Zach Beauvais

Yesterday, I had a nightmare journey. It was the kind you think is made up by travel writers to pad out the pages between interesting sights and ‘how-to’s of ticket management. It didn’t help that my reason for going was to have a chat with the JobCentre Plus (Plus benefits, I assume) about allocation of a National Insurance number.

The first leg of the journey was fine: train to Shrewsbury. I sat down to enjoy a book and baguette (brilliant combination until you take a bite out of your novel) and noticed that the notice on the gantry sign kept changing: next train-on time–next train-cancelled. Well, which one is it? Turns out, I just had to wait 25 minutes for the next one. No worries, I’m reading and drinking caffeine-containing hot stuff (It’s not coffee. This is coffee.)

So, I’m late into Telford, but I was going to be an hour early anyway. I have a Google Map printout, but I don’t want to risk it, so I jump in a Taxi, explaining that I’ll need cash first, then on to the Jobcentre Plus (Plus and Minus?). The Royal Bank of Scotland was just across the retail park which is Telford centre, so I tried to get cash out there… no luck. I shrug embarrassedly at the driver, who shakes his head as if to say: "Oh, bloody hell… I’m taking him to t’JobCentre Plus (Plus Jobs for foreigners, no doubt!) and he’s got no bloody money."

So, across to Asda, which looks more hopeful–there being three cash machines from different banks. Brilliant…but no.

Live Writer

Right, so I’ve been blogging using Windows Live Writer for a few weeks, and have generally enjoyed it. It’s easier than logging into my CMS, and it integrates with the site theme, so what I see is actually what the post looks like.

As you can see, it’s a pretty slick interface, and I think it’s  relatively simple, so the focus is on the writing rather than the application (Windows’ biggest design fault IMHO!) There are a few exasperatives, however:

• Insert Video only works with a select set of video sources, and I even had trouble with YouTube. It’s a slick idea, but it executes poorly.
• My Site favicon appears, which is nice, but it runs over ‘View Weblog’ and falls off the bottom of the window. Surely it’s not too hard to resize or align it in a satisfactory way?
• Set-up was quick, but there’s no native support for Drupal (you have to cheat and call it WordPress or MetaWebLog). This isn’t so bad, but it does limit the options you’re given if you choose the wrong one.
• It has the ability to tag posts, but it calls them ‘Categories’. They’re Tags. It’s a Blog. And, it’s one of the things that doesn’t work if you choose the wrong set-up type.

Aside from those, it’s brilliant. I use it all the time, and it is easy to use. You just have to html-in the videos you want.

I just watched the most unhelpful but beautifully-shot promotional video for the new Sony Ericsson XPERIA. I assume it’s a mobile phone from the five-second glimpse you get of it. The rest of the video is a bit of a mystery. It’s very enjoyable to watch, so I’d recommend it. It’s got lots of paper aeroplanes flying around NYC, with a Mystery Tour song going round.

In seriousness, I read a review on Last 100 about it, but they were baffled by the marketing speak too…

The EXPERIA X1, available in the second half of 2008, is a “premium experience of energized communication”, whatever that means.

It looks fun, and I can’t wait to see what it will do; but I can’t say I don’t feel a bit sad that it’s Windows Mobile. The limited experience I’ve had with WinMobiles has been poor, really. I don’t really want my mobile phone to pause and hang like my PC does… However, I love Sony’s hardware, and this looks rather fun…

I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading on the Semantic Web lately, and its primary feature from the perspective of  a writer is a difficulty of easy definition. It avoids simple sobriquet and isn’t explained without analogy and lengthy description.

The best way I have come to think of the whole system is as a set of perspectives, a way of looking at information in a network. Sir Tim Berners Lee described it using the Social Graph as an analogy, but described it using the Social Graph as an analogy, but Nova Spivack, from Radar Technologies,  has a brilliant talk about the Graph which explains the concepts and history behind the Semantic Web:

Nova Spivack - Semantic Web Talk from Nicolas Cynober on Vimeo.