On the 27th of May 2010 I was invited to attend the Thinking Digital conference in Gateshead,  for those who don’t know the North at all and still think it runs on whippets and sheep, here is a map.

Thinking Digital is basically the Geordie equivalent of the TED conferences,  in that TED is a non-profit collection of events that promote Ideas Worth Spreading. Thinking Digital or TDC is an annual conference where some of the worlds brightest and most inventive thinkers across the area of digital, attend to demonstrate and highlight their latest technologies and ideas.

The conference is an inspirational blend of new tech, social media innovation and business inventions, and it is a great place to make new contacts and new friends. Unless you are me and then you tend to stand in a corner and wish you were home hidden behind your machine blogging or digging.

The whole event was organised by Codeworks a not-for-profit organisation that has been promoting digital innovation in the North East of England for the last 8 years, they work closely with a major investor  One NorthEast and are there to help develop and support new and existing digital media technology in the North East.

Herb Kim

The conference director was Herb Kim who I had met when we both gave talks to local company delegates some two weeks before, Herb is the CEO of Codeworks and has worked in the field of media and tech for the past 17 years, originally heralding from Brooklyn with honors from Princeton, Herb’s resume reads like a dream from BOL.com and O2 to Marketing manager st IBM.

The day of the conference – 27th of May 2010

I entered the Sage building at around 8.15am, the building is awesome like a gigantic metal beetle lazing on the side of the tyne. Its concaved roof glinting in the unusually bright May morning for the Northeast.

Paul Miller

I took my seat in the main hall sometime around 8.30am and as i watch the Twitter stream roll up in the background, Lauren Laverne stepped on to the stage and introduced Paul Miller from Gavurin. Gavrin’s mission is to turn the raw data that is mostly meaningless into an understandable, usable format.

The companies technology called G-View allows companies to find patterns and trends that are normally hidden in data, thus allowing them to use this data to make effective decisions. The technology seamlessly works through the data, integrating the numerical data with charts and maps to create easy to understand visuals.

You can watch a demonstration of this technology below, just click on the images.

Managing large datasets

Making Numbers Easy

Creating great looking graphs

Performance reporting in 11 seconds

You can watch the rest of the video on http://www.gavurin.com/whats_on/#one

Herb then came onstage to introduce one the the best videos of  this year so far Embrace Life – always wear your seat belt campaign, probably one of the most underated commercials of this year.

Lauren Laverne then walked onto the stage and joked that the video had brought the mood down saying “well that was feel good” – everyone laughed

Professor Gilbert Cockton

We than had a very interesting, but a little overmyhead talk by the brilliant Professor Gilbert Cockton of Northumbria University’s internationally renowned School of Design.

The same school that gave the world Jonathan Ive the genius behind Apple’s award winning designs, and now the Senior Vice-President of Industrial Design at Apple.

He talked about his work in accessibility in the web and his work with people with trauma brain injuries, using social networks to provide better care for people with disablity and also spoke about the 4 types of principles about design. I won’t go into this as i will make a rather large fool of myself, but thanks for the Professor.

Mary Ann de Lares Norris

We then heard fom Mary Ann de Lares Norris General Manager of Oblong industries in Europe, basically Oblong create the kind of technology that we were in awe of in the 2002 sci fi film Minority Report, and in fact the director of Oblong was the science advisor on Minority report. This science in the film is from his life’s work in which he hoped to emancipate the pixel from the screen into the user actual environment.

In the film the glove-controlled, wall-sized computer display that Tom Cruise controls by hand gestures is the one thing that has stuck in peoples minds.

What Oblong want to do is to tap into the part of the human brain that covers spatial calculations about the persons environment, something that is very natural to use and that remains untapped, they wish to do this be completely altering the way that we interface with our computers. This kind of technology should be a long way to being common place, but is looking like it will be with us within the next 5 years.

Now if you think that this is futuristic, G-speak see the future of this technology being the installation of high-resolution projectors in every light bulb, this would mean every surface in our houses or offices could be an interface. It is their idea to make computers work for us and help them compliment our environments instead of us having to mould to this technology.

The platform, which runs on Linux and OS X, is currently in use at Fortune 50 companies, government agencies, the defense market, the oil and gas markets and universities.

I will be writing more about the TDC10 over the next post.

