The Virtual Explorer

Interface issues: PC versus Console and the concept of 'Interface Bandwidth'

2012-01-11T07:07:00.001Z

This afternoon I had some interesting chats over email with a friend about gaming. Actually I had some interesting chats about lots of different things, but what I want to talk about was gaming.

My friend is an Apple nut (or should that be core?), so inevitably he has an iPad. He's also pretty hot on all things webbie, so is keen on the new Onlive service that allows you to play games using a web service, rather than have to download or install games onto your computer locally. Our conversation was tangentially concerned with how I preferred playing games on the PC using a keyboard and mouse combination (at least as far as I remember - it's not something I have much time for anymore!), whereas he preferred the controller from a console.

At home later in the evening, I happened to start up Playstation Home on my PS3, more by accident than choice, which requires the use of a controller rather than keyboard, but by happy coincidence this did make me reflect on how I was using the device - and at the same time brought some interesting clarity to my earlier conversations, which is what I thought I would share here.

I struggle with a controller. For some reason it just doesn't offer the level of control over the virtuality that I want it to. I thought this was just a personal thing up to now, my lack of experience being the key factor, but I'm not so sure tonight. I think it's down to the device itself. I think it's down to the 'interface bandwidth'.

Expertise or inherent properties?
For many years I worked as a designer, using computers and software such as Photoshop, Quark, Pagemaker etc. to create graphics and documents. Fine control over mouse movements is critical in that work, as you're really trying to turn out pixel perfect products. You tended to get a bit obsessed about ensuring your mouse was clean, in the days when they used to have little trackballs inside rather than the optical mice we're all familiar with now.

That level of control became equally important playing games on the PC, as you use the mouse to move your view within the world in many first person perspective games, and aim your weapon in games that use them (which, let's be honest, is just about all of them!). Hence I became pretty good at using a keyboard and mouse combination to navigate myself through simulated virtual spaces.

But was it just being experienced with this interface combination that is the key, or is there something else going on? Is this down to my personal level of expertise, or are their inherent properties of the devices that are making the difference here? I believe there is a subtle and powerful reason why the keyboard mouse combination is inherently better than a controller, and it's down to that term 'interface bandwidth'.

'Interface bandwidth' explained
'Interface bandwidth' is a term I use to describe not how many megabytes of data might be heading up and down a cable between you and the computer, but instead how much human perceptual data is headed through the interface that you're using to interact with the simulation. The interface is the man-machine interface device, and the bandwidth is both the quantity and quality of perceptual information transmitted back and forth. This could cover not only instances such as this mouse versus controller situation, but everything from simply sitting in front of a television screen, to listening to an iPod. All Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) inherently require some form of interface, so all ICTs can in turn be measured in terms of their interface bandwidth.

In this case with the mouse versus controller, the mouse forms a natural extension of much of the hand, allowing a great deal of 2D plane control and some moderate finger activity to be extended through into the virtuality, and crucially maps some of the way the hand would naturally interact - the index finger, for example, holding a key role just as it would in reality, and the hand that would be holding a weapon swinging and moving to aim just as it would in real life.

The controller, on the other hand, expects the user to learn to transmit movement information into the virtuality using their thumbs, an odd way to to do things, with no mirror in reality. It's a testament to the adaptability of our species (or should that be genus or order?) that we can become so expert at this, but clearly an interface choice that is at odds with the more natural movement of a mouse.

Obviously I've simplified things a little, the mouse for example is severely constrained by it's 2D plane, and the controller also offers index fingers extra capacity to play a role more akin to that in reality. But nonetheless the two basis interface methods differ significantly in the interface bandwidth that they provide to their users. The mouse in particular allows a far greater amount of both quality and quantity of natural human perceptual capacity to flow back and forth between man and machine, and hence is inherently a better interface.

I hope I've shown how considering the interface bandwidth specifically when trying to understand how man-machine combinations are working, is a useful way of highlighting critical components of the interaction that otherwise might be missed. The concept of interface bandwidth is an important part of my PhD research into the use of technology within education, as it allows me to highlight and consequently isolate effects of the man-machine interface from possible pedagogical effects, something which I think is crucial in order to be able to understand the true value of ICTs to education.

P.S I started this post on my Chromebook, as I was inspired by events in my living room and needed to write quickly to get the basic form of the post written whilst it was fresh in my mind. The Chromebook is an ideal companion in this, as it works instantly, you simply open it and it is ready for you to start typing. I find the Chromebook more and more to be my computer of choice at home, and I think this highlights the fallacy that performance is the key to a device, or even how many apps you can install on it. Availability is more key in my experience, I want it to be there for me exactly when I need it.

Website as space: Reflections on Facebook abandoning deals

2011-09-06T11:53:00.000+01:00

Why are people in spaces? To do certain things. I move to a space to achieve certain things. I go to the playground to play, I go to blackberry bushes to pick blackberries, I go to work to … well, work. All these spaces have individual things about them which make them the right space to do those things that I want to do.

The web is the same - it’s much easier to move between spaces, but the individual spaces that you go to each have their own merit, each is set-up, architected if you will, to suit the achievement of certain things.

What has this got to do with Facebook and Deals? (Facebook ending Deals product after four-month test) I think Facebook simply misunderstood it's own space, people do not go to Facebook to shop, they go there to socialise, to play, to catch-up with friends. Having deals included is kind of like that awkward moment when you're out in a bar somewhere enjoying a drink with friends and someone you don't know wanders up to the table and tries to sell you something!

There's a moral here somewhere - never plan your web spaces around the technological feasibility of something or fashionable choices. Psychology needs to dominate your decisions, you need to know why people are in your space, identify why they've some to your space and build new products or offerings around the resultant needs.

The Chromebook: A 30 second summary

2011-08-16T13:59:00.002+01:00

I have a Samsung Chromebook, have been using it for a couple of weeks now. Lots of negativity out there about this, the classic being that you could have a netbook for the same money. That's so wrong. A netbook is the past, Chromebooks are the future. If you don't get that, it means you're living in the past. Personally I like to live in the future.

What makes the Chromebook the future is that it's always there when I need it, instantly. It's the smartphone equivalent of the laptop. No waiting for boot times, no security patches, no software downloads, no virus updates. Think how you use your smartphone, that's how a Chromebook works, only much bigger and with a proper keyboard.

No it doesn't have all the software applications you're used to, but I've always been able to do what I need to on the Chromebook. The web is stuffed to bursting point with just about every app you can imagine - and it's only just getting started.

Yes you need to use the cloud, and most people don't, but why people who don't use the cloud try to review one of these things truly escapes me. I keep my music in the cloud, my documents, my photos, my email, my contacts, my videos, my photos ... well, you get the picture. And wherever I am everything I need is always there. Files on a hard drive are, quite frankly, a pain. The more you use the cloud, the more you realise that.

I have lots of computers in my life, every form factor you can imagine from the behemoth Windows desktop to Google TV, but the devices that I'm using less and less are the laptops and tablets. The Chromebook is so much better for the kind of tasks I want to do. That's why it's the future.

A Website is a Place, not a 'Product': It Needs Evolution, not Revolution

2011-02-28T21:25:00.000Z

An interesting blog post dropped into my inbox this morning from Boagworld, called "Are you refining or rotting?", which focused "on the need to evolve your website rather than redesigning every few years". Evolution is something I've read about before from people like Gerry McGovern ("Web redesign is bad strategy", July 2007), and touched on briefly myself in a blog post about web 2.0 a while back. I've a big believer in evolution not revolution in web design, but it's still something of a rarity in this field it seems. I suspect this is because the people who make the decisions about such things generally learned their trade in a webless world, so aren't sufficiently experienced specifically with web design and cloud working to see the difference - but that's probably another blog post.

I'm also working on some Google Earth models at the moment, and the reason I mention it is a thought struck me as I was starting up Google Sketch-up that is relevant to this issue of evolution/revolution. I have two versions of Google Sketchup installed on my computer right now, version 7 and version 8. I won't go into why (this is not an accident, put in that way!) but as I went to start it this morning I was briefly annoyed to see that the name of the programme in my start up list was the same for both programmes. How was I supposed to know which was which?

On reflection though, it occurs that perhaps what this demonstrates is the Google way of thinking, rather than the Microsoft or Adobe way of thinking. The concept of continual improvement and evolution that is the hallmark of good web design, now creeping slowly but surely into app design. Sure, Google still have iterations of some of their products, but from a user perspective you're just using Sketch-up. Or Chrome. Or, for that matter, Google Docs. You don't actually care what version you're using most of the time, you just want it to do the job you need to do. The old Microsoft concept of iterations, clearly demonstrated here by the various Office 2007 products I have installed, is becoming more and more irrelevant. The Google approach of continual improvement to an existing product, such as Google Apps, rather than cycles of product development and release seems much better attuned to a web world where todays bright new thing is tomorrows old hat.

It's interesting to think of a world in the future where iterations are no more, when even the operating system of your computer will simply be 'Chrome OS' or similar with no numbers, rather than Mint 8, OS X or Windows 7. I think it's fair to say that this whole concept of the next generation is something that was started by, and is driven forward by, the wider computer industry. Don't think there ever was a "car 2.0" or "supermarket 2.0", for example. Whilst companies in those other industries do redesign, they almost always evolve from what exists, building on established practice.

In such a young industry as IT and the web perhaps we do need iterations for a while longer, but personally I think as we move more and more into the cloud that will change. More and more people will start to understand that the web is a space in it's own right, and that their websites are just a place within that space, not a product that somehow needs upgrading now and then. Places, unlike products, are complex entities with highly complex interrelations within and across them. To try and destroy and recreate them in these cycles of redesign is, to my mind, simply a symptom of a fundamental failure to understand their nature. Our thinking needs to evolve ... along with our websites.

Identity, Social Media & Business: Multiple Personas for a Web 2.0 World

2010-09-03T13:41:00.000+01:00

Your worst web 2.0 nightmare. You've just sent that Twitter post about how much your feet smell after your 5k run to 1,265 of your business followers instead of your close personal friends and family. Ouch. Several months of cultivating social media up in smoke in an instant. Just why is it so easy to do this? What is it about the web 2.0 world that makes it so easy to mess up in this way - and more importantly, what do we do about it? The answer is simple - we need to start acting virtually like we act physically, and actively take a hand in managing the different personas we use online.

A Bit of Background - Just how do you start the day?

For most of us our home lives and our work lives are two different things. We have colleagues at work, friends at home, clothes for the workplace, clothes for relaxing in, an office computer at work, and a home PC. Whilst there are often cross-overs between the two - colleagues might also be friends perhaps, or you might wear some of the same clothes both in the office and at home - typically there are more differences than similarities.

It's perhaps easier to think about this issue in terms of identities. When you wake up on a work day and get ready for the office, you might put on a suit, prepare a few things to take into the office like a laptop or some paperwork. Once you're in the office you'll sit down at your work desk, surrounded by items that assist you in your job such as in-trays, telephones, notepads and reminders. All these things form part of your work identity - whilst you're still you, you're now focused on some specific aspects of your life which need specific thoughts and actions.

Virtual tools do present something of a challenge here though. In the above example everything is very physical, so it's relatively easy to assume the work identity simply by wearing different clothes and moving physically to another location. However virtual tools cannot identify you based on what you look like or where you are. Virtual tools need you to make an explicit choice when you log in to them, effectively saying 'this is me' to both the tool, and the rest of the virtual world that is connected to it. But here's the big question - just who should choose to be when you login to these virtual tools?

The Need for Multiple Identities

For many of the more techy amongst us, this has so far not really been an issue. The truth is that our work lives and home lives are so tied together when it comes to virtual tools that we tend to exist in both using the same identity. But that is changing as more and more virtual tools are created, and even the very technical start to have trouble managing the vast flows of information that starts to accumulate. So what's the answer? Replicate the same physical difference that we use to identify us as in "work mode" or "home mode" when we're online - i.e. create multiple identities. Simple as that.

By multiple identities, I'm not suggesting that we need to attend counselling lessons, merely that we take advantage of our existing different email accounts to base different personas around. Your email address is, after all, the prime means of distinguishing the work you from any other you's.

Take me for example. I have a Gmail email account, as well as various student email accounts and other email accounts, plus my 'official' University of Exeter email account where I normally work. Personally I blog about food at home (insert shameless link to The Sunday Roaster :-)), but I also blog about Web Innovation at work. For both of these blogs I also have accounts with Google Analytics. I need to login to all of these virtual spaces, but I don't really want to be logging into work on a Sunday morning to write about food, nor do I want to see my statistics for my food blog when I'm trying to analyse how our project blog is being read. The answer is to create different accounts for these services using the different personal or work email addresses as the main identity in each case.

So far this technique for managing different aspects of my life has worked well for me, allowing me that separation between home and work that can be so difficult to obtain in a constantly connected world. But I'd be very interested to hear from others on the subject. Is managing virtual identities like this the future, or just a temporary artefact, a product of the current state of development of the world wide web?

Tablet PCs, iPads, Pens and Interfaces

2010-06-21T18:41:00.002+01:00

I've sat rather bemused over the past few months as iPad fever has taken over the media, and with it people's minds. I've been a daily user of a tablet PC for over 5 years now - and by daily, I mean really do mean daily - so it's a bit of a struggle for me to come to terms with this so called 'revolutionary' device called an iPad. It kind of suggests that for the past 5 years I've been living in some sort of dream world - did I really just imagine I've had a tablet myself all these years? I had to see one of these revolutions for myself.

I've written a little before about what I think of the iPad, based on details at it's launch, but now I've finally had a chance to explore one personally and I can't say I'm exactly impressed. Sure it's a fun thing to try, but I'm so used to using my tablet now that in comparison the iPad seems a bit 'lightweight' - though by that I'm talking about it's functionality, not it's actual weight. In actual fact it's quite heavy, as many others have already commented. In some bizarre way it's harder on your hands and wrists than my own device (a Motion Computing LE1600), which in theory at least should be worse seeing as my tablet is a fair bit heavier. But what struck me most about the iPad was the lack of any wow factor, in fact I felt quite the opposite. The interface frequently shifted the way in which it reacted to me, i.e. the usability sucked - again something which others have commented on. It's not that individual application usability is bad, it's that the device as a whole has no common interacting model, so that you're constantly trying to adapt how you use it to what you're using it for. That's hard work. Overall it felt like a toy, something to play with now and then, not a proper computer at all - which is a very different experience to using my tablet.

Browsing the web and checking emails in the living room on my Motion Computing LE1600

To be fair, my old tablet PC still evokes wonder with those who aren't used to me using it in meetings and the like (where I'm usually whingeing about the lack of wireless - iPad users take note. It's kind of like the bad old days when you used to take acetates of your presentation to a conference, only this time around you need to remember a local digital copy of something that you were going to access live on the web :-). It's a bit disturbing really, I always try to reassure them that my tablet is 'just a laptop without a keyboard' which it is of course, but then again it is also something special. The way it engages you so directly, by allowing you to interact so immediately with virtual space and the digital objects that inhabit it.

