webponce rants

Through my work at Yarned, I’m involved in a new charity - Child’s i Foundation, which is building a babies’ home in Uganda on the outskirts of Kampala for 50 infants, from newborn babies to five years-olds. The home will have medical facilities to help with premature and sick babies and children with special needs.

This is happening in two ways:

1. To build a “transitional orphanage” with full medical and educational facilities that provides a safe haven for babies and young children.
2. To place these children into secure and happy families, giving them something we believe every child has a right to – a loving home.

Child’s i Foundation will connect supporters to our work in Uganda in real time. Through emails, blogs and videos, people will be able to see exactly where their money is going, and we will have the opportunity to appeal directly for additional help should we need it.

Members of the community can be involved on many levels, from community fundraising, making donations and suggestions to actively volunteering at the Home in Uganda.

Interaction and mass collaboration are the keys to building the charity and achieving our goals.

We are creating a Web 2.0 version of a letter from a sponsored child and creating a new way of giving.

I’ll write more about the approach we’re taking from a technical perspective over the next weeks, but in the meantime, please go and visit the website:

http://childsifoundation.org
Also, follow us on twitter and flickr.

I’ve not been allowed to talk about this before, but it has just been nominated for an award, so I guess it’s all pretty public now. This was one of the last projects I was involved in at de-construct - a filtered art experience for Amstel.

Visitors would arrive at the gallery space, and be given a personal identity card - which they would take around the exhibit. The first port of call is to a booth where you are asked a series of questions, following the pattern of a multiple choice quiz. The aim of the quiz is to get an idea of your psychological makeup, and see where you sit in one of the three Hans Eysnick scales of neuroticism, psychoticism and extrovertism.

Once profiled, you would enter the gallery where we had about eight different spaces for watching short films and video art. You would arrive at once of the viewing areas (a mix of large cinema spaces, tiny shower like audio showers or plasmas screens with headphones), swipe your identity card, and you would be presented with content to sort your temperament (or to get your N, E or P juices really flowing).

We originally built a three screen prototype for demoing to our clients Amstel and 180 (their advertising agency) and then the project culminated in a 200 person event in Amsterdam in the basement of the old Post Office building. The private party was a resounding success, and many of the artists who were also invited found the experience extremely enjoyable. The viewers/interactors in the space found themselves discussing with the person next to them why they’d been shown a particular piece of content, swap cards to see other people’s content, generally discuss and chat over the art - which for any gallery experience is a huge measure of success.

Technically, the system was completely bespoke. Based upon RFID and wireless technology, we created a local network which allowed each unit to communicate to a central database server. Upon profiling, each user was stored and could be referenced upon demand. The swipe at each unit would check the person’s ‘profile’, and display relevant content as required. I was involved from the outset, helping to expand upon the original idea, taking it from a concept to delivery - developing the underlying code for the system itself, as well as the hardware, working with the curator to ensure the experience felt right from a content perspective, and installed and setup the space alongside the production team. It was a solid three days of work once we arrived in Amsterdam to setup the machines (most of which were completely smashed up in transit from London) install the software/hardware, test and the deploy in the live space, not to mention the inevitable problems which plagued us right up until the 11th hour.

I was really proud of this project, especially how deeply involved I was from the outset to completion. It was great working with a very talented team on a unique concept. I’m in the video somewhere, turning on a computer. A prize for spotting me.

I also took a range of photographs for the project which are available at Flickr.

Forrester’s Social Technographics surveys show that when it comes to social content 21% of online US consumers are Creators, 37% are Critics (those who react to content created by others), and 69% are Spectators.

The 90-9-1 principle, recently publicized by Community Guy Jake McKee at 90-9-1.com, says that in a community, the rule of thumb is that 90% of visitors only view the content, 9% only comment or react to it, and 1% create it.

I’m always involved in conversations where whipping out backed up stats like these would be useful, but I never remember where I can find evidence for my generally anecdotal sounding opinions. I keep meaning to write up some sort of cheatsheet where I pour in recent facts, figures and insights from various sources, such as the excellent Groundswell blog, but it would be a full time job - and often, anecdotes seem to do the job. Even if i did store them somewhere, i’d probably not remember where i’d put them.

In any case, all things seems to relate back to either a “power law distribution” or “kittens on skateboards”. Maybe i should get a tattoo of a kitten on a power law curve.

This post is from my blog over at Turn Off, Tune On, which discusses innovation in the online video space, as part of my work for Endemol.

You can’t have failed to miss the Youtube Live event which is taking place today. If you read even one single tech blog, or use Youtube, you’ll have seen the chatter everywhere.

Celebrities, Web celebs and major artists, including the mad scientists from the Mythbusters crew, will.i.am, Lisa Nova, Michael Buckley, and Joe Satriani will be joining the celebrations, and YouTube will be offering three live streams direct from its Live channel.

