The reason for doing this is to enter the 10K Apart competition, where you have to produce a piece of awesomeness using the latest Web technologies. In under 10KB of code.

So, don't delay. Get your arse over to my 10K Apart entry and place your vote!

Now, back to working on the new Rawkes.

As some of you may be aware, over the last few months I've been thinking about the next version of Rawkes. I've had plenty of wicked ideas but it's come to the stage in my planning where I need some input from you, the people who visit Rawkes and who I care about deeply. All I can say right now is that the focus is going to be on content; specifically on introducing new content and making the current content better.

There isn't a timeframe for the next version of Rawkes just yet, but rest assured it's top on my list of things I need to get done before I go insane.

So, I'd much appreciate it if you could take some time out of your busy schedule to answer a short survey about Rawkes and its future The survey is now over. Thanks to everyone who participated.. It will help me immensely and the results will benefit you all as a whole.

Watch this space for further updates about version 4. Exciting times are afoot!

The first step in the life of a dissertation is the proposal, the proof of concept that outlines your thesis and the theories and topics that will be discussed within. At this point it's all a bit up in the air and open to change, although that doesn't make it any less difficult to decide upon. I believe I'm nearly there in regards to my own dissertation proposal and in an act of madness or, I hope, genius, I would like to share my thoughts with you with the aim of bringing to light any glaring issues.

It's not what you know, it's who you know

During my time at university I've become increasingly interested in network theory. From crowdsourcing to simple communication, I'm fascinated by the psychology behind their structure, and amazed at the power they wield. There are many other topics I'm interested in, like the issues surrounding ubiquitous computing, but it's networks that I always come back to time and time again so it would be a mistake not to include them in some way.

It would be wrong to try and tackle the entire concept of networks in a single dissertation so I plan to refine my definition of networks, at least in relation to my research. The dramatic rise of Twitter as a tool for social communication, as well as it's open data and API, makes it a prime specimen for analysis. I may expand my outlook after the initial research, but I believe Twitter is an extremely potent example of how networks work and illustrates beautifully the ways in which they can be used.

It's an emotional business

At the core of my dissertation proposal are the concepts of emotion and sentimentality, in particular their effect on behaviour. When coupled with networks this becomes a rich area of research. For example;

• Are sentiments and emotions reciprocated across networks?
• Are the actions of one's self defined by the perceptions of others in the network?
• Can emotion and sentiment be predicted based on that of the network as a whole?
• In what way is individual behaviour affected by the emotion and sentiment of a network?
• Does the emotion and behaviour on social networks reflect that of the offline world?

Those questions alone fascinate me, and I'm sure there are plenty of other insights that will arise from this area once I get started. Needless to say, my hobbyist interest in psychology and behaviour will drive my passion in this area of research.

Measuring Christmas spirit

The main aim of the dissertation is to expand from my work with the Redweb spirit of christmas project, a project which analysed in a basic way the emotion of individual tweets in relation to a particular subject. My plan is to dig a little deeper and find out if the widespread analysis of such information on social networks can be used to predict behaviours. One such example could be in the ability to use this information to gauge public opinion on particular issues. Is the opinion expressed on a social network comparable to that of the offline world?

Bringing in the big guns

A dissertation is useless without academic foundations and solid support from existing theories and research. Fortunately there is a wide variety of work out there today that relate to individual areas of what I hope to research. Here are just a few;

• Erving Goffman and his presentation of self
• Leon Festinger's social comparison theory
• Social network analysis

I hope that during my reading during the summer I will uncover many more theorists and concepts that relate to my thesis.

My question to you is this

I'm settled on the core focus of my dissertation proposal but I would very much like to hear about concerns or ideas that may enhance my research. Please get in touch with me via the comments or my Twitter account and I will answer each and every one of you. I'd also appreciate any pieces of advice from anyone who's already completed a dissertation.