Interface is Shifting

And that is of course where the iPad is different, it allows touch in a way which really hasn't been available to the average person before. My old device relies on a pen to interact with the screen, whereas the iPad allows you to use multiple touch points to move and interact with the space. It may be simple, appear even trivial, but it truly has 'transformed' the interface - but in order to appreciate that I think you need to backtrack, and think about just how much connection you have to the virtual space now, without touch. We're a species of many senses, far more than the 5 that are often bandied about, but when it comes to connecting to virtual spaces we're generally limited to vision and one poor finger moving about on the screen. Doesn't it strike you as odd that with ten fingers you can only really move and interact with your computer using one? Sure there's the keyboard, and some applications might allow you to use another finger or two (especially in the gaming world of course) but on average we have a very poor connection to the virtual world. iPad changes that, just as the iPhone did and how new Android phones like the Nexus One are doing now.

But you know what - I still don't want one. Even given my earlier comments about the iPads downside, and considering it's amazing upside, I stand by my argument that my ancient old Tablet PC is a better device - for what I do with it. Business wise it's a no brainer really, the Tablet PC beats the iPad easily. But then the iPad is not a device built with the office in mind. But oddly enough, one of the Tablet PCs biggest wins is also the iPads greatest win - my pen versus it's touch. I use my tablet primarily for work and study, and the pen gives me a level of preciseness that you just can't achieve with a finger. I'm forever making weird doodles and loops, connecting disparate ideas with notes and annotations, and changing from red pen to green highlighter to bring clarity to my thoughts. Honestly I'm thinking maybe an Android tablet might suit me better, but if they don't come with as pen either I might be stuck with what I have now for a few more years!

My Tablet PC in its stand next to my desktop, with a page of study notes in Microsoft Onenote

My Tablet PC is mostly a replacement for standard notepads and pens, it's a simulator if you like for something pretty mundane, but that said notepads and pens are technologies with pretty impressive pedigrees. Much as the iPad is clever, I don't think it's going to surpass that tech anytime soon. I know there are times when I despair of even my own simulators ability, and go back to good old paper & pen where my thoughts are no longer the prisoner of my technology. As far as I'm concerned people who think that these devices are going to replace pen & paper just don't spend much time actually trying to create new thought with them.

Catching up with some RSS Feeds on my Tablet

The Hype is Winning

I guess deep down I'm worried that this Apple iPad hype might actually be dangerous. As someone deeply concerned with the use of technology in education I follow several online forums where discussions take place, and just the other day someone was posting that they wanted to get some iPads for their School. They didn't know why, but somehow they felt that they were important, and were looking for reasons to buy from others. Ten years or so of tablet technology, and all of a sudden now they want one - hype at its very worst.

This kind of thing sends a chill down my spine, I find it mildly terrifying that those with power and control can be hooked so easily by marketing hype, and it perhaps says much about the type of person who has risen to the top of the educational system - or perhaps more significantly the way that the educational system is encouraging people who want to be managers to succeed, rather than those who want to be teachers. Yet again we're expecting technology to deliver something in education, as opposed to pedagogy. But then again the current government plans to swap experienced educators with hopeful amateurs, so maybe it's all par for the course. Did you know that half of all those already signed up to run free schools are NOT teachers? I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority of them didn't even have a clue what pedagogy means, let alone know how to celebrate and support it. But that's another blog post.

What's in a name? Mulling over computer officers, web officers, and the emerging 'Web Science'

2010-05-26T18:04:00.000+01:00

I've got two jobs at the moment, as well as being a PhD student, but my two jobs have very different job titles. For one I'm a "Web Innovation Officer", which - let's be frank - is a pretty fab title, but for the other I'm a "Computing Development Officer", a title which I've always hated. I'm not sure exactly why - maybe it's the geeky connatations (although aren't geeks supposed to be trendy now or something?), or perhaps the focus on the computer rather than the user - something very alien to my background as an interface designer. But whatever it is has led me to start thinking a bit more about the difference between the two - and, more fundamentally, how people who work with computers, and people who work with the web, differ in their focus.

Computers pre-date the web of course, by not just years, but decades. Electronic computers, for example, date back to the early forties. Computer networks have existed for a fair while too, starting in the late sixties/early seventies, which has meant that computers could work together, but the advent of the web is still relatively new, really only getting off the ground in the early nineties, and I think there's the crux of the issue. We just don't understand yet how different it is - and with the new government culling the Institute for Web Science it's not going to be understood any time soon - but one thing that is clear about it is the sheer scale of what's involved.

The key, perhaps, may lie in the name of my two jobs. A "Computing Development Officer" is someone whose prime focus is on the technology, that is the computer itself, and what it can do. As a product of that, it's also concerned with the applications that run on that computer, and the integration of computer and application. It's a lot about moving data around, about making sure data is stored and retrieved accurately, and that different data works together correctly.

A "Web Officer", on the other hand, is someone whose primary focus in on something much more intangible, and for that matter something far greater in my (admittedly biased) opinion. This constantly mutating, endless, fascinating construct we've made for ourselves called the world wide web, with all it's idiosyncracies, fuzzy edges, and mismatching parts. It's something no one person can possibly understand alone, and requires much more than just an understanding of computers. The Web Science Trust has attempted to map this blend of skills in the diagram below, and see it as a mix of many, sometimes quite disparate, disciplines:

As a past student of cognitive science I see certain things in there which were already being researched under that umbrella, but the emerging Web Science seems to encompass even more. It's as if we're creating a whole new virtuality, and with it the need to understand a whole new set of rules for what works and what doesn't work within that virtuality.

I guess I prefer being a web officer because of the very fact that the web is so unformed, emerging, fuzzy - that's probably why I called this blog the virtual explorer too, to summarise my feeling that working with the web is a journey into the unknown. I appreciate the need for traditional computer professionals in this field, those more concerned with the technology than the emerging virtuality, but in my experience they tend to try and force the web to behave as it it were a computer - and by doing so extract from it the very properties that can make it so rich. The freedom to explore, to connect, to create, often alien ideas to traditional computer people, who seem more concerned with control, regulation and the integrity of their data.

So what about Web Science more generally? With the 'official' Institute of Web Science no more it'll be up to others in the UK to push research into the web forward - but at least the Web Science Trust is still around to guide that process. Here's looking forward to another decade of web innovation, and hopefully from my perspective a little less computer development :-)

Steve Jobs just doesn't get it - Flash is so much more than he gives it credit for

2010-05-18T17:24:00.000+01:00

I must admit, I've never been a big user of Apple products. My days of working on Macs as a desk top publisher are long gone, but I've always been impressed by the companies attitude, it's commitment to producing the best products possible and doing it in ways which seemed ethical and moral at the same time. Many times I've considered bringing their products more into my life, and I guess I'm just the sort of person they'd like to win over, but it seems the chances of that are getting smaller and smaller every time Steve Jobs opens his mouth these days.

Take his latest diatribe against Flash. It's hard to argue with the technical points he raises, but what's really important isn't what he says, it's what he doesn't say. He talks a lot about what's wrong with Flash, but says nothing about what's right with it, but has still somehow managed to shift the mindset of millions of people by the sound of it. Are we so used to just being consumers that nobody out there can sit back and have their own thoughts on this issue? The way some people react to this seems like they just take it at face value, and it instantly becomes part of their own thinking, without any chance of interpretation. Jobs says, they think. That's a bit scary ...

I'm not keen on quite a few things that Steve Jobs has come out with lately, but being a big Google and HTC fan doesn't help, seeing as he's had them firmly in his sights lately. I've been using Google for all sorts of personal storage and other services for many years now, and have been a big fan of HTC ever since I moved from my Motorola Mpx200 smartphone to the HTC Typhoon back in 2004. I still reckon that was one of the best smartphones ever produced. But it's Jobs take on Flash that has finally driven me to write something about it.

A Bit of Background

I do have a bit of a personal interest in Flash - I used to be something of a Flash developer back when I was more of a mainstream web designer, but I've not done much with it for years now, bar the odd light animation or webpage widget. Sure I've had my issues with it over the years. There was the endless versioning, which left you playing catch up and creating all sorts of detecting scripts. The accessibility issues, which could quite easily leave you making something illegal. The horror of programming in ActionScript - never really liked that much. But you know why I stuck with it? Because you could create wonderous things in Flash. Of all the tools in Adobe's Creative Suite, nothing is so creative as Flash in my opinion. Flash allows you to be much more creative that you could otherwise be on the web - and I believe it will continue to do so for the future. If Jobs thinks he can simply turn Flash off like he has some sort of divine will over the world, I think he's living in cloud cuckoo land. But let me be a bit more specific as to just why I think that.

The Past: Flash offered much more than CSS/HMTL/JavaScript - and others - could ever offer

This is the reason Flash became so popular in the first place, as there were things that you could do with it that you simply couldn't do any other way. There was the animation and interaction of course, you could create brilliant little demos that would download in seconds compared to their cumbersome CSS/HMTL/JavaScript equivalents - check out this Hydrological Cycle for example - at only 7kb it's tiny. And as for Java - megabyte downloads in the days of dial-up?

Believe it or not there was a time before YouTube, Spotify and all the rest, when things like audio and video were a nightmare online. Flash came to the rescue, and gave us all the ability to share rich media with the world. It gave me the ability to create things like my Burmese Musical Orchestra - a playable set of online musical instruments where you could even record and save what you made. I did loads of this type of rich media, bringing to life museum artifacts that would otherwise remain trapped behind dusty glass, and creating other fun simple learning interactions like a whole series of these Bird Song Games. They're a bit old hat now maybe, but bear in mind how old these things are. In web terms they're practically drawing a pension!

The Present: Flash is doing much more than CSS/HMTL/JavaScript can do now

I think this is a no brainer - do I even need to give examples? However much I might love standards, support for things like HTML5 is all over the shop at the moment, and will remain that way for some time to come. Whilst I've been a big proponent of standards over my career (hopefully turning out hundreds of students over the years who feel the same) I'm not so naive as to think we're ever going to reach some sort of perfect, everyone on the planet agrees, state with them. Even now cracks are appearing in the various semantic web standards, the video standards, etc., as the W3C tries to aim for the best solution for all. I'm sure they're well aware that at some point they're just going to have to publish and be damned, and then just start working towards the next inevitable set.

The simple truth is that millions upon millions of flash interactions are live and in use across the planet, enriching peoples experiences every second of every day. The way Jobs tells it people are screaming to be free of Flash, when the reality is the average user is loving every second of it.

The Future: Flash will be able to do much more than CSS/HMTL/JavaScript can do in the future

OK, this is bit more contentious, but I think history is on my side. The standards like HTML define the overall landscape, the infrastructure within which we all work, but they can never be designed in such a way as to answer things that have not yet been thought of. This takes us straight back to the beginning, it's the very reason that Flash became popular in the first place - as it allowed you to move beyond the constraints of the current standards - and I believe it's exactly what will happen in the future as well. That said it might not be Flash of course - it might be Silverlight, hell it might even be something that Apple will dream up themselves, but I fail to see what has changed to significantly about the overall dynamics of the web that means rich media platforms in themselves will simply disappear. The current push back to agreed standards again may well swing things more towards that direction, but that is just part of the inevitable backwards and forwards that we have all seen many times over the history of the web (just thing of things like Netscape or Real Player, for example).

So Flash is fine - but what's with Apple?

So that's my take on Flash. It may not be as prominent as it has been, but I think will still play a leading role in the web - which begs the question just why is Steve Jobs - and therefore Apple - so against it?

Is it just me, or does it seem that ever since Jobs returned to Apple things have taken a markedly darker tone. Lashing out at competitors, bad mouthing all that oppose it and tightening control over those products (and for that matter users) it already sells and those it proposes to sell. I don't know, maybe they've just decided to act more competitively, and I'm mistaking this for aggression. Personally I've never bought into the Apple paradigm, from what I can tell they make the decisions about what I can access and not me, and that just doesn't suit. I prefer to build a tapestry of devices and services that suit me specifically, and do not intend to let anyone tell me what I should and should not be using.

Steve Jobs seems to think everyone else is the bad guy at the moment, but perhaps he should take at closer look at his own actions. Maybe he'll have his own "Fallen Down"' moment ...

"I'm the bad guy? How did that happen?"

It's not about the technology, it's about the space - and about changing that space.

2010-05-02T11:48:00.001+01:00

I've been designing websites and similar virtual spaces for almost 15 years now, so I'm not totally naive about this web design lark. But for a few years now I've had this growing doubt in my mind about what it was I was working on - and I've come to the realisation that I no longer 'believe' in web sites. Now what the hell does that mean?

It came to be a few years ago I think, and has been spreading deeper into my consciousness over the months that have followed. I stopped looking at websites as simply collections of pages, images and links, and started to see them as virtual spaces in their own right. I'm not talking here about spaces like Second Life - they're clearly designed to be simulated virtual spaces - but your average everyday website like Amazon or Google. I started to build sites on a more modular level, following a user-centered approach that was focused around the individual explorer, and not my own view of how the overall site architecture should work. Following the work of people like Pirolli, and the ideas of Information Foraging, the centralised hierarchical approach was just making less and less sense, I'd been studying the user paths behind the scenes, watching what people actually did rather than what I thought they did, and the traditional model just wasn't working for me any more.

I think my own ideas are quite well formed now, and from a UI point of view centre around the three key concepts of Perceive, Move and Change. These three actions can be used to summarise any user experience, at least at the top level, and I find are a good way to analyse your space from the user perspective in terms of what someone can actually do at any one point in time. I believe they build on other work in user experience design, such as the work of Gibson and Norman, but exist at a more abstract level of experience, above specific concepts such as affordance. I define my three as:

Perceive - what information can the user deduce from simply looking at the space
Move - How can the user move from one point in the space to another point in the space
Change - how can the user change the space to suit their own needs

These three states continuously exist in every moment of time that a user experiences in virtual space. Every time they complete an action, then the three questions can be asked again - and a new set of answers will apply.

Of course these three states map closely into the real world, but in the real world perception, movement and change are rather simple affairs - I see a pencil and paper across a room (both P), walk over to it (M), pick it up and write with it (both C). In the virtual world this is not so simple - any one of these states may be allowed/restricted/altered by the creator of that space in ways which will change how much or how little a user can connect into the virtual world. And the truth of the matter is that this type of alteration is incredibly common, and also almost exclusively unconsciously arrived at - but that's another blog post.

For me as someone working in education the most critical point of these three is the last one - change. It is the most critical thing that you can do in order to learn, yet is almost always either completely missing or at least seriously restricted in virtual space. So a quick answer for me as to how we can make better use of ICT in education is simple - enable change. My own research is trying to look deeper into the virtual world, and try and comprehend unique properties, but in the meantime if only we'd allow a little more virtual change in our students virtual lives I'm convinced it would make a big impact in their learning.

