WillFrancis.com

New Sigur Rós Album: Valtari - Full Stream

Tue, 22 May 2012 18:23:52 +0100

Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2 Trailer Revealed

Wed, 02 May 2012 02:32:00 +0100

Why Modern Art Is Actually Quite Important

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 11:58:00 +0100

I was pretty amazed by these photos taken from atop the Shard - which at the current state of completion is the tallest skyscraper in Europe. The stunning snaps are thanks to a plucky group of ‘urban explorers’ who (mostly) made it past security to climb a thousand feet all the way to the crane at the top.

Alongside the stunning images, the blog post’s author takes the opportunity to air a polemic against crap architecture and modern Art. Whilst I think most of us are surprised at some of the urban monstrosities that get planning permission, I am always amazed when anyone with even the most passing awareness of beauty pipes up with a blanket disdain for anything which “a five-year-old could do”.

In a world where religion is on the wain, I believe that more than ever we need spaces to reflect, to be reminded of and forced to consider certain things which we would not have otherwise considered. Art, the sort that sits in galleries collecting dust and not being touched, provides us with a priceless opportunity to open our minds to new ideas and reflect on our situation in new ways.

In the West as in many cultures, religion and Art were tightly intertwined until relatively recently. Walk through any large gallery and you’ll notice anything before about 1500 is almost all religious. Anything between then and about 1750 is still lots of religion with a good dollop of portraiture and history thrown in, and then onwards through the 19th century gets a bit more landscape and still life-heavy before Art hits a cataclysmic step change with the onset of Impressionism - the first truly ‘modern’ Art. And the reason paintings suddenly looked so different? Photography.

Due to the invention of photography, Art would never be the same again now that painters and sculptors were relieved of the pressure of accurately rendering scenes in oil, canvas and clay. This development gave artists great freedom from the rigours of figurative painting and sculpture, and also presented a challenge to stay relevant and necessary. Artists rose to this challenge. After all, painting - and indeed all hand-made Art - would always be able to express more than a photograph ever could - the feeling, emotion, sounds and so on - of a place or person.

The next pivot was 1917 when Marcel Duchamp famously presented his latest piece - a urinal lay down on a plinth with a fake signature cheekily painted on it, entitled ‘Fountain’. From that point on, pure workmanship would no longer be the only measure by which Art was judged. Conceptual Art was born and so started the great “what is Art?” debate, which still rages on in gallery cafes today.

Fountain, 1917 - Marcel Duchamp

Nowadays, Art is a medium of expression defined by its lack of boundaries, far removed from the Christian scenes of medieval Europe. We grant artists of all disciplines - musicians, writers, actors, painters - complete freedom to deconstruct formats and break the rules in pursuit of evermore lucid and poignant expression. In return we participate in an economy of taste where we the public are wonderfully spoilt with a rich gamut of creative media to consume and endorse (or not) where we see fit, whether that’s paying to enter a gallery, downloading a song or pinning a poster print we like to our Pinterest boards.

Would we really give up such a privilege? There’s good reason behind Art receiving government funding - it makes us more thoughtful, balanced and fulfilled people. A bit like church used to, apparently, only with better gift shops.

Google Launch Project Glass: A Computer In Your Head

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 23:58:44 +0100

Today Google announced Project Glass - an ambitious augmented reality project which they’re asking for our help with here. The hardware (spectacles) and software (a simplified Android variant) work together to add the best of today’s web services to your field of vision. Sound like hell or the most useful thing ever? I’m certain this will be part of our lives within 10 years. Maddening as having an ever-present computer in your head sounds, it’s going to make pulling your phone out of your pocket and firing up an app seem like an awfully old-fashioned way to do something.

Independent voices of 2011: Most influential non-celebrities on Twitter

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:23:13 +0000

The Independent listed their ‘voices of 2011’ today, highlighting the non-celebrities on Twitter who are ‘setting the news agenda’. Pretty stoked to learn that I’m included in the Technology list. Being listed alongside the other eight in that list is an honour indeed :)

Read: Independent voices of 2011: The most influential non-celebrity users of Twitter

Stunning Timelapse Film Shows How Beautiful American Landscapes Are

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 13:13:05 +0000

Watch this in full screen and enjoy! If you’ve never visited the American south-west, I’m pretty sure you’ll want to go after watching this amazing film, shot in the extremely high-definition video standard ‘4K’.

The Odds That You Exist Are Zero [Infographic]

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 09:57:28 +0000

Ali Binazir calculated the probability that you came about. And finds it is mind-meltingly slim!

