Henrik Werdelin

A talk by Sir Ken Robinson at 2006 TED conference, making a funny,
erudite and moving case that schools kill creativity.
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/66

Thanks Tom for highlighting it..

Some really good points from Tom Loosemore's Blog. BBC have an
amazing ability to gather some really clever people.

1. Build web products that meet audience needs: anticipate needs not
yet fully articulated by audiences, then meet them with products that
set new standards. (nicked from Google)

2. The very best websites do one thing really, really well: do less,
but execute perfectly. (again, nicked from Google, with a tip of the
hat to Jason Fried)

3. Do not attempt to do everything yourselves: link to other high-
quality sites instead. Your users will thank you. Use other people's
content and tools to enhance your site, and vice versa.

4. Fall forward, fast: make many small bets, iterate wildly, back
successes, kill failures, fast.

5. Treat the entire web as a creative canvas: don't restrict your
creativity to your own site.

6. The web is a conversation. Join in: Adopt a relaxed,
conversational tone. Admit your mistakes.

7. Any website is only as good as its worst page: Ensure best
practice editorial processes are adopted and adhered to.

8. Make sure all your content can be linked to, forever.

9. Remember your granny won't ever use "Second Life": She may come
online soon, with very different needs from early-adopters.

10. Maximise routes to content: Develop as many aggregations of
content about people, places, topics, channels, networks & time as
possible. Optimise your site to rank high in Google.

11. Consistent design and navigation needn't mean one-size-fits-all:
Users should always know they're on one of your websites, even if
they all look very different. Most importantly of all, they know they
won't ever get lost.

12. Accessibility is not an optional extra: Sites designed that way
from the ground up work better for all users

13. Let people paste your content on the walls of their virtual
homes: Encourage users to take nuggets of content away with them,
with links back to your site

14. Link to discussions on the web, don't host them: Only host web-
based discussions where there is a clear rationale

15. Personalisation should be unobtrusive, elegant and transparent:
After all, it's your users' data. Best respect it.

http://www.tomski.com/archive/new_archive/000063.html

Been reading quite a bit about long term projections lately and have
found two interesting books. The first is The Singularity is near
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near which has some
very interesting points on how quickly new technology and artificial
intelligence will emerge in our everyday life. It seems that the
folks over at BT are a bit of the same belief. Have a look at this:
http://www.btplc.com/Innovation/News/timeline.htm

Interesting times a head…

I’ll admit it.. I love TV. Absolutely. As a storytelling technology
and a method of evoking emotions in the viewer its simply amazing.
However, it takes skills to do it right – being it from 1st class
drama like CSI, over reality shows like Idol to simple spoof shows.
But when its done right – its just works… Here are a few examples:
UK talent show

UK talent show 2
BBC Spoof show

Check out CSI on joost.com

Now with Joost for great long form content (note the mce remote is
working) and Windows media center to record all different stuff -
all on my plasma screen via my media center PC – I am one happy
couch potato :)

<random thoughts>

These years are fascinating as many of the technology dreams and
visions that was created in the very early days of the internet
finally see the light of day. The technology is being developed to a
point where new companies can make services that solve problems for
people in a way that is easy to use. I think that social engineering
and the ability to wrap technology around human behavior will be the
key success drivers for the success internet services over the next
few year. Over the last month four companies has stuck out for me as
being truly great in creating easy to use, well product developed
services:

- Truphone.co.uk is a service that allow users of high end Nokia
phones to connect to the internet via wifi and use VoiceOverIP to
call people rather than their mobile service provider. There are
quite a few companies out there that provide a service a bit like
that. Fring (fring.com) is great if you want to use skype on your
mobile, gizmo.com is pretty advanced as it has both a pc client and a
mobile client – but TruPhone is for me the right balance between good
user experience and solving a problem. The way I use it is at home.
My mobile phone automatically connects to my wifi network at home so
when I need to make a call and I am in range of my wifi network I
route my calls over the internet and get very good rates. The audio
quality is on par with my landline and the connection is quick. In
short, roaming between wifi network and cellar provider is seamless.
You need as mentioned a high end nokia phone – and it seems the ones
to get is either Nokia E61i (thats the one I am using. more
functionality and great if you are using you phone for many other
things than dialing ) or Nokia n95 (great camera, great phone, poor
battery)
http://www.truphone.com/
http://www.gizmoproject.com/learnmore-nokia.html
http://www.fring.com

- Facebook.com is a social networking site like asmallworld,
friendsterm bebo, myspace and the 1000s of other sites that help you
connect to people whom you dont normally speak to (sometime for a
reason :). However, Facebook is quite amazing in the way it does it.
Its a prove for me that the competition over the next few years are
not in new ideas and new technologies but in how well the sites are
executed and the technology is applied. Facebook is from a product
development and easy of you stand point in my view miles ahead of the
other sites. The details are amazing and the functionality are wide
but no too complicated. Really enjoy how they have managed to apply
very simple human touches to the site. Both "poking", instant status
broadcast and their ability of creating content out of behavior is
very well thought out. Well done guys…

- Google never stops to amaze me. I have recently started to migrate
most of my online services to google.
Gmail – left my original provider),
Google news reader – left bloglines
Google docs – left one of 27 signals site
Google notebook – left a text file on my desktop
and so on.
Google are delivering on the promise of server based computing. I can
now reach most of my docs, thoughts and plans from any computer and
share it with people easily. No need for word, excel, or thumbnail
drives. Google manage to make very deep but simple products that are
super easy to use. They have now started to integrate them all and
the result is really working. Microsoft must be worried…
Google personal homepage: http://www.google.com/ig
Google docs (online word type product with sharing functionality:

http://docs.google.com/
Google labs : http://labs.google.com/
Google reader: http://www.google.com/reader

- Schedualeworld is a site that is by no means good for the non geeky
user. Their userbility is not very good at all. They do however
provide a very great free service for people who would like to sync
their contact and calendar with multiple phones and computers (with
different software). However, with a bit of user interface work
Schedualeworld provide a good look into how services in the near
future will seamlessly sync across multiple devices, software and
platforms. For the less nerdy user try the service over at my buddies
at zyb.com which is a great way to backup your contacts on your mobile.
http://www.scheduleworld.com/tg/cal/day.jsp