http://binarytales.co.uk/index.php/site/index/ en jon@binarytales.co.uk Copyright 2008 2008-04-27T17:57:00+00:00 http://binarytales.co.uk/index.php/site/as_busy_as_a_mad_march_hair_part_2/ http://binarytales.co.uk/index.php/site/as_busy_as_a_mad_march_hair_part_2/#When:17:57:00Z In hindsight I should have chosen a better name for this pair of posts as it’s almost May. Perhaps I should take a leaf from the book of Tom Morris and do away with titles. The need for good search engine rankings and to gain peoples interests quickly has done away with catchy, clever and witty headlines, but that is a topic for another day. An now the concluding part of my recent adventures. A week and a little bit ago I was in London for Future Of Web Design. What an event! I had heard that events run by Carsonfied can be very business-y, that is, a lot of marketing people trying to sell you stuff and not much substance so I was not sure about what I would get out of the event and being a student I was a little bit worried about how costly an event like this is for me. Train tickets, accommodation, sustenance and the cost of the event itself all soon add up, would it be worth it. In short, yes it was. The day was punctuated by two awfully embarrassing sales pitches from Microsoft and Adobe (though you’d be forgiven for thinking they were there to sell cars not software) but the amazing line-up of main speakers put together by Paul Boag was excellent. I won’t go into depth about what was said. Jeremy Keith was doing some rather superb live blogging. I think my favourite talk was from Jon Hicks. From Design To Deployment was the title of his talk was the day in the life of a website type affair. What I liked about it was that while I’m sure most in the audience new it all already being a student and often feeling isolated from the rest of the web community it was nice to now that I was doing it right. It being the basic workflow of web design. On the topic of being isolated it is the case that in Cornwall there is very little chance of meeting and talking to like-minded people. So you can image my surprise when I was browsing the attendee list that I discovered two more people from Cornwall that would be there. I managed to meet up with Richard Quick and his associate Dan Oliver at the event and was very glad I did. We grabbed a bite to eat and had a few drinks together at the after party and I hope it will be the start of fruitful professional relationship. Woohoo for Cornwall. I am not alone! At the pre-event party Media Temple put a load of money behind the bar and thus the free drinks lasted well into the night, plus the event was held in a nice place where you weren’t afraid to touch anything. The event’s after party by contrast was a very strange affair. It was held in the sort place you feel you might get chucked out of just for standing in the way that isn’t perceived as cool. The music was very loud and after the pitiful amount of money that was put behind the bar ran out after just an hour we were expected to pay a fiver for a small bottle of disgusting Japanese lager. Not an environment conducive to socialising and networking. It wasn’t long before most in attendance had escaped to the pub next door or caught a cab to pub standards that was also taking place that night. Poor show from whoever organised that awful soiree. Now for the it you have all been waiting for. Why did it take me 3 days to get home! I arrived at Paddington Station promptly and very good use of the free wifi I get as part of my iPhone contract. The train departed on time and I a very pleasant journey home, the seat next to me once again being unoccupied (I’m either very lucky or smell really, really bad). I arrived on time to Camborne and enjoyed the spring sunshine on my short walk home from the station ready for a weekend chilling out in front of the telly and playing Mario Kart Wii. All that stood in my way was my front door. Here in lies the problem. I had lost my key. Normally this wouldn’t have been a problem as my girlfriend Claire would usually be in at this time of night or at the very least on her way home for her day’s activities. However this was not a normal weekend. Claire was in fact in her car about 200 miles away on her way to a weekend at the Super Car Showdown at Silverstone. It was well after 5 so the estate agents would be shut and not open again until Monday morn’ and I don’t know how to contact the landlord. Bugger. Luckily may parents live only a short while away and I would be able to shelter there until Claire returned on Sunday evening. So I gave them a ring and attempted to arrange safe carriage to a hot shower. Yet more problems. Only my brother was in. My father was working lates and for him to get me, drop me off and get back to work would be over an hours round trip which wouldn’t go down well with his boss; My mother had gone out to run an errand and was not expected back anytime soon and while my brother does drive he was under strict instruction not to leave the house as a Tesco delivery was imminent. I had a few hours to wait on my doorstep while I waited for my mother to return home, have the tale regaled to her by my brother and then come and get me. To top it off, in a perfect example of pathetic fallacy it had begun to rain. I was eventually collected and spent the weekend with my parents and siblings which wasn’t the worst way to spend my time. Claire eventually arrived back from Silverstone in the wee hours of Monday morning and I could finally sleep in my own bed and relax in the knowledge that I had nothing planned for the foreseeable future. Well, except for my 21st birthday next weekend which I have left in the capable hands of Claire although I do insist that a trip to the cinema to watch Iron Man is incorporated into her plans.  