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Are you an idea person? I've been plagued with ideas for as long as I can remember. Bit phrases, jingles, strange product ideas, character concepts, movie ideas, hilarious one liners you name it... always got something spawning off in the head. Heres a good read on capturing those ideas from the land of pasta and vinegar: idea recording. I do most of the things listed in here but a few new concepts are in here as well. Keep those ideas flowin.
Be authentic!
Hey flooz kittens whats happening? I've just returned from a three day ottawa bonanza research trip. It was good.
I'm sitting here compiling some fresh tracks for my gym workout experience and listening to Verbal here from Amon Tobin.. and ya know the other day I caught the video for this track and was throughly depressed. Great song but the video was just totally crap. I can't believe a poorly visualized car race was the "gist" visualization for this song. Sad sad!
Soooo anyways.. what is happening. Much goodness, work is getting crazy with new projects coming up. Folks on staff are getting pumped on new research ideas coming into the fray here. I hope to use flickr for a project coming up. Finding faster and better ways to grab the freshest experience possible. Some cool stuff afoot!
Next week its off to Madison & Chicago for more user testing on this programming software platform. So far so good, great user feedback and some serious issues to resolve. I love that. I love real data where there are clearly things to address.
I've learned alot about "command liners" folks who live and die and thrive by a command line. I didn't think too many really existed out there honestly but in the linux world.. geeeze they love the command line. Then I got to know the "gui kids" the guys that are all about gui's they love their gui's yet respect the unix badge of honor folks. In the middle are the toolmakers bouncing from commandlines and gui's to get the job done. Making patches, orchestrating elobrate tricks in layers of code.
Yes all very interesting for about 6 hrs and then i need a drink. LOL. Yesterday was a long, long day. But what else is happening...
Hmmmm amazon arrives soon! New books, new tunes! Can't wait. I need my No Roots cd.
I haven't worked out in three days and my body is telling me GO TO THE GYM NOW! heh....
So turning the flooz lens into the blogsphere what do we find... ooo Jackito, the first tactile digital assistant. Thats pretty groovy. Watch the video.
Wanna pizza?
I really need to attend one of these conferences.. heck a conference would be good for me.
More aspects of my lamp fetish. PlasticBag article from Many to Many, a nice read on music socializing via de web. A few other tasty bites.
Ooooo more tasty bites in the social computing matrix, list of firms with social labs.
More juicey location based game research. Navigate the Streets... this is hilarious.. what a great idea.
Hmmm ohio is one step closer to the matrix.
Now playing: Lazyfish - Falling - ive been rip casting for 3 days straight, yeeehaw!
Hmmmmm saturday am.. early... I must of fallen asleep in the Stargate: Atlantis pilot on SciFi.
koovus, Your ideal job is a Stand Up Comedian.
delicous regards:
elastic space, nice breakdown of mobile entertainment apps
marklyon, more gmail addon goodness
isohunt & bitogle - bit torrent search engines - looking for something?
clickin, people that click
mp3 blogs, djs, mix of the week, gettin in the mix
Now playing: scsi - 9 - 4 Teen
Yesterday I learned the art of QUASKing. Wow, what an amazing thing. HA! In any case we gotta do what we gotta do. The to do list got clobbered yesterday, much much done indeed. Looks like things are looking up for next week's biz in Ottawa.
Have Phone, Must Travel
So the other day I reactivated the hiptop. Why did I ever de-activate it? Well it was expensive to carry on my own along with my other phone. And I didn't think tmobile had good coverage yet, and at the time number portability hadn't arrived yet, and the battery life sucked.
Plus I couldn't accurately expense it, lease I had more a conscience back then in expensing it correctly. This time around it's not a phone at all - pure data on this baby and its much cheaper as a result so I think its a bit more suited for expense'able measures. What an employee with a conscience? Well hey when yer the bosses brother ya kinda know more about the internal biz then you'd like at times. As a result you factor everything in. One less expense non bill-able to a client the better. Now don't get me wrong I'll blow the $$$ when I need to for a project, case in point the behavioural observation rig, and much of the danotes coding and such. Still it all adds up.
Ok so the battery life sucks, the coverage seems better and there's been many revisions to the software on it since my departure. So going into the field these next few weeks, well I'd like to have access to email and the web as well photoblog. :)
I'm finding flickr calling me to photo more and more. Its like flickr's abilities empowers me to photo journal more. Especially with the new enhancements of tagging and notes. Its grabbed my interest so much that its now a serious tool to consider for research purposes. It has the web connectivity, email and blog abilities, discussion groups, minor edit tools like rotate and the added ability to document a photo with in depth and detail and organise it via tags....its just irresistible. Gotta use it. Why? For Example.
