#61 February 2024 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

(A good reminder, via What’s Your Gift?)

A bunch of things (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on (as no longer on Twitter).

READ

“Google, especially, has relied on the open web RSS protocol to gain so much market share and influence, but continues to engage in behavior that exploits the open web at the expense of its users. As a result, Google has single-handedly contributed to the reason many users who once relied on RSS feeds have stopped using them.”

How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds – Open RSS

“Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember, the only taste of success some people have is when they take a bite out of you.” Zig Ziglar

99 Great Quotes That Will Help You Handle Criticism | Inc.com

“When writing by hand, brain connectivity patterns were far more elaborate than when typewriting on a keyboard, as shown by widespread theta/alpha connectivity coherence patterns between network hubs and nodes in parietal and central brain regions. Existing literature indicates that connectivity patterns in these brain areas and at such frequencies are crucial for memory formation and for encoding new information and, therefore, are beneficial for learning.”

Frontiers | Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity: a high-density EEG study with implications for the classroom

“Put simply, the numbers don’t add up. Data from Patreon and Substack suggests the average conversion rate from follower to paying fan is about 5%. This means a creator would need a total fanbase of 20,000 followers to yield 1,000 paying supporters. And building a core fanbase of 20,000 engaged followers is extremely difficult in today’s crowded creative landscape.”

The creator economy can’t rely on Patreon. — Joan Westenberg

“A Vicar asks his congregation in the valleys the question “What would you do if Jesus returned tomorrow?”. A voice in the flock pipes up; “Move Barry John to inside-centre”!”

From the comment section of Barry John was ‘the King, a magician, my friend’ – Sir Gareth Edwards – BBC Sport

“Much furor has been raised in recent months over the unauthorized scraping of the web to train AI models; OpenAI even thanked the faceless “millions of people” who created the data to train GPT-3 in its paper describing the model. But when it comes to data willingly shared with Facebook and Meta, that Faustian bargain was struck long ago.”

Zuckerberg Boasts He Will Be AI God King Because We Already Gave Him All Our Data

WATCH

EXPLORE

This minimal, customisable typing online tool / test.

Check out the quietest places in the world’s loudest cities.

A nice Terminal-level workaround for applications hiding under the MacBook Pro notch.

Free ‘innovation’ posters for exploration / sharing / discussion (via Innovation illustrated – by Dave Gray).

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

#39 March 2022 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

Several things (which I tweeted) for your eyes and ears plus brain to spend time on.

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March 1st is St Davids Day / Dydd Gwyl Dewi, did you celebrate in an appropriate way?

Just 15 companies are responsible for three quarters of greenhouse gas emissions in New Zealand (and there’s no strategy to tackle this).

The boss of games platform Steam explains why NFTs are banned.

Got any little humans? Check out this child-friendly explainer on the Ukraine / Russia situation.

Read about Facebook’s African digital sweatshops.

A write-up on a NFT event here in New Zealand.

If you use Tik Tok you might want to read this.

Life would be very good without’ is the response from leaders in Europe when parent company of Instagram and Facebook threatened to shut down it’s operation in said continent.

WATCH

EXPLORE

Play around with some happy, jumpy birds.

Driving around cities in the world whilst listening to local radio stations.

I Love PDF is where you can ‘merge, split, compress, convert, rotate, unlock and watermark PDFs with just a few clicks.’

An analysis and visualization tool to help readers better understand space situational awareness (SSA) data, with a focus on particularly interesting on-orbit activities, Satellite Dashboard.

All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

#37 January 2022 | Monthly Digital Breadcrumbs

Starting the year offering up a buffet of things I tweeted last month.

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A deconstruction of the negative things around the whole Web3 discourse.

My end-of-year-write-up on producing a unique, beautiful and independent video podcast.

Great piece about how most successful tech investments are not from the over-hyped ‘unicorns.’

WATCH

EXPLORE

These LEGO inspired home products.

A chilled web experience of walking in different cities whilst listening to local radio (which you can turn off if you wish).

THX Deep Note is good for waking up kids, scaring the birds / cats & for general awesome creative things.

Create random AI art from words and styles.

Townscaper is a procedural town building online toy.

Image credit: Visualizing the Accumulation of Human-Made Mass on Earth.
All monthly digital breadcrumbs posts.
Published

Connecting, Collaborating, Converging | Activating Smart City Projects

Crafting collisions.

On November 21st 2015, PM John Key launched the three year Wellington City Council funded Collider activation programme, which focusses on transforming the city into an internationally recognised smart city.

This is what I’ve been spending the last nine months managing.

The programme website was launched mid January so the whole initiative has had about a six month stint and as the council funding year runs from July to June, we celebrated the first year this week.

In that time the initiative has:

  • hosted 124 events
  • had 3,209 curious attendees
  • averaged 21 events per month (our KPI is 15)

The rest of stats can be found in this handy to read and downloadable infographic:

Collider 1st Year Infographic

The true excitement which is brewing is building on the momentum into year two with a mandate to explore more smart city focussed options. The programme will continue to support existing meetup groups and activities plus run masterclasses, workshops, roundtables etc, although know we have the encouragement to explore new ideas.

All this and more we announced and featured the other night in this Collider blog post.

As we launch into year two, the video above repositions our efforts firmly in the wider city context and highlights the aim to connect, collaborate and converge (our three strategic pillars).

This is just a beginning.

It feels like I’m just starting to get warmed up…

Published