imran*

Category: Computing

  • Squeezposé

    Expos One of the things I love about my Mac is the  ‘All Windows’ feature of Exposé. I’ve gotten into the habit of squeezing my Mighty Mouse‘s side buttons to invoke Exposé, but y’know that’s only for application windows.

    With most of my day spend inside various web applications, what’d I’d find really useful is for all my open Firefox tabs to pop out when exposéd.

    Firefox 3 promises visual integration with the platform its running on – whether XP, Vista, OS X or Linux – but perhaps what’s required is interactional integration, harnessing the host platform’s unique UI features not just its appearance.

  • Open Source: A Northern Way

    Opensource_2Last week, OpenGRC‘s Jason Woodruff convened the inaugural meeting of the Northern Open Source Interest Group. The discussion brought together the UK’s three Northern regional development agencies, Leeds Met University and some interested industry people; including me 🙂

    The group sought to understand the state of open source across the North of England as well as formulate some strategies to help promote the philosophy. The discussion focussed on the business case for open source, where public funding can help promote usage and vendors, open source in education, regional projects and the creation of an Open Source Network, backed by the Northern Way.

    Surprisingly, there were no dissenting voices on the principles of open source – however, many of the vendors present felt that without public support, they were likely to lose out to larger players, particularly US open source vendors. Yorkshire Forward’s Robert Ling suggested that vendors needed to better organise themselves into an industry consortium that RDAs and Business Link can present open source options as part of their tendering services.

    Though I met some interesting people, such as MDDA’s Dave Carter, the National Computing Centre’s Ed Downs and NTI’s Linda Broughton – I found the discussion a little behind the curve as people asked questions on how money could be made from open source, how vendors could compete with vendors like Microsoft and Oracle…from my perspective, this is moot…

    • Dell’s launch of Ubuntu-enabled PCs will provide IT departments with the support they need; more large vendors will follow suit.
    • We’re in the midst of a generational shift in the technologies of choice for software developers. Almost all the students I met at Leeds Met’s Innovation North Undergraduate Showcase were using Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP for software development; as these graduates enter the market place, they’ll shape their employer’s open source stance.

    I believe that if the region wants to drive open source adoption – the best use of public assistance is in the development of thought leadership, providing support to those wishing to push the bleeding edge of open source..

    • The development of an Open Data movement to define, demand and utilise open data principles.
    • Drive the adoption of open source philosophies beyond software production – educate others in the Rules for Remix.
    • Popularise the teaching and usage of open IP models such as Creative Commons and GNU.
    • Assist the region’s successful electronics industry in moving to open source hardware like the OLPC. The region is a leader in set-top box technology…imagine what open source could do for TV 🙂

    The pragmatism asserted in last week’s meeting is necessary and useful, but part of a much wider opportunity to shape the region’s place in the global open source ecosphere. RDAs, universities and industry can make big things happen here, but they have to have big ideas.

    UPDATE: Jason’s formed a Google Group to keep the discussions alive electronically…also I wonder if we could leverage some of O’Reilly’s OSCON community to help the group. I’m thinking about you Mr. Torkington.

  • This Better Be Good…

    Welcome2007 …’cos papa needs a brand new phone (and a laptop).

  • Clickstop Computing

    About a year ago I read a pair of articles that got me thinking about how much time I spend online and whether I use that time productively…

    Clicks_2 Coupled with the recent uptick in writing about the Attention Economy, I’ve noticed that there’s a real need for computing environments that help you manage your attention healthily. I don’t mean services that analyse your clickstreams or musical tastes, but tools that simply reflect what I’m doing and helping me make better choices about my behaviour. Reflective Computing perhaps? Some ideas…

    • A daily report from my laptop that tells me how I’m spending my time – perhaps by task (email, blogs, surfing), by application or even the ratio of creation to consumption 🙂
    • The ability to set personal rules – ‘no work email after 6pm’, ‘only 1 hour of Bloglines a day’ – that help me manage my time better.
    • Subtle reminders – perhaps by IM, or Tangible Media – that police my rules and allow me to modify behaviour as circumstances change. Perhaps even suggestions like calling a friend or family member that I haven’t contacted for some time.

    Fortunately, there are a few tools beginning to emerge that at least support what I call Clickstop Computing – managing the time spent on various tasks and applications…

    • Desktop Subversibles* -several playful applets that record, aggregate and visualise the activities of a group.
    • Hoverstop Mouse – vibrates to remind carpal tunnel sufferers to take a break.
    • SlimTimer – a web based stopwatch service.
    • TimeSprite – tracks how much time you spend in different applications.

    There’s a lot of fruitful research and innovation to be had in this area – perhaps oriented around Maeda’s emerging laws of simplicity…

    —

    * I remember seeing these at Media Lab Europe in 2003, but not really understanding the significance; they were cute, but actually I think they could be really useful now 🙂

  • Test! Blogging from Word

    Word2007This is a test post from my beta edition of Word 2007 – finally a blogging client for my Typepad account!

    Blogging from Word 2007 has it’s limitations – no inline images, you can’t import a previously publisehd post and it’s not really an editor, simply a publishing feature. Nevertheless, next time I’m blogging a conference, I can carry on working offline when the wifi blows!

    I hope this is a precedent for Microsoft – extending familiar environments like Office applications to the emerging 2.0 ecosphere…but also for the industry to start offering service-oriented clients (blogging from Dreamweaver? an MT desktop) to make sporadically available web services more useful and usable when connectivity is scarce (yes, that still happens…)

    The real test for Microsoft’s openness? Will Office:mac be compatible with iWeb 😉

    UPDATE: Microsoft has just launched Windows Live Writer, a desktop authoring tools for blogs – with integrated maps from Live.com, photo manipulation and integration with Typepad, LiveJournal, WordPress, Blogger and others.

  • Tag-tical Awareness

    Back in January 2005, as Flickr and del.icio.us drove the adoption of tags, Brian Dear speculated (as did I) on the emergence of federated tagging; a Google for your tags – Taggle.

    TagticalNow, eighteen months later tags are everywhere – Technorati, Flickr, del.icio.us, 43 Things, Gmail, Vox, YouTube, Ning, Last.FM and our very own Simpatico, Klippr and Comcentrix. Tags have become an essential piece of Web 2.0 infrastructure, providing the defacto mechanism for organising and navigating information.

    Yet, no metaservices have arisen to enable users to pivot through their increasingly dense cloud of tagged messages, photos, songs, post and videos. Most of the services listed above make a user’s tags available through API access, but no one has joined up the dots – the tagsonomy/folksonomy/tagosphere remains fragmented.

    What I’d like to see…

    • Use of tag microformats in sites that support tagging – would that be rel-tag, xFolk or hReview?
    • A service that aggregated my tags and everyone’s tags – from known tag-based apps and items with microformatted content
    • A great Stamen-powered visualisation+UI, that lets me glance, pivot, find, search and scan; through people, time, places, spaces and things.

    C’mon – let’s taggle this problem!

  • Dual Core Apple

    Apple So it’s true – but in all the press coverage, I’ve yet to see someone make the obvious dual-core Apple pun. Shame on you tech press.