Digital Digressions

Music Community 2.0 - Garageband.com

No, I don't mean Apple's lovely music-making software, but a community site called GarageBand, my latest addiction introduced to me by a friend only days ago. My music-making has seen a break recently, mainly because of other distractions, but also because when you are making your own tunes just for the fun of it, there's only so much you can shower your friends with and if they don't get what you are trying to do, your inspiration can take a dip. Not so say I only do tunes to get a pat on the back, it's more that when you are making music you really appreciate the feedback from fellow musicians.

That is also the beauty of this site - GarageBand excels where so many others have failed. It builds a community around independent music, people who haven't even got signed up yet, and the act of reviewing other people's songs before you even are allowed to upload songs yourself. Ahh, easy you say - but no, comments like 'this sucks' or ' your mother was a hamster' don't cut it on this site, as before your reviews go anywhere they have to be reviewed by other users who give you points on how well you articulate your points and how useful the review was to them.

True democracy - this helps not only the good stuff to trickle up to the top in the charts running on Garageband.com, but also all the bands to get useful feedback from their peers and not just some random comments or people trying to suck up to them. You have to complete 30 reviews, before you get to post your first song so this does take a bit of time to do, but again that is the beauty of it - good things come to those who wait. Too many sites instantly give away all their goodness to the extent that you lose interest in about a week, where other sites, like this one, grow on you.

So there you are, trying to be your most verbatim best, giving useful pointers and descriptions of stuff thrown at you (yes you can choose genres! I'm sure I wouldn't give very good ratings to the Country & Western lot, not because of malice - just because it isn't my thing) and having reviewed tracks in the Jazz, Electronic and Electronica genres I must say I'm particularly impressed with the quality of Jazz on Garageband.com.

A sad discovery, however, is that this site, a little weighted to the American audience, still doesn't have a genre called Drum&Bass, which does exist in America too, usually under the name 'Jungle' and a little too aggressive in my liking - but the really good stuff you'll find under the sub-genres of Jazz-step and Intelligent Drum & Bass - the output of which mainly comes from Europe. So once I'm as far as ready to upload my own tracks onto Garageband - I shall have to decide whether my Drum&Bass numbers should be classed as 'Electronic', 'Electronica', 'Dance', or 'Techno' to comply with Garageband's collection of genres.

Not sure what I'm on about? Go check out Beatport or TrackItDown for some great examples of what Drum & Bass can offer. Needless to say - this stuff is not mainstream in the sense that if you expect to hear it on Top 40 countdowns - forget it. That is also the beauty of Garageband.com - the real stuff, coming straight to you without some record company exec deciding what you should be listening to - for the people by the people, brought to you by web 2.0 put to the service of building a great community. Amen.

A Million Penguins - The First Ever Wiki Novel

"Everybody has a novel in them, so they say. Wouldn't it be better, though, for a million people to club together to write one? This is the theory behind an initiative launched this weekend by Penguin Books, in collaboration with students at De Montfort University in Leicester. They plan to create the world's first 'wiki' novel, fiction that will be concocted online by millions of contributors across the globe. Until the end of the month anyone can join in to help write the novel, which has the provisional title of A Million Penguins.

The site is A Million Penguins and, so far, just a few days into the experiment, the novel is into its seventh chapter. The project has been designed as part of a study module at the university. Students involved are based across the world and include the director of Booktrust, Chris Meade. The term 'wiki novel' has been coined for an online book from the internet term 'wiki' which is the name of a website that allows the visitors to add to and edit content, often without the need for registration.

Previous attempts to throw open the editorial process using the web have not had a smooth track record, however; chaos ensued when the Los Angeles Times threw open its editorial processes to internet readers. But Penguin is optimistic. The company's digital publisher, Jeremy Ettinghausen, said the contribution of the students on the university course had already been hugely helpful in shaping the launch of the novel." ( Vanessa Thorpe, arts and media correspondent, Sunday February 4, 2007, The Observer)

What I want to know is, is it any good? Listening to authors speak about their novels it is usually a complex affair, many interlocking threads are kept initially apart to entice the reader to gradually piece things together, then things get turned on their head and eventually the novel ends in a surprising way, which makes all the pieces fall in place and make sense again. Well, of course not all novels are like that - but to cite an example for the purpose of discussing: can those intricate turns and twists of a plot realistically be delivered by people who don't know each other, don't work together necessarily even to the same goal? I decided to take a peek and this is what greeted me in the prologue:

The Emperor gazed ponderously over the city of London. Although he had long grown bored of the invisible control he and his ancestors had exercised over the human race, since abdicating three hundred years ago he had become increasingly remorseful at his decision to set them free. For over three hundred years now the human race had been left to do what it wanted, severing the intricate planning of generations of past Emperors. They had proved themselves to be absolutely useless, relentlessly engaging in a nonsensical frottage of sex, violence and gimcrackery that they attempted to pass off as art and politics. And now the planet was melting. It was a mess.

