Jet Set Willy (1984: ZX Spectrum), Sonic the Hedgehog (1991: Sega Megadrive), Monkey Island (1990: PC), Doom (1993: PC), Worms (1995: PC), Abe’s Oddysee (1997: PS1), Grand Theft Auto (1997: PC), Rainbow Six (1998: PC) and many more; they all chart a certain personal view of the evolution of console and computer gaming. And it’s incredible to think how things have changed.

I can mark eras of my life in the same way you might signpost your autobiographical memory with where you were living. Sad but true. It tends to be just the one game as I don’t devote masses of time to gaming – when I find a game that I like, I stick with it.

Recently, I persuaded my wife that a PS3 would be a great addition to our family because “a PS3 is so much more than just a games console – you can use it to view all those digital photos and videos of our son”. And I’m glad I did as I think I’ve found the game to mark the next era - LittleBigPlanet. This game is incredible. It has brought the traditional platform game into the future with a fun, creative and collaborative online world that is constantly changing and ever evolving. Irrespective of what it represents in terms of amazing media and technological innovation, it also represents a return to pure and simple platform based game-play, with a few twists. And, possibly most importantly, it is impossible not to feel happy playing this game. It looks like we’re going to have some fun with this one…

1) Open source paves the way for the odd utopian dream:

Sir Thomas More’s description of Utopia as a place where “nobody owns anything, but everyone is rich” is not a bad way to describe the open source movement in which people around the world collaborate with each other to produce services that anyone can use – or improve on – for nothing.

2) Open source is recession proof:

One of the interesting things about the collaborative movement is that it is probably recession-proof, though you won’t see it in economic statistics because it mostly does not involve cash transactions.

3) Open source is robust and well-trusted by large successful organisations:

Big corporations, such as IBM, Google and Amazon, are devourers of open source software because they find it cheap, efficient, low-maintenance and reliable. But UK government departments, including health and the foreign office, have proved risk-averse with hardly any open source in their infrastructure.

4) Open source is socialism (well, social collaboration at least):

…open source combines the cooperative spirit that was at the heart of the Labour party in the past with the entrepreneurial skills needed today.

And with nothing more to add to that summary, I’m off to join the revolution (well, okay, I’m off down the pub to carry on ranting to anyone who’s too polite to stop me).

Whatever you say about Twitter, I was enjoying the ability it gave me to receive updates via SMS. In fact, it was this feature that won me over to using it and helped demonstrate what it was all about to mates. I figured that the initial free SMS alerts that appeared in my Twitter account would run out one day and then I’d have to pay for more credits – easy business model. I’d happily have paid too. So why pull it? Maybe its all part of some ploy by Twitter to gather a crowd reaction – so that when they announce payment plans for SMS alerts, they already have the crowds’ support. Yeah – okay, that may be a tad cynical but I do hope they listen to their UK users (and, in fact, anyone who used the UK based SMS alerts). The reaction is already gathering pace – with comments and tweets a plenty – and now a Facebook group. SMS is huge here and it seems to be a glaringly obvious way to actually turn Twitter into a revenue making business, in the UK at the very least.

And with this promise of an enhanced search presence will come the marketing need for publishers to create content that capitalises on this. Just as SEO emerged as an industry all of its own, I expect Semantic Web Optimisation to emerge as an industry all of its own in the very near future.

[Before submitting this post, I quickly searched on the topic (yes - I appreciate the irony of having used Google!) and came across this article - essentially saying the same thing as me above. But please can we not fall into the trap of applying version numbers after "Web" for every evolution in web technology that occurs!]

Scary or exciting?

Lately there’s been a spate of negative blog entries and articles slating Facebook – and the furore surrounding Mr Scoble’s recent quarrel with Facebook pushed things even further. [Although some may argue that this simply served as an excellent PR pre-cursor to last week's announcement that Facebook (along with Google) were to join the Data Portability initiative.]

Is this the beginning of Facebook fatigue? In 2008, will Facebook go the way that Second Life went in 2007? Or is this simply the natural media/ public reaction to “hype”, as described in Gartner’s Hype Cycle, and we’re now in the “Trough of Disillusionment“? I have to admit that the tedious slew of unanswered invites in my inbox from zombies, pirates and vampires has sent me sliding down my own trough of Facebook disillusionment. Although, rather lazily, I do find it handy to have friends’ details in one place on the web – I use Facebook to arrange meeting after work or even to message someone, for example, as it is easier than digging around for their contact details. Will I still be doing this in 12 months? I certainly wasn’t a year ago, so who knows? Maybe Gartner does.

Tim Berners-Lee stated in a post yesterday that

…we have the technology — it is Semantic Web technology…

In other words, the connections and relationships made possible by the semantic web (or social graph – use interchangeably from hereon). He goes on:

Now, people are making another mental move. There is realization now, “It’s not the documents, it is the things they are about which are important”. Obvious, really.

and on opening up this data:

It is about getting excited about connections, rather than nervous.

