Should I follow my fridge on Twitter?

Once you read it you'll have this expression. Or think I'm talking bollocks, one or the other.

• “Ed just made toast” @Ed_toaster_314

The internet of things, a term long bandied around in technical circles is rapidly becoming a mainstream concept. This isn’t a new trend, connecting devices and sensors together with human beings is a basic goal of the internet, but the omnipresence of wi-fi and mobile phone bandwidth as well as the rapid strides in low power processor and better battery development has changed the game. According to an Intel survey the number of internet connected devices will increase from around seven billion now to over two hundred billion by 2020. There will be over twenty connected devices for every human being on earth and all of them will be sharing data about their environments, their activities and you, their so called owners. By 2030 some projections indicate there will be over fifty trillion connected devices, in effect; every device/artefact/thingy/widget on earth, from your car and your sunglasses to your front door and your shirt buttons will have the ability to sense their environment, talk with each other and you.

The Cheshire Cat State

Yup, I've been thinking again....

It's been thirty five years since Michael Aldrich demonstrated the first online shopping experience and gave birth to eCommerce and channel shift in one fell swoop. Since then the shift to digital channels, first for B2B ordering, then B2C shopping and finally to G2C services has gathered pace. This shift is one of the largest areas of discretionary spend for global public sector clients. It is of interest to citizens, governments and IT providers because it’s pretty obvious that this move to a digital default model for the delivery of public services to citizens will deliver vast benefits to both providers and consumers of those services. From more efficient processing to quicker delivery times, the channel shift to digital will transform the way citizens and public service bodies interact and free up resources to deal with new priorities but that shift doesn’t come without risk.

When a printer is a gun

Scaramanga's career in hairdressing was short lived

You remember the scene in “man with the golden gun”? Christopher Lee, who plays the assassin, Scaramanga, is having a terse conversation with his corporate backer and whilst he talks he plays with his lighter, pen and cigarette case. The conversation draws to a close and Scaramanga, who has assembled his golden toys into a gun, resigns from corporate service in a brutally abrupt manner. A work of fiction and one with no small degree of panache perhaps, but a not quite a useful insight into the dangers of emergent technology. 

Files from the dead and information in-memoriam

Somehow a funny caption seems inappropriate.

An excellent article here at gizmodo.co.uk stopped me in my tracks today. The author tells of a job reading, reviewing, summarising and then destroying files within a social security department of a local authority. For 18 months the author waded through a vast room of literally thousands of files, the files of children who had died in the care of that local authority. The dead room as it was known. Anyone who has worked in legal RM or for any hospital records unit or for any local authority will have a taste of what this is like, though not the distilled horror of reading bland summaries of dreadful circumstances. The mere thought of this job gave me a palpable feeling of dread and a cold sweat.

Anti-social media. When social goes wrong and anonymous isn't

Get back under your fucking bridge.

In some parts of the internet there is a prevailing atmosphere of nasty. Have a look at the less salubrious areas of Facebook, twitter or in the comments section of any news organisation and you’ll get the measure of the beast. Highly misogynistic, racist, bulling, territorial, hate filled garbage. It’s unpleasant to stumble into accidentally, like something nasty you scrape off your shoe into the gutter on a hot summer day, it’s a lot scarier, threatening and horrible if directed at you, like the nastiness on your shoe is replaced with an industrial scale muck spreader on auto-feed. 

Clever investment, cool stuff and why bigger isn't better

I use this when I want to get out of doing the dishes.

There are times when one despairs of sensible investment in the UK. The talk of throwing over £40 billion into HS2 and the ongoing debate as to the best location for airport expansion in South East England can easily lead one to think that all politicians are obsessed with big dumb investments and value posturing in front of vast steel and concrete white elephants above prosperity and opportunity for all. Then you read about some under reported but very clever investments HMG has made in UK high tech industries. Like the £36m various bodies like the office of the Mayor of London and SE development agencies put into Inmarsat ( read more here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23380147 ) or the £60m HMG Treasury put into the SABRE engine ( more here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23332592 ) which are two or three orders of magnitude smaller than the grand gestures proposed for UK transport infrastructure, but have the potential to deliver vast benefits for the UK in terms of wealth, opportunity and advancement.

Records management, risk and cricket.

WG Grace makes everything relevant so he does.

W G Grace once said some very fine words about doing the obvious thing no matter what the circumstances are, in essence bat first, no matter what, if you can. 