2008-04-27T17:57:00+00:00 http://binarytales.co.uk/index.php/site/the_third_kind/ http://binarytales.co.uk/index.php/site/the_third_kind/#When:00:50:00Z The following is a response to “But Who Owns Javascript Anyway” by Jeff Croft. It was originally posted as a comment to the article. As well as increased demand for skilled Javascript peeps AJAX type web stuff is also leading to a higher demand in those skilled at user interface/experience/interaction type stuff and this is also often lumped in with the “designer” role. I think Steven Ametjan’s workplace with it’s three tier system is going to be a strong future trend. There will still be designers, focusing on, you know, design, but also the UI/UX stuff. There will still be developers who know Java, PHP DB’s and similar and can do it in their sleep. Then there is going to be a new breed of web peep filling this gap in the middle. They know HTML, CSS, Javascript and by know I mean they REALLY know their stuff. They will know enough about design to take photoshop comps and wireframes and make them functional and know enough about development to deal with templating systems and similar ilk. I get the impression that designers often come to the web from print design or some other design trade backgrounds and that developers often come from traditional computer science software engineer type backgrounds. This new role are people coming straight into the web, people that have grown up with the web and want to go straight into it. I dunno if you agree or not but I think my hypothesis will play out. The question is what do we call these people? Client-side developer isn’t as cool as just “designer” or just “developer”. 2008-04-24T00:50:00+00:00 http://binarytales.co.uk/index.php/site/as_busy_as_a_mad_march_hair_part_1/ http://binarytales.co.uk/index.php/site/as_busy_as_a_mad_march_hair_part_1/#When:12:50:00Z Wow. It feels like I’ve not really been home for over a month now. It’s been non-stop fun and travelling! It all started when I went to BarCampBrighton2 in March. It was my 3rd BarCamp and the best yet. If you follow me on Twitter you will already know about the crazy train journey I needed to take to get into Brighton. I had a really early start, the train departed at just before 7:00am - well, it was early for me, I am a student after all. 4 trains, 3 changes, 2 bottles of water, a shrink wrapped sandwich, a Twix and many many hours later I arrived in Brighton. My intention was to stay at The Grapevine, recommended to me by Andy Budd - although I’m sure he has never stayed there. It’s a sort of student, backpacker, hostel type place where you get a bed for a tenner a night and that’s it. I was seriously strapped for cash in March. Jay Gooby got wind of my plans and was having none of it. He sent word out to all attendees via email that I needed somewhere to stay and the esteemed Jeremy Keith very kindly reciprocated. So upon my arrival to Brighton I headed over to the Clearleft offices and chilled out for a bit while Jeremy finished up his days work. Jeremy and his lovely girlfriend Jessica were superb hosts and the evening was spent playing Semantoply, eating excellent homemade pizza, drinking fine wine and thrashing Jeremy at Guitar Hero (it was my first time playing, I don’t think he was too impressed with my l33t skilz). Thank you Jeremy and Jessica for taking me in. The following morning a BarCamp was to be had. I could waffle on for far too long about how good it was but the event was well documented by a plethora of live bloggers and many of the talks were even broadcast as live video on the web so I will spare you. Suffice to say it was a brilliant two days well spent at a great venue and with great people. It was really good to meet familiar faces again and make lots of new friends. I took a lot away from the event and felt fired up and inspired which is always a good thing. Unfortunately I had so much fun I neglected to realise my train home was not till the Monday - I had originally planned to take a sleeper home on Sunday night - and I had no where to stay. Luckily Mark Ng had a comfy sofa and was heading into Brighton to work in the morning. He lives in Bournemouth and it was a little strange travelling almost a third of the way home only to travel back into Brighton to take the train home. Mark and his wife Tepanga had me fed and watered and their hospitality was most welcome, thank you. I had all but one nights sleep in my own bed before I was on the train again, this time to Plymouth for an overnight stay before another early start to arrive in Exeter for the UCAS Fair. I was helping to man the University of Plymouth Colleges stall as thousands of plucky sixth-formers arrived by the coach load to grab as many prospectuses as possible. It was a fun but tiring day but definitely worth it as I got paid extra on top of my usual student representative duties. Easter weekend was spent “oop-north” at my girlfriends parents which was a nice change of pace. I entertained myself by singing “I’m dreaming of a white Easter” on the drive up. The weather was seriously screwed up but Easter was very early this year. We returned safely home and I had a few days rest before my next endeavour to Blackpool. Blackpool is a funny place and it was my first time there. I was there for the NUS Annual Conference, you may have heard about it on the Channel 4 news or read about in the paper. NUS Conference is a funny thing which is probably why the have it in Blackpool. I described it as “watching paint