Online Shopping, Fridge Handles & Hi-Fi: How high street business might thrive in a webby world

2010-05-02T09:59:00.002+01:00

I shop a lot online, have done for years, and it's not as if I don't have a choice. Whilst I do live in the country I work in a large city with all the usual range of both high street shops and independents. I still love to browse real goods and support my local shops, but I reckon I buy more online now than offline. But, curiously, I found out the other day that sometimes I really don't care who I buy from. I started to wonder what this means for marketing.

Just to be clear, I'm not talking about risky trading at all. The web is my life, i.e. I live and breath it for both work and pleasure, so I'm more than capable of taking care of myself online. Most of the time I buy from respected and well known companies, but as the market diverges and more and more companies set up places for others to sell under their umbrella brand it's becoming possible to trade very easily as yourself - no marketing required.

It was a eBay transaction that made me stop to wonder whether this is actually shifting the role of marketing. I needed a new fridge handle as mine had cracked, and being at least 3 years old there was naturally no way to buy a new handle for my fridge without buying a new fridge to go with it :-/ I knew from past experience though that eBay had loads of odd stuff like this for sale, either the real thing or a replica, so went looking for one there. Sure enough I found what I was looking for very quickly and bought it. Then followed a quick conversation with my partner:

Me: "I found a new fridge handle for us, should be here in a couple of days."

Partner: "Did you buy it from some person?"

Me: "No ... errrr, actually, I don't know who I bought it from."

What got to me about this conversation was the very fact that I had no idea who I had just bought it from. Prices for what I wanted were pretty consistent across the various sellers, so I relied entirely on the ratings system in order to make my decision, so much so that the brand of whoever sold it was irrelevant. Sure enough the handle arrived promptly and works fine, so no problem there.

Now this is just a petty transaction for something that's practically a disposable item, so it's not as if I really cared too much about quality in this instance, but nonetheless I think it indicates a change in my own attitude about how I buy online. I have enough faith in the overarching infrastructure of the web, and of the larger brands such as eBay and Amazon where I've already built up experience in trading and a pretty thorough understanding of their policies, that I'm willing to let them take the risk and trust them to offer goods from whoever they decide to let into their spaces. Your own branding after that point is probably a waste of time. Basically even though I'm willing to give you my money, I don't trust you - I only trust (a) the space you're operating in (e.g. Amazon) and (b) the ratings other people like me have given you. That seems pretty cold when summed up so bluntly, but I think is probably a fair summary.

Oddly enough I think there's a silver lining in this for certain businesses. In this transaction the object itself is of little consequence, there's nothing really to distinguish one choice from another. This of course is the backbone of all web transactions, the fact that most objects for sale generally have little to distinguish them from each other, making it relatively simple to choose one without having to actually experience it in real life. Books, DVDs, even objects like washing machines, they can be assessed via reviews and manufacturers sites remotely and comparisons and decisions made without needing to leave the home. There are some objects though that are much harder to make decisions on - those that work together to form more than the sum of their parts.

I'm actually thinking of something specific here, hi-fi. It's the family business (www.chewandosborne.co.uk/), so it's never far from my mind, but it seems to me that selling something like this might actually benefit from the rise of the web - provided it latches in to two key ingredients that are missing from the web experience:

things that require a sense that the web doesn't yet support (e.g. touch - clothes being a classic example)
things that can be combined to create something more than the sum of their parts

I think hi-fi fits in here because the quality of audio and video reproduction online isn't high enough to make a decision. There's a big difference between acoustics and plain old sound, plus there's no way you're going to be able to appreciate a 50" HD (or even 3D!) TV picture on your PC screen. Then there's the complexity of the higher quality hi-fi components - i.e. the way they can be plugged together to create systems. I reckon you simply can't combine things online in enough detail to make good decisions. There's the myriad of cables and connectors that need to work together, the way different components combine and duplicate different tasks amongst them, not to mention the way that different components when combined in different ways can create different end results.

Anyhow, enough ramblings for now - I'm sure these ideas could be refined into something that makes more sense, but I need to point my brain back in the direction of ICT and Education!

The Thankless Job that is Web Architecture

2010-04-18T10:25:00.000+01:00

I've been creating websites for well over ten years now, and although some things have changed over that time there still remains a bit of a divide between web design and web development that won't go away. I've always been in both camps really, but traditionally you're supposed to pick a side, so to speak. Web design is all about the look of the thing, and web development is about how it's programmed, with how it's actually structured falling somewhere between the two I guess, often picked up by a combination of both. I guess I've always felt this is where I belong when it comes to web work, a skill/profession probably best referred to as Web Architecture.

Web design is the more glamorous side of things, if you can call it that, but I've always considered web development, and for that matter web architecture, something of an underrated profession. I think the problem is people seem to think complexity in websites is somehow something to do with the computer, and not the people who made it. We seem to have this weird blind spot when it comes to computers - and also complex web sites - where we treat them as black boxes of mysterious techy amazingness, rather than what they really are - simply a collection of digitally encoded thinking.

It's not a website - it's people's thoughts

What a clever, dynamically driven website really is, is the sum of all the developers thoughts that have gone into it. The way it functions is a direct result of those persons ability to think out problems and processes, and the way that you experience it is completely down to the way they have thought it out for you. I'm not talking about the content here, the text on the page or the images, etc. that you see, but the architecture that makes up the site as a whole, the nooks and crannies, the way you can click here but not there, move one way on one page, and in another way somewhere else. The experience of being in the space, as opposed to reading the content.

It's actually the same throughout all the digital world. Unlike the real world, where we already have space that comes pre-filled with various things (trees, light, ground, gravity, etc.), everything in the digital world has to be created from nothing. There really is nothing there at all, until some designer and or developer comes along and starts to code, and suddenly you get virtual space that you can move about it - everything you experience in that space has been dreamt up by one or more individuals somewhere.

But then comes the down side - from the developers and architects perspective in particular their contribution is invisible to the average user. People who use the site will generally have no idea of the complexity that underlies experience. Most other things that we experience in our day to day lives have been around for so long that we tend to appreciate the differences - we may not understand everything about how our cars work, for example, but we do appreciate that a Ferrari is a more advanced form of craftmanship than, say, a Rover, and that is then reflected in our experience of the product. Hell, for just about everything else we can at least see the thing we're supposed to appreciate, but the lines of code that create a virtual space? That's far too abstract for most people.

The end result of all this in my experience is that those who strive to create quality spaces in this way are too often overlooked when it comes to tokens of appreciation. Most organisations have systems in place to honour those who work hard for their companies, but few I think have the capability to allow the contributions of developers and architects to be equally measured against their colleagues who work in the real world. It's basically much easier to appreciate someone's work when you can actually see it, after all, so their contribution is obvious. The architect of the virtual space you experience is always hidden from view though, there is no signature at the bottom to indicate its provenance, no smiling face of the creator showing you who's responsible for the experience.

I hope that as our use of the web matures that this will change, and perhaps one day there will be more widespread appreciation of the skills of the architects of virtual space, just as there is for architects of real space, but in the meantime we'll just have to keep plugging ourselves I guess.

Reality versus Virtuality - Why I think we need to focus back on the loss in human bandwidth

2010-03-27T18:59:00.001Z

I'm going to stick my neck out here, and share some of my vision of reality versus virtuality. First off something nice and contentious.

(Quick note about definitions - I tend to use the two terms reality and virtuality. By virtuality I mean anything that is created using Information & Communication Technologies, so that kind of stretches to anything from the landline phone in your house, through things like cinema and TV, to the web and all that entails)

Doing things in virtuality is generally worse than doing things in reality

Odd thing for someone who's so involved with technology to say, but I genuinely believe that we overplay the benefits of doing things in the virtual world, to such an extent that we have often tend to manufacture for ourselves a lesser human experience. I don't think I've ever read any proposal for using the virtual world that talks about how much we'll lose by utilising virtual space, only what will be gained. I propose a more balanced approach would be to accept that whenever we use virtual space we need to identify and accept what is lost in partnership with what is gained.

There are some things you can do in virtuality that you can't do in reality

This is the real crux - virtuality is a simulated world, and therefore some things are possible within it that are simply not possible in this reality. This is why it's so useful. Classically, time and space operate in a different way to what we're used to, and from that basic starting point many things become possible.

Take a simple web page - the real equivalent of this virtual object would be a sheet of printed paper. Such a sheet of paper can only exist in one real space at one moment in time - in order to share it with another person it has to be physically moved to that person, moving across time and space as it does so. Now think about it's virtual equivalent, the web page. This virtual object can exist in multiple virtual spaces simultaneously, and because it travels using virtual methods it can move at speeds which a physical object would find impossible. Suddenly sharing what you know becomes immeasurably simpler.

There are some things you can do in reality which you can't communicate with virtuality

Bandwidth. That's the big problem. I'm not talking about technological bandwidth here, about bits and bytes and download speeds, I'm talking about human communication bandwidth. About how much of ourselves it's possible to transmit through the interfaces we use to connect to virtual spaces given the current state of the technology.

Think we have 5 senses? Think again. It's now widely accepted that beyond the five classical senses there are many more senses that we rely on day-to-day to inform how we relate to the world around us - senses like balance, temperature and kinesthetic sense. These senses can be broadly categorised into four groups: chemoreception, photoreception, mechanoreception and thermoception. Now think about the virtuality again - how many of these senses can be transmitted through the everyday interfaces that connect us to the virtual world? It's pretty much all photoreception and some mechanoreception. Most of our senses cannot penetrate the interface.

Take what I'm writing here now, and consider how different the experience would be if we were face to face. Not only would you be able to hear intonation, and therefore be able to deduce more precisely my meaning as I strengthen and highlight certain words and phrases, but also be able to see a multitude of physical indications - some tiny, some large - that again define and clarify what I am trying to communicate. It's true that current levels of development with interfaces now allow some small part of this extra information to be transmitted, some specialist devices even allow smell to be transmitted, but the vast bulk of communication is lost.

It's all just part of a long path

So in a nutshell that's my take on ICTs right now. Yes it might be a revolution - personally I now think of it as a Cognitive Revolution, as a reflection on the physicality of the Industrial Revolution - but I believe we're at the very beginning of something that is going to shift society over decades, not years. The concept of these type of developments 'transforming' anything has become so overplayed now that it seems to stand for little else than soundbites for the uninformed and unthinking. If we don't start to realise how much we lose when we rely on ICTs to stand in for us, I think we're in danger of losing what it is that has got us so far already, i.e. the sense of community and connection between each other which depends on human bandwidth to grow and develop.

Explaining the Smartphone - Just why are they so expensive?

2010-03-06T16:06:00.000Z

I was showing an interested colleague my Nexus One the other day, and the inevitable question came up - how much was it? The £400(ish) response got the usual sharp intake of breath, and there's me trying to explain, as ever, "but it's not just a phone, you know". That always seems such a hollow line!

It got me wondering why it is that people are so shocked by the price - I think it's the fact that they really don't get just what a modern phone like the Nexus can do ...

I've been an avid smartphone for user for many years now, and for me the core has always been to have access to things like my contacts, emails, calendar, music, pictures, etc. wherever I go. But these days the phone is pretty much a whole host of other gadgets as well, and the rise of the various app stores is adding scores of other new tools every day. But enough of words, I thought it might be best to show just how comprehensive something like the Nexus is with a table showing how much you'd have to spend on other gadgets just to be able to access some of what it can do.

*Nexus One Smartphone Functions versus Gadgets*
Nexus One Smartphone Functionality	Equivalent Gadget	Cost
Satellite Navigaiton	Tomtom or Copilot	£100
Music Player & Video Player	Microsoft Zune, iPod or Archos MP3	£100
Mobile Gaming Platform	Nintendo DS	£150
Digitial Camera (including Video)	Low end 5MP camera	£50
Digital Compass	Standard entry level compass	£10
TOTAL		£410

So by my (very rough) calculations you've already got £410 pounds worth of gadgets in your pocket before you consider that it's actually a phone as well. Not to mention a powerful miniature computer, able to browse the web, check your emails, manage your appointments, and do a whole host of other functions that your average desktop computer can do. I guess most people just don't realise that - but by the look of some of the latest statistic for smartphone uptake, they're just beginning to find out.

Apple, Patents and Virtual Spaces

2010-03-03T18:17:00.000Z

So, Apple has finally got round to trying to sue HTC for using what it claims are it's own patented inventions. No surprise there, except perhaps that it took them this long to get round to it. Personally I think Apple has started to believe it's own hype just a little too much over this - they seem to think they invented the mobile phone itself the way they go on, instead of being a really late entry into the game when hundreds of interesting things had already been tried. Was it really so hard to come up with such a game changing device as the iPhone when so many hundreds and hundreds of other ideas and other devices were already out there to study and understand? I don't think so. Clever the iPhone may be, but 100% original it most certainly was not.

But what about patents more generally, and this constant surge back and forth between companies claiming that everybody else is stealing their ideas? Why in particular in the world of Information & Communication Technologies is this so commonplace, with hundreds of patent cases being exchanged left right and centre? Just take Apple as the latest in a long line - in 2009 Nokia sues Apple, then Apple sues Nokia back, so Apple sues Nokia back, then Kodak sues Apple, now Apple sues HTC. Is there really so much patented tech being stolen ... or is perhaps something else going on? I think it may be ...

The Virtual Space Argument

I'm currently a PhD candidate at my University, where I'm also an ICTs specialist and part of a special web innovation project. My research, though, is actually about the value of ICTs in education, but as part of that I'm developing a way of working with virtual space which tries to understand it's specific unique values as opposed to it's ability to simulate reality. Let me clarify.

Take Second Life, something which most people are now aware of. It's a 3D simulated world, where most of the time you simple wander through a digitally recreated version of this reality. It's a bit odd, and you can certainly do things within it which you can't in this one (like fly, for example) but the vast majority of it simply recreates what exists in this reality. And if you look closer at just about everything in the world of ICTs it's not hard to see the same sort of thing happening across the board, i.e. people recreating this reality within the virtuality - but sometimes it's not as easy to spot as in Second Life. And I think that may be a bit critical when it comes to patents.

I'm going to turn back to Apple here and the iPhone unlocking mechanism, one of the issues over which Apple is suing HTC as far as I understand, as I think this is a good case in point. If you're not familiar with this unlocking thing, it's the ability to put your finger on a part of the screen with what looks like a button, drag it to the other side of the screen, and this action then 'unlocks' the phone, i.e. the screen is now active and can be interacted with. It's bugged me senseless that Apple can think they can patent this, but I've not been able to put my finger on exactly why - until perhaps now. I've thought long and hard and finally it came to me. I do a very similar action to this every day of my life, several times a day in fact, and have been doing it for many, many years now - long before Apple 'patented' it. What am I talking about? I'm actually talking about going to the bathroom. My toilet at home has a sliding bolt. I reach out, slide it one way and it locks, slide it the other way and it unlocks, just like an iPhone.

