BarCampHelsinki - My notes form an exciting day

This post has been sitting in my TODO for far too long.

First of all, thanks to Fjord for the use of their space. It was a really good space to have this type of event; good WiFi coverage, plenty of power points, Interesting things (asus eee pc, olpc), large boards to write on (and enough space for everyone to sit)

Only thing to remember for next time is that the entrance to their office is a little tricky to find (it is sort of "round the back")
An interesting and diverse group of people came. During the round table introduction there almost seemed to be a "i'm the least technical person here" competition happening :)

The organising of the days agenda went rather smoothly (enough topics had been proposed etc).
Here Antti live posted the agenda as it was made

First there was a split into two rooms as there seemed to be enough content for two tracks (one more technical than the other).

The Microformats session i did not attend.

Antti gave an overview of how he does GTD here is a thread discussing the tools he uses (these were some of the notes i lost)

Although there was a plan to have two tracks it seemed everyone wanted to listen to Petri's session, so that's what we did.
So now the day moved back to a single track, to me this is one of the cool things about BarCamp type activities, the attendees decide what will happen.

Open organizing and wikis by Petri
Yochai Benkler - commons based peer production Too much content for me to take notes (but lots of really important ideas)
@Pe3 contacts have devloped "think tank" culture - micro-contributions Parvi.fi (swarm). Reasearch swarm started in jaiku #tutkimusparvi
Science is not open. End result is open, but process is closed. Experiment in what happens if done in an open way. Need all of mediaWiki to be "localised" before getting full status Wikiversity (wikiopisto) creating "learning prcesses" not "learning materials" Avoin.org - 3 guys writing their phd's Jornalisim is changing - what is it.
link
the revcommended book

Scred by Kris
Billmonk vs scred Cool conerversation "bit" between Peter (a bill monk user) and Kris.
Peter & friends started to build a "debt" tool, but realised that more complicated than first thought.
Why not change; took long enough to get friends onto billmonk -> export tool by built by Scred.
Scred has mobile client that syncs nicely

A short break for lunch (that then extended :)

Tcl session by Kris
Everything is a string
Mature language
Kris gave some examples of why TCL is so cool for a developer.
Developers should remeber that there is a really easy to embed version for your projects.
TCL homepage

Location Based Services by me
Links to sites mentioned:
jaiku - found out in the beer session afterwards, people had not realized that if they have S60 client they can name locations (based on cell towers)
brightkite - US based, Send location to site. Sort of not very good copy of Jaiku location functionality.
locatik.com - not sure of the point of this, but it is in beta (need a GPS enabled S60 phone to take part).
Nokia Sports Tracker - Speed distance maonitoring using the inbuilt GPS of an S60 phone
Nokia Maps - free maps for S60 phones
During discussion, extra site plazes brought up, but no-longer has mobile client, what is the point of it?
interesting discussion comparing Nike sports Vs Nokia Sports Tracker

Systems logic in design by melanie
Explanation/demo of this technique - Common Needs, Context Needs, Context needs, Qualifier needs,
Examples of how to use this technique for Nokia N770 and Wonderbra
Demo of how this applies to advertising (at least i learnt a new thing that wonderbra has a product for "fuller figure" women!) compare&contrast this to French 1970 playtex bra advert.
Really good presentation/session by Melanie (especailly as idea for seesion was only thought of approx 2 hours before session!)

Internationalization / Localization by
Simple 4/5 slide presentation outlining points
Do it now, if not web 2.0 services are too easy to replicate
Formats & localisation (only USA has states, etc)
Google fail * detects ip - causes fail if using proxy from some other country (not too bad for home page, but other serives become hard to use :) * ff - point by Patrik Hirvinen * not using selected location - try searching using Google.de in finland gives results as if searching in FI = FAIL!
Much bigger problem because customer support is most important thing

Hopefully there will be more events like this in the future.

Recent mobile developments

Over the past couple of weeks there have been some rather major announcements in the mobile phone space (something someone living in Finland tends to be interested in!), and rather than a this set of thoughts just turning into another "those guys said it better" type post in a couple of months, here it is (in all of it's <> glory)

iPhone 3G -
Not much from hardware point of view (3G & GPS). The benefit of this (as i see it) is that the first generation owners don't feel so left out in the cold, it also allows those people who need to upgrade a possibility to sell on their first generation phones (as there will be some sort of market for those).

