The Problem With #MakeFFMeanFF

February 14, 2011 5 Comments

You may remember my post last month extolling the virtues of #makeffmeanff – a Twitter scheme to encourage people to follow each other.  If you don’t remember it then you can read it here.  I was pleased with the idea at the time and happily followed people on Fridays with gay abandon, whilst suggesting top tweeters to others.  It was like a warm fuzzy feeling had engulfed me (I hadn’t wet myself, either).  Sadly,  in the next couple of weeks, tragedy struck.  I contracted a severe case of Twitteritis and the whole plan back-fired.

If you’ve never heard of Twitteritis (and I don’t know why you would have since I just made it up), it’s a condition that affects Twitter users when they can’t be arsed tweeting.  It starts with a little apathy and then when you attempt to get back into it, you’re faced with big long conversations that seem inpenetrable and you put off tweeting again.  It’s very much a vicious circle (don’t confuse it with a viscous circle, that’s an altogether stickier subject).

The “illness” has only been exacerbated by the number of new people that I now follow.  At this juncture, I’d just like to point out that nobody has offended me (well, one or two may have, but it’s probably not you).  All youse twitter-folk seem right lovely.  I just don’t understand what you’re all talking about.  I feel like a pensioner who’s been stuck in a home for years who’s been wheeled out for a birthday party attended by a bewildering array of extended family members.  I just want to go back to my room and put my pyjamas on.

The big question is whether I should unfollow people or not.  I don’t want to offend anybody, but I want to enjoy Twitter.  It seems that I’ve backed myself into a corner with my grand scheme.  Any suggestions?

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Learn2Massage.Net

January 25, 2011 2 Comments

Would you like to learn how to massage?  Of course you would, you’re only human.

Well, why don’t you head over to Learn2Massage.net, the new web-site from James, my good friend and co-founder of The Gravy Boat (why not revisit the original episode featuring us both, here?).

Go on, you know you want to.  You can download the Indian Head Massage course for just £15.99.  What can you buy for that price these days? Sure, you could buy 1599 penny sweets, but what good would that do you? Wouldn’t you prefer to massage an Indian’s head?  Of course you would.

Get involved.  Now.

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The PS3 Imperative

January 11, 2011 Leave a comment

I’m fed up.

Don’t worry, I’m not depressed.  I should probably be more specific.  I’m fed up with wanting to buy a PS3 that I don’t really want.

Yes, it’s trivial, but you can see why I’d be fed up.

I’ve had this burning desire for at least a year now (see here for evidence), and it remains completely inexplicable.  I often have a yearning for new technology – I think it’s just a male genetic thing – but I usually either buy it or the lust dissipates.  At £250, the PS3 is above some undefined price threshold that I won’t cross unless I’m really sure.  I did rush out and buy a Nintendo Wii (rarely used and powered off) when they were released, so my limit is somewhere between £180 and £250.  I quickly get bored with computer games so the thought of having 2 unused consoles is a pretty compelling reason not to buy one.  So far I’ve resisted, but I’ve definitely come close to succumbing.  Today, for example.

My latest plan is convoluted\tenuous, to say the least.  I’ve become a bit disillusioned with Sky’s movie channels recently, and the paucity of “premieres” that I can be bothered watching.   It struck me that it might be better value for money for me ditch the movie channels and sign up for a DVD rental service.  I’d lose the ability to flick through Sky’s 11 dedicated channels whenever I wanted, but I’d gain the ability to focus on the films that I really wanted to watch.

The only spanner in the works was that Sky was in HD, and I don’t have a blu-ray player.  Sure, I could spend £70-80 on a dedicated player, but why would I do that when I could just pay £150 more on a PS3? It seemed like the perfect compromise.  An “unlimited” account with Lovefilm was £13 a month, and I figured that Sky was costing me £16 a month.  Eventually the PS3 would pay for itself!

I signed up for a free trial with Lovefilm, and I immediately started to back track.  Surely, I should just plump for a Blu-ray player.  I’d never use the PS3 for games, would I?  You can stream movies from Lovefilm to a PS3, but my broadband is reliably slow.  It was just going to be a waste of money.  Oh well, the plan wasn’t a complete wash out, I could still give it a try.

