Our Man Inside

Not sure if you have read this article in the Guardian.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/22/social-networking-cyber-scepticism-twitter

It’s a new article based on and old statement that’s been floating around for a while. I imagine it’s resurfaced due to the book ‘Alone Together’ hitting the UK shelves soon. Either that or there is little new comment to report on.

In some ways for those that use Facebook only, the general thrust of the article rings true. The social web has evolved way beyond what the mainstream public use though.  The potential is only limited by our imagination. If the person stood at the bus stop is forever head down checking their Facebook wall, then maybe they are only comfortable talking to people online and are not normally that sociable.  Or perhaps they are connected to thousands and just on the way to meet a chunk of them. Just because they are not talking to the person stood next to them doesn’t mean they are not being sociable. Social interaction online is still social interaction.

If you are not at all empathic then I can see how using technology to communicate with another human being may seem difficult and strange. This is not the fault of technology. It is down to us to listen more, to extract meaning from the information we are given. To become better readers of others. We have mastered very well indeed how to communicate by telephone. Even though we have no access to facial expression, eye accessing cues and body language. It’s still early days for all of these new tools and once the initial explosion is over and the dust settles, we will see new and amazing ways to connect.

Location based applications using geotagging, particularly those on Mobile devices are certainly bridging the gaps between the online spaces and what the non-users of these channels are calling ‘Real Life‘.

I can say from my own experience that my uses of these tools are often a talking point with those stood around me. It’s a fascinating new world. I enjoy sharing it with those that still think this is all digital witchcraft. You only have to show a couple of relevant uses for people to suddenly ‘get it’.

You can’t just dip into these channels and understand the interactions that are going on. You need to get involved or you risk sounding like every other lazy pundit that doesn’t ‘get it’ as they state.. “I don’t want to know what you are having for breakfast!”

Those regurgitating this particular meme are probably not that interested in humanity anyway. It’s like walking into a public gathering and shouting “What are you all talking about and how is this relevant to me?!!”

I certainly talk to and meet more people IRL (in real life) now that I’m using these tools because I’m a person that likes to create new interactions anyway. It may be that I leave my village desk for a conference, a ‘geek meet’, to grab a quick coffee with an new online connection, or some social experiment where I am purposely connecting with people in the real and virtual sense using these tools. i.e http://Freebees.me

Some individuals are sociable and some are not. I’d hazard a bet there are more people experiencing new interactions with the social web that there are sociable types becoming ‘isolated’ like the article suggests. Huge swathes of socially impoverished disconnected people now have a voice and it is down to us to listen and connect.

The call for some kind of ‘Netequette’ sounds suspiciously like someone asking for more ‘rules and regulation’. After new forms of back channel communication and information sharing have spurned organisations like Wikileaks, I don’t have to make too large a tin foil hat to see a social technology backlash would be nurtured by some other ‘well connected’ members of society. After all, the person on the street with a mobile device is now more connected than ever before. With more information at their fingertips than you average i.p blocked government office.

I totally agree with peoples growing inability to digest large complex amounts of information. Although can only really speak from my own experience. I seem to be buying more books but reading less larger works. On the whole I am reading more though. I use the Read Later bookmark tool to send articles I don’t feel I have time to read (mainly when I don’t feel like I want to sit at the computer) and that article gets synced to an app called Instapaper allowing me to read the article on my other more mobile devices like my phone, ipad etc. That person you see at the bus stop staring at his phone or iPad may be me reading the Guardian or some other online publication. Would I be less isolated hidden behind a broadsheet newspaper?

These new ways of communicating and sharing information are not going away. They will however become more refined as we also find new ways of managing our time. No doubt as we see greater adoption, those in the heart of this ‘backlash’ will quieten down as they begin to find these tools ‘more useful’.

i’m @Documentally on twitter

The dust has just about settled after the Vodafone 360 launch and after having no clue at all as to what I was going to see, I now have much more of an idea and am genuinely excited about what is in the pipeline for mobile users.
I’ve never really subscribed to the platforms spawned by the mobile giants, either from the carriers or the handset makers. I made a point of avoiding Vodafone Live as when I was ready for mobile web I wanted it to be on my terms. I didn’t want to be spoon fed sport and weather on a naff mobile browser. Wap or no Wap.

