Recently in Technology Category

I'm having a frustrating evening. I've stacked up a series of blog posts for my various blogs, and I can't publish them. There isn't even a sniff of the cafe WiFi that we're meant to have access to in this apartment, so I'm left with the unpleasant choice of venturing out into a blustery Norwich night in search of some WiFi, or tapping out an entry of two on the Movable Type iPhone interface.

And you know what? The iPhone interface is pretty good. You can forget putting any links in, of course, but that's as much to do with the iPhone's lack of cut and paste than a failing of Six Apart's work with the interface.

It occurs to me that I should actually invest some time in experimenting seriously with the iPhone as a mobile blogging tool. Expect a few more experimental posts over the remainder of my stay here in Norfolk.

The other day, Nick Sergeant was messing around with Yahoo! Pipes. He discovered that by ingesting content from one of our newspaper sites, and comparing those stories to the content in a specific story, he could automatically create related links to other stories on that site.

Note: There are vendors who provide this service for thousands of dollars. Thanks for one smart developer playing around with the latest, cool open-network tools, GateHouse Media can now make it available on our sites for free.

The only way I've been able to get internet access for much of the past week:

The apartment where Mum & I have been staying in Norwich while she undergoes chemotherapy has WiFi, via the coffee shop nearby. Sadly, the only place I could get a reliable, regular signal was the cupboard in her room.

Ah, well. Another five hours here at the hospital, and then back to her blissfully broadband and WiFi-enabled house…

When I got into work this morning, there were a number of e-mails in my in-box about our Movable Type server being down. Luckily, it had been that way for just a few hours, only the posting interface was affected (ie pages were still readable) and the Web Services guys had already solved the problem. However, it brings me some comfort to know that we're not the only ones who hit these sorts of issues. I've been getting the above message from all of The Telegraph's blogs for the last hours or so…

OK, so the 18 month lock-in ain't great. And only having one network isn't making me happy. But there are lots and lots of reasons why this wee iPhone is changing my thinking. Post in progress…

1. We really need some way to incorporate comments directly into the RSS feed (and no, doing it separately Wordpress-style doesn't cut it).

2. If you have a large number of RSS feeds in your aggregator, they really need to be tended like a garden. The dead wood and decaying flowers need to be trimmed away to let new shoots flourish, and you need to mow the lawn regularly. 1909 items unread does not count as a well-mown RSS lawn.

Something strange and wonderful has occurred:

Those of you familiar with the Mac and NetNewsWire will know what this screengrab means: for the first time in many long months, I'm finally on top of all my RSS feed subscriptions. I have none unread.

This feels great.

So, what would be the sensible government approach to repeated revelations that IT projects have gone wrong? An internal investigation? Some changes of management? How about bringing in outside experts to manage the mess?

No.

They order civil servants to shred documents.

Some fine reporting from Tony Collins on Computer Weekly, there.

The Washington Post has published an interesting article by a law professor about students attending classes with laptops open. It calls into question the idea that the younger generation are as able to multi-task and process as many information sources as we think they can.

Is he being reactionary, or is this going to be a genuine problem?

Ironically, I'm typing this in an internal meeting with my attention on 50% on the proceedings.

[Via a comment on Anil's Vox.]

And now to the heart of this trip to New York. Six Apart held a Movable Type Summit in the Affinia Hotel Manhattan yesterday, and they'd asked me to be one of the speakers. It was a summit of two halves, with the first devoted to the technical issues and the second to use cases and the business of blogging.

I've got a fair investment in Movable Type. I've been using it for this blog for well over three years, and we've selected the Enterprise version of the tool as our blogging platform at work. I came seeking some reassurance that we made the right choice. And got it. In spades.

In many ways, the first, technical section of the day was as reassuring as anything. There are a core of good people here, doing some serious work around high-traffic sites - and willing to share the experiences they've had. I know some people believe that MT doesn't scale, but David Jacobs was able to give some solid evidence and advice about exactly how it can (and does) scale.

The afternoon sessions were more a case of bonding over common experiences. There's no doubt that any organisation that starts blogging internally or externally starts to experience some major cultural shifts - but most start from a position of fear. Again and again I hear people not liking the idea of readers being able to comment, and their position quickly changing as their experience of reader interaction grows.

Indeed, on both the technical and content front there was plenty of discussion about the best ways of taking regular commenters and giving them a bigger say with blogs.

I'm not going to blow-by-blow the issues raised in the summit, but I will go through some of them in future posts. I have a seven hour flight on Saturday. I need something to keep me busy…

Closing off the day, Michael Sippey took us through the future of Movable Type through until the end of the year. Movable Type 4 hits by the summer, with the roadmap showing two .1 releases before the end of 2007. Much of the focus of MT4 is going to be on re-engineering the platform to use the key technologies behind Vox and Typepad to make the application faster, and much better at handling non-text assets. There will be a series of add on packs that add elements that aren't needed by everybody in the core product, but which will allow people to customise the app they way their (business-mainly) environment needs. A nice concept, and one that breaks down the current distinction between Movable Type and Movable Type Enterprise.

There's no guarantee that we'll stay a Six Apart customer for our blogs for ever and I'm most certainly not going to start taking sides in the tiresome Wordpress versus Movable Type war (I'm glad there are other tools out there should we ever wish to switch). MT looks like its going to be the right tool for us for a while to come.

I've not been having a good technology day. We've had a couple of issues with both our internal and external blog servers that have sent my blood pressure in what could be described as "a non-positive direction". The "split bill" service for my corporate mobile phone (no, I still don't have a Blackberry) was refusing to work in Firefox. My work PC laptop was crashing repeatedly. I was, in short, having a bad IT day.

