Category: Articles

Interesting North

Saturday the 13th of November was a date I had been looking forward to for quite some time. This day saw the culmination of a lot of hard work by Tim Duckett, Greg Povey and a band of merry helpers that I was lucky enough to be one of. The hard work was to set up a conference in Sheffield based on the Interesting conference run in London. Interesting has been run since 2007 by the post digital god Russell Davies. Tim Duckett, an Interesting veteran, had the idea of transporting the concept to Sheffield and I suspect he did not really know how much work that idea would entail. Numerous planning meetings were held in local public houses and Chinese restaurants. Following these planning sessions lots of work was undertaken to get to this day. Saturday the 13th of November was the day Interesting North opened its doors to the lovely ticket buying audience.

Cutlers Hall

The team had an early start with the majority of us arriving at 8am to set up the grand venue that we had chosen, Cutlers Hall.  When I got there things were well underway with the AV all set up and the only thing for me to do was help with hanging some bunting and then get ready for registrations.  I never knew how much hard work signing 250 people into an event was but let me tell you it was difficult, difficult, lemon difficult.  Thankfully the rest of the day was being run by Tim and Greg with an efficient air so the good folk that did show up were not to be disappointed.

The plan was 20 talks, 2 coffee breaks and lunch all in just 7 hours. Ambitious? Foolish? Either way it represented great value for money for just twenty English pounds no matter what happened.

As much as  would love to write about all 20 speakers I lack both the energy and skill required to do so.  Instead here are a handful of my favourites.

The first talk I had earmarked as must see, was by Stefanie Posavec. I first became aware of Stefanie’s work a few years ago when I came across her lovely visualisations of On The Road by Jack Kerouac. Her talk for Interesting North was on Baseball Scoring. Stefanie bravely asserted that Baseball was better then Cricket (she is of course wrong) but did recover by telling us that an English man made Baseball the sport it is today by introducing peanuts and beer. Stefanie explained the intricacies, differences and notations used in Baseball scoring.  It was clear that she was passionate and emotionally linked to Baseball scoring as she admitted that she would only score the game in the same way her father does.

All round nice chap and black pudding fan, James Boardwell, asked ‘As we peddle more how might cities change’.  Following a recent cycling accident where James was hit by a taxi and unsurprisingly came out worse. James wondered if the city could be made softer to benefit the cyclist rather than the car driver. He showed a fantastic automated bicycle parking machine from China, some amazing stunt cycling that made the most of how our cities were already laid out and he also got a little over excited on stage over bike porn.

Peddle Peddler

James Wallis deserves a special mention for the funniest talk/list of the day with his fantastically titled session called ‘Works of Fiction with Really Stupid Titles Involving the National Socialist Government of Germany 1933-1945’ or to put it another way books with Nazi in the title. As someone who works for a bank my favourite was ‘Gnome: A young Swiss banker deals with the Nazis, He remains ambivalent’

Frankie Roberto had the tricky task of enlivening the crowd post lunch but he took it in his stride with a passionate talk about the joys of Lego. As well as showing a photo of his fantastically organised Lego collection (think lots of well labelled tupperwares) Frankie also covered the issues that the passionate community of AFOLs (Adult Fans Of Lego) spend a lot of time discussing such as the colour tone differences of new grey bricks, dodgy product tie ins e.g. Shell and the tricky issue of minifig skin colour.

Best game of the day was designed by Oli Shaw. Oli spent a year studying the behaviours of people who fall asleep on public transport.  Oli has built up a splendid collection of photos of these sleepers. He told of, and showed, the innovative pillow usage, considerations of how to deal with your bags (hold on tight or be more nonchalant) and the contagious nature of the sleeper. As his studies progressed he began to add game mechanics to these photos assigning points for sleepers e.g. 1pts for a sleeper, 2pts for a unique sleeping position, 3pts for use of a real pillow and 10pts for capturing someone mid yawn.

As the sun set and the grand room began to darken the stage was perfectly set for Marcus Brown a.k.a. The Kaiser a.k.a. Jack The Twitter a.k.a. Sacrum.  Mr Brown told a tale of how he had lost 12 days, ended up in a tent camping in a field even though he hates camping and does not own a tent.  Following this he checked himself into a mental institution. The most engrossing and affecting talk of the day.

Marcus Brown

Last speaker of the day was Toby Barnes, MD of Mudlark. Toby is good friends with Greg but the fact he was on last and that it was at least an hour later than he was originally planned to go on meant that as he was being wired for sound he had some harsh and very amusing words for Greg which I can’t repeat here but that made me laugh a lot. A theme which continued through his talk.  Toby told us of his love for the future with a special mention of modernist architecture. As a child growing up in in Portsmouth he would love to visit the, now sadly derelict, Tricorn shopping centre.  The fact this futuristic concrete vision has now fell into disrepair highlights how we no longer have the desire to build and invent the future we were promised in the design, science fiction and future gazing of the past.

Toby was also concerned that the so called good guys in popular works of fiction such as James Bond and Star Wars were always blowing up really cool architecture e.g. Blofelds Volcano Lair and The Death Star. His other concern was that we have all these cool futuristic things today e.g. iPhones, and that we take them for granted. A point which he made by referencing Frank Chimero’s post ‘There is a horse in the Apple store’ which looks at how we take the extraordinary for granted.  My poor usage of the English language really does not do his talk justice and hopefully the video of the talk will be online soon.

