Imran Ali

BarCamp Bradford [Flickr]

2009-11-15T13:28:15-08:00

Imran... posted a photo:

Broughton Shoe Warehouse [Flickr]

2009-11-13T13:49:27-08:00

Imran... posted a photo:

The Skull on Your Desk [del.icio.us]

2009-11-13T09:59:37-08:00

"...one's to-do list, in whatever form, is ultimately a skull on the desk, a memento mori, a reminder that our time here really is limited and we ought to make the most of it, in as much as the list is also meant to be a tool for helping one actually do so"

We Love Holbeck [del.icio.us]

2009-11-13T04:49:33-08:00

'We Like Lists Because We Don't Want to Die' [del.icio.us]

2009-11-13T04:31:31-08:00

"We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That's why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It's a way of escaping thoughts about death"

John Buxton obituary [del.icio.us]

2009-11-12T13:11:43-08:00

"...respected in academia, industry & government, John Buxton, who has died aged 75, gained world renown. He made fundamental scientific contributions to computer simulation, programming language design and software implementation technology"

City Station [Flickr]

2009-11-12T02:40:13-08:00

Imran... posted a photo:

Hyperfloor [Flickr]

2009-11-12T02:39:33-08:00

Imran... posted a photo:

This is what Dave Bowman sees when he's crossing the street

Uhoh...13th Floor [Flickr]

2009-11-12T02:39:16-08:00

Imran... posted a photo:

I thought buildings weren't supposed to have a 13th floor...

Calagator: Portland's Tech Calendar [del.icio.us]

2009-11-11T15:34:49-08:00

Are nuclear weapons safe in Pakistan? [del.icio.us]

2009-11-11T04:43:32-08:00

In an unstable Pakistan, can nuclear warheads be kept safe?

The PLENTY [del.icio.us]

2009-11-10T08:35:54-08:00

Piedmont Local EcoNomy Tender

Bag It Don't Bin It [del.icio.us]

2009-11-09T09:11:19-08:00

Print your own design or company logo on stylish eco friendly bags

MRBS [del.icio.us]

2009-11-09T03:19:29-08:00

MRBS is a free, GPL, web application using PHP and MySQL/pgsql for booking meeting rooms or other resources.

Divvy · Free Scheduling and Billing Systems for Coworking Spaces [del.icio.us]

2009-11-09T03:18:52-08:00

Genbook [del.icio.us]

2009-11-09T03:13:33-08:00

Online Appointment Scheduling Software

A Farewell to Arms (5.05) [del.icio.us]

2009-11-09T02:00:20-08:00

"For those on the ramparts of the world's sole superpower, the digital winds are blowing an icy chill through the triumphant glow of the post-Cold War"

The Arc: A Formal Structure for a Palestinian State [del.icio.us]

2009-11-06T13:03:27-08:00

'...the area’s physical size and linear arrangement of connected cities is comparable to extended urban regions like the San Francisco Bay area or metropolitan Cairo along the Nile.'

The Long Zoom - The Long Now [del.icio.us]

2009-11-05T08:24:21-08:00

What is discovered in consilience is not just scales of distance or time but nested systems.

Curating, not moderating, the flow of content and participation [del.icio.us]

2009-11-05T07:41:12-08:00

Save To... the Cloud?

2009-10-01T01:47:29+01:00

A couple of years ago, my good friend Ian Pringle wrote about the anachronistic persistence of a floppy disc icon to indicate a save command.

Ian noted that the notion of 'saving' in an age of web applications is itself an absurd notion and that state is perhaps more appropriate - recording a temporal snapshot of attributes and values. However, expressing state/time in a universally comprehensible icon is a daunting brief...

Of course, replacing the floppy with a hard drive or USB key icon would be just as arcane as a 3.5" disc, but I've noticed recently that alpha-geeks speak of saving to the cloud or assert that a particular document is in the cloud.

With the advent of web-based applications such as Google Docs and the emergence of cloud computing, perhaps The Cloud is an appropriately contemporary metaphor for saving a piece of work.

Saving to the Cloud blends the notion of a resilient, repeatable and trustable act, with an ambiguous, dimensionless, time-skipping cloud of data, servers and connectivity...a metaphor that's a good enough start :)

Curiously, the discless Google Docs does employ the traditional 3.5" floppy icon, but the disc-based iWork does not...

The TED Gift Bag

2009-07-23T01:29:01+01:00

TED conferences are famous for the complimentary gift bag distributed to each delegate upon registration.

Not only are the bags replete with politically/ecologically-correct goodies, but the bags themselves aren't your usual cheap-ass branded schwag, but sourced from the likes of Timbuk2 and Rickshaw Bagworks...this year, TEDsters got very cool (and very large) Zero Messenger.

So what's in the bag?

Books...