Then there was Nokia’s Ovi.. Well, being a Mac user there seemed little point.

Vodafone 360 may well change the way we look at mobile forever. (Or at least the foreseeable future). If you ever dabbled in ZYB you will have a rough idea of what’s in store.

I guess cloud mobile hints towards it too but this is way more than what you get with your dot mac account.

This is not just syncing this is a suite of internet services morphing your contacts, status updates and messaging all in ‘the cloud’. This will integrate all your social networks with your address book and provide a two way editable pipeline between you and your contacts.

The flexibility and configuration options are mind boggling and I haven’t even gone into the realtime location integration.

Of course there will be some people (normally me) screaming “What about our privacy?!” From what I could see this has been taken way more seriously than any other platform developer has bothered in the past. After a few wines were had this conversation on audioboo ended up on Kathryn Corrick’s blog and Terence Eden‘s comment on the bottom explains things better than I could.

I thought I was getting close to a cloud mobile experience with my Apple devices and some of the apps I use. But Apple is as Apple does and I’m fed up with the controls and restraints Apple put in place to guarantee ever increasing profits while it’s users are drip fed new tech. Always wanting and waiting for Apple to do the right thing. Jobs acting like a Wizard of Oz over his minions.

Vodafone is a massive faceless behemoth yes, but I’m thinking with this move so much is going to decide on the community making it happen. From macro to microcosm. From the coding community building the apps to the cross platform communities meeting in their hand held device.

360 is meant to work on all devices with all carriers. Obviously Vodafone are going to make sure they have the most suitable devices on offer and having got my hands on the Samsung H1 running the LiMo Platform, It’s feels like really decent handset.

Sturdy, well styled and feature packed. The camera really impressed me as did the fact that this wasn’t another phone trying to win the megapixel stakes. It’s not the number of pixels in a camera it’s how they are used and on a WVGA AMLED display it’s easy to see the quality of your image.

On first impressions low light images looked better than some of the compact cameras I use and the 720p video quality seemed good enough for me to leave my other devices at home.

The touch screen interface felt a little sluggish compared to the iPhone but I was assured this is still really early days and the interface with be honed and refined as the weeks go by.

With the €1,000,000 prize fund in place for coders to collect should they create new and innovative apps I feel we may see an app store that begins with quality over quantity and I really have to get my hands on the phone just to experiment with new apps as and when they begin appear.

The universal contact list called ‘Vodafone People’ clearly puts contacts and content at the forefront of the 360.com ethos a suite of services that apears to be dripping with social media potential.

If a beast like Vodafone has bitten the bullet and finally embraced social media this may be the confirmation all the early adopters have been waiting for. Why is it we have been hanging around this social media fad thing for so long.. Well maybe this is really it. With so much potential to expand and innovate with the mobile communication tools at our finger tips starting to do what we want them to do.. This is what we have been waiting for.

Of course in the not too distant future we will no doubt be excited about hardware breakthroughs as battery life, bandwidth and memory capacity going through the roof.. That doesn’t change what Vodafone may have done here right now for mobile communication. I would not have imagined them opening up elements of it’s network to third parties.. This is a different and hopefully leading a mindset. Once you let social networks and open source operating systems enhance your devices, you are placing an awful lot of power into the hands of the community. I am sure the control will stay with Vodafone. The lack of Google maps at this stage hints towards this and they seem to have invested a hell of a lot into this move to take too many risks.

Still, I am excited to see where this goes. And with this new level of connectivity bridging previously unconnected networks, I imagine it will be a magical mystery tour where everyone is on the bus.

