Fragment my convergence

Mobile and digital is making everything possible, and breaking down boundaries between products, services and utility. And it is happening at speed.

This is not about media convergence. It's about something bigger. Things change. Things change so fast that sometimes, it's hard to see it. We tend to think about our businesses and our lives in terms of keeping up with change.

The New Convergence by Mitch Joel, ends on the question: what do you think?

I think it will go to pieces for a while

In that the world we've had for a few years now, with Google and Facebook dominating the web, and Apple driving mobile and apps forward is changing into a plethora of markets, devices, ideas and changes.

Kickstarter is one force driving that forward. Products like the Pebble e-paper watch sold for $10 million unseen, untested and with out reviews. It could have sucked. But it still got made and changed how a watch and a remote and a sensor display is viewed.

Sure it has a lot of potential for improvement, but compare the Newton to the iPad and add in innovation at a digital pace - and five or ten years down the road you might be able to "drag" any app from your main device onto one or more support devices, to show the data you need right now just right.

Platforms like Arduino and the Raspberry Pi are making the "somewhat smart" gadget even more affordable and providing a huge step up to total diy. We put up a Pi showing 3 twitter feeds on a dedicated screen, at a fraction of the cost of a whole laptop, and also a lot cheaper than trying to get a  better gpu. Because it was disposable, we might as well give it a shot.

Mobile is back in the trenches, Android gaining ground as the smart phones move into mass market and lower income brackets, and as the top of the line models outstrip the 5 for power, style and innovation. Microsoft still pushing, with some Nokia steam. Blackberry not so much in Europe, but die hards in the US pushing pushing. And Samsung? Making everything from TV to fridge, and a lot in between. Will they make a substantial move, or continue to play the horses?

And startups? With Amazon, Google, Microsoft and more pushing the cloud solutions onwards, upwards and all over every day, the barriers to entry are mostly about attention.

So, change is here.

It will be here for a long time.
It might not get faster - at least not on the same scale as the last two decades,
but it will certainly be stranger.

Strike a pose - there IS something to it

Another non-online Wired piece - on the Harvard Business School (assistant) professor - Amy Cuddy - and her work on body language as a life hack.

Turns out that not only will visualizing an action help you as you perform it, but doing "high power poses" before you do an interview or a performance will makes you (appear) more competent and enthusiastic!

Says a lot about mind over matter - and the old adage of "think happy thoughts". Not only at the moment influences you and thereby the audience. But up front actions spill through.

Does that makes us really simple mammals, or extremely adaptable? Borderline magic? You don't see me doing it, yet it changes how you see me.

How many other factors transfer across time? Will smiling a lot before a meeting transfer into a good mood regardless of expressions during the meeting? And does it work when the audience is aware of it, looking more intently on the actual performance and trying to read the body language behind the body language?


Where do I sign up for taking a masters degree and digging into this? Seriously, it sparks of some many questions and permutations. 



Hungry for more, check out the video of Amy Cuddy from PopTech



Or just get it on with Madonna - Vogue your way into the good spot.

Substitution - it really subs to be you

Seth, in an email this time - Domino;

A New York City publisher probably needs $2000 a page to acquire, edit, typeset, print and distribute a book (making up a number from thin air). A self-published ebook author needs $1 a page.
That’s not a cost-efficiency. That’s a totally different industry. But the if the viewer/reader doesn’t treat the two products as fundamentally different, if reading or watching one is a replacement for the other, then a crisis is right around the corner.

Dis-intermediation is one thing. But the democratization of production? Making everything digital, and then making the tools free? That is the real "killer".

And no, it is not the "same" tools as used by the pros, but for a lot of things, good enough is more than enough. It doesn't need to have 80 footnotes for each chapter if that is hard to make, it can just have a free companion book of notes, sources and ideas for further reading.


Take the Flinch, by Julien Smith. Yes, literally take it. It is free. Written, proofed, edited and with a cover. Uploaded to Amazon, hosted and distributed by them as well. All for free. Because the ideas are what matters. Getting more people exposed to it means more people hcaniging their life and our world.

Sure it might also give a boost to the rest of the Domino back catalog, some more traction for the blog, and related sales for Amazon of Pressfield amongst others. But the main point is that putting out a book for free can be close to free.

And it goes for a lot of other media content as well. The variety of choice enabled by global instant distribution, combined with digital back catalogs? Stunning.

Case in point; audio content and yours truly.

