My name is Mark Rochefort and this is my website - a place where I like to play and learn. Are you still searching? I doubt you'll find it here but you might find some other guff - sometimes with photos.
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Filed under: Technology
“Basecamp, Backpack, Highrise, Campfire, Writeboard, Ta-da List, and our blogs are all offline” – Ouch.
37signals System Status, originally uploaded by markrocky.
One reason why you shouldn’t rely on all this fancy web 2.0 stuff for your business…
Although I do get a certain reassurance from seeing that even people like 37signals can have bad days (sorry 37signals)!
Filed under: Media, Random, Technology
I’ll admit I’m quite a fan of Tom Hodgkinson’s work (being an avid reader of the Idler and having read both his recent books – “How To Be Free” and “How To Be Idle”), so I might be more inclined to understand where his rants and raves are coming from. But his latest outburst in the Guardian concerning Facebook certainly seems to have generated a bit of a maelstrom in the murky waters of the social media world (more than 500 del.icio.us bookmarks after one day and counting). While a little conspiratorial, there’s a certain weight to what he’s saying.
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.
Filed under: Photos
dew drop bye, originally uploaded by markrocky.
Dew drops on barbed wire, one fine Winter’s morning in rural Somerset.
Filed under: Technology
While not exactly something I’d advise for your critical web apps, I’m still intrigued to see this in action…
Chelsea chimneys, originally uploaded by markrocky.
Looking west across London from Peter Jones in Chelsea, on a bright and Christmassy winter afternoon.
Filed under: Technology
Got a web app that relies on a 3rd party service? Well, I hope you selected that service well! A year or so ago I was evaluating Zimki and nearly selected it to provide a platform for some web app development at work. I’m rather glad I didn’t now…
Please note that this is your final notification of the withdrawal of the Zimki service, which will occur on the 24/12/2007.
All user applications and data remaining on the Zimki service will be deleted and the servers decommissioned shortly after this date.
It certainly highlights the importance of building your fancy-pants web 2.0 application on solid and reputable services.
Filed under: Friends, Technology
24 ways to impress your friends is back for the third year running. It’s like a web geeks advent calendar and I’m impressed.
Filed under: Media, Technology
The “social graph” is a global mapping of everybody and how they’re related. I had a play with a visualisation tool for Facebook relationships last night and it was great. Slightly scary but fun nonetheless. However, our weblives are not just about Facebook (although Facebook does provide a platform to bring them all together). Google’s OpenSocial is promising to provide another way to pull them together but, as Brad Fitzpatrick points out, a centralized “owner” of the social graph is a dangerous thing. Social networks need to be made open and portable. And they can be.
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.
Filed under: Technology
With all the feeds available from the various apps that make up my weblife these days, there’s a wealth of data that can be brought together into a single data stream – or “lifestream“, if you will. Using Yahoo! Pipes to mash up these feeds, I’ve hacked together something that displays all this fantastic data on one page – with the idea of this eventually being displayed on a timeline. I don’t expect the hordes will be rushing to view my aggregated weblife in a single life stream but there are some rather nice applications for this in a wider micro-blogging context.
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If you are sitting next to someone who irritates you follow these instructions:
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Two complete strangers agreed to look at each other for an hour in complete silence. A lot can happen in an hour.
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Filed under: Technology
Rich Internet Applications (RIA) are gaining credibility as a buzzword in the interweb playground right now and there’s a new kid in class.
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Filed under: London
Last night we stepped out of St Thomas’ Hospital into one of those perfectly beautiful summer evenings you sometimes get in London. The sort of evening where you have to slow down to an idle, almost continental, pace to soak it all up. This wasn’t particularly difficult given Claire’s current condition and so we slowly meandered alongside the River Thames towards the new Southbank Centre. We were there at the weekend to checkout Anthony Gormley’s “Blind Light” exhibition at the Hayward Gallery but didn’t stop to fully appreciate the amazing new developments to the Southbank Centre. At the time we were so taken by another of Gormley’s work – “Event Horizon” – that we took the locale for granted. Now, after last night’s stroll, I realise the surrounding buildings are integral to this work. The silhouetted figures, looking down on the Southbank scene, took on a serene and sentry-like quality as dusk descended – watching over the swarms below. The whole area has been opened up to encourage people to explore and enjoy the space. I love it.
Filed under: Media, Technology
Some of you will have already heard about Joost (formerly known as The Venice Project) – an IPTV thingy from the folks who brought us Kazaa and Skype. There has been much speculation about its implications for the media, advertising and marketing industries – bringing together the wonders of the internet and TV in one glorious multimedia dream (well – that’s what the hype will have us believe anyway). Find out more over at Wired and MIT.