For the past fifty years The Emperor had been patiently executing a plan to regain control. His plot was at a critical phase, one that could, if he could pull it off, re-establish coherency in the world. In his current guise as the director of Penguin Books, hiding his appearance with a hard hologram that enveloped his portly black and white body in that of a gregarious businessman, he was in a position of immense psychological power.

Just then came a knock at the door. He turned from his office window overlooking the Thames as Jeremy entered, the head of Penguin online. The Emperor had been judiciously manipulating Jeremy to develop a tool with which he intended to get the human race back on course and regain the benign, paternalistic control that was so badly needed – A Million Penguins. Outwardly A Million Penguins was an optimistic creative writing experiment. But in the depths of its structure lay the most powerful psychological weapon that had ever been invented.

Sounds like this could be fun. I like the little jibes at Penguin and the digital publisher, Jeremy Ettinghausen in all this - there is a taste of the beginning of a Batman movie hidden in there somewhere, or maybe it is just the reference to penguins that is setting my mind off. Also, let's presume this becomes a runaway success - how many more of these kinds of stunts can be done until people (rightly so) start demanding a share of the proceeds? Truly quality material needs to be matched with some reward or perhaps getting your name in print is enough? And what is it about Penguins - we had the March of the Penguins, then Happy Feet, now a Million of them... is the world obsessed with Penguins or ...?

How to Find Your Dream Job

No I'm not joking - there isn't a funny punch-line coming. There is at last a service set up specifically for all those of us who have ever wondered what it would be like to work as a ... chocolatier?  fishing guide? car critic and writer? pit crew member? you name it - they have thought of it! Almost - they should add toy designer to their list just to get people like me a little more respect - designing toys is actually really hard! At least good ones anyway - but I'll leave that to another post.

Vocation Vacations  specialise in setting up vacations where you get to try out your dream job - is it really all that it's cranked up to be, is this something so much fun you could easily do it for the rest of your life? Changing jobs and even vocations is very hard work - it's hard to get started and its even harder to sustain your interest if you run into difficulty. This could just be the perfect stepping stone to give you a taste of what you have been dreaming of and supply you with the necessary energy, ideas and advice to make the switch permanently.

Or then not - I don't know to what extent you cover the annoying things that there surely has to be with any job you take on - the question is are the nuisances small enough in the big picture to not matter - or will the prospect dealing with those nuisances in fact make you grateful you don't have to do this new job for the rest of your life.. I would like to hear testimonies from both camps, not just the evangelical 'Vocation Vacations Changed My Life', but then I can be a cynic.. only at times.

I like the thought though - also what an interesting thing to do for a vacation! Beats lying on the beach watching over-weight people slowly cook themselves to a nice pink colour. Coming home with a head full of ideas always puts a spring in your step and changing your outlook on life also feels good - knowing that you are not trapped in one job/scenario for the rest of your life, but that there is other exciting things out there and the step between dreams and reality has just been reduced with a significant step. That is something not to be sniffed at - life is too short not to aim for the sky, to follow your dreams and do your very damnest to try reaching them.

Scrybe: Where Art Thou?

If you read my rant a while ago about Scrybe you must have gathered how excited I was about this - my problem is: I never made it into the Beta tester crowd! As you might have noticed any cool software worth having these days is something in a Beta mode, primarily housed on the Internet and combining cool functions and features you will have grown accustomed to being housed previously in several different programs (all at an extortionate price), this time all in one and probably for free. Or so it seems. That's why we love them: the promise of simplicity, user-friendliness, productivity with low or no (God forbid!) hassle.

Then you find your holy grail, like I did (see for yourself in this little movie clip below) and what happens? Absolutely nothing. For months. I mean, I have been waiting since about September! And I am cheeky, so every couple of months I go to the Scrybe website to add my email to their list of people who want to Beta test (in case they have lost my previous entry... or because there might be strength in numbers... or submitting entries more times might convince them I REALLY would like this piece of software RIGHT NOW) in any case: to no avail. Every time I type my email address in the little box, I get the kind little reminder - your email has already been submitted. Thank you.

This is sublime irony if there ever was any - so please please Scrybe people, if you have one of those nifty RSS trackers that pings your in-box with an extract every time some poor blogger is writing about your (excellent if I may add) software - here's another poor blogger desperate for all the features and functions you so effortlessly extol on your little video - please: release it already or I WILL throw my PC out the window..