Why blog this? Youtube moving into live streaming is an additional string to the monetisation bow, something they’ve yet struggled to really find models beyond simple adserving and partnership deals. It also puts Youtube into the broadcaster space, allowing them to compete with a wider range of other services. It will be interesting to see the next steps they take to push this service with commercial partners.

Nicky and Asi have been secretly working away on this lovely book project. I’ll let Nicky explain:

So, what’s the idea ? Well it’s a bit of a cross between Pass the Parcel, Consequences, and the 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon. There’s 6 spreads in the book, and we’ve sent it to the most famous person we know to create something or leave a message, and then pass it on to the most famous person they know. Fingers crossed it will get to some exciting people along the way.

Lovely idea - something with a lovely crossover with our DMP project I think. They should attach a camera to the book ;) Good luck with the project guys, and let me know when you auction it off.

I love pie - especially when they’re data visualisations. This is the range of colours from the Back to the Future triliogy (and the Godfather oddly enough).

It reminds me of this pie chart pie:

and this pizza pie:

mmmm 3.141

Perspectives - Andrea from BaseMOTION on Vimeo.

Really nice video project from the lovely people at Base Motion. Sometimes the pauses, ponderings, ahems, erms, hesitations and ruminations between the words we say are more loaded with meaning than the comment itself. The body language of thought presented in its raw beautiful form.

One of the really nice touches in the latest Bond flick was the use of ‘in scene’ typography on some of the scene start title sequences, I particularly liked the London opener which was printed on the road in that classic ‘City of London’ typeface which was then immediately run over by a car. You can see them all at Tomato’s site, or pulled out for easier viewing at Goldenfiddle. I read QoS and Fleming’s other short stories in the recent Penguin collection - well worth a read if you’ve not read much James Bond before.

I’ve recently started working with Big Brother production company, Endemol. They do, of course, make much much more than just Big Brother, in fact, I’d be surprised if you haven’t at some point watched one of their shows. You may ask why someone digital would want to go work in television - the answer is simple - Endemol aren’t a television production company, but a content producer, and are already working with a number of innovative new formats and concepts in interacting with content, so this is a really interesting opportunity. We all love and want great content, whether it be on the gogglebox or internets, and Endemol are perfectly positioned to help television evolve in the right direction.

I’ve started blogging over at turnofftuneon.wordpress.com to get internal and external discussion around new formats and models in the digital content space, you can follow that if you’d like. I’m going to separate out work to that blog, general technology to over at http://yarned.co.uk and more personally interesting stuff here.

Here’s some more Clay which I just posted over at that blog.

I’m a massive fan of information visualisation, and very interested in the Israeli/Palestine conflict, so this is just super, and a great summation of the history behind the conflict.

knowledge (subtitled version) from Axel Rudolph on Vimeo.

Google have released their index from back in 2001 to celebrate their 10th birthday. It works too, and searching on the name of company i traded under as a freelance back then even works (V2 Design, second link!)- and then linking it through to the Wayback machine gives you the full experience. Apologies for the lack of semantic markup or accessibility.. it was 1998.

Binary Beat from Niklas Roy on Vimeo.

Two fish are in a tank.
One fish says to the other:
“Do you know how to drive this thing?”

Sorry, a little drunk, and a little bored.

I’m currently in Amsterdam at the Picnic 08 Conference, and have managed to see Clay Shirky speak twice (which brings my attendance level up to to three of his talks). I managed to fail miserably in giving him a disposable camera, having seen him wandering into the press/speaker lounge at the conference, but scrabbling around in my bag took too long and he’d disappeared, but hey ho, just getting to hear him chat around topics of collab is always good enough. Here is one of the Picnic TV girls talking to him outside the Gashouder about the changing concept of ‘we’

Add-Art is a free FireFox add-on which replaces advertising on websites with curated art images. The art shows are updated every two weeks and feature contemporary artists and curators.

This is just brilliant, a lovely hack for Firefox users to discard the usual tirade of advertising with a curated exhibition of art. Get cultured whilst you browse.

Ah, the power of music.

I’ve just started posting at excellent creative spotting blog No Legacy, setup by a bunch of the guys at de-construct, and contains the thoughts and braindumps of many very talented designers, including Jakob Nylund from Frost and Joel Corneer from The Apartment.

I absolute love this, don’t know why, it’s properly freaky. Reminds me of the scene in Never Ending Story with the Oracle thingy shooting lasers from her eyes at Atreyu

Via Geekologie

I love this idea, created by TBWA. Simple, but really nice.

Spotted via The Dieline

Huzzah! The Lucky Voice in home private karaoke service has launched in beta. I’ve been involved with the project over the past few months, primarily as technical consultancy, audience insight and some of the marketing activities. As they say themselves, Lucky Voice is a life affirming experience, and we’ve managed to bring an element of their quality and class to the digital space. No longer will you be tied to crappy plastic tape machines, this is karaoke for the 21st Century. Now, if they can start to push cocktails over IP, i’m sold.

If you’d like an invite, email me or post a comment, and we’ll sort you out.

