Category: Random

A few beautiful images from daily dose of imagery:

• Reflecting Box
• Giant Icicles of Niagara
• Frozen Falls
• Canada Trust Towers
• Corridor

I’ve visited seventeen countries so far (I’m sure I’ve left some out), and if I could remember the names of the places I went to in America I’d do the dedicated map for that too. But I can’t. Why not play too: Create your own visited country map.

Ok. I’m probably missing something really obvious, but while everyone’s talking about how Yahoo! have now relaunched their search without Google and while everyone’s debating whether it’s better now or not, why has no one commented on the really really obvious failing of Yahoo? That failing being, of course, that when you go to their bloody site your cursor isn’t automatically in the search box!? It takes me twice as long to search for something on Yahoo as it does on Google and involves me fiddling with my trackpad. What an idiot design decision (and such a simple one to fix).

So here’s a thought – albeit a short and unconvincing one that hasn’t really got much of my heart behind it – about the problem of weblog comment spammers. For those of you who are unaware of the phenomenon, basically it’s pretty simple: if your site is linked to by a well linked-to site, then Google ranks you higher in search results. Therefore if you’re someone with a desperate need to exploit the unhappy, unconfident or socially awkward by selling them Viagra or weight-loss drugs or ‘the banned CD’, the apparent best way to claw that little bit further up the greasy pole is to start posting specious comments on people’s weblogs filled with links to your commercial sites.

Or at least that’s the theory of the soulless evil self-interested wankers who undertake such activities. God knows if it works or not – certainly Google’s algorithms aren’t public. Moreover, there was a suggestion a while back that only links in which the link-text reflected something on the linked-to page would count for their weighting. So it might not work at all. Nonetheless, it continues and as it does so, each and every time, another weblog owner starts to feel more and more disillusioned with the web in which they operate and about the unscrupulousness of their fellow man. The perpetrators of this kind of spamming aren’t committing crimes against humanity, but they’re still basically scum. They’re people who would spit in your face if you couldn’t stop them and they could make a few cents out it.

There are a variety of ‘solutions’ to this kind of problem of course, with some being instituted in Typepad as we speak while others (like MT-Blacklist) have been developed by third-party developers.

One possibility that occurs to me that’s less technical in scope is a “Terms and Conditions”-style tick-box that you have to click when you post a comment. In the Terms and Conditions could be a statement that posting a comment constitutes an agreement that you will not link to any commercial sites whatsoever and that anyone who does so has basically entered into a tacit agreement to pay for whatever the length of time that link remains on the site at the rate of $100 a day (rounded up to the nearest day). You could then bill the sites concerned via their addresses in whois and take them to the small claims court if they didn’t pay-up. I’m fairly sure this wouldn’t work on the whole but it might put the wind up a few people and make them think twice about it. Has anyone got any other suggestions?

So here’s a weird sensation. I’m trying to install a Photoshop upgrade at two in the morning, because i’m jetlagged and can’t concentrate on work but can’t sleep either so I’m procrastinating. And in order to install said upgrade I’m going to have to restart my browser. So I start the process of closing down windows and tabs and adding them to a little bookmarks stash and I’m about forty-five tabs down (and about half-way through the process) when I start finding clumps of windows that I opened during presentations at ETCon. One browser window is full tabs stuffed with ubicomp and networked objects sites, another is full of robot-related material. As I grab the URLs and stuff them in a folder for later, I start to realise how clearly I remember navigating to each of the sites and how I’d determined to keep them for later. Suddenly I’m back in the auditoria, next to Phil and Paul keeping notes and listening for the hum of the infinity of extension cords that litter the carpet around us.

If they’d all been hand-outs, I’d have them in my hands – little grubby bits of paper stacked in piles here and there, clogging up bags and boxes and bookcases. Every so often I’d glance inside them to find one thing in particular and a wave of nostalgia and association would fill my head. That is – at least – until I finally snapped and threw them all away. Now until this point I’d always assumed that the web was getting rid of interactions like that – that our relationships to sites were transitory and fleeting – but now I’m not so sure. The act of “saving” and the act of “having open” are gradually merging and I can foresee a time when I haven’t closed my browser in months rather than weeks and in which I’ve managed to accumulate thousands of open windows across a whole range of applications. The stuff near the surface will be the stuff I’ve been working on recently, but I’ll be able to do an archaeology of my own browsing when I’m bored and filter through the collected papers, throwing away the things that no longer have any relevance to my life. Will we start wanting to transfer documents in their open states between computers when we upgrade? Will we expect a computer desktop to be as persistent and never-changing as a wooden one? When someone famous dies, will the biographer go through their enormous accumulated browser cache to find out what they were interested in five or ten years ago?

