Category: Technology

Telepresence voice

Grandma in GrizedaleI’ve just witnessed a bunch of people using a high definition video conferencing system for the first time. It was only a single screen system, so not the fully fledged thing, but I noticed an interesting phenomena – telepresence voice.

We all recognise people’s telephone voice, so I was interested to see this move over to a telepresence system too.

One of the reasons that we have a telephone voice is that most phone calls are working at a reduced frequency range so we have to speak a bit clearer. When phone systems were first available people tended to speak loudly because they knew that someone was a long way away – and so you speak up.

The microphones on telepresence system are also high definition and will pick up a full spectrum of sound and yet the people in this call all spoke loudly and deliberately clearly.

The other thing they did was to treat it like a synchronous communication device where only one person can speak at a time. It was almost like they were talking to someone on a satellite phone waiting for the person on the other end to respond before continuing. It was definitely not a fully fledged conversation.

I wonder if it will change over time as they become more comfortable, or perhaps some of them will permanently have a Hyacinth voice.

Citrix Community Verified: Engaging the Community

A Trip to Hadrian's WallThe IT landscape is composed of millions of moving components that we plumb together to create thousands of applications. We then take the thousands of applications and plumb them together to make systems.

But how do you know what works with what, how do you find out what the problems are. You’d think that this was a simple question, but it’s not. There are many reasons that it’s not simple, one of the main ones is the relationship between organisations. It’s very difficult for one organisation to validate the work of another organisation without a lot of work. Lots of the larger vendors run verification programmes but they can be expensive especially for the smaller application vendors.

Citrix has recently taken a different approach – community verification.

The IT community is integrating applications and components all of the time and Citrix is hoping to tap into all of this knowledge, but also to make it available to everyone else.

“The Community Verified site is a platform in which third party products are added and verified by community members. Community members are helping each other by posting and voting on third party products known to work in their environment.  These products do not get any Citrix Ready program benefits.”

There’s no warranty involved here just the knowledge that someone else has gone ahead of you and managed to succeed, a very valuable asset. The voting system also enables you to put some weighting behind your confidence.

In my experience it’s not integration of applications from the large well known vendors that cause the problems, it’s integration of products from smaller companies. These companies have less extensive experience and who would be struggling to undertake a formal verification activity anyway. A community based approach gives a very valuable middle ground.

Meaningful Conversations Day 1: Web 2.0, blogs, wikis, etc..

Jimmy, Grandad and Grandma go to CornwallLast night I decided that I needed to have more meaningful conversations to hone my communications skills.

I have, at least, managed it for one day.

Today’s conversation was on Web 2.0, blogs, wikis, etc. with a colleague who has been asked to write some short opinion type papers for a customer on the subjects and is only just learning themselves.

It was a good conversation because it turned out to be a real communication challenge. How do you communicate this stuff in a couple of pages and give some value. it’s easy to write a lot and still not give any value. How do you even talk about it without using buzz-words and meaningless acronyms?

It made me realise that I need to invest more time in making this stuff simpler so that any communication can be of real value. The conversation felt a bit like I was putting someone under a waterfall and asking them to drink it all in which is never very effective.

One day own, discovered some challenges, now I need to turn them into lessons.

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Word of the day: Maven

Grandma in GrizedaleI like knew words and occasionally write something about them. This one is a new one to me, and quite new in word lifespan terms too.

The definitions seem to wander about a bit as is often the case with relatively knew terms.

Here’s one definition:

Maven

n.   A person who has special knowledge or experience; an expert.
[Yiddish meyvn, from Hebrew m?bîn, active participle of h?bîn, to understand, derived stem of bîn, to discern; see byn in Semitic roots.]

Although I think prefer this one:

A maven (also mavin) is a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass knowledge on to others.

It’s the “who seeks to pass knowledge on to others” that I like, especially as it’s a tipping-point idea. A maven/mavin isn’t just an expert, they are one who seeks to connect and to pass on.

I’m sure that many of us can think of many people are like that, I’m sure that we can think of just as many experts who are the opposite. I suppose I’m more likely to be maven than not. I’d rather people made use of the knowledge that I had, it’s normally not that much use to me otherwise.

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Is Flickr losing its Creative Commons roots?

Grandma in GrizedaleI’m a big flickr user, I post all sorts of stuff and I post it all as Creative Commons licensed. I’m even generous and license at quite a low level of Creative Commons control – Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic. in simple terms, what this means is that someone can use my pictures as long as they use them for non-commercial work and they give me credit. I’ve even had people asking to use pictures for commercial work, which I have given without fee.

