BBC - Outriders

Supermodels and the good and bad of photographic habits

2012-09-14T15:25:20Z

Hello Outriders!

This week on the podcast, Chris Vallance hangs out with supermodels and young coders while I explore some of our digital photographic habits.

First stop for the good ship outriders with with our chris Vallance. You may remember when he was taking good care of you while I was away that he mentioned dropping in to visit the folk at Young Rewired State. He did just that so here's a selection of the young people who are creating amazing things with computers, young Outriders in their own right.

]]> Earlier in the week I hear about a wonderful blog called Underground New York Public Library, kept by Ourit Ben-Haim who is a photographer in New York. She takes beautiful photographs of people reading on the subway, something fairly familiar to people who travel by train the world over and also something that captures a moment when people are simultaneous there but far away. I asked her more about her work and the art of taking photographs in public.

It's interesting that Ourit prefers to let her subjects know when she is taking a photograph. There is so much mobile photography taking place around us these days, how can you know when you might turn up on someone's blog?

To find a comparison with Ourit's work, I spoke to 'Anniemole' who runs a blog for about the glory and occasional inglorious moments of the London Underground. I asked her about taking photos on the Tube and what the rules are according to Transport for London or TFL.

Of course candid photography for bloggers is one thing, but professional photography for media coverage carries its own set of rules above ground. I had a chat with Jules Mattsson, he's a news photographer and multimedia journalist and has done a great deal of street photography. We discussed the law and ethics around taking images in public as we sat in a public space.
That's all we have this week, but as ever if you'd like to share the things that float your digital boat, search for Outriders on Twitter, Facebook and Google plus to join the conversation.

Until next week!
Jamillah

Art, dance and unidentifiable cities

2012-08-28T14:11:45Z

Hello Outriders!

I hear there was even some magical goings on in my absence. It's good to return to find there has been a little wizardry!

This week on the podcast I've got more from Chris and a little video remixing from one of the well known groups who make viral, yet dance-able video productions.

Well, It seems that Chris was so enthusiastic about tracking down Outriders all over the web, that he had more than enough for the past weeks as well as something for us now.

From walking around with paper models of over sized World of Warcraft weapons to planting giant replicas of Google map pins in real locations - Artist Aram Bartholl is interested in exploring the boundaries between offline and online worlds.

]]> He's just completed a new work - DVD Dead Drop at New York's Museum of the Moving Image - and so Chris asked him what he was trying to achieve through his art.

But that's not all Chris has been up to - heritage locations and the gaps in between are another topic he has been looking at.

When you think about photographs, sometimes it's very easy to tell where a picture was taken...you might see a picture of Big Ben and you know it's London - the Eiffel Tower, Paris and so on. But what about a random picture from a nondescript part of town? If you exclude obvious things like street names what are the elements of the image that help you visually locate it?

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the Ecol Normale Superieure in Paris have been taking a look at Google's Streetview to see if computers can identify the distinctive visual elements of cities...and one of them has been talking to Chris Vallance - a researcher that is.

Another step toward machines recognising things that humans might have at least subconsciously known for a while there. I wonder how that might fit for culture spotting?

If you're a Web-addicted digital video fan, you'll probably have heard of Eclectic Method. It's a group that does video remixing to music and they manage to grab pop culture references and make them into something pretty catchy.

Of course technology plays a big part in how culture can be remixed and all manner of copyright, sharing, portability and performance questions come about with each new advance.

Geoff Gamlen of Eclectic method was in London at the Apple Store recently to do some live video remixing on an iPad. I caught up with Geoff in a park nearby and we talked about his work with Eclectic Method.

That's all for now, but I'll be back next week with more Outriders dancing on the frontiers of their digital lifestyles and as usual if you search for Outriders on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook, you can join in along the way.

Until next week!
Jamillah

Brains, GaymerCon and Adventure

2012-08-21T10:57:09Z

By Chris Vallance

This week on the podcast
Daniele Perito of UC Berkley spoke to us about what the study, On the Feasibility of Side-Channel Attacks with Brain-Computer Interfaces, tells us about potential future security risks associated with devices which monitor our brain activity.

]]> Kayce Brown and Matt Conn told us about GaymerCon - which aims to be " the first gaming and tech convention with a focus on LGBT geek culture."

