Jaiku Has Returned

AT SUNRISE IN IRELAND, my Nokia E90 connected to Jaiku after more than a week away. During that time, Jaiku's backroom team endured a server power problem, moved from one data centre to another, but without porting Jaiku onto the Google Application Engine. When the service restarted, it meant waiting for DNS settings to propagate and users had to approve a new privacy policy. All these things meant a week's downtime while opening Jaiku to all comers. The subsequent Jaiku Fail-o-thon upset some hardcore users who believe they have been long-fingered and abused by Google, owners of Jaiku. Personally, I like the tone and functionality of Jaiku over Twitter, the favourite child of Ireland's connected generation. Jaiku gives me textual information (free SMS from Jaiku), a presence-aware mobile phone client that tells the world where I am, and threaded discussion that offers some sanity among all the babble that a wide-open Twitter has become. I know I'm a different kind of infomaniac than others who fill their days with meaningful exchanges in the Twitterverse. I play on Twitter as well but I straddle both communities since the voices and the functionality in one space are very different. Skipping around the two places (Twitter and Jaiku) is like walking parts of Parnell Street in Dublin. You're still on Irish soil but the faces and the conversations are often worlds away. Perhaps you need to walk with my earbuds to appreciate the metaphor. I like having Jaiku back--faster and with a deeper history than Twitter--and I like having free access to both communities. You might too, or you might prefer just to subscribe to the flow and read a day's babblings in two screens of information. All it costs is your time.

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I am topgold on both Twitter and Jaiku.
You can subscribe to my Twitter RSS feed or my Jaiku RSS feed. It's less tedious than hanging out on screen.
Fabsh said, "Oh look, Jaiku is back from its massive Fail-a-thon". Jyri says, "A part of my job has been to make it easier to share things on Google."
Previously: "Trying to fit into Twitter"

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Misleading iPhone Ad

THE MEDIA GUARDIAN report that the television advertising for Apple's iPhone has been banned by the UK's advertising watchdog for misleading consumers after it over-hyped the internet capabilities of the smart phone. The advertising does not point to the phone's powerful, energy-draining 3G capabilities. Instead, the ad shows how well the iPhone zips around on its Safari browser, with images zooming in on a weather forecast for Cape Town and a map of how to get to Heathrow airport. "You never know which part of the internet you'll need ... which is why all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone," voiceover says. And therein lies the rub because in many people's minds, you need to see more of the internet than the iPhone can show. According to the Media Guardian, "The Advertising Standards Authority received two complaints that the claim was misleading because the iPhone did not support Flash or Java, which are both integral to many web pages. Apple said the aim of the ad was to highlight how the iPhone can offer access to all websites, while many other handsets only offer lower-level access to WAP versions of sites or those selected by service providers." In our hands-on experience (sample at left), the iPhone failed to play YouTube videos and it wouldn't run several plug-ins that our Nokia E90 can operate for video playback when browsing.

Networking

SOME MOBILE PHONES (like my Nokia E90 at left) let you associate special ring tones with specific contacts. That way you know if your other half is ringing because your ears pick up on the distinct ringer. I like that functionality because I need to stay close to those who are part of my special network. Some industry colleagues and members of my working groups in college also get special ring tones associated with them too. When they ring or text, it normally means co-ordination is required so it pays to pick up and talk with people in that node of my professional network. Outside these two degrees of separation comes the realm of popular social networking. Even though I chat to "friends" inside these social networks, few of them are in my pocket as mobile phone numbers. None of them merit a special ring tone. So in my books and in my pocket, the true measure of connected networking is all down to getting close, connecting in real ways. You cannot beat the emotive channel of voice when it comes to meaningful networking. Now it's off to sync a new phone with those special ringtones.

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Sent mail2blog using my Nokia E90 and O2-Ireland Typepad service on the back roads of South Riding.

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Tweetrush Tells Me

AN IRISH-POWERED TWITTER stats package called Tweetrush [2] gives first-generation snapshot data of usage across Twitter so I started probing it to see what I might discover about the electronic water cooler preferred by some early adopters in Ireland. In the graphic above, it's easy to see when I don't tweet. The lower bars on the graph are UTC times I'm reading, speaking or working face-to-face with people. In one quick glance, I can tell when my most productive hours occur and they happen to be the times when I'm less active on Twitter, a site that gets no fewer than 30 tweets from me on an average day. Tweetrush data has encouraged me to throttle back on those tweets, just in time for the start of a new academic year. After nearly 8000 tweets, I've concluded that I can get greater value per page load in my newsfeed aggregator instead of listening to Twitter. However, I get better tips on breaking news from Twitter, but only if it lands on my mobile phone. The mobile dimension is very important for me, since I'm untethered from my desk for most of the day as I try to fit into Twitter.