Once Toby had delivered his excellent yet depressing talk (I want the future we were promised as well) it was time for Tim to wrap up and get the rapturous applause his tireless work deserved.  After that it was off to the pub for a well deserved pint or six and to finally get the chance to chat with the audience, speakers and fellow organisers.

I would like to add that it was an honour to be involved (although my contribution was minuscule) and I have to take my hat off to Tim for pulling this together.  A truly amazing feat and I am so glad the day went as well as it did as he truly deserved it. Also a special mention for Greg who worked his own special blend of magic to make the event what it was all the while maintaining his dry caustic wit.

You can find out lots more about what went on at the Lanyrd page where we will collate all write ups, photos, videos and anything else we can post online. I have taken a few average quality photos and for some much better photos I strongly encourage you to check out Dan Sumption’s images of the day.

November 15, 2010 1 Comment

Hunch Cultivation Mechanisms

Cultivation MechanismI recently watched Steven Johnson’s TED talk on where good ideas come from. Steven talks about how the coffee houses in England in the 1600s were fertile breeding grounds for good ideas.  The smart and wise would meet to discuss the latest scientific theories or the political issues of the day and provide solutions to the worlds great problems. He jokes how innovation increased once ideas were discussed over stimulants rather than the previously heavily used depressants i.e. Gin, and while I don’t agree with this fully, I hate coffee, I can see his point.

Steven says that we need these kind of environments for ideas to grow and flourish and to quote another recent TED speaker, Matt Ridley, have sex. Have sex? Yes we want ideas to flirt, fornicate and reproduce. Organisations could do with some modern day coffee house equivalents or better yet idea nightclubs where cheap and easy ideas go to dance and look for lust (get your coat you hot idea you’ve pulled).  Sure there will be a few morning after pills and a few trips to the GUM clinic but hopefully a few meaningful connections will be made as well.

Inside organisations these environments for stimulant fuelled idea discussions are few and far between. Sure they have canteens and maybe some other informal meeting spaces but the chances of getting the right people together in these spaces are slim.  This is due to the usual reasons such as people are busy and the fact that in large organisations they work in vastly different geographic locations.  The relatively new enterprise 2.0 collaboration tools are still in their infancy so online hunch cultivating fields are not yet tilled.  Maybe we need some more interesting analogue solutions, how about dry wipe boards on the back of toilet doors, the perfect space to think.

Outside the office environment it is much easier to connect ideas, to search out people to validate your hunch, as the big wide world more than likely contains people that think like you, where as the average sized company may not.  The collaboration tools are also much more mature externally. Twitter, GitHub, Slideshare etc. allow you to sow those hunches and see if they germinate (metaphor being overworked like an arid patch of land).

For all the external environments benefits, for those that work in certain industries e.g. banks, the discussion of ideas outside the factory walls can have a disastrous effect on a persons career. Whether loose lipped individuals let innovative ideas slip in a real world coffee house or virtual coffee houses such as Twitter they are certainly skating on thin ice.  Does this lack of ability to cultivate externally hamper the growth of these hunches?

How about some physical Hunch Cultivation Mechanisms? All these social collaboration tools are all well and good but why has the world not delivered us something that really can cultivate hunches? I am thinking something along the lines of everlasting gobstopper machine in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. Instead of the machine spitting out gobstoppers it actually takes in your hunches (not sure how, may involve the transfer of bodily fluids) and spits (maybe that is the bodily fluid transfer method)  out perfectly formed and delicious products/services/things of beauty.

Maybe it is more like The Matrix where a cable is plugged directly into your brain, or better yet your belly button as we all know the hunch is a gut feeling. Your hunch is transferred into the digital realm where it can instantly be filtered and matched against the millions of other hunches. The computed and digitally generated idea can then be faithfully reproduced in The Matrix complete with green hue to give it that Wachowski feel.

Not really sure where this is going so I better wrap up.  The key hunch cultivation mechanism is a human being and the one who had the hunch in the first place but they do need tools to help them cultivate the hunch. I need a stiff drink to help me think about all this and not one made from ground coffee beans and hot water.

You can buy Steven’s book, Where Good Ideas Come From, and I have just taken delivery of it so I am hoping he has the answers to my questions above.

November 11, 2010 Add Comment

Socialising Expenditure

I have a theory that people would rather publicly discuss their intimate sexual liaisons than their finances.  This is probably due to the fact their sexual antics are less embarrassing than their dirty financial secrets.  For this reason I am very interested to see how socialised transaction services like Blippy and Swipely fare.  These services give their users the privilege of publishing their expenditures on credit cards and at specific retailers such as iTunes and Amazon.

Now I personally think this is a great idea. As someone who is a huge fan of allowing data to be published, subscribed to and repurposed, the thought of a datafeed of my purchases is a fascinating one.  But I also fail to see the point of these services existence, why do I need another social network just to publish what I have bought and talk about it? or am I missing the point? Are they just a layer that then posts the details out to my social networks of choice to share with my existing social graphs? Or do they add extra value? Either way there are issues.  Firstly, I am very unlikely to to join a new social network just around buying stuff. Secondly, I would certainly want control over the types of things posted to my existing networks.  Spamming my tweetstream with all my credit card purchases is unlikely to win me many fans (although I don’t have many now so it might not be an issue). Blippy does give you full manual control of what gets posted which is a big plus.

