Entries Tagged 'Miscellaneous' ↓

Walkit.com is a newish site that’s trying to get everyone to walk places. Type in your route, it gives you either the quickest or least busy route (and tells you how much carbon you’ll save by getting out of your car). It’s also social so users can suggest new routes.

It’s been pretty successful in London and they’ve just added Birmingham to their list of cities. Not sure how useful it’s going to be yet but I’ll definitely give it a go (not that I ever seem to go south of Digbeth these days).

• I like this one. A "terrorist suspect" decides to put his entire life online to stay out of Guantanamo. I’m sure they’ll still find a way. "You made an anti US remark between the 9:18 espresso and getting on the 325 bus at 9:23. You’re going down."
• Here’s a mighty useful piece of software: Ibackup. Pay a few quid a month, Install it, within 5 minutes it’s backing everything up online, every night. Brilliant. I can finally go to sleep knowing that even if my flat goes up in flames I won’t lose all of last year’s invoices. Phew.
• Cory Doctorow (congrats on the little one by the way!) on why personal data is as scary as nuclear waste.
• And while we’re on the subject of nuclear waste, check out these designs for a system of signs and monuments to let future generations know to steer clear of particularly nasty areas. Beautiful.

If you’re interested in keeping up with the ever fascinating minutiae of my life (and Facebook updates just don’t cut the mustard) I now have a Twitter feed at twitter.com/antoniogould.

Enjoy!

Congrats to my Dad Dave for another 4 works in this year’s Discerning Eye show at the Mall Galleries.

I tootled along to the private view last Thursday with friend and amateur art-critic Anna ("That’s highly derivative") Burrells.

The works for the show are partly selected by "collectors" (i.e. celebs). Past collectors who’ve seemed to enjoy my Dad’s work have been Richard Littlejohn (hilarious - my Dad taught me everything I know about being a right-on Guardian reader) and Anne Robinson.

This year’s star selector was Davina McCall who chose three Dave Goulds for the show.

I came back from getting a drink to see Davina and my dad chatting happily away.

When she left, my Dad asked me "so who’s she then?". He has less knowledge of popular culture than Ian Hislop. 

I patiently explained that she presents Big Brother.

"Load of rubbish" he said.

The show’s on now if you’re interested in taking a look.

Hot on the heels of my rant about Web 2.0, here’s a nice little example of it working quite beatifully.

Jessica Poundstone saw the August Etsy workshop via the webcast, and got all inspired. Here’s a comment she wrote on the blog recently:

"I found your talk to be incredibly interesting and helpful, and was inspired to make my first ever video tutorial, which you can see here: www.jewelrybyjessica.com/tutorials.html. As a start to spreading the word I’ve posted the video on my site, on my blog, and on my flickr site. I also started a flickr group for others to post their pin if they decide to make one. I’ve got Google Analytics set up on my site, so it will be really fun to see where people are coming from, and whether they stay to look around or purchase the earrings and necklaces I have for sale there. Thanks so much sharing your expertise with the world!"

Wow! Talk about embracing the approach!

So, if you’re interested in a project for the weekend, why not have a crack at making a Shrink Plastic Flower Pin?

Good luck! Prize for the best one!

More on her blog.

I’ve steadfastly avoided using the term Web 2.0 until now. I can’t stand it. Reading last night that Joanna Geary feels the same, it made me wonder whether there are more like me with the same frustration.

The problem is that although I hate the name, I love the concept. The principles behind the Web 2.0 are very important, elegant, and vital to understand for everyone. Much of my career is currently based on this particular premise.

Web 2.0 sounds like a new hardware release. When I first heard about Web 3.0 (also describing something pretty important and elegant) it sealed the argument for me. It reminds me of when a bunch of programmers decided that a great way to structure a web address was to put a series of fairly incomprehensible characters (http://www.) before a company’s name in order to access it. I know we got used to it in the end, but that’s not the point.

This obviously presents me with a dilemma. What on earth do I call it? I feel like washing my mouth out every time I use the term, but I often need to in order to explain what I’m talking about.

I did flirt with "The Live Web" for a while - it works much better for me but I’m not entirely convinced that we’re all decided on what that means yet.

Ideas on a postcard please. (Did you see what I did there?)

I’m going to be there on Wednesday and Friday.

If you’re going to be about then let me know.

I KNOW this is really late, but hey, it’s been summer.

I went to New York in August for a wedding party and stopped in at Etsy Labs in Brooklyn to do a talk. If you don’t know it, Etsy is a site for people who want to sell hand-made items. The labs are a physical co-working space where people can congregate, use equipment and learn stuff. The whole thing’s just brilliant. After two years of opening they now have over 50,000 shops set up.

The talk was based on Hugh McLeod’s Global Microbrand concept and, being the techies and artists they are, they recorded the whole thing and put it up online (complete with bluegrass soundtrack – that’s got to be a first).

If anyone’s an artist or indy creative you might find it useful. It’s all about social media and how to use it to build a worldwide customer-base whilst staying small.

One great thing was having 50 or so people watching from all over the world using Etsy’s amazing broadcasting system. We did a live, interactive web makeover at the end of the session and it was lovely to see that Xiane (our online guinea pig) actually went ahead and changed her site based on our suggestions.

It was a great evening and good fun meeting all the guys. They have some very interesting plans afoot and it’ll be interesting to see what they get up to over the next year.

I know it’s a bit off topic, but this did make me chuckle. Guess what’s for sale on the Tesco website?

I am.

I’m absolutely fed up to the back teeth with sitting on uncomfortable chairs for hours in Costa Coffee with crawling, 5 quid an hour internet waiting for my next meeting. But I’ve found an alternative! Last week I finally went to check out The Hub in London. It’s a co-working space just behind Angel tube station in Islington.

It’s wonderful. The space is light, airy and big; the internet’s fast and best of all the people are lovely. Maria Glausier was hosting and did a great job of making me feel welcome; the few other people I spoke to there also made me feel like it’s my kind of place. It’s also very cheap - the first rung rate is a tenner for five hours which I think is a bargain.

As well as being a shared working space there’s a community aspect to the membership which in The Hub’s case centres around social and environmental businesses. I think this is a great idea and looking at the members’ photos on the wall I think I’m going to meet some interesting people as I start to go more often.

As you may have seen on this blog a few of us have been throwing around the idea of setting one of these up in Birmingham and the idea seems to have legs. I’ll keep you posted as things move forward.

(Imagery by Christian De Sousa from from the-hub.net)