In fact, I found myself wondering how my job became so technology-centric. And then it hit me, my job has always been technology-centric. After all, magazine publishing is based around the twin pillars of Desktop Publishing and Printing Presses. But they don't really register as technology to most people, and that's because we tend to use the word "technology" as a shorthand for "new technology" - which is technology which has come to prominence within our adult lifetime.

What will this industry look like when the digital natives enter the workplace? What will journalists who don't remember an age before the internet create with the tools that people are building already?

And it's thoughts like that which allow me to keep wading through the technological morass of corporate life towards whatever it is that's coming next.

(This post might be taken as evidence that I need to cut down on the coffee)

Preparing for the Keynote

Originally uploaded by Adam Tinworth.

There's no doubt that Steve Jobs and Apple know how to build excitement. People do not set up “Keynote Bingo” for Gates's keynotes at CES. Microsoft does not shroud its booth in black cloth to build up expectations about the goodies hidden underneath.

It also, I suspect, creates a sense of shared experience amongst the Mac loyalists, a bonding of identity much the way that the Queen's Speech on Christmas Day used to do for us Brits.

Whatever. It's fun to see what goodies Uncle Steve has lined up for us. Let's see if he can live up to this year's greater-than-normal hype.

Technorati Tags: apple, keynote, stevejobs

My experience of using instrumental music to write or work to has impoved by leaps and bounds since Apple introduced gapless playback into iTunes and iPod.

Which reminds me, time to print out my keynote bingo card.

Accustomed brilliance from Brian Micklethwait:

It has taken me quite a while to get used to the idea that, in the Age of Google, if you have a question, you can quickly find an answer. It’s like being a small boy again, only this time when you shout “Why?!?!?!” (or whatever) at your mother, your mother is the Internet, and it knows, and it can tell you in seconds.

However, it's a lot less likely to cook your dinner and iron your shirts for you…

Technorati Tags: google, internet, quotable, searching

Busy work day today. I'm off on a conference that took up the whole of this evening and will eat up pretty much all of tomorrow. And I'm looking forward to every minute of it. When did that happen?

However, the really cool thing is that both the conference venue and the hotel I'm staying in tonight have completely free internet access. Free WiFi at Sandown Park and free wired broadband in the room at Oatlands Park.

So, I'm keeping up with e-mail, IMing family and friends, listening to podcasts and even getting some blogging done, without it costing me a penny extra. That's customer service. That's what will bring me back to places like this.

Technorati Tags: business, business travel, conference centres, hotels, internet access, mobile working, wifi

Lorna, my wife, has a theory that we're in a very tight window of opportunity where computer and web familiarity is an advantage to you in the workplace. From there we'll rapidly move to a situation where lack of it is a crippling disadvantage (if we're not there already) and finally to a phase when it's just the norm.

After that, we swing back to real world social skills being a major competitive advantage.

This is all interesting in the context of the campaign launched by The Daily Telegraph this week— Hold on to Childhood — calling on us to protect our offspring's time as children, which is being eroded by the way we're structuring society. Daniel Finkelstein of The Times had a fairly predictable pop at the idea on Comment Central, and The Telegraph's Ben Fenton mounted a decent defence of the paper's forward-looking approach to technology on his blog.

I can't help feeling that the ideas expressed here are backing up Dr Tinworth's theory rather nicely. Certainly, as Finkelstein argues, electronic toys are, on balance, good for children. But, unless kids get a more rounded experience of childhood, and the social education that comes with it, they're destined to a second-class position in the workplace and, quite possibly, in life.

Technorati Tags: children, education, hold on to childhood, learning, technology

Web Worker Daily is an interesting new blog from the GigaOm stable, aimed squarely at people for whom their laptop and mobile phone are more the office than the physical building with that name.

I'm a great fan of the concept of mobile working (as opposed to home working) because it suits me right down to the ground. I've done some of my best work in coffee shops, hotels and trains. Offices can be great places for human contact, but they can also be stifling to creativity.

Technorati Tags: blogging, blogs, mobile working, office, workstyle

I notice, via Anil Dash, that Google has shifted Gmail for your domain to become Google Apps for your domain.

The more I look at this, the more I think we're only a couple of steps away from something that will be perfect for the roving reporter. All they need to do is add Writely, the online word processor, and you've got something much more efficient that VPNing into the company network and accessing your files and data that way, using applications on your laptop. You can work anywhere there's an internet connection and a web browser, and access your key files.

It'll be a while in coming, and it might not be Google that does it, but I think I just saw the future of journalism flash before my eyes.

More and more publishers of all stripes, it seems, are growing slightly uncomfortable with the growing power of Google over what gets read and what doesn't. Two very different takes on the situation flowed into my RSS reader this morning:

• Sean Bonner, of Metroblogging fame, questions the arbitrary nature of Google News selections.
• On the Travolution blog, Graham Donoghue worries at the changes in the way Google rates landing pages [disclosure: Travolution is published by my employer, RBI]

Google, for all its coolness and “don't be evil” ethos, is becoming as secretive and closed as that cooler tech firm, Apple. However, Apple is pretty much just a minor player in the PC market, while Google rules the web.

Technorati Tags: google, google news, landing pages, travoloution

11 Suggestions For Not Being a Dot-Bomb 2.0

A nice hype-pricking guide to the Web 2.0 phenomenon. Most of it comes down to “how are you gonna make money, buddy?”, though, and I remain amazed at how the internet blinds certain people to the need to get paid, pay the rent and buy food.

[via Loïc Le Meur]

Technorati Tags: web 2.0

This is very interesting, and a lot of fun. It pulls information on surnames out of the census databases and displays them on a map. For example, here's the distributions of Tinworths in the 1881 and 1998 census.

We've spread, but not that far.

[via James]