confectious: Notes from Where 2.0

comprehensive notes.

for me of course, the mobile stuff is where my head is at. why can’t the operators just get out of the way? they own some of the juiciest location info, apps can really easy integrate automatic location info from the handset, and mix it with some good web apps and the pc and you can have a bazillion services bloom!

i remember talking to nathan eagle, who tracks the cellids in the metro boston area and he saw them moving every so often – on purpose? just by accident? oh, the need for a database like cddb.

hello, operators, wake up! get out of the way and you will prevail! provide location info for free and everyone will swamp your networks with mind-blowing services! the mobile is perfect for this and the only thing holding it back is your 20th century thinking!

sheesh.

Link: confectious: At Where 2.0.

Some very sketchy notes follow in the extended entry.

by way of the ever amazing matt jones.

The difficulty of scanning podcasts…

I’ve been spending the past few days catching up on my manifestos from ChangeThis. They just handed over the management of the whole site to 800-CEO-READ. Nonetheless, I knew Seth Godin was one of the founders, but read about the other folks there and followed the link to Amit Gupta.

Funny guy, go read him.

But, one comment caught my eye:

Link: Amit Gupta’s Blog.

There are more blogs than I can absorb and sort through already, but as Seth points out, at least I can spend 10 seconds on a blog and know if it’s worth my time or not. Not so with a podcast. As the number of available podcasts grows, the problem of figuring out what to listen to becomes greater.

When I was at Les Blogs back at the end of April, Caterina Fake, of Flickr fame, made a comment that stuck with me: ‘you can’t scan a page of videos as you can a page of photos’.

It shook me, becuase I am a video guy and I just love posting videos from the road to my blog. But, she’s right, it’s not easy to know what a video is about or how long by just looking at a screen shot or some numbers.

The same thing will happen with podcasts, as Anil mentions. You really can’t scan them rapidly as you can with text or photos.

Indeed, this harks back to some discussions we used to have at work about audio and video and that, while both are information rich, they aren’t easy to browse and hence have a lower importance in one’s Lifeblog.

gapingvoid: how to be creative (long version)

I had the good fortune of meeting Hugh at Loïc’s Paris schmooze-fest, Les Blogs, back at the end of April. We had a nice long chat about our weird backgrounds, how we got to where we were, and a bit of musing of where we’re going. What’s funnier, I’m looking forward to the day I can afford to have Hugh fit me
with a suite or jacket. 😉

I hadn’t realized until today, but I had downloaded Hugh’s article, How to be Creative, from ChangeThis, the manifesto site (great site, BTW), a long time ago. And it was appropriate for me to read it today. In the past week, I had a juicy book deal vanish just as I was about to start the work, I turned down a really cool gig a bit too fast, and then had a potentially great and fun new gig deal stall and die just as the negotiations were getting somewhere. It is no wonder that I have been trying to get back to basics – my obsession with creating things: stories, macromolecules, experiences, relationships, stuff.

‘How to be Creative’ is not about how to become creative, but how to live being an obsessive creative person and tips on how to deal with that ‘burden’. The manifesto speaks heaps to my constant turmoil between my creative urges and my need to feed the family. It is also full of many nuggets of wisdom as only Hugh can deliver them.

I suggest that if you are the creative type, that you read this a few times.
 

More on the end of TheFeature

I’m a bit peeved and don’t feel like waiting until Monday to find out:

It’s one thing for a publication like TheFeature to fold – that’s just the way things are. But, it really stinks when 5 years worth of content are gone in an instant.

Sure, someone has to pay to keep all that conent up and the same reasons that made TheFeature disappear are the same ones that don’t permit it to just keep the contnet live – even that costs money.

In all the talk around the web, sighing about the end of TheFeature, I don’t think anyone cried for the content. But, isn’t permanence what it is all about?

Will TheFeature content ever be made available again? Heck, I have links to some really great articles.

I think I need to have a chat with the lads from TheFeature.

As an aside, I used to write for a site that vanished. I contacted the site and they sent all the content files to me on a DVD. Can something similar be available for TheFeature that others could keep or serve from elsewhere?

Carlo Longino has resurfaced at MobHappy

Yet another blog on Mobile? I think not. Russell (who comes highly recommended by mobilejoneshere) has started a new blog with a huge potential readership and has hooked in Carlo from TheFeature (RIP) as a partner.

Great duo. Good luck guys!

Link: MobHappy: Welcome Carlo.

I’m delighted to say that this also leaves Carlo free to join MobHappy, as my partner. We want to continue the best traditions of TheFeature of quality comment and opinion on everything happening in mobile technology. As both Carlo and I have always tried to do, we want to bring you the news that matters and try and analyse why it matters. And we have a unique combination of in-depth knowledge of both the US and European markets, respectively.