Predict the World in 2007 Challenge

Back again, after a long work-induced break, this blog is hopefully once again up and running with more frequent posts than recently. 2007 has got off to a flying start for many of us, and wintery landscapes are finally reminding us Northern Europeans that it is in fact, still Winter - and what a great time to pull ourselves up in our armchairs with a hot cup of something and muse about the year ahead of us. What will be the big changes coming to our attention in 2007, how are our lives changing, or are they in fact changing at all?

Having delved into extensive research into trends and various fields related to my work, I feel like I have finally come up to the surface to breathe again after having been immersed in fact-finding for so long. The notion of mapping trends is actually very difficult and what I struggled with most was the notion that every day seemed to bring something new to my findings, sometimes even turning things completely upside down from how I had been looking at them before. One thing is of course finding examples of what is going on, but more importantly, the challenge is to try to make connections between different things and even attempt to explain why they are happening.

 

The Big Surprise for 2007
In my mind the most revolutionising develop­ment of 2007 is likely to come from a very un­expected quarter: Africa. Despite the philanthropic efforts of Microsoft and others, computers have failed to penetrate much beyond the urban middle class in east Africa. Laptops are targeted by thieves, desk­tops are stymied by power cuts and a lack of broadband access. This in itself makes the concept of OLPC *One Laptop Per Child, an effort by Nicholas Negroponte to get computers into the developing world potentially a red herring, but may in fact turn out to be the killer of products like LeapPad for kids, where the laptop has more mileage and is a better investment than the closed electronic platforms of children’s learning toys, but who knows?

Speculation aside, the truth is that mobile-phone operators in Africa are bullish. Except in restrictive Ethiopia and Eritrea, the market has taken off in the region, and 2007 will see the first high-speed access Internet access through mobiles. Some com­panies, such as South Africa’s Breakdesign, a developer of software for phones, predict that mobiles will become east Africa’s primary portal to the Internet.

The humble SMS will have an even greater effect on east Africa in 2007. Innovative use of SMS will allow people to move money by text message, to receive information on, say, maize prices, along with tips on planting, and to receive medical advice, a particular benefit to those living with tuberculosis or AIDS. (Source: the Economist, December 2006, ‘The World in 2007’.)

 
Connected Communities
Another big one, which is not really new for 2007, but growing explosively, is the phenomenon of connected communities. Over 1 billion people are now online as of June 2006 *see Internet World Stats  and the biggest growth in internet usage is coming from Africa, followed by the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. The sites receiving the biggest traffic are sites involving direct human interaction – sites like MySpace, Orkut, Bebo, but also blogging, Youtube and the like. People connect around contexts, things they have in common and their desire for knowledge, for communication and a sense of belonging – coupled with virtual and physical communities beginning to blend into one through the advent of internet-ready phones, Google maps and GPS, makes it possible to connect to people you have met online on Mesh Tennis offline – for a great game. The passion is what unites you. The internet is the enabler. Niches find their audiences, talented moviemakers their fans, bloggers their readers, geographically widely spread apart, but huge in numbers. Connected communities make it possible for word to travel fast, for good news or bad news to spread quickly, for brands to emerge one day and almost be buried the next, as employees equipped with cameraphones decide to publicise their gripe about a topic, as happened with the Starbucks employees highlighting the rat infestation at a Starbucks premise on Youtube. The transparency can become tyranny at the flick of a switch.

 
The rise of Homegrown Media
Sitcoms are in terminal decline and the only growth area is still reality TV - which, interesting­ly, shares a low-cost aesthetic and people-like us authenticity with much of web video. Indeed, the only thing keeping TV programmers off the sills of their skyscrapers is that the source of their income, marketers, have not embraced web video as quickly as have their viewers.

In 2007 TV will have its first ‘music mo­ment’ - the realisation that a core audience (the 18-34-year old male) has moved on-line, pos­sibly for good. The rise of Youtube and an army of other free video-hosting services has created a phenomenon of short user-created videos. These clips are creating a new kind of watching experience, on more about ‘snacking’ than half-hour sitcoms. They spread virally, by e-mail and blogs, rather than via billboards and prime-time scheduling. And most worryingly for the net­works, they are not accompanied by 30 second advertising spots, or any other advertising at all. This is television, but not as we’ve known it.

Few even care to comment on the absurdity of traditional TV business models (to say nothing of the risible model of interruption-based TV advertising itself; annoying 90% of the audience for the sake of reaching 10% who might care about your product) makes sense only when you’ve got a captive audience, which is no longer true.

