Who am I?

20.08.2008 13:10

Well if you look at the blog posts on this page you get something like this:

 

But if you take my del.icio.us links you get somthing like that:

 

I guess I´m somewhere in the middle...

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Web 4.0

15.08.2008 15:47

Everyone is so busy upgrading to Web 3.0 that they missed the Web 4.0 release. But internet versions aside, here are some cool cutting edge projects along with my comments on why I think this is the future of the interwebs...

Fire Eagle
Public launch this week. It is what I would call a location broker in the sense that it acts as the middle man between websites and applications which might know your whereabouts and relays the info to other sites and applications based on your settings.

So in theory my Dopplr travel plan could update a Facebook application to notify my friends that I’m back in Iceland. Neat huh?

Fire Eagle is hatched by the Yahoo Brick house innovation initiative and I have been testing it for a couple of months while it was in closed Beta. The reason I like it is that there is no clear revenue model as such, rather you could compare this to the councils which provide infrastructure like roads and water pipes to facilitate growth. Fire Eagle is essentially the pipes upon which geeks can build cool location aware services to enhance the lives of the less technically able population (like this). The key to success here is that I trust this site because I have full control over the information flow and Fire Eagle does not store my location history (the Big brother tactics are left to 3rd party sites).
What got my brain ticking was the idea of expanding this concept for a wider range of content relative to my profile to simplify my life.
An example would be me in New York feeling thirsty. I would be happy to share my location from Dopplr and my taste in beer from my the RateBeer Facebook application with Beer Menus to get a list of bars serving my favourite pint. This could be a one off query where I would not share my profile with the 3rd party sites. Just my attention profile information (APML).

Wua.la
Another closed beta which opened the doors to the public this week. With a simple setup and slick desktop integration, Wuala has every potential for bringing cloud computing to the masses with it’s online social storage application. In 5 minutes I was up and running with my 1GB of storage and was collaborating with two mates on shared documents. Essentially you can drag a file from your desktop to the Wuala interface and share it with people, engage in a dialogue and do all sorts. Your data is encrypted and you can get more space by sharing some of your hard drive space in true peer to peer spirit. You can also buy extra space online.
It is so simple that I would be comfortable sharing image libraries with my Mother using this.
Cloud computing is all about thin clients (again) and being able to do your work and collaborate with others online rather than being stuck in the daily rut of MS Office documents and stuff.

Freebase
This site is actually what some people would refer to as the materialisation of Web 3.0 so it is a bit outdated right?
Freebase is like Wikipedia built by Metadata freaks and should perhaps be referred to as a Structured Wiki. To explain, we stick to the beer example and look at this list of beers you can see how it differs from Wikipedia. You can actually filter the data set based on a range of beer specific attributes. When editing the entries, you are actually working to a structure rather than the blob we have for each Wikipedia entry. This is pure semantic web heaven and the guys at Metaweb have come up with this great wiki way of managing domains, types and properties. This site should overtake Wikipedia if the world is fair because it will bring us smarter search engines like Parallax and an overall better quality of life through cool semantic web mashups :p  

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My first Google App engine project goes live

07.08.2008 15:42

I have been messing about with with the new Google App Engine web application development environment for a while now and plan to migrate this blog onto it (more on that later). Some of my fellow geeks have asked, why would you invent the wheel again when there are so many great blog applications out there and my answer is the same as to why the dogs lick their balls... I can. And I like to build stuff now and then as my work is mainly about talking these days.

My experience has been a pleasant one excluding the 1Mb upload limits for files. I like Python and Django and it only took a couple of days to get accustomed to the basics. Documentation is also quite good for the GAE and they have a good selection of demo apps. Development and deployment is a walk in the park, but it would be nice to have an IDE to debug stuff on your local machine.

All that said, last night I deployed the new Moss website. We have a gig tomorrow and I felt that we should really have the new site live by then. Mr Rootside is responsible for the design and I just used what I had developed in the last couple of weeks for the blog and gig listing. It is all marked up in Microformats which is cool for those who care and we have some mashups going with Twitter and Flickr where we can post updates from our mobiles straight to the site. I still need to set up the RSS feeds and such, but it is an improvement from the old site. Now we just need to record some music to put on there as well.

Moss grow on rock....

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New search engine in town

29.07.2008 13:05

It's called Cuil, pronounced Cool apparently. I'm not a big fan of company names that you have to spell for people every time, but hey what can I say.

They claim to have a larger index than Google but in my tests I have not seen them return more results for any term. But what I like is the faceted navigation where you can drill down and filter your search results even though the categories are not always spot on. I also like the 3 column layout, I feel that I can skim the results faster than on Google.

All that aside, I must comment on my ego surfing experience. First of all, I'm not number #1 for "Finnur" like on Google.com and Google.co.uk (#4 on Google.is) which is of course just wrong. But that's not all. For some strange reason they decided to pick a photo to go with my page entry saying "My Success in Scientology". WTF! 