dry, but the painting is a Michelangelo”. Despite never really working out all the political factions and how you can be a member of the Labour Party but describe yourself as an independent because your not a member of Labour Students, not to mention those crazy Student Respect kids, I had a good time. I even found a spare moment to go up Blackpool Tower for the first and, I think I can safely say, last time. Thankfully I had a whole weeks rest after that with my only commitments being getting some college work done and a couple of trips to Plymouth for Union Parliament and the Volunteers In Plymouth Awards for which I was nominated for one but didn’t win. I did get a little broach though. Then it was time for my final excursion in this period of time, a train to London for Future of Web Design. That will come in part two where I will tell you why it took me 3 days to get home.  2008-04-22T12:50:00+00:00 http://binarytales.co.uk/index.php/site/browser_news_march08/ http://binarytales.co.uk/index.php/site/browser_news_march08/#When:16:41:00Z While Spolsky rants about the IE8 version switch and the mess that is web standards, Safari 3.1 is released with some massive improvements Web fonts, off-line storage, better SVG, and cool developer tools to name a few. 2008-03-18T16:41:00+00:00 http://binarytales.co.uk/index.php/site/the_problem_with_fireeagle/ http://binarytales.co.uk/index.php/site/the_problem_with_fireeagle/#When:11:10:00Z At d.Construct 2007 Tom Coates was the last presenter of the day and during his session talked a little about FireEagle, the new location tracking service from Yahoo. I remember thinking that what he was talking about sounded seriously cool with lots of potential, so when they recently opened up the private beta I knew I wanted to be part of it. For those of you not familiar with FireEagle I’ll try my best to describe it for you. It is essentially an information service. It is not a social network or the next big Web 2.0 app. The information it deals with is your location. You can tell FireEagle (either directly or by a service built on top of FE) your location and FE can report your location back to services or applications you have given permission (via OAuth) to. You can also fine grade the fidelity at which your location is reported on an app by app basis; from your exact location through neighbourhood, region, right up to the country you are currently in. Another interesting aspect, it is entirely possible to lie to FireEagle, you can be wherever you want to be. On it’s own FireEagle may be inherently cool but it’s pretty useless. It requires services and apps to be built on top of it to make use of the data it provides. So, it’s late on Sunday night and a storm is brewing outside. I sat down to think about if I could make something cool with FireEagle. It may have been because it was very late or that the sound of impending doom was quite distracting but I was stumped. But why. What is the problem with FireEagle. I started by thinking about some of the location aware services that Tom Coates has alluded to: Well, the way you’d do a service like that is that you’d use the service to work out just *your* location, and then you’d use that location to do a search on geo-coded plumbers. You would never have to share your location with other users. It would be just like typing in your location into Yelp or something. Having said all of that, finding plumbers probably wouldn’t be totally useful. But having your mobile device displaying nearby restaurants, bars, cafés, points of interest, transit solutions, photographs or local services generally - now that might be useful! The key phrase in there is “It would just be like typing in your location into Yelp or something.” Thus we discover the first problem with FireEagle. If a user browses to a location aware service, why don’t they just type in where they are. Why would they want to sign in, redirect to FireEagle, authorise the app, tell FireEagle where they are, redirect back to the app and then find out where the nearest pizzeria is. Add to that, that they may have to register with the app and FireEagle if they haven’t used them before. It’s a contrived example I know but essentially the user chooses to enter their location directly or to FireEagle and then they get the results. The second problem steps forth. In it’s current form FireEagle requires the user to know where they are. I say in it’s current form because there are plans to develop auto discover services on top of FireEagle. Alas as far as I can tell there is no way for third party iPhone Apps to access the “Locate Me” location from Google Maps UPDATE: Turns out there is. If FE becomes able to automatically discover where you are and update on the fly then maybe there will be some merit to location aware services similar to those described by Tom. We will see. After that I started thinking about cool stuff you could build with it right now. I thought about YASN where you and all your friends can join up and using FireEagle it can tell you where they all are and if anyone you know is nearby. That sounds pretty cool. Except Dopplr already does this, does a damn good job and, as of very recently, integrates with FE. It will be interesting to see if Dopplr with FE provides any extra functionality or a better experience than Dopplr sans FE. I get that FireEagle is cool. Why can’t I think of anything cool to do with it. I thought about incidental stuff you could do with location. For example visiting a news site could show you local stories and weather, location aware Google searches, Flickr showing pictures recently taken near by you and similar. Okay this sounds more like it. Accept your location is not ethereally available to any site you visit. For sites to access your location data they must be authorised via OAuth. