middledigit.net | jonathan hopkins

Sorry, couldn’t resist posting this for a number of reasons. Here’s Steve Jobs flipping it to IBM, teaching us that invaluable lesson that anything you do offline (past, present and especially future) is more than likely to make it online - especially if you’re a world-famous CEO. And on the internet, it’s there forever. No harm done though. It’s just Steve, being human.

[Via Edible Apple]

Wow. Ben has just spotted this. Jed05 created a level on Little Big Planet in order to propose to his girlfriend. First, mariage proposals on Twitter, now in-game proposals. Just wow. < voiceofanoldperson> What is the world coming to? < /voiceofanoldperson>

I actually think this is a bit cruel. But I appreciate the geekery involved and the website created to showcase the project. And did find it a little bit funny, if I’m being really honest.

[via @juter]

Today I saved my 5,000th link on Delicious. That means I’ve invested 13 hours and 45 minutes in Delicious, or thereabouts (I reckon using some fairly crude calculations on 10 seconds per save, allowing for some tag management and re-saves). I actually thought it would be more as this figure doesn’t seem that impressive, but then if I imagine sitting for 13 hours straight saving links it gets a bot bigger in my mind.

So. the big question is why bother? Well from a practical point of view, it helps me remember and find stuff I come across on the web. It’s as simple as that. It’s a big filing system that has traveled around with me from computer to computer and job to job. I actually feel naked without it, when browsing on someone else’s machine or mobile. I feed it relentlessly and I’m adamant that one day I’ll be able to extract even more use out of my bookmarks and everyone else’s bookmarks. For now though, I really do love Delicious and think it’s one of the best, most useful Web 2.0 apps that I use every day pretty much without fail.

Thoughts?

Oh and if you want to get some useful stuff, I’d personally subscribe to the feed for my stats tag. The cat stuff may geek you out a bit.

I’m pretty late to this but I’ve just finished watching Nerdcore Rising. Amazingly cool, genuine, funny collection of people and a great insight into the genre’s growth in the US. Hot Chip, Hedluv . . . we have our own hugely popular homegrown stuff too. I can’t wait until all this celebrity stuff finally goes out the window and the true rise of the nerds happens. Technology is driving huge global cultural change and nerds are finding themselves in the spotlight. And I love it (being a bit of a geek myself).

Full stream here, though be sure to check out the official site.

Official trailer below.

Here’s MC Frontalot, star of the movie and the rapper that’s held up as being the Godfather of the scene.

Whilst Suw is on ‘blogging sick leave’ I’ve been geeking out with a guest post over at Kits and Mortar. I wanted to write about cats, GPS and stuff and it turned into a rather lengthy post. The first of a few I hope, thanks Suw! It’s really funny though to be blogging away from home after so much one-on-one love with middledigit. I think that might explain the slightly different style and unusually lengthy nature. PS - if you work in PR, it’s worth reading this - what happens when someone like Suw is confronted by reams of spam from PRO’s, even after taking hte time out to write this.

In the meantime, I’ve also been doing HEAPS of Flickr trawling and stumbled across this - some awesomely geeky ink-work. I am awarding the proud owner of these tattoos full middledigit-certified geek status. The first ever award and (I have a feeling) the first of many. More geek tattoos here BTW.

Love this [via here]. That’s me on the right that is, quite a lot of the time.

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)

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.