Yes, you may be screaming, but that's irrelevant because it's something in reality - the iPhone is different. But is it? Why when we construct something in virtual space should a new set of patent rules apply? The digital objects may be different from their physical counterparts in many ways, but the actions that we try and perform on them are very much the same - because these actions are driven not by the technology but by the human. What the iPhone unlocking mechanism does is latch in to a very human action, a very natural action, and one that we have been doing for many, many, millennia. The technology may have reached the point where such an action is feasible in virtual space, i.e. the combination of touch screens, sensitivity, motion detection over the screen, etc., and therefore many companies are starting to take advantage of it and similar capabilities simultaneously, but for some company to try and claim it as their own is to me akin to patenting riding a bike. Don't get me wrong - I think that there are technological innovations that deserve a patent, such as this new touch screen that touches back for example, but to try and patent a human action that is made feasible through this technological invention seems to me simply ludicrous. Perhaps one day we'll invent a technology that allows a totally new form of human action, which would be pretty amazing, but I don't think swiping your finger is quite there yet.

Take another example - the infamous pinch and zoom, probably another on the list I'd expect. I was wondering about this one as well, and was thinking of a real world example. Imagine of a piece of paper lying on a table. If you put two fingers down on the paper about 2 inches apart, hold down the paper with these fingers and then pinch the two together, what happens? The paper rises towards you. Pull them apart, and the paper folds back down. Now this isn't quite as directly applicable of course, because pinch and zoom actually works the other way around (pinching zooms out, not in), but the basic principle remains the same. What I think we're latching into here is actually a very physical reaction of objects when we squeeze them - in a 3 dimensional space such as this reality when we apply force across a plane, the object reacts in the opposite fashion to the plane on which the force is applied. A force applied in the Z plane, for example, will create motion in the X/Y plane. Something like pinch and zoom is simply taking this very real property and transposing it to a simulated virtuality. Personally I don't think that's patentable - it's been around for a pretty long time after all. It's simply a transposition from this reality to the virtual world.

I'm convinced that issues like this is part of the reason we are so deluged with patents in the world of ICTs, and that the good stuff is getting caught up with what it many ways is the mundane. I think it's great that people are looking at UI design and applying how we work in this world to the virtual world, but I disagree that what I'm seeing are real inventions. I think the truth is we're actually discovering a brand new space to occupy, virtual space, and with every turn of the technology we're exploring a little more of how we can project who and what we are from this reality into this new virtuality. If we continue to try and patent every step in the virtual world in this way, we are crippling humanities progress as a whole, forcing ourselves to stumble into the future in fits and starts when we could be striding ahead together.

A Call for Sanity

Personally I'd like to make the call to those deciding on patents worldwide to question whether or not these new patents that are being presented to them really are innovations that need protecting, or whether in actual fact they already exist in a real world counterpart. Just take the time to ask yourself is this truly a new invention, or is it just that the development of the overarching virtual space has reached a point where an existing invention is now possible within the virtual world. By doing so we'll not only save billions in fees from all these court cases, but also drastically improve the ability for companies to innovate and develop new virtual products and services without fear - and just possibly highlight those real innovations which really do bring out the best in the new virtuality we're only now just discovering.

"Studying in the Cloud", or how a PhD student uses the web to stay sane(ish)

2010-02-17T18:11:00.002Z

I like studying. I enjoy reading what others think, searching out new ideas, combining knowledge into new forms, making intuitive leaps between disciplines - all of the sort of things which to my mind PhD students should be getting up up to. But I don't necessarily think I'm a very good student, and I'm sure teachers both past and present won't disagree. The aptitude I may have, but sometimes dedication (and deadlines for that matter) don't exactly come easy. With that in mind I need all the help I can get ...

Luckily when it comes to the web, and web 2.0 tools, I'm not exactly a novice. I created my first HTML page on May the 2nd, 1999 - I know the exact date because I still have the page - and ever since have been engaged in all sorts of web and new media projects, from the days when a multimedia CD-ROM was the very height of cool. Right now my day job actually requires me to be innovative with the web, so I'd like to share some of my expertise here, most specifically with the way I use web tools to help me as a research student.

Why do I use the Cloud? Because I never know where I'll be ...

I never took a conscious decision to use cloud based services - my first draft chapters were all word documents. But my life is pretty complex - I'm a part-time student, who also has two jobs, for which I have two separate offices in two different parts of the city where I work. Oh, and a home office. And three separate mobile devices I keep notes on. Honestly I just can't afford to rely on thumb drives or laptops to store everything - I just never know where I'm going to be. But it turns out it I don't need to know where I am - I can simply store everything I need in the cloud (aka hosted somewhere on the web). Then so long as I have a web connection I have access to everything I need.

This actually maps to the research I'm doing, which is on the use of Information & Communication Technologies in Education. In my own research I'm exploring the way in which virtual space seems to have a different set of rules to real space. I'm looking for concrete ways to harness this difference to our advantage, both as educators and as researchers, so that we can achieve things that would otherwise not be possible - like connecting to our work wherever we are, for example.

But ... is it safe? I'll lose it, I can't trust it, I'll have no back-up ...

It's an understandable reaction, to be afraid of cloud services. But you needn't be. Just think about it for one second - who manages your data right now? You? Your research support team? Your IT department? I use Google Docs for all my critical PhD work. You know who looks after my content? Google. One of the most successful, powerful and experienced companies on the planet, especially with things like data storage. Do you really think your data is safer than mine? Admittedly I do take a copy now and then and store it on my hard drive, and would advise you do to, but honestly, if Google goes belly up we'll all have something far more serious to worry about I reckon. Probably World War Three ...

OK, I'm interested, how do I do it?

I use various cloud based services, but the the main one for my writing, data collection and presentation is Google Docs. You can think of this as sort of an online version of the famous Office suite of productivity tools. You can keep all your writing, presentations and data in one place in Google Docs, and fully organised into folders. You can also means share work directly with colleagues and supervisors online, and collaborate and comment on work without having to meet up physically. Not that I'm against meeting up physically, in all honestly I still prefer a physical meeting, but sometimes it's just not practical.

There are other online choices, such as Adobe's Buzzword which is part of their excellent set of free tools available at http://www.acrobat.com, but for my research I prefer the integration of Google's offering so will only talk about their service for this post. In order to get started with Google Docs in particular you'll first need to set-up a Google Account.

I've put together this short video showing how I use Google Docs, and how you can use it to help you study. It includes the basics about creating and working on text documents, making presentations and using forms and spreadsheets to manage data.

Adobe Captivate demonstration of me using Google Docs
(takes a little time to load)

So that's my writing sorted - but what about all the reading?

If you know anything about research then you'll know you need to spend a fair bit of your time not only reading articles and books, but also managing what you find. Eventually you're going to have to produce that big list at the back of your thesis showing just how many articles you've waded through, and I've already heard horror stories of students who left it to the last month before submission. Personally I don't mind horror stories, but I don't particular want to be in one - and luckily the web can help here.

I use two web services to manage my reading, one for bibliographical storage (CiteULike) and one for keeping tracking on articles (Google Reader).

CiteULike - Online Bibliographical Store and Social Network

CiteULike is a web based bibliographical tool, that can automatically draw out an articles full bibliographical data from a webpage and a store it in a format whereby it can be represented in any one of a number of internationally accepted standards. With one click of a button on my web browser toolbar I can store an article in my own personal CiteULike library, give it some tags/keywords to categorise it, and even add some notes to describe it in more detail if I feel the need. Later on I can use the site to download the article reference, along with all my other article references for inclusion in my thesis in an acceptable format - referencing made easy!

The CiteULike Homepage

And that's not all. Because it's also a social site, with thousands of other people doing the same thing, I can keep an eye out for other interesting articles that other researchers have added, and CiteULike itself will constantly suggest related articles based on matches between what I've added and what others are adding - which means some of my literature work is actually done for me.

Google Reader - Online Subscription Service

Google Reader is just like any other RSS reader in many ways, but what with me being a Google fan (and therefore having lot of my virtual life tied up in Google Spaces) in makes sense to use their own service - plus it has one or two tricks up it's sleeve as well.

The Google Reader Interface

In the early days of my research (only a few years ago now) very few of the mainstream academic journals had RSS feeds, even in my specialist field of ICT, but these days the situation is much better. You can add these RSS feeds to your Google Reader account, and that way whenever a new edition of the journal you're following is released you can read all the contents directly through Google Reader.

What's more because Google knows an awful lot about not only what you're doing but also what others are doing in the same field, it suggests articles that you might find useful as you use the service. There has been a fair bit of criticism lately of Google for using data it gleans from you for advertising purposes, but that overlooks the enormous benefit that can come from using it in terms of leveraging the enormous distributed cognition within it. Google may use the information it gathers to present you with adverts, but at its core what it tries to do (and generally succeeds in doing) is present you with something that may be of use to you. That way Google's happy, the advertisers are happy - and more importantly you're happy. Not exactly knowledge for nothing, but certainly knowledge for next to nothing.

Two other clever tricks - Google Alerts and Evernote

I have lots more things going on in the cloud, too many for this blog post really. Just the other day I actually sat down and mapped out just how the different parts of my life map into different web technologies, but that's probably a whole other blog post.

That said there are two other things from that chart that I think are worth sharing now - Google Alerts and Evernote.

Google Alerts is kind of like your own personal Google hound dog. You give it some keywords for things that you're looking for and it will keep searching and once every day for you (or continuously if you want it to) send results as it finds them. Instead of having to remember to manually search for items, you can sit back and let Google do if for you. This allows you to find all those nuggets of information that you'd otherwise miss, without having to spend hours and hours digging around the web for them out in the first place.

Evernote is an online note taking tool, and there are lots of those about - but the clever thing is that you can also install it on your phone. That way when you're out and about and a struck with a great idea you can simply use your phone - write it if you want, take a photo, or literally speak it into the Evernote program to create an audio note. Once you're done the software will upload the note into your own personal space on-line, and you can write it up later when you're back home.

And finally - staying sane

Well that's a quick overview for some of the web services I use to help me in my studies, I hope they may be of some use to you. There's just one more web service I'd recommend though, the comic strip "Piled Higher and Deeper".

I've leave the last words to Jorge Cham, creator of the fab "PhD" Comic strip ...

"Piled Higher and Deeper" by Jorge Cham

www.phdcomics.com

P.S. And just one more thing - did I mention that everything on this page is free? Apparently you can have your cake and eat it, and lunch isn't nearly as expensive as you thought it was :-)

The hidden danger of systems, or why we're missing the good stuff

2010-02-04T19:04:00.000Z

I've been meaning for a while now to post about something that's been bugging me for a while, to do with what I see as the hidden danger of systems, or if you like "systematisation". Now generally speaking I'm a big fan of off-loading cognition into virtual spaces. Not only does my job demand that I create the capacity for this day-to-day, but I'm also a big consumer of third party offerings such as Google Alerts, Twine, etc. But that said, there does seem to be an increasingly dangerous approach that can see some systems as finished product rather than a tool to achieve it. The "if I use this tool I no longer have to think about it" mentality.

In order to explain what I'm on about I first need to nip back in time to when I was a Psychology student, and the time when I first discovered the normal distribution curve. To those who don't know it, this is a deceptively simple graph that explains, well, pretty much everything about life to my mind. It goes something like this:

What you're looking at can explain many things in our day-to-day lives. Take individual wealth in the UK for example, with the vertical axis indicating wealth and the horizontal our population. A very few people have lots of money. The same again have practically nothing. As you go away from these extremes you find more and more people nearer the middle, with less and more depending on their circumstance. No great breakthrough you might think, more common sense, but that's where the deceptively simple becomes powerful.

Now look at the graph again but think of cow fertility across the planet (weird I know, but bear with me). Take the vertical axis as fertility and the horizontal axis as cows across the world. Again you find some cows very fertile, some very infertile, but the majority is in the middle.

I'm not trying to make a point about cows here, but I am trying to make a point about this graph, and that point is that this type of distribution appears throughout nature, and for that matter artificial systems as well. Technically speaking it may become skewed here and there according to local variables, but that's a lesson for the statistics class, and not here in this blog.

So what's all this got to do with systematisation? It's the ends ...

What systems do (and now I'm thinking about computer systems) is encode certain chunks of our lives into code, and that code is represented in virtual spaces which we can wander through and then achieve various tasks. I'm talking here about anything from checking into an airplane flight to taking an online archaeology course. But what's easy to miss is that the encoding is a very limited affair, and hugely dependent on the authority, capacity and empathy of the encoder. And even in the very best encoding possible, some things will be left out. And do you know what's left out? It's the ends of the graph.

We lose the terrible, i.e. the far left of the curve, but we also lose the genius, i.e. the far right. Systematisation then, and by that I mean the application of generic systems of action to replicate a process, by its very nature removes the capacity for critical failure, but also removes the ability for critical success. In effect it could even be seen as a way of dulling life, of taking away that spark which can sometimes be just what you need to make life worth living.

Yes there are times and places where you need to remove the possibility of critical failure, and so have to accept the fact that you therefore remove the ability for critical success, but I think far too often systems are applied without even acknowledging this effect in the first place - and the consequence is, we miss the good stuff.

I don't know about you, but personally I like the good stuff ... I'm happy to take the rough with the smooth, you only get one chance at the life lark after all.

Thoughts from a long time tablet computer user on the iPad

2010-01-27T22:37:00.001Z

I'm no stranger to the tablet computer, and in particular the slate format. I remember getting very excited about them back when Windows XP Tablet Edition was released in late 2002/early 2003, and spent the next two years reading about them on and off and trying to understand how they were being used in various disciplines. I'd only recently moved into Education, and was particularly keen on how they might be used there. They always seemed like a technology on the edge, something that would provide that extra special quality that could enhance whatever it was used for - if only we could pin that quality down.

I was lucky enough to get my first tablet in 2005, and plumped for the Motion Computing LE1600 - still in my mind one of the very best tablet computers ever made. It wasn't long before I had dumped my usual A4 notebook, moving everything into OneNote 2003, forcing myself to use the technology in order to understand it - a trait which has echoed throughout my life. In fact I chose the slate form factor (i.e. no keyboard) for the very reason that it would make me learn how to use the tablet properly, and not just treat it as an everyday laptop with a slightly dodgy keyboard.

It's now 5 years later, and I still use the same original tablet on a daily basis. I've worn out the extended battery, expanded the memory, and been through several operating systems, but it's still running strong and is pivotal to much of my work. It runs Windows 7 like a dream, not to mention Ubuntu or any other Linux you care to mention. In fact I like the tablet format so much I now own three of the things, and use them for everything from casual browsing and video watching on the sofa to managing business notes and presenting at conferences. Basically I think it's fair to say that I know the tablet experience pretty well.

So what do I make of this iPad thing then?

