James Marshall

So, I have apparently succumbed to the latest “social game” that is the ever growing stock market and self-promotion engine of "Empire Avenue”; the place to go to invest in just about anything or anyone from Ford & BMW through to little old me. (Go and invest, you know it’s worth it!)

To those who don’t know: Empire Avenue allows you to create yourself in a stock market-type environment where you can invest fictional currency (eaves) in other users. You can also pay real money for more “eaves” but you can’t turn them back into real money. In order to increase your value you can hook up your other services including Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, and even your blog with any activity being picked up by Empire Avenue and making you a potentially more attractive investment for others.

There’s a lot more to it that that, but as I’m not an expert I will leave you to explore yourself…

My question is “where’s this all going?” – you can’t turn “eaves” back into real money, and there’s no extra real-life kudos to be had for being CEO in your index either. At time of writing I’m Senior Manager on the Technology index, in case you were wondering.

At least with other “social games”, like Foursquare, there are real-life incentives for playing; like coffee and pizza. At the moment Empire Avenue is holding my attention because it’s new and exciting but apart from being a massive time suck, it’s not offering me very much.

I recently attended a talk on the gamification of websites; that is to say the application of gaming mechanics to a website in order to make it more appealing to users. The big message to come out of it was that users lose interest pretty quickly if there’s no real-life payoff for their efforts.

So, what would I like to see?

• Loans – the ability to loan eaves in order to make more investments.
• Banks – the ability to loan others your eaves at different rates of interest.
• The ability to go bust – so you lent some dodgy Sheikh all your eaves and now he’s disappeared… didn’t you check his…
• Credit history – have I been a good social citizen and paid back my (e)10,000 loan?

Perhaps those ideas are utterly unworkable – perhaps not. What is true is that if Empire Avenue doesn’t do something to keep me interested soon, I might take my “eaves” elsewhere…

I remember being at primary school some years ago when our head teacher at the time, Mr Francis, announced he was moving on to a place called Pastures New. “What an odd sounding place,” I thought “I wonder where that is?”.

Very soon I’m about to find out, for I too will be going there. I am exceptionally honoured, nervous and excited to have been offered a job with Microsoft’s UK education team as the Live@edu Deployment Specialist!

I am leaving my current role to build on the experiences and skills I gained while I worked in education - joining an amazing team of people to help academic institutions across the UK make the leap to using Live@edu – a hosted suite of email, productivity and collaboration tools offered to schools, colleges and universities for free.

This blog, my Twitter account and any other social outlet for my thoughts will still continue, but expect me to be a lot more vocal about the fantastic stories that tools like Live@edu enable people to tell.

Big shoes to fill!

My predecessor, Ben Nunney, is moving on to a role within Microsoft as an Academic Developer Evangelist – a job I know he’s going to be amazing at – but in leaving he has left some mighty big shoes for me to fill. He was the first-in-post and I feel that in recognition of his excellent work I may yet be known simply as “Ben 2.0”.

Rather unlike our summer I’m going through a bit of a creative dry spell.  In an attempt to kick-start the old creative juices I thought I would write a brief review of my thoughts after a month with my HTC Desire.

I have the ‘exclusive’ black version only available in the UK with Orange; however, the trade-off is that Orange pile just about as much customisation into their ROMs as they can – more on that in a bit.

My previous phone, for the record, is the BlackBerry Curve 8900 smartphone, and the Desire is the first Android OS phone I’ve ever owned.

Performance

It is a quick phone. Responsive, useable, comfortable. There are a vast array of different applications available on the marketplace that promise to kill applications or better manage your memory but in all honesty they’re a total waste of time. Android, like mum, knows best.

Battery life is around a day the way I use the phone. I don’t have many widgets or battery draining things. I do find it drains quicker the more I use it (common sense…) – but it’s in line with other smartphones I’ve used.