There was a time when I could search through flickr and be reasonably sure that what I was looking at was also licensed as Creative Commons. It was the place that I would go to to get hold of good quality photos for a project I might be working on, as long as I respected the Creative Commons license I could be confident in using the pictures.

I have no statistics to support this, but my perception is that more and more of the content on flickr is now locked down to “all rights reserved”. Flickr does a really good job of protecting these pictures – you can’t download them and you only see one size.

I fully understand a couple of reasons for locking down content in this way:

  • You wouldn’t want anyone messing about with your personal pictures.
  • You might not want anyone using all of your pictures when it’s your business.

But there are many, many pictures that are locked down which aren’t either of these, they are pictures of scenes, or of items and events which are not of any value to them, nor that much value to anyone else.

What value does locking them down have? It just takes value away. if it’s locked down you can only see a small representation of it; no-one gets to enjoy the real full fidelity picture, no-one gets to download it and use it as a background or in a screen-saver, no-one gets to use the picture in a project to create something new and exciting.

Perhaps I’m just being some kind of liberal creative commons open source hippie but it feels like flickr is loosing its roots, loosing its sole? (did I really just say that, oh dear)

I feel like turning my stuff to “all rights reserved” – why should I share my stuff if no-one else is willing to share their stuff? “I’m not sharing my ball if you won’t share yours”. Perhaps that would be a good feature – my stuff is licensed as Creative Commons to everyone who’s pictures are also Creative Commons, if your stuff is “all rights reserved” then, to you, so is mine.

Why do people have to be so protective of stuff? Do they really think it has a value that people are willing to pay? Do they not realise that sharing is good for them.

Gosh I’m grumpy for a Friday.

Thankfully flickr advanced search enables you to search by license type, but I’m not sure why I should need to.

(Jimmy and Grandad are Creative Commons too)

I need a new bag

Jimmy and Grandma have a day outI need a new bag, the one I’ve got at the moment is falling apart. I made a massive mistake and went for a cheap option. This one is the third bag, the first two went back with broken zips in the first few days of owning them, this one has lasted a little longer but not much.

Now I’m a bit weary of investing my money in another dud, so I thought I would ask that great big world out there.

What am I looking for?

  • It needs to look good in the office.
  • Nothing too dull, but nothing too bright.
  • It needs to take a 15” laptop.
  • I move around quite a lot so need to be able to slot the laptop in and out quite quickly.
  • I always surprise myself with how much paper I carry around but I’m not looking for a mobile office.
  • I carry stuff too – iPod, pens, power packs, cables, USB sticks, etc.
  • I occasionally walk quite a way with the bag so it needs to be comfortable.
  • The bag itself shouldn’t be too heavy – if I’m going to carry weight I want it to be in the stuff that I need not in the bag (I picked up a Swiss-army bag at the weekend and it was so heavy I put it straight back down again).
  • It needs to be robust – I don’t want to buy another one in another few months.
  • It needs to be waterproof – I live in England.
  • I don’t really want lots of pockets – I’m not organised enough to put things in the same place every time so lots of pockets just become annoying.
  • I quite like to be unusual so would look favourably on something a bit quirky.
  • I’m not Roman Abromovich so it needs to be a sensible price.

I tend to prefer messenger style bags, although I would prefer a vertical style one over a horizontal style one. I’ve never seen a really stylish backpack bag, but could be persuaded.

A couple of sample things that look good to me.

Anyone tried any of these bags?
Does anyone out there have any other recommendations for me?

Help me, please, I’m in danger of becoming a bag fetishist..

How I read blogs: snacking, dining and scanning

Grandma in GrizedaleI tend to read blogs in three ways.

It’s not something I have consciously built up, it just seems to be the way I have gone.

I’ve also noticed myself subconsciously rating a whole blog in a similar way:

  • Snacking: some blogs tend to be written as small chunks and I like to consume them that way.
  • Dining: some blogs write longer posts these can be really good dining and require time and attention to enjoy them.
  • Scanning: there are a set of blogs on which I neither snack nor dine, I just scan. It’s rare that I eat anything at all, I just look and see, the headline is enough.

I’ve also noticed that when blogs that I regard as a snack produce items that are longer than a snack they tend to get scanned. Blogs that get scanned are the ones that I’m likely to delete from my reader, because scanning is of limited value.

