Chinwag Live 5th July

If you are in London on the 5th of July and would like to get together with a large chunk of the London New Media scene then register yourself with the Chinwag Live event and get yourself along to Imperial College on the night. See you there.

Mobile Entertainment Magazine meetup

On thursday night (21st June 07) I went along to the Mobile Entertainment Magazine Meetup event in Soho. They were celebrating the launch of a mobile version of Rough Guides for Samsung phones. Although the idea sounded interesting, I found this a very tedius event as nobody from either Samsung or Rough Guides really seemed to come around and introduce anything or anyone and speak about Rough Guides. I found a couple of guys from Creativity Software there who were my only guide to what was happening being that they had built the actual application, which incidently is very interesting. It basically seemed like a lot of business execs there to drink (or get drunk) and talk to head hunters (of which I bumped into many). The event left me feeling a little cold and wondering what use it really was to the sponsors of the event. Anyway, I bumped into a few people I knew and got into an interesting chat with some folks from M:Metrics so it wasnt all a waste of time.

Identity, privacy and security

I think the recent trend in Web 2.0 social networking communities and the way that mobile services are now being widely used the industry is starting to sound louder about issues regarding personal identity, privacy and security. I am not the best person to talk about this, only that recent events I have attended these have been some of the top most debated points and worries that people have. Is it enough to say the kind of arguments such as 'If you havent got anything to hide you have nothing to worry about'? You hear people say this a lot when the debate is about the possible introduction of UK citizen identity cards. However, when you talk to people in the know, you start to realise that identity theft can actually be a convenient way of not so honest people to do what they like under your name with no or little way to trace who they are are, laying blame at the doorstep of the innocent. So how do you protect your identity and keep what really matters private? Most people on the internet have a tendency to use the same password for all of their logins, this is very dangerous. With the rise in usage of things like internet banking, online purchases, election voting, blogs and so on, ID theft and the tracability of activity on the web brings around some disturbing possibilities. As Product Manager at Ymogen, we are building a collaborative tool to build rich media stories, and we will have to be very careful when we think about how we can protect identity. We also need to think about moderation to protect people such as children when it comes to the content people will put into stories. The internet is said to support the concept of Liberalism, but the community at the moment on the internet seem to fail to understand the responsibilities required to protect and secure people, their privacy and security. If you have some links to good places to find deeper information on this subject please add a comment.

Web 2.0 at the Dana Centre

On Wednesday night, I went along to the Dana Centre to attend the Web 2.0 discussions there. It was an interesting evening with the following speakers lined up for a quick intro and then group discussions around things like identity, preferred social networks, mobile, security and so on. All interesting stuff, including the chat in the pub afterwards. At this point in time I think there are a number of really interesting trends in computing. The Mobile and Web2.0 trends have a lot in common about how people communicate, collaborate and organise to meet up. Naturally this is all open to abuse, and I am starting to hear people talk about identity a lot more now than say 2 years ago ... probably about time as well. A lot of people are concerned how this affects the young using all of these tools today and how they interact with each other in more tranditional social environments such as school. On the other hand, I hear a lot of people talk about the social networking trend being a great leveller and remover of nationalist boundaries, perhaps a bit of a hippy ideals is required :)

Anyway, the speaker lineup was ...

• Gareth Mitchell - BBC World service 'Digital Planet' presenter
• George Hadjigeorgiou - General Manager, communications and community projects, Yahoo Europe
• Aleks Krotoski - Technology Columnist, The Guardian; researcher, University of Surrey
• Tim Malbon - Creative Director, Interesource
• Alison Wheeler - CEO of Wikimedia UK, Wikimedia Foundation

There is an interesting cross over where people think about the new 'trend' in social networks to be a web phenomena, however I believe this started back with the boom of mobile phones back around 7-10 years ago. I still think people keep their closest friends on their mobile, maybe on their social networking site, but they tend to use Web 2.0 sites to reach out a little further to find new and interesting people/friends/colleagues. I got my current job through LinkedIn which to me at least makes me believe this isnt all just a fad!

Podcast now available for June MoMoLondon

Quick article today, the podcast is now available for the June Mobile Monday London, to be found at our podcast site (sponsored by Clarity Capital).

24 hours of Flickr in London

So tonight on the way home I decided to drop into the 24 Hours of Flickr to see what was happening and what Flickr were promoting. There were quite a few people who turned up, Flickr put on wine and a few snacks and the space seemed to be set up for networking. You could wander around the 'How We Are' exhibition at the Tate as well which was interesting for look at historical photographs which is a nice tie-in with the evening. I didnt really get much in the way of photos from Flickr, there were a couple of screens showing photos around the globe that day but it wasnt that well presented and it didnt grab attention as it should have. I wonder what Flickr got out of the evening except just a good way to meet their community. However it is nice to go along to something different and it is a nice venue (and on the way home). I took a few photos, on Flick naturally ... take a look.

