Forget and Ipod Dock

Music is a one form of media that is very important to me, forget TV, the internet, books, magazines etc. music for a long time has been a living breathing hobby. Up until recently I have been using minidiscs almost exclusively for my home music collection (I have over 500 - picture later). Minidisc for a number of reasons, mainly as a legacy to my youth, producing mixes and trading discs, but also as I loved having something physical to slot into a hifi and hit play - music as dot.mp3 files seem so bland by comparison to a labled minidsc, CD or vinyl. I have had a 30 gb Ipod for a couple of years now, but I just struggle with the concept of having all my music with me. I just hit skip all the time. I now believe 2 gb is the optimum size for a DAP for me.

Anyway enough of all that back to the project.

Given that I never really clicked with my ipod I never really got into a docking system for it. As such my home stereo was still quite a traditional set-up > Amp > CD > Minidisc > Speakers (all Yamaha for what its worth). I've been toying with the idea of a fully integrated HDD set-up with all my albums for a while. To cut a long story short, I did a it of research and a bit of ebay searching and settled on an old piece of technology (I'm a tight git and hate spending money). I bought a Fujitsu Stylistic 3400 touchscreen PC. £75 from ebay with two batteries wireless card, stand and case - a bargain. The specs aren't going to blow anyone away but I don't need much horsepower. I upgraded the ram to 192mb and its quite spritley with windows 2000. It is now hooked up to my stereo and an external 300GB hard drive and it is one sweet touchscreen jukebox - pictures and movies are worth more than words check it out:

Forget a dock, scrap the Touch - this thing is sweet!




Other cool things about this little device are;

• It will sit there as a digital photo frame - never wanted one really but now I have a LCD sitting there it makes sense to have some memories popping up.
• Being a tablet PC it takes very little power to run (see above I am a tight git).
  
• I was thinking about buying a NAS drive - no need the media drive is networked through wifi on this bad boy.
  
• Currently I am running mediajukebox as a mediaplayer as it works very well with as touchscreen - however given I'm running an OS I'm not restricted to any 1 proprietry interface.
  
• If I want to download MP3's to my DAP I just use the jukebox - no need to head to the office.
  
• As above for photos from my camera - no need to fire-up my laptop or desktop.
• Its all internet connected - mp3 tagging, biogs, cover art etc - no probs.
  
• Web browsing - of course the touchscreen keyboard is annoying, but standby to internet = 15 seconds (importantly stanbdy to music is the same). Want to quickly check our household gcal (is it recylcing with the bins tonight?) no probs. I use Opera and SpeedDial helps
• If I felt the need to I could keep the tablet running 24/7 and expose a port outside my firewall - run something like vibestreamer and access all my music from any internet connection.
  

Anyway this litle piece of Fujitsu kit retailed in excess of $1500 at launch around the year 2000. For 75 notes it is now utilised as a great touchscreen jukebox - in my opinion beats an ipod dock hands down. You have to have a play with it to truley appreciate it! Dinner parties will rock!

Couple more movies

Boot to a paused playlist from standby in under 10 seconds



Web browsing with the touchscreen - sweet




Cheers
Bish

Listening to - Kaiser Chiefs - Off With Thier Heads (not sure its very good - may be a grower)

INSPIRE and the Social Web

Talking about metadata recently with a customer and showing off our new bit of kit - Stratus Gallery. The chap I was talking to made a suggestion that users would want to comment on the metadata records.

Comments that may include items such as:

• Subjective rating 1-10
• Previous Projects the data has been used for
• References to other data that may be useful.

I also notice that IBM have just launched a beta Enterprise 2.0 collaborative working portal type thingy - Bluehouse (strange name)

INSPIRE is all about collaborative working, sharing data, and making great use of the data available. You think those boys over in Brussels may be considering some of these social web-based capabilities - then again maybe not.

Cheers

Bish

Listening to - James Morrison - Songs for you, truths for me

Shaping a changing world...

There are people far more qualified and experienced than me in GIS, Web, Technology, Academia and dare I say business at this years AGI Conference. I went with a slightly tongue in cheek approach and I hoped to put some fun into the proceedings. I also strongly believe that the people I was speaking to understand Geo better than I do and wanted to show them a different angle on technology, rather than preach to them on GIS

These are my slides:

Web 2.0 And Hype

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: web 2.0 bishop)

http://www.slideshare.net/mpbish/web-20-and-hype-presentation

I didn't talk much about maps or Geo and as a former "GIS Professional" I struggled to come to terms with that in the run up to the conference. I graduated with a GIS degree in 2003. If my course director had told me 5 years ago that I would be presenting at the conference in 2008 (I would have bitten their hand off) but would never have predicted I would not be talking about Geo. Then again perhaps it has something to do with the time (around 2004) after a few shandies I told a lot of the top guys at the AGI they were a dinosaur organisation with outdated views and an academic focus. Clearly I was wrong as many people did listen to me yesterday. Do I feel guilty about not talking about Geo - yes a little. I love maps as much as anyone and I paid a lot for my degree to learn about geo.