At this point, I thought I should double-check how much Sky Movies was costing me.  I found that because I have all the sport channels then I’d actually only save £7 a month by getting rid of movies.  The money saving justification instantly disappeared and my glorious scheme was killed mercilessly.

Browsing my Sky account opened up a whole can of worms in itself.  It made me confront the staggering £62 a month that it costs me; a figure that deep down I knew existed, but one that I conveniently choose to ignore.  Can I really justify £20 a month for Sky Sports News and the handful of Liverpool matches that are televised?  Not really, but would I want to be without them? Not really.  Now I don’t know what to do for the best.  Should I cancel Sky’s movies and sports and go with Lovefilm alone?  I’d be loathe to lose all those channels, even though it’s hard to really justify them.  It’s safe to say that I’m fed up with thinking about it.

I only got into this mess trying to justify buying something that deep down I know I don’t want.  If anything, this should only persuade me more that I shouldn’t buy one…and yet, there’s still that nagging feeling deep inside.  I really don’t get it.  I don’t think I ever will.

All I know is that I dread the release of the PS4.

If anyone has any explanations for my obsession, please, please leave a comment.  It might just help.

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What Does #makeffmeanff Mean?

January 8, 2011 2 Comments

Last night I found myself having a mess around on the old Twitter.  Sometimes you get drawn into it and end up tweeting loads of stuff that is hilarious to you but is patently not remotely amusing to anybody else.  That’s just par for the course and that’s exactly what I did.

Anyway, as it was Friday, there was plenty of #ff action.  For the uninitiated, ff stands for “Follow Friday”.  The theory is that you mention someone that you follow and hence suggest that your other followers also follow them because they are in some way worthy of your followingness.  And you do it on a Friday.

That’s the theory.

The practice is somewhat different.  People tend to just tweet massive lists of tweeters as a kind of gesture to say that they enjoy their tweet camaraderie.  Some seem to go to the lengths of mentioning every single person that they follow.

This may be a nice thing to do, but it doesn’t seem to embrace the spirit of #ff.  The problem is that nobody ever follows anybody else as a result.  I’ve been mulling this over for a few weeks now and considered starting a campaign in which people actually acted upon seeing a #ff.  After a brief discussion with BennyFitfrawd (who had kindly #ffed me), I spontaneously started the #makeffmeanff hashtag, and a ‘campaign’ was born.

Twitter can often be seen as a place where celebrities show off to adoring fans, but what makes it unique is the ability for you to interact with like-minded folks.  When done properly, #ff is the ideal way to find those people.

I’m not a dictatorial kind of guy, but here’s a few suggested rules on how effective #ff action might occur:

1. Each #ff tweet should only contain one tweeter and you should describe why others might want to follow them.

2. Only #ff tweeters who you think that others might actually want to follow.  Don’t do it out of some vague feelings of being nice.

3. Only do a select few #ff per week, so that people don’t just skip past them when they appear.

4. Follow at least one new person per week from a friend’s #ff.

5. If you’ve started following someone and they don’t follow you back and\or their tweets bore you then unfollow them and move on.  Don’t let your timeline get clogged up with unwanted tweets.

So, did it work?  Well, it’s early days and only a handful of people have embraced the concept, but it did seem to have an impact.  Last night will forever be known as The Night of a Thousand Tweets for those lucky souls that were a part of it.  I’d like to think that the frenzy of activity was, at least in part, due to the new connections that were made as a result of #makeffmeanff.

Give it a try and see what happens.

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What the Whuffie?

December 24, 2010 Leave a comment

A while ago, I was narcissistically searching google for Sherby57, when I stumbled across this page - http://thewhuffiebank.org/sherby57.  Seeing as it wasn’t something that I’d ever signed up to, I was both intrigued and slightly disturbed.

It turns out that The Whuffie Bank is a non-profit organisation that is attempting to create a new, online currency, which is based on how people interact on social networks (well, that’s what their web-site say they do).  You have a online “salary” that is calculated using some algorithm which looks at who and how you interact with others.

