Phlogiston

I’ve been incredibly busy of late. So busy, in fact, that I’ve not been keeping up with the news. So it genuinely is with some sadness that I discovered today that Tony Wilson passed away well over a week ago. There is no doubt that the man was capable of spectacular grandiosity, narcissism, and—frankly—just generally being a wanker. There is also no doubt in my mind that he achieved genuine greatness. Factory Records were a cultural landmark: the seminal recordings of Joy Division, and, at the very least, the earliest New Order recordings; Peter Saville’s glorious but austere aesthetic. Those were some of my most formative artistic experiences, and they still resonate as strongly with me today as Miles Davis or a Reid Miles Blue Note cover. 24 Hour Party People may mercilessly lampoon him, but it is also a testament to what he achieved. There was just something about the ethos of Factory: the record sleeve with nothing on it except a catalogue number (if you didn’t know what it was, you didn’t deserve to buy it); no tours, no promotional videos, un-announced gigs (if you didn’t know it was on, you didn’t deserve to … well, you get my drift); the label owned nothing, the artist owned everything. There was just an arrogance, an elitism, and a thorough-going rejection of commercialism in favour of integrity of vision that it’s hard not to admire when it comes from a sector of Britain that was at the time thoroughly impoverished and had every reason to feel down-trodden. If you’re not convinced that what Tony Wilson created could have been anything more than just pop culture, if you think that that can’t be art then just listen to Closer by Joy Division, or better yet, go and see Control when it comes out in October.

Visiting my parents, I was saddened to learn of the death of old family friend Wally Ridley in January of this year. Wally was a record producer, songwriter and A&R man for HMV, and he was a dear friend and neighbour. He was always a friendly face whether waving from across the road or swapping gardening notes and tips with my father. But it was when he learnt—or, I suppose, heard—that I was learning to play the drums that he became a figure in my life. He was generous in the extreme with his time, inviting me over to his house to listen to his incredible collection of recordings of the great big bands, and regaling me with stories of Louie Bellson and Buddy Rich drum battles. Later he took me under his wing and taught me piano, although I must emphasize that the fact that I’m an atrocious pianist is all my fault and none his. I was greatly honoured when he took me (in what I’m guessing must have been 1983) to Abbey Road to sit in on the recording of José Carreras’s Love Is album. Seeing him at work was an education in musical sensibility in itself.

Thank you for all your kindness, patience and encouragement, Wally.

Obituaries in The Independent, The Guardian, Times Online, and The Stage.

Just a quick link: Ten predictions for XML in 2007 over at IBM Developer Works. Good stuff.

Perplexed as to why Amazon would launch two separate Question and Answer services, NowNow and AskVille I did some googling and thought I’d share what I came up with.

Firstly, it turns out that someone has already asked this on AskVille and the answers are fairly to the point. Also O’Reilly Radar has a post about the two services.

The gist of it is: AskVille is like Yahoo! Answers and NowNow is like 82ASK. NowNow is specifically set up for mobile users who need to find answers quickly. Questions are farmed out to Mechanical Turk where people are paid real cash money to answer questions.

However, Amazon have completely dropped the ball with NowNow:

1. The interface is mobile email! It’s specifically for mobile phones and yet they’ve used email instead of the obvious choice of SMS.
2. Because they’ve chosen email instead of SMS they’ve also made the billing procedure more complicated. While the service is beta it is free, but I presume that in order to use it when it goes live you will have to set up some sort of Amazon account. So you have to know in advance that you might one day need to use the service, unlike with 82ASK.
3. Mechanical Turk is notoriously badly paid, and absolutely anyone can join it. So the researchers aren’t vetted or trained like 82ASK’s texperts are, and they’re nowhere near as well paid as texperts, so they can’t guarantee the same quality of answers as 82ASK.

AskVille has some interesting twists on Yahoo! Answers. Like an online game answers earn virtual money, and there is more community vetting and rating of answers and answerers then there is on Yahoo! Answers.

If they’d been really innovative they would have merged the best bits of each into one single product with both mobile and web access. If they’d done that there would be reason for 82ASK to be worried. But as it is I think they’ve blown it.

This is a test post.

MED’s offices at The Scottish Microelectronics Centre, West Mains Road, Edinburgh

This post will self-destruct within 24 hours.

The International Herald Tribune has an article suggesting that the major record labels are finally beginning to see the light about DRM. This seems to be in keeping with a Yahoo! article I mentioned earlier. The big question is whether Apple will ever see the light on this? I suspect that one of the reasons the record companies are now beginning to back-peddle on this issue is they’ve only just realised that they’ve sold their souls to Apple. Of course it was them who insisted that an online music store would have to have DRM in the first place, and Apple were only too pleased to go along with them. But the upshot is that Apple now have an almost total monopoly on the MP3 player market and online music sales, and that clearly isn’t good for the record companies.