And my final, and key, issue with these services is that surely they can be replaced very easily by the retailers and the card companies? iTunes used Facebook connect in conjunction with its 12 days of Xmas Promotion and surely they will soon kiss and make up and join forces on Ping (which presents a real threat to these services). It does not take a great leap of imagination to see them publish my iTunes purchases to Facebook in the same way and cutting out the need for Blippy or Swipely.  Amazon for example could also make the purchases I share on my network, affiliate links for me so I earn some money thus giving me greater incentives to share.

The issue of sharing data outwards is the same with the banks/cards providers, in theory it should be easy to set preferences to enable me to share my purchases from specific retailers with specific social networks or to just implement a simple share button so it can be done manually.   But getting an API/feed of account transactions is something most banks do not offer at this moment in time (something I have mentioned previously…and will no doubt harp on about again and again).

The other problems these services have is peoples perception of sharing this kind of data. To those that say they will never share this data I say you may not but plenty will, also people already share this data today they just don’t do it via retailers, banks or services like Blippy. They tweet ‘Just bought…‘ or some variant of that sentiment. Also lots of people are using Blippy, sharing around $500,000 of purchases a day.

I think we will see lots more of this financial sharing in the future we already have purchases, we also have savings goals from SmartyPig. How long before we see Mortgage goals (I only have 10 years left to pay off).  My stock portfolio just grew by 0.25%. My Kiva microloan just enabled someone to start a new life. Aden unlocked the ‘I just blew my overdraft’ badge.

I think these kinds of shared items are inevitable and they are just more pieces of the database of intentions, as detailed by John Batelle. The use case for all these shared items is still not fully understood and at the moment they are little more than ‘look at me’ or the equivalent of broadcast marketing. That being said they point to wider trends and I believe in the future that those that share the most will benefit the most. On the other hand we all know that those people who overshare and fill their Twitter feeds with more noise than signal from automated services are quickly unfollowed.  Are we getting to the point where we need dual twitter feeds? One designed for automated outputs that can be picked up by other automated processes? This might work well for all those tweeting devices we will have when the internet of things takes off.

I am watching this space with great interest. I don’t think it will be long before the sharing of financial goals, activities and interests is commonplace.  When that happens it is also inevitable that sexual and financial taboos will meet head on and we will see people share how much they spent at Coco de Mer, proudly on their Facebook pages and Tweet streams.

October 20, 2010 Add Comment

Internet Identity Workshop – Europe

I recently attended the Internet Identity Workshop. An event organised by members of the Identity Commons, which bring together decentralised identity evangelists hence their creation of these sessions in a number of locations around the world.  My knowledge of this subject is limited at best but I am very interested in learning more because I agree wholeheartedly with the principles and desires of this group. It is worth noting I was a little apprehensive about attending this conference due to my previously mentioned lack of knowledge, which lead to a bit of late night revision prior to attendance.

The day began with me trying to find my way to the venue (Macmillan Hall in the University of London) from my hotel (the Radisson Grafton). Even though it was only a mile from the hotel and I was equipped with a GPS enabled iPhone it still took a lot of wandering around the University College of London (the college bit makes a big difference as  it is the wrong location) before I found where I as meant to be. Once I finally found the University of London and Macmillan Hall I registered, gathered my credentials and headed in to the venue. The room for the event was marble clad with high ceilings.  The room was dotted with carpeted panels to try and dampen sound reflections (they failed). The chairs were laid out in two concentric circles. I shuffled in, grabbed a drink, found a seat in the outer ring and opened my laptop. It is also worth noting I am awful at networking. I find it very difficult for some reason, to wander up to strangers, at an event that you have both paid money to attend so clearly have common ground to talk about, and introduce myself. Also the early arrivals at the conference were all middle aged males who looked like they spent a lot of time in front of computers. I realised I needn’t have worried about fitting in.

Things finally kicked off at 9.30 with organisers and facilitators for the day, Kaliya Hamlin (also known aptly as Identity Woman) and Heidi Nobantu Saul. Kaliya explained the reasons behind this meeting of minds (essentially make online identity better) and the format of the day, unconference. Heidi ran through the logistics of the day including the rules and expectations of the day e.g. If you are not learning or contributing feel free to fly between sessions like a butterfly and if someone mentions a TLA (three letter acronym) or something you don’t understand pause and ask them to explain.

The Rules...

There was then a series of intros where everyone in the room stood up and said a few sentences about themselves (always nerve wracking). Then came the session creation. A4 paper, coloured pens and anyone who wanted to create a session got writing. Upon completion we had 31 sessions covering all manner of ID related geekiness. Tech protocols/concepts such as WebID & DNSSSEC, privacy levels, tiered ID providers, European equivalents to NSTIC and finally ending up with digital death. Session slots were chosen, similar topics were merged and my own personal agenda became pretty evident.

Session 1 – Mydex Personal Datastore Announcement. One of the recurring themes of the day was around personal data stores. These are, in the words of Mydex.

‘Personal Data Stores are designed to restore to individuals control over the management and sharing of their personal data online.’

A key piece in the move to Vendor Relationship Management (VRM), Personal Datastores (PDS) provide a framework for users to store, manage and utilise their data rather than the multitude of companies that do so today.  Mydex announced their pilot PDS. They have signed up a number of relying parties including councils (Croydon and Brent were mentioned), the DWP, Yougov etc. For a much richer description then why not listen to William Heath from Mydex tell you more about it. Very interesting looking service and I managed to have a few chats with the creators of it and they happened to mention that they had interest from a few banks. I wonder if Sheffield Council will be interested?

