middledigit.net | jonathan hopkins

One of the top rules of blogging: never delete posted content, just update it.

Jason Calcanis has dropped a clanger with his predictions that “50-80% of the venture-backed startups currently operating will shut down or go on life-support (i.e. 3-4 folks working on them) within the next 18 months” and to make matters worse - there’s a big ‘WTF’ resounding around the blogosphere as Silicon Alley Insider and others pulled their posts in which the contents of the original Calcanis email containing the predictions were published.

Perhaps everyone quickly agreed that predicting that 80% of the current start-up community will ’shut down or go on life support’ was a bit much and not the most optimistic outlook for the industry, by the industry itself?

Here’s Loic wading in, on Seesmic, naturally. . .

Cheeky little video this morning. Such a simple idea that a brand could have done. But it didn’t. Paul Tosolini did it. And Paul is New Media Business Manager at Microsoft, which is pretty funny given the amount of Apple kit he clearly has (and loves).

[via Lloyd on Twitter, via Chris Brogan]

[Image from tdub303 on Flickr - he uses these to make super cool photos]

Where have I been? What have I been doing? What have I been thinking about? Everywhere. Lots of things. Even more stuff. You could say I’ve had a bit of a blogging dry patch and you’d be right. I’ve been sharing loads of stuff on Twitter, perhaps a little too much, but as you’ll see, I just haven’t been bothered about blogging lately.

So, in order to kick things back off, I thought Id offer up a quick round-up of some stuff I’ve stumbled upon lately, things currently on my radar and just some thoughts I’ve been thinking.

1. Geo-Location/GPS stuff
I cracked and finally bought an iPhone last week. That’s meant I’ve been checking out loads of Apps and thinking much more about the potential of GPS and geo-locational goodies. So far, Vicinity, Twinkle, GPS Tracker and of course Google Maps are all on my homescreen. And I’m well up for trying out a load more. Killer thing that needs building . . . . GPS + Facebook App. Dangerous.

2. Augmented Reality
Iain posted a while back on AR and that rekindled my interest in the area. It kind of ties into GPS stuff of course, then there was that company at TC50 that blew everyone away. Then today I checked this out. Awesome stuff, can’t wait for more exciting things in this space.

Enkin from Enkin on Vimeo.

3. It’s good to be in the audience sometimes
Well not all of us, but most of us. We don’t appreciate what’s going on around us - we’re too close to it. Way too close to it to appreciate it. If we go with the magic analogy that forms the tagline of this blog, then we’re quite literally standing behind the magician and spoiling the illusion. I;ve been doing a fair bit of training recently with all different types of people and that’s been great for making me appreciate what’s going on in the technology world. It’s all happening very very quickly and sometimes I think it would be nice to be in the audience from time to time.

4. There’s still a massive chasm for technology to cross
The technology adoption curve is nothing new. In fact it may even lie behind the name of something I’m working on . Tied into the point above, the tip of the curve is moving super quick, but from what I can see it;s taking time to push things down the curve and gain more early/mid/late majority adoption. Twitter is of course something we geeks love. But has it gone mainstream yet? Nope. This is something (not just Twitter, for all technology products/services) I think about a lot. How do you cross that chasm? What factors need to be in place? Is it simply how good/relevant/magical the product/service is? Hmmm. I’m going to think even harder.

5. Give Twitter back its magic wand
I’m in there all the time and I’ve noticed the following things that have happened. I no longer visit Popurls to get some quick link fixes. I blog less *cough*. I miss outbound SMS so so much. That was the magical bit. Why oph why doesn’t an operator jump in there and basically score the biggest load of love with the early adopter/tech community by striking up a deal with Twitter and taking some of the slack? Just cut out some of those slick adverts or drop a celebrity . . . Orange, Vodafone, O2, 3 or T-Mobile. (And yes I have mentioned you by name in the hope that you’ll pick this up and add it to the nagging thoughts in your mind that it’s a really good idea)

Wow. This is pretty cool. Exciting and a bit scary - high “more adverts shouting at us from more places” potential.

[via Engadget so you;ve probably already seen it - and actually originally a guy at Poke called Will)

I spent a good chunk of Saturday evening (yes, I *am* approaching 30) looking for a solution to something I’ve been researching for absolutely ages. It’s like my backburner web research project that I treat as a proper research thing that I keep coming back to and building on (thank you delicious, I heart you big time)But, I still haven’ t cracked it.

Basically I want to try out some home automation. I want to be able to dial into my house. I want to be able to check on an IP cam, turn the lights off remotely and generally get all geeky and do lots of cool stuff in the house - control everything via Twitter?!. Maybe that’s just getting way too geeky, but I’m adamant that home automation is the future and I’d like to get in there early. Besides, now is a great time for me to install some of the infrastructure for it as I’m building an extension and have the opportunity to rewire and mess around with 4 rooms at the same time.

Anyway, I’ve narrowed my search down to using the Insteon system (it already appears to have a community - good early signs) , potentially Indigo to control it all and ideally this latest bit of kit from Insteaon that web enables the whole lot and is iPhone optimised. However - the Insteon kit is from the US, not available in the UK yet (but coming soon, yay). Oh and even if you do get hold of it over here right now (which to be fair is easy) then it operates on the wrong voltage/frequency. Grrrrr.

So, I’m still hoping that I’m find a way of making all my geeky home automation dreams happen. Until then - here’s what could be.

This is unbelievable. So, so cringey - I keep thinking it’s an ironic viral thing. There is so much wrong with this video. “Ease, accessibility and fashion” ? Sorry guys but there’s talking about it and then there’s actually doing it. Trying way too hard.

[via Ars Technica which quite rightly asks if Microsoft should be doing stuff like this. Answer? Just focus on making great products and software that talk for themselves.]

Today Stephen Davies (aka PRblogger.com) joins the growing list of former agency digital PR peeps to launch their own specialist agencies/consultancies with new venture 3WPR. I did the same in March this year with Shed and I haven’t looked back since. Yes, it’s a bit scary and strange at first but you soon get used to working differently and dealing with all that extra stuff that comes with setting up on your own.

Personally, I absolutely love the freedom and flexibility it gives you in your work. Since setting up Shed I’ve had the time to meet loads of really smart people, start working with a few of them and even cook up my own ideas for some web based things. As well as doing all that social media and digital stuff that I genuinely love.

Good luck Stephen and thanks for calling Shed disruptive.

PS It was Ged that called Shed a micro-agency and it’s kind of stuck in my mind.

UPDATE: I’ve taken the embedded players down - they automatically play and are a little annoying when you;re not actually looking at this post. Just follow the link to Ustream to check out the (now not live) feeds.

Wow. This sent shivers up my spine. Live streams of Hurricane Gustav. You can hear news reports on the radio in the background and there’s the odd bit of commentary from time to time. As they say over on the Ustream blog - hope everyone is OK. The live web is most certainly upon us.

[via @noodlepie]