Thinking about the Future

Thinking about Feeds

Back in the old days, I was a voracious consumer of 'feeds' (or RSS, as we called them way back when). I followed 5-600 of these things and did a pretty good job of keeping up, reading the key ones every day and putting the dead time on a four-five hour round-trip train journey to London each week (remember, this was in the days before wi-fi on the train and 3G cards in the laptop) to work as I read through whatever backlog  was left in my newsreader (NetNewsWire).

Most of the feeds I read were produced by individuals, and I made a point (partly because of the offline way in which much of the reading was done) of not subscribing to any of those annoying people who only included partial posts within the feed itself.

Then all sorts of things changed. I moved job, and lost that train journey. My priorities shifted with greater regularity, and it was too big a job to re-align all those blog feeds every time I needed to reflect a change of emphasis. Blog search tools got better. I found myself reading through the collected posts to any one blog less and less, and flitting through the results returned by searches and alerts more and more.

Now, though, I'm trying again. I'm back using NetNewsWire (now free) and I have a tight set of 30-40 content feeds, supplemented by all those same canned searches with Google Blog Search, Technorati, et al, and the alerts targetted deep into the Financial Times, New York Times, etc.

Newsgator's (the company that now owns NetNewsWire) mobile interface is a powerful addition to reading behaviour; it synchronises my list of feeds with NetNewsWire, and simply displays those feeds with new content to read. It's perfect for those idle moments, and prevents the body of content growing too large between sessions sat in front of NetNewsWire itself. The new iPhone application looks like it will improve this still further when it's released next month.

As for the feeds themselves? Far more of them are those annoying ones that only deliver the first part of the post. Roll on 11 July and a 3G iPhone to make that particular annoyance a little less disruptive to workflow.

A brief brain-dump on getting to Beijing

It's a long way! Almost 30 hours, door to door, from sunny East Yorkshire to rainy Beijing. Emirates impressed as an airline, although with (much) better entertainment system Manchester-Dubai and (much) better food (and metal cutlery!), Dubai-Beijing. Let's try for good food and good entertainment on the way back, eh?

Nadeem was a life-saver at Dubai, waving his magic card to get all five members of the Talis contingent into an executive lounge for breakfast, showers, and a comfy seat for our three and a half hours in Dubai. Palm trees in the terminal, but not a camel to be seen.

In Beijing, the new-ish airport is truly immense... and all built in the time it took the committee to decide what colour the floor tiles should be at Heathrow T5.

Finally reached our hotel at about 2am this morning... to be told our rooms weren't available. Much debate ensued, which eventually saw us shipped to a different hotel for the night. Now back where we should be, and grappling with the foibles of Chinese internet policy; some sites (like this hosted blogging service) work when you wouldn't expect them to, and other entirely non-controversial locations appear blocked. The corporate VPN is proving unwilling to cooperate at the moment, which makes getting at mail a challenge.

Right, off to finish a presentation for tomorrow...

Hi Ho, Hi Ho... it's off to China we go...

Another month, another trip.

Tomorrow, Tom, Nad, Rob, Chris and I are off to China for WWW2008. We're on two separate planes from the UK to Dubai, but meet up there for the onward journey to Beijing on Sunday morning.

We've got quite a presence in the Linked Data on the Web workshop on Tuesday, which Tom is co-chairing, and then Chris has a paper on Friday. It looks as if I'm moderating a panel straight after his slot on Friday too, which should be fun.

Chinese firewall rules etc permitting, I hope to be blogging proceedings on Nodalities and at my latest blogging venue; the Semantic Web blog over on ZDNet. There might even be some contributions on other media channels; more on that later!

Prepare for lift-off...

It's the day before Ian and I set off for the Web 2.0 Summit and associated activities in San Francisco, which means it's time to overload the National Grid charging iPods, headphones, cellphones, pdas, laptops, and the rest.

It's also time to start clock-watching for British Airways' online check-in to open just after lunch... as SeatGuru suggests there are only four 'green' seats in our cabin... and we want two of them.

I wonder if there are any good films/movies on the flight? First, though, to tackle the list of jobs that really ought to be done before I fly...

See some of you when we land tomorrow evening...

Technorati Tags: Talis, web20summit, web2con, web2summit

I am still here...

...just devoting blogging effort to sites such as Nodalities rather than here.

San Franciso for a whole week next week with Ian Davis, so maybe that will lend itself to some blogging here... and there.

Web 2.0 Summit, Sun, Metaweb, Radar Networks, Open Content Alliance, the Apple Store, and a whole load more...

Technorati Tags: Talis, web2summit

North America, here we come

Another month, another trip with Rob.

This time we're taking in a couple of North American capital cities, doing Ottawa and Washington back-to-back. Oh, and Toronto. But only because Air Canada appear not to fly direct between the two on a weekend, and I'm not convinced that moving from one claustrophobic aluminium tube to another at an airport counts as visiting a place.

I'm clearly destined never to see Ottawa when the canal is fit for skating on...

So for anyone in Ottawa, and anyone in or heading to DC for ALA; see you there!

As for me... I'm off to log the trip with dopplr.

Technorati Tags: ALA, Talis

Danny Ayers

I've been itching to tell people about this for a while. Now officially mentioned on the new web site's news page, and in our new CTO's blog. Lots of 'new', but still plenty of 'good old...', and room for a whole heap more 'new', too, so watch this space!

For those who don't know Danny, check out the podcast... ;-)

Technorati Tags: Danny Ayers, Talis

Congratulations to Ian Davis

Some great and well-deserved news concerning friend and colleague Ian Davis enters the public domain...

And I agree with every word. Read the lot, but the last two paragraphs bear repeating;

“So here’s the pitch from the new CTO: if you want to face the challenge of creating something world-changing; if you like the idea of a company that controls its own destiny and is small enough for you to change it; if you never want to stop learning; then I want to hear from you.

Come and find me at XTech this week, or grab one of the other 8 Talisians that are going and get the lowdown on what it’s really like to work here. If you can’t make XTech, then email careers@talis.com and tell them I sent you :)”

Technorati Tags: Talis

Off we go again

WWW2007 was great last week, and there's plenty of coverage on Nodalities and elsewhere.

I can't help feeling, though, that Tim had the right idea in heading off up a mountain for a day...

XTech starts in Paris tomorrow, so it's time to finish off my presentation, pack, and head for Humberside Airport and my flight.

See you all there...

Technorati Tags: Linked Data, open data, xtech, Talis, WWW2007, XTech2007

Getting to Canada

Finally in Banff, Alberta, for the Web conference.

Yesterday was a long day; out of the house about 0600 UK time, and down to Heathrow. Boarded plane, which then proceeded to sit on the ground for almost two hours before taking off. I was next to a friendly baby (at least I was when the cabin crew weren't kidnapping her to play in the kitchen or show her off to the pilot), and Rob was sat in front of the most miserable old couple, who seemed to hold him personally responsible for their lack of leg room.

Once in Calgary, it was then two hours in a (ridiculously hot) little bus to arrive at the hotel and discover that I was in one (small) room last night, and moving to a (better, allegedly) different room today for the rest of my stay.

Rob had a bigger room last night, and a stunning view that Flickr really doesn't do justice to.

Quick dinner, then bed more than 24 hours after leaving my own bed earlier that day...

Now in Tim Berners-Lee's keynote, fighting for wifi with the rest of the room.

More later, after copious coffee!

Technorati Tags: Talis, WWW2007