The whole concept of an un-conference was new to me so I really had no idea what to expect. How many people would be there? Are they all going to be professional industry folk? Will there be any other students? My past experience has been with much bigger and more organised conferences like dConstruct. Most definitely the biggest difference is that absolutely anyone can walk up to the schedule and add their 45 minute presentation or activity. The cool thing about this is that everyone is free to have a say and talk about what they want. On the flip-side, however, there is a clear element of competition between speakers about positioning of their talks so they don't clash with other potentially popular talks. I wasn't too worried about this myself, seeing as it was my first talk, but I know that there is a certain unconscious aspect that a bigger audience equals a more popular talk.

My nerves and excitement hit fever-pitch at 3:15pm when it was my turn to present. I'd been preparing my talk on HTML5 canvas for the last few days and hadn't practised it. Luckily, after some initial technical difficulties, the talk went well and even encouraged a few questions at the end. The highlight of my talk was when a young fellow in the front row fell asleep. I now know why they call it the graveyard shift. If you're interested in seeing why I believe HTML5 canvas is the future of graphics on the Web, then have a flick through my slides which I've included below.

Still, the day was great fun and I enjoyed all the talks that I attended. Here is a quick overview of my favourites:

• Angela Barnard's plea to recognise the importance of content strategy. I found this particularly interesting as I'm currently battling with the content for Rawkes and how to organise and approach it in future versions.
• David Burton's humorous and thought-provoking overview of creativity and his 10 tips for better brainstorming. He also highlighted how different people have different traits when it comes to being creative. Personally I see myself as a fact-finder with a little bit of organising thrown in for good measure.
• Damian Proctor's beautiful presentation on design principles. It included a wide variety of examples which highlighted his points perfectly.

I've no idea if they would but I'd definitely like to see all three do their presentations again in front of my course at university. Not only were the presentations amazing, but the fact they come from people involved in the industry will inspire a lot of the students.

Overall, it was a fun day and I'll definitely be attending any future barcamp events in the area. I would advise anyone else who wants to get involved in the industry to do the same.

This essay in particular looks at the ways in which the phenomenal growth of mobile technology, particularly mobile phones, has transformed the way we consume and produce media. I received a First (71%) with generally good feedback. The only suggestion being that I could extend the piece by talking about user generated content and what Marshall McLuhan proclaims as the user being the content.

In what ways does the growth of mobile connectivity transform or extend our relationship with media?

In 2009 there were over 1.73 billion users of the Internet (Pingdom 2010), nearly 5 times the amount of users back in 2000 (MMG 2009). 2009 also saw 3.4 billion unique mobile phone users (TomiAhonen 2010), over 3 times the amount of users in 2000 (ITU 2008). There are now double the amount of people using mobile phones as there are using the Internet. Improvements in cellular technology allow mobile phones to connect to the Internet in the same way as computers. The introduction of other mobile technologies are offering even more ways to access the Internet without the physical constraint of wires. To what end does the incredible growth of mobile connectivity change the way we use, consume and produce media?

To understand the growth of mobile connectivity we must first highlight the key points in its history.

The predecessors of today’s mobile phones were introduced in the 1980s (Kohonen 2003, p.1). These analog services, known as first generation (1G), allow only voice communication (Gandal et al. 2003, p.326). Improvements in cellular technology culminated in second generation (2G) digital services which, coupled with division of the radio spectrum, allow more people to use the network (Korhonen 2003, pg.2). These digital signals enabled data to be transferred through the network, albeit at extremely slow speeds (Korhonen 2003, p.5), starting with the short message service (SMS) in 1995 (GSM Association 2010). By 2003, incremental upgrades, like GPRS and EDGE (GSM Association) meant data speeds were 26 times faster (SSC 2006), but still still much lower than wired broadband. Korhonen (2003, p.6) highlights that packet switching, the breaking down of data into small chunks, meant Internet use on mobile phones was now charged by the amount of data used. This was an important step in cellular access to the Internet, although the relatively low speeds restricted the type of services that were accessible.

Today’s cellular networks are third generation (3G) and offer dramatic increases in speed, comparable to that of low-end wired broadband (SSC 2006). Over 92% of the UK population are within range of 3G services, a figure that jumps to 100% of the population in Japan (Ofcom 2009).