The Adventure Travel Film Festival has just concluded. Adventurer Alastair Humphreys told us about Micro Adventures over an adventurous dinner.

Mark Cotton supplied us with a delightful sampling of the new Bletchley Park podcast - go listen!

Finally thanks to Joel Robson's for letting us use Three Point Landing- originally the soundtrack to this rather wonderful supercut.

Robots, wasps and taxis

2012-08-15T13:47:16Z

By Chris Vallance:

This week on the podcast we were joined by comedians Matt Parker and Timandra Harkness who along with their robot friends star in the engineering comedy show Humans V Nature: Engineering for the Win.

Paul Daniels has an iPhone app out – aimed at magicians – he spoke to me about magic and technology while trying to zap a rogue wasp.

Lastly tweeting cabbie Lee Cox interpreted the taxi rank twitter tremors for us.

Ideas are welcome for next week’s programme, you can hail us at @bbc_outriders on Twitter.

Cheers, Chris

Hacking, Singing and Debating Future Technology

2012-08-08T13:27:52Z

Hello Outriders!

This week on the podcast I have been at City Hall in London finding out a little more about the the Capital's growth as a technology centre, I've heard about how a man and his guitar can fight for his consumer rights online and I've learned a little about hackers having fun with their own telephone network.

]]> At the weekend Boris Johnson, Mayor of London hosted a debate at City Hall.

Nico MacDonald co-author of "Big Potatoes - The London Manifesto for Innovation" chaired the debate with Jimmy Wales founder of Wikimedia. The topic was technology disruption and convergence. So I asked Nico to explain what this was all about.

Across the Pond in the United States, the hacker conference Def Con took place recently in Las Vegas. At each event of course there is some creative work and a bit of showing off. One group in attendance, known as the Ninja Network created its own telephone network for selected guests.

Matt Lewis who is often known as Barkode told me more about the conference and how he came to be working on making a phone network of their own.

Dave Carroll is a Canadian singer-songwriter and social media innovator. You may know his name from his campaign about United Airlines.

He's now written a book about his experiences and so I caught up with him on his book tour to find out how that's going and recap the events that got him this far. He even sang a little of his viral video song for the interview.

A bit of a change next week. Chris Vallance will be steering the good ship Outriders so be nice to him and make him welcome because I am sure he will have some treats lined up.

In the meantime you can reach us via the usual channels. Tweet at me on Twitter where we are @BBC_Outriders, or search for Outriders on Facebook and Google plus to add us to your digital diet.

Until next week!

Jamillah

Faith and technology

2012-07-24T14:08:11Z

Hello Outriders!

This week I have been finding out about a ten dollar robot, learning more about how faith works with technology and our Chris Vallance has been out at the Science Museum.

First up is the $10 Robot Design Challenge. The project is open for people to think of ways for kids to engage with science and technology through robotics. Naturally to reach a lot of young minds, the robots have to be easy to make and cheap to manufacture.

Ayorkor Korsah is an assistant professor at Ashesi University College in Ghana. She told me all about the idea and why robotics are important in education. Makes me wish I had a teacher with robots when I was at school.

Also this week; someone let our Chris Vallance out of the building again and naturally he made his way to London’s Science Museum. He went to the opening of a new exhibition called Web Lab. It’s a collaboration with Google and according to its description it aims to “bring the extraordinary workings of the Internet to life”. Chris reports back on what he found there.

And finally, you might think that computer science can be lacking in spirituality sometimes, but this is not the case.

A top example that my colleague Paul Sawyers wrote about on The Next Web last week is Google’s work on Ramadan. Last year they started live streaming prayers from Mecca which if you love tech in any denomination, you have to admit that’s pretty cool.

This year the big G has gone further and there is a Ramadan channel on YouTube which - given there’s a lot relating to fasting and food, means hangout with celebrity chefs for planning celebratory meals and important figures opening up discussions. That’s some nice social technology.

But Islam is not the only religion getting digitally upgraded, there’s a very amusing billboard not far from where I live, advertising The Jewish Chronicle. The newspaper now has iOS and Android apps out and as their billboard jokes - this means it’s out on Tablets again for the first time in four thousand years....(gettit? lol)

Over the weekend there was a big conference in the US for those who work with technology for the Christian faith. The International Conference on Computing and Mission or ICCM is a way for people to get together and talk about advances and uses for their technical work. And to geek out a little bit.