So, yes – I am excited but how are we going to do this? Think data feeds, microformats and openID – things that would tend to be met with blank stares if I were to suggest them to clients. But show a client how you could remove barriers (such as log-in/ sign-up) to that all important “conversion” (with openID or microformats – here’s an excellent microformat implementation doing just that) and show how this person would be able to instantly tell all their friends about it (via their social graph) and then they’ll be interested.

(video for “It’s all Over” by “The Broken Family Band”)

Anyway – I’ve have been having a bit of a play and it looks rather nice indeed. Not that I’ll be watching TV all day – it’s all purely in the name of research, of course!

I’ve also got a bunch of beta invites for anyone who wants to check it out for themselves – just let me know your email that you want to use for your Joost account…

If anyone has any “web3.d” ideas, you can catch me down the Red Lion this afternoon to discuss further. That’s the Red Lion in Second Life, of course.

I’m sure we’ll see many other organisations doing the same thing in the near future as people turn to bookmarking sites like del.icio.us as their first port of call for search – where “page rank” is effectively determined by the users themselves and you can be guaranteed better results. I can even see a niche emerging for optimisation services for these sites, just like SEO became a niche industry around Google page ranks.

The advent of broadband has made delivery of video and other digital media possible via the internet but viewing via your desktop or laptop computer screen is not always practical. Equally, browsing and searching the web from your sofa via the TV is not exactly an easy or sociable thing to do. Surely the best solution is one where you would search on your PC then sit back and view on your TV? I know this is exactly what many people are already doing but it often means situating the PC near the TV so that you can run a cable from the PC’s AV output into the TV. What I want to do, and I’m sure a solution must exist (please tell me if it does – otherwise I hereby patent this idea!), is utilise my Wi-Fi network to stream content to the TV. Maybe via a SCART device that doubles as a Wi-Fi antennae, receiving data streams via the local network? Surely such a simple single device must exist? It’s all I need – not some “media hub” or “home entertainment centre”. It seems to completely bridge that gap between the different tasks of searching/ interacting (i.e. “lean forward” tasks) and watching (i.e. “sit back” tasks). Please – somebody help!

On a similar note, I wonder what BT will use to deliver their video streams? It would be quite fitting if they used BitTorrent (BT – geddit?) really. Although, it looks like NTL are one step ahead on that one.

why buck a trend at a geek fest?
everyone else is blogging here, so here’s my quick notes to self:

• the event
• the speakers
  • self referential blogospheric egos
  • yahoo is everywhere
  • motivation? hippies need cash too
  • tag.alicio.us
  • iam(certainlynot)cal.com
  • does every ruby need a rail?
  • flex your flash (or the adobe ajax)
  • that mint bloke needs more slides/ help
  • dropsend should have been dropbox
  • the vc is dead (reminded me of Chris Anderson’s article in this month’s wired magazine)
  • (maybe i could launch ***.com from my bedroom after all)
  • wow. where did they get that german google guy?
  • bingo!
• the inevitable resulting photos, tags and even some slightly sensible notes.

So, step aside clunky satellite interactive TV and make room for TV delivered via a fast broadband connection. The real interactive TV experience is when you don’t even notice you are “interacting” – where viewing is no longer passive but your involvement (like choosing what to watch, whether live or achived) is very much part of the TV experience. Whether you call it internet TV, broadband TV, IPTV or Video On Demand, the underlying concepts are essentially the same. And Homechoice is already there.

As mentioned before I’m keen to see how the areas of TV content, broadband and search technologies eventually come together. I’m sure it won’t be a clean race.

With last week’s news that Sky will be using Microsoft’s Windows Media Center to deliver its forthcoming Sky By Broadband service and Google announcing a new video store, some interesting areas in technology and media are finally starting to come together. It looks like the big players are jostling for starting positions in the race to realise the much heralded interplay of TV content, broadband and search technologies in the UK.

So – who’s next?

Hmm. Forgive me but haven’t we all been using applications “online and on demand” for a while now? To unashamedly use a meme that’s been bashed about for the last year or so – it’s all about this “Web 2.0” stuff, innit?

Web services like Flickr, Writely, inetWord and even MSExchange all offer feature rich applications as “online and on demand” software. And with broadband use becoming increasingly prolific, the thin-client model is now a feasible direction for certain applications. I can see that embedded advertising within these applications is a way to make money – particularly for the likes of Microsoft. But I guarantee the developer community will quickly find a way to outrun the displaying of these embedded adverts.

Either way – is this the beginning of the end for CD installed software? Maybe one day even our operating systems will be online…

EDIT: more here

noam chomsky wouldn’t be there talking to the masses if it wasn’t for this power imbalance. we wouldn’t have been able to visit the lecture in such comfort if it wasn’t for this power imbalance. knowledge is power – and universities do well to share it with those who will recipricate the power favour by choosing english to communicate. oh look – i’m doing it myself

anyway – i left the lecture thinking that we can talk all we like saying “something must be done” but surely the consequences of such action would have to mean the west loses its grip on power and wealth in the world? maybe that would be a good thing but it would mean a very different daily reality for the people that are currently going about telling others how bad it all is.