Ewan's Musings
The day to day ramblings and thoughts of a Scotsman in England.
Right, back in blighty, wondering why everyone makes a fuss over jet lag (more on that later this week). There's a lot to take in from the Emerging Technology and my brain has switched from Absorb to Digest mode. So here we go.
There seem to have been a few ideas running through the Conference. The first was Geo-Wanking (or All About Finding Out Where You Are and What You Can Do There). I still think Chris's 35 Ways To Find Your Location shouldn't have been the last talk, but there you go. There's a lot of companies out there that have a twist on the Blogging with Location data, and I don;t think all of them are going to succeed. Russ' hat is in with this crowd, and they have the advantage of being first to market (or at least to have a really good Demo at Demo of the WaveBlog.
I'm still sure the GeoURL can do something here, but the custom solutions are going to need network support. Unfortunatly I missed the GeoURL talk and attended Cory Doctorow's talk on EBooks instead. Typical.
Social Software is probably the other big thing. Ways to show who your friends are, what relationship you have, who their friends are, and so on and so on. Orkut breaking cover before the conference was the root of many jokes (how many times did Rael say "Hello my Orkut friends" from the stage)? Lot's of FOAF, 'Friend' sites on the internet, friends through phones, everything you know Venture Capitalists like (BTW look for me as Ewan Spence on Orkut, I'll be your friend).
There's still an immense buzz about blogs. It may be blase within the attendees, but the real world is still discovering them. Which means wayts to make these closer to real life and easy to use are appearing from a lot of people. Cue the BBC (amusingly mis-typed as Cure the BBC) and their Children's Unit talking about FOAF and Blogs for children. I have to say I expect Eilidh and the new baby to be pretty competent at a root level when they get up to 8 or 9 (much as I was able to run rings round my Dad on the ZX Spectrum - he did a moving letter on the screen, I programmed the quiz game "Give Us A Break").
Nokia probably have the ability to put their "Blog For Life" software onto all their handsets in the shortest space of time (and adding 'that slide' as a default wallpaper on any new phone?). It's based on the Atom.API, so roll on Moveable Type's update to version 3.0, which will carry full support of the Atom API and allow Symbian Diaries to hook in with the Nokia Blogging Tool.
That's what my brain puts at the top of the pile (after OPL of course!), so more on Etech later.
Posted by Ewan at February 16, 2024 09:20 PM