Russell Davies

starlings over poole

100,000 starlings fill the skies in Poole from Mark Rigler on Vimeo.

I post this because it'll mean something to two, possibly three, of my favourite people. The rest of you - just enjoy.

more shuffly music

Cinematic Drum and Bass : "The concept and the tracklist are self-explainatory, as shown on www.dubkraftrecords.com So just follow these instruction after you bought the full bundle: 1. Load compilation in player 2. Shuffle tracks 3. Move D. Ridgway's and Bulb's tracks as intro/outro. Or outro/intro. 4. Play 5. Close your eyes and watch the film. You can dance meanwhile. 6. Repeat steps 2-5 for a different film"

Thanks to Mr Tait.

talking of kindleyness

Tom's written the smartest thing I've seen about the Kindleyness of the Kindle. Must read reading.

music for shuffle

Music for Shuffle #01 from Matt Brown on Vimeo.

He's only bleedin' gone and done it. I wrote this, then Matt went and made this. And it's brilliant. You should read his thinking. He never just throws things together, that boy.

Also - big thanks to the various correspondents who pointed me at Gescom's Minidisc, which I must investigate. Though I suspect it won't be as beautiful as Mr Brown's efforts.

a new york minute

Being here has reminded me all over again what an evocative piece this is. You should listen.

a new york second

a this for a that

There are three things I really want to see.

1. Stories written for the the kindle - that use 'kindleyness' the way novels use 'bookiness'.

2. Music made for the shuffle - pieces designed to appear randomly but still hang together. More than a bunch of songs. And long too, filling up a shuffle, hours worth of it.

3. Comics made for an iPad. Something that's not just a port of a comic, that combines words and pictures in a way that exploits the iPad's capabilities.

These things may exist already and I've just missed them. I hope so. Anyone know any? In the meantime there are lots of things heading in that direction, crossing from one place to another. Some are:

Mark Wernham has made an app instead of a novel. Sort of. Perhaps it's more of an app on the way to a novel, or around the back of a novel. It's not, at least, just an app designed to promote a novel. It's an app made of novely stuff. It's free, it's interesting, it's worth looking at.

The Malcolm Tucker App is good too. Very nicely translates that book-of-the-series vibe onto an iPhone. Hints of something interesting going on there. Especially the way it reaches out into your iPhone life.

Matt pointed out this moment in webcomics. (Click on the 'follow him' link in the post below it and keep going). As he says, it seems small, but it's actually using what the medium can do.

And there are the art apps Scott Snibbe makes. His notion Art Wants To Be Ninety-Nine Cents seems like an interesting reframing to me.

I'm sure I had some more somewhere. I'll dig them out.

Anyway.

 

 

 

social media strategy control panel

over 30 behaviours

It's coming! It is coming! Designing behaviour is just around the corner.

Look - now it's toys, then it'll be consumer electronics, then it'll be everything.

What do I mean by that? Don't know, but here's the really crude stab of someone who's NOT A DESIGNER IN ANY WAY.

At the moment physical products have functions - what they do. And they have characters or personalities - how they feel.

And some things, a few things, have behaviours - ways of performing those functions that step outside the strictly functional. They convey personality through actions, not just through appearance and materials.

And, crucially, those behaviours can change in ways that the functions and the materials can't. Because the behaviours are in the software, not the hardware.

So the Neato feels a bit more human than the Roomba because it behaves a bit more humanly - but a bit of hacking or tweaking and everything could reverse.

The horrible extreme will of course be the backup personalities of the Sirius Cybernetic Corporation, the brilliant extreme will be the toaster/transformer and the mundane middle will be a telly that puts the lights on if you get too scared by Dr Who. Or something.

Anyway. That's not important. 30 BEHAVIOURS! How many do you have?

still spooky, still action, still at a distance

Spukhafte Fernwirkung is a German phrase usually translated as Spooky Action At A Distance. Einstein used it to deride quantum entanglement. I can't remember where I first heard it - possibly in Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives - but it's been lodged in my head for a while.

Spooky Action At A Distance seems to express that really simple thing some technology can do to make something feel actually marvellous.

I first mentioned it on the blog in a discussion of golf and anti-aircraft fire and here with more talk about model railways but I've thinking about it even more recently - because of that RC Helicopter and the prospects for controlling the world like we control software.

It's that fact of actual physical distance, you're here, but you're connected to there, it can't help but feel magic. Wheras with loads of computer stuff, it all feels like it's in there, in that box. And it's just a bit less magic.

(I've just noticed Mr Webb's mentioned it too. Hurrah, it must be something then. Aside - It is excellent that he's blogging again, ideas come off him like sparks off a grinder. They singe and illuminate. This bodes well for the year.)