Category: Geek

“She cannae take it anymore Cap’n!”

Swung by the Pink Pigeon offices to see Benny yesterday, we’re both trying to help each other out as the end of NaVloPoMo approaches fast and well, it’s always easier filming off the cuff stuff when you’ve someone else to bounce off.

Something to lighten the mood if you will.

This is us, messing about.. As usual.

Done here? Want more? Seriously… I’m still laughing at what Benny managed to pull together from the ten minutes of madness that we spent larking around leading up to the above exchange.

Heh.

Just Qik-ly…

This evening I attended the Nokia N900 meetup event in London town and, with my very own brand new Nokia N900, I managed to get a Qik video stream of the demo they gave…

It’s a bit dark and there’s no fancy intro, but I have no time to clean it up so I’m just going to throw it up raw.

http://qik.com/swfs/qikPlayer4.swf

The TV screen is a live TV-out from the device itself and the UI really is that smooth.

I’ll probably write up a bigger review for The Really Mobile Project at some point but in the meantime, I guess this is my vlomo09 entry…

Cheers.

About those velvet ropes

A post about Google Wave.

Back at the turn of the year, Peter Kim launched his ‘social media predictions for 2009‘. The paper, downloadable in PDF format, featured forward thinking insights from such social web luminaries as Jason Falls, Charlene Li and one of my favourite players in this space, Chris Brogan.

The predictions themselves make for interesting reading and I would (even now), recommend going back and taking a look if you have the opportunity. To cut to the chase though, it was the thoughts from Mr Brogan that stood out the most for me, mainly around his notion of the ‘velvet-rope social network’.

“I believe we’ll have more focused velvet-rope social networks in 2009 where the tools and the goals match verticals instead of the general commons of Facebook.”

Nicely put. At the time I remember agreeing with the idea, but I wasn’t entirely sure about the execution. Chris himself has returned to the subject a number of times on his own blog (often with examples). However, the reason this particular thought came back to me recently was in large part, thanks to Google Wave.

Google Wave is currently in private beta and the invites only started pouring out into the web just under a fortnight ago. With them came the promise of a new dawn in co-working, a new way of true collaboration on a global scale…  A brand new vision of the future.

Except that so far, based on at least 99% of my own experiences at least, no one has found any real use for it.

Well that is until I realised exactly what it is.

Ready?

Google Wave is, to my mind at least, one of Brogan’s new velvet roped social networks.

You open your Wave (this is your network) and invite in whoever you like to join you (as long as they are on Wave). This is, of course absolutely by invitation only. One inside you can chat, share and exchange.. basically do anything you would do normally just within the comfort of the Wave.

As Brogan said: “…the tools and the goals match verticals…”

But there’s more.

The answer? They’re both velvet-rope social networks. Why? Allow me to explain.

Not soon after I started thinking about Google Wave, I realised that another service from the big G shares the same commonalities as the velvet-rope social network: Google Reader.

Google Reader is not too dissimilar. The sharing functionality ‘baked in’ to the UI of the RSS service allows me to one-click push the stories that I’m reading out to my buddies on Google Talk (Google’s Instant Messenger service, aka ‘GTalk’). These stories then appear in my contact’s own Greader – sometimes with an added note from me – and that, is my choice.

I like sharing. I also like, occasionally picking and choosing with whom I share.

Is this the way forward?

Maybe. The point is, Google Reader is cool. I like it. I like sharing stories with my friends and I like them sharing with me. It’s closed (to a point) and I know who I’m sharing with.

Google Wave, while being no replacement for email or IM, is actually really quite useful for actually doing some work. Of the 36 ‘waves’ I have going on at the moment; one is for a specific project, a handful of massive group chats – the IM equivalent of an MMORPG (eesh), – and the rest are along the lines of ‘Is this thing on?’, ‘testing’ and my own favourite, ‘is this actually the future?’

It’s closed, for now. If you have an invite, find the people you want to work with and start a new collaborative project.

Treat it right, and you’ll yield results.
Don’t, and you’ll never see the benefit.

Thanks for stopping by.
–

Additional reading: “What problems does Google Wave solve?” (via Renate Nyborg)

For the Love of Music

I am… a Mobile Geek.

Oooh… Shiny!

This may not be brand new information to many of you, but to others – it might.

Reason being, I don’t tend to write that much about my mobile geekery here in My Happy Place, which is kind of silly really given how happy my mobile life makes me sometimes. But the motivation for this is that whenever I do have something mobile-related to say, I use my platform over on Mobile Industry Review (MIR), formerly – and now incorporating – SMS Text News, to get the message out.

So this post comes forthwith for two reasons. First up I have to tell you about something that I’ve been using for quite some time on my N95 8GB but which recently had quite an awesome little update. The second is more of a question for you dear readers… Which I’ll come to later.