The Idea Book
The Way Of Nowhere
You Are Really Rich And You Just Don't Know It Yet
TEDGlobal 2009 Speakers Guide
The Way Of Nowhere

DVDs...

Other Stuff...

A one-year subscription to Ode Magazine
A Clif bar
Arup's Drivers Of Change
Bliss' Sink Side Six-Pack
KOR One 'hydration vessel' - very cool, kinda like an 'iPod for water'
Pharox III LED lightbulb

Every night, returning to my hotel room, I'd find a schedule for the next day, along with a little gift - a copy of The Dodo Guide To Oxford, sometimes a box of Vosges Peanut Butter Bonbons or Hazlenut Bombalinas, Mari's brownies, and most impressively/embarrassingly an N97 couriered to me for live-blogging, by my sponsors Nokia; embarrassing because I can't use it without an iPhone SIM removal tool to flip out my SIM into the N97...

Over at Keble College, Toms Shoes were giving away complimentary pairs of their (very weird looking) footwear to all TEDsters; for every pair collected by a delegate, another would be donated to a child in need. So, Gordon Gekko was kinda right? Speakers get to pickup a Livescribe and (um) a pair of UGG slippers and Knome are offering a selected few TEDsters the possibility of sequencing their personal genomic data - neat!

So the TED gift bag is very 'right-on', speaking to ecological, creative and innovative motivations. I can't help but wonder if - assuming David Deutch's parallel universes theory hold - that there's an evil twin for the TED gift bag, containing DVDs of hardcore porn, Jeffrey Archer novels, a filament lightbulb, a bottle of Evian, pack of cigarettes, a hand grenade, a copy of Windows Vista and keys to a Hummer.

I'm hoping when I check-in to the pearly gates sometime around 2069 there'll be a gift bag with a Qu'ran, some holy water, a prayer mat and seventy-two virgins...oh and some Five Fingers :)

(woah, this post reads like a product placement singularity)

TED and me

2009-07-18T12:31:07+01:00

I don't really remember where I first came across the TED conference but in recent years, I've quickly become hooked on the eponymous talks and, in recent months, TED seems to be serendipitously intersecting with my career in many wonderful ways...

Earlier this year, Lee Bryant and I nominated Professor Salim Al-Hassani to the TED Fellows programme, though sadly the Professor wasn't unable to join this year's group.

A couple months ago, Codeworks' Herb Kim and nti Leeds' Linda Broughton asked me to produce and programme TEDx Leeds; part of a series of TEDx events taking place across the North's five great cities - Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Leeds & Newcastle. We'll be announcing speakers in early August, but do contact me and nominate your favourite TED talks for screening during the evening.

Most surprisingly, next week I've been invited to attend TED Global 2009 in Oxford. Earlier this month, Nokia, one of the conference sponsors, contacted me to offer a sponsored place at the conference. Upon enquiring why they approached me, they explained that I was 'one of the UK's top bloggers'. Um, that's slightly embarrassing, but I'm not going to argue with Wikio's rankings, however inaccurate ;)

The speakers list looks awesome, with Stephen Fry, Rory Bremner, Karen Armstrong, Stefana Broadbent, John Lloyd, Daniel Pink & Aza Raskin amongst others. Oddly, for a tech conference, delegates are discouraged from using laptops or phones during sessions; Nokia have suggested even a pen and paper might be frowned upon. It'll certainly be a novelty maintaining focus and attention for hours at a time. I couldn't even do that at university...like a laptop, I tend to fall asleep after extended periods of inactivity.

Regardless it's a real privilege to be invited to TED Global, and along with a pair of Foo Camps, I'm just a Web2Summit away from my exclusive tech conference treble.

Like Foo Camp, TED is subject to accusations of elitism and exclusivity. Ironically, those are the qualities that make each gathering special. There's a kind of meritocracy at work, generally driven by achievement, but 'by-invitation-only' conferences do make me slightly uncomfortable. On the other hand, Foo's philosophy of asking invitees to select next year's group does ensure there's a constant churn of people and ideas each year. Today's Times, has a useful analysis of the culture of TED at TED conference offers ideas to change the planet - in 18 minutes.

Now will the official TED bag be a Timbuk2 or from Rickshaw Bagworks...

Leaving Mobile Messaging 2.0

2009-05-25T20:12:22+01:00

After two years, two editors and 140-ish posts, I'll be stepping back from my role as a contributing writer to Corante's Mobile Messaging 2.0.

The first couple of years for MM2 were a sponsored curation of thought leadership and conversation around mobility. As my first paying gig as a professional writer, I learned a great deal in terms of discipline, leads, brevity and the economics of digital publishing, as well as the distributed camaraderie of working with other writers such as Ewan Spence and Debi Jones...all things which helped secure my contributing role at Giga Omni Media's Web Worker Daily.