Feel

Feels comfy. Screen is a fingerprint magnet which can become quite annoying; it also created a MASSIVE security risk insofar as using the pattern lock feature allows you to trace the pattern from your fingerprints.  Since HTC released Froyo recently a PIN and QWERTY lock option has been introduced.

Downsides

I’m not a massive fan of the keyboard if I’m totally honest. I have high hopes for Swype when it becomes available but I’m not holding my breath. I’ve got big fingers that like to type fast and this often confuses the keyboard and I end up typing the most awful things if I’m not careful.

As I mentioned earlier the HTC Desire as shipped by Orange comes carrier locked and fully Orange branded.  Even the case is branded. Cosmetics I can live with, but software I cannot.  Orange seem to have gone to great length to include demo applications that just sit there and chew up storage space as they’re unable to be removed.  As if you weren’t already aware that you were an Orange customer they’ve slowed the boot time down with their own animation and have even changed the Internet browser icon.

Some key software has been hidden, including Google Talk, and all updates are distributed OTA from Orange not HTC – which means very long waits for software updates.

Orange have always branded their phones, practically every single one I’ve had has had some kind of rubbish smeared and trodden into it like chewing gum into a beautiful new carpet. Don’t lose faith though – there are ways around it!

Salvation

For the cost of a mere couple of hours of your sanity, a significant amount of sweat and more than a Sunday’s worth of prayer you can unlock and de-brand your phone.

De-branding is highly likely to invalidate your warranty.  Do so at your own risk.

Following a few guides I found very easily on the Internet I created the necessary ‘gold card’ and after a few attempts was happily flashing a generic HTC Sense ROM onto my Desire.  The only bit that cost me any money was the unlocking which came to just shy of £25 – prices vary.

Now that my phone is both unlocked and de-branded I have been able to install Froyo OTA directly from HTC and am now running a bloatware-free and fully up to date Desire with all the freedoms afforded to me by not being locked down by Orange.

As far as I know, Orange haven’t announced which features won’t will be available in their version of Froyo but you can bet that things like the wireless hotspot application and Google Talk will be left out in the cold.

Summary

HTC have a little gem of a phone in the Desire. Running Android 2.2 (aka Froyo) makes the phone even better. The rich variety of applications available from the marketplace make the Desire a real alternative to the iPhone and I can only see it going upwards in market share.  I have been very satisfied and would highly recommend the phone to anyone looking for something new, fast and exciting.

If you’re not interested in being even a little bit geeky with your phone then I would say that Android in general isn’t quite ready for you – it’s not a fully polished product and can often lead you into very scary territory (de-branding involves quite a bit of geekery) so if you’re after a phone that ‘just works’ with strict constraints on what can and can’t happen then the iPhone is probably better suited to you.

You’d have to be living inside a dark shoebox at the end of the bed of a hermit who lives in a cave under the sea on a planet a million light years away not to have heard of Twitter at least in name over the past few months.  With any service like this a whole host of neologisms spring up to describe the actions of users of the service. 

“To Facebook” something is a prime example of an up-coming neologism relating to the act of updating your Facebook status, or otherwise engaging with the site.

Twitter has not escaped this curious evolution, and several words have entered the technological lexicon, some of which I aim to clarify:

• Twitter – The name for the service.  A micro-blogging website for posting messages up to 140 characters long.
• Tweet  – a message, public or otherwise, sent using Twitter.  Can also be known as a mention, reply, direct message or retweet – all ultimately ‘tweets’.  Definitely not twits; a twit is an idiot.
• (Re)Tweeted – having sent a tweet one could be said to have tweeted.  One has tweeted a tweet on Twitter.  Definitely not twittered a twit.
• Tweeter – someone who uses Twitter to tweet tweets at other tweeters.  Definitely not a twitterer twittering twits and other twiterers.

Why am I bothered? It really gets to me in a fantastically anal way when people use words other than the above to describe their, or others, actions on Twitter.  While Twitter might not quite make the OED (perhaps it has?) it’s certainly well established enough to be considered seriously – I am no twit.