As I mentioned – I’d normally use MIR to put this up but given the social/sharing elements and the happiness that this one app bestows upon me, I thought I’d share it here..

I want to tell you about a thing called Mobbler.

Mobbler is a 3rd party application that you download and install onto your S60 Nokia device, (so that’s pretty much any N or E series device plus a few others thrown in for good measure) which, once activated, acts like Last.fm for your mobile.

If you’re a Last.fm user, (and if you’re not, why not? Go and sign up now). this is cool for many reasons:

First up you can stream music from any of Last’s ‘radio’ stations – chosen by the usual themes of artist, tag, user, etc… You can stream music that you’ve previously ‘loved’ and you can also stream music from any of the playlists that you may’ve pre-defined on the web interface…

All of this delivered over-the-air (OTA) via your network/carrier – Tres Cool.
Oo yeah, all of this streaming means you might want some kind of data bundle…
Don’t forget that.

But, that’s not all, the real reason I HEART Mobbler so much, is that it allows me to share.

As you can see from the image above, right now I’m listening to Justice – One Minute to Midnight. This track is, along with about a thousand others, stored on my handset’s 8GB memory and is playing through the phone’s onboard MP3 player.. and Mobbler, in it’s wondrous fantasticness, is broadcasting this choice of track straight to my Last.fm user profile.

Which means you can go there and see what I’m listening to RIGHT NOW.
Instant sharing of what music I’m into, what’s making me strut and what is making me grin.

Awesome.
Thing is…

More and more recently my appreciation for all things musical has grown tenfold. From seeking out great new tunes to going to fantastic gigs or to just simply taking the time to really enjoy the emotional connection that certain compositions can have on the soul… Any and all of the above can make for a truly awe-inspiring experience.

Admittedly, having a trusted guide that can aid you through the mire of mediocrity that can sometimes exist on today’s CD shelves, (I’m sorry what? Who actually buys CDs anymore?!), can be a BIG help – but if you look hard enough, there are some true gems out there folks.. and being able to share these with you, whether I’m sat busy at my desk or on the move with my mobile, makes me a very happy Whatley indeed.

Oh and ‘reason for posting number two’…?
That question I mentioned?
I’ve thought about it now… and it doesn’t matter.

Thanks for reading folks.

🙂

The Man from Auntie

“We interupt this broadcast to bring you an important message…”

I mentioned last week (amongst other things) that I would be ‘back once again to some cool BBC-based activities’ that I couldn’t actually talk about. Well, I could but I didn’t want to until it was all done, dusted and in the bag as it were… Well in the bag it is so.. Now I can tell you 🙂

This past weekend I was invited onto BBC Radio Five Live‘s ‘Pods & Blogs‘ programme to talk about all things mobile. Well, not all things mobile, (that’d be silly), but just mobile news-based stuff. Things like the T-Mobile G1 ‘Google Phone’, (which I actually got to have a play with a while back), the Firefox ‘Fennec’ Mobile Browser, The Future of Mobile Conference, Mobile Broadband and the new Sony Ericsson W595.

So – for your listening pleasure – I’ve put a little Ovi file together of the whole show. It’s about 24mins long and I come on around the 18min mark. Hope you like it…

http://share.ovi.com/flash/audioplayer.aspx?media=whatleydude.10090&channelname=whatleydude.public

You can download the show from the Pods & Blogs website itself but I think it’s only up for a week, so get it quick! 😉

In the meantime, writing this up reminded me of the last time I did some stuff with the Beeb. Which, thinking on it, I don’t think I actually blogged about… Hmm. Maybe I should rectify that then? If it’s not too late..

Yeah ok, so way back in March I was invited onto BBC Radio 4‘s Today Programme on behalf of my employer, SpinVox, to talk about ‘The Business of Blogging’… i.e.: What is it I actually do for SpinVox and why (I think) it is important that brands have a presence in the blogosphere..
Because it is y’know… Important.

Rory Cellan-Jones gave his full write-up not long after the show aired but, in keeping with the Ovi multimedia theme of this post – you can listen to that particular segment of the show down below – with thanks to Neil from iGadget Life for capturing it for me.

http://share.ovi.com/flash/audioplayer.aspx?media=nechbi.10012&channelname=nechbi.igadgetlife

As ever, your thoughts and feedback are welcome.

J.

“What Wii did on Sunday…”

First official ‘proper’ post of the new blog site, AHOY!

How to make a Minority Report-esque interface using your Nintendo Wii!
(by yours truly and geekyouup aka Richie Hyndman of Mippin fame)

🙂

Now, this all happened thanks to the awesome social media world of the internet, how?

