May was a month of brick lane curries, a new art exhibition (silent city), mini golf and a bunch of other blurry stuff.

June was a good month (on the whole apart from hackers and google caffeine?!?), did incalculable amounts of coding, new site rollouts, tennis, monopoly, booked new york flights and some other stuff. Wrote a lot, drank a lot of wine, updated a bunch of auction2post sites because eBay updated their api (for the better) – standard summer month.

I started 4 draft posts across these two months but none seemed to stick, it’s not like the months were dry, posts boning csharp just didn’t fit, I was going to post csharp iis and multisql management code, a nice project I wrote to datamine from ebays new api and I was thinking of digging out my seo hub php based hub and rewriting it as a multi threaded windows app, but yeah sometimes stuff just doesn’t seem to hold enough value.

As ever though projects continue to crop up and evolve. I am working on a stupidly simple file system snapshotter after an incident with a second hacker, I will probably post about ripping data from the Nike app on the iPhone, if it isn’t up already somewhere else. Also I will make a quick program to save the top 20 wallpapers from reddit to a folder so windows 7 can automatically show me new epics (theres even an rss!) if know one else saves me the effort. Unless that is, all this stuff gets superseded. Mostly it’s just me biding my time and making broader plans

Look out for possible random posts on business intelligence, the stock market and brain architecture too, as they seem to keep cropping up.

Img courtesy of ~necrolz

This I think is a given at this point, but anyway. I wanted to write this post to put down some ideas I have had recently after I started using a few new music services. So this really is just an idea dump more than anything (if you haven’t a lot of time just JUMP TO THE IDEAS and perhaps you can tell me what you think in a comment!) If I had intentions to move into music software perhaps I would write something along these lines, but to be honest I would prefer if Spotify or similar invested some of their first few years profits and did it :p

So the best thing about switching the model up on music? Well it does make piracy less of an issue by charging a fairer rate (e.g. Spotify is £10 a month here) for a better service – it doesn’t eliminate it but it makes a step towards a feeder/reciever relationship which takes back control slightly. But really as long as the music is good the listeners don’t care about that money/buying/business part of the affair, all they (or rather we) want is to have access to listen to the music we want, when we want it, where we want it so we can enjoy it without concern of the business, this is why subscription is the right way if you ask me – although I wouldn’t be surprised if other dynamic/hybrid models pop up.

What else is good? Well it takes the files off of your computer, which on the front of it seems like an instant win because you save some space and don’t have to worry about hardware failure, but really its a lot better than that. It separates that management process from the whole business of collecting music, you can effectively manage and listen too a music collection from your home, phone, work, friends house, web cafe, wherever you can get access.

All this is great and currently available in Spotify, but ultimately the best thing about this new model we are adopting is the data, and that it is all in the cloud. It’s this data that could take the experience of music to a whole new level. CD’s, Tapes and other redundant media allowed for a start at this – Top of the Pops for example provided a weekly countdown of the most sold song’s – but with the music service coming direct from the cloud there is nothing stopping you moving this too a whole new level.

• Top of the NOW
• Top of the Minute, Hour, Day, Week
• Top of the Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays
• Top of the Month, Quarter, Year, Decade, Century

This allows people to listen to music in a whole new way. Spotify and some websites do process this data and this kind of breakdown is pretty much all available now.  Breaking down this data can also globally create billions of niche statistics. From Top Rock Track of 27th of February 2010 to Most overall listened too blue grass album this week. Now this is no small amount of data and visually defining a GUI or a system to easily transverse the breadth of options without drowning the user would be a challenge. One I think that can be pieced together using the combination of search technology, social media and a little bit of flair.

Why not have a “stream” automatically created based on something like this – simple selectors that will tailor to you
(background image courtesy of jelski)

My idea’s for a new way to listen to music? Granted a few of the below ideas are amalgamations of current systems but nethertheless they would still improve my experience as a music consumer. (Broken up in no particular order just to make them more readable!!!)