 

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Facebook, MySpace or Google, who are you going to trust with your social graph?

24.07.2008 14:10

There is a movement working towards the next generation of the interwebs where you don't have to update your profile details, passwords, photo and more importantly friend associations (social graph) on multiple sites. The term for it is Data Portability and the whole ethos is around you owning your virtual profile and the associated information.

Clever social site evangelists have picked up on this and see the benefits of stepping up and hosting this for your.

If the sites manage to earn your trust and you invest time and effort in populating their sites with your up to date profile. It is unlikely that you´d be willing to go through all of that again later right? So in effect you are hooked.

Google took the first step and introduced their Social Graph API. They have never been great at social web stuff and I have talked about that before. They tend to buy communities rather than build. Their solution is very much along the lines of exposing open standards and not asking you to maintain your information on their servers. Their plan to index all the publicly available connections between people and make it available for site developers.

This means that you should in effect be able to import your friends to every new social site you sign up for.

Queue the social platforms...

MySpace recently launched their Data Availability project.
You can give sites access to your MySpace profile and in turn your info and connections will be updated from there.

Yesterday at the f8 Facebook Developer conference, they introduced Facebook Connect. Basically the same thing but nicer packaging.

I also noticed a new project which aligns with an idea I had a couple of weeks back. I think it is a good idea to be able to store and manage the things you like online to get better search results and recommendations for things you might like. You just have to make sure that you own and control the data.

It is all for a good cause, now you only have to make up your mind about who you trust.

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Technology and Wine labels

22.07.2008 12:25

I have often thought about creating an application where you can take a photo of nice wines when you are at a restaurant for buying later. Of course there are applications you can mash up to achieve such functionality but today I tested a great new application which I'm going to start using. Evernote takes it a step further, they have great desktop applications and integrate well with web and mobile. But the best part is that they do optical character recognition (index the text in photos) so you don't have to type in the stuff on the label (unless it is in some strange font).

So I created a quick red wine label photo test site with a couple of my own photos and some nicked from Flickr. Try searching for rioja or malbec.

Evernote gets 9.5 on the nerd rank scale

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Better relationships through science

22.07.2008 10:56

Romance is so 2007. Why risk your future when you can do a genetical comparison and find out if your partner is right for you?

This new company; GenePartner.com has this great slogan: "Love is no coincidence". How romantic. And they claim that the highest probability for a successful relationship is when both individuals are genetically compatible (what ever that means).

This quote is great:

"Genetic compatibility results in an increased likelihood of forming an enduring and successful relationship. Research has also shown that the sex lives of genetically compatible partners are more satisfying than average"

Why wait? Sign up to day and send in your partner's saliva.

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The world would be so much better without users - Last.fm redesign

18.07.2008 18:29

Last.fm launched their new design last night. It is a massive update impacting all sections of the site. It is not just a facelift, it is a total revamp changing user interaction and features.

The site has been growing organically since 2002 and has a massive fan base and today they revolted. Poor Matthew had to close the commenting section on their blog after 2000 users mostly spit on all their hard work.

I feel for them, and I actually think the new site is better from a usability perspective. I was a big fan of the old site and often referred to it as one of the few successful implementations of a semi fluid layout available. The design was close to perfect too.
The thing that bothers me the most is that now there is a mix of fluid and fixed layouts. The home page and events page are fluid while most of the others are fixed

It is a bold move jumping of the web 2.0 design trend bandwagon with the rounded corners and flair to a more natural paint like effect. Unlike the fan base, Last.fm has their finger on the web design pulse.
It is a bit slow and needs some tweaking, but again, it is growing on me.

I might be a bit soft as I got the ticket for Leonard Cohen (who is a genius by the way) through my Last.fm friend Björgvin who noticed the old man on my charts.

By the way, if you have not checked out the events section, you are missing out, as this is the best listing for live music available.

Rock on Last.fm, the users will get over it soon enough.

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A few good days in Iceland

15.07.2008 08:53

I mixed work and pleasure and spent the last couple of weeks in Iceland.

Two great weekends in the country side, split by meetings and meetups in Reykjavik.

The funny thing is that Iceland has better climate than the UK now. I worked the tan and used my shorts and slippers to the max.

A day after I landed, I was with Gulla´s family in the north west region of Iceland, 25°C, standing in the middle of a river, fishing for trout. They have a house there, no electricity or fluff. Just great landscape, good fishing and this time around Mallorca weather.

Last weekend we did the same thing with my family to Skagafjörður in the north. Again, fishing, cow milking and such.

Great trip except for the mishap when my father tried to teach me golf and hit my nose with his driver. Blood was shed but I´m fine now.

There are a couple of photos on Flickr but more to come.

