Jo Blogs

Web 3.0, at your service

2009-01-09T10:56:00.011Z

Remember Clippy, Microsoft's 'helpful' Office Assistant? The annoying little brat of a computer programme, who became the butt of many of our most sophisticated Microsoft Mickey-taking jokes?

Well imagine a far less annoying, but not so cute Clippy for all aspects of your 'connected' life - encompassing documents, programmes, uploads, downloads, and spanning all mediums of text, picture and video.

Writing a word document on Art History? How about an Internet that recognises not just what you're writing, or how you're writing it, but suggests web links for research material on that topic, points you to pictures and videos on your subject of choice, or connects you by Skype to friends of friends who might know more about it?

Welcome to Web 3.0.

Many have waxed lyrical on what the new generation of web will throw up - by definition, its largely unknowable until it actually happens. For some, the transition can appear at first, seamless.

Do you remember the exact point you first thought 'my goodness, this web 2.0 is fantastically more advanced than 1.0'? No, neither do I. I was far too busy being concerned with the fact I still was neither as slim nor successful as I wanted to be when the unwelcome spontaneous school reunion burst onto my computer screen via the wonder of Facebook in 2005.

But the next transition might be a bit more exciting. This time we know what we want the web to do, we're just waiting for technology to catch up.

In a nut shell, the web is becoming 'intelligent'. No, it won't be able to crawl out of your dormant monitor and tidy the living room while you sleep. But it will know who you are, where you are, what you're doing, what you're interested in, and how you like to 'do it'.

To some, this new generation of web connection and communication will be welcome on a par with burning in hell with nothing but a pair of knickers on. For those of you who are just about taming the reins of the inter-connective community of Web 2.0 - avoiding the Facebook revolution with the shadow of a notion that some bespectacled, spotty, twenty something in America will 'steal their identity' - Web 3.0 is probably not going to be your tea of choice.

But for those of us who've enjoyed the laziness the Internet so far has allowed us, this new A.I will open doors to us that our forefathers could never even have imagined possible.

Looking forward to it? With nervous trepidation, I hope very much to be on the front line. Knickers and everything.

Fairy Delights

2009-01-08T12:42:00.009Z

I know, I know, I promised I would let you know about the Christmas party - my first at Cornwall and Devon Media.

But the Christmas holidays ran away with me. No sooner was I complaining that it had arrived to quickly, I blinked and practically missed it.

But not before sampling the delights of an early-hour frolic in a Falmouth Hotel with a load of sideways colleagues.

Fancy dress regulations dictated we dress according to 'musicals', so with the inexperience of never fancy dressing before, I opted for the Moulin Rouge Absynth Fairy.
Not such a plan, I must say.

Mortified at having to spend an evening in what one colleague described as a '12-year-old's outfit', I soon tucked into the vodka cunningly disguised as 'Absynth' for part of my costume.

About 12 and a half minutes later, management spotted the cunning plan and whisked away said costume prop - only to be retrieved later from reception, rubber banded to a note reading 'confiscated from a Green Fairy, table 11'. Well - there aren't many who own a note like that.

Back in the land of the living, I've recently moved to an old Farm House. One soon discovers the trade-off for old wooden beams and rolling field views is rubbish heating and frozen water pipes.

But it sure beats the single bed bedsit.

So 2009. New Years resolutions? I pre-judged 4x4 Ulrika Johnson when she entered the Celebrity BB house, only to be mildly surprised at my warming to her. So the resolution is to not judge people I don't know.

As much as possible.

Fairytale of Truro

2008-12-11T13:07:00.004Z

As something of a newcomer to Truro, I thought the Wednesday night Christmas shopping extravaganza of a couple of weeks ago was a one-off.

How wrong I was.

Last week, again struggling through a throng of over-sugared school children and tense looking parents with fixed grins on their faces, I wonder when it was that I lost my Christmas spirit.

It could perhaps be partly to do with the fact that this year, for the first time in quite a few years, I'm not spending the run-up at home.

I feel almost traitorous spending my money somewhere other than the local shops I know are struggling under the heavying weight of the recession back in Kent. But aren't the shops here under the same strain? No. That's not it.

Perhaps it is something to do with the fact that as I get older I'm starting to feel a bit disillusioned about the consumership of Christmas.

As we watch our old friend Woolworths buckle to it's knees, Mr J Public almost convulses with the excitement of getting a good deal.