 (Caution; shameless self-links ahead - back in time)


Once upon a time audio was music. And music was cd's (well a few records and a bunch of tapes, but it took off with the shiny disc).

As I grew older I picked up back catalog for artists I liked, one or five golden oldies, and new releases every now and then. Then I had a rather modest 150. That is one a week for three years.

Then I got online radio streaming - and so I could listen any time and "any where"(well, at uni anyway). Whole new world, less planned music, more new and unknown stuff.

Then I got the Zen Micro. And started making digital copies of those 150 cd's. And enjoying them all over again in new ways.

Then I got podcasts - and suddenly a whole new world of audio content on the go poured in. First a lot of "talk". The stories as Escapepod led to Podcastle and Pseudopod. And now music at work - Tiesto, Gareth Emery, Sebastien B keeps me in the zone when coding or doing number crunching.

So from simply music, today there are four audio content sets competing for my time;

• 150+ albums in iTunes 
• DAB and streaming Pinnell radio
• Music podcasts at work
• Assorted podcasts on the go

Most of them at little or no cost to me beyond already sunk cost such as the radio, the internet connection and the iPhone.

And then there is Spotify and Wimp...


- ...and the sun is back - again - mixed day today, but bright summer nights keeps the sun on past 21:00 ...

Neuro-pattern-light

I hate the new blogger. It killed the original version of this post as I hit save. Then I tested a new blank post and it failed again. Could somebody please tell Google that there is this thing called iPad, and if their solutions continue to work as poorly a lot of users are up for grabs. I have already stopped most my newsletters to gmail because the use is a hassle (yeah, could add it as account, but with work email that was a hassle in the first iteration at least)


And now tumblr looks really good, why even wordpress is starting to come around to ios as a platform of choice with the app growing stronger every incremental release..




On to the recreation, thankfully only two paras in before hit the save, but still two too many...

Neuro-pattern-light...or why I love william gibsons writing.

I think it has a lot to do with growing up alongside his three trilogies.

Read neuromancer et al in early teens at school, when computers consisted of commodore 64 (or a 128 as I had), used mainly for games and the occasional demo. A friends father had a Mac that we got to use for a few school projects - typing up the report and putting in some pictures.

Then picked up the bridge books more or less at university, where dot com was becoming a phrase, but a bit before the boom/bust really started. Back when Fast Company was still mostly about business trends.

And pattern rec is one of the last printed books I bought (fiction and regular non fiction at least) - spook country and zero history were delivered directly to a kindle or the kindle app on iPad. Read digitally and instantly on release. No time lag for cross Atlantic distribution or priorities.

My teens, my twenties, my thirties. As the world has gone digital and then some, so has my life. as the future has become today, so his books have merged into "reality", blurring the lines more with each passing chapter.


For books and background, check the Amazon author page

INTERVIEWER: For someone who so often writes about the future of technology, you seem to have a real romance for artifacts of earlier eras.
GIBSON: It’s harder to imagine the past that went away than it is to imagine the future. What we were prior to our latest batch of technology is, in a way, unknowable.... very, very difficult to conceive of a world in which there is no possibility of audio recording at all. Some people were extremely upset by the first Edison recordings. ... It sounded like the devil, they said

 - Paris Review

The magic of not having. So good quote - had to brutally trim it down a bit, because you really should go over there and read the whole thing. Now. Come back afterwards. More to come here as well...






Because it is easy to add in the blanks, merge things (like a mobile phone and a mp3 player... Or a pc and a phone), but close to impossible to even remember back five or ten years, how much of a leap a simple innovation like the Palm Pilot was. An actual digital assistant in your hand. And it could do other things. Small games. Like magic.

Emergent technologies were irreversibly altering their landscape. Bleak House is a quintessential Victorian text, but it is also probably the best steam­punk landscape that will ever be. Dickens really nailed it, especially in those proto-Ballardian passages in which everything in nature has been damaged by heavy industry.

More of Dickens is definitely on my too read list, inspired this time by a piece on new bio on him. The British televised versions are great, and the podcast librivox version of two cities is killer. Like Stackpole, I firmly believe that the model he used to serialize his fiction is finding a new life in terms of shorter ebooks, faster turnaround for stories and generally more adaptability to reader expectations. 

... I remember walking past a video arcade,... seeing kids playing those old-fashioned console-style plywood video games... were so physically involved, it seemed to me that what they wanted was to be inside the games

...one day, I walked by a bus stop and there was an Apple poster. ... holding a life-size representation of a real-life computer that was not much bigger than a laptop is today. Everyone is going to have one of these, I thought, and everyone is going to want to live inside them. 

