AZ

更新中

2011-09-14T23:14:00.003+01:00

Alfresconomics

2011-06-14T17:18:00.000+01:00

Google Search doesn't throw up any results, so I want to coin this quickly. Outside is better, for the mind and soul and economy. Discuss.

Crowdsource via Labs

2011-06-01T00:19:00.001+01:00

Every webapp should have open labs for public development. Introducing Gmail Labs - Official Gmail Blog

猫カフェで寛ぐ方法

2011-04-22T10:13:00.010+01:00

猫カフェというところは、コーヒーを飲みながら猫達と遊べるカフェです。去年、東京都池袋にある「ねころび」と呼んでる猫カフェに訪問した。猫は１２匹以上いました！チョウ楽しかった！寛ぐ方法にとって最高だった。一時間かかった後、ストレスとか心配とか完全になくなった！こういう概念は日本の外の成功は無理と思っちゃう。

「れころび」にご覧ください。

Relevance: Yes, Summify: Maybe...

2011-04-16T11:36:00.004+01:00

There is little doubt web evolution is moving in the direction of relevance. Take Google Search that now mines the entire social web in real-time via Caffeine - it hasn't improved relevancy so hasn't stopped people increasingly question the quality of Google's search results. More data is generated than can be possibly consumed, even opted-in data. All your feeds - between your email, Facebook, Twitter, RSS aggregator, favourite websites and information you need but haven't even found yet (probably because of data noise) - can you say you consume what is most relevant?
Of course the industry is catching up: APIs, widgets, streams and feeds are common parlance in 2011. Summify is a decent attempt at injecting relevance into all your data feeds. However, I think its solution is the wrong one. What must work best is a service that aggregates everything - that pings your bookmarks for updates, that knows your favourite hashtags and search history, that taps all your social feeds. An email summary once-a-day with 10 items is going to miss information you need. In fact, Summify has never asked me how to rate my own data, how to influence what it deems relevant - it's far too random. An information stream of everything -timelined chronologically- won't. Similar to Gmails "Important"/"Not important" meta-labels, we need something that can learn over time, so you can elevate importance of certain data, so that certain friends, hashtags, keywords grow in importance and literally steal the screen when presented alongside the parent feed. A non-linear timeline feed where what's most important literally jumps out. Nothing is missed - you still see everything and if you disagree you mark up/down depending on how relevant the data in front of you is. A learning algorithm over time, that elevates items' relevances as you direct...

Wishlist Alerts

2011-04-05T14:00:00.003+01:00

Why is there no auto-notification service for Amazon's Wishlist?

Having found one third-party "Wishlist Buddy" taken out of action by changes to Amazon's API, it is clear to me why it's unlikely that such an app will return. The wishlist function by itself encourages people to (a) return to the Amazon site and (b) direct them to the products they want to buy. If you are on their site, Amazon makes money: you're more likely to buy similar products, buy on impulse, share links or click through ads. If you're not on their site, Amazon would be losing money on informing you that individual products you have opted to track are being discounted.
Opt-in tracking is a strong indicator of demand, which means you're more than likely to buy eventually. Ironically, retailers will fight left, right and centre for ad space to tell you their sale is happening, but again such marketing is "loss leader" to get you in the store to browse and impulse purchase, not to mention a way to clear stock. Assume Amazon has infinite storage.

It's a shame. And I think all consumers would benefit if they knew the potential behind this. As a consumer, I still have a list of what I want and a price I would be willing to buy at. Having a Wishlist alert is probably not going to make me wait for lower and lower prices... or is it? Risk comes into play here - how risk averse an individual are you? If I'm willing to take a risk, I would interpret a price drop as a market signal, indicative of further price drops to come. The Wishlist alert would help me prioritise those items with prices dropping. If I'm risk averse, and a price drop brings a product to within my target price, I will proceed to purchase straight away.

An extension of this is that I think there is a business model for a Wishlist Alert subscription. In the same way, London restaurant-goers will subscribe to Tastecard (lump-sum for annual discounts), surely Amazon should be offering a similar model - pay a lump-sum fee for Wishlist Alerts i.e. a tool to maximise discounts down the line?

Central Media Point

2011-04-05T13:59:00.002+01:00

Twitter-led, data-led, maximise information, minimise speculation, translate the local news source, anything else is (a) speculation (b) out-of-date (c) noise (d) inefficient (e) creates hysteria that perpuates fear and cross-border suspicion.

Crowd Control

2011-03-28T21:22:00.002+01:00

So we're really privileged to protest in the UK, given the lack of such a right prevalent in other parts of the world. What about the right for protection against violence and shameless destruction witnessed on 26/3/11? Protesting has been around as long as mankind, but its origin stems from a social infrastructure vastly underdeveloped to what we have now, the Internet...
And no Western democracy would even contemplate to (overtly/covertly) interfere with that. It's helped elect the current generation of governments and is deeply embedded into the fabric of modern society. Use the Internet to protest. Its what Wikileaks did, to protest against government censorship, a movement that I'm sure could raise mass support relatively easily. But no buildings have to be hacked to bits, innocent bystanders' safety threatened and an entire city's reputation brought into severe questioning. Create a hashtag, start a Facebook group or deploy any one of the numerous Web 2.0 tools to gather support and raise awareness. Create a music video. It's just as credible, if not more relevant. If you're going to protest against government spending cuts, how is running up a multi-million pound policing and clean-up bill going to change that? If anything cuts will be marginally deeper than before. Threatening West End businesses is going to threaten profitability and jobs.