Really it was all about the software (latest AllAboutSymbian podcast noticed this) - for instance the inbuilt calculator making use of rotation, finally something other than the gallery and movie viewer app
New development tools are supposed to be really easy to use (drag & drop development, just how realistic is this?)
Enterprise stuff - Cisco VPN client built in & working
Apple tends to release small improvements to it's hardware platforms (at least since i have been watching them recently over the past 3-5 years), but keep supporting previous platforms (within limits of the hardware), everyone else seems to forget the old devices.
This gives you a slight feeling of confidence when buying the hardware, as you know at least next couple of releases of software will run on it.
I have seen quotes floating around the web that the life span of Apple hardware is approximately 5 years (with some form of updated hardware being bought sooner than that and the old hardware being kept on for occasional or emergency use)

Nokia E71 -
Saw the announcement of this and, WOW, shame about the camera (crappy optics apparently) but VERY low cost for the hardware you are receiving.
Reviews:
My-Symbian.com review
AllAboutSymbian Review
AllAboutsymbian multimedia review (in this one there is a quote about QVGA video at 15 fps, which looks wrong according to the specs at Forum Nokia (the front "video call" (has anyone EVER used this functionality?) camera does low quality, while the rear "main" camera does similar to the E90 (full VGA 22 fps)) Update (2008.08.22): Seems that on the Forum Nokia page some one had forgot to edit it fully (probably after copying it from the E90 page), and the E71 only does QVGA (320*240) at 15fps. Not so good :(

Comparing the hardware specs on Forum Nokia:
E90 Vs E71,
you can see that they are almost identical (different processors, more bluetooth "things" in E71, etc).

This almost makes me regret spending approximately 900€ on an E90 last year when they came out, but not quite.
For me the giant internal screen, and the opportunity to use a top of the range device for a year was worth it (especially all the cool stuff i have learnt via Jaiku!).

Which would i buy today, I'm not sure.
These are the main "things" i would think about for each device;
iPhone = big screen, smooth user experience, but VERY walled garden,
E71 = probably excellent build quality, some interesting updates to the core S60 software, good size, but small screen
E90 = big screen, slightly better hardware specs, potential laptop replacement device but big for a phone

So for me, today (if I did not have the E90), i would probably buy the E71 and either an iTouch or an N810/N800 to do the browsing on.

Social Networks or Social Objects

I did have some thoughts on this (and in fact started to write up this post a few months back), but these guys have written about this subject much better than i can, so here are some links instead:
Jyri Engeström
Hugh Macleod
Whatleydude (his points about Social objects are further down, and have a number of good links around this.

Seth Godin also talking about "friends"

how to get your Dopplr trips to feed into Jaiku

been meaning to look to get this working for a while now, and finally figured out how to do it this evening.

turns out it is really simple.

In Dopplr go to the "Your Journal" tab, and then select "show just your trips option".
This will give an RSS feed (actually it seems to be an ATOM feed) with an entry for every trip start and return.

Description of Today's bike accident.

Posting it here, to save me telling everyone individually.
time: 2008.05.12 08.35

Place: Porkkalankatu, Helsinki, Finland.

Accident description:
I am in the lane for/towards töölö, which was being held with a red light. The lane for/towards Kamppi had a green light. So I checked my mirros and saw a gap in the traffic. I then indicated and pulled into that lane. The car at the end of the gap was a Black honda crv. As i pull into the lane i hear a horn and then there is the bonnet then the side of a black car. there is some minor contact between the two vehicles.
I continue forward to safer place to exchange details. The driver of the car is very polite, and when asked speaks english with me.
As I do not know the details of Finnish traffic law in these situations (and UK driving training says to never admint liability in an accident), he calls the police.
During the wait, I phone my insurance company, as there is some sort of Bike resuce in the policy. However, when I get through, the woman at the other end does not speak English. As i am not understanding the questions she is asking, i ask the car driver to talk with her. This apparently means that a case is now open.
Police arrive, and advise me that because i was changing lanes, under Finnish law I am in the wrong.
Breathalyzer tests taken from both of us.
I take photo's of damage to both vehicles:
couple of scratches to the side of his car

and the clutch cover on my bike smashed open


The Police give me a warning, but tell me that no further action/prosecution will be taken.
The Police officer then calls for tow truck (as i was not sure if/how the insurance tow would work). Both officers then help me to push the bike to a safer spot off the road.
I have to say that the professionalism displayed by both of the officers was very high, by providing advice and help.

I then got to practice my Finnish as the Tow/rescue truck driver also did not speak English.
Arriving to the office one of my collegues came and helped to ensure that all the paper work for the rescue is filled in correctly.

Now i get to find out how good the Finnish Insurance system is.

been on a bit of an installing spree on my E90

Past couple of days, i have been adding some apps onto my E90, and i thought i would make a short write up about them here.