The world works because people communicate using agreed standards; you might not think it but virtually every time you speak to someone you open the conversation with a greeting and end it with a farewell; hello and goodbye for example.  Language is built around people using the same set of standards which is why dialect, colloquialisms and heavy accents can all lead to difficulties in communication – all the more reason to agree on some words and stick to them.

I may not be the most loquacious person in the world but I know a tweet from a twit a mile away!

The British are good at, and famous for, a great many things.  Over the centuries we’ve established ourselves as world leaders in politics, education, tea-drinking, football hooliganism, and Euro-scepticism; however, the one thing we are the very best at – untouchable by any other nation on the planet – is queuing.

Yes, that most frustrating, argument-fuelling, soul-destroying, yet quintessentially British practise of forming a line up to a point of interest is something we’ve carefully crafted into both a hobby, and a sport; why it isn’t in the Olympics is a mystery.

Where are you going with this, James? I hear you ask… Stick with me.

I am, I’m ashamed to admit, a regular customer of McDonalds; at peak time this particular branch is flooded by literally tens of people, and so they decide to implement queue management.  This term is not welcome amongst veteran queuers. 

Note: All British people are, by default, veteran queuers on turning 18.

Imagine, if you will, the scene as I walk in: in front of me are around 10 tills; only 3 of which are open.  The tills are staffed by two people; one taking orders, the other preparing them.  Up to, around, and stretching back from, these tills are rapidly growing lines of people.  Which line do I choose?  Using my finely tuned queue-sense I scan from end to end and pick (mentally) where I’m going to go.  Like a careful queuer I pause for a second to make sure that my chosen queue really is the fastest one before…. wait… what… what’s this? A member of staff (not British, and therefore not a veteran queuer) directs me to a queue – the worst queue!

This, dear reader, is enough to light the fuse to a very, very explosive rage fit. “Excuse me! I am British, and do not need you to tell me how and where to queue!” I think to myself in my best stiff-upper-lip-wartime accent.  Alas, she is still stood there violently gesticulating towards the ‘reject’ queue.  I have no choice but to obey like some condemned citizen destined for a 10 minute wait for my ‘fast food’.

The point of this article? Companies who have high-turnovers, and large walk-ins need to carefully consider their methods of managing queues.  My experience is that while most people are savvy and will instinctively know which queue to choose, there are those who are like sheep or lemmings and will go and stand where there are people (presumably to feel loved); but this does not mean that every customer is sans-intelligence.

Either have a first-in-first-out queue snake that equally discriminates between customers and gives everyone the same(ish) wait time, or let the queue evolve organically.  The very worst thing you can do is tell someone, who has already made their mind up about how they’re going to play this round of ‘queue roulette’, where to stand.

Why don’t I complain?  Well, that too is because I am British… mustn’t grumble!

I signed up to Foursquare some time ago, but it was only after reading a fantastic blog post by Katharine Robinson (@thesourceress) that I decided to give it another look, and actually have a proper go at using it.

Katharine touched upon the user interface in her post, and this is something that I want to go into more detail about.  When I say more detail, it’s pretty simple: the main website (that is, when accessed from a PC rather than a mobile device) is severely feature-anorexic. Instead, the service encourages users to download and install one of the mobile applications onto your device, or browse the mobile website in order to use the service and get anything meaningful from it.  While I agree with this in principle I have to ask the question: why limit yourself?

One of the most fantastic little things I’ve ever been given is my netbook.  It’s light, ultra-portable and has a fantastic battery.  For this reason whenever I travel it comes with me.  Wherever there is free wi-fi I will use it.  But there’s the rub: I can’t check in on it, even though I may be out and about with it.  Why not?

When I sign in on a mobile device I can see where my friends have checked in – something I find quite interesting; particularly if someone I know has checked in at the same place as me; yet on the main website I can’t see this information in the same way.