But then look at the fantastic range of speakers all talking about geo at this years conference and I feel a little less bad. Perhaps the fact that I am product of the system and not talking about Geo says a lot about where we have come from and where we are going? I have aspirations to take the power of location to places it couldn't before - mainly in the Enterprise. I can't do that by banging on about maps and tile servers all of the time (some of the time yes).


According to some my presentation was confusing or perplexing and 'old news'.

I'm generalising here but the sad thing is I think that some people in technology and "blogsphere" are loosing touch with the fact that there are scores of people in our industry (and outside our industry) that don't understand things as "basic" as web2.0. I wasn't positioning my presentation to the technologists, the bloggers, the evangelists, the serial conference speakers. I was positioning my presentation to the real people I meet on a weekly basis. Not everyone has a blog or even reads blogs. Most people I speak to will never know or (need to know) what ajax is. There seems to be a great deal of surprise on the lack of understanding of the ‘basics’ of Web2.0. I think the thought leaders in the industry should take a step back from their blogs for a second. Rather than trying to out do each other “top-trump style” start translating this stuff. I count myself quite ahead of the curve, but way back compared to some of the techie people in the industry. By the time it hits my radar it is old news for the elite – but still relevant enough to help many of my customers and the wider community.

Cheers
Bish

Listening to Kings of Leon - Because of the Times

AGI 2008 Icebreaker

What have I discovered on the Icebreaker?

• I work in a dynamic industry and many of my ex-colleagues have infiltrated far and wide
• The Average age of an icebreakers attendee is 40+
• I'm not very good at location based quizzes.
• I should not stay out and booze too late this evening.
• Marketing and presence is noticed.

Should be a good day today - lots of interesting speakers and topics.

Cheers
Bish

Location Intelligence and Document Management

This little bugger caused me a lot of hassle this week.

Rather embarrassingly I lost a single document that prevented me from traveling to Sweden. I was quite impressed with the 4 hour turnaround service, but not so impressed with the price tag (still £10.10 a year for 10 years isn't so bad). Still my own stupid fault, should try and look after this one. Also amazing how fast news travels as the whole office seemed to know.

I did finally make it to MapSweden - however I missed out on the shrimp and vodka party, followed by sauna and midnight swim. The Swedes certainly know how to hold a conference!

Listening to Beck - Sea Change

Then there were 3

(yeah I know there are others...)

Nice:

Speed

Omnibar

Application Mode (which means corporate web applications can now be nicely locked down - may interest a few ICT departments)

Not so nice:

No Plugins (Yet)

Menu all the way on the right

Not on Linux (Yet)

Fears of google data gathering (TBD)

Will we one day see everything running in browsers regardless of OS. Linux may rule on servers and web applications will rule the "Get Things Done" space (goodbye Microsoft OS, don't slam the door on the way out - perhaps not yet,)

Chrome may never be the number 1 browser, but it won't matter. It will shape the future releases of IE and Firefox as they try to take the best features. That is what I believe googke is trying to achive here. Utimatley it won't matter to google which browser you use to look at their content, apps, and advertisments. What they do want is users to demand things like the omni bar, speed dial and application mode in other browsers.

Listening to - Pixes Doolittle

Mygazines

I'm a newcomer to document management, but this new site raised my eyebrows. However I thought online magazine content was just not going to be a workable thing until I saw this site. http://www.mygazines.com/

You do need to sign up to read the magazines, for a web system the interface is sweet! I'm not sure how long this will stay live due to property rights lawsuits - we shall see.

The UI is sweet - it may be trivial but the pages flip horizontally rather than vertically - wake up Adobe - pdfs should be read like this. Just because I create documents in Word vertically doesn't mean I want read them in that fashion

(listening to: Verve - Forth)

Screencasts

I just love screencasts to demonstrate technology. I truly believe they allow for a rich representation of what products and technology can offer end users. They can be pretty funky at times and can really add an extra dimensions to traditional web content. I've experimented with a couple for one of the products I work with and so far I've seen people at all levels mesmerised by them. There is something quite intriguing to the end user to click play and be swept through a software experience.What kind of technology benefits from screencasts? Visual stuff, eye candy stuff, interactive stuff, - Mapping & GIS stuff perhaps?

A screencast that inspired me: http://www.songbirdnest.com/screencast Could watch this a couple of times... it is quite neat. Mine need a bit of polish and I've yet to sus out how to get audio to sync, but once I do the screencast experience will be complete!

Cheers
Bish

(listening to: Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree)

A bottleneck forms in an urban canyon

I travel into London less these days. I've become slightly spoilt by being able to drive into the EMEA headquarters. Despite taking around an hour to do 18 miles its still quite pleasant to be cocooned in the car with a radio and a seat!