First one was Nokia Sports Tracker.
On first install, this did not look too interesting (nice icons, but i could not see what to do).
But then i thought i would see what happens if i make the ride home a "workout". It took a couple of tries to figure out how to get SportsTraker to start tracking - the trick was to sleect the "new workout" option (obvious really), then a nice screen appears with all sorts of timers and stuff on it.
When i stopped the tracking, the real magic happened. Loads of cool stats on the route (speeds, time, distances etc). There was also options to export to Google Earth and a couple of other formats.
I need to look into if it is possible to only record the route (not that interested in speed on the motorbike most of the time :).
Nice use of the in-built GPS circuits. If you want to find me on the site my username is ymb.

Then i signed up for the Beta of Locatik. Not exactly sure what is the aim of this app, but the web site is a sort of cool use of Google maps. If you want to look, you can sort of see where i am when i last updated the site ( http://www.locatik.com//ymbrads )

I then got an invite to Brightkite. Seems like a sort of not quite as good Jaiku, but for Twitter users, so it will probably be really popular in the US.

I have also updated my copy of CorePlayer, as the previous verision had a small bug in that if you were listening to something, and then had a call, it would crash the phone (at least on my e90 this was the case!).

I also finally got Conversations working. I had installed the package ages ago, but it appeared to do nothing, but today i went back to the home page, and noticed that, in fact, TWO packages need to be installed. I downloaded and installed the "Nokia Internet Services Support Package" (as per the instructions) and now it all works.
Pretty cool addition to the built-in contacts app, and apparently has some sort of threading ability or something.

Not able to find a WIFM around Twitter?

So i use jaiku, as i have an S60 device (S60 is the name of the operating system that drives most of the mid and high end Nokia phones), and the native S60 client is really Useful|cool|fun.

Point's of comparison (after only a week or so of being signed up to Twitter admittedly)
* ugliness/difficulty to follow conversations on twitter site, vs the Jaiku site
* staying up (there has be a couple of short down time's after being bought out by Google and the subsequent increase in load)
* Presence (small icon shows profile in use on the phone)
* Location. There are a number of other location apps - plazes, dopplr, and now Yahoo's FireEagle.
* Jaiku has an RSS feed import and export. Although, you will probably need to send the Jaiku feed through Yahoo pipes to "clean" it before TwitterFeed can use it. My notes on this can be found here

In fact, while I was thinking about this , Stefan Constantinescu (Jaikunaut extraordinaire), points out that having to use a second website to be able to make sense of Twitter conversations, could be better done using just Jaiku see here

Some links to other (probably much better written articles) on this topic:
Smalltalk Tidbits, Industry Rants by James Robertson
dancingmango
Joi Ito
Mathew Ingram

How to get twitterfeed working for Jaiku

Note here as it took too long to get working (probably due to me missing the RSS link at the bottom of various pages!)

Setup a Twitter account
then login to Twitterfeed (it uses OpenID, so pick one of the listed ones (or maybe use another?)
then enter http://your-jaiku-name.jaiku.com/feed/rss into the box, where your-jaiku-name is the login name you use for Jaiku.

That will get your full Jaiku feed (Jaiku's, blog posts, Del.icio.us links etc). To get just the posts i used a copy of a Yahoo Pipe.

Check this for a link, or search Pipe's for Jaiku, to get a pipe that will filter all the other stuff out.

Once you have the Pipe working, get the RSS link and place it in TwitterFeed.
Don't forget to *SELECT* the description only option. If you leave it on the default Title and description then you will see everything doubled up (look at the output from "View Results" option for your pipe and you can see that the Title basically is the same as the description!)

a small success in languages

Last night i achieved a small step forward in communicating in Finnish, i managed to buy a pair of trousers, using only Finnish!

The shop assistant was not admitting to knowing English, so instead of her going off to find someone else, i attempted to communicate in Finnish.
We managed with a lot of erm's and pointing etc, but finally the transaction was complete.

It is the small things in life eh :)

BarCampHelsinki is Go!

So, via jaiku i signed up to attempt to help out with BarCampHelsinki (and yes it should be written like that :).

Details at BarCampHelsinki. This might be the first bar camp organised over Jaiku, as discussion are planned over at BarCampHelsinki channel on Jaiku
For more details on what is BarCamp, read the links on the RightHand side of the page.

Here are a couple of articles with somethings that could do with thinking about.
http://www.capulet.com/weblog/darren/how-to-run-a-great-barcamp
http://www.cleverclevergirl.com/?p=10

Any volunteers?