If anyone figures out a way to combine Google-style advertising matched to the con­tent people choose to watch with the undenia­ble power of video commercials, then the house of cards that is the economics of the broadcast TV industry will come crashing down. (Source: The Economist: The World in 2007)

This time last year, Mashable was reporting on del.icio.us clones - where are they now? Jots? SpinSpy? These sites have died a slow death, since the low of cost of hosting means they can stay online forever, despite having no users. Jookster and Wink were forced to change their models, meanwhile, to include video and social networking. Likewise, all the unnecessary RSS readers either gave up or got consumed by a larger entity this year: Mashable expects the same to happen in the video space, with lots of consolidation in 2007.

YouTube Becomes Bigger Than MySpace
This is a ridiculous prediction to make, since YouTube is trailing MySpace by a long way, and MySpace Video is doing pretty well. It’s also extremely hard to measure this stuff, since all the stat providers disagree (in fact, Alexa actually reported that YouTube had overtaken MySpace earlier this year, despite the fact that it’s still a fraction of the size by most measures - as mentioned previously, Alexa has some problems). Another issue is that YouTube involves spending a few minutes on each page, while MySpace users can rack up at least 20 pageviews in 5 minutes. So this is a wild card to some extent.

For more of brilliant insights from Mashup follow the link:Mashable Predictions  

Fuel for thought
To move out from the online domain – the other really big thing is energy. The world uses a cubic mile of oil a year, cost­ing almost $2 trillion. Oil and cars are the world’s biggest and most entrenched industries. Yet, an inexorable half-century transition beyond oil has begun, squeezing oil between efficient use and alternative supplies. In 2007 Toyota will emerge as the leader in super-efficient plug-in hybrid cars: electric for short commutes, petrol-hybrid for long trips. This could double the already doubled petrol efficiency of a Prius. Next, make that car ultra light and its petrol efficiency redoubles. Biofuel it and you quadruple petrol efficiency again, to 30 times today’s norm. Oil prices will drop - but efficiency will remain cheaper still. Getting of oil- abating 42% of global carbon-dioxide emissions will be led by business for profit. That transition already shapes competi­tive strategy. Wal-Mart’s new heavy trucks will be a quarter more efficient in 2007 than in 2006.

By 2015 they will be twice as efficient, sav­ing over $300m a year. Next will come trebled efficiency, which yields a 60% internal rate of return. In 2007 Boeing’s 20%-more-efficient but same price 787 will take flight. Ford’s new chief executive, Alan Mulally, whose efficiency-based Boeing strategy is beating Airbus, will bring to Ford Boeing’s focus on ultralight materials (the 787 is 50% advanced composites), systems inte­gration and breakthrough design.

In Washington, DC, a surprisingly strong voice in 2007 for getting off oil will be the world’s biggest buyer both of oil and of renew­able energy - the Pentagon. The risk and cost of vulnerable fuel convoys, easy prey to roadside bombs, will persuade military leaders that only super-efficient platforms dragging dramatically slimmer fuel logistics tails, or none, can fight persistent, dispersed, affordable wars. This strategic shift will not just save hun­dreds of lives and tens of billions of dollars a year. It will also speed key technologies, like ul­tralight materials, that can triple the efficiency of civilian cars, trucks and planes - just as military R&D created the Internet, GPS, the jet and chip industries. Thus the Pentagon will start to lead America, and the world, off oil so nobody need fight over it.

But even if work begins in all these directions, as well as improving energy efficiency in industry and homes and the use of various small-scale alternative sources of energy, we cannot forget that the economies of developing countries will continue to grow, meaning there will not be any reduction in en­ergy prices in the near and medium term. The year ahead will show which strategy the devel­oped countries are going to choose to work their way out of their looming energy crisis.

1. Re-industrialisation based on a ‘new compet­itiveness’ deriving from an energy-efficient advantage over the industry of China and other developing countries.
2. New colonial wars - this time for energy re­sources
3. New leadership: abandonment of the model of increasing material consumption in favour of improvement in the quality of life, and increase in the intellectual component of the consumer basket.

Strategically speaking only the third way holds promise for the future. (Source: the Economist: The World in 2007)

More Predictions?
This is by no means an exhaustive list. What do you think are going to be the big ones for 2007? Add your comments below and let’s see how close to the mark we get a year from now.

The Simplest Way to Program Ever - Just Sketch!

Did you ever hope making things come alive would be as simple as merely drawing them on a piece of paper? Did you ever wonder what would happen if your drawings did come alive? Wonder no longer, this wonderful bit of video (sent to me by Edith Ackermann at the MIT, thanks again Edith for making my day!) shows you just how that can happen. Don't be dissuaded by guy with moustache in the beginning, just watch what he does... it's magic! I want one!