Somewhat amazingly I’m about to apply something I’ve learned in my degree to a real-world scenario…

One of the principles of web design, certainly something that is taught in e-Business, is that you design for your users, not for yourself, and that you make your service as universally accessible as possible; to overlook something is to cut off access for a significant portion of your users. 

Surely I should be able to access the full range of Foursquare’s features no matter how I choose to access the service?  Foursquare should tailor their service to my method of access be that full desktop browser, mobile web, or mobile client software – I shouldn’t be penalised for using/not using a particular method.

I would like to see Foursquare include more functionality into its main website, here is my checklist of ‘wants’:

• To be able to check-in through the main website.
• To be able to see a summary of my friends activities from the main website.
• To get a properly personalised home page when I go to foursquare.com, rather than a generic welcome page (I’m a user already – I know what the site does!).
• Allow me to delete check-ins from the mobile application (I use the Blackberry app; not sure about others).  Occasionally Foursquare checks me in several times to a venue – particularly if I’ve got bad reception, yet the only way to correct the error is to log in to the otherwise useless main site.
• Allow users to report duplicate / mis-named venues and merge them into one correct one to  avoid confusion (for example: there are two Clapton stations, but which one’s correct?).
• Let me see who has been Mayor in the past?  Is there a secret Mayoral power struggle going on?
• Merge the stats generated by the mobile apps with the stats page on the main website so that I get the same information in both places.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on Foursquare.  Do you use it? What do you find useful or annoying? What would you add to my list?

I am, amongst other things, a second year IT student at the University of Reading in the UK.  This time of year for me, and thousands of other students, is a nightmare as we prepare for the onslaught of exams.  Exams are something that have been deemed necessary by the ‘system’ at practically every level of education for decades.

Whether you’re in primary school doing your SATs, in secondary school taking your GCSEs, or at University sitting your end of year exams they’re inescapable for the most part – and one of the most stressful times in any student’s life.

I am one of the many students that doesn’t test well.  I can speak to you for hours on a topic, write for pages, but sit me down in any kind of formal examination and I fall apart.  No amount of revision seems to fully prepare me for that moment when I turn over the paper and quickly realise that my mind is completely blank!  Many of my friends hate the fact that I often fill conversation gaps with utterly useless information but I can’t seem to apply this skill at hoarding info-crap to remembering important things like the topics in my exams!

Partly for this reason I am against traditional examining methods.  Studying a topic for 20+ weeks, completing coursework tasks based on the knowledge acquired, and learning how to apply it in ‘the real world’ is all well and good but then being asked to effectively cram that acquired knowledge into your short-term memory ready to pour it out onto paper is a tall order for anybody.  Especially if you’re not good at essay writing,

Even if you do thoroughly revise your module you still have a massive gamble when the paper is there in front of you: did you revise the right topics fully enough, will ‘that’ question come up that you hated in the past papers, is there anything you’ve forgotten?

I think it is safe to say that I see the traditional as at best a lottery; an unpredictable way of testing people on a randomly selected subset of topics from a broad module.  How can this be seen as fair; as a true representation of a person’s ability in a given field?  Yet, upwards of 60% of our degree courses are based on the results of these two-hour torture sessions.

The solution, you ask?  I would like to see Universities, and the broader system in general, adopt more modern methods of assessment.  Use technology to help extract the assessment.  If you’re studying a course where writing has gone the way of the dinosaur (as is the case in many IT based degrees) then don’t expect your students to sit and physically handwrite for two hours.  Instead create an environment where students can fully apply their knowledge, skills, and abilities electronically.  Use strong, goal-rich, coursework to fully test students understanding of a subject – not 10 week epic undertakings, but short tasks that can be completed in a few days but that cover all topics over the course of the module.

We’re often told of how people have a measurable, but short, attention span of as little as 10 minutes out of an hour, so why do examiners think that 2 hours in front of lined paper and a question booklet is a sensible, fair, and accurate way to assess?

Let’s catch up to the 21st century and begin examining in a more modern way!