Our friend Antoine Wright was there, he runs the website Mobile Ministry Magazine. We had a chat about technology, religion and the cool things he saw at ICCM.

That’s all for this week, but as ever, do get in touch of there is something digital, electrical or geeky that has caught your eye.

Tweet at me on Twitter where we are @BBC_Outriders or find us on Facebook and Google+ Just search for Outriders and you can add us to your feed.

Until next week!
~ Jamillah

Freedom on the internet?

2012-07-17T11:46:55Z

Hello Outriders!

This week I have a couple of longer interviews on the podcast for you. One looks at the freedoms or lack thereof when it comes to our Internet today and the other takes a closer look at trying to cover the current events in Syria through the eyes of citizen media.

]]> Rebecca MacKinnon is the co-founder of Global Voices, and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation which is a think-tank where work is done on Internet policy issues.

Rebecca's incredibly smart and incredibly busy, so it was great to have a moment to sit down and talk about her work. We chatted about the state of the Internet today and where there are threats to change that status for better or worse.

Global Voices has many bridge reporters who monitor the frontline on the web. As the Arab Spring rolls on and Syria sees more bloodshed, even when under threat, citizen reporters are still recording the events that happen around them as a matter of record.

Not only do people take huge risks to record the violence, but bridge reporters or those people who work between the reports that we see on news websites and the raw footage that can be found on sites like Youtube, also expose themselves to quite heavy doses of recorded violence.

Leila Nachawati is a Spanish and Syrian human rights activist, she teaches communications at Carlos the Third University in Madrid as well as contributing reports to Global Voices and many other mainstream media outlets. I caught up with her in Kenya and we talked about the pros and cons of monitoring citizen media.

That's all for this week but In the meantime you can let me know what lights your fires on the Web or electronically, by dropping me a line.

Tweet at me on Twitter where we are @BBC_Outriders or find us on Facebook and Google+ Just search for Outriders and you can add us to your feed.

Until next week!
~ Jamillah

Global Voices in Kenya

2012-07-12T10:03:28Z

After a little break, I'm back with sounds of the Global Voices summit in Kenya for the podcast. I've been finding out more about how the organisation works and what the members there are up to.

]]> Around 200 of the writers, authors and translators attended and then there was a selection of academics there too as well as the public days of the event where there were of course many more.

Global Voices has certainly grown since Ethan Zuckerman and Rebecca MacKinnon started the ball rolling. The network is a big one, and a smart one. I caught up with Ethan and asked where the whole thing came from and also explained what he hopes it will become.

As Global Voices grows, it also seems to sprout new projects from the community. As more ideas are traded and problems are identified, you can't help but find smart people who are also working on solutions. Eddie Avila is the director of the Rising Voices Project - he works also to find languages that are under threat and find new ways to expose them a little and encourage new speakers to work on resources. He explained what language activism is.

In fast times on the Internet, we may consume short bursts of information from great reporters, bloggers and of course those on Twitter who share what is happening around them. The hard thing about this is looking back or trying to research what happened. Bernardo Parella is an editor for Global Voices and he is also working on some eBooks that will capture online news so that we can look back on it.

While in Nairobi. a group of us from the summit headed out for a half day at the iHub in Nairobi. It's a place where people can get online, get things done and heaps more. I chatted with Rachel Gichinga who showed us around.

That's all for this week, but don't forget that in the meantime you can always get in touch. You can tweet at me on Twitter where we are @BBC_Outriders or find us on Facebook and Google+ to add our updates to your feed.

Until next week!
Jamillah

Outriders at LeWeb conference

2012-06-26T10:50:01Z

Hello Outriders!

Last week saw the LeWeb conference take place at Westminster Hall. This meant that all sorts of tech leaders, innovators and startup companies from around the world were in attendance, so I went along to meet a few of them who you can hear from on the podcast.

Loic Le Meur co-founded LeWeb with his wife Geraldine. The conference usually takes place in Paris, so I asked him why he brought the show to London.

Naturally there were a lot of start-up companies at the conference and it seemed that there was a trend in the types of products and apps they were creating.

Reshma Sohoni runs SeedCamp, a mentoring and seed fund organisation that works across Europe. She keeps a keen eye on tech startups and notes that there are often waves of business ideas that arrive at the same time.