It's ... nothing special. I can't really believe it. All that talk of clever interfaces, more voice, gesture control, multiple cameras. There's no killer app on it at all, it seems very much like my tablets, only not quite as good in so many ways. It's lower speed, smaller screen, less memory, possibly less or more storage depending what you choose. But hang on, my tablets are 5 years old? That should make them antiques, not contemporaries. Where is the good stuff? What's going on Apple?

Battery life sounds impressive, I can't match that, though in all honesty I don't think it matters as much as people think. The really key thing about these sort of devices in my experience are docking stations, places around where you would naturally be that you can slide the thing into for added connectivity and power. I now own four docking stations in all, gathered from various places over the years (well I do have two jobs, plus I'm a part-time student and busy food blogger - I tend to be in lots of different places!). But then again, a whole month on standby? Now that is right in line with how people actually want to use their devices, as opposed to how they have to use them!

And the weight - fab, it's so light! My devices do weigh a bit, even the ones without the extended battery can be a bit of pain after a while, but then again I just tend to rest it on whatever's near to me. People are used to heavy books and the like, so I'm not totally convinced that weight is so critical. Maybe that weight saving is a good reflection on how the technology has matured in the last 5 years, but I don't think it's exactly ground breaking.

Touch screen? I avoided that on the tablet for a very good reason - if you've ever actually used one of these things for any length of time then you will know that you spend a great deal of time with part of your hand resting on the screen - that's just natural. That really messes with the interface. Microsoft have done an good job over the years tweaking and improving on the way that their tablet interfaces work, the keyboard interface in particular has come on leaps and bounds, especially with Windows 7, and the pen interface in particular has a lot going for it that newcomers to this field often miss. Ever tried to be really precise with a finger? It's just not possible. For some things, particularly fine detail work, you need a precise device - and that means a stylus of some form. Basically I doubt if Apple can match Microsoft's years of experience in this area so quickly.

But you know what - I think this thing will still sell like hot cakes. Apple still has this incredible magic, and people will just want to own one because of where it comes from, and the associations it has. But only certain people. I've argued before about niche, and I think that's as relevant as ever, that Apple is a niche supplier (albeit it a big niche) and it's only the wealthier sections of society who will pick up on this. You can forget seeing these in mainstream education, for example, private maybe. Yes Mr Fry will have one (actually, I think he already has, given his Twitter stream - lucky bugger :-), but it's not going to transform society, just the chattering classes.

So where does that leave this post? Anything useful to add?

I've always been a Google fan, so I guess I'm slightly relieved in a way that Apple haven't pulled a rabbit out of the hat, but that said I'm also disappointed that I haven't seen the product of great minds leading us into the future. I did hope that someone somewhere deep in Apple was going to produce something new that would mean something important to me, but I've not seen it yet. Maybe tomorrow will bring fresh insight.

I guess I do think deep down though that Apple have always been about big public display, about show and design, about kudos. They have the products to back them up, yes, but the style and desirability plays a big part too. Google on the other hand are all about incremental change, about serving real needs, and making the planet a better place to be without you even noticing they've done it. With the launch of the Nexus One they tried to play Apple's game, and got a bit of a kick in the teeth, which I'm sure Apple enjoyed immensely. But now perhaps the boot is going to be on the other foot. Personally I think I'll stick to Google's camp for now - I'm a watcher, not a performer, and Google's 'personality'( if I can say such a thing about a company) kind of suits me better.

Now if only Google'd bring out a tablet, that would be interesting ...

P.S. An LE1600 Motion Computing tablet can be had for as little as £200/$300 on eBay - so if you can't afford the price tag for the iPad but are keen on trying a tablet I'd recommend you go and find yourself an old classic and give it a new lease of life ...

The Nexus One Google Phone: An Independent 'Review' from an (ex) Windows Mobile User

2010-01-17T09:04:00.002Z

Blimey. Writing an actual review on a piece of hardware - can I really do that? You know, I really don't think so. All that quoting of 5 mega pixel this, and 3.7 inch the other, 2.5ms for accessing one thing, and 3.2Mbps for something else. Not really me. If you're after that sort of review you'd better stop now ...

So what has led me here now. Well I'm a big fan of innovation, have been for many, many years. I'm not a big fan of doing things in a certain way just because that's the way they've been done before, and nor am I into the detail of life, the minutae that some people find so critical. I love big ideas, the big picture, seeing beyond the obvious into what I see as the really critical stuff that lays beyond. I like concepts ahead of numbers, feelings before statistics. And for some reason that has led me to the Nexus One.

Who Am I to Talk about Smart (or even 'Super') Phones?

So back to the nitty gritty. Although my job currently means that I need to think and write a lot about web innovation, what with being a Web Innovation Officer at the University of Exeter, in all honesty I've always been keen on new tech and powerful mobile devices. I bought my first smartphone, the Motorola MPx200, back in 2004 and still have it in a box somewhere - although heaven knows what version of the OS is running on it. I was never one to leave the manufacturers installation on there for very long. That started a long journey with Windows Mobile. I went on from there to an Orange SPV C500 (otherwise known as the HTC Typhoon), probably one of the finest smartphones so far in my opinion. Then to a T-Mobile MDA Vario (or HTC Wizard), on from there to an HTC Touch Pro and then to an HTC Touch HD. Got a bit carried away with HTC there, but they do make some pretty good phones.

The long and short of all this it is that I've known a fair few Windows phones in my day, and have been using smartphones for a long time - long enough I hope to have a modestly interesting take on the smartphone market, especially with regards to Windows Mobile.

A Quick Note about Apple

A feel I should say something here about the iPhone, it being the most obvious smartphone to compare the Nexus with. There are of course many, many reviews already that compare the two, so I don't think the world needs another. But more than that I'm loathe to get into an argument with iPhone users, or perhaps more precisely Apple users. There's something about the average Apple users unquestioning championing of their choice that can be a little overbearing - even cult like. I appreciate that they think the iPhone is a good choice, and they're simply trying to share that with me so I can have a better life - but that is kind of the attitude of the obsessive. Reminds me too much of the religious - and no I don't have anything to do with them either. No .... I ... do ... not ... want ... to ... join ... the ... (insert choice here) ... thank you.

I like the iPhone, and I like Macs, but they're not for me - at least not now. There was a time many years ago when I'd work on them regularly, but I've always found the overall infrastructure a little restrictive in the end. Plus I could never knowingly send an email that said something like "Sent with my iPhone". To me that's like sending someone a letter that ends "P.S. Up yours, I'm better than you". Do iPhone users really not get that?

Anyhow, I'll readily admit that I tend to the other extreme on the scale, and tend to reject many mainstream choices. Just owning a Nexus already makes me slightly uncomfortable - I guess I'll just have to live with it.

Nexus One versus Windows Mobile

Anyone who's got this far may well be wondering what on earth I can say next. After all, how can Windows Mobile hope to compare against the Nexus One? Well the honest truth is it can't, at least for the average user. The Nexus One is far superior in terms of speed, fluidity, integration and customisability than any Windows Phone I've known. The Touch HD2 may have a chance, and that was going to be my choice before I bought the Nexus, but from what I've read I very much doubt that it has what it takes.

It seems the underlying Windows OS has just become far too outdated to compete with it's modern rivals, and that it will take many months to catch up. It does look like the long awaited Windows Mobile 7 is delayed yet again, possibly until 2011, so I guess the (small) silver lining is that Microsoft have recognised that they cannot afford to release anymore weak software (i.e. a sort of mobile Vista) or they'll totally kill what mobile market they have left.

But just what is it about Windows Mobile that has kept me loyal for so long? I think the answer to this question lies in what it is I actually do with my phone, rather than how it stacks up on paper. Apart from the obvious (yes I do use my phone - as a phone) what else do you do with one of these things?

Keeping Track of my Life: Appointments

Probably the thing I do more than anything. I use computer based calendars for just about everything in my life, and the ability of these things to remind me of what I'm supposed to be doing and where I'm supposed to be doing it has become kind of central. The windows mobile phones would happily sync with all my other calendars, be those work or other, and remind me ahead of time to get to A, B or C. The latest versions would even automatically go silent whilst I was there so as not to disturb the meetings, leaving me to get on with whatever it is I was supposed to be doing. Now how cool is that? Just the kind of offloading of cognition I need in my life.

So why is the the Nexus One? First off there's the general speed. Moving back and forth through appointments is so much easier, as well as flicking between different views, e.g. daily agenda, week view, month view, etc. Then there's the display - the Nexus has a neat way of showing when on a particular day I'll be busy, using a series of vertical bars scaled and positioned according to time. And then there's the integration with other apps, e.g. making a phone number into a link that you can click to phone, or an address a link that you can click to navigate to, automatic functions that the phone will do by itself. Something that Windows Mobile did try to do, but not as well as the Nexus.

To be fair it's a pretty fair comparison calendar wise between them, but the Nexus has the edge.

Getting Information on the Go: Web Browsing

I use the mobile web an awful lot. Sometimes it might be to check a product that I'm looking at in store, perhaps it'll be finding out film times, or maybe looking for a local place to eat. I've tried just about all browsers for Windows Mobile, from Fennec to Iris, IE to Skyfire, but it's clear now that none of them can compete with the Nexus One. It's odd that the screen is actually a little smaller than the Touch HD that it replaces for me, but somehow browsing seems easier - and of course faster. I always liked Opera on Windows Mobile before, it seemed the best of the mobile bunch when you compared all it's features together, but you do spend a fair bit of your time waiting for it to respond. No such waiting around with the Nexus One.

And then there's the integration again. With all the things I tend to do with my mobile there's an app somewhere to help me. Windows Marketplace is of course pretty non-existent, and although people have criticised Android for 'only' having 20,000 or so apps I can't say I've had any trouble trying to find anything. And have you ever thought just how large that number actually is? A quick bit of maths shows that if you spent just 30 seconds deciding whether or not each app was for you (considering an average work day is about 8 hours) you'd spend 21 days or so just looking at apps and doing nothing else - not even using them. Can you imagine a whole month where the only thing you do in the office is look at apps? Numbers are pretty meaningless here - as other people have already pointed out, pretty much all the apps you could ever want are available for Android, so that whole argument is pretty spurious.

But back to my point. When I say integration what I'm talking about is the way that the whole phone seems more internet aware, and instead of having just one point where you connect to the web, i.e. the browser, the browser or parts of it come up repeatedly on demand from other parts of the phone. You no longer get a feeling of switching to Opera to go online, online is just there all the time throughout the interface. As Google themselves point out, this is where web and phone meet (and hence the word Nexus, meaning "A means of connection; a link or tie").

Finding Places: Maps & Navigation

One thing I've become increasingly reliant on is using my phone as a sat nav, and not just in the car but also on foot. It may have something to do with my ad hoc attitude to finding new places, which is mostly reliant on heading in the right direction, which means I get lost a lot. But I can afford to! I have a mobile in my pocket!

To be fair, there isn't much to choose between the two (at least for UK users, as the actual turn-by-turn navigation isn't yet available) because the core app is still Google Maps, and that's pretty much the same for both. In fact some of the interface choices on Windows Mobile (e.g. the button to re-lock my position) I miss on the Nexus One. GPS does seem to lock in much quicker on the Nexus though, there were many times on the Touch HD where I'd be waiting minutes for a good GPS signal.

The upcoming car dock is supposed to offer good things for the Nexus, but then the HTC Touch HD2 is getting a similar thing which will put the phone into a sort of 'car mode'. I suspect that Touch HD2 will be better here, especially with it's huge screen, but time will have to tell on that one. Overall right now there's not much to choose between them.

Keeping Entertained: Music & Films

For a long time now I've liked to carry all my music with me wherever I am - and that means over 14Gb of data so far and counting. I also use it to listen to podcasts when I'm out and about. It's important that the phone has a good bluetooth option, as my car is also bluetooth enabled so I stream music directly to the audio player - no need for any cables, it works automatically, and phone calls are automatically routed through it whilst pausing any playing music at the same time.

The music player on the Nexus One doesn't have much you can do with it, but then again nor did the Touch HD, and you can at least scroll up and own much easier with the Nexus. Having lists of hundreds of albums or artists was a pain before, but now I'm rediscovering old tracks that were before for ever lost in the Windows Mobile interface. Sound quality is great - better in my opinion than the Touch HD.

Film wise the Nexus is again pretty much on par with the Touch HD, although that said the Touch HD did have more control when watching films, e.g. different screen formatting.

I guess if there's one area of the Nexus One/Windows Mobile comparison where the Android is particularly weak this is it - though it's not as if it's a big difference.

Recording Life: Photos & Video

Having a good camera on my phone is very important, as I tend to take an awful lot of photos with it. I know they're not going to be great quality compared to a proper camera, but the simple fact that I always have my phone on me is enough to mean I can get pictures and videos that I otherwise would not.

The camera on the Nexus doesn't disappoint, and the videos in particular are miles ahead of what the Touch HD can do. The gallery for looking at them is very nifty too, but personally I don't think it's as important as people make out. Whilst it's fast and usable, it doesn't seem as customisable as I'd like - something to come perhaps. The LED flash is also nice to have, but again a flash on a camera like this is pretty rubbish either way. If you're going to take photographs that need a flash you're much better off using a proper camera.

For some video samples take a look at my Sunday Roaster blog - the Traditional Roast Lamb with Roast Potatoes & Leeks in White Sauce recipe videos were all shot with the Nexus.

My Conclusion

To be frank the sheer power of the Nexus One is enough to leave my old Windows Mobile phones behind, but that's (mostly) a hardware issue, so you can't really judge long term on something so transitory. The real reason I've moved on is all to do with the integration of the phone with what else I'm doing in virtual space more generally.

I freely admit I've been a Google fan for many years, and much of my life is tied into their services. Being very cloud based they're the natural choice for me, as the integration they themselves offer between their cloud services is so much more advanced than their competitors. Whether I'm using Google Docs or Google Reader, it's the same contacts that come up as options to share with. My Picasa albums are there without asking, and I only have to press a button and my new video is uploaded to my YouTube account. Wherever I am in the world I only need sign into my Google account and a whole raft of services are instantly at my disposal - documents, bookmarks, pictures, contacts, emails - you name it, it's there. And now with the Nexus One I can sign into all of that in the palm of my hand. With Windows Mobile it was always a little bit of a struggle to bring it all together, but with the Nexus One Google have managed to transfer all their great offerings into a form that makes them instantly useful wherever I happen to be, and fully integrated into a form where a large chunk of the thinking is done for me. And at the end of the day that's what I look for in any ICT that I use - cognitive offloading. My mental life is busy enough, so if someone can come along and help out with some of the thinking I'm all for it.