Cory Doctorow is the cool voice of reason in all this and I’ve blogged about him before here and here.

Update: France and Germany are joining Norway in challenging Apple over their DRM policy. Yay!

Another update: OMG. Norway have just become the coolest country in the world. They’ve outlawed iTunes! There’s discussion on Slashdot if you have the patience.

James has taken much hilarity and great delight in pointing out to me that the Google Ads on my Friendster profile are for “quit smoking” products and sites offering to help with your alcohol problem. Blimey. When I had a quick look the ads were even worse: “Patriot K-9 Services: Bomb dog teams experienced in Irag and Afghanistan. Available worldwide” and “Bomb Detection Dogs: VIP, Conferences, Executive Sniffer Dogs For Your Protection.” WTF? Apparently Google has gleaned from my Friendster profile that I am an alcoholic who smokes too much and is either a likely member of or likely target of a terror cell. Bloody hell!

Okay, so the picture of me is the only decent picture I have of myself, and it happens to be one of me smoking and holding a glass of Pimms in my hand. But how the hell does Google know what it’s a picure of? They’re basing the whole ad placement for my page on the caption—”Armed to the teeth with Marlboros and Pimms”? There’s a lot more text on that page than that.

And what about the creepy bomb-dogs-to-fight-your-war-on-terror ads? Well, I do describe myself as a “web standards nazi, liberal left-of-centre communitarian type” so clearly I’m a key part of the axis of evil.

No wonder no one wants to friend me on Friendster.

So, the iPhone has been revealed. Excuse me while I try and mop up some of this drool. This is a triumph I can hardly believe. In terms of user interface design, interaction design, and sheer bloody beauty this is a totally revolutionary device. I have never gotten excited by a phone before ever. Nor have I by an MP3 player, although I must admit to being completely seduced by the iPod Shuffle this Christmas—but that was more a “awww, it’s so pretty” thing, rather than a “oh my God, this will change my life forever” thing. As for handheld computers? I’ve never even owned one. (Although I did think the Nokia 770 was cool, at least until I saw the iPhone.) But this? This is one of the most exciting things I have ever seen. Everything about it is just new. A new way to do email, a new way to do SMS, a new way to Voicemail, a new way to interact with a device of any kind whatsoever. Hell, even the interface for making a call is new. And all of it is an improvement. It is simply one of the most amazing devices I have ever seen, and I can well imagine myself being one of those people actually queueing up to buy one when they come out here later this year. One thing is pretty sure: Blackberry, Palm and all those other has beens are pretty much dead in the water from this moment on.

And so are you.

The Sun Online has an article on 82ASK’s forthcoming book, Do Sheep Shrink in the Rain. Sadly the Sun’s articles don’t stay online for very long, so here’s the text of the article:

OKAY, fact time - the average gent lasts about seven minutes in bed, although most women need about forty minutes to reach orgasm.

It’s a frightening statistic from a book, Do Sheep Shrink In The Rain?, that sheds a whole lot of light on over 500 strange and enlightening topics.

We also learn that you can burn off up to 200 calories from an hour of sexual activity, and that masturbation is the safest form of sex, making it very good for you!

Other informative treats include the mystery of White Dog Poo revealed, along with the link between Postman Pat and The Lord Of The Rings.

We scoured the book for our favourite questions answered…

Q. How old am I?

A. According to 2004 National Statistics, the average age in the UK is 38.6 years, an increase on 1971 when it was 34.1 years. Possibly you are around this age.

Q. Can you cry underwater?

A. Yes, you can cry underwater, just like you can pee and sweat underwater. But you can’t sneeze!

Q. What is the most deadly animal?

A. According to LiveScience, the deadliest animal is the mosquito. They often carry malaria parasites, so causing deaths of more than 2 million people a year.

Q. Did Garrincha, the famous Brazilian footballer, lose his virginity to an animal? If so which animal?

A. Legend has it that Brazilian football hero Garrincha lost his virginity to a goat. He is known to have had at least 14 children and killed his mother-in-law!

Q What size is the world’s smallest penis?

A. The smallest penis record was 1 inch. Smallest erect penis was 4.75 inches. Genetics determine penis size.

Q. How many condoms are used every day?

A. According to the BBC, 10 billion condoms are used every year worldwide. Meaning 27,397,260.3 are used every day or 27,322,404.4 in a leap year!

Q. On average how many thongs does a woman own?

A. Less than they used to! In recent years thong sales have declined to only 20 per cent of the market from a high of 31 per cent. Women own on average 22 pairs, suggesting 4-5 thongs.