Chinwag Live

If you havent got anything to do on July 5th, I cant think of anything better from a professional networking point of view than joining everyone at the Chinwag Summer Party for a drink or two and a BBQ. Lots happening there, check out the Chinwag site.

June MoMoLondon

Well Mobile Monday London seemed to go OK on Monday, but the turn out was less than impressive and I feel the need to ask the question ... 'What does it take to get people to actually come along when they have registered a few days before?'. Its a little puzzling why people say that they can attend one day and then just not turn up or have the courtesy to mention it to anyone. This is a community of people in the mobile field in London and I think it is time to start laying some rules that people that dont turn up should give something back into the community. Anyway, to stop this being a really negative article, huge thanks to Symbian for sponsoring the event and the speakers that came along to give a really interesting coverage of what is happening in the more graphical end of the mobile ... interesting stuff. Podcasts will be available soon for those who couldnt register and those that couldnt be bothered to turn up!

MoMoLondon June fast approaching

Blimey a month goes quickly, doesnt feel that long since the May event, due to time pressures we keep missing the first monday of the month (which is sort of what we aim for). So this month it is all about Mobile Games and Multimedia with some interesting names lined up. I think there are a few spare places left so pop over to our yahoo group and come along on Monday the 11th.

Will the mobile community be at the Chinwag summer part

Chinwag have announced they are holding a Summer Party in July to bring together the New Media world for drinks and BBQ. I hope there will also be people from the mobile fraternity to make up the numbers. I certainly will be there ... for pure social reasons naturally.

London Wiki Wednesdays

Last night I went along for the first time to London Wiki Wednesday and found it very interesting. A good group of Wiki veterans and real users turned up (around 50) and debated about general social and community uses of the Wiki tool (probably true about all community tools). However it did go on for way too long and I didnt really get to meet anyone and left around 10ish just to get home. It is well worth going to if you are a Wiki nut or interested in how Wiki's can be used by communities.

Ymogen @ MiniBar

Friday night seemed to go fine at the MiniBar. I presented a story I built on the route down to the venue (uploaded via Wi-Fi at the venue upon arrival). Take a look at the Story on the site (will only be there for a couple of weeks now) and let me know your thoughts. I could have done with 5 minutes to go through a few more interesting aspects of where Ymogen are heading but everyone will see when we Beta in the summer.

Google Street View

Rather interesting buzz going around about Google's new Street View addition to the maps, seems to be in San Francisco so far but take a look, its really interesting. I am guessing they have used a mix of GPS, a 360 camera nailed to the top of a car and driven around town and let the device automate based off certain GPS criteria ... probably with a large set of hard-drives in the car boot?

Ymogen to present at MiniBar

Just a quick note for anyone interested, friday 25th May I will be presenting on behalf of Ymogen at MiniBar. We will show a quick story built on the night (just before hopefully) and play it out as the presentation. The idea is to show how location, the immediacy of mobile and rich media can be brought together with a strong narrative to produce an interesting story. Anyway lets see how it all goes on the night as I only have a 3 minute slot to present!

MoMoLondon May

Monday saw the latest MoMoLondon hosted by Qualcomm at The Hospital in Covent Garden. I was MC for the evening and did the minimum possible due to having 8 speakers. However it felt like it all went quickly and being that I dont know a huge amount about mobile widgets was very educational. Qualcomm were very hospitable and we had some interesting mini-hot-snacks which everyone appreciated. There were some well known industry faces again this month, of which a few I think Dan Appelquist interviewed on camera after the event. It appeared most of the speakers agreed on where they saw mobile widgets going, but I think their views were a little too optomistic for the right now. Anyway, I can relax a little now that is over :)

Social networking ... or collective destruction

The blogsphere over the last 24 hours has lit up on the subject of Digg and various codes being copied around for unlocking protected DVDs. The real base of this is:

• Is this the community making the decisions on what is right or wrong, and who are they to make these decisions?
• How can the site feel confident they can moderate content and keep the trust of their user base?
  
• Is the community being dragged along on something they dont fully understand the implications of?
• If your community is producing content of a questionable nature, what can you do about it?
  