Productivity Enhancer: Scrybe - Simply Unbelievable

Yes I know, not a post for a long time and my poor excuse of lots of travel and being so busy I haven't had a weekend to myself without work for the last two weeks will not cut the mustard. Once you have a blog you should write something. Simple as that. So until now I haven't had lots of useful things to say apart from gargling noises and looking like I need more sleep. On the upside my face is looking normal again after my Friday the 13th accident (which you can read about in the earlier post) and also I will be at home for at least the next two weeks without interruption - so I promise to write some more posts.

What caused my sudden return to the keyboard today is this most awesome application which proposes to solve all my troubles about being organised AND working on more than 10 things at once - both of whom are pre-requisites of my new role, but equally a source of continuous headache and a lasting challenge to any GTD application, a few of which I have put to the test previously on this blog.  Some I also liked a lot in the beginning, but their lack of a useful calendar and seamless integration with that oh so useful medium most digital applications shy away from, namely paper - make them fall into oblivion in the long run.

Along comes this amazing application called Scrybe - it has a very fluid calendar built in, which not only recognises time and dates when typed in normally (forget stupid pull down menus), but can also create calendars featuring several timezones simultaneously and fluidly moving between all of them. Recently I have been spending some time in the US and of course my clunky Outlook calendar has all my meetings occurring in the middle of the night, which has me permanently confused of what the correct time is - wonder no longer, put Scrybe to the test and watch all those troubles disappear. It also lets you print little pocket-sized versions of your calendar so you can have your latest to-do list with you in your pocket everywhere you go and scribble on it whenever you need.

Moreover, it has a great way of making task lists from any content you copy into it, by dragging a task onto a time and date, it automatically gets the time allocated to it, but what I love the most is the way Scrybe lets you browse the Internet and create Thought pages, a clip book of images, text and links you find and store those under their own topic rather than an eclectic mix of favourites lists with website links, but no way of ordering the information.

The beauty of it all is that it is all on-line - you don't have to install a thing and it also works offline. You make the changes you want and next time you are back on-line it syncs it all..check out all the functionality in the movie below. Aaah. Genius!

7 Free Software LifeSavers

Having spent an unreasonable amount of time recently fiddling around with editing video, dealing with ridiculously large files and trying to convert one thing into another I thought I'd break with the norm on this blog and share with you what have become my software life savers recently. The Internet is awash with useful utilities for nearly everything and the kitchen sink - some free and some not free, some truly lifesaving, some moderately useful and eventually quite useless, when you discover that the one thing you REALLY needed to do - this nifty app won't handle. So the criteria for my list of lifesavers?

1. They have to be FREE. Free is good. Free builds good Karma. More things in life should be free. Some lifesavers are - so anybody charging money, take heed!
2. They have to be truly USEFUL - no one-trick ponies here. Just because they are free they shouldn't be useless, just the opposite in fact.

Sound simple enough? Well, you will be surprised to know that most programs that are truly useful aren't free and those that are free stop being free when they begin to be truly useful, so this paradox will make my list fairly short. And as I'm only a mere mortal, I would like to tap into the hive of knowledge out there amongst you readers - please let me know of other truly USEFUL applications out there that are also FREE. Love is there to be shared.

So here comes list in no particular order.

1. SUPER
   Super is a small program with lifesaver written all over it. It hosts an impressive list of formats, both audio and video and it is a very capable converter between virtually anything. Bonus is that it is free. So stuck not getting any sound from your MPG files once you bring them into Premiere? Look no further. Want video on your phone? Again, Super will come to the rescue. Fancy seeing films on your Video Ipod? Convert anything and everything to Ipodformat right here. Simply fantastic, but sadly PC only.
2. YouSendIt
   Having to share big files? Tired of trying to figure out where to deposit files for others to download? This nifty (and again free) web-based application allows you to register, upload your chunky file (up to 100 MB) and send your friend the link in an email. What could be simpler? And this one I particularly like, because it is cross-platform.
3. FIREFOX
   FireFox is not new, but it is arguably the most flexible and user-friendly web-browser out there. Why? Because of its continuously expanding library of extensions and plug-ins which allow you to do anything from downloading Youtube videos right to your desktop, to hiding your tracks while surfing to many more handy features. These extensions keep growing on a daily basis and one of my favourites is Down-Them-All, a great extension to help you download stuff faster. Needless to say, FireFox is cross-platform.
   