It seems that the UK is holding its own for tech and entrepreneurs too.

Andrew Humphries is the Tech City Champion. That means he works with the entrepreneurs in the Tech City cluster, which is over in East London. He looks at how these businesses can scale and grow.

I asked him more about the roots of Tech City which seemed to grow out of an area that was already dubbed Silicon Roundabout.

Hugh MacLeod is the cartoonist behind the Gaping Void Blog. As a cartoonist he has found that going digital early has brought a lot of success.

Of course an event like LeWeb draws the big names in the tech world too.

Bradley Horowitz, VP of product for Google Plus was at the event talking about a new partnership.

Google is approaching the development of this platform with some patience and Bradley told me more about how.

The progress of Google Plus shows that the web has really changed from just input and finding data, to sharing or 'the social web' as many folk will call it. But we are also seeing a change online as the web becomes a media-rich place. You'll notice that as we hope for better bandwidth, there is more video available.

One of the many video on demand services that is riding in on this new wave of the Web is MUBI. Efe Cakarel is the founder and CEO and so I asked him about going to the movies or watching at home.

I won't be with you next week with Outriders, but rest assured, we'll be back the week after.

In the meantime you can still get in touch, drop me a line on Twitter where we are @BBC_Outriders, find us on Facebook and Google+ where you can leave a comment, or add us to your feed.

Back in two weeks!

Jamillah

Outriders at Sonar, Music Hackday

2012-06-19T08:50:32Z

Hello Outriders,

This week I have been in Barcelona at the festival known as Sonar. It’s an event that explores the frontiers for music and new media and as you might expect, there was a hack event and this is where I have been exploring.

Though there were Djs and sunshine outside, there was a talented pool of hackers who love music indoors who worked on all manner of projects in 24 hours to create something neat relating to the way we listen to or understand music.

Music technology companies helped to sponsor the event by providing APIs - which means application program interface - and SDKs (software development kits). These are ways in which companies can open up data for developers to make the cool things they come up with.

I caught up with a bunch of the experts and hackers at the event to find out what they were making and what’s on offer for people who are the Outriders of musical frontiers...

If you would like to get in touch, tweet at me on Twitter or find us on Facebook and Google +.

Until next week,

Jamillah

Deciphering Cyrillic and hacking at Bletchley Park

2012-06-06T11:37:03Z

Hello Outriders!

This week I have been in Moscow at the Digital Life Design conference and I have been meeting with hackers to at Over The Air which took place at Bletchley Park over the weekend.

So first to the East and Russia. There are some differences when it comes to Internet life in Moscow in comparison with use and development here in the UK, but there are also plenty of ideas, startup companies and a healthy culture online for those who can parse Cyrillic.

The Digital Life Design conference is more regularly found in Munich, but this year it set up at the Digital October Centre on the bank of the river Moskvar. There were many presentations and next door an entire conference set up around young startups in the region too.

As you can imagine with experts and industry leaders, it was pretty exciting so here’s a few of the people I met, explaining more about the Internet, Russian style....

Hacking in the home of the code breakers.

Back on home turf, the weekend not only saw the start of Jubilee celebrations, there was also an event to maker Alan Turing Centenary this year. What better location to have a mobile hack and conference than at Bletchley park where the man himself worked as a code breaker?

Over the Air celebrated its fifth year around 600 people turning up to hear talks and presentations about hacking science, the web and mobile together to see how they can create a more interesting and useful experience for us all. Here’s a taste of what happened over the weekend.

More travels soon, but for now, why not get in touch and let me know what’s floating your digital boat?

Come and say hello on Twitter where we are @BBC_Outriders, or find us on Facebook and Google+ by searching for Outriders and add us to your feed.

Until next week!
~ Jamillah

Digital Vertigo

2012-05-29T10:55:58Z

Hello Outriders!

This week on the podcast, I have a big chat with writer and broadcaster Andrew Keen about his new book, Digital Vertigo.

With his last book, The Cult of the Amateur, Keen ruffled a lot of feathers among tech-utopians. In his latest work, he draws more subtle and thoughtful conclusions in the hope that we may consider carefully our digital futures.

Find out what Hitchcock has to do with Bentham and why we are all so addicted to Facebook.

If you would like to get in touch, tweet at me on Twitter or find us on Facebook and Google+.