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…
From the busy streets of Brixton, the blood red dot in the sky was beautiful but rather washed out by the orange glow of the street lights. That said – it’s not every Saturday night at 11 o’clock (when most people are more concerned about what club to go to) that you see all the people on Brixton high street looking skyward! Anyway – people in less urban settings got a fantastic show by the looks of it.
Filed under: Technology
MS Photosynth is an app or a Firefox plugin (and yes – this is a Microsoft product!) that connects to geo-coded photo sites like Flickr and enables you to browse through similar pictures in 3D. The tech preview is visually very impressive but I’ve not yet seen a real-life demo so the verdict is still open. The video of the demo does look good though.
In my mind, this represents an interesting step forward in the cross-overs between web 2.0 apps and 3d browsing. It also raises interesting questions about where Microsoft might be headed in the 3d browsing space (aka “3pointD”). Particularly considering the rumours around Google’s developments in this field – where Google Earth and SketchUp could be brought together to create a “Google Planet” – a virtual-real-world Second Life, if you will. As has been suggested – maybe, in the not-to-distant future, “every Google Account [will] include a plot of land on Google Planet?”
Filed under: London, Technology
Do I really need to blog my notes from the last two days at this year’s London FOWA event? No, I thought not.
Filed under: Media, Technology
I stumbled across this rather slick video this morning, introducing how internet technology is evolving. I quite like it…
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Filed under: Media, Technology
Amongst all this Second Life hype, I’d like to add a little prediction – on the back of trends in buzzwords in the media – that 2007 will see the rise of “web3.d” applications. Where the 3d web (i.e. apps like second life) and web2.0 (i.e. social apps like myspace and del.icio.us) collide in a mash-uptastic frenzy. Oh yes.
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.
Filed under: London, Photos, Random
Budding taggers learn how it is done..
These young whipper snappers were watching keenly as an older kid scrawled his tag on a wall along London’s South Bank. It didn’t take long. Let’s hope the pupils of this nursery school of graffiti move on to a higher level of street art sooner rather than later. Am I getting old? These pesky kids. Grumble grumble… I’ll be complaining about uneven pavements next.
Anyway – while I am on the subject, when a particular piece turned up at the bottom of Bristol’s Park Street a few months ago (on the side of a sexual health clinic, I should add for the benefit of the picture), I heard Bristol City Council were debating whether it was public art and should be left. Funny that they start to see the potential tourism benefits of leaving this stuff after years spent cleaning it up. They certainly wouldn’t have even considered the fact a few years ago. Well – they eventually decided to let it stay and it promptly made the Visit Bristol tourist guide.
Filed under: London
The Serpentine Gallery are putting on an exhibition of Chinese art inside Battersea Power Station this month and we went along this afternoon to have a look. I’ll pass giving any judgement on the art for now – we (and, at a guess, the majority of the other few hundred visitors) were there for the chance to see this great building up close. I see the power station daily yet it remains distant and enigmatic, flanked by hordings on three sides and moated on the fourth by the Thames. We were guided through the dark, damp and derelict floors of the old turbine hall, looking beyond the bizarre art installations, and tried to understand the building’s past (and future). It’s an interesting place – with old signs warning of high voltage jostling for attention alongside newer signs warning of falling masonry.
Unfortunately photos inside the building were not allowed; the cynic in me wondered whether the developers were worried that people’s photos could affect the forthcoming coffee table book.
EDIT: A quick peruse through Flickr reveals some excellent covert shots of the sort that might well make it to said glossy coffee table book. And it looks like some discreet snapping was occuring during the art tours.
Filed under: Friends
bigging up the hastings massive – check this out from little miss hangover. nuff respect miss (or should that be ellie?)
Filed under: London, Random, Science
Some research from Bath University suggests that wearing a helmet might be more dangerous than not. And that drivers gave women cyclists a wider berth when passing. Personally I’m not taking any chances cycling around London without a helmet but I am considering growing my hair and wearing a skirt, just to be on the safe side when cycling to work.
Filed under: Media, Technology
I’ve just spotted Adobe as a “user” on del.icio.us. It’s interesting to see that organisations like this are using del.icio.us as an online marketing channel to increase brand awareness, page rank and general online visibility.
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.
art banksy bikes election facebook friends google india iptv ir2p lifestream London marketing Media microformats microsoft photos Random semantic web sri lanka Technology Travel tv yahoo yahoo pipes
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