Best - and Creepiest - Siri Responses on My New iPhone 4S

Sat, 15 Oct 2011 01:14:00 +0100

Here are the 12 best responses I’ve received from my new iPhone 4S today. I’ll upload more as they come but the first few will be hard to beat in the creepiness stakes.

Just to note that when you ask #2 about anyone else it refers you to a web search like when it doesn’t really get what you’re asking.

Just watched all 6 Star Wars. Formed some unpopular opinions.

Sat, 24 Sep 2011 11:49:00 +0100

With yet another re-release of the Star Wars films, this time on Blu-ray, it felt like a good time to watch all six films from 1 (1999) to 6 (1983), ie in the order Lucas would have us watch them. I recommend it if you find the time.

I tried to see the series with fresh eyes and keep an open mind. Guiltily, I made the following observations. Please don’t lynch me!

Dialogue and Narrative

The old films are seriously corny. Think Lucas sold out in 1999 with the release of The Phantom Menace? Try 1977. The most commercially exploited film franchise in history was full of cliches and crap dialogue from the off.

Action and Effects

The old films don’t stand up so well to a modern, more discerning audience. In the days before photo-realistic video games your average Joe didn’t know what it was like to shoot people with laser guns and dogfight spaceships, so the totally unrealistic scenes where bad guys can’t take down a little fighter ship in front of them whilst good guys can take down a space station with one shot got filed under poetic licence. Now that we actually live in the future and are virtual combatants in our own right we know that is total bollocks and you can see a shift in films made this millennium where technical scenes had to withstand the scrutiny of a far more discerning audience who is finding it increasingly hard to suspend their disbelief unless the science adds up.

Ja Ja Binks

We all hate Ja Ja Binks, but I think we forget just how silly and annoying Chewy and C3PO are, and that they take up far more valuable screen minutes than I remember with their antics. Particularly in The Empire Strikes Back, Chewy massively grates with his constant moaning, it’s kind of like having a pissed off, noisy baby in the cinema. These characters are certainly no more edgy or cool than poor old JJB.

Just to clarify, Ja Ja Binks is really annoying too. It’s like Lucas wanted to take the piss out of a dedicated audience who had happily bought his licensed merchandise, VHS and DVD re-releases whilst waiting the best part of two decades for the next trilogy. I also feel sorry for the actors Ewan McGregor and Liam Neeson. Did they know how stupid the scenes they were shooting would turn out to be? I find Ja Ja’s first scene where he takes the two jedis to his underwater city quite funny. McGregor and Neeson are acting so solemnly, treating the role of jedi knight with the sensitivity it deserves, whilst in post-production someone thought it was a good idea for JJB to do a triple somersault into the water, shouting “yippee” and pulling stupid faces!

What do you think?

You can get Star Wars: The Complete Saga on Blu-ray here for £68

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 - Multiplayer World Premiere

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 11:00:00 +0100

8th November 2011. That’s the release date for what looks like an awesome follow-up to the game that kept us warm all through last winter. The trailer shows some of the London multiplayer map, peeks at new weaponry (what’s that rotary blade sticky bomb?) and is that blood I see splattering gloriously out of downed tangos? The pressure was undoubtedly on Infinity Ward to come up with the goods and do more than add a couple of new weapons, and it looks from this trailer that they’ve added a hitherto unseen polish to the series. Well, now you know what my winter looks like :) Will you be buying?

Mad Men Season 5 Teaser Video

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 13:33:46 +0100

First Live HD Video of Earth To Become 'Live Google Earth'?

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 11:04:49 +0100

According to this dramatic trailer by Canadian company UrtheCast, two HD cameras will be installed on ISS (International Space Station) and be streaming back to Earth in real-time by 2012, giving the rest of us non-astronaut folk the ‘life-changing experience’ of seeing our planet as one object before us.

It’s apparently going to be ‘Google Earth on steroids’, giving us the chance to watch major earth events from space to ‘one meter resolution’ which means that each pixel will represent one meter on the ground (making it difficult to see anything smaller than buildings).

Sounds awesome though. Does this bring us one step closer to a truly live, detailed and complete map of Earth? Oh, and have you ever shown an older relative Google Earth and had to explain it’s not live?

Twitter Unveil Native Photo-Sharing Feature

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 14:03:38 +0100

Twitter will soon be adding the ability to add a photo to a tweet without having to use third-party services such as popular options TwitPic and yfrog. They’ve partnered with former Myspace favourite Photobucket to offer the service which will launch in the next few weeks according to Twitter COO Dick Costolo.

