I mentioned earlier about the PSP having a pink screen. Apparently that was only an April issue – the screen changes colour based on month. Dave Taylor is listing the following colours:
May 2005: Dark Green
June 2005: Purple
July 2005: Aqua
August 2005: Sky Blue
September 2005: Violet
October 2005: Gold
November 2005: Light Brown
December 2005: Red
I’m glad – pink is definitely the wrong colour!
There’s a conference at Microsoft today on Social Computing. David Weinberger has posted notes about a presentation from 6 teenage girls and their use of technology.
It would be interesting to get a comparison with the UK usage. I’m not sure that they would necessarily believe text messaging is too expensive; the cross-network SMS has been around a lot longer here and texting is more the norm that in the US. When I work there, I have to change habits, and not assume that texts about being late to next meeting will get through!
“Blogging was big last year, but now it’s not”. As the media are picking up blogging, the week it makes the front cover of Business Week, the teenager has decided it is old hat, and no longer worth bothering about. I’d like to know what they were using – my bet is that it is primarily Livejournal and it was about sharing gossip and other teenage angst; the information sharing that is being talked about now is still gossip and opinion…but seen to be more adult 😉
“My attention span is just too short for email. I need a rapid response.” Fast response, via phone or IM, always there, no waiting, no anticipation. No patience. Indicative of the culture that wants everything now. Then agian, if I’m online I’m the same – looking for information, And if at work or at home, I’m generally on line. So I understand this..I’ve suffered when visting parents with a machine that takes about 5 mins to boots, sort itself out and then get conencted to a 56k dialup. Too slow..I need my email now. But at least with email or web there is some time to reflect on the content. With IM..never.
But the key thing throughout is connection and interactivity. They use what their friends use, whether IM client, blogs or other types of community software. So for the tech business, it gives a model – spot the trend leaders, the conenctors, get them using the software and others will follow.
Here’s a link to a T-Mobile page that is a fun way of passing the time – if I could get it to work. You upload a picture and, through the wonders of technology, it ages the photo. SO you can predict how you may look with after the ravages of time. I go this via Blogdex…given it’s still an IP address and I can’t find the link on the main site, I wonder if it is supposed to be live?
Looks like the Scottish Parliament is moving forward with technology – it is contracting BT to finish the provision of broadband to 97% of all households; the remaining 3% in the Western Isles being covered by a local project. (via BBC). Maybe this is one of the attempts to keep the population..the BBC were reprting this morning that Scotland is undergoing the largest depopulation in Europe.
I got to play with a PSP for about 5 minutes today. Much fun, display quality is superb and I can see the gaming experience will be great. But one question – why is the default display pink?
I commented when the first round of Google maps came out and it was US only. But we’ve finally got there – Google Maps UK is ready, along with Google Local for tracking down all sorts of stuff. And it ties into SMS
I use Firefox as my default browser. Makes problems when the developers we use tend to only have IE, but we’re getting there. I’ve got all of my team here using it as default as well. So it’s good to see the news from Boing Boing that Firefox is used by 38.4% of all visitors, number one in their chart.
(Chart from Boing Boing)
Reading New Scientist yesterday there is a great report into how Skype is being used for podcasting. The article quotes from the Skype Journal, giving a positive review of this collaborative approach to broadcasting
Flickr are making good on thier promises and giving away goodies to Pro subscribers. My account has been extended by one year and I’ve got 2 free Pro accounts to give away.
I love google maps…and now they’ve discovered the rest of the world, at least via Satellite. They have added satellite imagery to the site, with all the saem cool sliding and zooming, but a global version, to various resolutions. So I can take a closer look where I have just booked a holiday
The BBC are going to commission a second series of Doctor Who after just one episode being shown on TV. Reading about the leaking of the first episode onto the internet, they commented:
The BBC has trialled a download service for some of its TV content, but there is no indication yet as to when the Interactive Media Player will launch.
Other broadcasters are probably hurrying their own plans because until they launch, there will be plenty of individuals willing to fill that hole.
And today, I see that Microsoft have started a service for commercially downloadable video content. Should I sign up – not at the moment, far too US based. – I think i need a How To guide to US football, baseball and basketball before I can submit myself to Fox News
Old communication channels are embracing the new. There was a time in many countries where the church was the centre of a person’s community. This appears to be less so now, but religion is managing to use newer technology to get the message across. Godcasts are becoming one of the more popular flavours of podcasts; religious themes on your media player of choice, according to this story on the bookofjoe.
In another use, Adrants are reporting that ministries are using comparisons with Halo2 to spread the word, as the storyline is apparently like a Bible story.
And to bring us right up to date, Amazon are selling a 30TB Tablet – or they were for a wee while until the typo got noticed. Over on Seth’s blog he thought that it would have disappeared by now, but it seems the PTB at Amazon have left the entry up there, so you can read some of the very funny reviews that got put up
I like this tool from at Metaatem, pulling outimages of the letters
#flickrWords .flickrImg { float: left; }
BT have quietly upgraded my connection speed over the last week and it’s now sitting at a 2Mb, or just under it when I run some tests. I’m not complaining on the speed, they’ve even dropped the price for a few months.. Unfortunately they’ve put a cap on monthly usage of 30GB of download. Don’t think I get close to this, but we’ll see.
I found a link to the NASA WorldWind application on the Scobleizer yesterday and have been having fun playing with it. Great ways of looking at the world..what would be good is some time lapsed images so you could see changes to coastlines.
Google Maps….where’s the rest of the world? Or when will they bring it online. The tool itself – love playing with it.
Just seen that UK Online will be offering a 8MB service from my exchange from around March. Pre-registered for it..so need to wait what the cost will be. It’s around the time the BT contract runs out so it looks like perfect timing
Spent time yesterday listening in to a conference at Harvard on Blogging, Journalism and Credibility. I’m going to have to go back and read the transcripts to check up, but one area that I found strange was the discussion about links and their use in blog posts. There seemed to be a feeling that all links need to be credible, to be validated somehow, and if you link to an unvalidated post, then, somehow, that damages your credbility. One argument for me is that ‘credible’ news organisations, either print or media, don’t always do this anyway, why should bloggers, whether amateur or professional do it any different?
With blogs, with it being a slightly more permament media, allowing you to interact for a far longet time than a newscast or a paper, then surely half the pleasure is linking to things that are dubious, or not fully verified; often linking can be to comment on the quality of the posting/news; or you can go back later and confirm stuff.
Blogs, in fact all web media, is a pull rather than a push media. I choose what I want to see on there, I seek out content far more than I do on TV. It gives me far more opportunity to explore AND make up my own mind about things than a 2 minute story on the news or an article in the paper. The choice stays with me.
After all that rambling, there’s a point in there somewhere. Maybe I’ll come back later and try again.
BTW, loved the sharing aspect of this conference – being able to listen in whilst lurking ont he irc channel reading the asides was a far better experience than just reading the stuff.
liked the look of the mini mac that was announced by Apple today..especially as it is already for sale on the the UK Apple store site for shipping in 2 weeks. Could definitely see the attraction in getting it for the parents to reduce the support I need to do. However, the grandparents – they’d break anything. But support over Xmas this year for them was showing them how to send an email, much easier to cope with then the normal stuff they have. By now, i think they now have a regular account with the store to fix things.