people have asked why I don't just blog from work, but to be honest I tend to have a endless list of things to do at work, so as I complete one task, I just move to the next one. This means theres no time for blogging. Also recently I've been out of the building so much that sitting down and blogging would be difficult. I had thought about drafting a load but I've been unpacking for days and am still not finished.

In the pictures you can now see on Flickr, you might notice a few boxes but up till yesterday was a lot more.

Before anyone asks, the computer next to the TV isn't there all the time, thats my test machine ubuntu box for xbmc in the future. There is no barrier between the kitchen and living room, its open plan. But I decided to put the bookshelf and sofas in the way. This means the living room area feels more cosy. The sofas are not my choosing, just like the glass table and coffee table but I'll live with them. The TV is watchable from the Kitchen and dinner table too. The second bed room still has the bed covers which came with the flat, because I would never pick such nasty bed covers. I put the servers and switch in the wardrobe alongside the extra furniture and boxes. I still need to get rid of the rest of the boxes and sort out the ethernet/telephone cables. If it was my flat, I would be drilling nice outlet holes between the rooms but its not.

To date, only 3 people have seen the new flat. The first person was Kate, while Dave's actual slept over, although Kate did get to sample some cooking. Generally I'm having a good time in Manchester and I did go out drinking the other day with Kate and Leanne, so things are going pretty well. The house in London exchanged last week too, which is good and now means I don't really have links to London except family and friends. Yes the ride up to Manchester last Sunday was pretty long (4.5hours), luckly it only rained between Oxford and Birmingham, so I was dry by the time I stopped for the 3rd time for fuel and a rest near Manchester.

Sorry all, I'm mainly offline due to my move to Manchester

[ Socially Offline ]

If there wasn't so much unpacking to do, I'd be climbing the walls of the flat. I hope to be back online and blogging as usual by May. Also if you've sent me a email in the last few weeks, please be aware that I currently have 237 emails which are not spam or mailing lists type stuff. 1519 which are mailing lists and project updates. I will try and through them all, but its going to take some time - please bear with me.

And winner of the poll was moi?

[ Just plain life ]

Ok bear in mind I've been offline for a while, but serious thanks to everyone who voted for me on the Techcrunch Poll. Jemima Kiss, wrote a quick write up about the poll results, and shes right. I'm pretty bad when it comes to politics. I tend to change my mind quite a bit and always say the wrong thing to get a reaction rather that say nothing. I'm aware I'm doing it but can't help it. One thing Jemima got wrong was me being a sound techie. People forget I have a design background.

Top of the bill is Ian Forrester. He's an extremely sound techie and very well connected, but a politician he is not. If the description of Highfield's job as 85% politics, 15% action is accurate, anyone that feels the need to do rather than to talk won't be very happy in that role at all. And anyway, Ian can make far more difference on the ground.

Social games with Moby from O2

[ Socially Offline ]

I like the idea of 02's new competition/big summer party but why did they make it so damm complex? Wouldn't it be simpler to just have the winner and all his/her friends up to a maximum of 1000 or something? Anyway judge for yourself, rachel has the low down on the whole thing.

The prize is a little complicated. Despite claiming in the introductory copy that the party is for you and 1500 friends, you actually only win a party for 100 people in the VIP section, where you get fed and watered and get a chance to meet Moby. The winner has to choose those 100 people they want to invite. The runner up gets to invite 4 people. But everyone else on the winning guest list gets a chance to get a ticket. - everyone gets an ‘invite’ and the first 1500 who reply get in. (for those keeping count, we’re up to 1605 now). Although on a different page it says only 1400 - the copy is not consistent through out, so no idea exactly how many.

Social Enginnering at any cost?

[ Culture and politics ]

I was waiting for my train for Manchester today at London Euston. A old woman comes up to me and asks me, if I'm from Kenya, I say no and she thinks for a second and then asks me if I'm from Africa. I say no once again and she then asks where I am from? I say the UK and she gives me a funny look and asks wheres my parents from? I say the Caribbean and in return she takes a second and says can I give her 4 pounds. I look at her and wait for her to say more about why she needed the money but it doesn't come. So I say, I only do cards, I don't have any cash at all (which if you know me well, is very true actually). Anyway, she turns away and just walks away.

The whole thing lasted less that a minute, I was thinking afterwards while running for the train so I can get a seat with a table (I got one, facing backwards). She didn't even ask for spare change or a low amount of money, I mean would you give someone you don't know a fiver for no reason? Anyway, also the repour thing was quite laughable and i'm never the kind of person who goes for that whole thing. Yo yo, were from the same city, now give me a fiver.

Dying to comment, but won't...

[ Just plain life ]

I've kept super tight lipped about what I think of this whole thing. I mean don't get me wrong I know the poll is full of something but actually if you look beyond a certain level things get quite interesting. Add all the comments and before you know it, you got something very interesting. However I've decided it would be un-professional of me to comment in detail.

Whoever gets the position next really needs to be ready to take the BBC into the next 10 years. They need to be thinking about a lot of things but I would like to see that person also do the small things which Ashley started doing. Things like the podcast, internet blog, net netutrality support and even installing ubuntu. A commitment to more transparency is a must and one of those things why I think (only guessing) Me and James scored so highly. We blog a lot and its pretty clear who we are and our thoughts, we're not a faceless entity. I think this is critical if the BBC wants support from the British people. From the cluetrain - Companies that don't realize their markets are now networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are missing their best opportunity.. Ok enough said for now, back to downloading tons of email over a EDGE connection.

Xbox media centre on my laptop

[ Home entertainment ]

Quick post to inform everyone that Xbox media centre can now be complied and run on a machine which has Compiz-Fusion turned on. When I last compiled it from source, it failed to display anything on my laptop unless I turned off Compiz-Fusion. Now its working perfectly and much faster that the Xbox. So when I do finally get settled in Manchester, I'm going to setup a dedicated box for running xbmc. HDMI is a option but I think it will be best if I just get a DVI > HDMI switcher and find a motherboard which supports optical out. The Xbmc on linux forum recommend Nvidia cards only and so does this guide. Accroding to the previous link I should be able to build a machine for less that 250 pounds. I still like the idea of using a laptop but I'm unlikely to find one with Optical out, HDMI/DVI out and a Nvidea card for less that 250 pounds.

Ashley moves on, while people debate who should replace him

[ Just plain life ]

Ok I've not said anything about Ashley Highfield leaving his position to lead on Kangaroo from director of Future Media and Technology. You know I always get into trouble for saying stuff about work on my blog, and yes I know the press could use my words as BBC employee says, but I can't help myself now I see James Cridland is winning the current vote on TechcrunchUK. I mean theres nothing wrong with some healthy non-serious competition and James will see the funny side of the whole thing.

I also didn't add any comments to the debate on techcrunch but its always good to see what different people think. It was also good to see Ashley chime in about joining the startup world and maybe going to Mobile Monday one day soon. Maybe I should send Ashley an invite to the joint geekdinner? I do have to take Mike to task about the last comment in his post.

So, here’s the deal: Dear BBC,

What we want is your data, a lot more APIs, developer tools and your traffic.

We’ve paid for it already in the license fee.

Now get on with it.

Yours Sincerely,

The UK’s Startups

If only it was that simple...

Data Portability - Logo Design content

[ Design and Ideas ]

You have till Friday to vote for the new Data Portability logo. Go vote...