Bad news: This blog has pretty much run its course. Nothing very interesting (to me) has happened in this space for a long time. I won’t be updating twopointouch anytime soon.

Good news: I’ve started a new blog, called gamethinks.com, which is about computer games. I know this won’t interest a lot of my regular readers, but it does interest me, a lot. Give it a go. Maybe I can convince you.

image credit: C J Isherwood

Today, I reached the end of my patience when I couldn’t take part in a Skype video call. My downstream had plunged to 446kbps, as opposed to the (already pretty feeble) 6mbps I had 12 months ago.

For a little while, when I first noticed this drop, I was told it was because I had downloaded too much stuff. I probably had. But not within the last six months.

So anyway, I got on the phone.

• Ten minute wait in the queue. Bad – but I’ve had a lot worse.
• Annoying “is it plugged in?” style diagnostics. Bad – but not idiotic.
• Can you unscrew your phone socket from the wall and try this. That’s a new one – but I prefer this to a 2–3 day wait for an engineer.
• Ah yes, you need a new router. Promising – I’ve had my current Voyager 215 for about five years with no offer of an upgrade.
• But you need to agree to a new 12-month contract…

No, I don’t think so. Give me a workable internet connection and then I might trust you. So, no – can I have my Mac code [this lets you move more easily to another provider] please?

Him: Can I tell you about the best offers we have for you right now?

Me: No, I’d like my Mac code.

Him: Well, the best we can do is… [actually a quite good offer]

Him: … and shower you with loads of free stuff.

Me: Can I stop you there? Because I was told I’d have to take out a new contract to see my broadband connection fixed. And I don’t want to do that.

Him: Ah, yes. That is the case.

Me: Well, I don’t want to do that because I don’t trust BT to be able to deliver, based on my experience.

Him: Ah OK.

Me: So can I have my Mac Code, please?

Him: Just getting your code now. Two minutes pass.

Him: The system’s just generating it now. Another five minutes – no joke.

Him: I’m just going to go and get it Another two minutes.

Him: I’m sorry about the delay, Mr Delaney. I’m just getting it now. Another two minutes. Or was it ten? I am dazed now.

I don’t like to be mean about call-centre people. I don’t think it’s fair. They have a rulebook that was written by people hundreds (sometimes thousands) of miles away. They are the ones to blame, not the first woman I spoke to or Iqbal Hani (actually he was a total dick – really rude) or the other guy in retrieving-really-angry-people I spoke to today.

But really. You lost a customer today because you were too inflexible and you don’t really care about your customers. I’m paying my bills, why didn’t you just fix the problem? Why didn’t my router get upgraded years ago? If you have this new speed enhancer doodad, why didn’t you send it out to your existing customers?

I know why, of course. Because subscription businesses are based on customer inertia. Because you make more money putting effort into converting or acquiring new customers than in showing great value to existing ones.

But that’s shit. And there, I said it. You were shit today, BT.

It was with some surprise that I discovered that built-in RFID chips aren’t the preserve of high-end smartphones. They’re actually more likely to be found at the bottom-end. It’s a technology that needs to be available to millions, rather than thousands, for the likes of retailers and transport companies to want to support such devices. I wrote a thing about it, which first appeared here.

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There’s not much chance that Nokia is likely to change its brand slogan — ‘Connecting People’ — any time soon. But the scope of what you do with your phone seems to widen with every passing year.

Something that’s getting the alpha-geeks very excited at the moment is the emergence of something rather unglamourously called ‘the web of things’. The idea is that, just as objects on the Internet — pages, files, pictures — all have unique addresses, so this will extend to objects in the real world. More or less anything from shirt on your back to the door of your house can and is likely to be connected to the Internet and have an address like http://you.yourstuff.yourblueshirt. At the moment, it seems most likely that these items will each have a tiny radio chip installed, called an RFID chip. The technology of getting your phone and other devices to interact with these things is called Near-Field-Communications (NFC). There’s a Nokia document explaining it here.

Why is that useful, you might wonder? Well, in the case of your shirt, it would mainly help the people that you bought it from. They could use the technology to track deliveries to individual stores. They might sell you the shirt by you tapping your phone on it. It would also make shoplifting a thing of the past, since they could identify and find items that haven’t been purchased at any point. Activating your door would be more useful to you, though. Again, you might use your phone to unlock it rather than keys. You could tell remotely who was in the house, and tell them to put the kettle on when you’re coming home. Actually, you could probably activate the kettle yourself.

