notes: November 2005

Bartering airtime in Africa

Africans are experiencing astonishing, rapid growth in mobile telephony. Mobile handsets are selling even to the poorest of people because there is an enormous need for communication. For decades, people have wanted to communicate but have been prevented from doing so because fixed line connections were expensive and unreliable.

But most amazing of all is the move by Kenya's SafariCom service provider. It is offering users the chance to trade airtime with one another.

So I can buy airtime (with a scratchcard from any local shop), then send it to another account - either for free (as a gift), or in exchange for money, goods, or services.

The upshot is that the phone service has created, from nowhere, an alternative currency. A barter system that will allow people to exchange money (or value) across vast distances, with no need for banks or travel.

This is astonishing. The typical Western consumer thinks that our society is at the cutting edge of technology and its interface with society. But in Africa, people are using the same technology in radically different ways. Imagine the barter system being introduced here in the UK. Would you work, in whole or in part, for airtime? Especially if you had the opportunity to sell that airtime on to others, or exchange it for goods?

What will 'money' look like in fifty years from now? Twenty years?

These notes made during a recent broadcast of Global Business on the BBC World Service.

Labels: tech, writing

Wednesday, November 30, 2005
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DAB hand for freebies

There are perks to this job.

This morning, a courier turned up at the door while we sat eating our cereal. He handed over five large cardboard boxes, each containing one or more Digital Radio sets. I've got the chance to review and play with them for a few weeks.

As I said to the PR company that got in touch to offer the goodies: "I'm a complete radio nut. The thought of having a houseful of DABs turns me into a gibbering, salivating wreak. When will they arrive?"

A frequently asked question: "Do you get to keep them all, Giles?"

Answer: No. In my experience of reviewing gadgets, games, computers and software, it's rare for a journalist to be given something like this to keep. Generally, if the item is cheap (less than 100 quid or so), you might be in with a chance, and the likelihood increases if it's software.

One memorable exception: when Psion launched the Psion 5MX pocket computer back in 1999, I attended the press conference. Celebrity geek Stephen Fry gave a very entertaining speech, various Psion dudes gave little presentations, then at the end as we filed through the door, every single person present was handed a brand-new Psion in a box. I was astonished.

Of course by then I was already a loyal Palm user and owner, so couldn't really justify keeping a second PDA in my rucksack; so on my return to the office, I handed the Psion over to my surprised colleague Lawrence. I think it died on him, losing a pile of data, a year or so later.

Labels: tech

Wednesday, November 30, 2005
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Campus maps notes

I'm a map freak. I find it hard to pass by any map without taking a close look at it. Almost every time I use Google Image search to look for something, I notice some kind of map or plan lurking in the results. I always look at it.

I'm particularly interested in what I call campus maps - University campuses, hospital complexes, schools, transport hubs; places that often have to cope with a great deal of complexity in a small area. Buildings jostle for space between roads; pedestrians often have a good claim to whatever space is left.

An example. Here's a map of what is now Anglia Ruskin University, although when I started a Geography degree there back in 1989, it was called Anglia Higher Education College.

This map, or an older version of it, is ingrained in my brain. I knew every shortcut and every corner of this small college crammed into a tiny corner of Cambridge's less-posh side. At the time, I loved the way the lack of space forced the buildings to pay some attention to one another. The cramped feeling made it easier to mingle with people from different year groups and different courses. Looking at the map again now, I love the way that little seems to have changed. There's a joke, too: all the buildings have grand-sounding proper names, except the pitiful 'T6'. What goes on in there, I wonder?

I spent most of my time in the Coslett, Webb, Ruskin and Helmore buildings. The new accommodation blocks, Swinhoe and Peter Taylor House, didn't exist then. Peter Taylor was the head of geography while I was a student there, and fired my interest in urban geography and architecture. He died, too young, a couple of years after I graduated.

Anyway, I've been thinking of making some sort of list of interesting maps. I considered creating a fresh weblog for them, or perhaps just posting them here along with everything else. I'm also toying with the idea of sticking them on Flickr, where the tags and notes features might come in very handy for annotations.

I'd love to hear opinions from anyone else with a similar fixation on cartography.

Monday, November 21, 2005
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Google Base notes

Been messing with Google Base.

If I want to add an entry to the Base about myself, how should I go about it? My first thought was to include it in the People Profiles item type, but it turns out to be not for general People Profiles at all - it's all about finding a date. The default attributes for this item type include Sexuality, Marital Status, and Interests. And each entry in this item type has a maximum lifespan of 31 days.