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The Moss gig

24.06.2008 12:37

Hjörtur recorded 3 clips at the Moss gig last week. It is a mobile phone cam so it is not quite broadcast quality. We enjoyed it tremendously and the crowd seemed quite happy to. Give me your honest feedback.

Moss - Debut gig from gommit on Vimeo.

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Innovation and Open Alchemy

18.06.2008 13:52

Here in the UK there is a very interesting organisation named NESTA, National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. It’s sole purpose is to make UK more innovative and I think it's a brilliant idea.

Innovation needs to be fostered and when you have the the perfect conditions you breed something like PARC.
For the next 24 hours I will be locked up in a room with some very interesting people talking about contextual content. The rules are simple, it is an open forum where any individual or company can take the ideas that surface and run with those.

This is a part of the Open Alchemy and I will be there with techies and evangelists from Arup, BBC, BP, BT, Cancer Research UK, the Department fir Transport, Interbrand, Lloyds TSB, NHS, Pfizer, Rolls Royce, Unilever, Virgin Atlantic and Vocalink.

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Family, Premier, Fame and Projects

11.06.2008 22:34

Last weekend was 4 days and 4 individuals having lots of fun in London. Gulla brought her girls over for the firs time and we did everything!

Zoo, Science Museum, Hairspray musical, London eye, Hyde Park, double decker busses, tube and cabs. It was all good fun and we had some great moments and laughs.

Last Monday I was invited for a premier. I was one of the first people to experience Renaissance and meet the author. It is the latest dram from the Ardbeg distillery and I have a signed bottle from the head distiller. This same night I got to taste a 1975 single cherry cask (going at £550 a bottle). Mmmm

The first Moss gig is confirmed and we are busy polishing the 6 songs we are going to play Friday 20th. Be there and later you can tell your children you where at the first Moss gig.

This is also my second week in a new role as head of business development. I like new challenges. I get bored every 2 years or so and need something like this to get a breath of fresh air.

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@media rant

29.05.2008 16:31

Now I remember why I didn't want to go to this conference in the first place.

Disclamer:
Those of you who know me know that my glass is mostly half full and it takes a lot to frustrate me, but today I just have to share this.

2 years ago I attended the first @media and it was great, last year was ok, but today was just way below par. The Mental model was good, but the next one on content being king turned out to be about books and subsequent film renditions, I just didn't get it. There where two slides on personas and content being important but the rest was a history lesson on books being turned into films with associated video clips.

Fair enough, but next up there was a session on Content Management without the Killing. I have done my share of CMS projects in the last 7 years and was looking forward to pick up some cool tricks from Drew regarding use of semantic web and microformats in the world of CMS. But nooo, there was roughly a half an hour on what CMS is and why it is important to have one. This was followed by an overview of the Blog CMS systems MovableType and WordPress and the reasons why those are not great for big sites. He also touched on "mid range" CMS systems like Joomla, ExpressionEngine and some other open source PHP bundles. He wrapped up the coverage by admitting that he didn't have much experience in the Enterprise CMS range but everyone hates those right?

After this overview it turned into a sales pitch for the PHP CMS his company is developing.

I have had my share of speaking engagements and those have been a mix of sponsored sales pitches and more educational presentations performed at events where people pay good money for quality content. In all cases I try to focus on the educational value but if it is not a sponsored talk, I make sure that the content is not related to Unify or VYRE specifically. After this I just walked out. I don't like to be sold at.

END RANT

It could also be that this summer is starting to look a lot like the last one in the weather charts and I might be turning into a grumpy old fart. On the up side, I'm going to see the Black Keys tonight, jeee. 

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Web Conference fatigue

29.05.2008 10:33

I'm at the @media conference, I did not get a ticket but there was one extra floating around the office so what the heck. The thing is, at the moment I feel there is a bit of a low in the web Hype. We all understand the importance of accessibility, css, standards, social web etc etc. I have seen most of the modern leaders and speakers of the web frontier in the last couple of years and they seem to be repeating the same stuff with a bit of a twist. It might be me but at the moment I feel like I'm waiting for the next big thing with the associated peak in the sinus wave of geekness and web hype.

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Icelandic names - lesson 101

27.05.2008 19:22

I recently helped a friend of a client who was struggling with the pronunciation of the name Páll. The quickest way of course being to record it on YouTube.

Today I got a similar request from someone I don´t know about how to pronounce my own name; Finnur.

In my reply I asked if I knew the person and as a response I got this brilliant little story.

 

Thanks a lot! My wife and I recently named our son Finnur -- I liked Finni and she liked Finn, so we compromised on Finnur. After 6 weeks, now we both prefer to call him Finnur. Of course, all of these goofy relatives come out of the woodwork and try to tell us it's Finn-oor or Finn-yoor and all kinds of pronunciations. So, now we have proof. With the lack of an Icelandic accent, we will stick with Finn-er!

Don't you just love the interwebs :D

 

 

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