Mobile phones are already very much part of the web of things. Across the world, trials are being conducted to replace tickets on public transport with a wave of your phone across the barrier. So called “smart” posters are created that reveal extra information on your mobile device with a wave. Building entry cards are similarly being replaced with identification using your mobile.

So why isn’t this already widespread? It’s a bit chicken and egg. Manufacturers won’t want to go to the extra cost of installing RFID chips until everyone’s phones support it. Phone manufacturers won’t want to create readers unless there are sufficient ‘things’ with which they can interact. It’s happening, though. Nokia already has three models with NFC, so do a number of other manufacturers. Public transport systems — where ticket machines, finding change and queues are a perpetual problem — are likely to be an early win. The Finnish city of Oulu, for example, has been running such a system for several years.

We’re entering a world where the Web enters and interacts with everyday life. They talk about about RFID, near-field communications, online/inline and glanceable interfaces. There’s a great video down the bottom that explains it all in a lot of detail.

What we’re talking about is things like:

• Nike + – personal information aggregation and sharing.
• Wattson and Holmes – power usage visualised more easily
• Oyster cards – ticketless travel payment
• Nabaztag – physical gadgets conveying Internet information

And super animal senses. Sorry, SUPER ANIMAL SENSES!!! With my own normal human senses failing rapidly, I’m especially interested in this. Some guy is making gadgets that will replace them with SUPER ANIMAL ones.

The prototype described is about knowing which way is North, like migratory birds do. There’s a buzzer in your pocket that goes off whenever you’re pointing northwards. Over time, you stop noticing the buzzer but always know which way North is.

We’ve seen the children’s/stalker’s toys that can pick up conversations from a distance. This is the Super Ear sound-enhancer that can pick up speech from 100 yards.

We’ve seen Silence of the Lambs and so forth and can see how seeing in the dark might work. Here’s the Cobra-Vision night-vision goggles:

Let’s halve the cost and the size for five years, as per a slightly-mangled-but-historically-reasonable Moore’s Law. I reckon I have Super Animal Senses by 2020.

And here’s the video I referenced. It’s about 30 minutes, but well worth it:

image credit: GreenFlames09

You might not realise it, but Xara is one of the real grandaddies of software development, having been formed in the UK in 1981. Nowadays, the company is owned by the German Magic AG group, though they’re still based in Hemel Hempstead, north of London. Over the years, they’ve produced all sorts of stuff: they made Snake, Wordwise and Space Invaders for the BBC Micro, for example, and continued to support the Archimedes range of education-focused computers over the 90s.

Since 1994, however, they’ve been best-known for their Windows-based design software. It’s always had a couple of advantages over the ‘industry standard’ software tools, which remain as true now as they were 15 years ago:

1. it’s really fast. That’s less of a concern nowadays, under most circumstances, but until recently, doing anything with high-res photos was a pain in the neck;
2. mixing photos and vectors is really easy. While it’s predominantly a vector illustration package, it’s always been possible to edit photos in place, non-destructively;
3. it’s really inexpensive. The basic version costs £69, with the pro version costing £249. Adobe and Quark might sell you a beermat for that sort of money.

So what’s new in this version? For me, three things in particular. The last version – Xara Xtreme – introduced web page design options: these are now much improved. Second, Photo-editing no longer requires separate applications for 90% of what most people want to do. Third, working with longer chunks of text is a lot more powerful. There’s dozens of other things – you can check the list on the site.

It also looks very smart indeed.

I know about this, a little. My wonderful mum (71) is one of the disenfranchised.  She has had potential access to the Internet for years, but she doesn’t use it for banking, shopping, entertainment, information, communication or news. Largely, she uses it because other people (me and my sister) want her to. I recall her telling me last year:

I go on the Internet once a week, just so I can remember how to do it. But once I’m there, I’ve no idea what I might want to do.

When it comes to the ‘fear factor’, she’s definitely worried about what it might do to her phone bill*. It took her 10 years to use an ATM, so I can’t see Internet banking on the cards in the near future. But more pertinently, she hasn’t really seen the point. She gets online; gets to MSN or whatever it is and there’s nothing there for her. I get that.