Despite having traveled every day for 3 years into central London from the suburbs I'm now very impatient with the number of people. This morning at Waterloo, they were manually checking tickets and there was a massive bottleneck. Its just as bad if not worse trying to get to a platform on the way home. SW Trains are in the process of installing ticket barriers at Waterloo - I dread to think what the chaos will be like once they do this. I don't think the platforms are geared up to it - just too narrow. If I look at other big London stations they have barriers set well back from the platform enabling people to filter through.

I do wonder is SW Trains have performed any crowd modelling on the numbers of people that they expect to filter through this system. Certainly some GIS/CAD tools may be capable of doing some of this modelling, but they aren't really geared up for it. Quite an interesting research paper here: http://geosimulation.org/crowds/#candy

behavioural geography - great term




We are living on an increasingly crowded island here in the UK and I think this type of modelling can be very valuable. If you are planning for ticket barrier, a new school or even an Olympic village, these types of models should be very compelling.

Cheers
Bish

(listening to Kooks - Konk)

GIs Professionals

There are people far more qualified and experienced than me in GIS, Web, Technology, Academia and dare I say business at this years AGI Conference. I went with a slightly tongue in cheek approach and I hoped to put some fun into the proceedings. I also strongly believe that the people I was speaking to understand Geo better than I do and wanted to show them a different angle on technology.

These are my slides:

http://www.slideshare.net/mpbish/web-20-and-hype-presentation

I didn't talk much about maps or Geo and I struggled with my theme in the run up to the conference. I graduated with a GIS degree in 2003. I my course director had told me 5 years ago that I would be presenting at the conference in 2008 (I would have bitten their hand off) but would never have predicted I would not be talking about Geo. Perhaps it has something to do with the time (around 2004) after a few shandies I told a lot of the top guys at the AGI they were a dinosaur organisation with outdated views and an academic focus.

Do I feel guilty about not talking about Geo - yes a little. I love maps as much as anyone and I paid a lot for my degree to learn about geo.

But then look at the fantastic range of speakers all talking about geo at this years conference and I feel a little less bad. Perhaps the fact that I as a product of the system am not talking about Geo says a lot about where we have come from and where we are going? I have aspirations to take the power of location – the enterprise. I can't do that by banging on about maps and tile servers all of the time (some of the time yes).

Apparently my presentation was old news - but let me summarise the opening plenary:

• Someone created a web business understood economics and sold it for loads of money
• The Ordnance Survey is now Web2.0
• 3D models are better for town planners than 2D

Don’t get me wrong I enjoyed these sessions – but sometimes these things rely on who is saying it rather than what they are saying.

The sad thing is I think many people in technology and blogsphere are loosing touch with the fact that there are scores of people in our industry (and outside our industry) that don't understand things like web2.0 is. I wasn't positioning my presentation to the technologists, the bloggers, the evangelists, the serial conference speakers. I was positioning my presentation to the people I meet on a weekly basis. Not everyone has a blog or even reads blogs. Most people I speak to will never know or (need to know) what ajax is. There seems to be a great deal of surprise of the lack of understanding of the ‘basics’ of Web2.0. I think the thought leaders in the industry should take a step back from their blogs for a second. Rather than trying to out do each other “top-trump style” start translating this stuff. I count myself quite ahead of the curve, but way back compared to some of the techie people in the industry. By the time it hits my radar it is old news for the elite – but still relevant enough to help many of my customers and the wider community.

Cheers

Bish

Listening to: Kings of Leon - Because of the Times

TFL GMAP

Interesting gmaps development I hadn't spotted until this evening - public transportation by TFL integrated into google maps. My gf asked me for how to get to Bishopsgate for a meeting in the morning, I hit GMaps and suggested walking from Bank - low and behold a click on the map and it looks like tfl are on the GMap waggon:

It wasn't that much use to me there or then, but perhaps it may be one day. How long till we see the MaccyD's and BK's popping up like this? Not too long methinks.

Cheers
Bish

(listening to Hotel Costes)

Here we go

Welcome to MappinBytes.

I thought I would jump on the band wagon and start one of these blog things. We'll see how it goes. I guess I need to slap a disclaimer all over the place to stop me getting fired, not sure how just how much that would hold up in court... I'm not certain on just how much I should mix personal content with work rambling, is there an article on blog policy (its not in my HR handbook)

I can't promise the awesome content that some of the Spatial blogs I visit have, as I have a day job to attend to ;) But perhaps, I will try and take a different stance on things and take it all a bit less seriously. (rather than mention which router I post from, mention which tunes I'm listening to).

You may ask what is the purpose of this blog? and on my first post maybe I'm asking the same thing. The truth is I'm very fortunate that I am working in an industry I love and have the opportunity to work with some fantastic people and great technology, so perhaps this little blog will let me look back and remind myself of this.

BTW, the name of the blog could be an ingenious play on many things answers on a postcard.

Cheers
Bish