For more interviews with the people in the know click on this atom feed

..Or here are some AudioBoo’s

Also you may want to listen to Nik Butler and Andy White’s thoughts on Vodafone 360 in the podcast Social Media White Noise (7 minutes into the podcast)

Video has finally arrived for the un-cracked iphone! Well.. video in the shape of a video slideshow, which as far as I am concerned is a bloody miracle judging by the way Apple seems to be restricting development of video based apps. Or is it AT&T and O2 not wanting people to stream with their ‘unlimited’ data?

I have to say I am so happy that it is 12seconds.tv that has started to build this bridge across the video void.. It’s a long time coming and for a start up with little to no cash, this is like building home made space suits and heading off to the moon.

They are top guys too..

The next thing I need to do is invite them over here to the UK so they realise although we are a little island we have big gobs and could have started spreading the word way before the US woke up.. This would have eased the world into 12Seconds and been a great way of flushing out the inevitable bugs before everybody rushed in..

The US could then have woken up with a massive 12Second alarm call..  Here in England it is now the end of the day and I have had the app sitting dormant and broken on my iPhone until only a short while ago.. All day out and about i have been checking it like it was a pacemaker and my life depended on it.. I won’t go into how frustrating that is. I initially thought the app had been launched broken.

I think my frustration stems only from my anticipation and the fact I knew it was a really important release as far as iPhone apps go.

Of course.. if i had taken a proper look at the text on the app store it would have told me I would have the app before it was going to work, but you know me.. Ever so slightly impatient when it comes to the release of new tech.

Still.. it has now sprung to life and I can actually talk about it. I dropped a tweet out yesterday mentioning it by accident but managed to delete it before I caused too much trouble. (Sorry Guys)..

So what are you waiting for?! The application cost a dollar (59p) it’s a bargain.

It is so straight forward. If you don’t have a 12Seconds account get one and then get the app.. Hell, why not get the app first! You can sign up through the app on the phone.

Once you have it.. Log in.. take three photos, add 12 seconds of audio and click to share it on the 12seconds site. It really is that easy you could do it drunk.. you no doubt will..

So if you are reading this as a noob and don’t know about 12Seconds.. get on it. Be it through the app or through the site..  I’ll see you there.

If you do download the app.. please review it and help the guys get the respect they deserve.

I have made some good friends through 12Seconds and I’m looking forward to making more. As soon as you are ready to go.. come let me know.. It may come as little surprise that I am on there as Documentally.

On the way.. down. on 12seconds.tv

This week I was asked to go along to the Manchester Digital Development Agency and talk at an event called AmbITion, an Arts Council project that’s helping arts organisations in the East and North West regions of England make better use of technology.

It was a quality day, well organised in a great venue. Whenever I make the journey up to Manchester I always end up returning inspired after mixing with the masses of creative minds involved in some great projects.

Here are a few moments from the day:

Big thanks go to the MDDA, in particular Phil Birchenall and Gerry Scappaticci.

If you get the chance, show your support for the first Manchester Social Media Cafe on the 11th November.

The music used in the video is entitled ‘Depeche’ by Moriarty

Dear Twitter,

I have had a great idea…

I suddenly realised that over here in the UK you have no offline presence at all. No skyscraping head office, no billboards and no sponsored parks or roundabouts.

How could this be? Especially with you being such an incredible international social media tour de force.

This got me thinking. I believe I have one of the most sociable cars ever built. It also just happens to be ‘Twitter‘ colour. As the car is so rare in the UK people already stare as I drive by. Wherever I park, people approach to find out more. What is it? Where is it from? Why do you have it?

Imagine how different the questions would be if my car had Twitter emblazoned down the side…

What is this Twitter car? What’s it all about?

It would be a cinch to also have real-time, location based tweets scrolling across the rear window.

Social media folk know all about Twitter. Let’s make social media even more sociable by reaching out of our echo chamber and into the wider world.

I am happy to be the driver/chauffeur/pilot of the ‘Twittermobile’. I could even do interviews in the back seat.

Talk to me and lets take twitter offline and into the minds and streets of the British people.

If you are not following me already on Twitter i am @Documentally

Random donations are always welcome and deeply apreciated on my support page.