Well the thing is, I (along with a few others) like to organise Mario Kart Wii competitions over Twitter.
So far so Nintendo Geek…

But ‘Wadds‘ – aka Stephen Waddington, Managing Director of Rainer PR – spotted this regular occurrence and decided to share that he’d given up playing games on his Wii and how he now is all about creating something like this.

“Wow, cool!”

I took that link, threw it at Richie and he came straight back to me and said:

“Come over Sunday, let’s do it!”

ROCK. ON.

So – Big love to Johnny Chung Lee for showing us the way – and also bonus props to Stephen for giving us some blog love first thing this morning!

Nice work all round,
Cheers.

🙂

MIR: The Mobile Geek of Glastonbury: Gadgets

Evening readers, Whatley here, writing this on my laptop en route to Pilton for the festival that is known as Glastonbury.

As you know from my last post, the multitude of tools available to the modern day, festival going Mobile Geek really is quite something… So here, for your pleasure, is a quick rundown of what I am taking with me, starting with the hardware…

Handsets:

I’ve packed my N95, my N95 8GB and my E61i. The E61i is perfect as an emergency, backup handset as the battery on that baby is HUGE and it lasts FOREVER (well, about 5 days). So if it all goes pear-shaped I can resort to using that. The N95s I’m going to tag-team throughout the day/festival. One to carry with me and one to charge. Speaking of chargers…

Power:

When it comes to keeping the batteries fully topped up, I?ve covered all bases with this one. I’ve got a Nokia DC-8 battery charger, bought this today, £25. Steep, but I?m a sucker for the branded stuff (and it’s worked OK so far).

I’ve also got a Free Loader Solar Charger (see below). This thing gets kudos just for the fact that out of all of the chargers, this was the only one that came with one for the Nintendo DS. Which has made my friends very happy indeed; Mario Kart for them while I type this passing Stone Henge, (fact).

Finally, I have this ‘GoHello’ wind-up charger and, as Ben Smith so rightly said in a recent Mobile Industry Review podcast – “…they ain’t called wind-ups for nothing”.

Seriously, I’ve got nothing out of this thing yet. Nothing. Boo.

On top of all that lot, I’ve got four (count ’em), N95 batteries. All fully charged before departure so let’s see how long they last shall we?! 🙂

Software:

Well stuff like Qik, Google Maps, VOX, SpinVox, Moblog etc… I kinda covered this last time round. I want to talk about the new stuff. Since writing that original piece I?’ve acquired two pieces of software; both of which have – so far – impressed me much.
First up is ViewRanger. I downloaded this earlier in the week and my thought was: What a load of rubbish!
However…
THEN I downloaded the Glastonbury specific maps – aka Worthy Farm etc, and WOW! Impressed!
Check out this screenshot:

You can see that they’ve pre-loaded the app with the relative points of interest. Which is so awesome; things like cash machines, toilets, stages etc… And on top of that if I hit ‘Lock to GPS’ it’ll tell me where I am.
Rock on. I cannot wait to use this properly 🙂

The other piece of software is from Orange. It’s called GlastoNav and at first I really couldn’t get this to work..

Eek!

A few days after this, once they had ironed out the gremlins and suchlike, this little app has turned out to be very handy indeed. Not only can I look at the (much richer interpretation) of the map, but also I can plan my schedule for the event… and THEN I can share that schedule with my fellow festival-goers!

So far (again), this has really impressed me 🙂

For actual mobile stuff, that’s all.

But, I have also been given some other cool pieces of gadgetry to use/play with. One of which is the Flip video camera. This is something that I think Ewan has spoken about a fair amount – my only problem with it however is that once my hour of recording is up, I can’t upload it until I get to a USB connection.
Bah! We’ll see how I get on with that one…

The other piece of REALLY COOL stuff I’ve been given is this Loc8tor device which, hand on heart, is the best thing yet (in theory anyway).

I attach the small part to something I might lose – i.e. my friends – and then, if I lose them, I switch the big part on and it beeps to tell me how close I am etc…
I had a play before I left the house and it rocked my socks.

So… again, we’ll see how we get on.

That’s it from me, I’m nearly at Glastonbury and my laptop is about to die. Thanks to Ben Smith for editing this for me and putting the media in etc…

You can keep up with my exploits at http://www.glastonblog.co.uk

See you soon!

J.

The iPhone aka The iBone

Before I hit you up with Part 2 of my Adventures in Soho, a brief comedic interlude:

That up there ^ is my friend’s iPhone, last week after his dog had got hold of it. Ouch.
Cue much laughter, finger pointing and merriment at his expense.
The iPhone’s screen is strong. But it seems it isn’t that strong…

‘Dave’ is a bit upset about this (I’ve changed his name to save him further embarrassment)

*giggle*

Anyway – after snapping that pic I asked ‘Dave’ if I could blog it, “Sure..” he said, “…and I’ll update you too.”

