Dr Laura James's writings

I went to my first Rewired State event last weekend; this time the theme was carbon and energy. It was a great weekend, with lots of ideas and a great range of projects at the end (which I'll blog later). Thanks to all the people and organisations who made it happen! I'd vaguely hoped there might be more electronics hackery there; but that would really require equipment and maybe a different kind of space ( Makespace , anyone?). There's also a question as to how much of a hardware hack event would need to be devoted to training, rather than doing. I had a lovely chat with Georgina from Tinker.it and perhaps we'll be able to do something more in this vein down the line... During the introductions, where we learnt about useful datasets and tools, I wondered whether we had quite the right blend of people in the room. Everyone seemed to have data, and be asking for others to help out with visualisations and other efforts to engage a broader audience, but there were...

I'm imagining a new job. We could call it the Personal Data Assistant, or "PDA".  For most people, their PDA would be a part time role, perhaps just needing a couple of hours a week. This would be a highly trusted role, just like a PA, but with a different set of specialist skills. The Personal Data Assistant would do all the tedious tasks which one ought to do around personal data - creating it, sharing it, securing it, archiving it, curating it. Sure, there are tools for some of these tasks, but none of them operate without manual intervention, and these tasks tend to be either tedious work which we avoid doing at all, or tricky things which could more quickly and effectively done by an expert. So, what would my PDA do?  He would archive and preserve my old emails and files, which I don't usually do very well. I, like Bill Thompson with his Zip disks , have old files on old disks which are running a serious risk of becoming unopenable and unpreservable; I think...

Overheard yesterday at Science Online - In the 1990s, one would say “sorry, your email didn’t reach me.” In the 2000s, one said “your email must have been eaten by my spam filter.” Now, one will say “alas, your email didn’t make it into my Gmail Priority Inbox!” A weak joke, but an interesting idea - do unreliable systems fulfil some social need? Hilary Mason is thinking along similar lines : How can twitter be so popular and successful if it’s down all the time ? We base statements like this on the assumption that quality of a web application maps linearly to the application’s stability. This is obviously true for most sites most of the time, but things get interesting at the edge where rare, unpredictable failure actually enables more complex human interactions around the service. Unlike e-mail, twitter etiquette doesn’t demand that you read or reply to every message from every person you follow (or who follows you). Combine that lightweight social touch with occasional tec...

It's been a while since I posted my list of Android apps . Since then, I've moved to an HTC Desire, and a similar-but-different set of apps, arrayed differently across my increased number of screens, and folders. The recent upgrade to Froyo has been valuable in that I can now move apps to storage on my SD card, as the phone's internal memory has been getting short... So, here's the epic list, which might help you if you're wondering what apps to install or buy, but is mostly for my own reference... I've ignored the built-in apps, in the main, and I have probably missed a couple of widget-only apps (I know I have a blue thing which lets me toggle silent/vibrate/ringer - no idea what it is called though!  First off: alphabetical list, or go straight to the same apps listed by category . Say No to 0870.  Because no one likes paying premium rates for calls if they don't have to.  Abduction! and Abduction World Attack -  two superb games Action Potat...

Another year , another Hide&Seek weekender !  But this year was different, because Michael and I were organising a game , as well as playing. Time*Trails was our first outing for Michael's new creation, PlaceWhisper (a DigitalFlapjack production - more info here ), a mobile location-based app, which lets you leave and collect messages attached to specific places; like geocaching , only without the tupperware. Time*Trails uses an iPhone app to let users explore the South Bank area as it was in the 20th century, particularly during the Festival of Britain in 1951 - with the support of some terrific period maps. We had over 50 "whispers" with facts about South Bank history, so that players could learn about the places they visited as they would have been in the past. Also, we had three story trails, which let you follow in the footsteps of three people in 1951 as they explored the festival.  It was wonderful to get it out in the open at last, to see so many exci...