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, this is absolutely the right way to do it, however it may limit FE’s usefulness in this regard to sites you visit often; those that make it worth doing the OAuth and managing access permissions for the authorised sites. The final idea I rolled around in my brain was the obvious one for which widgets are already in development; announcing your previous location on your blog, Facebook, MySpace etc. I guess that is kinda cool but the novelty will quickly wear off and it will become yet another piece of metadata. That’s not a bad thing but it dosn’t generate the kind of buzz I felt when I first heard Tom speak about FireEagle. In my ideal world every internet capable device would have a GPS chip and report it’s latitude and longitude in it’s HTTP headers along with IP address, browser version et al. Obviously the user would be in control of which sites could use this data on a site by sites basis. In the meantime FireEagle is a good solution. I hope there are smarter people than out there than me that can come up with something truly stunning to inspire us all. 2008-03-14T11:10:00+00:00 http://binarytales.co.uk/index.php/site/whoops/ http://binarytales.co.uk/index.php/site/whoops/#When:14:34:00Z Oh dear. It seems that earlier today I accidently published an entry that I thought I had just saved as a draft. Sorry if I caused any confusion. My fascinating article on FireEagle will be published properly when I have finished hopefully later today or tomorrow. 2008-03-10T14:34:00+00:00 http://binarytales.co.uk/index.php/site/i_want_to_shop_with_bags_that_have_style/ http://binarytales.co.uk/index.php/site/i_want_to_shop_with_bags_that_have_style/#When:23:31:00Z This post is a response to Dave Shea’s article “Producing”. It started out as a comment to the original post but got unwieldy.  In the UK right now there is a growing move away from traditional plastic bags with Marks and Spencer, a major high street store and supermarket, beginning to charge for them. Instead shoppers are being encouraged to recycle old bags or use more environmentally friendly and reusable tote bags. While the bags you can get in supermarkets are all very well and good I like to think I’m a little more classy and it would be nice to have something with a bit of panache. The bag I got last year from d.Construct is rather nice but a little on the small side for a grocery shop. What I’d like to see is some of my favourite designers coming out with some decent sized tote bags with some funky designs on the sides. Something that helps me stand out. Something that says “Yes, I may be shopping in Tesco and buying microwave meals for one but I am doing it with style.” In Shea’s article he talks about the pros and cons of producing badges. I like badges but feel that they have lost their cool edge recently. The next big thing in the accessories department is pins. Similar to badges but a little more sophisticated. I already have a very nice and I’m assured very rare Stuff and Nonsense pin and a FOWA Road Trip pin and I am on the look out for some more to add to the collection.  Sorry about the lame title for this post. I wasn’t feeling creative at the time. 2008-03-04T23:31:00+00:00 http://binarytales.co.uk/index.php/site/semantopoly/ http://binarytales.co.uk/index.php/site/semantopoly/#When:13:31:00Z A couple of weekends ago I was at Semantic Camp where I presented a game called Semantopoly. I mentioned it briefly in my write up of my experience at the event but felt, due to its success, it warranted it’s own blog post. Instead of describing it in detail I’m just gonna post a link to the loverly pictures taken of people enjoying the game that are on Flickr. and a PDF of the rules. That was easy. The game was more successful than I could ever have hoped. Firstly because it created quite a stir in the blogosphere - Jeremy Keith, who played as himself and wrote a nice review on his blog, certainly enjoyed it and a Google search for Semantopoly comes up with over 10,000 hits. I’m expecting a cease and desist from Hasbro any day now. Secondly the game achieve it’s purpose. Let me explain. If you have read the rules you should now understand the main premise of the game. There are two types of property available. Technologies like HTML, RDF, OpenID and Social Networks like Twitter and Facebook. To develop social networks (and thus command a higher rate of return) you must first develop technologies, the idea being that to build successful social networks (and be successful in the game) you must make use of open, semantic data. I also hoped that it would encourage those playing to discuss the technologies they were playing with and during the first game at least, once the novelty of the game itself had waned, this was the case. If you are lucky enough to be attending Bar Camp Brighton 2 then you will have an opportunity to play the game and hopefully in its second iteration with some panned tweaks and improvements. Shortly afterwards I plan to make my designs available as PDF’s so that you can print them off and make your own. 2008-02-25T13:31:00+00:00 http://binarytales.co.uk/index.php/site/semantic_camp/ http://binarytales.co.uk/index.php/site/semantic_camp/#When:19:49:01Z Last weekend I was at Semantic Camp at the Imperial College in Kensington, London which was organised by the very intelligent Tom Morris. It was my second bar camp style event; the first being Bar Camp Brighton last September where I presented