NetGen Study. Microsoft (but heck any major company) wanted to know how college students were adopting, using, changing, and not using technology in their daily lives. They gave each student 5k approx in $$$ to choose gear in which the students picked what they wanted, what they needed, what they thought (expected) to be : phones, pdas, cameras, tvs, pcs, printers, sound systems, anything "digitally" related basically. Technology we use every day. They then observed and journal-ed these students over about 18 months to see how the products either made it or didn't make it in the students ever changing needs and environment.
Using something like flickr you could essentially ask them to photo document their "trying times" their "ups and downs" their "ideas of innovation" their "moments of pain" and so on. This ongoing photo journal would help researchers remotely refine the questions they would need to ask in order to get the freshest possible feedback from the students. And you could either use flickr as the differentantor in your approach on the remote research ability of the project or use it for purely cost reasons. Either way flickr makes the difference.
For me and my team we came into the picture at the end of 18 months. We knew what they requested as far as gear went and general good or bad experiences the students had with the gear. We set out to shadow the students for two days to observe their lives at school and see how the gear was involved in their daily lives. Shadowed? Like you went to school with them? You bet! Folk Lore 102 man... there I am in the back. It was good to see what a typical day was like for a student. We logged where technology was used where it wasn't, why it wasn't, and observed their peers as well. A flickr photo journal would of helped spark the conversations needed to talk about immensely.
In fact we've done photo journaling before with standard clickn'snap cameras, tons of studies are done with actual written journals and now we do the same with online survey type journals to get the participants thinking and expressing what is working and or not working so that we we arrive those conversations are in the que and ready to happen.
One of my primary goals at Lextant is to acquire, discover, find, CAPTURE, the freshest data possible. I think I excel at that. Either from custom software + hardware solutions like the retail behavioural observation rig to video capture methods to things like flickr and finding more ways to get the real skinny as it occurs to help us get data and make it really have an impact on the team and influence the result us and the client.
Its also a personal goal. Staying fresh in the industry yields even more potential.
Using a photo journal in flickr helps the client understand the dynamics of what they are getting into, its not just technology and user experience of it, its branding, loyalty, buzz and witnessing just how fast things can change in a users experience.
I still want a better camera phone solution. But I also don't want just a typical black box approach. I've seen alot of interesting location awareness tools for the symbian os. Basic games to some interesting location + advertising type function dynamics. Not that I'm a programmer by any stretch of the imagination but I'd like the camera phone I get to have the ability to get new apps on it, and that it has a developing fan base of crack addict coders looking to tweak the hardware out to do all that it can do. And a little video capture is welcome as well. The blue one is older, still decent camera res for a phone camera. The white one is heavy and kinda bulky, dunno. Maybe the hiptop will keep me happy until those 2meg pixel - 512mb sd card, mp3 camera phones come out.
Today the day has run away from me.. FLEE! It is gone. I remember 10am, 11am.. and the rest is a blur of meetings, conference calls and mass idea branding storms.
Now I'm stuck in an endless loop of - to do - listing. Endless to do's over and over, need six of these, four of those, some of those other things and more of that thing.
Work always does this, ya go from slow to WARP 11!
Tonight I'm reactivating my hiptop, data only! So the hiptop travel blog will be awoken once more. I hope the battery life doesnt kill me.
This week I've learned more about multi-threaded debugging then I ever care to know about. I've been playing in the linux pool a bit and thats kinda neat. I'm really happy with glance.net its a great desktop sharing tool. I've witnessed a 2.8 GIG avi out file from Morae.. nice lets try for something semi-usable shall we. I've beaten the hell outa myself at the gym. Doesn't look like I'll get there today. Pain for tomorrow.
Cameo's DElight mailout goes out tomorrow, finally I'm finished round one!
Burnout 2 on the Xbox is a BLAST! Soooo many near car collision misses, brings out the " HOLY @#%!" in me.. kinda like those first doom days when ya really screamed and yelled playin games. Burnout 2 does that.. the game is frickin awesome.
I think work needs to buy all my gear. They need my printer... ok buy one. They need my scanner.. ok buy one. LOL. Ahhh well we gotta do what we gotta do!
Ok thats it for now, stay frisky.
Sara is back! I missed her. She's my muse at work, so whacky, soooo daring.