It seems that in order to get the idea going, the Whuffmeisters (my description) trawled Twitter and auto-generated data on what prospective members would “earn”.  Sadly, they hadn’t singled me out because of my excellence as a twitterer (although, you can follow me, here, because I am excellent).

It’s an interesting concept.   You can “pay” other tweeters from you current funds and so it’s a nice way to reward people you like.  Of course, they can’t actually do anything with their whuffies other than donate them to other people that they like, or hoard them, but you never know how it could develop were the idea to take off.  The best part about it is that it provides some incentive for you to interact with others in a positive way.

Despite being intrigued, I didn’t join.  I didn’t know who these people were and part of me was a but dubious.  I think the concept of them being a “bank” is enough to set the alarm bells ringing for any seasoned internet user – even though they’re not actually asking for any real financial details.

Anyway, after being subjected to Liverpool’s terrible euro-bore draw last Wednesday, I decided to join in an attempt to spice up my evening (you can see how desperate I was).  And not a lot has actually happened.  I’m not convinced that it actually works.  I’ve attempted to donate my whuffies, but I still have all of them.  My salary is currently 49 whuffies\month but my balance is 25W.  This doesn’t even take into account that I’d, ahem, donated 70W to myself from my other Twitter accounts.  These show up as transactions, but I don’t have the extra W.  Your account also shows a list of your recent retweets and the times you’ve been retweeted and this is hideously out of date.

As I mentioned, I did attempt to give my precious 25W away – to a random tweeter who last used the hashtag “whuffiebank”.  I felt that just trying to horde your W completely defeats the object of getting involved.  Otherwise you’ll just have lots of Tweeters with a few W and no interaction whatsoever.  I don’t know how the algorithms that determine your salary actually work, but it needs to be clear that it goes up the more you give away, otherwise nobody will ever have an incentive for doing so.

Unsurprisingly, the highest earners on from the Whuffe Bank are celebrities.  Top of the list is Rev Run with an incredible 1.6million W\month.  This helps highlight one of the interesting aspects of Twitter.  The experience of anybody with a public profile is completely different to those of us that don’t.  Celebrity tweeters tend to have a high number of followers (usually in the 1000s), but follow only a handful.  Obviously, those with many followers should have a large online repuation, but you have to factor in that this is largely built on a non-online presence.  Often they will do relatively little in terms of positive interaction.  For a “normal” twitterer, who retweets lots of people with low reputations, aren’t you paying something back to the community through “hard-work”?  Shouldn’t that be rewarded too?  Or will the Whuffie Bank just be exactly the same as the real world financial system?

I should point out that I don’t actually know how it’s actually calculated, so they may have taken these points into account.

In conclusion: it’s an interesting idea that deserves development, but it doesn’t currently work functionally, or, possibly, conceptually.   To their credit, they have actually replied to my tweets and assure me that they are imminently going to do a big re-launch and re-vamp the technology behind it all. Fingers crossed that it is a big improvement.

On a final note, the Whuffie Bank’s own Twitter account only only earns 57 W\month, which is refreshingly honest (check it here:  http://thewhuffiebank.org/whuffiebank ).  At least their hearts are in the right place.

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A Netbook?

August 9, 2010 7 Comments

So, after a couple of months thinking about buying an iPad, and even writing a couple of tedious posts on the matter (here and here), I finally went out and bought a, errr, well I went out and bought a netbook.  No, I didn’t see it coming either.

Despite knowing that I would have absolutely loved the iPad, had I bought one, it just proved too expensive and too limited for me to take the plunge.  This was especially true when I realised that I wouldn’t want to give up having an iPhone (and I really want an iPhone4) and couldn’t justify buying both.  I still wanted a portable device, though, and so I plumped for a netbook, despite some misgivings.

The model I went for is the Asus 1005PE.  It’s difficult to choose between netbooks as they all offer pretty much the same specs.  The one I chose was on offer and had a 250Gb hard drive, as opposed to the usual 160Gb, so that just about swung it.  It’s running Windows 7 Starter and has a built in webcam and microphone.  My typing is also pretty accurate on the keyboard, so that’s definitely a good sign.  It’s a nice looking piece of kit, although it clearly doesn’t compare to the iPad.