4. NETVOUZ
   Is your favourites list on the computer beginning to resemble a study in chaos theory? Moreover - are you surfing the web on different computers, one at work, one at home? Or have you ever inadvertently lost all your favourites in a system re-install? Netvouz is one example of a very handy little web application that allows you to import all your favourites from any and every browser you use, regardless of platform, grade your links on a scale of 1 to 5, describe them - share them (if you want to) or just have them as a private link-log for your own backup. Another great detail is the fact that you can search the links to find what you are after, instead pf trawling the hundreds of links you may have logged. Browser-independent and cross-platform.
5. MOONEDIT
   Want to take live meeting notes, but struggle to both take dictation, edit the content, remove errors and insert comments? Why not use a little help from your friends and this little tool that allows you to share the chore of live note taking amongst a group and collaborate on the same file in real-time. Sadly only for PCs at the moment.
   
6. TIDDLYSPOT
   Fancy your very own Wikipedia page on a subject you adore? Or even a way of capturing information and collaborating on it with your friends? Or a digital notebook that can grow to contain both links, images, quotes and content of your choice? What about keeping a live to-do list of everything on your mind, regardless of computer platform? TiddlySpot offers a wide range of different spins on TiddlyWikis (personal Wikis), that you can store both on and offline as well as some hybrid solutions incorporating David Allen's Getting Things Done methodology in a tidy electronic solution, such as MonkeyGTD. Again free, cross-platform and REALLY useful. Start logging all that information now!
7. VYEW
   Vyew is a browser-based online collaboration platform that allows you to share presentations, visuals, text, whatever your mind can dream up, right from your desktop, without having to download a single thing. You can annotate things, have a live text chat and even busy yourself with a telephone conference all at the same time. Did I mention it was free? And cross-platform?

So there we are - my 5 pence on the subject of useful programs. Please feel free to share what you deem as Software Lifesavers!

Tenori-On: Coolest Electronic Music Interface since the Invention of the Synth!

Some of you know I like to dabble with music and mixing every now and then. Anyone with an interest in this field knows that electronic music these days is a collection of computers, cables, USB midi-controller interfaces, software, plug-ins, compatibility issues - never enough performance and many more challenges placed in our way of masterminding the field of digital music making. Intuitive is in fact a word that seldom springs to mind, as there are so many components to use concurrently that it is often easier to get stuck reviewing a library of samples or simply trying to make things run smoother than it is actually making music.

This is why this movie of a collaboration between Toshio Iwai and Yamaha really caught my eye - it's extremely simplistic dotmatrix interface seduces one into thinking this is some sort of pre-wacom type of tablet, until you realise that not only is it an incredibly intuitive way of playing music, but it also doubles up as a sequencer and synth all in one beautifully simple interface. Moreover - you can hold it in your lab AND it makes for interesting watching by the audience! Gone are the days of some geek with sunglasses standing behind the keyboard pressing keys and twiddling knobs - for all we know, he could have just been pretending. Not with this thing though - making music becomes a visual spectacle as well as an interface for experimentation and play. I want one!

Many thanks to prof. Edith Ackermann at the MIT for bringing this to my attention.

A Procrastinator's Guide to Getting Things Done

So there we are, a week into a new job and my head is buzzing with trying to get a hang of all the things that have been done, will need doing (probably by me) and may be nice to do once I get that far into the job. If you wonder what I'm doing - that is a fair question and this post may hopefully illuminate a few things or then not, as the case may be. More on that later as I get around to updating my profile page on this blog and all that jazz. Back to this post - I thought that starting afresh with a new job would be a brilliant opportunity to start a crash course into the 'Getting Things Done' methodology avidly debated and evangelised the web over and originally devised by David Allen in a book bearing the same name. Doubtless this guy's made it big and it amuses me that he's done it simply by devising a system that supposedly is the enemy of all procrastinators: a tool to get stuff done.

My musings aside, new job - plenty to get my head around so plenty of potential opportunities to feel anxious and stressed about all the things that need doing - I feel like a textbook candidate for the methodology so I shall take you on a journey of my findings so far.

Apparently the great enemy to our peace of mind is collectively defined as 'stuff' -  anything you have allowed into your psychological or physical world that doesn’t belong where it is, but for which you haven’t yet determined the desired outcome and the next action step. [pg. 17]. Sounds fair enough and if you are anything like me your mind is a zoo of ideas that like to wander up and down the pathways of your mind, collide with each other, create strange new connections and generally think about anything and everything all at the same time. The difference is of course that over the years I have got quite used to this and certainly, as things became more predictable in my old job - I also learned the ebb and flow of demand, tasks, deliverables and that sort of thing. My coping mechanisms weren't very elaborate, merely a diary with a page devoted for each day, so I could keep a running to-do list - things I would get done I would cross out and things pending would get moved to the next day. Not too complicated and more over, quite beautiful in its simplicity.