Just under the title heading of this blog is a line displaying my latest tweet, however it doesn’t quite do what I want. I got the code (displayed below) from Joost de Valk’s blog; it will convert mentions into links, but not hashtags and URL links – something I would really like it to do.

Sadly I don’t have enough knowledge of regular expressions, or PHP, to modify this code to add that functionality, so if you’re able to help I would greatly appreciate it!

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< ?php
require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-includes/class-snoopy.php');
$tweet   = get_option("lasttweet");
$url  = "http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/jamesbmarshall.json?count=20";
if ($tweet['lastcheck'] &lt; ( mktime() - 60 ) ) {
  $snoopy = new Snoopy;
  $result = $snoopy-&gt;fetch($url);
  if ($result) {
    $twitterdata   = json_decode($snoopy-&gt;results,true);
    $i = 0;
    while ($twitterdata[$i]['in_reply_to_user_id'] != '') {
      $i++;
    }
    $pattern  = '/@([a-zA-Z]+)/';
    $replace  = '<a href="http://twitter.com/'.strtolower('1').'">@1';
    $output   = preg_replace($pattern,$replace,$twitterdata[$i]["text"]);
 
    $tweet['lastcheck'] = mktime();
    $tweet['data']    = $output;
    $tweet['rawdata']  = $twitterdata;
    $tweet['followers'] = $twitterdata[0]['user']['followers_count'];
    update_option('lasttweet',$tweet);
  } else {
    echo "Twitter API not responding.";
  }
} else {
  $output = $tweet['data'];
}
echo "Latest Tweet: ".""".$output.""";
 
?>

Ideally, instead of just saying “Latest Tweet:” I’d kinda like that to be a link back to the tweet itself, too!

Update: This is the current version of the code. Thanks to Chris Alexander and Nick Telford it now links correctly, automatically converting mentions, hashtags and URLs into clickable links!

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< ?php
 
$username = "jamesbmarshall";
 
require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-includes/class-snoopy.php');
$tweet   = get_option("lasttweet");
$url  = "http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/" . $username . ".json?count=20";
if ($tweet['lastcheck'] < ( mktime() - 60 ) ) {
  $snoopy = new Snoopy;
  $result = $snoopy->fetch($url);
  if ($result) {
    $twitterdata   = json_decode($snoopy->results,true);
    $i = 0;
    while ($twitterdata[$i]['in_reply_to_user_id'] != '') {
      $i++;
    }
// Hashtag, URL and Username linking - added by Chris Alexander, chris@chris-alexander.co.uk
 
$output = $twitterdata[$i]['text'];
 
//Replace URLs
$output = preg_replace('@(https?://([-w.]+)+(:d+)?(/([w/_.]*(?S+)?)?)?)@i', '<a href="$1" target="_blank">$1</a>', $output);
 
//Replace @mentions
$output = preg_replace('/([^a-zA-Z0-9-_&])@([0-9a-zA-Z_]+)/','$1<a href="http://twitter.com/$2" target="_blank">@$2</a>',$output);
 
//Replace #hashtags
$output = preg_replace('/([^a-zA-Z0-9-_&])#([0-9a-zA-Z_]+)/',"$1<a href="http://twitter.com/search?q=%23$2" target="_blank">#$2</a>",$output);
 
$prefix = '<a href="http://twitter.com/' . $username . '/status/' . $twitterdata[$i]['id'] . '" target="_blank">Latest Tweet</a>: ';
 
$tweet['prefix'] = $prefix;
    $tweet['lastcheck'] = mktime();
    $tweet['data']    = $output;
    $tweet['rawdata']  = $twitterdata;
    $tweet['followers'] = $twitterdata[0]['user']['followers_count'];
    update_option('lasttweet',$tweet);
  } else {
    echo "Twitter API not responding.";
  }
} else {
  $output = $tweet['data'];
  $prefix = $tweet['prefix'];
}
echo $prefix . $output;
 
?>

If you’ve logged into Facebook recently the chances are that at some point you’ve seen a suggestion rather similar to this.  That’s right, it’s yet another ‘official petition’ for this, that or the other; the creation of some illiterate hopeful who aims to overthrow society with their mighty group.