Another quick build project for Andy at de-construct, who part-owns The Prince Regent, a pub down in SE24. Building this has made me hungry. They’ve just been shortlisted in the 60 under £60 category in the Evening Standard London Restaurant awards, so bravo! Its still a bit of work in progress, as we had to get it live ready for today’s announcement, but I’m sure i’ll tidy up the CSS and add some new content later next week.

A little build project for Endemol went live recently. For the Children in Need programme, an application form to have your haircut by a celeb’. Fancy getting shaved by Rachel Stevens*? Sign up here. The full site (which i’m also going to be involved in) will be launching later this year.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/scissorhands/

NB. Rachel Stevens probably isn’t doing haircuts, as she’s doing the dancy thing this year. I’m not sure she’d have time to balance trimming and shimmying in her life.

via [monster-munch]

I was in North London for most of yesterday, and whilst in the area, had the opportunity to go and see Anna Garforth’s Moss based graffiti, after reading about it on numerous blogs. We wandered down to a tiny little street off Stoke Newington Church Street, opposite Clissold Park, but couldn’t seem to find the ecological prose anywhere. Peering into one of the buildings, we managed to find someone, and upon asking if they knew where the work was, the reply “Oh yes, its mine!” came back. We stumbled across the artist herself, who took us to see it.

Unfortunately hidden behind a big MPV type car, I managed to take a few shots whilst Anna tended to the moss with a water mister.

The letters are attached to the wall with a all natural yoghurt and sugar mix, and the moss, Anna hopes, will embed into the wall, and take hold, colonising the brick work, and become part of the wall itself.

It is a lovely piece, if not for the typography alone.

I was going to write an article this morning about cheating, cheating and cheating, although i’ve lost the third page i was going to link to through the red mist decending on me after seeing this piece of laziness.

The new Number 10 site launched a few days back. I didn’t immediately visit the site, as I’ve not been online a huge amount recently for browsing purposes, but I fired it up this morning after reading another post about its launch, and oh dear.

I’m not going to comment upon their approach to using social media, as many already have.

What has infuriated me is the ‘beta’ logo they’ve plopped on the masthead, which seems to be used as a ’sorry we haven’t quite finished testing yet’ get of jail free card. NO NO NO!

The current fascination with launching betas confuses me a little. I am a big supporter of releasing early and often, smaller simpler offerings to test the water, and then expand and enrich from there on. Its agile, it means you can get your community feeding back on what they like and what they don’t like, and quite often helps in just getting content out there.

A beta does not mean public release, its an early release for testing purposes. Betas are designed to be opened out to a smaller population than your usual audience for feedback, testing and review. Many ’startup’ type sites or web applications launch in private beta in this way, as well as public beta to gain feedback, and it can be a useful approach if you haven’t yet ‘launched’ your application or site.

However, a beta release and a phased release of functionality over time are not the same thing. You can, very succesfully, launch a site with a percentage of your eventual vision for the long term, providing it passes certain acceptance criteria: is it enough for the audience, will it achieve what we need it to in the first release, and so on. Twitter is a good example of this. They launched with just simple messaging, then layered in IM, then added replies, etc. etc. That isn’t a beta. A beta isn’t your first public release, waiting for added functionality, a beta is for testing and review.

What Number 10 have done is released an incomplete and broken website, and sticking a beta label on it doesn’t justify or excuse this. Number 10 is a substantial government landmark, the mouthpiece of the PM, not some 2 guys in their bedroom startup app.

Firstly, it doesn’t validate against XHTML. Why not? It really isn’t that hard to get content validating against XHTML Transitional (they’re not even using strict). As a government who support legislation and penalties on companies who don’t adhere to accessibility guidelines, I’d say this was pretty hypocritical, but ultimately downright lazy.

Secondly, the layout doesn’t work in Firefox. You might have heard about Firefox, it is a pretty popular browser. I’m assuming it was developed and tested on another browser (although assumptions on their testing are foolish). I wouldn’t mind so much if the design was half decent, but wow, it looks like they’ve literally just grabbed the first wordpress theme they found, and vomited it up on the server.

Thirdly, on the day it launched, there were 404 errors all over the shop. A BBC article explains:

A Downing Street spokeswoman denied the site had crashed.
But she said users on some servers might experience glitches “for the next 48 hours”.
“It is just what happens when you launch a new website,” she added.

No, it isn’t. I’ve launched hundreds of sites without layouts breaking and 404 pages on topline navigation. Sure, i’ve had the odd bug crop up which wasn’t spotted in testing, but not topline navigation, and not basic layout issues.

I guess I’m just really disappointed in an organisation as important as Number 10 could launch something without basic checks and balances from purely a technical perspective. I understand that getting social media is a harder nut to crack, and I’m actually glad they’ve started making inroads to that sort of technology, but the fundamentals still apply, and hiding behind a beta label doesn’t not excuse ignoring the basics.

I’d email them, but they haven’t set up their contact page correctly yet. The only option seems to be to write them a letter. How very 2.0