Sadly, my work at MM2 will fade away as the site transitions towards being an automated aggregator, rather than curator of original content. I haven't decided whether to republish my MM2 contributions, blended here with my personal blog, or to host an MM2-branded site for posterity.

In the meantime - onto ventures new :)

The North's Digital Spring - 'ThinkingFuturesonicbTWEENLSxDigital'

2009-05-10T20:29:32+01:00

The five great cities of the North are buzzing with conferences and festivals as we close out the Spring and head into Summer...

5th May - 3rd June: LSx, Leeds' annual web festival returns for its sophomore year with the FOWA Tour, its third BarCamp and a Physical Computing workshop.

13 - 17th May: Newcastle's Thinking Digital & BarCamp North East. TD continutes to attract some stella speakers; this year's highlights will be Johnny Chung Lee, Tara Hunt, Alex Sonsino and local geek hero Tom Scott (who'll also be MC'ing BarCamp Leeds)

13 - 16th May: Manchester's Futuresonic festival enters its final year, before it transforms into FutureEverything in 2010. The lineup looks amazing with sessions from old acquaintances Stowe Boyd, Ensembli, Stefan Agamanolis and Lee Bryant, along with Jamais Cascio and Usman Haque.

11 - 12th June: Liverpool plays host to this year's bTWEEN, previously held in Manchester and Bradford.

19 - 21st June: Sheffield's third BarCamp rounds out the Digital Spring.

There's been a little controversy at the overlapping schedules and content - but personally, I think it's cool. Every city's conference or festival has something unique to offer...Manchester's music, Newcastle's ingest of global speakers, Leeds' student show and grassrootsy content, bTWEEN's media focus and Sheffield's newly minted Digital Campus. But the overlaps might actually be helpful as speakers like Stowe Boyd can commit to a few weeks touring across the North and various events, the same way ETech and SxSW's proximity make for a productive conference season in the US.

Ian Forrester is encouraging LSx, Futuresonic, TD and bTWEEN to coordinate more closely next year, so there's great potential to cross-promote and synchronise where we can.

Katie Lips, in her own unique fashion, is attempting to bring some harmony, between TD and Futuresonic in particular, by running a Tech Bus Tour between both conferences (via Leeds!)

2010 already looks like a promising year as FutureEverything spools up and LSx seeks to merge with Live At Leeds...now where will bTWEEN end up in '010?

Fuzzy Inside

2009-05-04T19:01:39+01:00

There's been an interesting confluence of commentary recently on why precision is not only unnecessary, but perhaps undesirable, in the formulation of communication services...

Dopplr's Matt Jones reflects on Google's Latitude location-sharing service, noting that designing Dopplr to be 'nothing more granular than cities-as-place and days-as-time' is enough to fulfill the goal of surfacing serendipity.

In Valleywag's Against Realtime, Owen Thomas argues that Facebook's recent makeover has emphasised recency and buried relevancy - in apeing Twitter, Facebook is assuming that 'the only news is breaking news' (Thomas' piece builda on comments from Om Malik's discussion of Facebook's identity crisis)

Dopplr it seems has been motivated by understanding context and what might be useful in a given situation, where Facebook's embrace of the realtime web has been driven by the faddish pursuit of a competitor.

Regardless, there are useful social models and design patterns that need to be abstracted from the Twitter, Facebook and Dopplr articulations of time, space, serendipity and relevancy, patterns that might enhance other services. There's an assumption that relevance and seredipity can emerge from simply aggregating together news items from social connections. Yet there's a growing anxiety that we're all drinking from a firehose of data.

Why can't Twitter, for example, learn to whom users grant their attention over time...or Facebook understand to whom I'm 'nearby' (at Matt says - 'hereish-and-soonish/thereish-and-thenish'), helping users make relevancy rather than recency based choices, that wire serendipity into the fabric of social software.

Fab Lab Discussion Forum

2009-04-27T03:33:44+01:00

I first started following the work of Neil Gershenfeld during my various visits to MIT Media Lab, and of course through his book Fab, along with speculating about fictional HP DeskFabs and Fabster P2P networks...a miniature attempt at Bruce Sterling-eqsue Design Fiction!

So it was a huge surprise to learn that Gershenfeld would be stopping by Manchester's Manufacturing Institute, last Tuesday, for a half-day discussion forum on the launch of the city's first Fab Lab. With 50-60 people in attendance, I was surprised that no one from Manchester's tech scene was there.

The morning opened with keynotes from the institute's CEO, Dr. Julie Madigan, Gershenfeld, New East Manchester's regeneration chief, Sean McGonigle, and Paul Jackson of the Engineering Technology Board (download the PDF flyer)

Here are some of the interesting snippets from the forum...

Gershenfeld characterised digital/additive fabrication as materials that contain information - essentially embedding 'code' into materials.