Another Tuesday, another Arcadia Seminar! This week we heard from Lilian Edwards , Professor of Internet Law at Sheffield, on Death 2.0: What Becomes of Digital Assets after Death.  I won't attempt to summarise - there is a great precis from Daithí Mac Síthigh here . Professor Edwards went beyond questions of how to provide your heirs with the ability to access your encrypted data (usefully discussed by Cory Doctorow here ) and into the tricky area of digital assets and reputation. The talk covered questions of archiving and access (for the public good and for financial gain, as well as for sentimental reasons), issues of privacy, and of course the tricky legal situation, where the third party of an internet platform probably has some control. Terms and conditions of web services vary in the ways they handle the death of a user  - if they do at all - as well as the jurisdictions where they might operate. Facebook, for all the fuss around privacy and control of data, is o...

This week, the Playmakers film launched on the web. It's a combination of the story of the design and evolution of the Playmakers game, as coaxed into existence by Alex Fleetwood and Holly Gramazio from Hide&Seek , and a compelling overview of what pervasive gaming is all about. The film includes wonderful people such as Howard Rheingold and Michael Wesch , and brings in elements of theatre, public spaces, playfulness in everyday life and specific games, as well as the edginess where pervasive gaming tilts towards street protest. There's also a little discussion of conventional computer games, compared with "no technology" games and technology-assisted pervasive gaming. The documentary is worth watching, whether you are already interested in gaming, or interested in learning more about an exciting emerging field. Playmakers from thinkpublic on Vimeo . All this leads up to the final launch of Playmakers the game, which Michael and I were lucky...

We cooked lunch on my lovely new Rondue, which is rather like the hot rock cooking we first enjoyed in a restaurant in Wales. Thanks to Michael for the Rondue, and my parents for the new camera which took the picture!

It's Ada Lovelace day today, and just like last year , I am pondering whom to blog about. On the CARET blog , today we've featured our wonderful technical women, and I'm proud that without any positive discrimination our small department has managed to hire so many. If you've been wondering why we celebrate Ada Lovelace, there is history on the Finding Ada site. But in recent weeks I have been reading the wonderful stories of Sydney Padua , who is crafting splendid comics from the real history of Lovelace and Babbage, and giving them exciting lives in a parallel universe where they succeeded in realising their early potential. Their true histories shine through, though, in scholarly footnotes, from Babbage's real anecdote about cheese to economic commentary . So, which woman working with technology will I blog about this Ada Lovelace day? I shall go off the beaten track, here, and nominate my mother . (Hi Mum!) Mum is not only on FaceBook, twittering ...

Yesterday was my friend Robert Priddey's funeral. He was only 34, and his sudden death in hospital was a huge shock. Funeral services are always hard, and for someone who has died with so much unrealised potential even more so. Robert's family had done an incredible job during the worst of times to pull together a lovely service, punctuated with Robert's own poetry and music compositions, as well as moving tributes. It was particularly special to hear more of his music, including the startlingly beautiful Tinnitus Siderium, the pianola track produced by converting the layout of stars of the night sky directly into a score, and the only composition of his I had heard before. There were many periods of silence, as even when filtering in and out of the crematorium, it seemed like the crowd had no words to fill the gaps. And it was a crowd - every seat was taken - and rightfully so, as even a hall packed with weeping women could not have done justice to Robert's wonderful ...

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Last autumn, I made several rash promises to friends who were considering buying an Android phone, that I would at some point blog the list of applications I had on my HTC (slogan: "quietly brilliant") Magic, and what they were good for. I procrastinated sufficiently that this eventually became a Christmas holiday task, and then my phone decided on Christmas Day that it no longer wished to turn on, causing me to spend nearly 3 weeks without it, and also necessitating a complete reinstall of all my apps. Luckily, my phone did have a rough idea of things I had downloaded before (thank goodness) so reinstalling was not as painful as I had anticipated. Nonetheless, I am now writing that blog post... If you are not interested in Android, you should stop reading here, as it is about to get boring. The HTC Magic has three "home screens", where shortcuts and so on live. On one, I have useful things I often need (email, calendar, weather, RSS feeds). On the main first sc...