One downside is the usual Windows boot time.  I have ordered some additional RAM (why they all only come with 1Gb is a mystery), so hopefully this will help.  There is also a second power button on the unit that takes you into the “Express Gate” OS.  This contains a web browser, Skype, an IM client and some online games.  You can be browsing the internet in under 30 seconds, so it’s very handy if you just want to check something quick.  It doesn’t have 3G built-in (the SIM-card slot is mysteriously a dummy), but it’s simple enough to use a USB dongle.  You also have to accept that the processor isn’t that fast and that things may take a tad longer than you’re used to. That said, it’s really not annoying once you’re used to it, and most things open pretty snappily.

There are also some real advantages over the iPad, such as vastly increased storage space and true multi-tasking of apps.  One example is when I recorded the latest episode of my podcast on Saturday.  I was able to record using the in-built mic straight into (free) Audacity editing software.  I then was able to add my tags and photo in iTunes, before FTPing the file up to Podbean, my hosting site.  I was then able to create posts for the podcast on both Podbean and WordPress simultaneously.  I was listening to Spotify as I did it all.

I won’t even mention that it is Flash enabled, but it is.  Actually, even the Express Gate OS is Flash enabled.

That’s not to say that part of me doesn’t wish I had an iPad, and I’m conveniently ignoring the advantages that the iPad has.  Overall, though, I’m currently pretty happy with my choice.  It will certainly keep me going until the iPad2 is launched.

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Navmii Update and Skobbler

July 31, 2010 3 Comments

My advice is quite simple: if you’re thinking of using an iPhone sat nav app to replace a dedicated sat nav, then don’t.

I should probably qualify that somewhat.

You may remember my luke-warm review of Navmii a couple of weeks ago (you can read it here), in which I said that while it wasn’t amazing, it basically did the job.  I’ve sadly had to revise my opinion.  I’ve tried to use the app quite a few times since my initial review and it’s completely failed every time.  The problem is pretty fundamental, in that it is no longer able to get a GPS signal.  While attempting to use it, I’ve been into the Maps app on my phone and this is able to get a GPS lock straight away, so the phone isn’t the problem.  It’s incredibly annoying.  I’ve e-mailed Navmii support, so I’ll keep you up to date with how that goes.

In the meantime, I came across the sat nav app Skobbler, which only cost £1.19, and so was a bit of a no-brainer purchase. Skobbler downloads the maps as you drive, which relies on having some kind of data signal and could seriously eat into your monthly data allowance.  Despite this, my first few tries of the app were pretty successful.  For a lot of the journey I only had a GPRS signal, so the maps weren’t incredibly detailed, but I could tell where I was going, as long as it didn’t get too tricky.  For just over a pound it seemed like a bargain.

Ah, but it was just too good to be true.  I tried to use it on Thursday and it failed miserably.  I had problems getting a GPS lock (although not as bad as with Navmii) then it was incredibly slow updating my route and seemed to be giving me false information.  I found myself getting incredibly lost.  Still, it only cost a pound, so you can’t complain too much.  Maybe it would run a bit quicker if I had a newer phone.  Hopefully some iPhone4s will be available soon and then I’d be able to tell you.

The whole experience made me realise how lazy using a sat nav makes you.  My destination on Thursday was a friend’s house (good old JLS) which, if I had stopped and thought about it, I knew exactly where it was.  It’s essentially straight down one road, then turn left.  It’s not exactly rocket science, which, incidentally, I happen to be qualified in.  Maybe I should just do away with having a sat nav and just engage my brain instead.

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Navmii on iPhone Review

July 14, 2010 1 Comment

After having my Tom Tom stolen a week or so ago, I decided to try and save a bit of money by replacing it with an iPhone app.  After searching the app store for “sat nav”, there seemed to be three main contenders.  The official Tom Tom app costs £52.99 and so ruled itself out on price.  The other two were Navmii and CoPilot Live, which were both £19.99 for the UK & Ireland editions.  The reviews seemed to be pretty similar so I ended up just guessing and I went for Navmii.

