beeker ideas

mr & mrs dopplr-smith

Two of my favourite companies, Smith and Dopplr have got together to make beautiful content.  (In fact their names aren't half bad double-barrelled - a true test of a marriage made in heaven if ever there was one).

We've worked with Smith (who do the nice hotel event stuff) at Bloom from the year nod, and I've used and admired Dopplr's traveller network thing for a while now, so it's extra exciting.

Now when I log onto Dopplr to plan trips to Bristol and Brighton I see lovely things like this

and this

and then get tempted to book fancy hotels instead of staying with my mum or Matt's.

places

I've just found Flickr's new Places thing and I'm in love with it.  This is the page for one of the best bits of our road trip.

making joost

A friend sent me an invite to Joost's beta project (and I think she got it from Holy Moly, so you may all have it, but if you don't...) I thought I'd pass on to you, because it's incredible.  Or it will be. 

I got hooked on Bridezillas last night.  Strangely, it comforted me.  I think this aberrant behaviour has something to do with me reaching the 5 weeks to go mark.  (I've done pretty well so far.  No white, no gold script, no magazines...)

my google earth

After blithely posting my Google Earth pictures of the US, I had a proper explore for the first time.  It's incredible.  Truly awe inspiring.  I'm probably late on this.  But I'm a late fan.

And nothing prepared me for how moving it is, looking for places that once meant something to you, that still do, or that might one day.  Flying from one to the other.  Like looking through old diaries.

It surprised me what I ended up looking for.

The house where I was born.

Dad's old house.

First school.

Sixth form college.

Mis(well)spent teens at the Blue Mountain club.

Mum's house.  (Urban's better than rural).

Where I stayed when I first lived in New York.  The Gershwin.  Not The Museum of Sex.

My grandfather's house, with someone else in it now.

Where I lived in France.

Where I met Matt.

A strange mixture of emotions, about which I'm ambivalent.  But I'm also shocked.  There's also something here about changing your mental map.  I don't think of places geographically.  Not certain that I want to.  But to fly like this to an old place that you just stored in your head is a weird thing.  I imagine this is a bit how people felt when telephones were invented.  Disconcerted.  Discombobulated. 

And I thought it was just a big old map.  Well worth having a look round if you haven't.

vod:pod

I've been faffing around a bit with vod:pod lately after spying their logo on a video here and I've come to the conclusion that I'm a bit in love with it.

One thing I like about blogging is that although it's widely acknowledged you don't need to be at all tecchy to do it, seeing as I was so untecchy before it's actually massively upped my tecchy credentials.  Not only because people who don't blog assume it's harder than it is and that we all perform some kind of programming wizardry that takes hours during the night (the new bedroom DJs).  But also because genuinely, I've learned lots of new things.  Like html.  Well, a tiny bit anyway.  And it's because I want to.  I want to make my blog nice, and interesting, and full.

In fact it is a bit too full at the moment.  Is anyone else feeling a bit seasick on here?  But I couldn't resist putting up a new vod:pod widget to make it worse.

Not least because I got a very nice email from Mark at vod:pod the other day.  They're small still and haven't been going long, so instead of an automated message they try to get in touch with everyone who registers personally.  A welcome and some helpful tips.

So this is my bit to try and get with the whole video thing.  Very pleased with it all.

Helpful vod:pod blog can be found here.

uncanny valley

 

Matt Jones introduced me to this theory at the coffee morning where we all gazed at him and Fiona, and I've been a bit obsessed with it ever since.  I'm not very good at science and robots, but this made lots of sense to me.  The idea's that the more human-like a robot becomes, the better we respond to it...until we reach a twilight zone called the Uncanny Valley where the robot is so freakily human like our positive reponse turns to fear and loathing.  And then I think it goes up again after.  (That's the bit I don't really get.  Wouldn't it just get freakier and freakier?)

And it keeps cropping up when I think about other things.  Like how web design can be only so slick before we start responding badly to it.  The great Tom Lubbock's column in the Independent (shame on them that I can never find his stuff on the web) last Friday reminded me of this too.  He talked about the lifelikeness of portraits, as opposed ones that gave the impression of the subject being in the room.  Bit of a tenuous connection, but with real verisimilitude, and the most accurate portraits, we're (or I am) often repelled.  Either they're sickly, or dull.  And sometimes they're just creepy.  But mostly they don't have that elusive something that makes them likeable.  Not sure that's related to Uncanny Valley at all.  But I keep thinking about it.

And what a great name.  I feel like I should write a science fiction book called that.  If only I knew the first thing about science fiction. 

an alien in second life

'[My character] sits down, exhausted, in the free reclining chair he has picked up on his travels, and wonders how to make it stop facing the wall.'

Nice article from Tim Adams on life in Second Life.  Captures the funny melancholy that I felt in there. 

2 point what?

The Guardian had a great article last weekend on leaders in 2.0 innovation.

Two points stuck out for me.  First, the various answers to the question 'what is 2.0?' were striking for their dissimilarities.  No-one really agreed.  Although one good point that crept through was that it's an overblown term of more use to marketeers than anyone else.  You got the sense these people weren't really interested in defining it.

Second, the article itself made a distinction between blogs that I'd never thought of: they must be either interesting (usually 'personal' ones) or useful (interactive/multuser sites).  The best are both, I suppose.  It clarified something for me - a simple point but an illuminating one.  It made me realise this site's about as much use as a chocolate teapot.  Note to self: try and make it a bit more interesting.

when good technology goes bad

I'm hating technology at the moment.  There was a long phase of loving it.  But right now I've limited access to a real computer and have relegated myself to the crappy ones round the corner in the internet cafe.  Can't plug in my camera.  Can't write about Prague/lost of other stuff I'd planned til I can.  Have to use rubbish pics off tinternet.  Grumble. 

I'm waiting until I only have to THINK something and then it's up there on my blog with a wicked photo. 

you too can be invisible

It's official. The first real live invisibility cloak. What is the world coming to? Or "Go ON!" as my great grandmother would have said, incredulously.