More recently, she’s joined a local library programme to learn more about computers and the Internet. She’s actually a lot happier about using their computers than the one she’s got at home: she can’t break anything and she can’t run-up a massive phone bill. The lessons have been a bit disappointing, though: apparently, copy-and-paste has been on the agenda three weeks running, without any indication why anyone would want to copy and paste anything. No one did that before, you see.

She sends me an email once a week on Wednesdays at 10am. I love that and always reply immediately, but by that point her allotted hour is finished.

And I’m sorry, but I do wonder what’s the point?

No shiny media campaign will make people like mum love the Web. Oh, I know there’s a gazillion silver surfers and online communities for the elderly and bingo and everything. But she’s happier with what she’s got and has always had. Our society is utterly selfish, self-serving and hateful to try to make her feel inadequate for not using the Web. Even more so when it makes it harder for her to access information and services because she doesn’t.

* she still says thing like ‘I know this is running up your bill, so I won’t be long’.

image credit: Ricky

Today is my first day at Republic Publishing. It’s a social media publishing agency established by experienced journalists, in the belief that editorial insight and principles are a good foundation for compelling content. Current clients include Nokia, Five, Pricerunner, Vodafone and The Link.

My job is mainly to act as international managing editor (crikey!) on the Nokia Conversations blog, helping to establish and manage global editions. It’s all tremendously exciting. And I wonder what this red button here does…

Ferriss’ stuff isn’t always popular. Like I just said, I find it hard to swallow myself. So he gets a lot of negative comments. In the article, he sets out seven principles or attitudes for avoiding getting affected by those:

1. It doesn’t matter how many people don’t get it. What matters is how many people do.
2. 10% of people will find a way to take anything personally. Expect it.
3. “Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity.” (Colin Powell)
4. “If you are really effective at what you do, 95% of the things said about you will be negative.” (Scott Boras)
5. “If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.” (Epictetus)
6. “Living well is the best revenge.” (George Herbert)
7. Keep calm and carry on.

Great advice for anyone working on websites and living on the Web generally.

picture credit: The Punk

RSS is a wonderful invention. But what it often means is that you try to read ten times the content that you used to. Because, of course, it’s so easy to slip through feeds in your RSS reader, and so whenever you find a new website with an interesting article you hit the orange button. (By the way, if you haven’t already, do hit the orange button).

And Google Reader is a great product. It really is. But then you wake up one morning, hit the link and there are 11,000 unread items. Plus Google has been a bit naughty recently with its interface design. What once looked cool and clean is now a bit of a mess.

I present, m’lord, item one:

What is all that stuff? I quite liked it when sharing came along, but now – ugh too much.

Solution 1: It’s Not a List; It’s a Magazine

So I was delighted to discover Feedly last year (via. Drew Benvie). It distils your web feeds, does some magic sorting and displays the stuff you should read on a single page.

I like this a lot. It doesn’t tell you that you’ve got 11,000 unread items; it doesn’t have a ton of possibly important but inscrutable menu links. Like Reader, the content is lazy-loaded in the background, so you can click on links and read the item’s content without reloading the site.

It also doesn’t show you everything. You won’t ‘get-through’ all your feeds this way. But that’s kind of the point. Once you’ve stopped enjoying reading updates, you can move away without feeling guilty.

In case you do feel guilty about this approach to reading RSS feeds, I’d suggest that it’s close to the original ‘river of news’ idea that Dave Winer suggested, except there’s been some clever manipulation of the items so you’re less likely to miss popular news.

Solution 2: Health and Efficiency and Helvetica

So what if you are a bit more conscientious or hard-working? Find that whole magazine idea a bit strange. Or have a keen sense of design offended by so-called web friendly fonts? The solution for you, my benighted friend, is Helvetireader.

Helvetireader is a CSS rework of Google reader that hides extraneous elements and makes the rest look plainer and more beautiful. It’s a two-step installation process. You need to install Greasemonkey for Firefox or Chrome. It’s a scripting add-on that you’ll find lots of other uses for if you look into it.