Sara: I just don't understand.
drock309: sara relax
Sara: okay - gotta let it go....
drock309: he tried to calm her down, he offered her a orange and a candy necklace
Sara: can't have oranges - they make me gassy - don't need the sugar either - if he offered her chocolate, then, she might talk.
drock309: he pulled some melted choclate from his pocket.. it was sticky and had lint in it... he shrugged and offered it to her
Sara: she actually paused, afterall, chocolate was chocolate -whether or not it had been in the back of someones pocket since before she had been conceived, besides, the protein alone from such a bar could have been the protein that had fed the sperm of her father to swim faster and farther then the others, thus bringing her to life. So yeah - you had to respect the chocolate.
drock309: he assured her everything was on the downlo and picked out the little bits of lint.. then he noticed her dreamy eyes.. he tried to make simple talk but kept blinking at her as he tried to focus on her beautiful face
Sara: She was intent on the chocolate. Imagining it's sweetness and it's tartness all at once, melting in her mouth, on her fingers. Unconsciencely, she licked her lips and held out her hand in anticipation.
drock309: everything slowed down.. he saw her eyes filled with anticipation as she leaned forward and reached out her hand, he cleared his throat and gently smeared the chocolate in her hand, his eyes never left her, he smiled
I've made a dreadful mistake this morning. I slightly miscalculated the packaging on my cored pineapple.... and well.. I gotta eat it all now! Darn! No savin this pineapple. I love pineapple. Ya know the freshest most tastest pineapple I ever had was on the streets of Akihabara Tokyo. It was like six bucks for a stick of pineapple but ooooooooh so tasty it was standing there in the heat.
Doh! Pulled away from my pineapple to figure out some vpn thing... gah that bad. Ya know we really need an phone line back in the lab. But anyways....
Yesterday I beat myself up at the gym for an hour and a half. Cardio is fine its a good way to burn off any stress from the day really. The weight training machines, well they are built for smurfs, all you little people out there. And that's ok the planet needs little people but us 6'5" folks need machines too ya know. Its amazing some muscle groups im working are seriously offended at working at all.. and as a result.. the pain. The PAIN! But its all good. I really need to explore a bit more though.... try out the steam room.. the pools etc. Or maybe the EFX which they tell me "just try it out for 2 mins.. you wont be able to take any more than that..." ok that sounds like a killer workout 2mins! Ready Set GO!
I'm chatting with Sara here at work on who's she prefer to "do", Tobey from Spiderman or Will Ferrel from Anchorman..and....it. looks like Tobey wins it by a land slide. Why Tobey I say??
Sara: because he's hot hot HOT! (ala Antoine)
Mid morning panic! Server FULL! Gah... bad all bad I say. 30 mins later.. ok 5 gigs free have at it!
Ya know I'm really over due for owning some de-phazz. Last friday I compiled my final flickr 1st round xchange cd entitled "delight".... well sunny delight that is, I couldn't resist.
I ended up with about 30 "delightful" tracks so I had to make 2cds to boot. The second delightful cd is called "bluesky salamander".. i dunno the name just came to me. Course theres no salamanders in the artwork... ahhh well.
Anyways back to de-phazz.. I have plenty of their songs just none of their cds. Time to amazon them I figure. My sister just informed me tonight that one my nieces has a friend working at Eighteenth Street Lounge Music, hot dang, maybe I can get some cool freebies. I love that record label. They can do no wrong.
I still need to get my hands on "mass destruction".
blog watch:
whatever ya call it, I love blogs like this: funfurde, its like interior design blogs or cool things for yer apartment that you probably can't afford blog.
Then we got sites like generate. I love mood lights and they just keep crankin them out. I must get, MUST get.
Deep down I'm a lamp freak, I love lights.
Don't be suprised the next time you swing by the house here you see that big chill out room in the yard. I'm seriously considering it.. just cause. That next to a shiny mini, hahah, thats hilarious.
Now if I had real cash to blow I'd go for the projector clock.
ApartmentTherapy is another site I need to visit more often. Josh Rubin has another great design/art/funky stuff you don't need but hey get anyways site - cool hunting. Then we got styleborg, do a little hunting here but some excellent finds onboard. I caught IDfuel on the end of my surfing excursion this morning, I'll have to take a closer look at it. Sensory Impact looks like another great design blog to add to bloglines as well. And design-addict looks really good for digging up those creative ideas and gettin them to the table on project. Probably pricey, design books are always an arm and a leg but worth it.
Sigh. Ok sure juice has just as many calories as coke right ok i see that. Today I headed off to the gym talked to my two docs: excersise good sure, bikes bother me, must find taller seats... treadmil works, i dig that, strength training tomorrow cant wait, wanna get into that stuff in a hurry.. but my diet, sigh, lay off the naked juice they tell me, wait a sec its like really good for me, yes but too much is bad! Bah.
I'm still getting over my alum creek water flu too. I have scratchy throat- yahness!