However, a new situation prompted potentially changing this simplicity, because I have been inundated with project outlines, time-lines, facts, figures, contacts, FYIs and all that sort of thing and because I'm still new to it all, I struggle to decipher which of the information is pivotal to me right now and what is more 'nice to know' and something I can refer to later. So how does Getting Things Done work then? Quite simply:

1. identify all the stuff in your life that isn’t in the right place (close all open loops)
2. get rid of the stuff that isn’t yours or you don’t need right now
3. create a right place that you trust and that supports your working style and values
4. put your stuff in the right place, consistently
5. do your stuff in a way that honours your time, your energy, and the context of any given moment
6. iterate and re-factor mercilessly

Sounds straight forward enough, but then there is an awful lot of talk about folders and in-boxes and categorising stuff - something which the geeky side of me didn't quite warm to. Instead, there are a number of solutions to this same dilemma available in program-form on the web, so as to allow for the same recording and categorising of information, but devoid of all the papers. I'll get back to those in a moment. To recap on how the system works MineZone Wiki have created an excellent set of notes from the book, summarising the methodology in beautiful simplicity:

1. collect things that command our attention (anything personal or professional, big or little, that you think should be different than it currently is and that you have any level of internal commitment to changing)
   1. get it all out of your head
   2. minimize your collection buckets
      • physical in-basket
      • writing paper and pads
      • electronic note taking
      • auditory capture (answering machines, voicemail, dictating equipment)
      • email
   3. empty the buckets regularly
2. process what they mean and what to do about them
   1. what is it?
   2. is it actionable?  YES or NO
      • No
        1. trash
        2. incubate
           1. someday/maybe list
           2. tickler file (suspended or follow-on file; a 3D calendar)
              • 43 folders:
                • 31 Daily Files
                • 12 Monthly Files
                • Tomorrow's Date at the front
        3. reference (reference should be information that can be easily referred to when needed)
      • Yes
        1. What is the next action?
           • do it
           • delegate it
           • defer it
           • Project (anything requiring more than one step to accomplish the desired outcome)
        2. actionable tracking
           1. list of projects
           2. storage or files for project plans and materials
           3. calendar (time specific actions [appointments], day specific actions, day specific information)
           4. list of reminders of next actions
           5. a list of reminders of things you're waiting for (only review as often as they have to be in order to stop wondering about them)
3. organise the results
4. review the options
5. do
   1. choosing actions in the moment
      1. context
      2. time available
      3. energy available
      4. priority

Microsoft Photosynth: 3D Image Browsing

Although you may have stumbled on my reluctance regarding Microsoft in some posts in this blog, this new technology championed by Microsoft Live labs is so cool I'm prepared to put aside some of my bugbears just this once. The technology in question is called Photosynth and is a kind of 3d tagging system for photographs, which means you can search the web for a picture and instantly have related pictures be aligned into a 3d environment around the source picture so you can navigate the area as if it was a 3d world. Sound weird? You betcha - until you check out this little film and it all makes sense.. if I was Adobe I would be very worried... very worried indeed as this is a kind of technology which would be great for the next generation of Photoshop, not the next generation of Microsoft Photo Editor.. just a personal preference. Anyway - have a look and be intrigued!

[Microsoft] [Youtube] [Computers and Internet] [Internet] [Photography] [Software] [Technology] [Web]

Play with Your Walls

I seem to be on a bit of a roll here with groovy interfaces of late, but no harm sharing cool stuff. This is an interesting twist on projections, where rather than merely providing a bigger view of a screen - the projection on the wall actually comes alive, reacting to gestures from people around. Have a look!

Forget Keyboard & Mouse: Use Fingerpainting Instead

Regardless of far computers have come in the last decades, we are still using a pretty archaic form of input: keyboards. Mice aren't that intuitive either, at least not when you are trying to draw - so we have Wacom tablets and styluses instead. What if we did away with all of that and went back to a more child-like way of interacting with things? Touching, pointing, pulling our fingers on the screen? What if that actually meant commands for the computer to execute? Have a look at the video below:

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Global Street Art II Loop

As you may have gathered I'm quite a fan of graffiti - or street art as I prefer to call it. When done well it truly is art, it is evocative, strong and eye-catching and deserving of better treatment that the 'nuisance' people so often call it. Below is another selection of my favourites I have found on my travels. If you download the cool filmloop player (click on the loop) you can store these images on your computer and use them as a screensaver. And of course also the earlier loop, which you can find here

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Creative Mess on Your Desktop