So are we really starting to see the start of the community working as a union for constructive or destructive behaviour on social networking sites? This is very relevant to me in my new role at Ymogen. If one day a user submits something that say infringes copyright, if/when we pull the article what are the consequences and who has the final say? By the look of the situation with Digg it appears that outcome has potentially damaging affect on the brand and the trust of its community. We will see if this dies down and if the bloody thirsty mob go back to being normal cizitens over the next few days. I feel this shows how people can react in a crowd and in many cases lose sight of what is reasonable. Who is in control, the site or its community? Lets face facts, Digg could well be successfully sued and put out of business, will everyone be much happier then?

Well who was to blame?

Last night BBC Panorama aired their investigation into irregularities for premium rate services for GMTV (amongst other programs such as Blue Peter!). This morning I watched live to see the response and the MD of GMTV was on air to answer questions and to underline that they had ended their business with Opera Telecom. I am guessing a lot of service providers right now are looking to pitch to GMTV in the meanwhile. I wonder who is actually to blame here, if I was the client I surely would have asked how many entries were taken upon the winner being picked, and then when I wanted to check the revenues from that competition I would have noticed the gap in the figures between the winner selection and the actual time the competition was really closed ... me thinks there is more to come on this side of things. Couple of things to check, a more up to date story from the beeb and the official response on the GMTV web site. They have dated this back to 2003 which is the really interesting aspect of this which I doubt they will ever manage to quantify. I dont think anyone comes out from this well, Opera Telecom should have been managing this and keep it above board as they would be well aware of the OfCom and ICSTIS regulations, its their business, plus the client GMTV (who has been running these competitions for years) should also be more than aware of how these services work. I also think the regulators shouldnt escape some blame here as all they do is slap the wrists in such circumstances and then react when it is all basically too late to do much except mop up the mess ... and what a mess!

May Mobile Monday London

A quick note on the next Mobile Monday London for May, it is going to be on the 14th (previous monday is a bank holiday). The theme will be mobile widgets, a subject I dont know a huge amount about but ironically I will be the MC for the evening. So if you would like to present send me an email at alex@mobilemonday.org.uk or join the yahoo group at groups.yahoo.com/group/momolondon to await further news and we will see you there.

Premium rate back in the news

Quick post this time, it appears GMTV (a British early morning breakfast news/show) is now under the magifying glass this week due to more dodgy goings on regards premium rate competitions. Again it appears that competition winners are being selected before they close them meaning large numbers of people are not even entered for the draw. Panorama is on at 8.30 on the BBC covering all of the controvesy around this subject and I think a bit of naming and shaming is going to take place. I am glad I havent worked for a company that has rigged this type of thing. Shows what can happen when the companies in question do not follow a strong ethical and quality procedure in house. GMTV have issused that Delloitte are being brought in for a full independent investigation so I await that news to see if anything will actually change ... or as I suspect things will evenutally go back to normal.

Where now for premium rate

Chances are if you are reading this, you will know something about the premium rate industry. Recently it seems almost all of the UK media industry has been affected by competition fixing, failures to handle competition entries correctly, over-charging and so on. It doesnt paint a good picture for the industry. I am glad to say that ever since I worked at Broadsystem and Telecom Express I never saw any of this go on and always pulled heaven and earth together to resolve technical issues so that they had no affect on the consumer. It appears most of the issues in premium rate telephony and text come down to human error, very few things I have read appear to be technical issues. I do wonder if the government and the governing bodies such as ICSTIS have kept their head in the sand to make sure the industry runs above board. Its almost impossible to police this area because premium rate is used so widely these days.

So where now, many of the big brand media companies have put their premium rate services on hold. They must be losing a huge amount of revenue which they would have budgeted for at the start of their last financial year. So I think we have to assume they will wait for things to quiet down before starting where they left off. But there are questions left open here, who is keeping an eye on the industry?

ICSTIS appear to wait for complaints to come in before before slapping somebodies wrist rather than pro-actively getting involved with the industry. It also seems the government doesnt understand the ins and outs of premium rate. Also I think we will start to see this industry offshore as the industry aims to continue to bring costs down. I also believe the mobile operators need to be more pro-active, they seem happy to deliver and bill on the traffic but dont work closely with the service providers to clean up the industry. I cant remember the mobile operators really taking any interest in how providers actually used their services, as long as the money kept rolling in eh?

So, it's time to replace parts of ICSTIS, OFCOM, gambling and lottery commisions with a new body, and this time give them the task of working closely with the industry and actually help them rather than just publish ednless reccomendations and expect the industry to police itself. The industry and bodies up to now have been rather lazy when it comes to being above board, there are better ways that dont have to appear heavy handed to encourage more openess and greater honesty. Nuf said!