Well break out the map, Ottawa Canada here I come where is that.... ( flipping pages.... ) ahhh yes, and then Chicago! Looks like we RIDE this July. I really need to find a beach for a few days as well. Maybe I should visit SuperSocks or SallySue, NZ would rock as well of course. :) Ya know Sara ie Tuggernut is in Canada this week on vacation, i wonder where she's goin up there.
Delicious always delivers unique links. Ahhh ha! Discovered at last, it's "Coast" by "Sedona" you don't know how long i've been searching for the who of what of that song.
Oooo more gmail goodness, the addy importer! Oooooo more goodness.. Casshern gets a review! Its out! Er well.. over there.
More and more cool design portals out there. Ummm a goggle portal? Yikes.
Ok flickr keeps adding things and I keep missing them.. this is a really cool way to look at tags.
morning: 10am
I wish I could buy Naked Juice in bulk, surely there is an outlet there somewhere.
Hmmmm ramble to ramble what to ramble on? Hmmmmm life caching, we've messed with ideas on this for journaling user experiences, the more "fresh"ness the better ya know.
"This LIFE CACHING introduction is just the tip of the iceberg. Obviously, providing consumers with the software, hardware and storage space to start building, unlocking and showcasing their 'lifelogs' should be high on your priority list if your business is in any way related to the world of photography, publishing, video, music, SMS, instant messaging, search, blogging, cell phones, email, memory sticks, PDAs etc etc etc. (And don't forget the vast amounts of non-digital, non-organised LIFE CACHING artifacts waiting to be digitized: think millions of shoeboxes, photo albums & framed photos, home movies/videos, old bundles of letters, CDs, DVDs, bookshelves and filing cabinets!)"
I kinda miss traditional photo albums really and sadly due to an incomplete universal printing solution many of the pics taken today just don't get printed so the album is fading away. My mother has dozens of photo albums and hundreds of slides. The traditional photo album is far more comfy then the warm glow of a computer monitor screen. PC's aren't that social either really, they are fine 1 on 1 but you get a few people in the room and well that PC is gettin turned off. Plus they haven't made their way into the living room yet and god forbid if they ever did for my mother she'd have a fit. I suppose something like a TiVO playing photos off the hard drive on yer TV monitor would work but even then thats not that comfy either. I want good ole fashioned photo albums back. My father struggles with digital photo printing, he'd like to do it at home but more so its take yer flash card to the photo mat and get the photos done and typically they are more expensive to develop which doesnt brighten his day any.
I thought about getting him a wifi photoframe to put in the living room. Kinda like an experiment really, to see if mom would like it.. bear its presence in the living room amongst all her classic photograph frames of the kids, classic books, oddities etc. Doubtful really. Not that she's anti-technology its more like a comfort level. What is that comfort level and how do you achive it.
Eventually I see the traditional photo album replaced by the digital photo album that looks identical to old one, the pages show digital, maybe 15 frame movable animations of the moment trapped in time. The book isnt powered by AAA batteries or fuel cells, its powered by turning pages. It looks like it belongs, its comfortable. You can sit in yer favorite chair and flip back in time. Its a record that remains.
Records that remain. Maybe thats the issue with computers, they are so fleeting at times. So fragile in their presence and make up.. one minute stable, the next dead! Perhaps flickr will be the gmail all archived never lost approch to pictures. Still one big problem remains, well a few actually, getting yer pics to up and if yer not connected ya got nothin. This ramble runs into net existance one. Are you anyone without the net? Where we headed now? How many idenity agencies rely on the net. Teens in japan define their social status with cell phones and thier new gadgetness goodness. When was the last time you met someone that didn't have an email address? The more connected we get the more I need a big holiday away from it. For as much as I need the net, the new fix isnt more of the net its less. I need withdrawl to provide perspective.... hmm maybe thats not correct.. why do I need withdrawl? Why unplug? Cause I can. Define that. I choose. Where are the studies on people connected vs those who are not... who's evolving? who's stressed? who's happier? Wouldn't ya love talkin to someone who didn't know what the net definition of spam was? A spamless existance. There's some guy building boats on beaches thats never heard of spam, no the spam i know.
Its a little too late to consider the problems really, yer in the stream baby, ride it or fight it, yer goin with it.
I ditched netflix awhile back but this concept... books....? Hmmm thats kinda interesting. I still need to get back to the WWMX project as well.
