Digging Design Professionalism

I am a fan of Andy Rutledge, both from his enjoying his blog and from the stellar work his agency does – including the excellent small CMS Unify that I heart.

He has recently released ‘Design Professionalism’ available online or as an e-book.

Read the foreword if you must and then go and get it.

Online, he is both a Platonist and a provocateur, a professor and a street fighter.
Jeffrey Zeldman

Agile in Government

if Her Majesty’s Government can spend millions on propaganda — for a scheme the public want — then surely, a few quid in Research and Development can equally be written off? Lessons, after all will have been learnt.

In defence of Agile

igotu – first impressions

i-gotU is a GPS logger device (maps your position) that is aimed at the traveler, suspicious partner and photographer.

iGotU GPS location logger device

Essentially you set off and it claims to record up to 262,000 waypoints with the interval set between 1-60 seconds thus mapping your route. I was talking to fellow biker @davidhartland about recording travels and he successfully used it last year for a trip on mainland Europe and for under £50 from my local Maplins I figured it was worth a punt.

I have the Gt-200e model which includes bluetooth that should let me connect to a mobile phone and laptop according to the packaging, which I must say looks rubbish and hides the key features of the device. Also the website is pretty crap too and I think they’d sell a ton more by sorting it out as it comes across as a Dragons Den dream catcher.

Out of the packaging I was surprised at how small it was and impressed that it charges via USB. That said, the USB connector is some weird design that looks like it could easily break – not exactly travel friendly as I have no clue how i’d ever get a replacement.

The key features are – gps logging and the ability to put the data on things like Google Maps and also sync a waypoint with specific photos from your camera which sounds cool on a PC.

So being a crap scout I didn’t realise that the software is PC compatible only… luckily somebody has made their own software which will hopefully work (albeit without the photo syncing which I can live with).

It is on charge right now so my brief trip to Wales tomorrow will be my first test.

Dear makers of igot-U please fix the PC only software for us mac folk and sort your packaging and website – you’ll get richer quicker.

 

Considering telemetry data for a biker

Not just content with photos and video for memories I am considering how I can collect data too.

The aim is to setup some gizmo to record trip data and then put that online, preferability in real-time.

First, Hein Gerieke plotted the location of Nick Sanders world travel. Then I read about a Nascar/indy car driver who was obsessed with using data to improve his time. Most recently the Mclaren F1 team started to show their car data.

I want in.

I met Tony Hirst in Manchester this week and we got to talking about collecting race data which of course helped me to move doing this from idea to challenge.
My initial thoughts on what I’d like to achieve are:

1 – Learn how to correctly spell ‘telemetry’. Check, sorta.

2 – Identify possible useful data to collect (location for a Google map, speed?, braking amounts on both brakes, G wind speed, air pressure, humidity, engine temp, brake and tire temps?, distance traveled, fuel consumption, weight of rider, pillion and fuel, heart rate… )

3 – Identify what datalogging kit is available and what may work with my Honda CBF 600

4 – Cost the above

5 – Install.

For the thrill of it I would love to have this data being beamed live (and maybe announce on my site/twitter a journey has begun) though would settle for collecting the data and then transferring to USB/phone for later upload.

I’d like to do this for all trips and hopefully future track days once I pluck up the courage to book my first session.

Already I have spoken with the pilot of a Boeing 747 and he uses AeroWeather for flight planning and so it may be that a bunch of data can be cross-referenced with static data-logging services…

I know nowt about data collecting or the bike tech but here goes nothing and if you have any suggestions please do drop me a line.

WordPress as the life buoy

I have just spent two inspiring and tiring days at OER Hackday in Manchester with around 40 people with the simple task of building ‘something’ around OER.
Our group gravitated together through our common interest in doing with pulling OER stuff together and using WordPress.
Not wordpress because we think it is ‘cool’ and certainly not because we were highly skilled in hacking it to pieces.. well Pat and Simon could. But because out of the zipped box it has the power to achieve all of the things we might need to do. Being safe in the knowledge that there is a technical solution allowed us to just think about solving our problems and not having to even consider the technical solution because we know that it will be possible.

Knowing this we were able to jump with both feet into the challenge of the event.

OER stuff, like many types of resources are stored all over the shop and my only vague method for finding this stuff is to use delicious. However mentally I have been struggling with this.

So liking Huffduffer’s approach (just audio podcasts) I was wondering if we could make a solution that takes the idea of tagging but with a more blog/ordered style.

By the end of the 2 days we ended up with a great proof of concept (links to come) that I hope can be developed further.

I often visit the grey area overlapping the problem and technical solution too early and get caught up worrying about parts of the solution and how to achieve it which puts my solutions into a tiny box heavily constrained.
So dear self, the next time your working on a problem, don’t sweat the technical solution, just keep refining the problem and sketching the possible solutions. Then take a deep breath and chuck it into wordpress.

Classroom AV systems by Fraser Speirs

The same day I read Fraser Speir’s blog post on “The next generation Classroom AV system” I was staying with friends who happened to have a 42″ TV which is around the same size that Fraser discusses.

42 inch TV

Fraser’s piece is worth a read as he dismisses projectors and interactive whiteboards on the basis of their cost and limited value over a TV and so is trialing the use of 40″ TVs.

Having used the TV through the night for gaming and the Australian F1 qualifying at silly O’ clock I am even more interested in Fraser’s efforts.

My initial questions are “What is the maximum viewing range/angle that a student could sit at?” and similarly “what is maximum distance from the TV that this could work with?”. I’m guessing for many classrooms the room will be of a suitable comfortable size.

I look forward to his follow-up in months to come…. plus can i get me some 40″ plus home theater with surround sound??!!!

UPDATED

Fraser has a video with more details.

Thoughts on The Thank You Economy (book)

I have no idea how I originally stumbled across Gary Vaynerchuk but I have been following his video blog and occasional wine series episode for a few years.

I skipped his last book Crush it! but thought i’d give his next outing a whirl as I like to support people who’s online work has given me idea’s or food for thought.

The book, The Thank You Economy, sets out to explain why you should be engaging with your audience and that using social media as the platform makes sense in 2011 and beyond – get involved or get left behind. This is something i have been actively doing with the day job over at JISC Digital Media, rolling my sleeves up and taking the time to understand what folk are interested in, going to them and joining in. The results of which are that I am filled with new ideas and there has been a noticeable growth in interest to our services. Not huge, but a heck of a lot cheaper than marketing the traditional way.

The core theme is that of community engagement and is something that I have been interested in since University, stemming from using discussion boards and blogs. In many ways the contents of the book is obvious to folk like myself who are living the web every day. So the book is really aimed at folk like me to give the book to other people who are not yet convinced and Gary suggests starting at the top.

So while I didn’t discover much new, I did enjoy the book and like the idea that this is a marathon and not a sprint I will be recommending it to folk who are interested in learning about harnessing the power of web tools to improve their services and that bad reviews actually help us to deliver next time.

If your thinking of getting the book then next time your in a bookshop skip to the back “Part V” and see the highlights. If it resonates with you then pick it up!

Or if you want to borrow the book let me know as it now sits on the shelf and i’d love to do a book swap.