I think I’ll still use Flickr and Instagram so I can keep my photos in a nice, hi-res, organised place (Flickr) and take random atmospheric polaroid-style shots which feed into one of my favourite niche social networks (Instagram). What about you?

Change: A World In Flux - My #CogsTalks @ The Hospital

Wed, 11 May 2011 14:42:00 +0100

Here’s the presentation I gave this week at The Hospital in London, showing my take on how the digital world is changing and why this constant change shouldn’t scare us but rather is an endless source of opportunity.

Here’s the presentation I gave and below is the full video of my talk:

Visit My SlideShare

Video courtesy of VideoJug

Any questions, feel free to comment, tweet or email me :)

Master Yoda Reads SatNav Instructions

Mon, 09 May 2011 10:55:00 +0100

I can’t believe I only just saw this year-old viral ad for Tom Tom SatNav. It’s a brilliant and rare example of someone using a LucasFilm licence in a way that doesn’t make me want to rewrite my childhood. Indeed, it’s a great example of brands colliding in a witty way.

P.S. The Darth Vader one isn’t as good.

AV Referendum Results Map

Fri, 06 May 2011 19:57:00 +0100

From light green for ‘no’ through orange for ‘no, but only just’ to purple for ‘yes’

That’ll be a no then…

Fullscreen version here

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How To Create a 'Welcome' Landing Tab for New Facebook Pages

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 17:19:00 +0000

On 10th March 2011 Facebook will upgrade all pages for brands, companies and organisations to a new version of Pages, bringing the design in line with personal profiles which were upgraded in December 2010. For details about the changes read my last blog post here.

‘Static FBML’ tabs, with which you could quickly add extra tabs containing basic HTML to show text, images and videos are being phased out so that you won’t be able to create them after Thursday. This means adding a simple Welcome tab like the ones above which introduce new visitors to your Facebook page (and encourage them to click ‘Like’) is about to get a little complicated. Here’s my step-by-step guide to the easiest and quickest way to create a ‘Welcome’ tab:

Create an image 520px wide and a maximum of 800px high with your Welcome message on. As in the examples above this can include a strong call to action to ‘Like’ the page. You can start with this very basic Photoshop template and save in a new folder called ‘welcometab’.

Open your text editor of choice (Notepad+ for Windows, TextWrangler for Mac perhaps?). Add the following code into a new document replacing my ‘http://yoursite.com/welcometab/IMAGENAME.jpg’ with the address of your own image:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=iso-8859-1" />
<style type="text/css">
body {
width:520px;
margin:0; padding:0; border:0;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id="fb-welcome">
<img src="http://yoursite.com/welcometab/IMAGENAME.jpg" alt="Click 'Like' to get started" border="0">
</div>
</body>
</html>

Save this as fbwelcome.html in the ‘welcometab’ folder and upload the folder and its contents to your FTP.
Visit facebook.com/developers. If it’s your first time here you’ll need to add the developers app, which you’ll be prompted to do. Then hit the ‘Set Up New App’ button in the top-right of the page.
Name your new app ‘Welcome’, click ‘Agree’ and hit ‘Create Application’.
On the next screen describe your app and add icons for it. The icons are important because without them you will see the default ‘gears’ logo next to the app’s name wherever it appears around the site. You’ll need a 16px x 16px image and a 75px x 75px image:

Enter your other details such as email address and support URL and then click ‘Facebook Integration’ in the left-hand menu…
This is where you point to your iframe.
In the ‘Canvas’ section just enter your iframe URL in ‘Canvas URL’ e.g. ‘http://yoursite.com/welcometab/’, select ‘iframe’ in ‘Canvas Type’ and move onto the bottom half of the page…
Enter the name as you want the title of your Welcome tab to appear and then in ‘Tab URL’ enter ‘fbwelcome.html’ and click the ‘Save Changes’ button:
You’ve now created the app and should find yourself on the app developer dashboard looking at an overview of your new app:

Click ‘Application Profile Page’…
On this page click ‘Add to my Page’ in the left-hand menu and in the overlay that appears click the ‘Add to Page’ button next to any of your pages to add your new app:

And that’s it, you’re done! You can create as many apps you need in future, and as the iframe is a webpage hosted by you, you can add what you like there, including previously prohibited goodies like Flash, JavaScript etc which is a great boon, despite the inconvenience of simple ‘Welcome’ apps taking a bit longer to build.

