The Flicker Blog and Podcast

I attended a talk by the inventor of Hypertext and the web-browser Tim Berners-Lee (Sir) today at the Oxford Internet Institute.

Rather helpfully he put his presentation online (note the Web 2.0 and semantic web friendly URL – looks like finding all presentations by TBL should be relatively trivial!): http://www.w3.org/2006/Talks/0314-ox-tbl/

Unsurprisingly, Tim evangelised about ‘The Semantic Web’ – his vision of a web of data, rather than a web of hypertext. Whilst his ideas are inspirational, I do find the desire for most citizens of the web to play by the proposed rules and agreed ontologies rather optimistic. The success of the web could be attributed to many things, but for me, ease of use (largely) and access is core to it’s impact. Tim himself alluded to ‘serendipitous re-use’ being key to the real value of the web, and what he hopes will begin to happen with data. Several in the audience argued that Web 2.0 is already doing this quite successfully – but it was clear that Tim felt that the Web as we know it is far too ‘dumb’ for him.

With legions of bloggers contributing data, and cross-referencing one another, the web has become a vital medium for the dissemination of ideas and discussion. Where the vision of the Semantic Web did not ring true for me, was the hope that a majority of the web’s citizens would start playing by new rules in order to ‘bring alive’ his vision :

“Make Useful Links” – Easy, we already do this

“Share Ontologies” – Not too difficult, I can see this working with small, focused communities.

“Agree on Ontologies” – Hmmmm. This one, I think will be difficult. Isn’t the web about de-centralisation of everything, including ideas? Can we ever expect a majority to agree on anything? He seemed to be suggesting that everything for which there is data or meaning should have a singular, definitive URI, to which all documents point when referencing. A very engaging idea, kinda reminds me (in a very trivial way) of using VoodooPad on a mac. As you type, any word for which a page exists immediately becomes a link. The problem is, as a sole user, it’s often difficult to avoid multiple pages on the same discreet object. What happens when the whole world is let loose? Who decides on the definitive URI? Who ensures that every other referencing document points to the correct place. This whole concept is very interesting, and rather too expansive to go into in a (relatively) short post.

Unlike Ian (whom we travelled with) Louise and I had to rush back to London straight after the event (a very, very sick cat worrying us to distraction).

Hanging around and networking, Ian got quoted in a New Statesman article about the event. See also, Ian’s post on the event.

I attended an interesting event last night at 01 Zero One in Soho.

Paul Tyler talked about his production for the BBC, Bamzooki.
Frank Alsema talked about The Blackbeard Connection.
Gary Pope of Kids Industries gave a very entertaining talk entitled ‘Are children over-indulgent technology eating monsters, or are they still kids?’ Ashley Cooksley, Manager, Kids, Teens and Learning, AOL UK presented the results of research conducted recently with 10 year olds across the UK and Richard Deverell, Controller, BBC Children’s talked about the future for broadcast media in the on-demand age, and the shift in power between channel and programme brands.

Paul Tyler – Bamzooki

I knew nothing about this show (if that’s an appropriate manner in which to refer to a cross-media broadcast) prior to attending, but was rather impressed with the concept – offering kids tools that they can download, from which they can build their very own ‘Zooks’ and upload them for possible inclusion in the TV broadcast. The Zooks are effectively virtual robots, designed by the kids, and suitable for certain tasks or environments. Kids are encouraged to share experience and learning, collaborating to for me teams for the tv programme, where the ‘Zooks’ are pitted against one another in competitions. An understanding of mechanics, physics and an observation of what works in nature yields better results. So, the interactions encourage learning on several levels.

Paul was one of two speakers talking of the ‘Interaction Pyramid’ – the easily grasped concept of a diminishing number of participants as more interaction or engagement is required. He admitted that the bar was set quite high for this show and that a very small percentage of the kits downloaded actually resulted in uploaded ‘Zooks.’ He was relatively unconcerned about this but I feel that the comments by another speaker, Gary Pope of Kids Industries about ‘Proximal Development (that we learn most and are most attentive when we’re just between the ‘can do’ and ‘can’t do’ spaces in any task were particularly relevant here. It appears to me, that too many of the kids are firmly in the ‘can’t do’ camp and as a result, get less from the experience. I’m also slightly cynical about the attitude that passive consumer (or lurkers) forming the majority of the audience is both acceptable, and even desirable. My suspicion is that this is driven by the needs of the dominant medium (TV in this case) and not by any higher ideology. If all the million kids who downloaded the kit uploaded ‘Zooks’ how would they be judged fairly, and how would you make a compelling TV show using the existing format (several teams competing against one another)?