Sometimes I wonder about devices like ShockFish, no doubt initally its damn cool- another unique edge to add to a conference where you dont know who is who etc, and ya the radar is very cool. Soon cellphones will have this kinda of tech built in, and hopefully established on one universal platfrom so that dozens of manufactures of cellphones can keep this one consistant functionality base for the end user to rely on.. yet.. YET.. a device like this makes it too easy. I mean we can all go straight to the CEO to kiss ass now. At a social event I'd want to talk, drink my glass of wine and have a conversation with you, not yer device. Tech like this is good, good for experimentation but reality wise? Does it apply? Well people carry cellphones into everyday conversations already so ok i'll give ya that, but the phone still has its place. At a socail event people rely on the basic good ole me talkin to you. Barbaric as that seems.
break for lunch: 12 noon
todays bad design item: the snapple a day bottle, not a bad drink really, but the top features a poorly designed "tug the crap outa me and i'll open up and all over you" bottle cover. I thought the first time i had one was kinda odd, then the second one harder, this third time i approched it with a fork to assure victory. They taste as good as Naked Juice, but well its one of those rush lunches so I opted to down one. Fighting with the "pull tab" is really a hassle, who tested this thing. Just watching one of the gals trying to open one in the kitchen was just too painful to watch as well, she got smart though, fork it!
Its coming, check out the Mogi: Socially Connected GPS Gaming mogi video, very cool. And umm ya. Soooo many phones so little time. Man I really need that camera phone. Now thats spiffy!
I've reading more and more articles, magazines, books, etc on Venture Captial and Entrepreneur mindset lately. The wants, needs, the drive and all the various aspects of it. One more ball to juggle, least part of me thinks that. The jack of all trades here but maybe cause at heart like my father and my brothers I've got a bit of that entrepreneural spirit as well. Luckily there are plenty of blogs on the topic. Today I came across this little tid bit and chuckled a "oh ya baby.. you got that right". Its really nuff said, saw this way back and it continues to be "goal" for many companines I think.
"I have concluded that the best and fastest way to build another billion dollar company (assuming, of course, that MyFamily.com gets a billion dollar market cap someday) is to create a subscription product that one million people will eventually pay $10-20 per month to use. A million customers paying $15 per month would generate $180 million in revenue. If the company had a profit margin of 25% and a P/E ratio of 20, the company's market cap would be $900 million."
Everquest and every other online game comes to mind right away. Paul Allen writes on this here and here. Soon despite my poor communication skills, spelling especially, I am going to venture into the world of press writing as I take on more abilities here at work in regards to marketing etc. Writing the google aware press release could be handy.
Dan remind yerself to install this tonight.
time: 2:40pm
RFID, ok its big and gonna be huge when it hits. But what about the juicy research potential? I say we're behind already, we should be researching this now, I mean, we that is lextant should be. Wired has an excellent article on the subject and the store of the future they talk about is here, lots of great video on there, check it out!
Well time to end this ramble! Much to do as always. Shake and Chug!
Well let's see what is happening at the flooz here. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm nothing! There you have it! Really not much is happening. I've been hitting the gym more and more and observing the life of those that fester to get fit.
I think my mini needs an ipod mini.
The normal folks are givin me a hard time over Good Girls Don't ok sure its on the "oh!" oxygen network, I stumbled upon it the other day and found it pretty darn funny. TIVO it baby.
Seen Spidey2 yet? Its great, another fantastic picture from Sam Raimi, from Evil Dead to Spider Man, wowza who would of thought that was possible. Actually in Spider Man 2 we get a taste of Sam's love of horror movies, theres a little Evil Dead in that picture ( the doctors workin on doc ock scene ), and I like how they got Bruce Campbell as the door man in there as well. Bonus factoid, did ya know he's also listed as a writer on another all time favorite flooz picture- Hudsucker Proxy. Excellent work Sam!
work rant:
How is it that equipment knows when to break down at the exact most inappropiate time possible? On and on and on it goes the cycle of cursed hardware needs. I keep building custom rigs to do specifed custom things for set purposes only to have them tainted by "oh we gotta do x y z and r" as well when in fact that wouldn't be the case if their darn hardware wouldn't die over and over and over on them. Bad hardware you say? Not usually I say. Bad usage maybe.
what i learned from blogs today:
Zoo + Kids + Tablet PCs = Good Times! Pretty cool little project here. Gator Dave we gotta try this out!
G-Mailto, for you gmail folks.
The Lextant Margs & Fireworks party is about to begin.
Let the parrrtayyy begin! Have a great weekend all!
Ok this time around we got a 100min audio blog note! LOL, I need to get my radio show backup... can't do it this way but still I kinda like doing the talk show - song break down thats been very coool.
Ahhh the sooothing sounds of SomaFM, and the first track i hear? Art of Noise - Paranormia, ahhh the classics. Now I need more.... hmmm.