The size of the app is 341Mb, so I òpted to download onto my laptop first to make sure that I had a copy.  However, this did mean that I had to wrestle with the deraded iTunes, but I luckily managed to emerge pretty much unscathed.  The bonus of the software’s large size is that all the maps are included and that you aren’t relying on an internet connection when you’re on the move, so it was worth the extra faffing.

On first use, the interface was clear and easy to use and the GPS located the satellites quickly.  The app is feature-packed, including your current speed, an estimated time of arrival, detailed speed camera alerts, 2D or 3D maps in portrait or landscape, full 7-digit postcode search and POIs.  Everything you’d expect from a proper sat nav, really.

My initial test journey was to a local golf club about 1.5 miles away (it was a nearby POI).  This part of the journey seemed to be sucessful, although it wasn’t obvious to me where the entrance to the club was, but this isn’t necessarily the softwares fault.

As I drove past, I changed my destination to home (using the home button), and, instead of telling me to do a u-turn, it took me on a unecessarily long diversion down a country lane.  In fairness, country lanes do tend to make sat navs go a bit mental generally, but this seemed a particularly perverse digression.  Technically, it did get me home, though.

My first impressions òn usability were mixed.  In comparison to my Tom Tom One it sometimes seemed slow to update your position and the maps, there were the odd spurious direction from the voice commands (although the directions on the map looked fine) and the GPS position ocassionally drifted.   However the map seemed laid out well enough to be able see where you’re going and so, if you paid attention, then you should generally avoid going wrong.

My next journey was going to be the app’s ultimate test: Manchester city centre.  Driving around Manchester feels like you’re in a remake of Escape from New York at the best of times, so Navmii really needed to be on the ball.   Sadly it was nowhere near the ball.  The app updated far too slowly and the map wasn’t clear enough for a built up area.  This meant that I ended up missing the correct turning and then the app really struggled to locate where I was and then plot me a new route.  Technically it did eventually get me to the correct location, but I was late (read about it here), and it felt like a failure.

I had to use the app a few days later when I was on a route I knew, but the road was closed and so I was totally lost.  I got Navmii up and running quickly enough, but it took a long time before it knew exactly where I was and planned the route.  It felt like I went on a longer diversion than necessary, but not being familiar with the area then I’m not sure.  It would probably have been fine if I could have stopped immediately and let it sort itself out, but I was stuck in the flow of traffic and there was nowhere to pull over.

It’s worth pointing out that I have an iPhone 3G and so the software may run much quicker on the newer models.  If I ever get a newer iPhone then I’ll be sure to update my review.  It’s a pity that I can’t do a side-by-side comparison with Co-Pilot and Tom Tom apps, but I’m not forking out £70 just to write a review.  If anybody wants to sponsor me to do this, then I’m open to offers!

All in all, the app is a bit disappointing, but it does eventually get you to where you’re going, and as someone with no sense of direction then it’s essential.  It does its job up to a point, and £20 is a lot cheaper than buying a brand new Tom Tom.

UPDATE: Please read the update post, here, for an update on how Navmii has been working.  It hasn’t gone well.

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iThink iStill Want An iPad…Possibly

June 29, 2010 17 Comments

You may remember me writing about wanting an iPad a couple of weeks ago.  If you don’t then please click here.  Despite having reservations and not being sure whether to get one, it’s almost certain that I would have bought one by now if I could have found one in stock anywhere.  Perhaps it’s lucky that they have been so scarce.  Yesterday, I got to have an extended play on one at work and despite it being brilliant, the experience threw up more questions than answers.

I won’t bore you with how responsive and intuitive the user interface is, or how surprisingly easy it is to type on the on-screen keyboard.  These points have been made in virtually all the iPad reviews that I’ve read and can be taken as read.  From a personal point of view, the experience only confirmed how much the device would fit into the way I use the web: primarily an adhoc browsing of the internet on the sofa, checking e-mails wherever I may be and being able to concoct blog posts on the fly.  The iPad seems ideal for all of these.  It also fits the fantasy I have of being able to travel anywhere with it and write at the drop of a hat.  Although it’s certainly not pocket sized, it is small enough to slip into a bag and instantly pop it out whenever you have a spare minute.  You’d think that I would have been only more convinced to buy one.

