Some good news. Dorkbot NCL returns for a second time on November 17th. This is when we get together to have a look at what exciting things we have made.
This month we will find out about the mystery of Humanaquarium, Brendan Ratliff will be composing using tracking techniques, and Touchscape will be showing off touch technology.
More details can be found on the Centre for Life web site.
Earlier in the year I waffled of at BarCampLeeds about multi factor authentication and tried to persuade everyone to get a PayPal security key.
I learned at Charity Hack that PayPal were discontinuing the security key. I don’t know the full story, but it has been suggested that it could be because of cost.
The security key has essentially been replaced by SMS in the UK. So now you can register your mobile number, and when you try and log in as normal PayPay will send you an SMS message with a one time password to enter. Although not 100% secure or reliable this does overcome the authentication security concerns affecting most PayPal users. Because of this I strongly recommend you use it if it is practical for you to do so.
Now the good news. You can still purchase a PayPay security key for £3 from the US PayPay site, and it is the amazing credit card sized hardware key pictured above. This key can also be used on ebay and other VIP web sites. There are no excuses, even if you only log in once a year you should please get one now.
I have been a Manager Tools podcast listener for quite some time and have found it most useful in my business career. It is a product of the American businessmen Mark Horstman and Mike Auzenne. They have taken there military experience and applied it to modern day business practices with amazing effect. The podcast is a great learning resource if you are new to management or wanting to improve your skills by learning from others. You can find out more and download the podcast at manager-tools.com.
The reason why I mention this is that mark and Mike are holding two one day conferences in London next January. The first day is the Effective Manager conference, and the second is the Effective Communications conference held the following day.
Currently I can not justify spending this kind of money on a one day conference so will not be attending, but if you can justify spending the money I do recommend looking at spending it on this.
At last night’s Dorkbot Newcastle the idea of organising a hardware focused Hack Day before the second European Maker Faire in Newcastle was floated.
A “hack day” is when like minded people get to together to create things. This would create interesting things to demonstrate at the Maker Faire, bring people together and introduce others to our local tech community, and help support anyone stuck on an element of there home brew projects.
This will not be a massive event with lots of the razzmatazz of larger Hack Days, but should still be a fun event focused on producing interesting things.
It could be a one or two day event, or perhaps even spread over several evenings. It could also be a weekend event, or potentiality in the days before the Maker Faire. It all depends on what people and when we can squeeze it in.
So…. What are your thoughts? Are you interested in attending? When is good for you? Please let me know your thoughts.
I was writing a long post about Freecycle and where it is going in the UK at the moment, but then realised the guardian had already written what I was going to say.
All I want to add is that I have always like the concept of Freecycle and am on the whole pleased it exists, but have always been disappointed by the heavy handed approach dictated by the central organisation. I find the way they threaten legal action against people using the word Freecycle for exchanges not moderated by them disgraceful. Lets hope that the now independent truly community driven versions are a success.
Update: The UK Freecycle groups that have left Freecycle, that to me looks like most of them, have now got together and branded themselves Freegle.
I would also like to give my support to Ema Wright who Freecycle have threatened legal action against on there web site. I believe such comments were a knee-jerk reaction, but still shockingly unprofeciaonal.
Our fist monthly Dorkbot Newcastle is launching on the 5th October 2009 at the Centre for Life.
A Dorkbot is an event where a group of people interested in making things get together to talk about their projects and share ideas with each other.
To start the event we have three guest speakers. Evan Raskob who is a visiting Dorkbot regular London, Aaron Nielsen who will be talking about developing with the Arduino, and, errr, me who will be trying to inspire fellow creators by showing off a percussion machine that can be built in a few hours.
So please come along meet other like minded and creative people, see what others are building, and perhaps show off that you are playing with.
Two years ago I boggled about Microsoft Photosynth but have not had opportunity to play with generating a synth before now.
This weekend I decided to give it a go at the more unusual BarCampBrighton4 venue. I followed the Photosynth tutorial with a few alterations to cope with dividers. The resulting synths are…
They may not be perfect, and I have learned a few things from the exercise, but I remain impressed with the technology. Please let me know what you think and think about having a go yourself.
Thank you to Martin for lending me his machines to do the uploads at the venue as the Photosynth software will not run on my Netbook.