Mobile phone hardware gets smaller and more powerful as improvements are made to cellular networks. Both the hardware and software improvements change the way in which mobile phones are used to consume and produce media. TomiAhonen (2010) estimate that 29% of phones are 3G capable, 95% having some sort of Web browser, and 75% offering a camera. All of these features, now common-place, are encouraging user generated content (UGC) and the consumption of high quality media. Over 2009 alone, mobile data traffic increased 160% because of this to the equivalent of 23 million DVDs (RRW 2010).

Brown (2002, p.5) identifies that the interest in mobile phones comes from its core features; that it is “small, portable, constantly on, and potentially constantly connected”. These features of mobile technology are allowing us to interact in more meaningful ways. As Baron states, “[…] it’s far simpler […] to communicate with people not physically present than at any time in human history” (2008, p.4). What is interesting about this view is that it highlights the ability of mobile technology to break down the concept of physicality. Baron has highlighted what Negroponte calls the “post-information age”, one that will “remove the limitations of geography” (1995, p.165).

The post-information age corresponds to McLuhan’s theory that through digital technology “[…] we have extended our central nervous system itself […], abolishing both space and time […]” (2001, p.3). The general idea is that through the extension of our senses, telephones for hearing and cameras for sight, digital culture has contracted the world into nothing more than a village. Because we can instantly hear and see things from the other side of the planet, the world in itself has become a smaller place to inhabit.

This smaller world is enhanced by the increasing popularity and domestication of mobile technology. As Ling (2004, p.177) puts it:

[…] mobile communication provides us with ubiquitous contact […]. Rather than requiring us to be at a specific geographical location, mobile communication means that we can communicate and have access to information wherever we are.

What Ling describes is a world where both digital information and the physical medium of accessing the information are free from geographic constraints. Not only can you access information from across the world, you can do so while walking down the street in practically any urban location.

Brum (2009) refers to the ubiquitous access to data as an increase of urban bandwidth:

The bandwidth of urban experience has increased. The ancient ways are still there: the way a place looks, the neighbours we wave at and the hands we shake. But now, there is an electronic conversation overlaid on top of all that: tweets […], neighbourhood online message boards, detailed mobile electronic maps, and nascent applications that broadcast your location to your friends

In modern society the physicality of the world around us has not changed. What has changed is the stream of digital information flying over our heads. Some of this information is tagged with a location, a technique called geo-tagging. The beauty of geo-tagging is that information can be targeted depending on where you are. Through GPS, mobile devices are smart enough to know where they are in the physical world. Knowing where you are means a mobile device can pull information from the local area, wether that is the nearest coffee shop, tweets, photos, news stories, or otherwise. All these location-based services prevent us from feeling lost, even in a new city.

[…] To actually arrive somewhere is no longer surprising in the way it once was” (Cooper 2002, p.26)

Sharing geographic information is good in theory, but the reality is that potentially anyone can get access to that data. This has been the case with location-based service Foursquare. The purpose of the service is to check in at landmarks and specific locations, allowing you to see who else is around you. Inherently, the service highlights the locations you are not currently at. A website called “Please Rob Me”, created to highlight this relaxed attitude to location data, identified users of Foursquare who were announcing that they weren’t at home. None of this information was private, and most people are out of the house from 9 to 5 anyway. However, it raises an important issue about the kind of information that is being given without question. Information that can identify people and and the places they have been. Tufekci ([no date] cited Blum 2009) comments on the fact that anyone could be listening in and watching your every move; “as we leave behind the 20th century, it is almost as if we have come full circle back to the village where everyone potentially knows your business”.

Communication is a situation where the sharing of location data is important. For example, Cooper (2002, p.26) illustrates the common utterance, “I’m on the train”. It is not the phrase that is important, it is the meaning behind it. As Cooper continues:

[…] Information on whereabouts often serves to establish the grounds for the conversation in terms of constraints on and sensitivities with regard to possible topic, privacy, duration and so forth

What this means is that although you can contact anyone, anytime, anyplace, the physical location of the conversation will determine what can and cannot be said, and for how long. An extreme example would be a conversation about the intimate goings on of someone’s love life, a conversation that wouldn’t seem out of place in the car or walking down the street. However, the same conversation would be deemed inappropriate if acted out in a train carriage. The physical size and proximity to other people dictates this, along with basic social and cultural norms.