Specificity Snap and met a lot of very cool people. I met a lot of very nice people at Semantic Camp also, reflected by the number of people following me and the number I follow on Twitter doubling in the days following. The event really was a meeting of minds. Rightly or wrongly there seemed to be two distinctive camps of people: academic-y types interested in things like RDF, N3 and FOAF and more designer-y types with knowledge of micro formats and pretty user interfaces. I didn’t think this was a bad thing. From chatting with other attendees I got the impression that each really wanted to learn more about the other side of the spectrum and I think that over the next few weeks we may see some interesting stuff coming from the middle ground. Some of the sessions that I liked where Tom Morris’s RDF for beginners, where I learnt about N3, or Notation 3, for the first time, Microformats: State of the Nation by Ben Ward & Frances Berriman and Pimp Your FOAF by Tom Heath, Yves Raimond , Georgi Kobilanov, although all the session I attended where interesting. I must admit however that some went over my head a little. As I mentioned I learnt about N3 for the first time. If don’t know what I’m talking about and want to know more then read the primer by Tim Berners-Lee. In essence its a really straightforward syntax for writing RDF and something I feel should be publicised much more. I think many may be in the same situation as me in that they have heard of RDF and wanted to know more, maybe start using it, and then got scared off by the complicated XML syntax. Now that I know about N3 (and also FOAF which is to RDF as hCard and XFN are to Microformats, sort of) I’m not as frightened and hope I can dip my toes a bit further into the Semantic Web in the near future. On Sunday I presented my follow up to Specificity Snap, which I showed at Bar Camp Brighton last September, Semantopoly. In fact, I presented it twice. If you follow the Twitter streams of Matt Harris or some of the webs luminaries illustrated over at Happy Webbies and were online around tea time Sunday you may well have seen some rather odd tweets along the lines of “Andy Budd buy IE” or “Cindy Li buys the whole of the internet”. Semantopoly was the cause of all the commotion. I intend to write a separate blog post all about the game but in essentially it is a Monopoly like game aimed to illustrate to connection between successful social networks and open, semantic data. While much fun was had by all playing it sort of achieved it’s goal as while people were playing there we discussing the merits of various technologies and social networks which made me happy. All in all it was a great weekend. But there is no rest for the wicked. I got back late Monday after a very long train journey only to awake Tuesday to get a train to Plymouth for a meeting. Back to the grind. Hopefully I can get some much needed rest this weekend and recover from an awful cold I have caught as I am off to Brighton next week to see some very nice folks and then back in Brighton shortly afterwards for Bar Camp Brighton 2. Then not long after that I am in the North to visit my girlfriends parents, then off to Blackpool for NUS National Conference before finding myself back in London for Future Of Web Design. Busy, busy, busy and hopefully lots of fun things to blog about. 2008-02-21T19:49:01+00:00 http://binarytales.co.uk/index.php/site/something_is_better_than_nothing/ http://binarytales.co.uk/index.php/site/something_is_better_than_nothing/#When:02:08:00Z I have been severely neglecting my blog for many months now. I have been playing around with a redesign for quite some, it’s sitting here on my local machine. I never seen to find time to work on it or ever feel happy with it and I think it was too ambitious. On my local machine it will remain. Maybe I will finish it one day. Instead I have thrown this site together that you read now. It’s not much, quickly put together on a Wednesday night while not being able to sleep due to a bad cold. The decision to do this came about because I realised that (not) working on the redesign was stopping me writing and that writing was why I wanted to have a blog. There have been many false starts since the inception of my blog, each time I have promised myself that this time I will write regularly and interestingly but for whatever reason have broken that promise. This time it’s going to be different. No really. Another reason for getting my act together is that recent events have made me realise that there may be people out there that actually care what I have to say. More on that in another post. There have been some changes though. There is a different design, probably a worse one than before and not the one I was aiming for but it is different. I have switched from WordPress to the highly regarded Expression Engine. Thus there is a new address for the feeds. I have set up a redirect from the old to the new and hopefully this will work without issue. Finally, hopefully, the biggest change is that I will keep up with this blogging lark this time. Maybe. It is very late at night, or early in the morning depending on your perspective, so I should probably try and get some sleep. Tomorrow I shall attempt to write about my recent trip to London for SemanticCamp where I presented Semantopoly, I board game that seems to have caught the attention of the blogo/twittersphere in an unexpected way. I am back on the blogging bandwagon. Third time lucky they say. Not quite what I was aiming for design wise but it’s the writing that’s important and I’ll hope you’ll agree that something is better than nothing. 2008-02-21T02:08:00+00:00