Twitter, Flickr, Doppr, Delicious, Boxee ... it goes on....

Continuing on from a recent post I’d like to tell the world why it is that I’ve migrated from one service (Facebook) to nearly ten (MobileMe, Twitter, Dopplr, WordPress, Flickr, Upcoming, Last.fm, Vimeo, Delicious) which seems entirely rediculous and somewhat overwhelmingly inefficient:

1. Firstly Facebook is a corporate walled garden in a trendy tee-shirt, this makes me very angry.
2. Secondly all the services I use can be updated or used via the web, or even better, by text message via Twitter.
3. The services I use are hot-swappable, that is they are easily replaced, upgraded or removed (thus the TCP/IP reference).
4. The services I use let me and, more importantly, me friends choose how to ‘consume me’ (a’ la JP Rangaswami).
5. The services I use can be aggregated using devices such as FriendFeed or, for media, Boxee.

So I think five are enough reasons for now, oh wait, you can update Facebook for free too. Anyway the only quandary I’m left with is:

How can I present all this information in a way which is both pleasing to the casual observer and useful for those that are interested in the same things as I?

With this I give you the remit for my soon to be released website. The premise follows from a post about tags that I wrote a few weeks back. I was interested in what tags said about me as a person as nearly all the services I subscribe to have tag APIs (or at least a third party generator). These tags contain information about me, my events, my interests, my travel, my photos and most importantly my friends.

Taking these desparate sources and presenting a weighted tag-mash (weighted by the amount I use a service) I intend to produce a superset tag-mash which, when clicked, follows though to a list of referenced content carrying that tag for each of the services I use. This will obvsiouly be accompanied with a per service linkage on the left (a’ la Phil Hawksworth).

I think this could either be a complete mess or an interesting experiment in digital self-discovery.

You decide.

The best part of Chrsitmas... honestly

So, I wrote this post once on IE at work and, well, I’m never going to post from work again, else this little bit wouldn’t be here. So it begins. In light of Jon Lister posting his Christmas 2008 desires over here I thought I’d follow suit… I dunno, seemed like a good idea at the time. Here goes, oh and don’t worry, Im not as complex as Jay:

• Firstly I’d like to see an on-demand television service that works. I value my time and often miss things because I refuse to have my habits dictated by a snotty BBC scheduling executive. The recent AppleTV upgrade in the US has interested me. If only they could arrange a rental contract for the rest of the world.
• Secondly, and in full awareness that I’m following Jon Lister very closely on this, is that I’d like to see decentralised social networking come unstuck. However I think Jay missed a bit here. The way I see it, in order to have a successful, open social networking platform you need three things; an open identity management system, standardisation of the interfaces between open social platforms and (potentially) computer friendly semantics. Now I realise that, in order to keep a social network alive you need to include your users, but this is a Christmas list, and who ever got what they really wanted when they were ten? I sure as well didn’t get ‘Blossom’ to stay at a sleep over now, did I?
• Finally, and most importantly, I’d like to see WiFi take off. I’m sick of all this Mickey Mouse WiFi hotspot madness. I think I must hop in and out of about ten networks on my way to work. I hear WiMax making big noises over in there garden but, there are a few physical barriers to be overcome, for instance concrete. I could be very boring on this subject for a very long time so I’ll leave it at that. All I’ll say for now is this; Analog television spectrum up for auction next month… interesting?

So that’s it really, three things, can’t be hard can it? It’s not like I’m asking for a solution to the P=NP? problem am I?