Giving and receiving - fine.

Remortgaging your house so your kids can have an xbox and a new pair of Nike Airs? Not fine.

And at times of hardship I'm a big believer in the 'it’s the thought that counts' gifts. Craft-making your way into a solvent Christmas by making someone a shell necklace. Giving your nephew that old mini-mal that hasn't even seen the sea since 1999. But are those kind of gifts really as appreciated as a Cath Kidson luggage bag, or a new Quiksilver Cypher suit?

Perhaps my scrooge-like spirit will vanish tomorrow night as the happy elves of Cornwall and Devon Media will once again let their hair down for a veritable feast of fancy dress and no-doubt drunken debauchery. I'll let you know after the weekend. If I remember any of it, of course…

Oggy oggy oggy

2008-10-14T15:31:00.014+01:00

I find regional dialects all too easy to pick up.

Having come from the land of cockney rhyming slang, no turn of phrase is too preposterous for me.

I used to knock around a bit in Somerset where locals would call each other ‘babba’. It sounded so affectionate and endearing – so much softer than the London trend of calling everyone ‘love’. It stuck to the roof of my mouth like Dairylea, and wouldn’t come down.

Worse than that, it’s impossible to say "alright, my babba?" without employing a hugely exaggerated southwest twang. And use it, I do. Frequently. Now other friends have complained that they’ve picked it up from me, and I’ve vowed to cut down its usage.

It only takes a short while to overhear and adopt the idosyncrasies of regional language, but some are better known than others.

In research carried out by Travelodge, 40% of the country recognised the ‘affectionate’ Cornish name-calling of tourists as 'emmets', while only 20% knew that an 'oggy' is a pasty. Having said that – when was the last time you actually heard someone other than your dad call it an oggy?

Just 2 hours up the road in Cheddar, some good friends of mine refer to me, an outsider, as a 'grockle'. I think I prefer this term, as said with something of a London twang, a grockle sounds like a warm fuzzy feeling one might get after having a long hot bath – “oooh, I’m feeling a bit grockle...”.

From what I can tell, however, it means exactly the same as ‘emmet’, just applied to a different part of the Southwest - a mildly derogatory term for anyone who isn't local.

But even the locals disagree on the definitions sometimes. A colleague of mine assures me the term ‘emmet’ only applies to someone who has actually moved, and is now living somewhere they weren’t born locally.

The Urban Dictionary however (I won’t link it due to some of its over-enthusiastic characterisation of the stereotypical tourist) most definitely applies it purely to those tourists (mainly northerners) who sun themselves on the Cornish beaches between the months of July and August.

One thing is for sure – I am bound by birth to never be able to thrown my hands in the air and raise my eyes to heaven at the summer traffic jams to cry ‘bloody emmets!’. Bit of a shame really.

I will just have to start my own lingo.

Drunk dialer

2008-10-08T13:12:00.009+01:00

I think I could do with one of these. Or rather, the people around me could do with one of these.

Step aside in-car breath tests, step up the breath test for email.

Are you sure you want to send this email? Are you really, really sure?

The Urban Dictionary defines the problem thus:

So it is with a collective sigh of relief that at long last a safeguard has been designed to stop one rattling off a message when ‘emotionally charged’ (or indeed, my personal favourite, ‘alcoholically challenged’).

Brainchild of an employee at Google, activating late at night and on weekends, the gismo asks a series of ‘short mathematical posers’ (love that phrase) which you have to answer before the email or text sends.

Now, ordinarily I’d like to think myself supreme enough to be able to answer a ‘short mathematical poser’ even after a few jars, but wise with the experience of ballsing up about a hundred late-night sudokus while on the last train home, I know different. It’s harder than you think.

Having been on the receiving end of many a drunken email and text, and admittedly sending a couple myself, this can surely only be a good thing.

My only worry – don’t make them too hard, guys. Otherwise I can imagine, even without the dealy ingredient of alcohol, struggling after about 3 o’clock every day.

Facebook group: Mobile number changed

2008-09-26T15:37:00.011+01:00

I can’t even begin to fathom what 6.7 billion people looks like. Half the world.

Imagine that number of mobile phones going off at once. Unlikely, yes, but soon possible, as the UN's agency for information and communication technologies predict that half the world will own a mobile phone by the end of the year.

