Wearables

Forget watches, health sensors and the rest. Clothes - as in fashion - are going to be the end-game in wearables. This is an interesting article electronics and fashion. Although the iMiniSkirt retails for £3,750, I don't think it will be too long to move wearables from CuteCircuit to Primark.

Spotify

I've found Spotify. I found it because someone posted on HotUKDeals that Spotify had the new U2 album available for streaming this week (i.e. prior to release) and I thought I'd give Spotify a try.

Well, I'm impressed. I've used last.fm on and off but it seems to stream me lots of stuff I don't like and it's catalogue doesn't seem to have all the stuff it want to listen to. Spotify is different. To start with you can programme the music you want - none of this "XYZ Station" stuff which gives you a track by "XYZ" every fifteen minutes. 1-nil to Spotify. The catalogue is pretty good - I've noticed the absence of Richard and Linda Thomspon's "Shoot Out The Lights" - and it is just so good being able to explore music at whim. I particularly like being able play several versions of a song. For example, there are versions  of  "I Only Want To Be With You" by Dusty Springfield (*****), The Bay City Rollers (*),  The Tourists (****), Tina Area(**),  Nicolette Larson (*), Michell (* German but she sounds Japanese to me), Michael Poss (nil points - worse than the BCR).

Well worth a try out.

Grenoble Graffiti

Take Me Now Baby Here As I Am

Take me now baby here as I am
Pull me close, try and understand
Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe
Love is a banquet on which we feed
....

Because The Night - Patti Smith / Bruce Springsteen

I'd forgotten just how much I love this song. But thanks the BBC iPlayer I've caught Patti Smith's April 2002 performance on "Later with Jools Holland" reshown in "New York Rock at the BBC".

Thank you BBC, thank you Patti, thank you Bruce.

Glastonbury Guardian

The Guradian's website has a rather good slide-show about the Rain at Glastonbury. I've been very impressed with some of the mashed-up content on the site; there was a very good video-still-sound report of a week with Tony Blair. I find it interesting the way that the Guardian is producing a site which is not "a newspaper on the web" but is altogether new.

Divergence

I've written about why, although digital technology is converging, digital products should diverge. I've recently become interested in the Nokia N800 web-tablet. It's a small (think PSP) touch screen based computer which looks ideal as a portable web browser. It has bluetooth and WiFi connectivity, but no cellular connectivity; it is not a phone. A recent blog posting, "maybe your phone doesn't need to be smart" covers some of the good reasons why a bluetooth cell phone plus an N800 could be a really good combination.

My own analysis is that I want my cell phone to be small enough to carry with me at all times - in the pocket of my jeans. This means the phone must be small (thinner than my current Nokia 6822 which can unfold to reveal a qwerty keyboard); robust; work well as a phone(!); and have some non-phone functions (i-net, diary, ...) but it doesn't need to be very good at those things. The 6822 works just fine with the Google Mail Java app for instance. Ultimately, of course, the size of the phone will limit the screen size which ends up limiting its usefulness. I think carrying a second, larger device, with more functionality sounds just.

Of course, today the N800 seems to be lacking a key application, a diary which syncs with other things (Outlook, Google Calender). But I'm sure this will get fixed soon.

Divergence revisited

Once again I found my self traveling between Bristol and Grenoble this week. And once again I bought myself a copy of The Economist to keep myself occupied on the flight home. This week was the occasion of The Economist's technology review and I'm pleased to say to mentioned the issue of digital divergence. Unfortunately the article, about telephones, is only available for paid view so you, dear reader, will have to make do with my precis. Essentially, The Economist draws the analogy between the car and the phone. Both are fashion items, both rapidly move technology from the high-end to the low-end, and in terms of what the consumer wants, both are unpredictable. (What ever happened to video calling? Why do people drive round crowed cities in SUVs? Why send 160 character text messages when you can talk to someone at less cost?). Oh, the final one, no one asks which is the one type of car that we will converge to; we accept the need for diversity and multiple ownership. Maybe digital technology is like that too?

Digital Divergence

Very interesting how a contrarian view can give an enlightening perspective on the world. Digital Convergence is an idea whose time has come and gone; it is no longer giving us a clue as to how to shape the future. On the other, Digital Divergence, is the an idea whose time has come. How do I know this? Well, last week at meeting to discuss research strategy for 3CR, the topic surfaced, and then today, I find the matter raised on Build and Break.

My call on it is that digital convergence has happened; all media is now digital media. We have computers that are cheap enough, capable enough and power-efficient enough that our ability to manipulate and mash the media is limited by our system building skills and imagination, not our technology. Digital Divergence is what happens next, and we see a range of diverse digital devices and applications exploiting digital convergence. If the single device model of digital convergence were correct then shoe shops would stock only one type of shoe.

Unfortunately both divergence.com ("the Nematode Genomics Company") and digitaldivergence.com are taken so I have to think of a better name for a digital divergence blog.