The global nature of our actions mean we must deal with the consequences, we can no longer be disassociated from them. Whether broadcasting our location or talking on the train, our actions and their respective reactions occur almost simultaneously (McLuhan 2001, p.4). No more is this the case than with UGC and citizen journalism, where media can be both produced by one member of the public, and consumed by another within seconds of each other.

Mobile connectivity gives rise to citizen journalism because of "the spatial and temporal ubiquity of basic tools for observing and commenting on the world we inhabit" (Benkler 2006, p.219). The basic tools needed are built in to the majority of mobile phones, that is SMS, camera functionality and Internet access (TomiAhonen 2010). Gould (2006 cited Mobile Life 2006) states, “give someone a mobile phone and you give them a voice. Give them a voice and you offer the opportunity of empowerment”. It is incredibly difficult to censor and prevent citizen journalism when done via mobile phones. It is simply too easy to produce and distribute content to a large number of people.

In 2001 the president of the Philippines lost power after 4 days of intense protests (Leadbeater 2009, p.186). The interesting part about this was the integral part mobile communication played in organisation the protests. "Tens of thousands of Philippinos converged on Epifanio de los Santas Avenues […] within an hour of the first text message volleys" (Rheingold 2002, p.157-8), within days that number reached over a million. Mobile had well and truly been proven as a medium for organisation large quantities of people.

As Gould (2006 cited Mobile Life) states:

There is now virtually no event that can happen on the planet that cannot and will not be recorded by mobile phones and then transmitted to the world.

One defining example of this was when a plane ditched into the Hudson River in 2009. Janis Krums, a passenger on a ferry crossing the Hudson, sent a pictures of the downed plane on Twitter before media outlets had even caught wind of the original event. His simple words, “There's a plane in the Hudson. I'm on the ferry going to pick up the people.” (Krums 2009), spread across the Internet in an instant. This is still well before any mass-media organisation had published anything. None of this would have been possible without a mobile phone.

Not all citizen journalism is so fresh and believable. Countless photos and videos were captured by passers-by and passengers during the London bombings in 2005. What is interesting about the event is how traditional mass-media utilised the coverage taken from mobile phones. Gordon (2007) outlines the situation:

The media and press asked for eyewitnesses to come forward and used images taken on mobile phones to supplement - and in their terms ‘enhance’ - their coverage of the event. […] However, these images and videos sent to media organisations were then subject to the editorial process.

Whilst content from citizens was used in mass-media broadcasts, undoubtably a good thing, the media companies subjected the content to a traditional editorial process. What this meant is that although the content was from real-life members of the public, it destroyed the extra credibility such content enjoys for being outside the realm of traditional media.

This is not the only negative side to citizen journalism. One of the most debilitating factors is that citizen journalism is only available to those that have the means to do so. A digital divide has arisen between the haves and have-nots of society. Those who have mobile devices are able to easily report events. Whilst those who have not, either because of their countries infrastructure, or for economic reasons, cannot. This places an inherent level of censorship on what content makes it into the global village.

One solution to the digital divide amongst comes from wireless technologies. Benkler (2006, p.402) identifies the problem, particularly in developed countries, as the cable connecting homes directly to the network providing the Internet. This last mile often inhibits people from getting any connection to the Internet, simply because the geography makes laying cables economically unwise. The speed and range increases of WiFi place it as a legitimate replacement for traditional wired connections, a viewpoint Rheingold is quite clear about. “Wireless is undoubtedly the best way to bring online the majority of the world's population” (2002, p.135).