Anything to add? Think there’s an easier way? That’s what the comments are for :)

Facebook Pages Upgrade - What You Need To Know

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 12:30:13 +0000

The old, and new Facebook pages at a glance

On 10th March all Facebook Pages - i.e. pages which are not for personal accounts but for brands, businesses and organizations - will be upgraded to a new style consistent with personal profiles, with a picture gallery across the top and ‘tabs’ now linked to in the left-hand navigation menu as opposed to across the top. You can manually upgrade now at facebook.com/pages/status

The key things you need to know if you run or contribute to a page are:

Use Facebook as your page

This new feature allows you to take on the persona of your page as opposed to your personal identity. You can go around liking, commenting and interacting as the page.

One way you can exploit this is through joining conversations on similar pages. So if you’re a guitar shop you could go and join in conversations about guitars on Fender or Jimi Hendrix’s page to gain exposure in relevant communities. I expect to see this feature abused in the near future and it will be interesting to see how Facebook deal with this.

Notifications and a newsfeed

Once you’ve switched to using Facebook as your page, when you click the Facebook logo or ‘Home’ you will see a newsfeed as normal, but now it won’t be your personal one containing updates from your friends but rather the page’s newsfeed containing updates from other pages you have liked whilst using Facebook as that page.

You will also see different notifications. Again, instead of your personal ones they will all relate to activity on the page you are using Facebook as.

Photo gallery at the top of the page, ‘tabs’ and liked pages on the left

Once you upgrade the first thing you will notice is the new layout. You have the photostrip at the top just like on your personal profile which displays photos you have uploaded as that page (it does’t include photos uploaded to your wall by users), and the ‘tabs’ (can we call them tabs now? Maybe they’re ‘subpages’ or just ‘apps’) are linked to on the left, with pages you have liked (whilst using Facebook as your page) listed below. You can also feature any number of admins who run the page should you wish to bring out some human personality into the page.

Iframes and the death of FBML

This is in my view the biggest change by far, but a technical one and so possibly the least discussed amongst marketeers. In short, your existing Static FBML tabs will be safe (and updatable) forever, but after 10th March you will not be able to add the FBML app to create new ones. You will have to create a Facebook app and insert an iframe into it. Sounds scary, but whilst definitely more time consuming than the old Static FBML tabs it’s a bit easier than it sounds. I’m currently writing a tutorial just for you, so hang tight and stay tuned :)

Mobile World Congress: 5 Things We Learnt About The Future

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 23:05:00 +0000

Now that the dust has settled and everyone has returned to Asia and Scandinavia with their red lanyards no doubt still swinging round their necks it’s a good time to look back, take stock and reflect on the big takeaways from Mobile World Congress 2011:

Phones don’t have features, operating systems do
If you were bored within an hour of looking round the conference I’m sure you weren’t alone. The phones were almost all the same i.e. iPhone clones with a full-span touchscreen and between one and five physical ‘home’ buttons at the base of the unit’s front, with of course the obligatory volume buttons on the right-hand side, data, audio and power ports. It’s actually a massive relief that software interface design has been taken from the hands of those who have seldom mastered it and been put in the hands of Google, whose Android platform was ubiquitous at this years #MWC11.

There were a few nice original touches such as a few phones with HDMI-out like LG’s fast-as-hell Optimus 2X which outputs games, videos and screen mirroring in full HD.

LG also captured a lot of the column inches last week with their Optimus 3D phone which boasts a glasses-free 3D screen and a dual-lens camera which shoots 3D video which can be viewed and shared on YouTube (which is now 3D compatible). They also have a tablet which sports the 3D camera and I think I was the first person ever to publicly upload 3D footage on it (#geekwin):
Which ‘cloud’ your stuff is in really matters
I really started to feel that this year a lot of us have started living out of the cloud as opposed to our hard drives. Maybe it’s just me but all my documents and files for both work and personal use are in my Dropbox, which via apps makes all my stuff accessible on any device (and even their website). My collaborative documents with various clients/colleagues are on Google Docs, my email and calendars are in Google and Apple’s servers, my music projects are all synced through Gobbler, the list goes on and on and what matters now when choosing a phone is how easily I can get to all that stuff sat on servers somewhere in California. With Google being an increasingly big player in the cloud storage space (with rumours of more stuff coming) and being the developer of what is now the biggest mobile operating system it can only mean good things for Android and the phones who run the OS.
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Mobile internet and voice quality is about to get a big upgrade
4G is already being rolled out in major US cities by Sprint and has been tested in the UK by O2. Your average consumer can expect to start enjoying home broadband speeds on their mobile as early as next year which will open the door to previously home-only activities such as IP voice/video calls (via Skype etc), multiplayer gaming, hi-def content streaming and file-sharing.
Orange also confirmed the rumour that they’re about to trial HD voice calls in the UK, which will give calls the audio quality of music mp3s. Great news for those who are regularly kept on hold I guess.
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Tablet computers are here to stay
“iFad” I heard you scream when Jobs unveiled the device that’s ‘just a big iPhone’ back in January 2010. Well, taking a look round the stands at Mobile World Congress this year put the clear message out that there is a big demand for touchscreen devices between five and ten inches big and everyone from Blackberry to LG wants in on this burgeoning market. As with the phones they started to all merge into the same Android device after a while though the differences in size, weight and speed were more noticeable with the pads. Here are a couple of key players compared with my iPad:

