1. Get Spotify
2. Create a playlist to share
3. Make sure your title includes the #mondayMix hashtag and your Twitter @username
4. Right-click on the playlist and select “Copy HTTP Link” (this is the bit you’re going to share)
5. Share it on Twitter, say something like “check out my #mondayMix, hope it gets you all going! http://is.gd/1Kefj”
6. The best bit – find other people’s #mondayMix’s by searching on Twitter

Here’s my playlist, it’s optimistically summer themed!

Pete invited me into Vox (here’s my page) which is essentially a hosted blog site much like Blogger or Live Journal. The difference is the way you interact with the community and your media.

The reason I call it the Flickr of blogging tools is because of the first impression I had; you basically have flickr, but instead of photos you have blog posts. I can’t explain it any simpler than that. You have similar privacy options, tagging, sets, groups.

Go check it out, I have a couple of beta invites still…

And I’m thousands of miles away :(

At least Flickr is there for me…

I’ve been eating far too much Sushi recently..

I’m off to Taiwan in August, so I should really hold back, it’s going to be much tastier out there!

But what if you’re selling Smart cars?

PingBase is a more efficient, modern and affordable car. A car designed for not only the driver but it’s environment and the cohabitants of that environment.

All these monitoring services certainly do their job, although I’ve not used them all, so what’s wrong with them?

1. The Price
   They are prohibitively expensive. usually charging around $10/month per domain or URL you want to monitor.
2. The Free Trial
   You might get a month for free or maybe longer but for a much lower level of service.
3. Access to data
   Few provide an API or even RSS, although around half offer multiple person notification lists of some sort.
4. They’re not designed for everyone
   Most are designed for web developers or large corporations, they ignore the needs of the majority of websites and their owners.

I think that last point may be the most important. Everybody and their fathers brothers have a website and they all need to know the uptime, or downtime of their sites. A persons blog is a very important thing. Some livelihoods are made from blogs as well as reputations built from them.

If your blog is down, you need to know! But you shouldn’t have to pay more than it costs you to have the website for that knowledge.

Enter PingBase, a modern website monitor built for you, your friends, your company or your rabbit.

If you want to monitor your blog, PingBase will do that, for free, forever. If you want more, then you can upgrade to the first level which will allow you to monitor 10 URLs for $15/month with the added bonus of receiving SMS (text messages) as well as email when your site goes down.

There is an FAQ that should answer more of your questions, and you can sign up to know when it’s launched from any page on the site.

I’m really excited to get this up and running, I’ve been looking forward to announcing it.. I know it’ll be a useful addition to many peoples online lives.

I realised quite early on what we were doing providing free wifi in brighton. people in brighton got very used to it and we started getting phone calls from them when they were out of town, “why isn’t it free? i thought it free in bars and cafes?”…

Andy’s right people have to come expect it for free.

The way we sold it to venues in brighton was to convince them that it was a value add to their customers. they give away free wifi, and they sell more coffee. coffee that the person was gonna buy anyway somewhere else. this way the customer isn’t spending any more but they chose your venue instead.

So yeah, of course the same rule could apply to airlines, just as hotels realised about 2 years ago (not many though).

Now, expand that. why don’t the councils get in on the act. give it away to the public as effectively a value add for paying your taxes. Of course some are. But not on a proper scale and not really thinking through all the implications.

Ubiquitous free wifi effects local business, your own local network, the local and national telcos, the list goes on. Most councils don’t want to become ISPs. They are also under pressure not to screw over people like BT by undercutting them.

Free Wifi is still quite a way off. but not for technical reason, more for political or simply not understanding the marketplace properly. Mostly people don’t see it as a marketplace.

A normal headphone jack so i can use my own headphones. And one that will also handle a mic input if a handsfree is used.

Easy, standards-based, phone-to-phone syncing of data/contacts/sms/pictures/etc..

The same memory cards as everything else. SD preferably. Normal size, high speed a bonus.

The ability to use my 3G data connection with my laptop over Bluetooth.

An actual USB port, yeah alright the mini version. USB 2.0 too please!

A joystick that you can press inward to make selections without accidentily moving the cursor up or down.

Oh, and of course, Symbian (Series 60) and come with Flash Player as standard, for free.

I don’t think these are unreasonable requests.

Like most industries, the mobile phone manufacturing industry could learn a lot from the current state of the web. Tools that let you have easy access to your data, that let you use already standard third party devices or services, in this case USB, SD, SyncML, 3.5mm audio jacks. And that let you share your data with others or even remove all your data completely.

Flickr found that even though they provide an API that allows you to take all your data and leave, nobody has actually done it. Just knowing that they can if they need to instils trust in the provider and therefore people stay.

They will get more brand loyalty and longevity out of their products by making these very simple changes. Hell, even if BenQ made a phone that did that stuff i’d buy it! Even BenQ!

So as a result of realising that actually being 26 isn’t so bad, i’ve decided to make sure that i feel the same about being 30 when i get there.

Firstly I’ve started taking more photos, something i used to do a lot of six or seven years ago. So I bought a new camera and started using my neglected Flickr account. So far so good, I’ve got almost a hundred photos up and I’ve found a bunch of people I know also using Flickr. I’ve encouraged a bunch of people to start using Flickr too!

Next I started finishing a document I started in 2005 about New Media’s place in developing countres. There is a need to organise the efforts of all the individuals and organisations working in this area, to minimse overlap and to encourage technical compatiblity. Of course there is also a great opportunity for business development too, but this has to be seen as a long term goal, the short term goal being to develop the businesses and infrastructure and to educate people in these countries about all the great stuff new media can do for themselves and their communities.

As a result of this document being published i hope to form a group of influential new media and communications experts to lobby and work with all the major players. Many I’ve shared this idea with have expressed great interest and are committing their personal time to help.

Some of my personal projects have fallen to the side due to my current full time job at Comic Relief. But there are 3 projects that are almost ready for the prime time, and i’m quite excited about them. One is a community site with a wiki and mailing list centered around the co-operative movement. Another is a web app that I’ve been working on with a friend. We’ve both been very busy and work’s been slow on it, but it’s an idea that just needs to exist, so we’re making it! Thirdly is BrightonWiFi, a site that basically shows you where you can find WiFi in Brighton. It’s a mashup of Google Maps and WordPress. As a result of this project (only about 15 hours work) i’m going to release the WordPress theme back to the web, I think it’s a great use of the tech, it allows non-nerds to use Google Maps in an accessible way. Check it out…

So being 26 might turn out to be ok, I’m being more productive, I’m working on getting my sleeping patterns sorted, and I’m finally producing some of the projects I’ve talked about for years. Now if only I could make some spare time for relaxing and seeing the outside world more…

Some of the things i’ve been meaning to blog for a while are:

1. My manifesto for new media in the developing world
2. Why Google won’t become a web host
3. My top 5 films (currently. Everyone else has blogged it, so should I :)
4. Frisbee survival tips

I’ll get there eventually. I was planning to do at least one today, but i’ve had to come into work a day early. Which is fine. I guess i wouldn’t have written this if i hadn’t!