I initially thought the Nexus One was too simple for me, but I've realised since that the simplicity is actually just the device matching the way I already think and act. As a web architect I should know better - for many years I've gone on and on about how good design, particularly interaction design, tends to be invisible, and then I go and fail to spot it myself! It automatically blends the real with the virtual seamlessly and still allows me to personalise and customise in a way which means it's what I want, and not necessarily what Google wants. I wonder how many (and I can't help but nip back to it's major competitor here) iPhone users could say the same? I suspect the majority have become so used to the way the iPhone steers their thinking they would find the Nexus One difficult - perhaps that would explain the surprisingly large number of negative views I've read from other iPhone vs Nexus One style reviews - something in clear contrast to what the average person thinks about the Nexus One and the iPhone. It does look like the professional review community is a bit out of touch. Maybe even - dare I say it - a bit iPhone biased?

All I know is that this device has a way of mapping into my life that nothing else can manage. Not only that, but it shows every sign of maturing and developing as I do - a philosophy that Google has become somewhat famous for, thinking long term and keeping very customer focused.

Personally I think the Nexus One is the right choice. Simple as that.

Nexus One: Video Quality

2010-01-10T17:57:00.002Z

Very happy that I bought a Nexus One to replace my HTC Touch HD. Was very keen on the HTC HD2 until I heard about this new phone from Google, and since it's been with me all weekend I think I can safely say that I made the right choice now, having had a couple of days to experiment.

I'll try and write a more thoughtful reflection on it once I get the chance, but in the meantime anyone who's interested may like to check out the videos I made today for my blog, Traditional Roast Lamb with Roast Potatoes & Leeks in White Sauce.

These were uplodaed directly from the phone (via wifi). It's integration with other Google services is excellent so far.

(most of the other ones were shot with a Flip Ultra HD earlier in the year)

'giffgaff' - a new pay-as-you-go mobile network

2009-12-07T13:19:00.001Z

As you might imagine, I'm a huge user of all sorts of technology, including lots of mobile devices. I've been using a smartphone since the very first appeared many years ago now, and long before the iPhone was even thought of. I've never been happy with one thing though - data plans.

Honestly I'm not a big talker - well, maybe to a few close friends - so I hardly need the hundreds of minutes and texts even the most basic plans seem to offer these days. What I do need though is lots and lots of data. My latest phone, the HTC Touch HD, is to all intents and purposes a mini-PC, and it is constantly wanting to sync various bookmarks, emails, calendar appointments, weather forecasts, etc. Not only that, but because of it's large screen I use it a lot for mobile browsing and things like Google maps too - perfect for storing the secret location of my latest mushroom foraging expedition! But it can cost me an arm and a leg in data - or, more commonly, I simply don't use data as much as I'd like.

That brings me back to the iPhone - a great device, and no mistake, but I'm utterly convinced that a huge factor in it's success has been the included data plan. Without data the iPhone is a bit of a brick - let's face it, all those apps would be for nothing if you couldn't get them on the thing and then actually do something useful with them! Most of us non-iPhone users have to put up with paying through the nose for even basic data like HTML, let alone start messing around with clever things like the Layar augmented reality browser. So why is this post titled 'giffgaff'?

Well giffgaff is a new offering (actually owned by O2), which calls itself:

"A new pay-as-you-go mobile network, matching the UK's lowest prices. A giffgaff SIM works in any phone, including the iPhone."

They've only just launched, and indeed are offering great prices, but more importantly from my perspective have promised free web browsing until the 25th of May 2010. You won't be able to get it abroad, but you will here in the UK, as they're interested in how people use mobile browsing and are very much looking at their customers as to how they should price in the future.

Well my SIM is on it's way, so I can't exactly report on the quality of service as yet, but it's looking promising so far. If you fancy having a go yourself just nip along to their website and request one - though you'll need to add an initial £10 top-up straight away:

http://giffgaff.com/

It's very community oriented, so they are promising various reward structures for recommending people and helping out , but not sure exactly how all that will shape up. You could always plug my nickname in if you're signing up - richpb7 - that way at least I can see how the reward system works :-)

Why I Hate Symmetric Diagrams

2009-12-04T11:34:00.001Z

I admit it, I have a problem. Every time I see a perfect symmetric diagram in a presentation, research paper or similar publication my faith in the whole thing takes a nose dive - hell I might even give up on it completely. You know the sort of thing, three interlocking circles, perhaps a series of triangles balanced on top of each other, or maybe four squares equally spaced. I see them and I smell trouble.

So what's the problem? Symmetry over reality. Real life is not as perfect as these creations, and any sort of complex thought and interaction that is a result of research is certainly not. I firmly believe that rather than adding clarity by making our diagrams so perfect we're actually removing information, making things much worse, by creating an aesthetically pleasing image.

That's why I was very happy to see this image recently in a post about Web Science, that emerging discipline that brings together some quite disparate areas, in order to create a science that really understands the web. Instead of going for perfection, they've created an aesthetically pleasing graphic that uses the space intelligently to convey the very complexity that a supposed 'perfect' image would break.

Great to see quality visualisation like this - I only wish it was more widespread!

My point might seem weak, and you could argue that by forcing things into a regular shape we are actually aiding understanding, but I still contend that we're just hiding complexity. I have a saying I use -"Simple problems need simple solutions, complex problems need complex solutions. Know the difference." Sometimes just by making something look simple, we don't simplify it, we just hide the complexity - dangerous.

There's an even deeper issue perhaps here - the fact that our tools are doing the thinking for us. It's easy to create a series of regular blocks or triangles with modern computer applications, it's very hard to create a diagram like that above. The level of embedded cognition is vastly different, and in the previous a large part of the embedded cognition is not that of the original creator but of the designer of the computer application itself. But that's another story ...

P.S. For a good example of some 'perfect' graphics, you could check out the infamous "Chicken chicken chicken" at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk

How to Sum up Twitter ...

2009-10-07T09:28:00.003+01:00

I think I've finally worked out what I really think about Twitter!

"Where I want my words heard and no one wants to listen though, No one wants to listen 'cause everybody's yelling"

:-)

Web 2.0 and Personalities

2009-07-30T13:27:00.003+01:00

I've recently taken on a new role at the University looking at web innovation so covering all things web 2.0, web 3.0, that sort of thing. A colleague and I have this broad remit to investigate, report and build.

Whilst I'm a big user of lots of innovative web stuff, I use some of it more because I think I should than because I necessarily want to. My own internal tension about what I should be using has been reflected elsewhere in my research and teaching, as I come across all sorts of types of people who engage with lots of different types of web technology in different ways. Perhaps the most striking of all of these in the young students who want nothing to do with the tech, or at least are not half as engaged as you'd think. Aren't all young people mad about this stuff, or isn't that what we're led to believe?

Conversations with colleagues about Twitter recently have really been interesting, and have started to lead me to think whether or not engagement with some of this tech is about personality types. The classic tweeting position is after all one of 'listen to me', and although experienced users will say that the best use is actually to use it to converse rather than preach, nevertheless the vast majority of what Twitter is being used for is to disseminate what an individual thinks is right. Kind of like the person in the meeting/party/whatever who always seems to have something to say.

Now these are very formative thoughts, but I was pleased to find others on the web with similar concepts, for example the Web 2.0 in the Classroom blog, so will certainly be pursuing it further. I suspect it will map quite nicely to my virtul space concepts, and in tandem with those will help to explain not only how people use the web but also what we can achieve within it.

Late night thoughts

2009-05-23T23:33:00.004+01:00

Today I can right click within Windows PC Folders and rotate a picture by 90°. In 2010 I might perhaps be able to do the same thing for a video.

Take a second to digest that - how basic are these functions, how simple - if, just for example, you had a photograph in front of you, how easy would it be to rotate it? And how complex is the same action within the virtual world?

This is so much the beginning. In the virtual space we are just about learning how to move ourselves about, we have not yet even considered talking. If we were children we'd still be wearing nappies.

I am convinced we are taking our very first steps in a new world of infinite possibility, and yet some commentators seem to think they understand it all, almost as if the brilliance of this new adventure is already over. Don't believe those who claim to have the answers, they only have themselves in mind, and lack the ability to comprehend what they are perceiving. Great things are yet to come.

Is Use of the Web Declining?

2009-05-11T11:54:00.004+01:00

For a few months now I've noticed a downward visitor trend in multiple sites that I manage across a wide range of topics. I've started to ask myself the odd question is use of the web actually declining?

I think we have to accept that at some point numbers are going to plateau online, this endless rise in traffic has to stop somewhere, but when are we going to get there? Are we there now?

Oddly enough there was an April fool post about the declining web recently, and in an ironic twist it may have been more accurate than the writer could have thought!

Has anyone else noticed any weird trends in their data like this?

Flip Ultra HD

2009-05-09T09:33:00.000+01:00

Just bought one of these from the states. Verdict? Yes.

How the Web is Powering the Democratisation of Expertise

2009-04-21T17:21:00.003+01:00

I work in higher education, a UK University, and as such am part of an established structure with fairly rigid hierarchies and systems in place to ensure everything works as it should. People are generally consulted and informed in terms of their level in the hierarchy above all other considerations - and you flaunt this accepted practice at your peril.

I've always found such systems and structures frustrating, even back in my school days when I used to be the one breaking all the rules. What I seem to be noticing lately though is just how much you can break away from established structures, whilst still being part of them, using the power of the web to connect and publish autonomously.

Using blogging tools such as Blogger and Twitter, creating and maintaining professional personas and connections through social sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and simply being able to find people easily and simply through searches and email, means you can build extensive links and connections far easier and more widespread than was previously possible. Conferences and the like were always the established place to meet and network, and whilst they most certainly still have their place it seems you can achieve a great deal without them in our connected times. What's more if we really are at the very beginning of the internet revolution as opposed to the end or the beginning then it begs the question of where this will lead us.

I think what we are seeing is the democratisation of expertise, in as much as the more you spread yourself about (excuse the phrase!) in terms of who you are and what you can do so the more people can pick up on that and decide to work with you based on nothing more than what you can offer up via the web. You are judged not on the colour of your cloth, nor the tone of your voice, but something that has kept the simple printed word the most powerful communication tool on the planet for centuries - your meaning. It's a lot harder to bullshit in this medium, at least to get away with it ... if you do it's nice and clear for all the world to see. Of course the web may move on, and video may become the default medium, but to be honest I doubt it. There is something about text, the stripping down of intellect into simple words, the necessary thought and work that takes and the ease at which others can connect to it and understand it that surpasses video.

So what prompted all this? Well I was invited as one of many thousands to complete a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, and to my considerable surprise and delight they included three of my quotes in the finished report on the Future of the Internet. You can download a copy from their site if you're interested in the topic:

http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2008/The-Future-of-the-Internet-III.aspx

It's nice to think that it doesn't matter who you are, or what you do, the web gives you a place where if you have something honest and (hopefully) useful to say there is a place to say it. Experts in Ivory Towers ... your time may be ending!

Why we need to humanise computers

2009-04-03T08:32:00.001+01:00

I'm currently working on some Semantic Web projects, and one of the things that strikes me repeatedly from the literature surrounding it is the constant referral to the computer in the abstract form - here's a typical quote, talking about the proposed benefits of the Semantic Web:

"better enabling computers and people to work in co-operation"

Now I have no problem with that in principle, but let's just analyse what it says, in particular the word "computers". Initially of course computers were actual people, they were often talented and clever individuals (more often than not women) whose job it was to perform complex mathematical calculations. You can see then how the term moved on to describe the machines which did the same thing. But what has that made the people who work on the machines?

I strongly believe that we need to revisit how we conceive of the computer, not as a black box, a mysterious entity that we can push one thing in and get another thing out, but as an encapsulation of human thought, human cognition encoded. At present this distinction is given to the content stored on the machine, but very rarely is the machine itself given any credit, in terms of the hardware and software that it is comprised of. To talk of it in the abstract is wrong, it has no meaning, computers in their myriad forms are all creations by individuals, and as such as representations of how those individuals think. All their many quirks and irregularities, as well as their strengths, and direct products of the individuals who made both their hardware and software components.

So what does this mean for the Semantic Web? If there are no 'machines' why are we making machine readable code?

My answer is that these are not so much machines, but little chunks of ourselves. The possibility to encode chunks of cognition into semi-autonomous, semi-intelligent copies of tiny parts of our own abilities. This is a logical extension to the concept of distributed cognition, that our thoughts do not simply reside in one place, but are distributed in many things around us, books, notes, the way we arrange our things around us, etc. Computer programmers can take this a step further, and not just use information technology to store a memory, but also a small chunk of their own thought processes. What I call this is human simulation, as opposed to the concept of artificial intelligence, as there is nothing artificial about how programmers use their skills to make the complex simple.

One day I hope to be able to develop software that will take cognition from an individual and think for them 'off-line'. I'm not proposing AI in it's classical sense, more a small replication of a specific problem that a human is trying to wrestle with and that using aspects of their own cognition this problem will be 'thought' of by the software programming that they will themselves have created. We are pretty certain that when we sleep our brains continue to work on problems that have presented themselves to us during the day, so I like to think of this concept as a web based dream machine. One day perhaps ...

Anyhow, for now, it's back to the semantic web.

Who knows better - the zoo keepers or the visitors?

2009-04-02T10:46:00.000+01:00

I often make the case these days that what IT is giving us, particular when it comes to the web, are entirely new virtual spaces that we can visit, wander around and interact within. I often struggle however to bring this concept to life for others, and tend to look for metaphors which help to explain the thinking.

On a linked note I was reading what seemed to me to be just another amateur take on issues within the world wide web, and getting suitably distracted by something that was at the end of the day rather empty and a bit of a waste of time, and an idea occurred to me that might have merit - comparing the keepers of a zoo with the visitors that come to look.

I tend to argue that the creators of virtual spaces, those coders, developers, designers, architects, call them what you will, are the ones who have the true grasp of what can be achieved, and if you're not familiar with how the web comes to be then you either need to find out or get out of the picture. Compare the ones who look after the animals in the zoo, those who work behind the scenes and understand all the intricacies of what it takes, to the visitors who simply wander around looking at noticeboards and into cages. Both have points of view of what it means to run a zoo, to keep animals and more complex issues such as conservation, but would we accept their opinions as equally valid, as equally useful if we need to use them to make decisions? I think not.

As the web matures and it's complexity grows, so does what it takes to create it, and the levels of abstraction between core content and the user experience deepen and intensify. We really do need a way of recognising those who understand this, not only on a technical level but more critically on a conceptual level, if we're ever going to get to the point where working within it becomes a formal and respected profession.

Good Online Learning tips?

2009-03-19T08:52:00.001Z

Just picked up a post that was offering 10 tips for online learning from a LinkedIn community:

http://blog.litmos.com/2009/02/top-10-best-practices-for-teaching.html?showComment=1237451820000#c8735343041550698770

It got me thinking about this recurrent issue with just what's special about online learning as opposed to learning face-to-face, and the point I'm always referring back to it seems, that most people just use virtual space to replicate what happens in real space.