Woot! Loop in time. Arcade games as the driver, then apple as the trigger for seeing it "everywhere". Merging insights and intuition, that's what makes the book so much more than just a cool story. 


Today Apple is slowly moving us away from the PC age, into mobile and tactile  with the iOS touch interface. And once more games are actively taking a huge part in both pushing the hardware (thereby feeding the need for upgrades and rapid development) and the user interface - Angry Birds as touch training. Speed, precision and flexibility. 


The best way to get someone comfortable with a mouse back in the win 3 age was Solitare or Minesweeper. Sit them down, show them some serious stuff, then give them a ten minute "break" - after opening the program. We learn when we want to learn, when there is a clear reward rather than just an obligation. 

I’ve always been taken aback by the assumption that my vision is fundamentally dystopian. I suspect that the people who say I’m dystopian must be living completely sheltered and fortunate lives. The world is filled with much nastier places than my inventions, places that the denizens of the Sprawl would find it punishment to be relocated to, and a lot of those places seem to be steadily getting worse.

Putting things in perspective? How to compare to Dickens? Is he dystopian or simply telling of the underbelly of the dressed up pig? 


I for one didn't really think of Neuromancer as dark at the time, compared to something like Alien it was a happy place all around, with cool tech and the chance of making it big. 


That is one thing that is changed with the latest novels - or perhaps as much with my reading and views - sure there is a potential big score, but you get the feeling that just getting out or onwards is as much of a goal for the characters. 


The settings are more "glamour" compared to the first books, but in many ways it still feels more empty and forsaken. The art hidden from view, giving only a select few the enjoyment or the experience. The secret clips and the chase for just a little bit more.






First read about the interview care of one of the @greatdismal musing, but at that time the only online version was via a sub to P.R, so that was $5 lost revenue for them, as I'd have gladly paid for just the issue or the article (more or less the cost of a single copy newspaper here, so comparable value)

But then I saw it rt and checked the link - lo and behold, the full version is up. So it seemed a great test for iOs 5 reader mode, and also for the new +style blogger. First is OK, but lacks page jump/pagination (skip full screen height down). 


The other is another crappy google conversion. As a blog writer, the original blogger was as good as or better than any seen since. New might be ok on pc, but today that is close to irrelevant. Same reason can't really care about plus itself. Plain sucks compared to any twitter app.

iMagazine, iVideo or iPaper?

Playing around with the iPad it is fun to read and see a lot of different experiments and approaches to presenting content, both in terms of packages, user interaction models and of course payment models ranging from totally free, via ad supported to direct paid or subscription.

The Wired app was a break-out hit in its first incarnation - and judging from the Adobe promo video, there is still a ways to go within their planned scope. And while it has taken a bit of flack for being mainly an early 90-ies style interacitve cd-rom style solution it is a good read. My major gripe is the lack of clear indication of reading direction (ie is there more content down below, or should I swipe sideways to move forward - can't be to hard to add in a couple of options for this; 1. default - as now, 2. full - swipe sideways takes next page no matter what, 3. fallback - swipe down takes next if no content, sideways still skips)

Naturally as a long time reader of Wired I'm a bit biased, but the idea that magazines in general might be better suited for taking advantage of the tablet style solutions is interesting none the less. They already have a modest to long cycle with their readers. They have a lot of focus on flexible fullpage and multi page layouts. And the content generally is intended to stand on its own.

At least that seems true in terms of dedicated apps - while the "webapps" space seems ideally suited to more normal news-oriented organizations, where having direct access, instant updates and pretty much full control over both content and technology is an asset. Especially with frameworks like Sencha Touch (or iUI) taking a bit of the "grunt work", the road to an extended experience seems feasible.

- ...and the sun might break through the clouds any moment ...

Going for broke, atomic or bust

There is room for one more test, this time after updating the blogger editor (now it actually says that it cant handle compose mode...) - and using the Atomic tabbed browser as the means of multitasking across the way of the web.

VeryShortStory It never really seemed right killing perfect strangers, but having come from a small family, I'd run out of options.