‘When you win the toss – bat. If you are in doubt, think about it, then bat. If you have very big doubts, consult a colleague – then bat.’ W G Grace.

Olympic thoughts

I’ve been pondering the Olympics opening ceremony since I watched it. To be fair it was about a billion times better than I had been expecting which wouldn’t have been too difficult mind. What I was expecting was basically Boris on a zip wire with some cheap union flags. 

Cripes!

Which was a lovely bonus to get yesterday admittedly.

Forgive, forget or just honest reportage?

Your real digital future, don't kid yourself.

"I am who I am today because of the choices i made yesterday" - Eleanor Roosevelt

Should one’s past  be held against you for the rest of your life, and beyond, or should you be allowed to retreat into obscurity? This debate is a fascinating example of how far removed most commentators, legislators and regulators are from the technology which is driving the question in the first place. From the usual points of view this is being driven by people who don’t want youthful and trivial discretions to be held against people thirty years later. This is partially a red herring, there will always be finger prints of past actions available, in the decades and centuries before the internet it was called a reputation and no one was taken seriously without one, for good or bad. What this particular legislative demand is about isn’t the right to be forgotten, it’s about wanting to edit your past, to edit your online reputation to remove the sleazy bits. Now various people will champ at the bit and state that the right to correct errors is vital. But who chooses what is an error and who chooses to edit it? the moment you open that particular Pandora’s box a world of nasties can explode from political figures editing their pasts to criminals attempting to slide away from the consequences of their actions.

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe

make sure you don't press that button....

Sometimes I read things which are so utterly amazing that they cut through all of the day to day grind, the happenstance and seemingly mundane nature of existence to reawaken my youthful wonder and amazement at the universe. Sometimes the same article can confirm that we as a species are bless with the ability to be really fucking clever on occasion.

Invisibility, intangibility and invulnerability

wise words

I’ve been following the development of meta-materials for a few years now, basically a meta-material is a compound material which has a negative refractive index. You can read a LOT more about them here Meta-material wiki. In summary that means, and I quote “Negative refractive index materials appear to permit the creation of super-lenses which can have a spatial resolution below that of the wavelength”. In summary-summary for those less blessed with a deep understanding of optical or wave physics it means that waves are refracted at an interface in the reverse sense to that normally expected. i.e. instead of bending one way they bend the other way. If you could build lenses out of a meta-material, convex lenses would scatter and concave lenses would focus.

New taxi rank @ Paddington

How exciting, well in a small way, a new cab rank at Padders. Alas my vague hopes for a return to the elegance and utility of the old platform nine "through"rank are quickly dashed after the new-bridge-hidden-street moment. It's badly designed, windy and miles away from the main platforms. God knows how it will cope with any significant usage. What a damn shame.

Da-da, Da, Da, Da-de-dit-de-da, da, dum, de, Da!

My sources inside NASA-JPL secured this for me today.

There is some great news out there for sci-fi and space fans today. On the one hand something fantastical and unrealistic yet tinged with hope that we will triumph even though the whole scenario is utterly implausible, impractical and as far away from reality as possible. And on the other hand a remake of Space 1999.

Under Pressure

Whoops....

As worthy engineering projects go, stabilising a lethal natural booby trap and providing power to an under-developed part of the world rank pretty highly. Solving lethal problems and providing infrastructure to people are high in the civil engineers motive drivers, well that and “oh waay cool” and “blow it up again” of course and as lethal problems go, this one is a corker.

Digital Marketing Services- something old, something new etc

it's like a graphic designer has done this, only a talentless dozy one.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the business of delivering the right sort of solutions to clients. In the space I work that boils down to a mixture of consultancy, technology, project management and delivery teams wrapped in a lovely risk and assurance blanket and sold to clients on a project by project basis. The problem is when the technology change which is underpinning the business shift with marketing is moving so fast that behaving in a project by project basis runs the risk of being far too reactive and slowly reactive to boot. There’s a risk that the traditional approach also risks missing the whole bundle of things which need to be delivered to make full advantage of the forthcoming technology inflexion. It’s not just about deploying a WCM package and getting the pretty-pretty bits sorted out. There are loads of people who can do that bit, they’re called digital agencies and the can do pretty-pretty just fine and can nearly deploy a working WCM system without making too much of a mess of it, during the pilot phase at least anyway.

Am I boring you?

its like engineering meets art... and misses completely.

