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.

A real page turner, surprisingly

So, I’ve got a whole load of tags around me and my ongoing involvement in the web. I have tags in the following places: TwitterCloud, Flickr, Aperture, WordPress and recently Del.icio.us.

What do these tags say about me? And, more importantly, when aggregated what do they look like? I read a great book on the interpretation of data a couple of months ago (highly recommended) and I’ve got some ideas on how to visialise these sources, both disparate and consolidated.

But if you’ve seen any services that do this I’d be interested in taking a look. We’ll come back to this post in the future, until then comment if you have the time but buy that book and check out the image of Ali vs. Foreman, absolutely mind blowing.

Twitter, it's the future

Right! I’m simply losing too much of my life to explaining to my friends why they dont need facebook any longer and why they should move to Twitter, Dopplr and Flickr as a replacement instead. So I’m writing it down.

The one thing I hate about Facebook, particularly of late, is that right now

Facebook is no longer working for you, you’re working for Facebook

There are many reasons for why this is true, some more technical than others, but I’ll keep it simple. If Facebook is purely to keep in contact and up to date on your friends, colleagues, lovers etc. then why is it so inaccessible, and why spend so much time in front of it? Particularly when you can use another medium and maintain it for free? So I give you Twitter, Dopplr and Flickr.

Twitter

Twitter is an increasing popular ‘micro-blogging’ service similar to status updates on Facebook. In it’s purest form you should always answer the question ‘What are you doing?’ however there are mechanisms for sending public (by prefixing an @ symbol) or private (by prefixing a D) message to someone. You can do this via the web, a desktop application, a mobile application or a text message. You can also upload pictures via twitpic. So far far we have the following services:

• Status updates
• Public replies
• Private replies
• Posting images (with comments)

Flickr

Fortunately Flickr doesn’t really require an introduction. It’s one of the most famous ‘web 2.0′ services for uploading, sharing and commenting on peoples photos and videos. So here we add:

• Uploading high resolution photos
• Uploading videos
• Commenting on content

Dopplr

Dopplr may require an introduction. Dopplr is designed for frequent travelers or friends of frequent travelers to schedule, log and keep up with people’s whereabouts. You register your home address and any future travel plans. In return Dopplr will tell you if any of your friends will be in the area and some local sights and services to visit. Dopplr is available on the Web, as a mobile internet application and, best of all, can be bound to and updated via twitter using the Dopplr bot with a phrase akin to ‘@Dopplr I’ll be in Birmingham from April 5th for 3 nights’ (you can also privately message). So now we’ve added the following services:

• Location awareness
• Travel scheduling
• Travel planning

Now ‘what about Facebook’ I hear you cry. The best part is that all of these things can be automatically linked via the bewilderingly large number of applications available in Facebook. Link them in and all your friends know exactly where you are, what you’re doing and (via Flickr) how many beers you’ve had.

So get out there, sign up and Fuck Facebook (yes, I did start that Facebook group).

You’ll thank me in the long run.

AppleTV, you know you can't resist!

Way back when I forst started blogging (January 2008) I wrote a post called ‘All I Want (For Christmas)’ where I outlined a few desires for the end of the year, to sum it up I wanted:

• On demand television that works
• Decentralised social networking
• No more Mickey Mouse Wifi services

So did I get what I want? Well, sort of. Firstly on demand television; Virgin, Sky and BT all offer these services from their own libraries but for me there are now two contenders that are really starting to make some headway. The iTunes has finally brought DVD Rental to the UK which pleases me but more importantly a XMCC based Boxee has emerged to become an all singing, all dancing, all platform multi-media centre. Based on the Xbox Media Control Centre (for hacked first gen XBoxes) Boxee incorporates the usual local netoworked media but also fires out to popoular social media packages such as last.fm, vimeo, YouTube etc. It also comes with a rich social layer of recommendaions and watch lists enabling you to check out what your friends are watching or listening to and reccommend something they might like. Best yet, it works as a menu item on an AppleTV! I’m off to the shops…

Secondly, decentralised social networking; what a downer… Facebook is still at large with it’s password antipattern and numerous annoying applications. However there have been a few gleaming lights this year namely in the shape of Twitter, possibly the most talked about application of 2008, since it looked sure-fire to go under at the start of the year. Using Twitter as a ‘data on-ramp’ (Courtesy of JayFresh) I use services such as Dopplr to publish my location, travel plans and numerous hints on life… I’m loving it.