• Simpler listening – playlists are good, as is the capacity to play a specific song, but 75% of the time you just want a mood of music (see below)
• Switch playlists with streams – playlists serve a purpose but we are now superceding limits, jumping boundaries – we should be listening to streams of songs not finite lists
• With all that data music providers should be doing more – Top of the NOW for example
• A more linked architecture – Elements such as bands, band members, albums, tracks, tempos, instruments, dates, geo-location data could all be better linked and presented
• With a better architecture you could have things such as “Awards” for “Best indy band of the week” etc. awarded to each band

• Music will progress socially – and this should be addressed by the software we use to listen to it, not “facebook” for music fyi
• Social listening – capacity for relational data, friendship links, follows/subscriptions, groups and fans
• Friend stream following – listen in realtime to the same stream of music
• Global digital DJ’ing – allow for digital concerts and DJ sets, democratisation of music selection presentation
• Shared streams – communities could vote on songs to create streams of genre or other element specific music
• Rivers via Stream merging – 10 friends could merge their party streams to create a river of music, perfect for a house party and not complicated or time consuming

• Song UX – band, artist management – A better system to allow artists/bands/label’s to manage the user experience of a listener when they are listening to their track
• WikiMusic – band/artist tributes, photo’s, fan art, tributes etc. could be cooperatively uploaded by the supporting community
• VOIP karaoke – integration of audio back up the stream could produce some interesting options such as remote karaoke sessions
• New and Hot – catch up service – see whats hot with your friends that you have never listened to before
• MixTapes – A classic gift perhaps for the lazy or late thinker, either way the idea could be sound – create a time specific stream of music and save it forever/share/send it
• Streamchat – while listening to certain artists, songs, streams, rivers a chat room could enhance the experience

• Intermission management – I saw this as an idea for a software on dragons den years ago – I still cant believe no music player can mix between songs automatically and well

Initially I would break down the challenge into two components. Technically getting the video from DV tapes and DVD’s onto home computer screens, iPhones, iPods, projection screens or whichever selected medium would be one. The second would be the contextual additional options. The scope for digital interpretation, communication, connections and display are countless.

The technicality of presenting video online is now an established practice. Example websites need not be named, for their popularity is well known, however despite the huge number of video’s present on these websites, quality is not a depth assured, this has allowed website’s such as TED to secure a wonderful foothold for providing higher quality (depth of thought not number of pixels) video. While TED is worth noting in this case (the people behind TED would perhaps be an excellent collaborative option) it is also important that it be distinguished from the possibility of this archive, of which there is no other comparative example on-line.

Not to dwell on the finite steps within the technological process I would concentrate this example into a summarised plan of 3 steps. 1. Digitalise all video in as high a resolution/audio quality as is feasible, taking care to maintain a proper method of file storage. 2. Process video – depending on the theory of display this could entail community based transcribing and translation, face tracking, tone mapping, automated or again community sourced segmentation or several other processes. 3. Encode all video for its intended output, depending on the intention this could be 1080p full hd video’s for download/streaming/youtube, higher resolution video for elsewhere or mp3′s for audio versions.

I think it would be important in this instance to not get caught up in the technological solution before deciding on the second component, the theory behind this archives display. Hans Ulrich Obrist has probably already considered many options, within the article it states a “system of tags” and a wonderful phrase “The archive is a polyphonic novel of more than 1,000 protagonists”. Tagging could work quite well but the question of who and how remains. These could be generated from the transcription of all the videos, something that could be tasked to a community to do digitally or by Hans himself or a third party such as end user’s viewing the video interviews. I think tagging broadly speaking will be a necessity in this project, however with such a unique collection I believe there are a variety of options to differentiate the final outcome of the archive online.

Whichever other process’s were performed on the video archive to provide a link or communication between interviews later on I would without a doubt get the video’s transcribed. This would add a depth to the archive enhancing features such as searching as well as providing opportunity for interlinking, communication and a larger array of display choices (the archive could then effectively be available on e-book reader’s, phone’s, subtitles for the deaf etc.) As aforementioned I would propose that this be done via crowd sourcing. Providing the video’s openly on-line and early-on in the project while asking viewers to transcribe what is said within the video they are watching (or even a small clip to maintain a higher attention span and therefore overall accuracy) could allow for a financial saving in transcribing coupled with a positive discussion about the proposed on-line archive by the contributors. This has been proven to work in a number of different scenario’s online and based on the depth of quality of the interview videos there would be more than sufficient interest to power this intention, in fact it may even provide a path to a much quicker transcribing (if a large enough community is built around the task) of the archive as a whole, especially into a number of languages.