Here are Dr. Boettcher's Top 10 Best Practices for Online Learning:

"Be Present at the Course Site" - communicate with the students, use noticeboards and messaging options
Create a supportive online course community
Share a set of very clear expectations for your students and for yourself as to (1) how you will communicate and (2) how much time students should be working on the course each week.
Use a variety of large group, small group, and individual work experiences
Use both synchronous and asynchronous activities
Early in the term ask for informal feedback on "How is the course going?" and "Do you have any suggestions?"
Prepare Discussion Posts that Invite Questions, Discussions, Reflections and Responses
Focus on content resources and applications and links to current events and examples that are easily accessed from learner's computers
Combine core concept learning with customized and personalized learning
Plan a good closing and wrap activity for the course

However a careful analysis of these tips shows that they have much more to do with good teaching practice than online learning, indeed I would argue that they are only about good teaching practice and offer nothing at all that is useful with regards to online learning. They may include some reference to online and distance, but I contend could easily be rewritten as the below simply by dropping a few distinct references to online activity and computers:

Communicate with the students, use noticeboards and messaging options
Create a supportive course community
Share a set of very clear expectations for your students and for yourself as to (1) how you will communicate and (2) how much time students should be working on the course each week.
Use a variety of large group, small group, and individual work experiences
Use both synchronous and asynchronous activities
Early in the term ask for informal feedback on "How is the course going?" and "Do you have any suggestions?"
Prepare Discussions that Invite Questions, Discussions, Reflections and Responses
Focus on content resources and applications and links to current events and examples that are easily accessed
Combine core concept learning with customized and personalized learning
Plan a good closing and wrap activity for the course

If these ten points are all about good teaching practice and not about good online learning practice then why are they so popular and resonate so well with those who are involved in online learning? One cynical answer would be that there are many people invovled in online learning who are not trained teachers (I should know, I'm one of them) so they just confuse the two, but I think there's actually something much more subtle going on. I think these 10 points are simply highlighting how far most VLEs have some, and the fact that they can (just about) convey enough of the teacher and the student within the virtual space to allow good teaching practice to penetrate the interface. What they show is a level of technological development, they are not about how the virtual space can be used to enhance learning, they are simply about how you should use existing teaching skills within a VLE.

So what's my point? Well as ever I think the bottom line is that we have an amazingly powerful new space to work within, but we have no idea how to use this space, so merely replicate the real world within it, and in this case real teaching skills. I having nothing against this per se, extending the teaching space like this can be argued as an enhancement all by itself, but I just think we can do so much more. We just need to reconceptualise what it means to be in these space.

Myth of the Digital Native

2009-03-12T08:40:00.000Z

Quick link here to a sort of debunking of the digital native ideas of Marc Prensky.

http://terry-freedman.org.uk/artman/publish/article_1480.php

Whilst I think Prensky is doing some great stuff in ICT, especially with games, I've argued for years that his digital natives idea is way off the ball. I think it says a lot more about someone's desire to offload responsibility for understanding ICTs than it does about a new generation of children.

Seems to me there's a strong case to be made that the advent of the digital revolution has merely coincided with a better neurological understanding of the way the brain can change - whilst it may be causal it's very wrong - and possibly damaging - to suggest this is just a new generation of kids that are different to the rest of us. This is a global phenomenon that's only in it's infancy, and it affects all of us equally.

Thoughts on Twitter: How it's Ruining your Communication

2009-02-26T11:04:00.000Z

Just looking once again at Twitter - I've been using it on and off for some time, but never really got to grips with it to be honest. Seeing as we have a seminar coming up soonish where I'm going to be talking about it I thought I'd best polish my knowledge a little!

I'm not a huge fan of it, but think this is part of a much bigger issue over the choices you make online and the different types of personalities out there. I'm pretty sure what we're seeing with things like Twitter is the people who like to be the centre of attention finding a new way to monopolise the conversation, rather than some new sort of demoncracy of communication - but that's a big argument, and not one I was planning on getting into now. What interested me looking back at this issue again was what had happened to the 'standard' communication channels once someone switches more to Twitter.

I had noticed that the emails (what I would call 'standard' communication) I was receiving from a certain third party had practically disappeared, and was half wondering whether or not the University spam filters were having their wicked way with them, but just checking into the same third parties Twitter stream and sure enough there's loads going on. What they've done is move practically all their communication to Twitter. Now I don't remember getting any info in an email to suggest that this was going to be the policy from now on, and I'm pretty confident that it never made it to an official policy status, but instead just became something they do. It's that bandwagon thing again. But it makes me wonder just who else has moved from emails, newlestters, even RSS, to Twitter as their major communication channel. I wouldn't be surprised if many more homepages are remaining dormant, and drop boxes empty.

The thing with all these forms of communication is that they are asynchronous. Yes they make be close in time, but they're still not happening at the same time. We don't have the tech yet to do that (i.e. have written communications online interjectable in mid flow). With all these techs we deliver we really have very little idea who's listening. Yes we can see numbers, read feedback, study statistics, but at the end of the day that will only give us a very small picture of the reality of our audiences. Ask any teacher and they will tell you, it's the quiet ones you have to watch ... and we can't see the quiet ones online.

So what am I saying? Just that we need to adopt these tools understanding that they are an addition to what we already do, not a replacement. If you try to replace what you use you are liable to be losing more than you know, and you will become so wrapped up in your own hype and the sprial of perceived greatness that you'll never spot you're only ever talking to those who want to listen, preaching to the converted. The web is a wonderful tool for connecting, but many modern tools are instead creating silos of interest, wrapping people up in their own special areas that reward and promote without critical evaluation. Interesting times for sure, but perhaps dangerous times as well. I'm sure this subtle issue is growing, and it's one we will need to keep an eye on as the web permeates more and more of our lives.

The Rise of the Amateur

2009-02-26T08:33:00.000Z

One of my specialities is the gathering and analysis of information, a skill which is becoming increasingly important as the amount of information we can easily connect to is growing so exponentially. One thing I've noticed changing recently is the sheer amount of ill-informed and badly thought out out postings in the wider area of ICT.

I guess this is a problem with all fields, but of course it's new fields such as ICT which suffer the worst. As the bandwagon rolls on it becomes increasingly tempting to jump on and see how far it can take you, but for those of us who are actually propelling the damn thing the more who jump on just for the ride the harder it is to move it forwards!

To be fair I think most people who try to get involved do it for the right reasons, and not simply to advance themselves with little effort, but nevertheless the naivety of the rising number of amateurs does cloud the field somewhat. The classic mark of the amateur is that they cannot distinguish between those parts of the field which are complex and need further development from those parts of the field which are simple and well understood. The bottom line of all of this is that questions which have already been answered are repromoted, and issues which are key are buried or dismissed because they appear too simplistic, when in reality their complexity is the very issue that amateurs cannot grasp.

In the established worlds of academic research there have existed for many years the tools necessary to discriminate between the professional and the amateur, and these have allowed academics to grow and build on previous work without needing to 'reinvent the wheel', to use a classic phrase. However these tools are embedded in a culture of publication which is still paper based at it's core, even given the rise of dissemination online, and there is as yet no established methods for easily identifying the good from the bad. Whilst many ranking system do exist, and you could argue that Google itself is one of the best of them all as it rates all content in a hierarchy, this is generally speaking a ranking of popularity, something very different.

Perhaps as the ability to add content to the world wide web becomes as easy as writing a note on your fridge then individuals will rise up by their own merit, but that does requrie that the individual is the one that is highlighted. Personally I think this is very much the way of the future, and will be exploring how this can work in more detail, but for now I guess I'll just have to go on separating the wheat from the chaff.

The 'Joke' of Browser Vulnerablities

2009-02-13T15:14:00.000Z

Wow. Another browser flaw. Quick, hide under the bed.

Just got one of my usual news updates, and this caught my eye - a mail about some problem with Android:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39616082,00.htm

The thing that sparked this post was this line in the news story:

"researcher who found a security hole ... says is serious enough for him to recommend people not use the Android browser"

I can think of no better recent example that highlights one of my older posts about the age of the web, or perhaps more accurately how completely naive most people are about what this means. Let me try and paraphrase that line above to illustrate what I'm on about:

"researcher has found unlocked door in Trevor Shankley's shed ... recommends everybody on the planet stay indoors until Trevor has fixed it"

Ok, so I'm being melodramatic, but it is a bit weird isn't it? The web is huge, vast, literally unimagineable in scale, yet this person is really suggesting people stop moving about in it until some bizarre tiny hole somewhere that almost certainly no one (and I mean no one) will ever find is fixed. Or maybe they're just trying to plug their own company, one who's job is scaremongering (sorry, I mean securing) things for the common man?

Yes there's lot's more going on that just the central issue about security online, but we just seem to have so little grasp of the real impact and importance of these things right now. Tiny issue given huge importance, almost certainly for commercial impact, but with huge socialological consequence. Not good.

The sooner people understand the real meaning of what it means ot be in the world wide web the better ...

The Banality of Software

2009-02-08T15:51:00.000Z

A few minutes ago I was watching the six nations match between Wales & Scotland, but something in the program created a moment of clarity about the nature of perception with virtual spaces, so I came upstairs to try to capture that clarity with a diagram within a drawing program.

But instead of illustrating that clarity I've instead spent the last few minutes swearing at various software applications ...

For a while now I've been working on some concepts around how software constrains rather than enhances us. Sure it may appear as if we can do more than we could before, but the critical point is that what we can now do that we could not do before is constrained in certain directions. Instead of free creativity we now have the ability to create but only in certain predefined ways - and those predefined ways are those set out by the software applications which we choose (or indeed are forced to use in some cases). The end product of this is that we have begun to constrain human creativity unconciously by adopting common tools that only allow us to express ourselves in limited ways.

So what was I working on that prompted this? Well it was clear that my perception of the game was too limited by the screen in front of me, but I wondered how limited this was, and started to think about ways of representing this lack of clarity visually. Needing some complexity in my diagram I looked to tools to accomplish this, notably PowerPoint 2007, but was once again defeated by the interface that locks away complexity in the pursuit of usability. But is it really usability, or saleability? In this capitalist space it's the software that sells most which wins, not the best software. So I'm left unable to convey my thoughts.

Now that's not at all true, if I'm honest. I have plenty of tools to express my concepts, they might take longer for me to do represent my thoughts, but I can certainly push them in ways which the average person could not to express complex concepts. Hell I could create a 3D flash animation that interacts with the viewer if I really wanted, but that's not the point. The point is that software is becoming more banal. And more critically that software is more and more the default way of expressing ourselves, whether in emails or presentations, tweets or photo sharing. What we're expressing is what the software allows us to express.

As a psychologist what worries me is the underlying effect on our abilities that this represents. From conversations earlier this morning with my partner, exploring how the simple addition of a dishwasher has changed certain typical habits between us, it's not a large leap to see how adding more complex tools to our lives can shift things in more dramatic habits. Whilst cognitive offloading may be a grand thing in many ways, it has it's dark side which I think is only now starting to show it's face - and it deserves much more attention and study than we currently allow it.

Thoughts inspired by Darwin ...

2009-02-02T22:09:00.000Z

... the desire for change is not some flaw to be weeded out, but a strength to be encouraged.

The Web: Just a Screaming Teenager ...

2009-01-27T18:51:00.000Z

It's very hard to put the web in any real context, as there's just so little to go on right now. It's not exactly been around long. I meet people every day who think the web is just amazing, wonderful, and lots more superlatives all the time, who think it's the best thing since sliced bread and no arugments please. But these very same people will laugh and smirk if you were to start to mention older technology - perhaps bring in an old SEGA console or Commodore and then see their reaction - yes they were fine then, but please, get a life, things have moved on ...

Well yes, but how far, and what's next?

What triggered this impulse post was a quick search to see if I could get from Exeter to Athens by plane. There's a conference there I might like to attend. I thought I'd ask one of the very best travel websites out there what it thought, and I got a pretty surprising result - the choice top of their list would have taken me almost 10 hours, involved 4 changes (I think - it's not very clear) and cost me almost £1,500. Hmm - maybe I should rethink.

Now I know there are lots of reasons why I got such bad results, and I'm not about to start a technical argument about pros and cons of this method or another. What I find really interesting is the fact that it's so bizzarely wrong, hugely wrong, wrong beyond all sense. It's like some of those tales of sat nav systems that send you to another country and back just to go down the road.

So what's my point? I think it's two fold - firstly the web is at the moment entering it's screaming teenager phase (or maybe that's just the people who are most engaged with it right now!). It's pretty cool, even accomplished, got some pretty good ideas about things too, but about as much self control and respect for other opinions as a rabid hamster. Secondly - and more importantly - it doesn't know how wrong it is. It's wonderful in it's range, it's scale, and hugely impressive that it can capture so much so quickly, but it's thick as pig ... well, you know the stuff.

At the end of the day it's all about encoding human intelligence, and I think we need to be more aware as we build this stuff that maybe our ability to encode what we know only goes so far. Perhaps we should be including a result which says "I don't know", because offering me the chance to spend 10 hours travelling and spend £1,500 just to get to Athens is non-sensical.

P.S. I take it all back, the web is great. 10 minutes more work searching manually (and using my own brain for once) and I can do the trip for £400 and be in Athens for lunch

The death of Google

2009-01-26T22:13:00.001Z

I'll admit it - I'm a Google nut. For years now they've been everything to me, a shining light in an otherwise bland and often obnoxious sea of arrogance and inadequacy. Many a time I've looked to them for inspiration, especially when I hear the latest client say "oh, and I'll need an advanced search, with options for choosing size of whelk and peanut discoloration type ..."

For god sake people, will you please let the professionals handle that side of things ...

That said there's something odd going on with search which I think might take their shine off - they're actually starting to produce rather poor search results.

Now I'm a consumate searcher, I've tried everything and was around when things like infoseek were the bees knees and was a huge fan of Coperinc for while. But Google changed all that, quite frankly there was just no point in choosing anything else. Even lately when I've switched to other engines for a bit they've always been a bit of a poor cousin, or the kind of date that only gets one trip out. Fun, friendly, you'd like to meet up again sometime probably, but no chance of marriage that's for sure.

So what's going on? Well it's the accuracy that's gone. I want something specific but instead I get - well - garbage. Sales garbage mostly. Most of the time it's fine, but when I really need Google all I get is salesmen. You know, I think the rest of the web industry has finally figured out how to get good search engine rankings, and are busy trying to push every little tom dick and harry they can find into the top 10. End result? The top ten is rubbish, and search engine results are flooded with irrelevancy.

Hell, maybe there's a point in all this. Perhaps there's a magic top 10 hidden way down around the 30-40 mark somewhere - maybe I just need to keep looking. Or then again maybe I need to change my search engine. I'll keep my Google Maps, my iGoogle, Analytics, Chrome and Docs for now (not to mention Blogger!) plus all the other great things Google are pushing out, but the search engine may have to take a back seat for a while. Shame - if Google loses their grip on search, what's next to go?