Session 2 – WEBID & DNSSEC. Thankfully two of the five sessions for this time slot got merged into one. Even more thankfully they were the ones I wanted to attend (in hindsight I may have been wrong).  First up was Henry Story to talk about WebID (formerly known as the less snappy FOAF & SSL).  Henry whizzed through a set of slides, that at normal pace I might have understood a bit more clearly.  The basic principles (I think) behind WEBID are the concept of you have a specific URI for your ID which can be checked as part of the logon to services.  The logon process is dealt with during the actual web page request using existing protocols HTTP and TLS.  The other element involves the authorising site to request a WEBID certificate from the user. This very manual step in the demo kind of killed things for me and until we have active agents in browsers it will be unusable for most users.  I really can see the potential in this tech (discoverability, federated nature of the ID) and I really liked the mention of using this built into crypto USB sticks for physical device logons.  But work is required to make idiots like me understand and therefore use it.

I had struggled a bit with the first half of the session the second half just killed me. DNSSEC is, according to the idle mans research source ‘It is a set of extensions to DNS which provide to DNS clients (resolvers) origin authentication of DNS data, authenticated denial of existence, and data integrity, but not availability or confidentiality.’ I can see how this could help with some of the request steps of WEBID.  Unfortunately  the topic was presented with no slides or pretty pictures and such a complex and dry subject left me reaching for my laptop to see what else was going on.

Lunch = Chicken Massaman curry and a chat with some nice people from Vodafone R&D project, One Social Web. More on that in Session 4…

Session 3  – Project Nori Demonstration. Project Nori is an open source, open standards compliant personal data store. This gives users the ability to create their own datastores on their own servers.  This hands control of your data back to you….assuming you are smart enough to set up your own datastore. Markus Sabadello, one of the creators of Nori, gave two demos of the technology.  The first showing its potential as a datastore and how you would interact with services online.  He used the example of ordering a Pizza.  No need to fill out your address details when ordering online you click a button it goes to your PDS and returns the requested fields. I asked if this should be two way i.e. should I store my order history with the company on my PDS. In future when I interact with them I can show them what I have bought in the past and they could market to me accordingly (free garlic bread for you as you eat here every week).  The current implementation does not deal with two way data passing but will do in the future.  This conversation thread lead to a long discussion on data schemas required to store all the potential data (Mmm Pizza Data Schema) which it was widely agreed would require some standard schemas to be created.

The second demo showed Nori operating as a node in a federated social network.  The example showed how it could be set up to send, receive and store messages as part of a Status.net (open source microblogging platform) federated install. Very cool geeky stuff.  You can see both demos in action on the Project Nori site

Session 4 – One Social Web & W3C Social Web Proposal. Another 2 for 1 session comprising a demo of the Vodafone One Social Web (OSW) project and a discussion around the W3C proposals for the federated social web. The One Social Web project is looking to build a truly federated social network built on open standards (XMPP, Activitystreams, vCard etc.) and aiming to destroy the walled gardens of existing social networks.  Daniel Applequist demonstrated the system by sending messages between multiple users who have their own OSW instances but on completely different servers. The demo while impressive to a geek like me also showed some of the flaws in this decentralised method in that one of the users Daniel tried to talk with could not receive a message because his server was down. Having said that, if it was a centralised system then had the one server been down no one could use the system.  What all this means is that if you have friends on one social network they are no different to friends on another social network. You can talk to them in the same way, share things with them in the same way. The analogy given was the telephone lets you call anyone. Facebook users can’t share a tagged photo with Myspace users. The code is available now on Github if you care to run up your own instance of OSW.

It is the federated concepts behind OSW that are driving the thinking behind the W3C proposal. Daniel, in conjunction with others, has produced a report on the direction of the federated social web
‘…the Social Web should allow people to create networks of relationships across the entire Web, while giving people the ability to control their own privacy and data.’

Harry Halpin (the editor of the report and spit double of Jason Lee, see photo below)  made a passionate plea for these open and federated technologies to shape the way existing social networks operate.  As well as the report they have also created the first Social Web Acid Test (SWAT0).  The test has just six seemingly simple steps:

1. With his phone, Dave takes a photo of Tantek and uploads it using a service
2. Dave tags the photo with Tantek
3. Tantek gets a notification on another service that he’s been tagged in a photo
4. Evan, who is subscribed to Dave, sees the photo on yet another service
5. Evan comments on the photo
6. David and Tantek receive notifications that Evan has commented on the photo

By about step 3 or 4 you would kill any of the main social services in play today. Elements of the technologies mentioned in the report are in play for some social networks e.g. Facebook utilise Activitystreams but true interoperability is a long way off.  The purpose of the report is to try and get the W3C to standardise these building blocks in the same way that they have with things like Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).  Harry mentioned that previous attempts by the W3C to build standards for this had been poor e.g. POWDER but he hoped protocols that had been built by others could prove more successful.  For anyone interested in the future of the social web I highly recommend reading the report.

Harry on the Left, Jason on the right...I think

Session 5 – Personal Data Ecosystem. The last session of the day and it was back to a topic I knew little about before today, Personal DataStores, but by the end of it I knew a little bit more. Lead by conference organiser, Kaliya, it was more discussion based than the previous sessions I had attended which were more presentation based.  The discussion revolved around the concept of the PDS and whether they can become a viable and well used device coupled with sustainable business models.  Kaliya picked on me first asking how could banks use this type of technology? My personal opinion is that while banks will certainly be a major contributor to these data stores in the future today the regulatory issues around holding and transferring banking data would make early involvement very complex.  David Alexander of Mydex explained some of the business models and benefits they are using to sell their system. Primarily the transfer of data storage and retrieval costs to the customer (or 3rd party data store handler) represented major savings costs for organisations. For banks I am pretty sure they would never be able to simply hand over all data to their customers and not store any for themselves so the savings would not be there.  But I can certainly see lots of uses from a customer point of view.