Screams Overhead

FOR A LITTLE OVER a decade, I lived for the high-pitched whine of turbine engines and the smell of JP-4 in the morning. That life style was to change dramatically 20 years ago as I walked the line and set up a refrigerated van under the screams of jet aircraft in the overhead traffic pattern at Ramstein Air Base, Germany. I had a new release from Tracy Chapman in my BMW 320is because her mellow take on "Fast Car" seemed just the ticket for my unbridled runs down the A6 between the Saarland and Heilbronn. I lived my work in a strategic command centre, trudging 156 feet underground in a blast-proof stairwell before pressing the keys on a two-foot-thick concrete door and taking my position behind two 30" colour monitors, astide a phone bank comprised of 38 hardened lines (six hotlines to people with potent buttons on their pagers), directly in front of a teletype machine. You didn't get the smell of JP-4 down there, just like you didn't get any sunshine during your 12-hour shift. And you didn't go topside for your time at work because you were the go-to guy when things happened. You were the traffic cop. So it was a special break in my work life that let me walk the line up top exactly 20 years ago, looking the part (see left). I took the time off to attend an Apple Users' Group meeting in Kaiserslautern and to help some friends set up a refrigerated van so we could sell ice cream to bystanders in a crowd estimated to reach more than 100,000 people for a nice day forecast at Flugtag 88. As it turned out, I was setting up just east of Ground Zero for the worst airshow disaster ever recorded in Europe. And as things later unfolded, the screams of the jets overhead would translate into a burning horror on the ground that still cause me sweaty nights when they weave their way into my dreams. My personal therapist during those moments is Tracy Chapman. Her "Fast Car" looped in my blue Air Force truck as I bounced around the tarmac setting up for the show. And "Fast Car" represented serenity among the carnage during the massive clean-up operation that unfolded after 28 August 1988.

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NOTE: The photo is from walking the line at an earlier Air Show that I helped organise.
Previously -- "Summertime Ice Cream Memory" on Irish Typepad 23 August 2003 and "No Chocolate. It's Flugtag." on 28 August 2005.
Roland Fuchs -- "Ramsteim 1988: Diese Homepage ist den Opfern der Flugschaukatastrophe vom 28.8.1988  in Ramstein gewidmet bei der mehr als 70 Menschen starben. Hier möchte ich beschreiben wie ich den Tag erlebte und was diese Katastrophe heute noch für mich bedeutet."
Wikipedia -- "Ramstein Air Show Disaster"

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Sunday Qik Tech

WE START A QIK FLICK through some of Ireland's Sunday newspapers in search of interesting angles related to technology, starting with Atsushi Kaga in the Butler Gallery. There's a subtle technical touch to his playful work that we noticed in Mother's Tankstation in Dublin and saw a few weeks ago in Kilkenny. Our Sunday newspaper round took us into France while thinking about Conor O'Neill's holidays along with Bono's noise, a probable cause of Spanair's crash in Madrid, ice cream from County Kerry, videos you can easily convert, mobile phone masts you can live with, speed limits that are smart to set, music, Facebook, ex-girlfriends, renewables, skimming, food, data protection, photographing your home, Rick O'Shea and Jon Stewart. More details follow below the break.

Trying to Fit into Twitter

FOR SEVERAL YEARS NOW, I have used this microblogging platform called Twitter and I've tried hard to fit into its demographic. But as Time Magazine now suggests, I'm not the Prius-driving, iPhone-drooling, Facebook-addicted 30-something who fits the target user. The statisticians at Hitwise say that males comprise 63% of those tweeting. And more than half of Twitter's visitors come from California! The largest age demographic sweeps through the 35-44 year old part of the population, since that segment makes up 25.9% of Twitter's users. Although I think I'm part of the H03 "stable career" segment, I'm not young or ethically diverse, nor do I live in a big-city metropolitan area. However, I consider myself cosmopolitan, so that should count. Upon further examination, someone with a "stable career" also tends to work in the arts and entertainment industry (Hey! I listen to podcasts, take photographs and go to art galleries!), drive small cars and espouse very liberal political views. Another 12.3% of Twitter's visitors are H01. They are the "Young Cosmopolitans" and are very likely to drive a Prius, earn household incomes over $250,000 per year and also identify with very liberal politics. I am not in that segment. I don't know if it's worth my while trying to fit into Twitter.

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So I'll just monitor the most talkative twits in Ireland, enjoy the Blip.fm flow, subscribe to the Twitter blog and read Time Magazine below.
Bill Tancer -- "Even Gen X is aTwitter" in Time Magazine, 20 August 2008.
Nick Burcher -- "Latest Twitter Usage Statistics Illustrate Twitter's Global Reach"

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Coworking Imperatives

I HAD TO LEAVE DUBLIN before checking into Team Contrast and their centre city premises. James Corbett points to the Dublin-based web development as "a direct product of the modern Irish web scene." Corbett followed the genesis of the idea from its roots in the coworking scene.

I spent a year on a career break inside a makeshift incubation centre that's nothing like the digs Eoghan McCabe and the crew have in Merrion Square. And fair play to them--they knew what they needed and just did it. That's what they're telling others--just set up your coworking space and it you've got the right mix, you'll attract a cluster of like-minded entrepreneurs.

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James Corbett -- "Contrast-ulations (on a co-working success story)"
Evert Bopp -- "Coworking center in Tipperary"

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Thoughts from Stephen's Green

MY NOKIA E90 beeped me awake this morning as its fully-charged battery politely affirmed it was ready to be unplugged. The Nokia BP-4L is one of the largest batteries on the market, its 1500 mAh powers me through most work days as long as I constrain my data usage to no more than 90 MB. Beyond the 100 MB threshold, I forget to turn off the signal searching and that can mean a battery swap before my 10 hour duty day is finished. No worries--I carry a spare battery and swap-out is a doddle. I'm thinking about these things while listening to FIR over a 3.5G antenna array alongside Stephen's Green in Dublin. The O2 over-the-air speed feels faster than the BT Broadband offered in the Mercer Hotel, my centre city hotel of choice. I like the place because I watched it being built. And I like the history under the place as documented in Beaux House across the street. Lots of unfortunate bodies are deep under the structures here, remnants of the live surgeries performed by the Royal College of Surgeons on impoverished Irish centuries ago.