I’m not sure what annoys me more: the actual existence of the group in the first place, or the shocking grammar, spelling, and punctuation that is used in the title and information boxes for these groups.  If you’re trying to pull off ‘official’ at least look up how to spell it in the dictionary first, please?

I realise that campaigns on social networks have been met with limited success in the past; most notably the sustained effort to get Wispa back on the market, but that is by no means an indication that Ruth Jones and James Corden are going to slip into writing mode just because 500,000 people on Facebook want them to.

I think Facebook is beginning to lose focus.  Over the past few months I have seen ever fewer people actually using it for anything really interesting – even status updates have become infrequent and boring.  It seems to be all about the pages you’re a fan of, and the groups to which you belong.  Quite frankly I’m not interested, and I wish Facebook would do more to discourage or ban these "join and add all your friends to get Facebook Chat v2.0" type groups that are set up purely to gain members.  In fact, the ones that suggest you’ll get something wonderful for inviting all your friends to join are probably the worst offenders because they’re the ones that are utterly pointless; at least the groups trying to bring things back have some point to them.

If you’re thinking of creating a Facebook group to try and effect a change in the world here’s a few things to consider:

• Is your group really likely to gain momentum? Pick something people are interested in.
• Do some research – it takes two minutes to do a quick background search on Facebook to see if other people are doing the same thing you’re planning.  If you find something, don’t duplicate it, join forces.  Remember that duplication doesn’t mean better, it means SPAM.
• If you do press ahead think of a suitable title and learn how to spell it.  I cannot tell you how soul-destroying it is to see a badly worded, unnecessarily long, grammatically incorrect group name.  If you want to annoy people who still care about the English language ignoring this point will guarantee success.

• Don’t pretend to be something you’re not, and avoid making promises you’ll never be able to keep.  "Official" is an over-used term in my opinion.  You may be the first, or only, group that is dedicated to your cause, but that doesn’t mean you’re official.  Promising to start a UK government petition in favour of your proposal isn’t likely to earn Brownie points either, especially as I’m pretty sure the Labour Party isn’t interested in Gavin & Stacey!

I don’t want to discourage fan pages or groups because I think they’re a good way for people to share a common interest in people, TV shows, films et al.  I do want to discourage the culture of groups that think they can change the world, when they very obviously can’t.

If Ruth Jones and James Corden do decide to write another series of Gavin & Stacey I would want it to be because they genuinely had some fantastic material that they thought they could work with.  If it were to be rushed, low quality, trash generated purely to satisfy fans I think it would totally destroy the legacy the 3 series have built up.  Let it go.  There will be other TV series that you can get your teeth stuck into; until then, why not have a Wispa?

James

However you have managed to stumble upon this little blog, I wish you a happy and prosperous new year.  I’ve seen so many reflective tweets pop up recently, but I don’t think 140 characters can do the past 12 months of my life justice, so a blog post it is.

I have met so many fantastic people this year, mostly through Twitter and University – I spent New Years with a few of them ( @bennuk, @deepwire, @amykate, @dtsn, @craigyd to name some!); it’s been really rewarding getting to know everyone!

Despite spending most of the evening yesterday on the ‘bitter couch’ I would say that this year I’m not going to be bitter, but more optimistic of things to come. Hopefully in July I’ll be beginning a placement year somewhere and will have a better clue as to what I’ll be doing when I finish my degree.

I’m not one for making resolutions as such, I know I don’t have the staying power to ever see anything like that through, but I will endeavour to be happy this year.

So whatever you do, I hope it’s fantastic and that 2010 will be a real year to remember!

Oh, and as for the bijou in my life: she’ll be OK.

James