“Update?”

“Yep. Get this…”

Turns out, after the aforementioned mauling, Dave tried to claim on his home contents insurance. Note: ‘Tried’.
He has since discovered that he can’t actually claim ‘accidental damage’ as the dog did it deliberately.

(clearly a Nokia fan then)

After that Dave tried to claim it on his business insurance. Still no dice. Thing is, this policy doesn’t cover ‘phones‘.
It covers PDAs. Dave is trying to claim the iPhone is a PDA –

“…which it is!” Dave tells me…

However, the insurance company have never had a claim for an iPhone before…
(they don’t even know how to spell it look)

…and what with it having the word ‘Phone’ in its name, Dave’s hitting another brick wall.

Double Ouch.

Insurance companies can be tough little beggars at the best of times (trust me – I know) but are they in the right in this instance?

Is the iPhone a PDA? Or is it a Phone?

‘Dave’ sold his dog over the weekend.. and I am really, REALLY not kidding.
He was that upset.

So much for man’s best friend…

Major Wii Firmware Update – V 3.0

Good morning folks,

Just a quick note to say to all you fellow Wii owners out there… Keep a look out for that little blue light today.
That there means that there’s an update waiting to be downloaded…

Go on…
Go get it…

A lot of stuff has been written about this already – most of which I’m about to repeat – HOWEVER!

Stay ’til the end and I’ll exclusively reveal something that has yet to be reported that a few gamers that I know stumbled across this very morning…

Ok – here’s the lowdown,

The rest is as follows…

Main Menu Revisions

  • Clock Display
  • The Disc turns 180-degrees on the Disc Channel icon
  • News Channel icon displays headlines
  • Forecast Channel icon now displays the weather without entering the channel
  • Faster loading times when changing channels/leaving channels (Up for debate)
  • Move contacts on Address Book
  • Calendar no longer displays envelopes for the amount of time you played, only messages
  • Light bar goes on when disk is inserted or removed
  • Able to navigate Wii Settings with + and – (Man that always pissed us off)
  • Scrolling through messages has a new sound, and scrolling with B now displays an arrow similar to the Internet Channel

Wii Shop Channel Revisions

  • New Welcome screen detailing 4 Recommended Titles and the points they cost
  • Titles You’ve Downloaded was moved to the main shop menu
  • New ways to browse
  • Popular Titles (not only based on recent info)
  • Newest Additions remains the same
  • Search for a title which can use partial names
  • Search by Category
  • System shows the different systems and how many titles have been released under each
  • Publisher showing different publishers and amount of titles released
  • Genres listed

Warning: Do not install this update if you have modded your Wii!

Ok…

So finally – and annoyingly enough – this story is now being picked up around the gaming journos.
I’ve just emailed the guys over at SPOnG to let them know…

But yes – what’s the big secret Whatley?!
Well – everywhere I’ve read about V 3.0 of the Nintendo Wii firmware I am yet to read one little thing…

That is – V3 actually allows Full USB Keyboard Integration.
That’s right – Wii-Mail & Internet Browsing will never be the same again!

Wooooooooooo!
lol – at the time of writing I’ve just had an email back from the guys at SPOnG saying:

“In fact… it even works with an ancient Mac keyboard!
Cheers!”

Rock.

Transparent Wallpapers

This is something that I think is pretty damn cool.

A colleague of mine has figured out how to make certain graphics transparent.
So that when you upload them to your phone, they seem to be just sitting on your desktop…

Make sense?

No?

Ok – Well allow me to share some screens from my N95…
First you need a blank canvas

—————————————>

Et voila!

Then you need a picture, your favourite will do.

Once you’ve got that, send it in an email to your friendly neighbourhood Graphics Designer…

Wait five minutes…

He then sends you back the graphic that you then save to your phone’s memory card…
Scroll to said graphic ‘use as wallpaper’ – go to your mainscreen…

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand… Ta Da!

Job done!

Not only can he do it with photos that you have –
But he can do it with any drawings that you may do too!
Take this picture of a ‘BattleFish’ for instance that a friend of mine drew recently…

See how the aforementioned expert takes said pic and not only makes it a perfect wallpaper for my N95 but also adds a funky little reflection too…

Cool huh? Now this can be done with most pics – my current favourite?
My very own South Park Whatleydude!

The only problem is – I can’t live without my active standby…

…which kinda ruins it a bit!

Ah well…

Anyone want to know this is done?
Anyone think they know how it’s done?
Answers on the back of a postcard…
I’ll be waiting!