I think the only way these datastores will take off is if major retailers such as Amazon get behind them. They must deliver new value to the users and they must present a more usable experience that what exists today i.e. remove incessant registration form filling. Please read Kaliya’s thoughts on Personal Data Stores and also keep an eye on the Personal Data Ecosystem site for more developments in this interesting space.

In conclusion, the day really exceeded my expectations, my initial trepidation at being completely out of my depth was misplaced as it turns out I know just enough about this subject to wing it. It was also not an issue because everyone there was very friendly and always willing to explain in more detail anything that was not clear.  Only downside would be the room, as the marble walls (even with tasteful carpeted panels) and high ceilings meant that it was very noisy and sometimes difficult to follow conversations in your own session.  I enjoyed the day and learnt a hell of a lot that I will have to spend quite some time trying to shuffle round in my head into something I can take forward. You could say I need a personal Internet identity workshop knowledge data store….Identity based humour is clearly the future.

October 13, 2010 Add Comment

A badge with meaning

Badge collector extraordinaireA few weeks ago I attended Playful, a day of cross disciplinary frolicking, or in other words a great day of talks about gaming.  The conference began with host and organiser Toby Barnes lamenting that game mechanics (with a special mention for virtual badges) were now rife and that the word playful was becoming dirty and soiled by the application of mechanics to just about every form of interaction.  To hammer home the point that playfulness had reached epidemic levels and how everything was becoming playful Toby stated ‘No one wants a playful bank’. As a bank employee this was a great start to the day…but I digress, back to badge proliferation. My favourite presentation of the day was by Sebastian Deterding whose talk, entitled Pawned, gave a dizzying amount of badge collection examples. From geolocation social networks, such as Foursquare, to less obvious services such as Google’s Power Meter where you can earn virtual badges for good behaviour with your electricity usage.

I don’t really want to go into the argument on whether badge collecting mechanics work, whether they are overused. What I am more interested in is the value of these badges/achievements outside of the systems they were designed/earned within.

The system I actively collect badges, or achievements as they are better known, in most often is Xbox Live.  I currently have 614 Xbox achievements collected via 59 games earning me a Microsoft Gamerscore of 11,699 over a period of about 14 months.  These badges can affect the way I play games.  There will be badges on the critical path of completing the game i.e. as you progress you earn. Some of these achievements can only be earned via very specific and sometimes obscure behaviour and a large number of achievements require you to replay the game once complete. I have collected a all kinds of achievements just for the reward of a badge and a handful of points. So the mechanics of collection certainly affect the way I play these games. But what does this mean outside the system of Xbox Live? How does the fact I earned 31 out of 50 achievements on Lego Indiana Jones affect my life outside of Xbox live land?

I can broadcast the fact I have earned these badges on my social networks of choice (I love posting my achievements to Facebook via Raptr as it annoys lots of my friends) but this is ultimately meaningless with limited social value over and above ‘Ooh Aden plays Xbox and he is average at Lego Indiana Jones’.  The obvious value could be around marketing/shopping e.g. If I share my Xbox live achievements with Amazon might they suggest games I would like. How about offering me a discount on Lego Indiana Jones 2 if I unlock the ‘I step on fortune cookie’ achievement in the first game? This marketing focus might drive the change required to link achievements with external systems but it feels a bit basic and does everything have to be about buying more shit?

To enable this sharing of badges between systems it would require them to form part of a federated ID. This decentralised data store would hold these badges/achievements against a person rather than being hidden away in numerous systems.  Could badges be held in a similar way to something like Attention Profile Markup Language (APML) which captures data about your browsing habits or bookmarks tags to work out what your interests are. Badges are another form of this but show the kind of games you play, the kind of tasks you complete and the kind of things required to earn those badges. Do we need Achievement Earning Markup Language or Badge Collection Markup Language to allow for this capture? Would it be possible to codify how a badge was earned in a way that could be shared and analysed in a meaningful way? If this was possible then the badge could be taken out of a million systems and become a more meaningful element of your online profile. I am still not sure of its full potential but I am sure there must be value in all these hours spent earning these achievements and what they say about you as a person.

It is getting late and I am running out of steam so this post is more questions than answers but it is out of my head now. ‘Dull blogpost about badges’ badge successfully unlocked.

The photo used features Travis Cochran the first boy scout in America to earn every merit badge.  I found the photo on Flickr posted by Dennis Crowley, founder of  prominent badge merchants Foursquare.

October 6, 2010 11 Comments

The problem with PFMs

Another painful scrapeI will state up front I am a massive fan of the online personal financial management (PFM) sites such as Mint and the now sadly defunct Wesabe.  They have shown how money should be viewed and managed online and have provided a blue print as to how Internet banking should look.  But these sites have a big  problem. They are very difficult for the user to effectively operate because getting your banking data out of your bank and into these services is not that straight forward.