Rioters should be dealt with via 21st century means, not numbers and riot shields. They don't hesitate to throw sticks, bricks and bottles and yet the police apparently get criticised if they mention "water cannon" or form too tight a line formation. I envisage some kind of non-toxic immobilising goo, delivered either via helicopter or water cannon in the same vein as this. Either that or a Spiderman-stylised adhesive web-shooter. I'd like to see the protest against that.

Blogger Buzz: What’s New With Blogger

2011-03-27T23:07:00.000+01:00

Blogger Buzz: What’s New With Blogger: "Posted by Chang Kim, Product Manager 2010 was a big year for Blogger. We cemented ourselves as one of the largest blogging platforms and t..."

Let's Go "Wiko"

2011-02-18T21:08:00.005+00:00

Arranging trips is left too much to chance. I've a list of places I want to go to, and a bunch of friends who like travelling. I don't want to ask everyone if and where they wanna go, or worry about differing ideas, budgets or habits. Why can't planning a trip amongst friends be as easy as a family trip or with a loved one? Now it can be - announcing Wiko ©, a social network plugin that lists the places you want to go, finds matches and streamlines the logistics allowing you to spend more time enjoying your travels.

Distress PINs

2011-02-17T21:56:00.002+00:00

Distress Personal Identification Numbers that covertly trigger a cash-point security response to protect the interests of customers and improve their safety by disincentivising a criminal to rob.

G st r k

2011-02-16T00:21:00.013+00:00

Ghost Trick is phenomenonal in both concept and execution, deserving to be witnessed by as wide an audience as possible. The premise? You awake in confusion, to discover a woman being held at gunpoint. No sooner, you realise you're already dead, drawing focus on your own slumped figure. Pondering both your own predicament and desire to come to the woman's aid, realisation strikes. You exist merely as a floating soul, whose omnipresence allows the player to possess inanimate objects and influence both the present and the past.
The past? Through connecting with deceased souls, Sissell (left) discovers his ability to rewitness a victim's final moments (I guess the literal analogy of one's life flashing before one's eyes) and deploy his Ghost Tricks to avert fate and rewrite a new future. For me, the killer concept is what follows. It's similar to Inception in "layering". The Inception characters defied just entering a dream, they pursued the dream within a dream within a dream layers to truly rewrite "thought". In Ghost Trick for DS, when rewinding time to avert fate, you encounter complex crime scenes with multiple victims, allowing Sissell to rewind during a rewind. Fate-hopping awesomeness.

Engineering Catch-22

2011-02-13T13:18:00.002+00:00

Recent developments (literally) have brought to attention the proposed future of London's Olympic Stadium. West Ham have won backing to occupy the ground post-2012, probably on the basis that they proposed to keep the running track around their football pitch, unlike Spurs' audacious plan. I'm amazed such a simple problem has polarised individuals at every level, one that has largely been left unsolved. More soon...

ジブリのおかげで

2011-02-10T23:06:00.004+00:00

天国じゃないんだろうか、このところ。

今年から人生の目標に達成します

2011-02-06T22:58:00.007+00:00

霊感を探した。先ダニ・チューと呼ぶロンドンで生まれて日本で住んでいる人について読んでいた。

昔彼は自分で一所懸命に日本語を独学して、プログラム作製も独学していた。僕は方向感覚（ほうこうかんかく）の感じがする。今から正しい方向へ新たな第一歩。頑張る！

LiveView from Sony Ericsson

2011-02-06T12:50:00.003+00:00

Sony Ericsson LiveView is a superb innovation and one I'm hoping other manufacturers can recognise and piggyback. Essentially a watch that Bluetooth connects to your Android 2.0+ smartphone.

Fortunately Sony Ericsson moved to quickly update the firmware and Market app, following connectivity issues among others, yet the potential for such a device is limitless (as evidenced by the growing plug-in count in Android Market). Alongside basic watch functionality, LiveView can pull notifications, emails, messages, events and RSS feeds to the device, and also act as music player remote. The price is incredible, and I'm hoping they update or release new models as the design needs tweaking in my mind. Some reviews I have read couldn't seem to identify the need, but there are countless times you couldn't access your smartphone easily - jogging, meetings, rush-hour commuting, and freezing conditions - the LiveView remote would work so well. Add to that one of the newer plug-ins that detects when the phone goes out of proximity... never lose your phone again!