Finally proper WiFi… this one is a bit of a misnomer since 3G was around last year, however this year it’s really taken off. Laptops are coming packed with an unlocked 3G SIM deep inside (Toshiba are doing this) and if you haven’t got one of those then a USB dongle can provide the rest. It would appear that there is no need to free up the Analog spectrum for WiFi, but it would have been a good corporate ploy for any telecommunications firm with no mobile arm *cough*.

So, with the year firmly behind us what do I want for Christmas 2009!?

The Osmosoft Crew

Right, in order for y’all to get not only a good view of what it’s like to work inside BT via my Twitter feed I will also be showing you some of the insides of BT from my own astraged persepctive. The first is one that I hold dear to my heart, Open Source.

I’ve been involved in Open Source projects throughout my studies at University, at Undergraduate I studied the use of Eclipse for software development, the use of Apache for hosting and the use of Ant for scripting deployment. In my Masters degree I studied Internet Software Systems where I studied the use of web development using the Hibernate, JSP, Spring, Wicket and ACEGI.

While I’ve officially lost the will to code, having been a coder since the age of 8 (Sinclair Spectrum and Your Sinclair magazine anyone?) I’m whole-heartedly into the concept of community driven development and the wider subject of FOSS (Free and Open Source) liscencing, particularly the (relatively) modern Creative Commons. This interest was sparked upon first joining BT and running across Mr. Jon Lister of Osmosoft.

Enough of the pre-amble, ‘what do Osmosoft do’ I hear you cry… well… Osmosoft was purchased by BT as I joined back in 2007, at the time Osmosoft was a one man band by the name of Jeremy Ruston with a single-celled, free, open source wiki called TiddlyWiki. This greatly annoyed finance as Osmosoft had no revenue, no customers and no intellectual property… so why did they bother?

As you probably know, large scale ‘enterprises’ have been blabbing about use of Open Source for a while now, be it positively or begrudgingly, however very few of these companies are saying the right thing… por ejemplo:

• The quality of software is poor
• We should use it because it’s free
• etc etc

JP Rangaswami wrote a decent ‘nail on the head’ post about the reasons for not adopting Open Source and why they’re irrelevant over here so I won’t blab on and get on with it. The reason BT aquired Osmosoft was becasue TiddlyWiki had an open, extensible framework which had gathered a community of around 25,000 people.The reason BT want this is because

BT wants to better understand the innovation which occurs at the edges of a community

it wants to be able to make use of this innovation as much as it wants to feed it’s own development time back into the wider community.

I beleive the benefits of this approach are pretty obvious but just to spell it out, yes you may get some free development time, but more importantly it helps you understand what your customer wants and where the world is going. The classic homage paid to Open Source project ‘leaders’ are that although 90% of commits to a project are abysmal it proves that someon cares about a feature or a bug enough to try and fix it. Think about it like a amrketing survey: Survey 100 people on whether they’d buy a new brand of soft drink, assume 50% said yes they’d buy it. Now offer tham a can for sale… think 50% would still buy it?

So what have Osmosoft been doing since their inception and aquisistion. Here’s a quick hose-down

• Developed a couple of products from TiddlyWiki namely RippleRap and TeamTasks which are free and openly available.
• Lead the creation of BT’s Open Source adoption message at http://bt.com/opensource
• Lead the move of BT into contribution at FOSSBazaar http://fossbazaar.com
• Presented at a million and one events inc.
• Created some crazy-cool visual psychobabble on Open Source and the web courtesy of Paul Downey

All in all a pretty successfull year, beleive me… If I still had that hackers instinct I’d be battering down their door for a job.