Public service announcement: Basically the BBC is doing a session in a couple of weeks (March 8th) in London exploring the impact of new technologies on viewing / listening behaviour and they’re looking for volunteers to come and spend the afternoon with some key managers from around the organisation (or something like that). I don’t have a lot of details about the project, but I think there’s a nominal contribution for the day and people who participate will be doing something good and positive both for the BBC and for all of us who end up consuming stuff that the BBC produces. If you’re interested in participating then you have to fill in and return this questionaire as soon as humanly possible. Unfortunately, I can’t attend as I work for the BBC (annoying but true), but I’d be interested to hear how people got on…

Well of course it’s the jet-lag that makes tired and frustrated with the UK. It’s the jet-lag that makes me want to be part of a larger and more productive internet community. It’s the jet-lag that makes me begrudge the local weather. It’s the jet-lag that makes me jealous of the extended social networks and friendships that my gay friends in the States appear to have. It’s the jet-lag that makes me miss actually going outside and having fun for a change rather than beating myself up about not doing enough extra-curricular work activities. It’s definitely the jet-lag that makes me angry about how much everything costs here. It’s almost certainly the jet-lag that makes the rent on my flat the same as a beautiful three-bedroom house in Korea Town. It’s got to be the jet-lag that makes me pine for a city with a beach or a bay or hills or features or views. Grr. I will be fine in a couple of days.

This picture – taken shortly before I flew back to London – shows lemons growing by the garage around the back of Kerry’s house. They were left uncommented upon – no big deal – they grow all over the place, all over the world. But if you’re from less sunny climes, there’s still something miraculous about lemons just growing untended. As if it were perfectly normal! With no one saying, “Ooh! Lemons!” or taking any special interest whatsoever. As I took a photo of them, Kerry’s next door neighbour cycled around the corner and gave me a very peculiar look as if to say, “Why’s that guy taking pictures of lemons? That’s so lame.”

When I think back to ETCon and my time in America my mind can’t help catching onto images of Horton Plaza in San Diego – the Escher-like mall-from-hell that kind of sat in my head and unfolded its sprawling, immoral, monstrous, mis-shapen, rhizomatic self into the nether regions of my cerebral cortex while I was busy looking for Tacos. I’ve tried to collage together a partially exploded view of the place but it’s not particularly representative. Apparently the architect wanted to create an ‘architecture of confusion’ where you would get completely immersed in the experience of the place, not want to leave and stumble upon new shops serendipitously. Personally I found the place mind-destroying, confusing, uncomfortable and not-a-little creepy. I kept seeing shops that I wanted to get to but could see no obvious way to do so and wandering down apparent walkways or paths that would suddenly turn into cul-de-sac balconies. It took me fifteen minutes to find the top floor food-court and a further ten to escape. The maps were of no help whatsoever. I kept expecting to see David Bowie glued to a ceiling twirling a glass orb on his fingertips. Very strange. Unsurprisingly, Matt loved it.

Right then. Emerging Tech is over and everyone’s heads are full and we’ve all got a little bit of a hangover from last night celebrations and socialising. I’m now back in Los Angeles, having taken the train up from San Diego with the lovely Phil and Anno. The train journey was filled with little aggravating child noises and I was sitting in the wrong direction so arrive in LA feeling queasy and dizzy. The train goes so close to the Ocean that it’s almost impossible not to want to sacrifice all future working ambitions, get out at any convenient station and run giggling into the water with warm sand between your toes. Manfully, I have resisted.

I fly back to the UK on Sunday evening – arriving back sometime around early lunchtime on Monday. I think I’m going to have to make an appeal for a long weekend off work to try and digest everything that’s been going on and make sense of it. I think my understanding of the event is even more blurry this year than last. In the meantime posting is likely to be more erratic than usual…