Budget Gadget

2011-02-05T00:52:00.003+00:00

InDinero, smallbiz accounting site, adds budget feature - Feb. 3, 2011
Great potential from the snippets I've read. Budget spreadsheets I've inherited definitely symptomatic of the Excel curse of data hoarding, at the expense of function, analysis and need. The more data vacuumed, the more tied up and committed your records.

ようこそ New Additions

2011-02-04T00:35:00.008+00:00

Introducing the new desktop additions working to inspire me through 2011 and beyond. Meet Docomodake, Tengu and Android. Each one symbolises a goal in language, music and technology respectively.

ドコモダケとテングとアンドロイド

Subterranean Cycle Parks: 日本に聞いて

2010-10-22T18:18:00.010+01:00

Boris Johnson's Barclay's Cycle Hire scheme is a great first step towards aggressively promoting the benefits of cycling in a city which (let's be honest) would otherwise be too busy to take notice. However, it is only one step forward. To bring about a deeper cultural change, efforts should be made to encourage the average commuter to switch to the bicycle because (a) intercity trains are overcrowded, unreliable and overpriced and (b) finally more high-rise accommodation is being built centrally in Zone 1. In a nutshell, I'm referring to bike parking (storage) and security, something Japan is light-years ahead in.

Regeneration of Thames, and Everything Else

2010-10-22T18:16:00.004+01:00

A general theory of environmental maintenance follows - faced with a beautiful environment, you will work hard to maintain it. Faced with a neglected environment, you will not work hard to maintain it, but will do the bare minimum to keep it functional.

Forget this green and pleasant land, London is one of the worst kept environments in the world, and I wonder why Councils are (relatively) happy to pay money to clean up, remove graffiti, sweep up dirt, fix broken installations or smashed windows, bus stops and telephone boxes. I claim that if we collectively made the effort to raise the bar and improve and clean our surrounding environment - indeed, at greater short-term cost - we would see a long-term sustainable improvement (and saving), as a result of greater respect and care for our environment embedded into our society.

I can't verify this with quantitative data, but I am building evidence.

II)
http://www.thameswater.co.uk/cps/rde/xchg/corp/hs.xsl/10115.htm

Aggregated retail sale data, pushed to user via GPS-trigger

2010-10-22T18:15:00.004+01:00

Envisage an application that aggregates retail sale date and location information and combines this into a simple, clean UI that reflects what nearby sales are local, upcoming and tailored to pre-set interests be they fashion, tech, food, and so on. Retailers will buy in because it means they can potentially meet a larger audience without the cost of advertising. Users will buy in because everyone likes a sale, but in my eyes no one knows when they are. I don't believe there is currently a platform that does this, on mobile nor the web.

Body Dryer - Dyson Airblade Re-engineered

2010-10-22T15:27:00.003+01:00

Many innovations find success because they speed up everyday processes or present more efficient ways of completing them. I think within the next decade this idea will become commercial. Here we have a way to save every single person 10-20 minutes of a Routine Task (RT) every single day for the rest of their life. Through innovation and searching for efficiency, RTs will always minimise over time. A simple analogy is computer boot times. Compared to the desktop machines of yesterday, today's load in a fraction of the time, allowing us to do the tasks we want to sooner, and for longer. Now we can wirelessly purchase and download eBooks to our Kindle devices, allowing us to spend more time reading, less time physically searching. It's common knowledge the Airblade was simply a redesigned Mitsubishi Jet Towel from 1993...

... but I hope Dyson or someone else can come up with this device, as it is definitely the future. It will more than likely be a combined shower/dryer unit for efficiency's sake, but whoever can get this to market first is surely onto a winner. If I don't see anything within 5 years, I'll apply to Dragon's Den myself...

And finally, a note from Mr Dyson himself. There is a worrying truth to his words, what with the government preoccupied with both protecting the financial industry and trying to promote a London-based Silicon Valley.

Opt-in Intelligent Discoverability

2010-10-22T15:24:00.002+01:00

This idea is based on Facebook intelligently matching across patterns and trends in the data you upload to the site. If you two independent users, anonymous to each other, have a high-degree of corresponding "likes" then Facebook should suggest a friend match. Such a process would help Facebook further integrate ties between different groups of friends, making it increasingly relevant. The only suggestion tool now is "People you may know" through one or more mutual friends, but with networks, likes, locations, check-ins and keywords at its disposal, I wonder if Facebook could rapidly expand in this area. It could really take the current service (a reflection of realworld life) and turn it into a whole new life of its own. Of course the privacy critics won't like this one, so I expect such a service to be opt-in thenagain people have willingly provided such information in the past.

Location-based Intents

2010-10-22T15:14:00.003+01:00

Smartphones with GPS should not just reacting to their users' requests but pre-empt and influence their thinking and decisions. This could be passing by a street when the phone alerts you to a particular sale up ahead or where the nearest pub is for live football because it is suddenly approaching 3pm on a Saturday afternoon...

Monetised Clean-up Mechanism

2010-10-22T15:09:00.003+01:00

Incentivising a Green way of living through embedded tagging of product packaging.