I don't know about you, but when I'm busy working on something, you can tell. My desk invariably overflows with paper, sketches, prototypes, old cups of coffee, sticky notes everywhere, water bottles, toys... the list goes on. To the untrained eye this looks like complete chaos, like a bomb's gone off, but if something gets moved - I can immediately tell. The piles of paper are actually organised according to a pattern and as I have a photographic memory, scattering things helps me find them. This, at least is what I tell people who question my need for a mess. The insights behind my messy behaviour are also what have inspired the geniuses at BumpTop to make computer desktops more intuitive and user-friendly. Have a look at the video below:

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Pong Piano

I feel a bit guilty for not having kept up my steady supply of musical digressions for you to sample and this of course is down to a very mundane reason: I have been to snowed under with everything going on recently. As I'm beginning to get my head around the concept of co-creation I thought that rather than give you another installment of my own creations, I'd instead point you to this magnificent little program that let's you create your very own experimental music and evolve it using a combination of gravity, colours and the game pong. Sound intriguing? Give Pianolina a spin and see what you come up with!

Are you too old?

Did you know that mountain bikes were invented by kids who wanted to ride downhill on their bikes? When their regular bikes broke, they started making modifications to the frame, brakes and using trial bike tyres for the wheels to create sturdier bikes. Call that a shining example of user-led innovation.

What about sending text-messages on your mobile phone (sorry! cell phone if you are in the States..). This function was apparently included in the early day phones as a mechanism to let engineers test mobile base stations and antennae and as a means of sending quick-fix software patches around. No doubt anyone turning up at one of the big networks' headquarters would not have been taken seriously if they had proclaimed that this little piece of functionality will herald the dawn of a new form of communication pioneered by young people, leading to an entirely new kind of 'language' - txting?

Recently newspapers have run the story about the Mosquito ring tone, a high-pitch ring tone kids have been programming their mobiles to use during class - but inaudible to the teacher. How's that for framing a problem and designing a solution around it? Are you too old to hear it? Try it! Alec Saunders Log offers not only links to the original NY times article, but also to the NCH Tone Generator application. This is used by audio engineers to generate various different kinds of tones ranging from square waves to pink noise to sine waves, and a bunch more. Alec has generated a host of tones in different frequencies, all of which I can hear too apart from the 18khz one. What about you - are you too old to hear them?

Graffiti is Art - Banksy Tribute Loop

Banksy is without question my favourite British graffiti artist and I'm not alone - many in the UK have cottoned on to his talent and even more people have unwittingly come across his work, whether it's on a street corner or even in a posh exhibition. Regardless of location, Banksy's work has the capacity to stir up debate and controversy as surely as it rains during Wimbledon.

Most recently, his mural on the wall of the Brook Young People's Sexual Health Clinic in Bristol, UK, depicting a woman in underwear, her jealous husband, and her naked lover dangling from a window ledge, would usually have been scrubbed off by council workers at the earliest opportunity. However, the employees of the clinic have sworn to guard Banksy's work and are coming head to head with the anti-graffiti lobby who see all street art as an eye-sore. Personally I hope this debate can be made public to ascertain the realm within which street art and graffiti can exist as a recognised form of art, rather than always be frowned upon by council elders and the target of some narrow-minded political campaigns claiming graffiti should be removed within 24 hours. There should be room to accomodate the geniuses of Banksy and others like him, just as we do with other forms of art.

Below I have gathered a few of my personal favourites of Banksy's prolific work, including an image of the contested Brooks clinic mural and wanted to share them with you. To me, Banksy's ability to use the location he places his stencils to help create context for some very poignant political messages raises him into the realm of a true artist, a genius whose medium is the urban canvas, spray paint and stencils and his messages thought-provoking comments to the issues we face as a society and ultimately as a civilisation. We need to embrace the likes of Banksy - not silence him!

Some more links:
Banksy's homepage
Banksy in Wikipedia
Banksy Photogallery

I/O Brush - The Coolest Thing Since the Invention of Photoshop

I don't know about you, but the longer I live on this planet the more it takes to surprise me. Also, to get me really excited, on par with those childhood WOOOOW moments when you learn something amazing, find the toy of your dreams or get told you are going on your dream holiday - it really takes a lot, and sadly, it doesn't happen that often. Recently, however, I did have that moment again as a dear friend of mine from the MIT passed me information about the fantastic I/O Brush. I have managed to get hold of a video, explaining how it works so without further ado: let's see if you have the same reaction as I did when I saw this ..

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Global Street Art Loop live!

Ah finally! A version of the very nifty FilmLoop Player that works! Don't get me wrong, I fell in love with this application a while ago, but it used to be very difficult to embed the player into a blog post. Not anymore - so here we go: a selection of my favourite street art animating right here! If you like the look of this, download it along with the player and you can use it as a screensaver. Enjoy!