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 with Android Honeycomb was noticeably light and very portable. Ran Android beautifully.

LG’s Optimus Pad sacrificed width for a more portable feel without the loss of screen real estate when playing widescreen media. Also felt very fast, responsive and of course has that 3D camera.

Confused by the middle ground between phone and netbook? Samsung’s Galaxy Wifi 5.0 will really blow your mind:

There it is next to my iPhone 4. Samsung have filled yet another gap we didn’t know existed with this phone-less bit of hardware that runs Android 2.2 and puzzled many people who wondered whether it was a big media player or small tablet. You decide.

Ultimately, if - and only if - these tablets are released with a much lower price tag than the iPad they may gain ground with the masses, particularly with heavy Google users such as myself and many of my fellow iPad-carriers. Android has matured into a serious contender to Apple’s crown and it’ll be interesting to see how Apple parry the blow on 2nd March 2011 with the big iPad 2 announcement.
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Google are pretty serious about this stuff
I think I’ve used the G-word in this post enough times for us to realise that Google aren’t just speculatively throwing their hat into the ring on this one, they aim to completely take over mobile, kinda like they completely took over Mobile World Congress 2011 with an amazing stand:

This stand had… a slide which made you a free physical photo of your trip down it, a smoothy bar, free drinks upstairs, a chilled seating area, an ‘Androidify Yourself’ free sticker-making station, free collectible pin-badges, free collectible Android figurines and loads more stuff. I mean it was totally mental, like so much more big and fun than any other stand, but not only that, they reached out to all corners of the event with an Android welcoming you to most other stands too:

The Androids were giving out green sweets and collectible pin badges which @alicam did a fine job of collecting:

For a more extensive account with photos of Android’s domination of MWC11 visit @alicam’s blog - alistercameron.com

All in all it was a fun(ish) and interesting conference. I learned a lot about mobile and got to see Barcelona too, which is a great city despite my vegetarianism eliciting the kind of face I imagine people would make if you asked to see intimate photos of their wife. Anyway, some pretty photos of Barcelona here.

Mobile World Congress 2011 So Far

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 12:34:00 +0000

I’m here at Mobile World Congress 2011 in Barcelona, Spain for the mobile communications industry’s big annual bash. It’s a time for phone manufacturers, app developers, accessories makers and anyone else who gains in any way from people using mobile phones and computers to show off their latest innovations and forthcoming product launches. It’s also a place for the big personalities in technology, like the CEOs of Google, Twitter and Microsoft et al, to take the stage in front of a key group of people (ie people in suits who make lots of money out of our obsession with mobile).

Yesterday was fun. We attended LG’s press conference where they unveiled the world’s first glasses-free 3D phone and tablet computer. We got plenty of time to try these out and play with the other devices and I even managed to get the first 3D video created with the LG Optimus Pad uploaded to YouTube ;) Out of all the devices the one I genuinely want to own is the Pad. If I didn’t have an Apple iPad already I’d be very tempted by this.

Today (Tuesday) is our second day at the conference and whilst the big announcements at press conferences have blown over, there’s still lots of buzz round the various booths with people playing with the latest handsets and chatting about MOBILE!!

I took the time to play with the two other LG phones (the ones without any 3D stuff going on) and one particularly took my fancy, more so even than the 3D phone - LG’s Optimus 2X. It’s a good solid Android phone and under the hood has a dual processor, dual memory and is basically very fast. Also loved playing it plugged into a HDTV via HDMI for full 1080p games, videos, photos, internet etc as evidenced by my Shrek Kart session below:

I’m here courtesy of LG Mobile - @LGmobileMWC on Twitter - hence my focus up to now on LG’s products. I’m with two other bloggers - @alicam from Melbourne and @mayhemstudios from Los Angeles. I’ll be roving round the other big booths tomorrow and looking at what other companies have up their sleeves so stay tuned at twitter.com/willfrancis :)