So it's no kind of People Profiles item type at all, it's a find-a-date service. I wish Google wouldn't beat around the bush with all this "We just want to help the world find all its information" rubbish and just come out and say it: "Yuh. We cloned Craigslist. Go crazy, kids!"

Base lacks the "Doh!" obviousness that the original Google home page had. The UI is downright confusing, but then again neither Craigslist, nor eBay (another cloneparent for Base) have particularly simple interfaces. Once you're inside Base, either in search results or your own "Dashboard" for creating new items, finding your way elsewhere is very hard.

There's tags buried in Base - called Labels - but no way to browse tags, or hop from one to another mid-search. It's frustrating.

What Base needs is some really clear contextual help to explain exactly what each element is for. And some much clearer, more honest, labeling of things like "People Profiles" - change the name to "Personals" and be done with it.

Labels: tech

Wednesday, November 16, 2005
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Make a Chart

A couple of years ago, I posted a Lazywebbish idea on my luvly mailing list: Make a chart, an imaginary service for making simple charts and graphs in a browser, without having to fire up something tedious like Excel.

I didn't think anyone was interested in making such a thing, but finally, someone's gone and done it with a thing called "Create a Graph".

You can do plenty of customisation of your graph, preview it, and then at the final stage print it, download it in a pleasingly wide choice of formats, or email it directly to someone else - as HTML or plain text. Wonderful stuff.

Wednesday, November 16, 2005
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Trying out Odeo

Barney and I spent an enjoyable half hour exploring the Odeo interface and creating some silly audio of our own.

I'm very impressed that Odeo not only Just Works, but does so in a relatively unknown browser like Camino. It's very well made and Barney, aged only three, got the hang of it pretty quickly.

I shall be adding some more fooncasts in the near future, no doubt. Be warned: there may be singing involved.

Labels: tech

Tuesday, November 15, 2005
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Microsoft and Web 2.0

Here's today's internet column for PA. This column is written for use in regional newspapers around the UK, so the text is aimed at ordinary people, not web geeks.

Things are changing at Microsoft. The software company that has dominated the world's computer software (and consequently, hardware) markets for two decades is feeling the faint breeze of competition from young upstart companies, and has decided to act.

Those upstarts are mostly new names that most people have not heard of. Tiny little web companies whose offerings are so appealing that people are flocking to use them, simply because they fill a gap and fit a need. The giants of this world, Microsoft chief among them, are playing catchup.

People are flocking to things like Gmail (now called Googlemail in the UK), Flickr (www.flickr.com) and Writeboard (www.writeboard.com), all of them free services that replicate on the web services we used to think were confined to the computer we were working at.

That model has been blown out of the water in the last year.

Thanks to the increased availability of wireless broadband connections (soon they will be ubiquitous), computers everywhere can be expected to be online most of the time.

And with this in mind, the people who produce software are starting to wonder whether they need to produce anything physical at all. Why make CDs, wrap them in cardboard boxes, and ship them all over the world, when you can make software that works just as well through a web browser?

The web is moving towards becoming a platform for services, not just a glorified electronic newspaper or shopping mall.

This platform idea is known as "Web 2.0" and it is the primary motivating factor behind huge companies like Microsoft having to rethink their whole attitude to software and the way it is designed and distributed.

Think how Microsoft makes its money. The vast majority of its income over the past 20 years has been from sales of boxed copies of Windows and Office. These products, sold by the million to corporations the world over, have been incredibly popular and incredibly profitable.

But in a broadband society infused with computers (our mobile phones are computers, our stereos are becoming computers, soon our TV sets will be computers), all of them able to connect to the network all the time, people are moving away from having "a computer" at which they do their work.

Now, people want to be able to use any device to access their stuff. They want to keep files online and put them to use from any computer they happen to be sitting in front of, be it a traditional PC or a huge high-definition TV set.

So the move has begun. Microsoft's senior executives, Bill Gates included, have issued a series of memos spelling out the threats as they see them, and the new direction they think Microsoft should take.

The new direction is internet services. The path will be a rocky one, because everyone and his dog (remember, on the internet no-one knows you're a dog) will be busy putting together their own internet services.

In taking this step, Microsoft is effectively putting itself back on the bottom rung of the ladder, alongside all the upstarts. It has the benefit of huge resources and a bottomless pit of money, of course; but some argue that the key to success in the world of Web 2.0 is good ideas that just work.

And you don't need resources or money to have one of those.

Labels: tech

Monday, November 14, 2005
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"Next ->"

Everywhere I go on the web these days, I find little tiny "Next ->" links. At the bottom of every page of Google or Yahoo search results; or in every Flickr user, tag, or group view. You see a few, and you always have to click Next to see some more.