The PFMs all offer a manual upload option, which is currently the most readily available (from banks), safest yet most cumbersome way to interact with them as you have to remember each month/week/day to upload the new set of data. These sites also offer lots of clever ways to logon to your internet banking while you are not there.  This involves giving over your logon details (a classic case of the password anti-pattern) and letting the application scrape your data and return it to the service.  For some services that password details cannot easily be handed over the service can be taught how to log on so it can record scripts and then automate this process. This is not only very unsafe, not too dissimilar to handing over your cash card and PIN number to a stranger, it also probably puts you in breach of your accounts terms and conditions. If any losses occur because of a breach by the PFM you may be liable.  This is not an ideal situation for all concerned.

These services also allow subscription to automatic feeds of the data e.g. XML formatted data. This is a much better way for these sites to operate but unfortunately banks that provide these feeds are few and far between, especially here in the UK.  One of the few banks that had this functionality up until recently was Nationwide.  They switched off this facility recently as it was designed primarily to service MS Money users and as Microsoft have ceased to make that product it was deemed an unnecessary (and costly?) function to keep running.  A few loyal customers of his service who were using the feed for online PFMs like Wesabe rather than MS Money were none too happy and have started a little campaign to get it reinstated.  There are users wanting these services now but are stuck with manual or risky solutions. If only we had standard Bank datafeeds or APIs to allow these automatic links to work. I for one would be willing to pay for that functionality.

So why don’t banks offer this functionality? My personal opinion is it is either the fear of security breaches, not on their radar, or if it is they don’t want to lose control.  The security aspect is probably the most common reason.  What I do hope it is not the last reason.  I am sure every bank would love to know the spending and saving details of any of their customers that have accounts at rival organisations but they maybe unwilling to share their own data.  Data is very valuable, especially such private data as a persons spending habits and bank product holding.  But the world is changing and customers want more from their online banking which is why sites like Mint are successful.  Would these services become too powerful if all the banks implemented a standard open data feed. Letting customers use 3rd party services while the banks updated their own online banking sites to match the functionality already on offer elsewhere.  Would customers ever come back?

A recent survey by Fiserv showed that in the US, customers preferred the safety of PFM tools provided by their banks rather than handing over logon details to third parties.  If safer ways of data sharing existed would this still be the case? Or would people still prefer to do their money management with their bank? I would certainly feel safer using a banks platform and I am pretty sure open up data feeds would not see a mass exodus by customers away from their banks online banking service.

How might this mythical data feed look? What if all the banks, card companies and PFMs agreed on a standard feed format (hopefully compatible with the existing ones such as OFX) and technologies to allow secure access to financial data without breaching the password anti-pattern. For example  why not use the widely accepted and used open standard OAuth?

I can imagine how beneficial this would be to people but I can also see the benefits for the organisations themselves, the ones that allow their customers the most flexibility will earn their loyalty.  The flexibility of having access to this data would also benefit internal developments.  For customers It would allow them to be able to see a real picture of their entire wealth (or in my case lack of it) and be able to manage things better because they would have the complete picture, assuming all their financial products were lucky enough to have this data feed.

So how do we reach this dream land where all financial organisations have a universally agreed data format and method of sharing this with 3rd parties? Who will drive this change? Customers demanding it? Banks joining together to work in an open collaborative way to benefit them all? PFMs coming up with an elegant solution they all agree on and that partner banks can agree to? Will the sledgehammer of regulation be needed? Or will an innovative new player such as BankSimple change the game with their API, making everyone else want to follow? I really don’t know. What I do know is that I want this sooner rather than later so if anyone can make it happen please do.

October 6, 2010 Add Comment

What if (insert brandname here) ran a bank?

A different kind of bankIt is often mused ‘What if Google ran a bank?’ and this has been covered at length by journalist Jeff Jarvis in his book ‘What would Google do?‘ as well as by others such as Brett King.  The concept of a Google bank got me thinking what if a whole host of our favourite brands ran banks? What would they look like? What would they bring to the market? Would I bank with them?  Here are just a few that I have thought about.

The Big Mac Bank – McDonalds the biggest owner of potential bank branches in the world would be an interesting bank owner.  They are renowned for selling the exact same delicious and nutritious products the world over.  If you step into a Micky Ds in London you can get the same Big Mac that you would do if you stepped in to a Micky Ds in Rio De Janeiro.  Could they bring the same approach to banking? Drive thru loans? a truly global experience that is the same the world over?

The Just Do It Bank – The worlds biggest sportswear manufacturer could bring something a bit different to the banking arena. With their recent branching out into the gaming arena via Nike+ they could certainly link financial fitness with real world fitness. Just imagine the stars they could get to appear in their banking adverts? The Brazil football team alone could create such awareness of the bank in their home nation that the established banks in the market would be terrified.

The Bank of Jobs – The one that most people mention on a day to day basis, what if Apple ran a bank? I guess that millions of people would love to have bank designed by the God of black turtleneck sweaters and shiny objects of desire, Steve Jobs.  They enthuse ‘It would be great, just imagine how easy it would be to access? Imagine how stylish it would be? A banking genius bar would be amazing!’ What they don’t consider is how horribly locked down it would all be e.g. the bank can only be accessed via Apple products,  they would overcharge for their products and their customers would be horribly smug (Can you tell I have issues with Apple?)

The Bookstore Bank – Amazon are probably the greatest online retailer in the world.  They sell almost everything and have made scarcity a thing of the past.  What would the long tail of banking look like? Millions of financial products to suit every financial whim? Huge numbers of customer reviews ranking and rating each product? Couple that with one of the most advanced CRM systems in the world, ‘58% of customers who looked at his mortgage bought this one, they also considered these’ and you have a very interesting model for selling banking products…but would that make them a bank?