Goodness. Half the world. Half the world with the potential to hear Guns’n’Roses Sweet Child of Mine emanate from a tiny gizmo every time someone else is trying to speak to them. The possibilities are endless…

Ironically, this news comes on the day that after 12 years with the same mobile phone number (I was carefully presented with a brick of a Nokia at the tender age of 17 as I hurtled back and forth from London to Cornwall every weekend in my 10 year old Polo) I had to change my number due to a recent abundance of malicious texts. And that’s the problem with everything fantastic – there’s always a downside.

Which got me to thinking - do I really need to be available 24/7 to anyone who happens to have picked my number up along the way? Do I really need the constant finger-ache and ear-ache of night and day communication? I bet there is the odd person out there in the county who has still refused the technology which interrupts, costs, and keeps tabs on you. A bit like those who have managed to hold Facebook at bay - I am in awe of these people.

I’m even jealous of people who own one, but rarely use it. My mum was a great example of this when, a few years ago, she actually DID break down in her car and her trusty old pay-as-you-(don’t)-go failed to work. On closer inspection by the network provider, her SIM had actually malfunctioned because it had become dusty. Imagine.

Another friend’s parents were asked to text their daughter when they got home safely at the end of a dinner party. About an hour and a half later, she received a text simply with the word 'BACK' shouting out from the tiny screen. As we giggled through tears of amusement, we mused that it probably took them half an hour to compose.

For those of us more frequent users, it’s a double edged sword. Although we are at the cutting edge of technology, bluetooth’ing, wi-fi’ing, video calling and picture messaging all at our very finger tips, it’s also all too easy to fight on text. Too easy to say things you would never say to someone’s face. Too easy to accidentally slip a ‘xx’ on the end of a message to a new love interest and appear ‘too keen’; and too easy to accidentally blurt out inner emotions when you’ve had a few on a Friday night.

It’s a nice thought but I know I’m addicted, and I’m sure I’ll never be able to quit. The ability to stay in touch with my brother by text when he’s in Singapore is priceless, or to catch up with friends when I’m on 5 hour train journeys home blissful. Yes, I am a slave to my mobile, and soon every other person in the world will be.

In need of an Indian summer

2008-09-17T14:55:00.010+01:00

How very English of me to blog on the weather. We’ve bitched, moaned and whinged our way through the most dreadful of Augusts in living memory. Kids have been sat indoors on their Playstations while parents despaired at their wasted summer holidays in the British Isles.

So last weekend came as nothing if not a blissful relief, as the cloudless sky which had been forecast, actually came true. Locals and tourists alike blew dust from their sunnies and blinked sun-spots from their eyes.

Never has the Wood gene been so lucky, as my brother and father rocked up from the South East for a weekend visit, only to wonder if the weather in Cornwall is always so lovely. Ha!

We were in the sea 3 times on Saturday and twice on Sunday, sampled some Cornish folk music at the Ring’o’Bells in St Issy, and as they wended their weary way home on Sunday, no sooner were they over the Tamar, it started to rain again.

Our hopes that we would be able to fill up on vitamin D before the winter sets in once again were dashed as quickly as they were raised. As a sufferer from SAD this is a big deal to me. Predictions that depression will increase become ever more real as we stare out of office windows for any break in the cloud.

My advice? Take lots of photos on the sunny days and look at them frequently; listen to Mungo Jerry’s In The Summertime on repeat; buy a sturdy winter coat, and when the sunshine comes again next May and June, lets not marvel at ‘what a nice spring we’re having’. Book 4 weeks off work then and there and enjoy your summer 2009.

Is it a fair cop?

2008-09-08T13:51:00.007+01:00

It’s not been a good week for me and my car. After 11 years of safe and careful driving (see blog below), a minor slip saw me morph into a common criminal. Cluedo style, it was the girl in the red Peugeot, on the deserted A30, with a mobile phone. Or not as deserted as I’d thought, as the unmarked Officer Dibble behind me - the only other car in sight - took no time in giving me the flashers and pulling me over, moments after I’d managed to tell my mum that I couldn’t talk – I was driving.

Now, dear reader, before you scoff at my carelessness, I fully understand the dangers of driving whilst distracted. A long conversation down winding local roads at school kick-out time is obviously a problem. I explained very politely that I’d ended the conversation before I even knew that it was a Police Officer driving behind me. That I had only been on the phone moments. That I have an automatic – no changing of gears required, even if I needed to break suddenly. I even breathed in my stomach and batted my eyelids a bit. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. He was not to be moved. Crime was apparently a bit low that day and quotas are quotas.

