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.

Golden Night, By BenJam

So, an exciting month. A great trip to Morocco resulting in some nice photos and a superb trip to Slovakia snowboarding… and in true ‘right place at the right time’ style I think I’ve managed to wangle an expenses paid return trip as a photographer for Propaganda Snowboards.

In light of this I’m now ramping up my efforts in photography in the hope that I can do something new in snowboard photography, or at least not make a total prat of myself. Part of this is establishing my own (small) photography presence. Since I’ve now had this personal blog for a year and I enjoy ranting upon it I shan’t spoil it with imagery, instead I have crafted another page; benjam photography.

Rub your eye-balls all over it here benjamphotography.wordpress.com

It's free! Go on, blog away!

It would appear that, much to my surprise, that BenJam has become free on WordPress. I, for some time now, have been lamenting the inability to move over from my current TiddlyWiki based blog over at tiddlyspot.com. So I shall now spend a bit of time importing Tiddlers from there to here… Once that’s done I’ll explain why…