As most people are aware, the ipad came out in the UK on Friday and so 1,000′s of excited Brits have flogged to Apple stores and various retailers around our green isle, in order to buy the lastest piece of ikit.

Therefore due to this and the prompt of one of my friends purchasing the 64GB wifi ipad, i thought that a test of it’s capabilities was highly overdue.

I have had my niggling doubts about Apple’s latest designer product ever since Mr Jobs began to talk of it, and sent ripples through the social communities. I found the wave of hate of the name, lack of flash, no multi tasking and it’s wireless capabilities only drove my interest deeper … either in a concerted effort to prove them wrong or whole heartedly agree with them.

In this video we unbox the new Apple ipad – specs 64GB wifi (not 3G), it’s raw unedited so don’t expect any fancy intro music or logos plastered all over it.

This video covers how to set-up your new ipad, the crazy thing is that since the ipad is simply a larger version of the ipod, you still need to sync it with itunes before you can do anything.  So in that respect it is not really a replacement for your PC or notebook, but lets carry on.

Here we are looking at the quality of sound on the ipad but testing it out on a range of music, from classical and pop to acoustic.

Now we are looking at reading on the ipad, using the app that the ipad it’self recommends ‘ibooks’. This is something that I was personally pretty impressed with, the design of the application and functionality is superb.

In this one we look at the quality of the ipad’s backlit screen for reading, as this is something that the Kindle lacks.

Since the ipad that we have is not 3G we thought that we would check out the wifi and see just how well it works.

This is a test of the quality of itunes movies on the ipad vs the iphone, taking into account the size, we are looking at image quality, speed and Robert Downey Jr.

This is probably the most important test, can we get porn on an ipad… “can we get it and will it PLAY?”

Well i hope that you have enjoyed a little glimpse at the new ipad and it’s functions and enjoyed our company for a few minutes, it was lovely to see you and we will be testing out a few more things on the ipad, so you really must call again.

If you do have any requests for us to try out, drop us a line (the more bizarre the better)

Augmented reality is going to be one of the biggest movements of 2010, in my humble opinion, why? … “are you sitting comfortably?, then i’ll begin!”

I first heard about augmented reality around 6 months ago in connection with the iPhone apps Sekai Camera, but at the time the technology wasn’t available in the UK.

Now augmented reality is “IN” and I have been playing around with augmented reality now for the past few weeks on Sekai Camera, Becks gig finder, Magicam and left loads of bizarre little messages all over Newcastle at Xmas, such as “the bar men here ignore you” and “try the peanuts, only 16 types of urine”. I have also been messing about on the new Quaker Oats website pawridge and looking for down loadable augmented images to print out.

The post is continued on my work seo blog here

Well, it’s on all the toilet walls, Apples CEO Steve Jobs gave a damning report of Adobe’s Flash product during the launch of Apples new ipad last week. He called Adobe “lazy” and confirmed that ipad’s would not feature flash – ever “so there!”. He also had a go at Google’s slogan of “don’t be evil” saying “It’s bullshit”, ooh he was in a testy mood.

Continued on the seo blog freshegg

The wondrous ifad and it’s entourage of second coming digital mediocrity!

The ipad’s launch was colossal; it literally brought every social network on line to digital masturbatory melt down. I deliberately avoided it all, as I envisioned Steve Jobs sat in a chair beneath a stupidly large screen, like the ultra modern stage production of craps last tape. Tech God Stephen Fry muttering all over twittering about stroking his new ipad as it were someone’s genitals and every proclaimed social media guru pronouncing the ipad as “The biggest thing since…..” well that last big thing last week.

We’d heard the whispers from Apple in – 2008 “Apples new tablet, it’s going to be big Folks”. “2009 It’s coming… the latest in Apples technology” and so it finally happened in 2010 and I for one, feel like a gender queer teen who has just been given bra, I feel confused and just a little deflated.

Due to this and my love of goats, I decided to map out the upside and downside of the new ipad (I’m not even going there on the name) and pit it against some other devices that encompass some, if not all of the functionally that the ipad should have as standard. Oh and I’ve added a domestic goat to give it scope!

Comparing the ipad to a domestic goat

Ok, and before you all go… noooo Apple is wonderful and you must be a PC geek, i own both a PC and Mac and an iphone and i am just a little gutted that Steve Jobs launched such a frigging clanker of a product. I personally will be investing in a goat from the local farm.