Officer Dibble carefully explained to me that ‘tests show that driving whilst on your mobile are proved to be more distracting than driving whilst under the influence of alcohol’. It took all my willpower to suppress an aghast ‘you cannot be serious’ laugh. Was he kidding? I’d pressed a button, put a phone to my ear, said two quick sentences and pressed another button. I’m not even sure my eyes left the road. More dangerous if I’d had a bottle of vodka? Well, a miss is as good as a mile – I almost regretted not having that glass of wine at lunch time.

Defeated, I took the ticket, the fine, the points (more difficult than it sounds as the sister part of my driving license had to be sent down from East Sussex and produced within a week – a close call when my mother accidentally forgot to put a stamp on the envelope). As the tight-lipped Policewoman at the station tutted and sighed her way through the paperwork a few days later I got to wondering. How about all those times I rummaged around for a CD to play? How about when I change radio stations or laugh or joke with my friend in the car? Distracting? Absolutely. But not illegal? No siree. Perhaps there needs to be some kind of distraction richter scale.

It’s a fair cop, guvn’r. I did, after all, break the law. But after 11 years of driving in and around the Big Smoke, never even to be pulled over, it was a bit of a slap in the face. Lesson learned, I’ve now got hands-free for my mobile. Which is even more fiddly and distracting than putting a phone to my ear, but apparently, that’s legal.

Engine trouble stops play

2008-09-05T11:39:00.010+01:00

Friday: Day 9 in SouthWest.

I’m always nervous about taking my car into the garage. There’s a fine line between getting overcharged because you’re a bolshie pompous guy who purports to know intimately the inner workings of the engine, or getting overcharged because you’re a clueless 20-something who knows more about the delicacy of the Middle East peace process than she does about what’s happening under her hood.

So it was with trepidation that I took my car in for its yearly MOT yesterday. They said they’d look at it in the morning and call me if it needed any work done, so by 3pm I thought I was home dry - enough to boast to a colleague about how my little L-reg had obviously sailed through its yearly medical, clearly down to careful ownership and model driving.

At 3.10pm and the call came. “Miss Wood? It’s about your car”. My faithful companion. How bad was it? I felt I should probably be sitting for the news. In the moments that followed I felt a good portion of blood rush to somewhere near my little toe. Something about a new exhaust. Something about a new headlight. And a further twist of the knife as apparently my number plates are too battered to be read according to legal standards (are you sure?). The damage? More than I’d budgeted for by a few hundred pounds.

It does make me wonder. If I had fallen somewhere in between bolshie know-it-all, and clueless-I-know-my-car’s-red-and-that’s-about-it, would I have needed so much ‘essential’ tinkering? Essential it is, however, as having no car in Cornwall is probably on a par with having no date for prom. You just don’t get very far.

Community Nipple Grazing

2008-09-04T16:41:00.004+01:00

So, here I am. Fresh from Guardian News and Media, I joined Cornwall and Devon Media this week as Deputy Digital Editor. And I’m very excited to be here.

Big things are afoot. We’ve already got a new Facebook groupthisiscornwall.co.uk – do please join up to be kept abreast of all the region’s news and features. We’ve also got a Delicious page, and are sampling the delights of StumbleUpon – hopefully you’ll trip over us imminently.

I’ve always loved Cornwall and have twice lived here before. Dreams of owning a gallery with a hot chocolate shop at the back have been somewhat put on ice for about a decade, but the pipe dream still throbs away quietly.

Truro is, however, relatively new to me. We used to venture in from St Merryn about twice a year in order to fill our boots from the charridy shops in a bid to look the part for Newquay’s late Fosters club’s 70s night (RIP). Outlandish costume jewellery, feather bowers, and nipple grazing collared shirts for the guys. Those were the days.

Here I am a decade later - a little older, a little wiser, a little less able to hold my drink - and charity shops and saffron cakes appear to have been replaced with M&S, Laura Ashley, Topshop – a veritable feast of cutting edge retail. I’m assured there’s the odd nice place to eat and drink too, which I’m decidedly looking forward to sampling.

So, whilst enjoying thisiscornwall.co.uk’s new community delights, any hot tips on the region hugely appreciated…