Oddly I have been asked a few times what events are worth attending. I have also been asked to help pimp a few events recently as well, so this post will hopefully help everybody. If you are interested in learning, building, or socialising then have a look at the evens and consider coming along.
August
Sat 29th : Geek Steam BBQ
September
Sat 5th – Sun 6th : BarCampBrighton
Fri 4th – Sun 6th : Geeks in the PeaksFri 11th – 12th : EcoMo09
Sun 13th : Big Geek Day OutSat 19th – Sun 20th : Charity Hack Day
Fri 25th – Sat 26th : Over the Air
Sat 26th – Sun 27th : BathCampOctober
3rd – 4th : Hack North
Sat 17th : BarCampBlackpool
24th – 25th : BarCampLondon7
Sat 31st : VampDevCamp
November
Sat 7th – Sun 8th : BarCampManchester2
Sat 14th : BarCampBradford
The only filtering criteria I have used on this list is if it is an event that I would like to attend (if I had the time). In truth I will be attending quite a few of them, probably more than I should.
Update: BarCampLondon7 added.
As of today my 0870 telephone numbers will no longer work. I have been prepared for this and have changed these numbers on the various web sites and registrations where I use them. This is because Ofcom have changed the regulation on these numbers reducing the termination fee (the fee a the company operating the numbers gets when the number is called) from 6p/minute to 0.5p/minute.
Although I am loosing the use of my 0870 (unless I pay for then) I am very much in favour of this move. People have been told that 0870 is the same as a national call, and this was technically true, it was the same price as a full price call from a BT line, but we almost never pay the full price of that call because of the calling package we are forced to take with a telephone line. All these free and 5p an hour call offers do not apply to 0870 numbers.
So when you called an 0870 number you were paying way over the odds, and the company you were calling was often very happy with this as they normally made a little bit of money whenever you called them. Because of this I refer to 0870 numbers as premium rate numbers.
For reference I have not made any money by using 0870 numbers, but they do have other advantages. They can be mapped to any other number so if I move or go on holiday I can get the calls to follow me, they cost a little bit more so I do not get marketing calls on them, and they cost next to nothing to set up (if you use the correct company) so can be used as disposable numbers for when you don’t want your details to be in the public domain.
Hopefully more telecommunication companies will now include 0870 and 0845 in there calling packages so they are free (BT have already started doing this) and more normal companies will use 03 numbers (that are the same as 01 and 02 numbers but non geographic).
Finally if you need to call an 0870, and 0845, or an 0800 (normally free, but often costs more on a mobile) then check out Say no to 0870 first. You enter the number or company that you want to call and more often than not it will give you a normal (01, 02 or now 03 number) to call instead.
In the past I found Plaxo very useful. It started life as a contact manager where you stored the contact details for business and personal use. It’s unique selling point was that your contacts could update there own details once for all Plaxo users, so to update your list you just need to click a button to accept the changes.
This was fairly useful, and it became more so and more of my contacts started using it. It took me a while to trust the site, as it does with all sites that hold personal data, but I do trust it as much as I do any other online service.
It also had the advantage of syncing contacts and calenders between Outlook, GMail and many other online services. While friends were using many services to sync there contacts and calenders I was using just Plaxo with one plugin. I did start to write a blog post about how great this was, but like so many I never got round to finishing it. Sorry.
Then at some point Plaxo realised that they had the backbone of a Social Network, and created “Plaxo Pulse” that brings all your content in to the Plaxo interface. In some ways this is nice, and optional, but not something that was useful to me or the Plaxo user base at the time.
Sadly with next to no notice the syncing with Outlook has been made a premium service, so will need playing for. There is nothing for nothing and the site does need to make money to continue, so I will not complain about this, but I have decided to move away from Plaxo as it is no longer of use to me. I have decided to use the contact management in GMail for now that can be synced to Outlook using a free app.
I will continue to use Plaxo to sync with other “backup” online services (Yahoo and Live mail for example) for the moment as there is no reason to stop. I will let Pulse continue consolidate the rest of my feeds for the same reason, and one friend prefers to consume it that way. Sadly though I do feel that today is the day I regrettably stopped using Plaxo.
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