Tech Related

This afternoon Nik Butler, Loudmouthman sent me a text message asking whether I was free to go to the London Geek Dinner where Robert Scoble would appear. Of course I was free so I decided to go to the event and met a number of people. The first person I met was Robert Scoble for this particular event. He was standing at the door and as I came up he welcomed me into the room, we shook hands and I got his business card. That was quite unexpected, so approachable. I spent some time talking with Loudmouthman, Michael Beddows, Liz Strauss and Giles Thomas. The London Photowalk itself saw us walk from The Geekdinner venue down towards Southbank and the film cafe. It’s the first time I went to the bar and I’ve been living in London for over three years now. It’s amusing to see how many photographs were taken and videos recorded. It was the photographer photographing the photographer. Scoble interviewed people as we were walking down the street and others were filming the filming. I enjoyed the evening and meeting Scoble. For a while I nicked his video camera and filmed some shots of London for him. One of those shots was the Midnight ring of Big Ben. That’s about it for tonight.  Video 1 Video 2 Video 3

Last time I went to the cinema I was in Paris and my name was in the credits. This time I was at the 20th Century Fox offices on Soho Square in London as a guest, along with Loudmouthman, Suzymiller, Danacea, Rupert Howe, Sizemore and many other social media participants. We were invited to preview the film Juno, which will be out in British cinemas around the 8th of February 2008. It’s nice to be two months ahead of the crowd. It’s also nice to be in a private cinema. I enjoyed the leather seats along with the press package and the fact that when you lean back the seat tilts back at the same time. It was also amusing to see all these faces. It’s a funny thing to be part of the social media mainly because you recognise and feel that people are familiar although you’ve never met them in real life. What makes this particularly appealing is the fact that it’s not someone saying “oh I’ve heard something about you”. They’ve actually looked at, and appreciated your work, or at least we hope so. I enjoyed the film and so did the rest of the crowd. Frequent laughter could be heard from around the room quite frequently. I did enjoy quite a bit of the dialogue and the story is a nice one although the end is typical of American films. Aside from the film and the crowds we did get to interview the organisers of the event as well as Danacea of Forbidden planet, Rupert Howe, vlogger and Robert… whose last name eludes me. It’s 1am and I’m tired. The Twittervox video should be up by tomorrow evening at the latest. More concise information on those interviewed will of course, appear accordingly

Nick O’Neill needs to do more research. Most of what he writes is speculative based on two or three months of research rather than sociological research. He goes after trends and gut feelings. As a result whilst his content is interesting to keep a track of it’s not relevant to the type of content I am looking for. Podcasters and social media people need to take a more academic approach to their writing. I’ve found myself angry with what Leo laporte and other podcasters have said. Some of them are really pro certain technologies and boasting about their advantages without taking a media tech and society view. What I mean by this is that technology and communication are cyclical. What was really common in older media is going to become common in new media as more people come to use it. Radio and letter writing are what podcasting and e-mail are to their contemporary period. It’s the same with the iphones being bricked. There was such an outcry within the early adopter crowd that you’d think technology has never evolved. We all know that more apps would be created for the Ipod touch and iphone for example. It’s interesting to see how things are evolving and how by looking at previous technological trends we can see how the future will take place. Those who write about technology need to have a media studies background for a proper, well based understanding of their topic of conversation. If you want historical information you want to find professors and their PhD thesis, the same should be true about technological writing.

Jennifer - Nov 3, 2007

Ironically, your own feed is not complete. :) Maybe you weren’t aware of this, so just wanted to let you know. When I’m reading it offline, it only shows the first few lines and then gives a “…” and you can’t read anymore until I actually go to your website.

When you’re creating web content that’s fed please think about those that are reading your feed from a device that is disconnected. here I am on a train and I’m captive to the content that you make available on your feed. Some feeds have the full article but others don’t. The result of this has a simple consequence. There is no use for your feed on my mobile device since there is no content. I would thus urge anyone with a feed to make sure to make all content available so that people may access it on the move, especially since Wifi is not yet ubiquitous.