Frank Alsema – The Blackbeard Connection

Hmmm. Not entirely convinced about this one. A ‘true cross media’ game. Again, the ‘interactive pyramid’ was mentioned; and again, this seemed to be the limitations of the games engine or medium driving the need for a high rate of player attrition. Not that I’m saying games shouldn’t be competitive, but I wonder how engaging the format is for the non-participant? A feature length movie, broken up into 3 minute chunks, broadcast daily with clues for players wouldn’t, I suspect, hold much interest for a non-player or one who has dropped the ball and is out of play. Then again, the idea of watching a bunch of wannabees do mind-numbing and demeaning activities whilst captive in a house on live on TV seems utterly ridiculous to me too.

Ultimately, I felt that pursuit of the ‘Convergence’ holy grail drove the game model. Rather than the value of each device/platform being used for it’s unique merits, I felt that they had a shopping list of devices and platforms they wished to include, then dreamt up rather clunky means by which to link them in a game. Still, it’s early days and there was a lot to admire in the aspirations of the project, if not in the execution and design.

Peter Diamandis on innovation in Space Travel at Pop!Tech 2005. His enthusiasm and energy could be transplanted elsewhere, but I’m sure the $10m bribe/prize money helped him acheive his aims. Nonetheless, a though-provoking and entertaining talk. Well worth a listen.

‘The Meek shall inherit the earth – the rest of us are heading for the stars!

James Surowieki giving an interesting presentation on group behaviour – how and why we behave the way we do – and why groups of mixed ability can actually outperform those of consistently high ability: ‘Even if the less intelligent ones know less, what they know is different. So diversity is really central, and therefore, some measure of randomness is useful.’

On exposure to huge swathes of information vs having seclusion and space to think: ‘whether it’s isolation or cacophony – both things are good. The key thing to avoid is this extensively, tightly networked model’.

After a fantastic day of training in CSS yesterday by Molly E Holzschlag and Andy Clarke, I was talking to one of the organisers, Ryan Carson, about a new web application that his company (Carson Systems) has built.
It’s one of those ‘it’s so obvious’ applications, that I really did struggle to believe that hadn’t been done before.
DropSend effectively lets you send files of up to 1 gigabyte to anyone using email as the communication (but not transfer) technology. The interface and simplicity of use is very impressive, and if it appears to work very, very well.

Based on personal experience, it seemed to me that the typical user would be anyone involved in the Media Production Industry, flying large, often incomplete files between collaborators. Remixers, Film Makers and Editors would, I suspect have great use for such a tool. This led me to press Ryan on a point raised by Byju Sukerman of the BBC about security. I’d imagine that the producer of the new U2 album wouldn’t be happy sending a completed set of tracks to a mastering house without being certain that the transitory files couldn’t be intercepted.

Despite these concerns – this seems like a great tool ( it has yet to be officially launched). I’m sure that the security aspects could be improved in future versions. The tool is great, and I suspect that as more people aquire 8+ Megapixel Cameras and DV Camcorders, that the applications for such a tool wil appeal to an increasing proportion of the public. I can see how for professional applications, that security would be paramount – but for the majority of us, this wouldn’t be the main concern.

Going to look into these as my baby steps towards redesigning my site begin to gain pace. At the moment, I’m totally into my site being updated by RSS feeds that document my every move (with minimal effort on my part). Kind of a self built robotic big brother who I build to watch me and publish to the build.

A very cogent presentation on the power of Open Source by Michael Tiemann – with frequent reference to two books that were on my reading list (and have now moved up it):
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
and
Massive Change by Bruce Mau

Kevin Hale on the importance of RSS.

There’s also a very interesting observation on the power of social bookmarking or ranking:
‘Every time something went up on the site that I felt would be good enough for a wider audience, I added it to my Del.icio.us account with the appropriate tags and descriptions. Our goal was to try and get a feature on del.icio.us/popular by the end of July and to our surprise, we accomplished it in less than a week. After two weeks of diligent posting and tagging, Google gave us a little over 50 referrals while Del.icio.us gave us over 700.’

Great I Cringely article on the notion of ‘the long tail’:
“There is an audience, however small, for just about every show ever made. What we need to do is to find a way to make the cost of keeping those shows available less than the benefit derived from people seeing them.”

Seems like this is the most appropriate place to note a recently completed Pew Internet report on the proliferation of blogging.