Gershenfeld 's influence on Squid Lab's Saul Griffith was evidenced by his illustration of sending design code into universal protein strings to 'fold & fab' 3D structures - similar to Griffith's TED talk noting that the 'secret to biology is the way it builds computation into the way it makes things'.

The fab wet-dream of self-replicating Von-Neumann machines is nearing reality with the RepRap project - the rapid-prototyping of rapid-prototyping machines.

Gershenfeld namechecked an experimental prototype alarm clock with which you had to arm wrestle to prove you were indeed awake!

Fabrication is still at the 'mainframe' stage, with the greatest impact set to come from the personalisation of technology - analagous to the transition from mainframe to personal computers.

Gershenfeld envisages an opt-in network of 'Fab Labs' across the globe - equipped with laser cutters, sign cutters, milling machines, electronics assembly and microcontroller programming - that can democratise manufacturing and mobilise people and projects across this network. A little like a super TechShop; the network currently includes locations in Jalalabad, Utrecht and Amsterdam.

Perhaps more interesting than the progress of the science, are the socio-economic drivers that're making the introduction of a Fab Lab to Manchester so appealing. The city was centrai to the industrial revolution, with it's eastern areas known as the 'workshop of the world' - apparently, the first transatlantic communications cable was manufactured in the Bradford area of East Manchester. Yet, though the area has found new purpose with the recent Commonwealth Games and the presence of Manchester City (the world's richest football club), large parts remain deprived and struggle in a post-industrial economy.

Regeneration officials see the Empowerment > Education > Problem Solving > Job Creation > Invention cycle of Fab Labs as a critical component in reviving manufacturing in the area, energising brownfield sites, as well as retaining local skills and raising educational standards. Upon being asked on Fab Labs' model for civic sustainability, Gershenfeld quipped that people 'don't ask whether public libraries have a model for civic sustainability' - implying that the labs hope to provide a similarly essential role in civic culture and education.

The city is due to open its first lab in late 2009, anticipating the 2010 edition of the city's Big Bang Fair for young scientists and engineers. The lab will be free for individuals, who will be encouraged to share their ideas and knowledge freely within the international Fab Lab community and beyond.

Personally, I'm really interested to see where the intersection of digital 'make' services like Etsy, Ponoko and Folksy, with the potential 'Napsterisation' of manufacturing. Indeed, my friend Steve, suggested that the d_shape robotic building system be used to 'endlessly replicate copies of the RIAA building!'

I'm wondering if Fab Labs has a natural analogy in the global coworking community - one for 'atoms', the other for 'bits' - indeed, is there a useful and natural crossover between these two grassroots global communities?

eComm 2009: Emerging Communications Conference

2009-02-28T00:40:05+00:00

Next week sees the opening of the second edition of eComm, taking place in Burlingame, just outside San Francisco.

Like the 2008 edition - and its two predecessor conferences of the O'Reilly ETel franchise - I've been part of the advisory board, roping in interesting speakers and contributors working at the intersection of telecoms and social media - in design, human factors, hardware hacking and mobile.

This year, I'm very pleased to have brought in Smule's Ge Wang on Creating New Expressive Social Mediums on the iPhone and Distance Lab's Stefan Agamanolis on Slow Communication. Unfortunately, some speakers I'd really like to have provide a platform for, simply weren't available - Georgia Popplewell, MD of Global Voices, Cisco's Clive Grinyer, Cliff Kushler, co-creator of T9 and the guys behind Ushahidi, tinker.it and 12seconds...

Sadly, this year I won't be attending (I'll be on vacation in New York), but I've gifted my own pass to PhoneFromHere's Tim Panton and gave away complimentary pass to local geek Jonathan Powell, to raise money at the recent Leeds Twestival.

There'll certainly be a 2010 edition - and I'm hoping next year I'll be able to add to the platform again :)

Röyksopp: Happy Up Here

2009-02-26T13:13:01+00:00

I've been (guilty) hooked on Röyksopp's Happy Up Here for a few weeks and, last night, stumbled across the awesome video at the band's Vimeo account...

It's a very clever mixed reality interpretation of Space Invaders - I wonder if director Reuben Sutherland was inspired by Futurama's Anthology of Interest II episode? But seriously, Röyksopp shoulda made a mixed-reality game for iPhone ;)

Y, El Último Hombre

2009-02-20T14:27:30+00:00

This week's episode of Lost - '316' - features a gratuitously self-referential shot of Hurley reading Y, El Último Hombre, the Spanish language edition of Y: The Last Man, written in 2004 by one of Lost's current principal writers, Brian K. Vaughn...

Nothing's ever a coincidence in the Lostiverse. Hurley is reading the fourth volume, One Small Step, a story with a very Planet of the Apes ending...what does that mean?!

---

Y: The Last Man is currently being adapted into a movie trilogy, but I've always thought it'd make for a great Abrams-esque TV quest :)