It is obvious that mobile connectivity has experienced extraordinary growth in the past decade, in close proximity to that of the Internet. Through this growth, digital culture has removed the traditional restraints of geographic location. Mobile connectivity has added an extra layer of interaction that allows media to be consumed from anywhere in the world, at any location we desire. Coupled with the rise in urban living, mobile devices are improving the way we interact with the environment and people around us. Mobile phones have lowered the barrier for producing and sharing content across the globe. This mobile content has proven to be successful in organising political movements and large quantities of people. We are undoubtably in the age of mobile, albeit at an early stage. The maturity of this age will be integral in defining our modern relationship with media.

References

• Baron, N.S., 2008. Always on: language in an online and mobile world. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Benkler, Y., 2006. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. Yale University Press.
• Brown, B., 2002. Studying the Use of Mobile Technology. In: Brown, B., Green, N. & Harper, R., eds. Wireless world: social and interactional aspects of the mobile age. London: Springer, pp. 3-15.
• Brum, A 2009, A friendly eye: social networking has made cities manageable, Wired UK, November 2009, p. 113.
• Cooper, G., 2002. The mutable mobile: social theory in the wireless world. In: Brown, B., Green, N. & Harper, R., eds. Wireless world: social and interactional aspects of the mobile age. London: Springer, pp. 19-31.
• Gandal, N., Salant, D. & Waverman, L., 2003. Standards in wireless telephone networks. Telecommunications Policy, 27(5-6), 325-32.
• Gordon, J., 2007. The mobile phone and the public sphere: Mobile phone usage in three critical situations. Convergence, 13(3), p. 307.
• GSM Association, 2010. Brief History of GSM & the GSMA. London: GSM Association. Available from: http://www.gsmworld.com/about-us/history.htm [Accessed February 20, 2010].
• International Telecommunication Union, 2008. Worldwide mobile cellular subscribers to reach 4 billion mark late 2008. Geneva: International Telecommunication Union. Available from: http://www.itu.int/newsroom/press_releases/2008/29.html [Accessed February 20, 2010].
• Korhonen, J., 2003. Introduction to 3G mobile communications. Artech House Publishers.
• Krums, J., 2009. There's a plane in the Hudson. Twitter. Available from: http://twitter.com/jkrums/status/1121915133 [Accessed February 23, 2010].
• Leadbeater, C., 2009. We-think. 2nd ed. London: Profile.
• Ling, R.S., 2004. The mobile connection: The cell phone's impact on society. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann Pub.
• McLuhan, M., 2001. Understanding media: the extensions of man. London: Routledge Classics.
• Miniwatts Marketing Group, 2009. Internet World Stats. Colombia: Miniwatts Marketing Group. Available from: http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm [Accessed February 20, 2010].
• Mobile Life, 2006. The Mobile Life Report 2006: How mobile phones change the way we live. UK: Mobile Life.
• Negroponte, N., 1995. Being digital. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
• Ofcom, 2009. Mostly Mobile. London: Ofcom. Available from: http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/msa/msa.pdf [Accessed February 15, 2010].
• Perez, S., 2010. Mobile Data Traffic Surge: 40 Exabytes by 2014. Read Write Web. Available from: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/mobiledatatrafficsurge40exabytesby_2014.php [Accessed February 23, 2010].
• Pingdom, 2010. Internet 2009 in numbers. Sweeden: Pingdom. Available from: http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/01/22/internet-2009-in-numbers/ [Accessed February 20, 2010].
• Rheingold, H., 2003. Smart mobs: The next social revolution. MA: Basic Books.
• SCMAD Certfication Center, 2006. J2ME Glossary. SCMAD Certfication Center. Available from: http://www.scmad.com/j2me-glossary1.php [Accessed February 20, 2010].
• TomiAhonen, 2010. TomiAhonen Cheat Sheet: Mobile Industry Numbers 2010. US: TomiAhonen.

You'll also notice some improvements to the way the game board and objects are added.

The ExplicitWeb name has been chosen for a couple of reasons but mainly because we don't want to censor any little mistakes or swearing. We simply felt the censorship restraints on the way we speak would make it feel unnatural.

