July 2007 Archives

I was pointed at a recent post by Nicolas Nova this morning (thanks Kars) which advocates a low-tech - or no-tech - approach to location based services (games, in this case). This is something I've been pushing for a while. About 9 months ago, I started off a brief concept presentation with this:

Here & Now is an adaptable service which provides time & place sensitive information to mobile phone users in response to an SMS. It is a “fake location based service”, because it relies on the user telling the service where they are.

In effect, we are actually bringing “human intelligence” into the system. Most LBS services proposed so far seem to be motivated more by a desire to use technology – engineer-led solutions – than a significant cost benefit to end users.

Most of the time, people know where they are. They don't need GPS when they're standing in the middle of Marbella looking for a good bar. Sure, guidance can be helpful, but really, how many people wander around a city centre using GPS navigation ? The hard parts of mobile LBS are relevance of search results and the user interface. GPS is a nice to have which simply enhances the input. So why the hang up on technology ? System design should embrace all components of the system, and in mobile location based services, a major component is the one holding the phone.

Today's great lost & found iTunes album (or whatever you call 'em these days) ... Bill Pritchard's "Jolie", featuring the wonderful "In the summer" and 9 other gems.

Strange character, Bill Pritchard. From somewhere Up North in England (Lichfield ? Is that Up North ?) but somehow spiritually a native of Paris. Totally wonderful songwriter, and a brilliant, idiosyncratic performer. I only once had the pleasure of seeing him play live, but his rendition of "Kenneth Williams is a sick man" will never leave me. Never hit anything approaching the big time, but he was quite hip around the mid 90s if I remember correctly.

I'd be very surprised if you could find this anywhere other than iTunes these days. I've still go my vinyl copy in a storage unit somewhere...well, I won't be needing it anymore.

(album cover scrounged from the apparently defunct Bill Pritchard discography site.

Ok, here it is. A MASSIVE opportunity in the Web 2.0 area.

The BoringBitz Generatr 2.0 (beta)

Yes, a one stop shop where you can enter a few bits of basic info, press a button, and out comes reams of text for your privacy policy, terms and conditions, FAQ, corporate blog posts (pro edition only) and patent applications (super pro edition only).

Obviously, there's going to be tags, discussions, groupings, folksonomies, memes, and All The Usual Bollockx™.

I suppose it already exists.

For the last year I have been a subscriber to John Gruber's blog, Daring Fireball - basically an Apple fanzine. I've decided not to renew. Gruber is a good writer, but his tone is really getting irritating. Describing everybody who takes a different view to his as a "jackass" is just childish. And although he does display a higher level of intelligence than most, he is display more and more signs of Cult Of Mac zealotry and fanaticism.

Daring Fireball is an interesting example of blog as income model, but however good the writing, Gruber's world view is too narrow and too predictable to be worth reading very often, let alone paying for.

I appear to be on the business spam list of a bunch of shysters called terrapinn, who are promoting yet another of these ersatz "conferences", where a bunch of bored disinterested suits spout marketing presentations to another bunch of bored disinterested suits, who are only in it for the expense account bar tab at the nearest lap dancing joint. Believe me, I've been there, done that.

Anyway, at least Terrapinn provide an "unsubscribe" link (yeah, I know, but whatever), which when clicked on produces this nice little popup:

Seven days to "process" ? Sure. In the spam list they go. Suits.