The social media living room is great because it’s really any device that you can connect to the web with, whether a simple mobile phone or a full spec desktop computer. Some of us look at the computer first thing in the morning and last thing at a night. This is as much as part of a technological expansion in the form of broadband. Just today an article by the BBC described how people are more and more wired with 90% using broadband, or some similar number. What this means is simple More hours spent therefore more conversation. With twitter it’s more overheard conversations. That’s not where it stops. Twitter, seesmic and similar websites turn a private discussion into a public one where the “overheard conversation” is a key point. It’s an evolution back to the route of internet chat. 10 years ago I spent 13hrs in a row online and I saw the shift from Australia to Japan, India, South Africa, Eastern Europe, Europe, NEw York and more. The difference is that at that time there was no meta data and the initiator to conversations was ASL. Now it’s reached maturity for those of us early adopters. Many of our friends are middle adopters and when they start using it they will not take full advantage. Look at how people use facebook. When asked by @leisa on twitter during a meeting in real life how often I checked facebook I answered as much as my e-mail. A lot of people do. What is not talked about is how middle adopters use it. They are far more limited. They don’t add rss feeds because they have no blog, few pictures if any on flickr and in general do not create content. They’re lurkers. Almost all of my friends are facebook I’ve been to parties with, studied or a combination of more. As a result it’s a personal network of IRL friends who have links to each other as well as through me. These people don’t use twitter, jaiku, tumblr, Pulse plaxo or more. I surprised a conversation on facebook where after seeing someone comment on their post one facebook user asked the other how dare they comment. They didn’t understand the principle of the forum. That’s something all of us are familiar with as early adopters. We are not technological determinists. We believe in the need for something and create a technology to cope. Look at Seesmic. It’s video. It’s twitter with video. One person commented on how it was based on time consumption. He said that although he would love to see everyone’s video and listen to what they have to say that because it’s time based it would take too long. As a result he’d follow just the friend’s timeline. This brings me back to twitter. How many friends do you have. Do you still use the public timeline or is your friend’s timeline filled with more than enough conversations not to need this? I think it’s a really interesting conversation. How does the social media living room integrate into your daily activities.

this is a post typed from the iPod touch to see how easy it isto use. Aside from not having a proper keyboard it seems to work fine. Great for blogging on the move.

Twittervox, a show which I do under the name Warzabidul with the help of Loudmouthman of Loudmouthman.com now has a facebook page which I created earlier in the day. The point of this facebook is to bring together all those that have participated in the show so that they may discuss past and future program topics, from social media, through twitter rules and regulations and towards related topics like seesmic and Second life. If you’re on twitter or seesmic and have a facebook account then come and join the conversation. We’re waiting for you.

The way we’re consuming information has changed completely. i see the freesheets as doomed and look forward to the day when more and more people have ipod touch like devices. I want to see a world where you select the news and information you consume as you’re on the room rather than before setting off. Already I’ve got a taste of the future (although to the occasional few it’s the present). Apparently google is looking at an advertising model that would see kiosks print out magazines with adverts tailored specifically to  the reader’s needs. Personally I don’t see the interest anymore as this seems like an old media strategy within a social media future. Most of the media I consume is in portable form, whether it’s a podcast, video content or other. It’s fed to me via RSS for processing at my own speed. Where is the relevance of such a patent when print is becoming less and less relevant?

Last night Hill & Knowlton organised a Social Media club event in central London to discuss a number of aspects surrounding blogging, marketing and PR. The Event started with a quick introduction to how certain bloggers have voiced their intense dislike of being pitched to by PR companies whilst others are more relaxed about the whole thing. A number of conversations took place as sub groups were split to discuss specific topics. The group I was in discussed Pull factors and how to encourage them to come to see your message, how to generate interest and take advantage of the social media and what they’re good at. A few case examples were given and discussed by this group. People from a variety of PR firms joined in the conversation. Two key things that were talked about in the debrief to the whole group found that no one knows how to deal with the social media and that at this moment in time it is about experimentation to find what is most effective and with whom. Blogging and social media were seen as a hard thing to quantify because conversations don’t have any concrete measurable effects until later. This led on to the point that at this moment in time it’s a challenge to value how you are attempting to raise awareness of what the company would like people to know about. It was an interesting event and i hope to go many more of this type.