Moving in virtual space and browser tabs

2009-01-14T14:38:00.001Z

Just reading a short post on Read Write Web (http://www.readwriteweb.com) titled "Firefox to Adopt Chrome's Tab Ordering Feature" (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/firefox_to_adopt_chromes_tab_o.php). The central point of this is that Firefox is going to copy Google Chrome and ensure that tabs opened up from links appear in the tabbed window next to the one you are currently using.

Now this may seem a very small thing, but to me there's a subtle indication here about the nature of virtual space and how people move within it. Conceptually speaking people are in a certain space when they are reading a web page, and when they click on a link they want to move towards a new space, and they don't actually expect it to be very far away. It's this disjointedness between their internal conceptualisation of where they are and where they went in virtual space, compared to what just happened in real space, that to my mind is the issue that Firefox is now going to change. Opening a tab is a small movement in virtual space that should be reflected as such in real space, i.e. in the interface shift that takes place.

The Problem with VLE's? They're rubbish

2009-01-13T17:46:00.001Z

Just browsing and spotted this article on the Guardian's site about VLE's:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/jan/13/online-classrooms-ofsted

which seemed to suggest that nobody knows why VLEs aren't being used very much by schools. I've seen enough to know that the real problem with most of them is that they're incredibly badly designed, but that's not even vaguely talked about in the article. The most appaling virtual architecture seems to have been flogged to Schools under the pretext of being a VLE, when it should just be put straight in the bin in my opinion. Some people are making a killing taking advantage of the ignorance of those in charge to stick in software which is toally unfit for purpose.

Hell I've been using things like Moodle and WebCT for years, and they're not exactly brilliant, but they're paragons compared to some VLEs I've seen.

Stop blaming the teachers I say - you can't give them crappy tools to use and then blame them for not using them. If they had chairs with three legs and books with half the pages missing no one would stand for it, but because ICT is so specialist no one says a word. We dearly need more professionalism in ICT procurement, and an acceptance that there is a huge variety in the quality of the virtual spaces offered by the various VLEs.

Please stop with all this video!

2009-01-09T09:48:00.000Z

Like many people I've been trying to make more use of video content lately, as it's a technology who's time has most definitely come. Advances in processor and storage technology have made creation that much easier, both in static locations and when mobile, and YouTube has given us all a wonderful platform for dissemination. But what on earth is going on with the choice of what to video and what not to? It seems like just because people can now do video that much easier they think they should do video, when it's not the best medium for what they're trying to achieve.

A case in point was this video from Teachers TV - "Top 10 on the Web - Secondary ICT".

http://www.teachers.tv/video/4946

Now I know they are Teachers TV, so they do kind of rely on video, but a top 10 list covered in 15 minutes? Sure they also have a 50 list to download (although it's word only, and I don't have word on this PC - I know I can convert it easily enough, but should I have to?).

Anyhow, I didn't want to rant, but I predict this will only get worse in 2009. Now that people can turn to video they will, and they will encode things into that format that really shouldn't be there. The beauty about text is that we can scan it, and rapidly assess whetehr it's worth engaging with further. At present this is very difficult with video, and it'll be some time before a similar ability to scan video content is developed.

P.S. On that note, Google are now attempting to index video content so that you can search (and therefore scan) content using text. To read more see this link:

http://labs.google.com/gaudi

My Research

2009-01-08T15:38:00.001Z

Just realised that I blogged about my research but never actually explained what it was. Basically I'm a bit obsessed with tech, and want to bring my knowledge of it to bear on research into it's use within education. I'm frustrated by what I see as confusion in this field, and to some extent the breadth of people trying to achieve within it, and think that a lack of expertise about tech itself is in part to blame for lack of progress. It doesn't help that this field can move so bleeding quick that just when you think you've created some good research you find it's out of date, or even worse you're out of date ... youch.

In light of that I'm trying to see if I can extrapolate something that unites all ICTs, both past, present and (hopefully) future, so that we can concentrate on applying a conceptual model of what ICTs have to offer instead of applying a specific ICT. Not, therefore, looking at how a blog might be used in education (just an example), but what is it about the blog, what fundamental characteristics underly what a blog is made of, that can enhance education. Tall order perhaps, but from what I've done so far I don't think it's as complex as it might at first appear.

Why start yet another blog? Well, I may just have worked out what I'm on about ...

2009-01-08T15:13:00.000Z

I've tried setting up several blogs in the past, and the only one that is really sticking so far is my "The Sunday Roaster" one. That's, unsurprisingly, about food and is practically a hobby site so not so tricky to keep up, but I've always struggled to find a way of thinking aloud about my work and more importantly my research. I think it's perhaps because I still find it difficult to identify with what it is I am (oops, getting a bit existential there) but there's something about the title 'Virtual Explorer' which somehow seems to fit.

So what is it that's so hard for me to define? Well my work started off blending engineering with psychology, then moved on to mixing up finance with graphic design, and now I find myself fitting together ICT and education. Confused, yes. But what's starting to become clearer through my research is that I have developed an understanding of ICT (including the web) that sees it all as a myriad of virtual spaces, some connected, some not, some huge and others tiny, some easy to perceive and some very difficult. In the midst of all this I realise that in a way I'm the explorer I always wanted to be, but unlike explorers of the real world I roam through the wonderful and often strange paths that Information & Communication Technologies create.

Now I'm hardly alone here, and given the youth of the web in particular it's pretty fair to say that we're all virtual explorers in a way I guess, but then again there's something distinct about those who wander the paths that they find from those who forge new paths to wander. I can never remember the guy who wrote that quote, but it goes something along the lines of ...

"Go not when the path may lead - make a new path and leave a trail"

Of course the weird thing about the virtual space is that it doesn't exist unless it's created first, so in a way you can never been the first one there unless it's something you actually created yourself. But compare that perhaps with the first white settlers in America to meet a red indian - they might consider themselves to have explored and hence discovered the red inidian, but I kind of reckon the red indians had already discovered themselves by then. It's all relative really ...

With the discovery of pure virtual space that's a bit more tricky, but with the growing creation of software and websites that have some form of limited AI built in it's not so difficult to see how space can be created dynamically and automatically that can therefore be explored afresh. Take the game Spore for example - it's ability to let worlds be populated by creatures that have been created in other worlds leads to unknown and unpredictable results and interactions.

Anyhow - I feel the waffle coming on, so will sign off thist first post and reflect on it later, but with mildy high hopes that something might come of this blog with time.

e-Learning: a world of experts ... ?

2008-11-26T12:50:00.000Z

Just sitting here reading about the latest presentations coming up on this, that and the other about e-Learning. It suddenly occurs to me that the vast bulk of this stuff is just people who have been reading up on the subject sharing what they've found out, some huge knowledge distribution programme (not unlike most e-Learning implementation as it happens).

It's very hard in all this to find people who are actually making e-Learning work, who have pinpointed areas and ways of using ICTs to actually enhance learning. So much is just people getting excited over the very latest and greatest that technology is going to offer. Trouble is this means that those that get listened to are those who can make a good story, to sell a good line. Add enough enthusiasm and people will believe anything.

We need a lot more analysis of use and a lot less commentary I reckon.

eLearning - Astrology or Astronomy?

2008-11-13T22:42:00.000Z

Quick note to self really ... I often wonder why so many people try to get involved in this lark when they really don't really seem to know much about the real subject matter, in this case the technology that makes or breaks things.

Struggling for an analogy something has just sprung to mind - seems to me there's far too much astrology going on and not enough astronomy :-)

Artists, Not Assholes :: UXmatters

2008-11-04T09:48:00.000Z

To be honest I'm not really sure whether I'm an artisan or an asshole (I guess most of us are somewhere in the middle) but I love this post either way:

Artists, Not Assholes :: UXmatters

I've never read anything that has struck such a chord with me before - must be something to do with the match to life right now!

It's not about computers ...

2008-10-20T08:28:00.000+01:00

I've been reading Gerry McGovern's writings for a while now, and his latest posting is about as succinct a description of what it really means to work in virtual spaces that I've read in a long while.

If you still think this lark is about computers read on.

http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2008/nt-2008-10-20-obsessed-by-technology.htm

Everyone’s a Web Designer …. A Call for Accreditation of Virtual Architects

2008-10-14T10:50:00.000+01:00

I’ve been making computers do what I want them to since I could first understand what a computer was, and have never stopped experimenting and pushing what I can achieve. These days I do most of my work in virtual space, such as application development and world wide web sites, and feel I have a deep and profound understanding of just what it entails to move about in virtual space and connect with the multitude of digital objects that live there. So why do lay people continue to challenge my advice, and question the validity of what I try to achieve? Am I missing something ... or are they?

Application development is relatively straightforward it seems – perhaps people are so used to having to come to terms with the oddities of some of the interfaces that are available that they are willing to sit and learn how to use them. The individual nature of most applications and the sense of connectedness to specific hardware seems to give them a sort of kudos that requires respect and attention. Think of your VCR, or these days your digital free view box, sky box, or whatever else you have in your living room. The interface may be a little bizarre, it may be irritating, you might even think ‘I wouldn’t have done it that way’, but you accept it – you don’t demand a rewrite from the supplier! Websites on the other hand seem to be fair game for critics.

Perhaps it’s their ubiquitous nature, and the fact that practically anyone can create one, that makes websites seem a fair target. Everyone’s an expert when it comes to creating a website, or at least knows someone who in an expert – cousin John perhaps, or granddaughter Caitlin. Yet the web is literally littered with millions upon millions of badly designed, difficult to use, ugly creations. Indeed even some of the larger and more professional looking sites can leave their users steaming mildly. Is there perhaps a link here? Does it perhaps take more than just knowledge of a bit of code and an FTP client to create a website? What really makes a good website as opposed to a bad website?

Well I think I appreciate what it takes - a real appreciation of the users. And when I talk about the users, I mean all users and not just you, the reader of this blog post right now. Probably the most common and most irritating of all the web critics is the person who looks at one or possibly two pages from a website and has an opinion. These are the kind of criticisms that you must throw away without even giving them a second thought. Just think of the word itself – website – this is not just a page, it’s not just two pages, it’s a web of content, a finely tuned interlinking of many parts of information, perhaps text, audio, imagery, video, and more. Any assessment must be made using time – you have to experience the site to be able to appreciate it; you have to move within it, take unusual paths, browse the content. A reflection of the overall look of a website may have validity as a design appraisal, but never as a website appraisal – that’s like trying to decide whether or not to buy a house without ever going inside, or the quality of a good meal just by looking at the plate and never tasting anything.

So what does this mean, what’s my point? I think that perhaps it’s time to make a better distinction from those that can from those that can’t, to separate the professional from the amateur. Most other professions have some sort of regulatory body that ensures that customers who need a professional you can get one, typically granting a form of chartered status of other accreditation. Architects in the real world for example, as opposed to virtual architects, can get accredited from several different bodies. Perhaps a chartered status or similar for those that build in virtual space is the way forward, and will help to show that being a virtual architect is a little bit more complex that many people understand!

Rant over …

In praise of 'Chrome'

2008-09-22T08:32:00.000+01:00

Just a quick post about Google Chrome, the new web browser on the block. As an Internet professional I need to stay abreast of additions to the market like this, but to be honest although I downloaded Chrome when it was released I hadn't used it much until this weekend at home. I do find that the browser tends to struggle these days with what designers are throwing at us via the web (new look Facebook, for example ... say no more) so decided to see if Chrome's promise of a better architecture to deal with these sort of sites was true or not.

Suffice it to say that Chrome is now my default browser at home. I try to make sure I use several on the various PCs I have (Firefox on my main work PC, IE on my laptop, Opera on my mobile) just to keep in touch with the different ways they render pages, but Chrome beats the others hands down with the complex sites I tend to use. I reckon on some it may be 5-10 times faster which is a huge improvement.

Take my advice - if you tend to use sites with cutting edge web applications then give Chrome an extended test. I reckon you won't be disappointed.

http://www.google.com/chrome

HTC Touch Pro Review

2008-09-12T11:38:00.000+01:00

Having just forked out for a new HTC Touch Pro I'm glad to see the experts agree that it's not a bad piece of kit:

HTC Touch Pro Review Overview in Handhelds Reviews at ZDNet.co.uk - Page 1

I very nearly went for the iPhone or X1, but am very happy with the Touch Pro either way. Now I just need that 16Gb micro SD card to turn up ...

Personalisation & homepages

2008-03-07T15:01:00.000Z

Like many I've been excited by how personalisation has been developing, and am a keen user of iGoogle amongst others. I was therefore glad to see that the BBC has taken on a similar idea on it's homepage, and have been promoting it to colleagues shamelessly. But It's got me thinking. I've been thinking of it from a portal point of view, but is the BBC really a portal?

One of my other lines that I'm always on about is how unimportant your homepage is. Sure it's important, but is it as important as you think it is? I often have to use stats to show that chances are your homepage is only responsible for maybe a fifth of your site entrances, as chances are that they are only using it to get somewhere else - they're not interested in it per se.

The BBC homepage is apparently getting a third of the 20 million visits per week that BBC sites get, but who is really using it as a hompeage except the BBC themselves? I realised that amongst all the hype that I was partly responsible for generating I never use the BBC homepage myself, only ever use it to get somewhere else, and love the concept but only so that I can bring it to use elsewhere.

I think I've got a bit overtaken by enthusiasm here ...

Exergaming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2008-02-03T08:45:00.000Z

Bought a Wii yesterday, so am now exploring various articles about it online. Was particularly interested in the Wii Fit, and came across this article because of it:

Exergaming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Having played a bit of Wii sports last night I now understand just how exhausting this can be!

Direct PhD relevance here to the time arguments I'm putting forward, i.e. the importance of understanding that issues that arise in technology as based in a particular time frame, and you need to tease out those issues that are long term from those that are merely artefacts created by the level of development of the technology.

The problem with Web 2.0

2008-01-30T05:35:00.000Z

This may seem a strange first post, but I was just reading an article about Web 2.0 in the Enterprise in 2008, and the definition of Web 2.0 made me laugh out loud:

"A set of technologies and applications that enable efficient interaction among people, content, and data in support of collectively fostering new businesses, technology offerings, and social structures." (Forrester Research)

I don't like to be rude, and appreciate the difficulty in trying to put a definition together, but what the hell does that mean? Sheesh. The further we get away from the coining of the term then the less relevance it seems to have. Personally I only seem use the word these days to talk to people who don't really know what they're talking about.

I'm sure anyone who works in this field would agree that the concept of defined iterations of the web is ludicrous, that this field is about evolution not revolution. I think that's where the problem of defining Web 2.0 starts - you're trying to define something that doesn't really exist. Web 2.0 was a moment in history, not something you can pull out of a box.

Trouble is as business types get their heads around this they start asking "where are my Web 2.0 bits?" as if it's something that can be just dropped in to an existing site in chunks without thought for it's spatial and temporal interaction with the rest of the site.

As for Web 3.0 ... don't get me started!