Q. Was fashion icon Hugo Boss responsible for the design/styling of Nazi SS officers’ uniforms?

A. During World War II, Mr Boss designed and manufactured uniforms and attire for troops, officers and other governmental Nazis including the SS.

Q. Which country invented marshmallows?

A. Marshmallows date back to ancient Egypt. Originally a honey-based sweet, flavoured and thickened with sap from root of Marshmallow plant (althea officinalis).

Q. Wool shrinks in the wash - do sheep shrink in the rain?

A. It require both water AND heat to make wool shrink; that coupled with natural oils in the wool prevent sheep from shrinking in the rain.

Do Sheep Shrink In The Rain? is available on 9th November, priced £7.99

40 minutes? Bloody hell. “Finish yourself off love, I’m off to sleep.”

Series 2 of The Secret of Eel Island, starring my niece Elysia Lukoszevieze as Sapphire, begins on Sunday 29th October at 9:30am on five.

82ASK have won yet another award: NatWest Startups Awards 2006. Best use of technology, hey? Hmmmm. I wonder if that could be in some small part because of the fantastically talented contractors they have on their tech team?

My brother-in-law Anton is a classical musician, and when he and my sister still lived in London he told me that he was chatting to his chiropractor one day and the conversation went something like this:

Chiropractor: So, what do you do for a living?
Anton: I’m a musician.
Chiropractor: Oh really? I used to be a musician too.
Anton: Yeah? What did you do?
Chiropractor: I used to be the drummer in The Clash.
Anton: *falls off table*

The thing is, he’s always making up stupid stories to wind us up, and so I was never really sure whether to believe him. Huh. Turns out he was telling the truth.

Trivia hunters ask the textperts and So, do sheep shrink in the rain?

The Guardian’s technology section has a nice article on 82ASK: The answer is just a text message away. Interestingly, they compared both 82ASK and AQA and 82ASK came out clearly on top. Yay!

The Register had an interview with Colly Myers, the founder of AQA: Are Google’s glory days behind it? It’s an interesting read, and much of what he says applies to 82ASK as well. The one thing that raised an eyebrow was The Register’s claim that in a couple of tests, no examples given, AQA gave a better service that 82ASK. Of course it turns out that Andrew Orlowski and Colly Myers are old friends from Symbian. Unless The Register wants to back that claim up with some actual data I think The Guardian’s tests are more trustworthy.

No, seriously, it’s true.

I meant to blog this earlier and then forgot. Håkon Responds to Questions About CSS over on Slashdot. Good reading if CSS is your thang.

Only one day late with this one: Opera have released Opera 9. I’ll shamelessly rip-off the summary of new features from Slashdot’s article:

The new version features correct ACID2 rendering, native support for the SVG Basic profile, a built-in BitTorrent client, support for Microsoft’s designmode and contenteditable extensions, per-site configuration, Atom support, Web Forms 2.0 support, Canvas support (and some Opera-specific extensions), NTLM authentication, some support of parts of CSS3 and lots more. The full changelog is available.

Cory Doctorow gave the Visionary Keynote address at the Red Hat Summit, and they have video of it. He’s a great speaker and it’s worth watching.

Cory Doctorow, co-editor of popular blog BoingBoing, EFF Fellow, and award-winning science fiction author, discusses the circular nature of advancement and restriction in visual art, literature, radio, television, and music. Learn about digital rights management technologies like Broadcast Flag, DMCA, Trusted Computing, and the companies we know and love who are behind this crippleware. Doctorow gleefully illustrates how they threaten consumer choice and have throughout history, and what you can—and should—do about it. The important question: Is it progress or piracy?

The Washington Post is celebrating ten years of being online with three special articles (may require free registration):

Web Site Starts from Memo, Gains Millions of Readers

A history of washingtonpost.com, from a hand-written memo in 1992 to its finally turning a profit last year.

As the Internet Grows Up, the News Industry is Forever Changed

Asks some hard questions about the future funding of serious news journalism: as readers flock to online news, will news outlets make enough revenue to fund serious journalism?

Web Users Open the Gates

Discusses how newspapers must adapt and respond to the disruptive power of the web.

“When the Web was born as a commercial content enterprise back in the mid-’90s, we thought it was about replicating — that is, ‘repurposing’ — our news and information franchises online,” Curley said. “The news, as ‘lecture,’ is giving way to the news as a ‘conversation’.”

I’ve no idea whether the articles were supposed to be read in a particular order, but placing them in the order I have makes for a nice read: how they got to where they are today; what the problem is that they face; and, some thoughts on how they need to respond.