Lifeblog Beta is here…

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Minna tells me that Nokia Lifeblog Beta (Windows PC only, I’m afraid) is available for download here, as is the s60 client for the Nokia 7610.

As the website says, if you don’t have that phone (as I didn’t for a while) you can still use the PC app, which imports jpgs quite happily.

I’ve been using it since May, and it makes for a lovely digital shoebox.

UPDATE: Just noticed you can win a futurephone by giving the Lifeblog team your feedback:

“From now until September 30, 2004, submitting a bug report gives you the chance to walk away with a Nokia 7610 or 6630 imaging phone. The best, most comprehensive report wins! “

Damn – I’d love a 6630, and I’ve been using Lifeblog enough to put in a pretty good report already, but something gives me the feeling I’m not elligible… 😉

» Nokia Lifeblog: Download Beta

Del.icio.us phrenology continued

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Kevan has knocked up an awesome visualisation tool for a user’s del.icio.us tags.

Here’s what mine looks like:

mattlicious

As compared to my hand-tooled version.

Here’s what Chris looks like:

chrislicious

Here’s what Clay looks like:

claylicious

Here’s what Warren looks like:

warrenlicious

And here’s what Foe looks like:

foelicious

Kevan has named it:

extispicious, a. [L. extispicium an inspection of the innards for divination; extra the entrails + specer to look at.] Relating to the inspection of entrails for prognostication.

and it does feel a little bit mystical, but not guts, more tea-leaves. Or even phrenological, seeing the bumps in peoples outboard-brains…

» kevan.org: extisp.icio.us – charting the tags of del.icio.us users

New meaning for the Long Now

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From Melvyn Bragg’s “In our time” newsletter:

“After the programme a lot of the talk was about a word new to me: ‘presentism’. This is the burden under which historians who teach say that they labour increasingly, ie: everything in the past (more than 10 or 15 years ago) has to be described first in terms of the present.

The idea of a century or even a previous generation being radically different from our own in its political structure, its transport structure, etc, is, I was told, increasingly hard to grab hold of.”

» BBC Radio 4: In our time

Muoto’s special “State of Finnish Design” issue

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muoto magazine

Muoto is a design magazine in Finland. It’s not superficial or consumerist – it has serious design criticism and commentary, but it’s still aimed at a broader audience than just the design industry it seems. Think “Blueprint” rather than “Design Week” at one end of the scale and “Wallpaper*” at the other.

This month’s edition is devoted to an examination of then state of Finnish design and the movers and shakers involved in it. It also has, for the first time, I think; translated all of it’s content to English.

It’s a good read, and a real window on where Finnish design culture is at, and where those involved in it think it’s going right and wrong. Alex Niemenen is part of a group interview that makes some interesting points about the Finn’s inability to package and crow about their abundant talent.

Being able to “evangelise” – market an idea, a potentiality, an abstract, a vision is something that in my short experience here I have found frustratingly absent, although there is something very reassuring about the refusal to talk about something unless every detail or eventuality has been considered.

The word “concrete” is properly the most used in conversations I have about ideas or design here. In a world of image this is anticompetitive but admirable.

Typepad defaults to homework

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Since moving to Typepad I’ve notice that posting a blog entry is more like handing in your homework, at a particularly strict school run by ascetic ex-Jesuits expelled from the order for their extremism. I keep getting comments telling me off for my self-indulgence and lack of intellectual rigour.

Admitted, I have the intellectual rigour of a frisbee. And perhaps these networked doses of cod-liver oil comments are good for me, making me a better writer or thinker. Or maybe not. Maybe this is all self-indulgence and should remain so for my sanity.

Anyway – I have removed the “recent comments” feature from the sidebar in the hope of reducing the ‘pile-on’ that happens.

The “recent comments” module appears to be a default setting in Typepad, and as a design pattern it is very successful for bootstrapping conversations on a personal website and keeping them alive. In switching from moveabletype to typepad, I thought that the effects of the default design patterns would have been noticeable, but aside from this comments amplification “pile-on” effect, I can’t think of anything else.

This over-riding feeling that Typepad’s defaults have turned writing here into a chore for me maybe just be a comparison effect of using more lightweight, life-recording, “spooling” systems, such as Nokia Lifeblog, del.icio.us and Flickr.

Connections, 2

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burkewebb

As I was watching James Burke passionately explain the interconnectedness of everything, I was reminded of my friend and psychoactive-substance-made-hominid, Matt Webb.

In this epic post, Webb lays claim to being the auteur of the first BBC factual documentary series (or holomemetic thoughtgift injectionseeds) that they commission after we all collapse into the supercontext of the singularity.

“our cities are unfolded instances of the hippocampus, as a game of Ludo or, rather, Stuck in the Mud is the first and second and n-order unfolding of the game rules + social behaviour + history. Surfaces, ha!”

Ouch! Brilliant!

UPDATE: gordon bennett. loads of comments about this essentially flippant little post.

Since moving to typepad I’ve notice that posting a blog entry is more like handing in your homework, at a particularly strict school run by ascetic ex-Jesuits expelled from the order for their extremism. All I’ve had a re comments telling me (and matt webb) off for our self-indulgence and lack of intellectual rigour.

Newsflash – this is a personal site, it is ALL self-indulgence. Moreover, I have the intellectual rigour of a frisbee. Anyway – I have removed the “recent comments” feature from the sidebar in the hope of redcuing the ‘pile-on’ that happens.

Connections

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connections
I have just spent an hour of a cold, wet Finnish summer afternoon, transported back to being 6 years old in 1978, watching the first episode of “Connections” by James Burke.

What an incredible series that was, and what a magnificent storyteller y’man Burke is. Depressingly, I can’t see anything like that getting made now, although Schama‘s History of Britain is probably the nearest in terms of compelling, rhetorical, factual television.

The theme of interconnectedness and interdependence of civilisations, technology and nature is one that probably needs telling powerfully these days, too.

Oh, and dig that seventies on-screen typography.

More:
» Palmer’s James Burke Fan Companion
» Wikipedia entry on James Burke