After a few false starts we managed to record the first episode last night entitled, 'Local Development, Version Control, Designing in the Browser and Killing Kittens'. There are a few mistakes but overall it went pretty well. I urge you to have a listen on the ExplicitWeb blog, follow us on Twitter and subscribe to the ExplicitWeb iTunes feed.

I hope you enjoy it and I'd love to hear what you think.

As you can see, 3D models are yet to be added to the game. For now, placeholder objects are being utilised. The objects you can currently see are: walls [blue], fire [red], wasabi [green], and the finish line [orange].

Different objects have a different effect on the character, ranging from a change in movement to outright death. Further objects will be added to the game as well as refinement of the interaction with current objects.

Unfortunately, activities in a live chat-room for the event have overshadowed the otherwise successful day. These events came in the form of sexist comments against some of the female guests on the show. The comments have sparked quite intense retaliation from those involved and the Web community at large.

I would like to state right now that the actions of some people in the chat-room were childish, unwarranted, and something I don’t condone in any way. However, this whole situation is very interesting, both with the commenters and with the overall response to the comments. There is much to learn from these events.

This issue has been discussed at length on Twitter and the general consensus is that these comments manifested simply because the chat-room was anonymous. Because there was no physical tie between comments and real people, it meant that anything could be said without fear of attribution. It was a free-for-all where the strongest feelings could be vented with ease, wether they are warranted or not.

An unfortunate aspect of crowds is that as soon as one feeling is made public, anyone else with those feelings feels better about joining in; becoming one of the mob. As this mob grows the feelings get stronger and stronger until they lose all focus and erupt into personal attacks. This is bad.

On the flip-side, most of these comments were undoubtably made by young and immature people who have a bad case of jealousy. Or at least you’d hope that is the case! The reason this didn’t happen to any of the male guests is that the majority of this industry, and in turn the chat-room, is male. I would bet money on 100% of the bad comments coming from males. But why the attack on females? Well, because when you’re jealous the best way to feel better is bring the other person down, at least in your own mind. The only way they could do that was by attacking the biggest difference; gender. I'm by no means an expert of psychology, but this is all pretty obvious stuff.

I'd like to stress again that I'm not condoning what happened, I simply believe a little understanding of the issue will prevent the community coming to knee-jerk conclusions. It seems to me that the response to the comments has turned into a defensive backlash about how woman deserve to be in the Web industry and how hard they’ve worked for it. Why has such a small number of anonymous comments required this much defending? Especially if the majority of the industry supports equal rights.

I can’t see equality being reached if there is a backlash every time a comment is made seemingly against said equality. If you highlight the difference then the difference will persist. It's a never-ending loop that must be broken somewhere along the line. Of course, this post is part of that loop, but I feel it's place is warranted by highlighting the need to break said loop.

In conclusion, none of this would’ve happened if users of the chat-room were required to register, attributing a real name and email in the process. A sense of responsibility results once a physical link is made between the user and his comments. The user must think carefully about the impact of their words before joining the crowd. I believe a majority, if not all, of the comments yesterday would not have happened if this simple requirement was in place.

The first episode of The Virtual Revolution dropped last Saturday and gave an informative overview into the Internet's history and the resulting issues with it's fundamental feature, openness.

This evening brought with it episode 2 which focussed on how the freedom given by the open Internet can prove damaging, and how some entities are trying to restrict that freedom. The result is an online battle between sophisticated defence mechanisms [the censorship], users [the free people], and technology providing a means of bypassing said defences. Censorship is an area of the web that is very young and one that will prove increasingly important to everyone who uses it, regardless of location.

So far the series has been insightful but most importantly, because of it's airtime on BBC 2, it is allowing the general public to learn about the hidden issues that affect them in so many ways. Unfortunately the web and the technology behind it is still seen as something that only geeks are allowed to know about. I hope this series will change that.

There has already been quite heated debate on social networks about the topics covered, and this is a good thing. Previously such topics would be unknown to most and left alone to do as they wish. Maybe this new audience will be moved to do something about the most important issues, maybe not. What matters is that the magic of the web is being laid bare in format that all can understand.