Some example of what I mean for different blogs:

Blog  

Snack Rating

Dining Rating

Scanning Rating

apophenia

2

*8*

0

BetaNews

*8*

0

2

Dilbert

*10*

0

0
Endgadget 3 0 *7*

Flickr Lake District Pool

1

0

*9*

Presentation Zen

2

*7*

1

ReadWriteWeb

1

0

*9*

SharePoint Magazine

2

*7*

1

Steve Clayton

*9*

1

0

A reader is, of course, essential to this type of working.

The question this leaves me is this:

How do people relate to my blog?

Am I a snack?

Am I a dinner?

Or am I a scan?

I don't blog enough! Do you?

Jimmy, Grandad and Grandma go to CornwallIf you want to be noticed as a blogger – you have to blog.

It would seem like a reasonably easy equation, but how much do you have to blog to be really noticed, if noticed is what you want to be.

Well it would appear that the answer according to Technorati is at least 2 to 4 times a day, and if you want to be really, really noticed you have to blog more than 10 times a day.

Well, there is little chance of me getting to 10 a day, perhaps I should just aim to be one of the 22% of top 5000 bloggers who write things that are so good that writing less than one post a day is good enough.

I still think that quality is better than quantity – but then I would, I don’t have a lot of quantity.

I quite like the idea from Micro Explosion Media of the meal verses snack ratio.

Personally, I try for three posts a week and employ my meal verses snack ratio with those three posts (one meal, two snacks).

I suppose that’s about what I do. Perhaps a few too many snacks recently though.

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The difference that 10 years makes

Jimmy and Grandma have a day outI’m sure I’m not going to be the only one to be this over the next few days, but it’s fun all the same.

In celebration of 10 years Google has made a specific search available to show results from 2001.

Being the humble fellow that I am, I had to see what the difference in the results for “chastney” were. So from 2001:

I have to admit to doing this in the full knowledge of what the result shows today:

That’s right, in 2001 I didn’t feature at all, today I feature in the top spot – twice.

Back in 2001 there were only 328 entries – now in 2008 we mange 11,800, still a relatively small number.

One of these days I will manage to write something to surpass my now defunct post on Windows Live Writer Dictionary Hacks. The problem is – I keep linking to it.

It’s nice to see that Jimmy and Grandad get a mention under my Flickr stream, but that’s probably only because they were the last pictures that I posted.

It also shows that I need to work a bit harder on my “happenings” site so that it appears somewhere.

Here’s to the crazy ones

Anyone feel a little crazy today – I must admit I am.

I’m sure that most of us can think of someone who this video really applies to. Make the most of them they are real treasures.

Yes, I know, no posting for weeks and then three in a day. Perhaps my muse has come back.

Playing with Windows Live Writer Beta

Jimmy, Grandad and Grandma go to CornwallI’m just playing with the new Windows Live Writer Beta. Looks very sweet.

It’s the simple things.

One of my plugins wasn’t supported – so it asked me if I still wanted it.

There’s a new (I think) “manage site” link and set of option which takes me to my typepad management page.

Not going to write much because I should be doing something else.

Why do I blog? Memory Management

Jimmy and Grandad got to Tarn HowesOne of the questions that I get asked from time to time is “why do you write a blog?” it’s a fair question – writing takes time and energy, so why bother? There are a number of answers to this question and today I’m only going to deal with one of them – memory management.

“Memory is a child walking along a seashore.  You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things.” Pierce Harris, Atlanta Journal

I’m over 40 now and my memory is not what it used to be. This isn’t some kind of misinformed modesty statement, your brain starts to loose connections from your 20’s onwards, and my brain is going through the same natural cycle. I’m trying to do things to protect what I have, but I can only slow it down. I’m also learning a whole set of management techniques to mitigate for this loss. Learning them early seems like the best way of making sure that they are embedded within my working practice before I really need them.

One of the most powerful ways of managing memory is to write. Once something has been written the brain seems to archive the information and only remembers a pointer to the information. The challenge is then to have a really good pointer or search system available. That’s where the blog comes in.

What I write on the blog naturally gets a pointer, that’s the way that blogs works. Adding tags makes for even more pointers. What’s more it also gets full text search so if my brain pointers aren’t quite correct I can still find what I want. I can then let my brain archive the information without having to worry about finding it again.

Sometimes I’ll meet someone who reads my blog and they’ll make a comment about something I have written and I’ll be surprised by what they have read. I’ve already archived it but it’s fresh and new to them. It sometimes takes me a few seconds to remember what it is they are talking about.

Off now to forget this information.

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