Blackbeltjones/Work “The cosmos is a deeply dangerous thing to think about - into it, vacant minds expand” - Dr. Jonathan Miller

Thanks to Debra for helping me get it…

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Jason Kottke demonstrates that conversational interfaces may have a way to go.

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Been in NYC, and now in Washington DC at AIGA: Voice. Been looking and listening. Oliver Sacks in NYC on “Narrative and Science”. Just saw Ken Garland speak taunting himself and the audience’s conscience. Many connecting threads. Lots of stuff to write down, remember, and most importantly act upon…

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I had a great time at ASIST IA Summit in Baltimore. A weekend crucible of ideas and people and chickens. Here’s the case study on BBCi Search that I presented [ powerpoint, 3.6megs] Seemed to go down okay with people I think even though I over-ran hideously… I’ve had to chop out a couple of things from the talk about our future plans but hopefully there’s some useful stuff in there.

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Boxes and Arrows is live…!
Well done to all involved!

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“Dear Matt,

We truly appreciate your interest in Google Compute.

At this time, the Google Compute feature is only available to a small
number of randomly selected Google Toolbar users. We intend to roll out
this feature to all Google Toolbar users in the near future. If you’d like
to be notified when the feature becomes available, please consider
subscribing to our Google Friends Newsletter at
http://www.google.com/contact/newsletter.html
.

Besides, please note that Google Compute is not supported on Win NT
currently (although it will be supported soon).

Thank you,
The Google Team.”

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Yup – leaving Airstrip One for a week or so, as I’ve been lucky enough to be able to attend a couple of conferences on the East Coast of the USA. I’ll be doing some of my old acoustic crowdpleasers, but also trying some of my newer experimental electric material.

If anyone wants to meet up, have a beer and reconfirm that I am indeed, full of shit, then I will be in:

• Baltimore: Thursday 14th 17th March: IA Summit: “speaking”
  
• New York: Monday 18th – Thursday 21st March: “Mooching” (and hopefully, seeing Qbert, Dilated Peoples and Ash)
  
• Washington DC: Thursday 21st – Sunday 24th March: AIGA “Voice” Conference – Milton Glaser, Naomi Klein and Matt Groening – Together at Last
  

So anyway – I’ll be in Dubyaland* for a week or so mail me if you’re around and thirsty.

*to be honest – last time I was in the US it was booming with Bill, and I’m a little nervous of going there now… should I be worried? Will I get lynched for being “a european peace-loving pansy?”??? Answers on a postcard.

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Following the threads that erupted after Peter Morville’s discussion of social networks – here’s what my man Josh ON of “>They Rule fame did back in 2000.

» josh on report | Royal College of Art | Computer Related Design 2000

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Groan. Sorry. Commercial GPRS and UMTS/3g will probably both have payment models that revolve around the consumer shelling out for the data they download and consume, rather than the time they spend ‘online’ – as you’re always on…

This post at Subterrane discusses the implications for designing user-experiences in such conditions, and how less will be more for most consumers once they realise how much they are paying for each extra branding element or design-doodat…

“When a wireless user requests data, just what are they getting in return? How much extra baggage is getting sent with NTT DoCoMo’s video conference feed? I’m willing to bet that these technologies are based on current systems that were designed to use wired networks. Over the years as bandwidth got cheaper, extra features were piled on until it no longer mattered how small a file was, it only mattered that it could be viewed correctly. When people start paying for every byte, this attitude is going to change.”

» Subterrane.com: 3/1/2002 : Do you know what your handheld is receiving?

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Just noticed the formal resemblence between “24” and “Timecode”.

How much do you think this was part of the high-concept elevator pitch for the series:

“...it’s like, Tom Clancy meets Timecode…”

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...with apologies to Erik Spiekermann. Here’s the always-excellent Joel Spolsky on what “just enough design” really means:

“Incremental design and implementation is good. Frequent releases are fine (although for shrink-wrapped or mass market software, it drives customers crazy, never a good idea—instead do frequent internal milestones.) Too much formality in design is a waste of time—I’ve never seen a project benefit from mindless flowcharting or UMLing or CRCing or whatever the flavor-du-jour is. And those huge 10 million lines-of-code behemoth systems Linus is talking about should evolve, because humans don’t really know how to design software on that scale.