I'm in engineering geek mode today, screw IT, let’s move a mega-tonne of silt and slap concrete all over it. That’s a real job. Back in the day, when I actually knew how to do things, I was going to be a civil engineer. It turned out that it doesn’t pay very well and standing waist deep in mud and shouting at people whilst wearing a hard hat didn’t appeal very much so I drifted into IT and information theory but part of me is always going to love civils and tunnelling in particular.

When no is the kindest thing to say

And Simon doesn't even have PRINCE2 certification!

I haven’t blogged for a few days, my creative and analytical talents have been fully employed with matters of work and upon finding a few minutes away from work, I’ve been in “time for a sit down and a cup of tea” mode rather than wordsmith. One of the reasons for this level of business and focus has been an explosion of project-management-itus at one of the projects I look after. In essence we’re now reporting at a microscopic level of detail on every action we take. Seriously if it gets much more we’ll be filling in thirty page reports every time we grab a toilet break.

The art of risk management, Cthulhu and aeon long death

The secret thoughts of every SharePoint architect

"The nethermost caverns are not for the fathoming of eyes that see; for their marvels are strange and terrific.”– The Festival – H.P. Lovecraft

It’s reported today in the Washington Post and the ever fascinating IO9.com that the latest attempt to explore Lake Vostok is a mere 40ft or so from breaching the ice cap which has sealed the lake off from the rest of the world for the last twenty million years, you can read about it here exploration of lake Vostok and here Russian scientists prepare to enter sub glacial lake. Lake Vostok is the largest Antarctic sub glacial lake, it’s the size of Kuwait and it’s been buried under four kilometres of ice for between fifteen and twenty mega-years. This is a pristine and potentially utterly alien environment. The ice cover keeps it dark yet heavily oxygenated and the pressure and insulating qualities of the sheer volume of ice above it keep it liquid even though the average temperature of the water is below freezing point.

Frankensteins Agency

Our new head of Digital Engagement will see you now Mr Fowler...

It’s been a busy few days here at Chez Fowler. Too busy for me to find the mental energy to slap a thousand or so words together in a cogent form for this blog. I’d offer my humble apologies dear reader but I can’t be arsed with that arslikan nonsense.

Zen and the art of Zombie special operations.

A PhD in Operation Market Garden? That'll do nicely

My name is Ed Fowler; I am a long term computer game addict. There I’ve said it. Not exactly controversial to those that know me but it’s still a strong statement of position. It’s not a harmless vice, It’s not without real world effects as well. For example during a blissful three months “gardening leave” when the dot-com bubble collapsed I had an extended period of doing bugger all at home. I could have used the time to up-skill, learn a language, get fit or actually do some gardening.  I spent it getting Zen-good at Return to Castle Wolfenstein. An admirable investment in total pointlessness I'm sure you’ll agree.

Cereal, Obol, cartoons and Fortean times in Bournemouth

Hello, is that the BBC? it's Aliens I tells you, Aliens!

It’s a bit of a portmanteau posting today, frankly I'm mildly hungover and still a bit confused over the depth of thought my daughter has put into her view of the perfect milk-to-cereal ratio.

I want it all, I want it all and I want it now!

Here's one I made earlier and yes the shape is damn near impossible.

“Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small parts”-- Henry Ford

I admit it, beneath the suave, urbane façade I present to the world, I'm a bit of a geek. Probably a lot of other things as well, but certainly a geek about certain things. I love culinary technology, I love sci-fi, I think games are what computers are made for and I when I want a gadget I want it now.

the dark side of marketing and analytics

too perfect for words..

“Data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.” Neuromancer: William Gibson

As I’ve mentioned before, once you get enough data in one place you can throw processor cycles at and reach some interesting conclusions pretty fast. What’s stopped us from doing this in the past was two simple factors, not enough accessible data and the price of processor cycles.

Twit, tweet and edgy marketing

I’m enjoying the cautionary tale of the latest ham fisted twitter marketing campaign as reported by the Telegraph here: Twitter users angered by Rio Ferdinand's Snickers 'adverts'. I’ve always found it amusing how quickly common sense goes out of the window for marketers and celebrities when that locus of time and money gets tight enough.

cake, process and efficiency

are you sure this is the expenses process?

There is a creative process I go through to write each day. It might not look like a process, involving numerous cups of tea, bottles of diet coke, the odd cream bun and the occasional cake, but it’s a process trust me on that.