My doubts crept in when I realised the importance that portability has to the iPad concept.  The version that I used was 3G enabled and it seemed to make perfect sense.  Although, I know that I’d still use a wifi-only version a lot, it seems like a massive compromise to make.  In my previous post, I mentioned the option of buying a MiFi dongle and using this to connect when out and about.  Although it’s a slightly cheaper option – £50 for the dongle as opposed to £100 extra for the official 3G version – it also represents an awful lot of faff.  The beauty of the iPad should be its simplicity.  Would you really want to have to carry this other thing around with you all the time?  I know that it seems a trivial thing to have to do, but even thinking about it makes it seem tiresome.

I could, of course, just go out and buy a 3G version, but the cheapest model available is £529.  Frankly this seems completely mental for a web broswer with no camera and 16Gb of storage.  After a very quick google search, you can buy a 3G-enabled 10″ netbook with 160Gb hard drive for £280.  Although the iPad is superior in some areas, the netbook is nearly the same size when closed and offers you the advantages of being a fully specced PC.  The iPad’s restricted OS means there are some things that it just can’t do.

I still want the iPad more, despite being nearly twice the price and having less functionality.  Why is this?  Is it purely because I want to have the trendiest gadget?  I don’t actually think it is.  The iPad’s appeal lies in something that’s difficult to put a price on.  It is “instantly on” and has none of the annoying waiting associated with Windows.  The screen feels the perfect size for reading web pages on, whereas the experience feels cramped and awkward on a netbook – even though they are the same size.  Being able to orientate the screen really pays off in this context.  When typing an e-mail, the on-screen keyboard fills half of the screen, yet the experience feels more engaging than on a netbook.  Being able to hold the keyboard-less iPad like a book to read web sites makes it feel a lesiurely pursuit, rather than feeling cramped over a comedy mini-laptop.  How much is this usability really worth?  Being unable to answer this question is where my dilemma lies.

As time ticks on, we only draw closer to the inevitably far superior iPad2.  I suppose that I could wait for that to come out, but I know it will be a painful wait if I do.  Given that I’m still using my £400 laptop quite happily after 3 years, I’d want to get at least a similar return from a £500 device.  I’m somehow unconvinced that a first generation iPad will still be viable in 3 years time.  Ah, the whole thing just leaves me feeling more confused than ever.  Please, can’t somebody help me?

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#Franksfund Shows The Good In Twitter

June 26, 2010 3 Comments

Monday of this week saw the sad news of the death of Manchester comedian Frank Sidebottom (the papier-mache headed character created by Chris Sievey).  It’s only a couple of weeks since he performed at the Pyramid Arts Centre in Warrington, a show that I really wanted to go to, but somehow completely forgot about (I’m an idiot).  I was gutted to have missed him, and now I’ll never get chance to see him.

On Wednesday morning, further news broke that Sievey’s family didn’t have enough money to pay for a decent funeral.   This sad news reverberated around Twitter and people wondered how they could donate money to help the family out.  Within a few minutes, a fund-raising campaign spontaneously erupted, with journalist and Sievey’s friend, Jon Ronson, posting the e-mail address of a Paypal account where well-wishers could contribute (it’s jonelle1929@gmail.com if you’re feeling generous).  #Franksfund didn’t look back from there.  At one o’clock, comedian Jason Manford asked Ronson how much more money was needed as he would generously make up the difference.  He didn’t need to make up anything, as over £6000 had been collected.  The latest update that I’ve read is that the total now stands above £19,000.  It’s quite staggering.  And, yes, I did contribute.  It wasn’t very much, but that wasn’t really the point.

The whole episode really went to show the power of Twitter.  Trying to explain the point of tweeting to someone who’s never done is pretty impossible.  Twitter is something that you have to experience before you can understand it.  However, something like #Franksfund clearly demonstrates the power of a group of like minded people being in instant contact with each other.  It’s only a shame that Chris and Frank weren’t able to see how much their passing had moved so many people.  There is talk that the excess funds collected could be used to commission a commemorative statue.  I think this would not only be a fitting tribute to the man, but to the collective good spirit shown by those that enabled it to be paid for.

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