From transcribed data a whole host of options are available, providing “similar interviews”, creating discussion groups from interviews, tagging and combining video’s. The transcribed archives could be coupled with other processed data such as face tracking. The interviews could be processed to record the facial expressions of the interviewee’s as they address different topics, acting as an “Expression tag” you could then similarly create different connections, suggestions and comparison’s using these. A web of similarities and dissimilarities could form an interesting navigation and experiment into the archive.

Similarly the video audio could be utilised to the benefit of the project, mapping sound-bites to text or even facial expressions. Perhaps visualised in-line with the video or just tone mapped to provide similar talks or a more interactive navigation. The interviews could also be available as mp3′ files for download or online listening, for the enjoyment of the blind or for people to listen too on their mp3 player’s or mobile phones.

Another possible pursuit would be to break the video’s down, segmenting the archives into smaller chunks might provide more options for viewing the material, communication between interviews and more. This again could be done through crowd sourcing of the task or by using audio mapping to distinguish breaks. This would completely depend on the length of the interview video.

There are, of course, numerous considerations and possibilities for a project like this, providing a way for users to access the archive that is both relative to the archive itself and conceptionally creative would be a great, fulfilling challenge. In just thinking about the idea for around an hour I have come up with a lot more ideas than I can fit in here, how about a new type of “rating” system that identifies the least viewed interviews and shows them on top of the page, therefore creating a cycling effect ensuring that the viewers on the whole as a crowd see the huge variety present? perhaps a single page with several segment’s of different interviews all pertaining to one topic all displayed and ready to click, draggable video frames that immerse the viewer in the interview? I would love to work on such a project.

Spotify may not have visualisations, but visualisations may find spotify

The reason this post really sparked was this post on pico projectors and what pico projectors might be like in 2015. I think pico projector’s (tiny projectors that will fit in your hand but produce a projection pretty much the quality of your old tv, anywhere @ 50 inchs) will get huge. I don’t doubt for one minute that MVIS stock will be the first sign of this in the coming months (the microvision showWX is going to be the worlds first mainstream big selling pico – prediction) and this will be only the start for developing display technology. Over the next 5 years visually representative technology will blossom. We will see embedded pico-projector’s slot into city planning, home design, products such as laptops (netbooks), mobile phones, games systems, camera’s. Within lcd little growth will happen but we will likely see some sort of “ultra hd” – probably double current full hd (1080p), while embedded pico’s will feature a whole host of new resolutions, by 2015 we will definitely see full hd pico’s. This development of display technology will usher in a new age of advertisements, coupled with Augmented Reality and revolution amongst the Operating Systems.

Which brings me nicely to Augmented Reality. AR. Currently there is much buzz around Augmented reality, which I believe really is the sudden sci-fi geek realisation that technically the technology to fully provide AR is out, its been out for more than a year. Smart phones with knowledge of where they are and decent digital cameras have been around longer than the iPhone. It seems once this dawned on people everyone made a mad rush to make something AR, regardless of what it is. As a result magazines, advertisers and marketing companies largely came first (presumably they had the quickest fluid funds to pay for AR.) This marrs the technology a bit if you ask me but perhaps as AR becomes more meaning based this will change. My jury is out on AR but I think it won’t be as big a deal as everyone is making out it will be.

Business will change, or rather some business’s will change the way they use technology. You always get early adopters but I believe a good proportion of companies that operate around creative, co-operative ideology will gear up more technologically as the younger generation come into professionalism. We will see different technological assistance of work in the workplace. Board meetings will not only be worldwide (like now via Cisco tele-conferencing) but they will be assisted by interactive technology, touch and display will play large parts in this technology, beyond the Microsoft surface table and towards the science fiction of minority report. Data will be housed, represented and communicated differently. A few years ago usb sticks and solid state drives didn’t offer an easy solution to copying files, network speeds were a 100th of what they largely are today, there was no cloud. As data management and storage develop as too will the way we use it. We will probably have identifiers rather than storage in 2015. e.g. rather than copying a file to a usb stick you will simply instruct your interface to relate that data to a physical object, a soundwave (a word/phrase perhaps?) or a time of day or place, provided you can prove who you are you could then recieve it. You could carry a 200gb file with you in your wallet or on your fingernail, as the likelihood is that 200gb file will be stored centrally in what people now call the “cloud” (but will probably be a server in london or a main city) and you will simply use a relation to prompt whatever interface into providing you with this file.