Sleep well moomins of the web

Related articles by Zemanta

• Apple’s approach to iPad e-books could create confusion: Which software will open which book? (taragana.com)
• iPad: A Question for the Magazine Industry, Not an Answer (technologizer.com)
• Google’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Mantra is ‘Bulls**t,’ Adobe Is Lazy: Apple’s Steve Jobs (John C Abell/Epicenter) (techmeme.com)
• Great Apple iPad Home Screen Concept (crenk.com)

The video revoLucian starts here!

Video is still really under used in social media and as a means of communication, which for someone who is visual can be pretty dissapointing.  So i am not going to add a lot of type into this post, i just want you to watch some brilliant videos by an extreamly talented Remixer/Composer called @RevoLucian and make your own mind up. Feel free to add comments …

Bale Out – RevoLucian’s Christian Bale Remix!

Highly recommend the Bale Out! Christian Bale Remix! ACOUSTIC VERSION on

Winemouse REMIX (very cute baby mice)

Pants On The Ground REVOLUCIAN REMIX

If you fancy watching more of this genius Remixer / Composer go here http://www.youtube.com/user/revolucian

This is a video i put together at the end of last year and forgot about, it features alot of things that i think are important about social media and some stats that i am sure you have seen.

Also on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmdpajQI3wA

Foursquare, for those that don’t know, is a location service-based social network-come-game and has been tipped at being the Twitter of 2010.

It sends you updates of where your friends are and what their tips on a certain cafe, bar or activity is, for example; try the soya latte it’s out of this world, or ‘don’t eat here, the waitress has crabs.

It’s like the love child of Google Latitude, Qype, Facebook and Twitter and also manages to squeeze in a points game system too. For me it has got my lazy ass out of the house, by offering cute badges from Newbie up to Superstar,and points that make me feel warm inside.

It also makes me Mayor of pretty bizarre places such as ‘my workplace bathroom’, ‘West Worthing station’ and cooler places like ’9 bar’ in Hove. It also makes it really easy to cheat, as it’s brand new and the geo targeting isnt exactly working yet, so you could be sat on your loo in Stratford and be “checking-in” that you are sipping cocktails in Soggy Dollar Bar in the British Virgin Islands.

Due to this glitch, i believe that Foursquare can be used for evil and i thought i would share a first hand account of this so that no one else has to suffer. Mr Flufflebums who was an earlier adopter of the Foursquare application, wanted to share this with you his experience and hopes that is will help others avoid going down this path to evil. (Will add the downloaded version later, this version takes a few ticks to start, it’s worth waiting we think)

GoAnimate.com: The dangers of using Foursquare by killerbunnie

Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It’s free and fun!

If anyone has been affected by anything they have seen in this video, please download foursquare.com and become mayor of your own garage.

I have gathered a bunch of augmented reality cards for you to print out and try on your PC or Mac, give them a go and send me the videos to post up, please!

1) Eco magination smart grid (print out the image) – Go here http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/#/augmented_reality and hold up the image to the web cam

This is what it should look like

2) Cute Monster on your desktop from Boffswana

Papervision – Augmented Reality (extended) from Boffswana on Vimeo.

3) BMW car – go here and test it out http://www.bmw.co.uk/bmwuk/augmented_reality/homepage?bcsource=vanity

4) Join Starfleet – Go here to test it out http://joinstarfleetacademy.com/discover

5) IQ demo – go here http://www.toyota.co.uk/cgi-bin/toyota/bv/frame_start.jsp?id=iQ_reality

6) Augmatic business card demo – just show to your webcam

7) Walmart demo – Go here to try it out http://instoresnow.walmart.com/your-zone.aspx?id=408

If, like me you are an iphone lover, you will find this comparison very interesting. I personally wouldn’t ditch my iphone for anything, but for those of you who are a little bit “odd” here is what you need to know about the “crap” different Smartphones performances.

Is your once-beloved iPhone giving you the stink-eye after spotting you drooling over the Nexus One? Well, if you’re contemplating ditching the drop call universe of the iPhone (thanks to AT&T) in favor of a fancy new smartphone and different plan, check out Bill Shrink’s handysmartphone guide.

Find the best cell phone plans and more graphics at BillShrink.com