Facebank – So what if the worlds biggest social network, with its 500 million users, decided to start a global bank.  They have recently introduced a form of currency, Facebook Credits which gives them their own money.  If they could build an online banking service as easy to use and as addictive as the game Farmville (which currently has 81 million players on Facebook and is now using Facebook credits to allow you to buy virtual goods) then they really could become the biggest bank in the world. I personally think this one is the most realistic of all and I am not the only one.

The Supermarket Bank – I have already covered this using the most dominant supermarket in the UK, Tesco, as an example in an earlier post that you can find here.

The RyanBank – Chris Skinner recently wrote about what if RyanAir created a bank.  I think we can imagine what it would be like (Stag and Hen loan products/insurance spring to mind) but I will let you read Chris’ thoughts on how he thinks it would operate.

As social and open source technologies become increasingly prevalent in society it seems inevitable that some day soon a full banking suite of products could be created and given away for free meaning that anyone could run a bank.  There maybe a few pesky regulations to get around but their are ways and means around those, virtual currencies anyone?  So which brands would you like to see run banks? What unique selling points and services would they bring to the banking sector? What about the ones mentioned above how can you imagine them operating and would you bank with them?

The image used is from this post here

October 5, 2010 Add Comment

Tesco Bank – A Unique Opportunity

In 2010/2011the UK will see at least 3 new high street banks.  Metro Bank has already opened, Virgin Bank and most interestingly of all Tesco Bank should be along soon.  It is the Tesco bank that I am most looking forward to as I am fascinated by what they come to market with.  They really are in a very unique position to offer something completely new in the banking sector.  From an innovation point of view I crave new things especially ones that have the opportunity to move existing markets forward.  They have a very powerful quad play in their armory.  One..Tesco need no branches as they already all over the country. Two…they have one of the best loyalty schemes in the world (Tesco Clubcard), as well as being a great incentive to stay loyal to Tesco for groceries (and everything else they sell) it is also one of the great CRM data sources of our times.  Three…They already have some advanced online services e.g. online grocery shopping and physical delivery. They have also embraced open APIs so hopefully this will lead to a wonderful new online banking experience, Four…They sell mobile devices and they sell THAT mobile device, which not only gives them a great sale incentive (Like a free iPhone with your bank account Sir?) it should also focus their mind on really delivering on the mobile front.

Thinking into the future a little bit (lets very optimistically say January 2013) lets imagine a little Tesco Customer scenario.  Lets call this mythical Tesco customer Barbara.  First thing in the morning Barbara peruses her Tesco Bank account details on her Tesco freebie iPhone (Free when Barbara swapped her account, credit cards and mortgage to Tesco bank).  Barbara’s Tesco app has alerted her saying it is shopping day (based on when she usually does her shopping according to Clubcard) and that she is £75 inside her monthly shopping budget on this time last month.  Babs (we know her well enough by this point to abbreviate things) takes a look through her overall shopping totals for the month (lovely aggregation feature that one) and drills down into the detail of that shopping to see an aggregated view of the products she has bought that month (from Tesco of course).  As she looks through the lists of items she has bought she can also see how many clubcard points she has accrued from each item.  A lovely highlighted number in the corner shows new offers are available.  A quick press and Babs can access this weeks clubcard offers and 2 for 1s that her local store has on offer. It also highlights offers against her usual shopping purchases and how much she will save this week along with how many clubcard points she could make.  Babs transfers into the shopping section (or another app?) and updates her weekly shopping list with a few extra items including some of this weeks special offers and some replacement items for those out of stock in store (the app told her that as it knows Babs local store).  Babs marks the shopping list complete and the app pushes the shopping list over to her husband Geoff so he can collect the shopping on his way home from work (he works nearer and finishes earlier than Babs).

Geoff receives a push notification that the shopping list is ready.  As Geoff reaches the store he receives notification of some extra offers on in store targeted especially to him (some fine ales on 3 for 2 and a cracking offer on some Camembert).  Geoff scans the items in as he shops (the trolley has a lovely iPhone holder to make this easier) RFID tag details are picked up by the phone when Geoff holds the items next to the phone before they are placed in the trolley (the trolley is a series of reusable bags, that Geoff brought with him, held on hooks).  He gets a little notification when the list has been completed (including his beer and cheese purchases).  On his way Geoff sees a poster for a 32″ 3D Super HD TV for just £299 but the offer is out of stock at the moment so Geoff taps his phone against the poster and the item is added to his bill and will be delivered from Tesco Direct at a time slot of his convenience.  He chooses 18:40 on Thursday.

Geoff heads to the checkout where he walks straight through tapping the Tesco iPhone on a scanner, Geoff had previously selected the Pay via Tesco option which means the shopping to be paid for via the online authorisation Tesco have built, this interfaces directly to the Tesco bank account via the internet (therefore skipping those pesky charge inducing card networks).  Geoff waits patiently for a millisecond while the transaction is completed and his receipt is uploaded into his Tesco iPhone App (So he has a guarantee for his new Telly), all the purchase details are uploaded against his account online and his new clubcard points are also added to his loyalty offset mortgage (100 points equals £11 off the mortgage).  While this takes place the checkout area scans his trolley to ensure the contents match the list passed by the phone.   This transaction is complete and Geoff heads to the car to load up the already bagged shopping and head home to get the dinner on.  As he leaves the car park his fuel warning light comes on and this triggers an event on his phone to check the location and prices of the nearest fuel station.  Unsurprisingly Tesco is the cheapest because as a customer of theirs he gets 5p off a litre and 10 clubcard points per litre.