So why are the Next links so tiny, so hard to click on?

I'd like to see them get a bit bigger, a bit easier to click on. It's not that I can't see them, it's just that they're so fiddly to use. They require more effort than actually starting a search, or clicking a search result.

In fact, I'd like to see the page developers use some real smarts and make large sections of the page clickable. How about if the margin of each page, about 30 or 40 pixels at each edge, became a Previous/Next link? These margins could be subtly shaded to indicate that they were different from the page background itself. I see no reason why this couldn't be a user pref, stored in a cookie or somesuch, so that people who didn't like or didn't understand the concept could simply switch it off.

But those of us who liked it and understood it could fly through search results and Flickr pages much faster than before, with far less mousing required.

Labels: tech

Monday, November 14, 2005
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What they used to say

In the 1970s: "A20, M25, M1, M6, M54, A5."

In the 1980s: "For your maths homework tonight..."

In the 1990s: "Giles, can you cover mags court today please?"

Early 2000: "No, that's all wrong. Do it again."

Late 2000: "Sorry, we don't take freelance contributions."

Between 2000 and 2005: "The deadline for completing your tax return is only a month away."

Recently: "I'm not doing a poo in my pants."

Saturday, November 12, 2005
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People whose lives have been transformed by the internet

At the local school recently, attending an Open Day for prospective new parents (Barney will be starting school this time next year - how quick is that??), the head teacher made a fascinating point.

He said that the school's ethos is not to train kids for a career, but to train them to learn anything that comes along.

"After all," he said, "how many of you parents now do a job that didn't even exist when you were at school?"

Kate and I looked at eachother. That's both of us. And many of our friends.

Loads of people I know have had their lives completely changed by the internet and their interaction with it.

People like Dan Hon, who joined a multiplayer game and ended up making new friends, a new career, almost a whole new life out of the people he met as a result.

Or Joel Veitch, who I interviewed years ago about some crappy 'web soap opera' that never came to anything; but his stupid animations, and those of his stupid mate Rob Manuel (who made me a custom CMS once, years ago; in return I bought him some fags and a four-pack of lager) helped him carve a path to being a professional animator and director.

Or me. My own life has revolved around the net since 1997. I got a job, I moved from Cambridge to London, I earned a (reasonably paid) living for four years, purely because I knew fractionally more about the internet than my colleagues. Since going freelance, I have done the majority of my professional work for online publications, not print ones.

And that's just three people I can think of while sitting in my living room, listening to Talk Talk and sipping beer on a lonely wet Monday night. There are dozens more that I know, millions of others elsewhere.

The net. Gawd bless 'er.

Monday, November 07, 2005
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Barney and his treasures bag

Barney and his treasures bag
Originally uploaded by emmajc.

Monday, November 07, 2005
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Walk Like An Egyptian

Walk Like An Egyptian
Originally uploaded by andipantz.

Sunday, November 06, 2005
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Feeding on feeds

I'm interested to see services like Superblog and Suprglu, which offer instant aggregation of feeds you might generate whilst using Flickr and Del.icio.us and the like.

Interested because I've had an idea bubbling in my mind in recent weeks - to create some weblog-style projects that are built in exactly that manner. If Rising Slowly ever rises from the ashes (and its demise is another story, which I'll hopefully be in a position to tell you shortly), I'd quite like it to rise in this way - as something simpler to scan, from the reader's point of view, and quicker to write, from mine.

I imagine the result to be a mishmash of short links, photos culled from various sources, and occasional longer posts as and when I see fit.

I'm interested in creating a bunch of such sites, on various themes that interest me. I'd like to create one about interesting maps and techniques of mapping, and another about 'Englishness' (what is England, what makes its people English, how does the rest of the world perceive England?).

None of these subjects are going to get the high traffic that would interest any of the 'traditional' 'weblog publishing networks', but I'm still quite tempted to try and create them myself anyway.

What I need to find is a simple way of building such sites. My technical prowess is almost as non-existant as my eye for visual design, but I know how to use the del.icio.us Javascript feeds to generate a custom feed of links (I really like the way you can limit the feed to just one tag of your choice), and the Flickr badge system to do something fairly similar with pictures. The end result is something like this. There'd be some temptation to add some auto-generated ads (Google Adsense? Some Yahoo alternative? Is there a Yahoo alternative?) at the bottom.

All this is just thinkings-aloud at the moment. I'll get back to you when I've thought something more useful.

Labels: tech

Friday, November 04, 2005
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Let's have a cup of tea

cuppa.mp3 (345kB, about 15 seconds)

Labels: audio

Wednesday, November 02, 2005
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