But when you sit down to write File Copy, or when you sit down to plan the features of the next release of your software, you gotta design. Don’t let the sirens persuade you otherwise.”

» Joel on Software: “Nothing is as simple as it seems”

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Whoa. Whoa. WHOA. Have they won yet?

“Google is pleased to introduce Google Compute, a new feature for the Google Toolbar. By turning on this feature, you allow your computer to work on complex scientific problems when it would otherwise be idle. The work it does is automatically sent via the Internet to researchers who combine it with information sent by thousands of other users.”

» Google Compute

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Flash moves towards the rulespace of the web with it’s new version: with embedded, exploitable information about it’s structure.

Named Anchors
Develop usable user interfaces and applications that ensure the best experience for your viewers. With named anchors, Macromedia Flash MX content can now be bookmarked, allowing for the use of the browser Back and Forward buttons.

» Macromedia – Flash MX : Top 10 New Features

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‘Nick ran his hand across his forehead. “I’m not quite following you.”

“Granularity,” Randy said suddenly breaking the thin column into even more columns with a red marker pen.

“Y’see, the problem with the Boho Melting Pot segment is it doesn’t have granularity. It’s too vague. But adding granularity means we can now add more texture by creating granules. In this case we can add, Boho Woho, which is your urban miserable cash-poor artistic sort so we can strike them immediately. Boho Wahay, your hedonistic but cash-poor artistic sort, who are just ripe for alcohol guerrilla. And Boho premium, which is a rock-star granule, because they are the cash-rich ones who like to think they are arty which gives us a huge opportunity to focus our luxury goods push.”’

» Nick Best is unwell…

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Yup. It’s all here, and more:

“Hemp wearers might hate to hear it, but in terms of energy use and consumption of green space, a person living in Trump Tower is already doing the planet more good than an organic farmer in Vermont.”

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Great American TV is better than almost any other pop-media in the world. Especially when it eats its own tail, ingesting old formats and formalae only to be born again a more formidable story-snake.

Example: “Smallville”
2 parts “Dawson’s”, 3 parts “X-Files”, 5 parts “Superman”.

Example: “Alias”
3 parts “mission: Impossible”, 3 parts Tarantinoesque Banterfest, 2 parts “Felicity”, 2 parts Bond-franchise-but-by-Bruckheimer.

“24” started last night here in Britain. Not particularly orginal in content, but formally it’s incredible.

Hyperlayered and frantic from the off, it’s going to become a regular fixture for me – and it’s on a Sunday night, which our colonnial cousins have long-known is the best night to put good TV on. Over here, we’ve only had Antiques Roadshow and Heartbeat to round off our weekends with a whimper.

Hopefully the BBC will wise-up and not fool-around with the scheduling as they are prone to do.

Or even better, someone over here will start making smart, incredible TV again.

» FOX Broadcasting Company: 24

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“To all our questions”, as Col. Abrahams once intoned. Dan’s finally posted his magnum-opus on Echo.com and the promise it holds for media brands, the exploration of music and musical community.

“it’s radio that learns. Learns quickly too… ...Watching it learn is fascinating. M’colleague Chris Jones described it as a ‘musical tamogotchi’. Hearing it play your favourite record unprompted is almost akin to witnessing a childs first faltering steps. Almost.”

» CityOfSound: Echo and the future of radio

Matt Haughey recently wrote something about digital music I’ve been meaning to point to:

“Imagine if you couldn’t ever buy a DVD movie on disc, and the only way to get content was to use cumbersome software tools in your PC, with an attached VCR as input. Now where would DVDs be if that were the only way to get new content? Looking at the world of mp3s, you see that even despite that daunting hurdle, they are everywhere.”

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