Then go over to the Helvetireader website, where you can install it from the button. Version 2 has just been released, which is prettier than Version 1, which was awesome. The next time you visit Google Reader, it will be beautified. And minified – the plugin hides a lot of stuff, so you won’t like it if you are addicted to features.

Helvetireader can be used in exactly the same way as normal Google Reader, but works as its best if you know the short-cut keys. There are loads of these. The important ones are:

• j/k – next / previous item
• space – scroll down / next folder
• s – star this item
• shift+s – share this item

It seems as though ‘n’ and ‘p’ do something similar to ‘j’ and ‘k’, but I couldn’t work out the difference.

MoMA New York’s department of architecture and design has acquired the @ symbol for its collection.

This is a fine piece of puffery, of course. The symbol cannot be owned by an individual gallery since it already belongs to all of us. Senior curator Paulo Antonelli explains:

It relies on the assumption that physical possession of an object as a requirement for an acquisition is no longer necessary, and therefore it sets curators free to tag the world and acknowledge things that “cannot be had”—because they are too big (buildings, Boeing 747’s, satellites), or because they are in the air and belong to everybody and to no one, like the @—as art objects befitting MoMA’s collection. The same criteria of quality, relevance, and overall excellence shared by all objects in MoMA’s collection also apply to these entities.

The symbol’s etymology lies in medieval commerce. Some scholars think that it represents an ‘a’ inside an ‘e’, standing for ‘each at’. This meaning was its only real use before computers came along. You might receive a bill saying:

10 geese @30p … £3.00

When computers arrived, a thousand years later, the fairly trivial and unused piece of punctuation was co-opted by the developers of programming languages to stand as shorthand for various functions and labels (thanks, wikipedia):

• In C#, it denotes “verbatim strings”, where no characters are escaped and two double-quote characters represent a single double-quote. As a prefix it also allows keywords to be used as identifiers.
• In Java, it is used to denote annotations, a kind of metadata, since version 5.0
• In modal logic, specifically when representing possible worlds, @ is sometimes used as a logical symbol to denote the actual world (the world we are ‘at’).
• In Pascal, @ is the “address of” operator (it tells the location at which a variable is found).
• In Perl, @ prefixes variables which contain arrays.
• In PHP, it is used just before an expression to make the interpreter suppress errors that would be generated from that expression.
• In Python 2.4 and up, it is used to decorate a function (wrap the function in another one at creation time).
• In Ruby, @ prefixes instance variables, and @@ prefixes class variables.
• In Scala, it is used to denote annotations (as in Java), and also to bind names to subpatterns in pattern-matching expressions.
• In Clipper, it is used to denote position on the screen. For example: @1,1 SAY “HELLO” to show the word “HELLO” in line 1, row 1.

With the advent of the Internet, it became ‘at’ again, best known as the middle bit of email addresses ‘name@host’, and more recently as the way in which people have managed to create threaded instant messages using Twitter, despite its initial lack of support for such a model.

So very good. But why does it belong in a gallery, even one about design rather than fine art? It’s not something we can attribute to a particular designer, like the recycle symbol. It doesn’t even have a single visual representation, like Harry Beck’s tube map, but changes according to the typeface used to show it.

MoMA disputes these objections, arguing that the use of the symbol for email by Ray Tomlinson in 1971, appropriating an ancient symbol for an ultramodern use is a deliberate and elegant act of design.

But to me, the American connection is a bit of a red herring. The history of the symbol is one of reinvention and cunning shorthand. It is also very interestingly international, with its meaning in other languages strikingly organic and affectionate:

The French and Italians have nicknamed it the “snail.” The Norwegians have plumped for “pig’s tail,” the Germans “monkey’s tail,” and the Chinese “little mouse.” The Russians think of it as a dog, and the Finns as a slumbering cat.

It’s also ‘little monkey’ in Macedonian and Slovenian; ‘dog’ in Russian; most beautifully, it is ‘moon’s ear’ in Kazakh.

English speakers seem rather unimaginative in comparison, don’t they? The international dimension uncovers a layer of poetry in our relationship to the symbol. Its etymology, translations and appropriations are all testament to human imagination and design. So, yes, I’m fine with it being in a gallery.

PS: finding an image to illustrate this post unearthed some truly horrendous clip-art. Thank heavens for Wikipedia, otherwise it would be one of this lot.