.oO Tailwind

A while ago I suggested to some colleagues that we should revisit a bunch of failed .com ideas from circa 98-02 purely on the basis that many were good but we didn’t have the skills, technology or appetite for them.

‘1973: Sorry, Out of Gas‘ has been curated by Mirko Zardini for the CCA (Canadian Centre for Architecture) to study architectural innovation spurred on by the oil crisis in 1973 where prices ballooned triggering a bit of a fracas across the globe.

Many of the ideas were probably ahead of their time, but are now very relevant and downright sensible. Okay, some aren’t.

The ideas don’t just concern energy efficiency and the environment they concern societal ideas, models and lifestyle. The exhibition looks at Sun, Earth, Wind and Integrated Systems.

It’s an interesting idea, looking back to look forward, it makes me wonder how many great inventions, cures, thoughts, ideas etc have been lost because they weren’t incubated correctly.

Maybe we need a worldwide ‘idea bin’.

What great ideas have you forgotten about?

First seen by Barbd, Ex.plode.us allows you to search social spaces for people’s profiles and it draws them together.

You can run a search for Warren Hutchinson and Snowbadger (My alterego) and get different results.

This make it easier for people to ‘dig up’ the real me. Eeek.

I worry about advertising here.

I wonder what this does for the privacy, professional / social persona debate I mentioned in an earlier post.?

Here’s a list of me and my friends… It’s interesting that Snowbadger has more friends than Warren hutchinson.

Hmmm.

In the ever chaotic world of convergence one has to hold their hand up to Virgin Media and say ‘good effort’. All the competition seems to be struggling to put things in one place and under one offer.

A quick visit to each of the respective homepages illustrates this, they all seem to separate Phone, TV, Broadband and Fixed-Line (that’s if they provide all 4).

While BT, Orange, Talk Talk at all all struggle to convince their customers that they can now ‘do internet as well as mobile’, Virgin have popped their head above the parapet with a nice simple proposition:

“Choose choose 2 for £20, 3 for £30, 4 for £40 or a Very Impressive Package - simple!

And the savings you make are incredible”

The idea is that you have 4 elements that you choose from which drives the pricing:

1. T.V.
2. Broadband
3. Landline phone
4. Mobile phone

I have to say I like its simplicity, I like it being in one place and I love the idea of ‘Very Impressive Packages’.

The offers are simple, coherent, jargon free and above all competitive. I’m seeing ads for this all over London at the moment and I have to say 300 minutes mobile, 300 texts, TV, Broadband and fixed-line for £40 looks very good to me.

Well done Virgin, let’s hope that you can fix the NTL customer service issues.

Blogged with Flock

The advent of digital cameras into the mainstream has seen a behavioural change in the way in which people take, store and share photographs. A conversation with parents over the weekend at my daughters second birthday party confirmed what I already knew, in that people are taking more pictures than they did previously as its easy to do so with a digital camera.

Being able to easily shoot, check and delete encourages a less efficient behaviour when framing and taking shots. I still use my 35mm SLR and know for a fact that I take more time over my shots, speed, aperture etc.. I have to, because you only get one shot, or 36 per roll, but you know what I mean.

• Storage will become and issue
• Sharing is easier
• Future could see time and location factored into EXif Data to create smart albums in smart frames

But think about this; forget the european fridge mountain, we’ll have an image mountain as people continue to amass images. What are the storage solutions? Will this finally be the tipping point for network storage? Are the folks at Yahoo/Flickr already designing services that make it easier for people to add and manage their entire library?

What are your thoughts guys?

Since the atrocities of 7/7 here in London just over a year ago, there seem to be more and more cyclists on the road going into work. Further, the amount of folding bikes that you see crusing around London’s busy streets has gone through the roof.

BTW - this is my Dahon Speed Pro.

I’ve been riding from the mainline station to the office, which is just about 2 miles since I started, but I’m really pleased to see that some of the cycling initiatives that have been put in place have taken off, particularly the Boost offering which they ran at my office.

Even some of my less-than-fit friends/colleagues have gotten themselves a bike and are now riding into work, getting fitter and easing the strain on the trains/tube/buses.

Personally, I live too far outside London to ride all the way in, but just by riding a few miles each day, I feel like I’m doing my bit to ease the congestion on London’s terrible transportation system, the only problem is that I get made to feel like a lepper for taking a bike onto the train into London at rush hour.

Frankly the new Siemens Desiro trains weren’t designed with transporting cycles in mind. To this end, as there is only standing room only, unless you get on mega early, people get upset about a bike being there.

Why wasn’t this thought about, why don’t the new trains have space for transporting cycles at peak times? Why isn’t the transportation system integrated?

When Tony Blair and Mayor of London Ken Livingstone want people to ride to work, why didn’t they think about how to make it easy for people to bring cycles in or store them safely somewhere near the station?

This is dumb design.

And with an increasing amount of people making the switch - someone needs to be thinking about a solution.

So - if you get onto a crowded commuter and there is someone with a folding bike, don’t huff, puff and tut. Just think of that extra space on the tube, and while you are at it, think about buying one yourself.