There you have one of my visions of the Tesco bank future.  Exciting from a banking/retailing/innovation point of view yet also a bit worrying from the point of view of smaller retailers.

October 5, 2010 2 Comments

Ladies in the stream

The 24th of March 2010 is Ada Lovelace day.  A celebration of women in technology and science named after the famous pioneering computer programmer (she wrote what are regarded as the first computer programs) Ada Lovelace.  You can find lots more about the Ada, the day and the woman who launched this all last year, Suw Charman-Anderson over here.   On the site you can also to pledge to write a post about your tech heroines on the 24th of March which is exactly what I am doing now.  Now I struggled to narrow it down to a single tech heroine so I thought I would take a look at my Twitter stream and focus on some of the brilliant women that educate, entertain and amaze me on a daily basis.  But let’s start with the one that started this all…

Suw Charman-Anderson – I first became aware of Suw at the Future Of Web Apps conference in 2008.  Suw was a late replacement for someone who had dropped out.  Suw stepped in and gave an exceptional talk on the curse of email, its impact on our productivity and how it is essentially a broken form of communication.  Suw began her talk and I was confused that no slides were showing, I even told the tech support that there was a problem with the projector only to be told Suw was talking without slides (how innovative and what an idiot I am).   The talk was exceptional and resonated strongly with me as someone who works in a large organisation the reliance on email is astonishing.   You can read all about that topic in Suw’s article on it in The Guardian.  Suw blogs over at http://charman-anderson.com/ with her husband Kevin and you can follow her on Twitter although a slight word of warning she does seem to spend a lot of time talking about her two kittens…but then every genius has their vices.

Tara Hunt – Tara, or as she is more widely known Miss Rogue, is a blogger, author, mother, karaoke addict etc. The reason Tara found her way into my stream was her work on Whuffie.  For those who don’t know Whuffie is a fictional currency created by Cory Doctorow in his book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.  The book is set in the not too distant future and cash has been replaced by a form of digital currency that is given (and taken away by others) based on you good/evil deeds.  Tara decided to write a book on this subject called The Whuffie Factor which tells the story of erm…Whuffie.  Instead of me trying (badly) to do justice to such a fine book why not here Tara herself tell you about it? So I highly recommend you check out Tara’s blog and join the 30,000+ people following her on Twitter for updates on Whuffie, tech and mainly Karaoke.

Kathy Sierra – Now this post is called ‘ladies in the stream’ and up until recently Kathy was one of the most inspirational voices in my stream.  Sadly Kathy has recently deleted her Twitter account and taken quite a few steps back from public life, which is a real shame.  The reasons for this stem from a series of death threats Kathy received back in 2007 and unsurprisingly sine then she has been a lot more cautious.  This is a great loss to the online world and highlights the need for protection from anonymous attackers and the creation of a safer environment for us all to express our thoughts openly.  Kathy provided some truly great insight and vision on a range of subjects but mainly around creating passionate users.  I urge you to check out her blog which thankfully still exists and I recommend you watch Kathy giving a great talk at FOWA in 2008 about growing and nurturing communities.  Hopefully we will see Kathy return to the stream one day soon.

Joanne Jacobs – I met Joanne, albeit briefly, at local BarCamp event Unsheffield.  Joanne was single handedly live blogging, video streaming and contributing to sessions without missing a step.  You could see that when ever she spoke there was a revered silence as yet another burst of smart and intelligent commentary was shared with the group.  I have been following Joanne’s work ever since.  Joanne recently gave a great talk on gaming at an event in Exeter called LikeMinds.  You can see the talk here and the slides used here.  Obviously you should also check out Joannes blog (including her great post on Ada Lovelace day entitled Blasting Myths About Women in Technology) and of course follow her on Twitter.

Victoria Richardson – The last two ladies I will mention in this post are a bit more personal as they are people who have helped me out.  First up Victoria who works for Proxama, a company specialising in mobile and contactless technologies and the use cases around them.  I am not sure how I came to follow Victoria on Twitter but I am glad it happened as she has been very helpful to me as I research the intriguing and complex world of Near Field Communications.  Victoria is always willing to answer questions and share any useful information she has to hand.  You can read Victoria’s thoughts on the world of contactless on the Simply In Touch blog.

Jen Goodison – and finally in my ladies in the stream list I have included a colleague (and friend I guess 😉 ) Jen is quite simply one of the smartest people I work with and knows more about databases, logical data models, indexes, SOA and lots more to do with the storage and retrieval of data than I think is healthy but she seems happy enough.  As well as trying to teach me about this confusing and (for me) impenetrable world of data she always finds time to review any of my written work and savagely (yet constructively) rips it to shreds with  a special focus on my poor use of the English language.  For this I am eternally grateful…although I am not sure many of the English lessons stuck e.g. look at this post.  You can follow Jen on Twitter and listen to her ramble about architecture and cricket mainly.

So their you have my list of ladies in tech for Ada Lovelace day.  All inspiring and thought provoking in their own ways.  All worthy of your attention.

If you are in Sheffield this evening you should check out the Ada Lovelace event happening at the Showroom and organised by some inspiring ladies of tech from my hometown.

March 24, 2010 1 Comment

links for 2010-03-09

March 9, 2010 Add Comment