imran*

Blog

  • Ever Wanted To Be Somewhere Else?

    Woah. Is this what would happen if Charlie Kaufmann was writing videogames? Valve‘s Portal looks like a physics-mashing blend of Being John Malkovich and the ACME Portable Hole; the trailer is even reminiscent of the movie’s LesterCorp orientation films.

    I’ve been very critical of the state of innovation in the games industry, but it seems as though novel and original ideas are starting to break through; notably on the PC platform and the emergence of episodic games. Recent months have seen the release of Jenova Chen’s Flow thesis and Rag Doll Kung Fu. Let’s hope PS3 and Wii can keep up the trend for originality.

    And remember, There’s A Hole In The Sky Through Which Things Can Fly.

  • Reputation Banks

    ‘Identity is how you describe yourself do others; reputation is how others describe you.’

    Reputationaccounts A lot of my recent research has focussed on reputation as a function of digital identity – from the brainstorming Ian and I did on telephony reputations, to concepts that IDII students developed for me in March. In essence, is it useful to have global digital reputations, like eBay Feedback Scores, that can be applied to any transaction online?

    The Institute for the Future recently switched from trend forecasts to ‘prescient product ideas’ to illustrate its insights. One of the five Artefacts from the Future included a spoof American Express Statement of Account for reputation…an very interesting user-centic notion.

    Perhaps the way to tackle reputation in multiple contexts is to simply ‘bank’ transactions in various categories. Services like Flickr, Amazon, eBay and others would simply bank transactions with the user’s identity/reputation provider; from low value transactions, such as blog posts, comments and user reviews to borrowing items and finally higher value auctions, sales and loans.

    It’s not too difficult to see a service like Rapleaf evolving into the Root.net for reputation. More significantly, if eBay were to provide API access to Feedback Scores, or even spin-off their reputation systems, they could rapidly become the first large scale Reputation Bank.

  • Mo’ Beta Blues

    I think I’ve gone a beta too far, my VAIO is currently host to…

    It’s all an accident waiting to happen – my most frequently used desktop applications (bar iTunes) are dragging me towards a digital abyss…I’m just installing the beta for Desktop Search…just need to add Vista and my laptop is toast.

  • O’Really?

    Oreilly_1 I’m not big on AIM, with the bulk of my buddies on MSN Messenger, but curiously I noticed that my AIM buddy list is almost all current or former O’Reilly people! Lorrie Lejeune, Jon Orwant, Rael Dornfest, Nat Torkington and Surj Patel (incidentally, Lorrie, Jon and Surj are also current or former FT people too…)

    I just got my invitation to this year’s FooCamp yesterday, so I reilly must be a friend of O’Really.

    (BTW, that’s Gaim in the screenshot, I tried Triton last week, but like most AOL clients, it’s a horrendously designed piece of software!)

  • Unintentional Fruit

    Apples_orangesThere appears to be an unintentional easter egg in our new TV ad, 42 seconds in there’s an Apple!

    It’d be great to see an Apple+Orange partnership (think of the branding puns!) but maybe I’m just seeing what I wanna see…

  • Life’s Better When It’s Open…

    the future’s bright…mobile & broadband

    Openness – many gaining from a simple impulse to share and communicate. Performers, labels, MNOs, ISPs, web service providers, computer manufacturers (and myself) all gain a small piece of the pie. This is because our networks are neutral; never judging, never loving, never hating, never shaping.

    Life’s Better When It’s Open… 🙂

  • FitTorrent & Flabbr

    Mark and I have just proposed a pair of Web 2.0 peer-to-peer health and fitness services…

    • FitTorrent – share the burn!
    • Flabr – Namaste/Hola/’Allo/Salaam/Shalom lardass!

    VC funding’s on the way…

  • Belchistan

    Osama_cave My good friend Ali is due to make one of his many media appearances tommorow on the BBC Asian Network. Ali’s inadvertently become the go-to guy for the media on hip’slam so I figured some media training on live TV, press conferences, radio appearances and interviews would stand him in good stead. A few tips:

    • Don’t hold your press conferences in a cave, cradling an AK47 – even Magneto decided against doing that.
    • No beard stroking – you’ll look evil and possibly dastardly. Even on radio, it’ll sound like you’re scratching somewhere you shouldn’t be.
    • Avoid the traditional Belchistani Burp most imams automagically invoke when a microphone-enabled device is within proximity.

    I’m being glib…Ali’s charming, funny, hugely talented (he’s also first prize in Emel‘s postcard contest) and a good face for Islam in the UK. Maybe those rules above are the just the media training that Albert Kaida‘s mates all work to 😉

  • “I Had a Really Weird Dream Last Night”

    Signs_3 Echoing the Onion’s I Had a Really Weird Dream Last Night parody of Martin Luther King, I actually did have a very weird dream last night – I dreamt of a locative media application that would plot Yeti/Bigfoot/Nessie sightings onto maps, utilising the wisdom of crowds and predictive markets to anticipate the location of future sightings…I could probably have VC funding by tommorow morning in the current climate…

    MonsterMash(up).com? I’m either entering the first stages of insanity or need to sleep less 🙂

  • The Perfect Time

    The time is now 01:02:03 on 04/05/06…the perfect time 🙂