There will be hurdles in achieving universal centralised data but by 2015 there will be a huge proportion less of personal computing power stored in the home. The google OS is perhaps a sign of a branching of operating systems, but I don’t see google dominating the operating system market. Microsoft have become a lot stronger over the last 18 months but the real truth of it is that neither of these developers seem to be truely embracing all of the technology developments happening. Perhaps this lag in uptake is natural, Microsoft does show some promising signs but is held back by business concerns, google seems to throw itself into the ideas without checking they are in the right direction, linux, well linux is linux. By 2015 I predict there will be at least another major world provider of what we currently refer to as operating systems. The whole concept needs re-exploring from the ground up, even starting again beyond the google os. Touch for example, AR and improved options for display are all completely ignored by all of the aforementioned operating systems, Microsoft is the only developer that even references these things but is yet to truly develop a commercial option.

Search will change too. The last few years has seen a huge uptake worldwide in searching for things which in turn has pushed marketing, sales and online business into a whole new age. It’s also cemented new business models such as affiliate marketing, search based advertising and more grey area web production. The long tail has well and truly become a reality, many successful business people spend their days driving traffic from long tail search into successful sales. This will continue but it wont settle in a single routine for long. Affiliate marketing will take to interactive media more as this becomes more integral in everyday life, search will some how adapt to a new more astute audience that is used to getting good search results fast and who quickly picks up trends and becomes integral members of up and coming online phenomena such as reddit, twitter etc. Beyond real-time, search will need to integrate much more with outside sources, new operating systems and the work out the best way to catalogue and express the ever expanding online data and how it is created and used.

HTML 5 is on its way too, this will be a major improvement but it wont be the last the web sees pre 2015. By 2015 I believe that the “internet” as we know it, a vast linked store of webpages will be a very different beast. Microsoft (XBOX), Apple (iPhone), Sony (Ps3) – these are all well known, global brands and they are all investing / operating in the new world of applications. Pioneered by Apple and the iphone the idea of segmented approved tools that are properly ordered was a (very apple) genius idea. Bringing a (standard) apple simplicity to what was previously a confusing and avoided world of software for a lot of people. Microsoft, Sky, Sony and other huge technology developers did not miss this success. In the coming years slowly these companies will target specific software/hardware at every possible market audience. By 2015 every member of your family will be buying something digital. Expanding on the segmented digitally providable media of the iphone app, television programs, games, music, films and books will all be available at the click of a button, tap of a screen or utterance of a command (and payment systems such as xbox subscriptions and ps3 accounts will remove the actual money part of the transaction further accelerating digital sales.) This new availability of media will be supported by webpages, but the web-pages are much more likely to be totally interactive, 3d integration is already in browsers but we will see more of this as well as individualised experiences. Imagine every web-page you accessed could (based on rules of privacy) know your name, interests etc – the web could be a much more interactive environment. By 2015 though I think the web could be on its way to new pastures, gone with the current ideal of “pages” accessed by address. An OS with search integrally built in could remove the requirement for a browser, content could be constructed on the fly and applications/services/movies/experiences could replace pages as we know them, with the situation that web pages changing from a square, box of a screen to a multi surface vivid world that we live in, there is no doubt in my mind that the OS and the web “page” as we know it will adapt to a new medium.

We are living in a time which is the true beginning of technology adoption, 2015 might bring a few or all of my predictions into reality, it could just as likely bring thousands more. Social adoption will drive these things forward and in return the technology will hopefully create a more co-operative, fair and equal world society.

Alex Tabarrok on how “ideas trump crisis”

Adam Savage’s Talk on his obsessions in life

All worth a watch, if you get a spare chance check out TED.com,  you can see my profile where I will try to favourite the video’s I like but nearly all are interesting enough to warrant some of your web time.