Until next week!

Jamillah

How safe are our mobiles? and Music Tech Fest

2012-05-22T09:13:58Z

Hello Outriders!

This week on the podcast I have been learning about mobile safety and I’ve had my mind blown at the first Music Tech fest in London. So, why would a mobile phone seem unsafe?

]]> Well, the pocket rocket that we all seem to carry with us may emit more information than you know.

It’s a handy tool of course, but as it may now give up your location as well as many other details, people like activists and journalists in some countries would do well to think about how they use them.

Katrin Verclas runs an organisation called Mobile Active which has a site called Safer Mobile. Recently on Safer Mobile Katrin published a guide for journalists so I asked her to tell us a bit more about the problems.

At the end of last week the first Music Tech Fest at Ravensbourne in London took place.

I went to go and find out what the future of digital music creation, performance and applications might be like and it was a pretty intensive display with plenty of food for thought.

If you would like to get in touch and let me know what’s floating your digital boat, tweet at me on Twitter or find us on Facebook and Google +.

Until next week,

Jamillah.

Home Brew and Studio School

2012-05-15T09:06:57Z

Hello Outriders!

This week on the podcast I was lucky enough to chat with one of the founding fathers of HomeBrew and portable computing, and take a peek into the future for young people in Liverpool looking for a career in technology.

]]> First up - how many of you own a laptop? Well the origins of that machine came from someone who was also a part of the infamous Home Brew Computer Club.

Home Brew was a group for hobbyists that started in the mid-seventies in Silicon Valley. As you may know, some of the biggest names in computing were a part of that group including George Morrow, Steve Jobs and Jerry Lawson.

So if you do use your portable computer regularly, Home Brew Member and tech pioneer Lee Felsenstein is one of the people you should be thanking.

Apart from influencing how we use computers today, Lee is working on something that brings our sense of play from the past to work with cutting edge consumer computing today.

Last week North Liverpool Academy announced that it is opening a Studio School for students aged 14 to 19 specialising in games development and digital futures. So I caught up with the director for enterprise there, Jade Parkinson-Hill to find out what’s on offer and why it is important.

Well, that’s all we have time for this week, but stay in touch and let us know about the things that are floating your boat whether they be web-based or digital in other ways.

Tweet at me on Twitter or find us on Facebook and Google +.

Until next week!

Jamillah

Twitter elections, drones and do-it-yourself podcasting

2012-05-08T10:10:25Z

Hello Outriders!

This week I found out what drones can be for journalists, how Twitter makes a difference to election watching and what it is like to start your own podcast. First up, the weekend saw elections take place in six different countries.

Often, unless you are a political scientist or a fan of politics, following all of those elections can be tricky.

]]>

I chatted with Alberto Nardelli, co-founder of Tweetminster, the media platform for UK politics and Electionista, for politics in multiple countries.

I caught up with him on Sunday and asked him about how to get the best out of trying to keep abreast of all this political movement.

It’s one thing to follow politics online, but quite another to follow a big breaking news event on the scene. Often when reporting on the ground, journalists can get a great close up view of what is happening in front of them, but gaining a perspective on a bigger picture is hard.

This is where new technologies that are slowly getting cheaper and easier to manage can help journalists, citizen reporters and activists to collect views and information from on high.

If you think about drones, you might first think of the remotely controlled flying machines used in war and reconnaissance by the military. But domestic flying machines may now also be able to help the media, in countries where the practice is legal.

Matt Waite is a Professor of Practice at the college of journalism and mass communications at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. He is running a lab at the college exploring the field of drone journalism and he explained where the idea came from to start the lab.

With our feet back on the ground and maybe our heads in the digital cloud, it’s time to take a look at a new podcast. Getting into the audio business online can seem daunting to some, but it can be pretty rewarding when you get the hang of it.

It’s nice to catch people as they are starting out so that we can ask them all about what it's like, and share a few tips, and this is exactly what we have done this week.

Ren Reynolds is the founder of the Virtual Policy Network. He started his own podcast to complement the work that he does, so I asked him how he decided what to do and what it takes to make his podcast.

If you’re up to something we need to know about, then give me a shout. You can find me on all the usual social media platforms.

Tweet at me on Twitter or find us on Facebook and Google +.

Until next week!

Jamillah