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See previous post or the dbuc09 site for background!

Digital Britain Unconferences - Final report

Quıcĸsıɩⅴεʀ (normally written Quicksilver) is the big find. The simplest way of using it is as an application launcher, but it can do a lot more than that. Install all the plug-ins and it essentially becomes a way of performing actions in any programme. For example, type a piece of text and link it into an email. Search for a contact. Tweet. You can even send command line pronts with it. The main limit seems to be your imagination. Admittedly, it takes a little effort to get set up, but that effort is rewarded in spades.

There’s a great video of Quicksilver’s creator (mysteriously named A1c0r) here , talking to Google about the philosophy and workings of the programme (via Merlin Mann).

Here’s a good guide to some of the things you can do with it.

Lastly here’s a new project from the same guy, now working at Google (I suspect he got the job just after the talk linked above. They clearly see the strategic benefits of ubiquitous, easy seamless desktop/ web search). (Via Rory Cellan-Jones).

Lastly, in order to meet my pledge to keep my inbox empty through 2009, I needed a tool to help me file emails in volume. Mail act on may be just that tool. Install and set up a couple of rules, and you’re away. (I will pay for it at the end of the trial if I don’t work out how to do the same in QS!). Essential for my emerging GTD regime.

I’m sitting in Spitalfields drinking coffee and getting used to writing on the iPhone’s touch interface. I’m keeping it short as there’s no copy and paste, and there’s little that’s not been written already about this particular toy, sorry, piece of high consumer technology.

Suffice to say I’m loving the cocktail of connectivity and syncronisation, ease of use and rich media experience. I like the way it has got software developers excited and brought a unity to the mobile platform which has been sadly lacking in all my previous smart phones.

It is not without its flaws – again, well documented elsewhere, but perhaps most significantly the charge that it is a closed and tethered device that could threaten creativity and/ or go towards creating a new Market monopoly. But I sincerely hope that it acts as a catalyst to other makers of mobile devices creating truly usable interface. The iPhone has moved the goalposts, now it just needs worthy opponents on the field.

On a more personal note, this is actually my first iPod and I haven’t enjoyed listening to music so much since I stopped buying vinyl. I think this is because it brings a sense of intimacy with the record back into the experience, where other players have made a music collection feel like a set of data files – still possible to enjoy as music, but despite the interface rather than because of it.

I’m currently watching a simulcast of the England football friendly against the USA: John Terry has scored, and despite the low resolution which makes it look a little like a football sim game, I’m enjoying the experience. In fact, I’m really pleased for him after a painful final against Manchester United!

Let me be clear; I pay the license fee with pride as I have come to greatly value the BBC’s contribution to society (and they commission some of our films), but the convenience and portability of an app like this make it much easier to keep in touch with the key programmes currently showing. I’ve been using the BBC’s iPlayer a lot since its launch on Christmas day 2007, and that is great for catching up, but Zattoo just might put some of the live and shared experience back into telly for me, and particularly as my USB card seems to have ceased working. This works, and well.

It is said that the business model is somewhat unstable, as essentially Zattoo is rebroadcasting channel’s output over IP; they may not get away with it for long – or may have to charge subscriptions in order to make financial arrangements with the broadcasters. The commercials, the idents are also streamed, and the application doesn’t facilitate downloading or time shifting, so you’d have to ask, apart from a loss of control, what’s for the broadcasters not to like?

Tags: Zattoo, Football, Simulcast, Application

As the lights came up, what seemed to be a single person with two heads was revealed, lying, in the centre of the stage. Slowly the figure shifted about, and the two performers comprising it moved themselves around each other in incredible intimacy and understanding, like living clay being moulded. This was the beginning of an epic, uninterrupted hour long and hugely energetic piece which very beautifully and humanely described the cycle of relationships; from an initial touch of magic (the balloons) through a honeymoon period (inseparability), and later stages of strife, deeper understanding – to the very end of human lives.

It was intensely moving to see these two performers and choreographers, Joanne Fong and Robin himself, mine their personal experience for the benefit of the audience in such a visceral, accomplished and, above all, inventive way. Woman and Man were represented here in their strength and weakness, vitality and insecurity, against one of the great human narratives. This was dance assimilating theatre, using set, props, music and live sound, text, lyrics, video, and voice to great effect, entwining physical metaphors in a multimedia collaboration which went beyond my previous experience of the potential of the medium of dance. This was Dance as Opera, an immersive and complete work which moved me deeply.

Had I spoken for longer with the director, I would love to have asked if he had a position on the potential for humans to know each other or to love. To my mind, the latter half of the piece portrayed a vision of a compromised domesticity, in which the protagonists fail to move beyond their fractious problems into true, mature relationship; where individuality is nurtured and where human weakness can be acknowledged and accepted – but not allowed to define togetherness as somehow alienated.

Did you see the piece? What did you make of it? And which were your favorite moments?

Photo courtesy of AdelaideAsleep

Tags: Dance, Dingemans, Fong, Contemporary