- twitter ultra short stories, and even automated thsirts over at the website

Another fun source of content is the twaiku, using twitterto send haiku poems around the world

So far the fans here in atomic actually do seem a bit smoother than the dual view of duet, especially with a custom search box for instant wikipedia goodness

Sing me a sing - with Duet

Trying o a new browser for the iPad, namely Duet,
Which should allow me to use the blogger interface along with the other window for grabbing and inserting links... Or thats the plan anyways.
And it seems to work pretty well, the link above is to an article in the New Yorker, on dystopian childrens books, supposedly a new trend or at least a bit more prominent than previously.
With this app it might actually be possible to get some writing done here again, with a small boy in the house pulling out the laptop just isn't as feasible, but a few minutes on the iPad is doable.
-...and the sun shines brightly still, 'tis summertime in Norway for sure...

digital paper - for real?

Plastic Logic Product: "foray into the market will begin in the second half of 2009 with pilots, and trials with key partners."

Sound almost to good to be true - size of a normal document, thinner than a lot of power point decks if printed, wired and wireless access.

A very thin Wikipedia entry, but at least the foundation from Cambridge does seem sound enough in terms of tech know-how, not to mention giving a time frame rather than just a "prepare to be dazzled" type statement boost the probability a bit.

There is definitely a solid niche for a "professional iPod" - something light and portable (in your pocket vs in your hand), able to give you a broad set of content for use (music and videos vs doucments and magazines) and stay updated (mail, twitter etc)

Personally i'd love to play around with a kindle 2 or dx - mostly in order to buy books instantly, read them and then avoid taking up shelfspace afterwards. Lots of business books and paperbacks that really only need one read, bordering on disposable entertainment - and chances are if the need to re-read is there in a year or three, the device will still be around

A lot of consumer electronics don't burn out, but fade away under a layer of dust - still useable but replaced by the new toy on the shelves.

There is still a Visor stuck in the closet downstairs - "The Visor Deluxe had the option of translucent colored models, and had eight megabytes of onboard memory. " [wp]
Light blue and with an expansion slot for endless opourtunities...
Now I have a touch with 16gb of storage here, and a cell with a gig sd card downstairs. And both the app store and online access for quite a wide array of tasks.

...and the sun keeps it nice and light late, late into the evenings - summer is just about here...

å æqéå
What do you want to do
Hva vil du finne på i dag ?
Ø

Yes it took a while to find the extra letters hidden on a hold n drag
tab with the keyboard here. But now it seems to work like a charm.

Writing this with easy writer, quite nice for the task at hand. And
responsive as well. So it is more a matter of mind over fingers than
system lag.

Let the musing begin!
@touch

- touching you

Got it

a month later? yeah. fiters and timeouts suxor

Updated the touch, bought the album from sirenia and picked up å bit of apps.
Now to test the wifi at work tomorrow.
- touching you

STATUS and update:

been trying to post from and via assortedmobile devices, more for fun than for real content. So far they have mostly been getting stuck either outbound or on the blog side, but today it seems to make a bit of a difference - the gmail sent one made it through (from gmail on the laptop, will have to have another go from the touch) While both using the webmail and the htc setup on the company mail keeps getting hung up in the spam filter. More worriesome is that with the new system we get a report, but even after releasing the messages it seems they ony bouce back into our system rather than going out as they ought to.

Plan for now: do a quick deploy and update on the site, then tomorrow install IE8 and add in the "comp mode" meta at first, and do some validation testing to see what doesn't play nice.

convenience or bust

saw an ad for Sirenia and their new album 13th floor in nemi
click itunes search. Entered sir and there it was atop the list. Quick listen to preview of three songs and hello downloads.
Instant and half price compared to shop. -
a bit larger touch and the future really is digital, instant and allways on...

...and the sun shone brightly on the white expanse of snow ...

immobile

So this is direct from the touch - online at blogger. Had to swap into HTML edit mode to get typing, but now it works lime a charm.
the real topic: Clive t. Again. 17.01 "this I'd your brain onvideo"
how will them glut of content affect the way we think?
will video take another major step in our lives?
most people spend a lot of more time on tv than reading books or papers. But when we study it I'd mostly books. How will that change with tons of related video? Courses, lectures, experiments like the flying bottles... Can we learn and remember as well or better with visual aids, as was mentioned on spos: 40% are auditory that makes podcasts as good as personal lectures.

Sorry, no copy means no links now. Will try to go back later and add in the most relevant ones.also loving the double space for point trick. Wondering if there are any others. Google next :D pretty code time on the responses as well when typing quickly. Loving it.
...and the sun won't shine, so no pictures today of the winter wonderland outside...