“I believe — really believe — in the stirring words of the Maker Manifesto: if you can’t open it, you don’t own it. Screws not glue. The original Apple ][+ came with schematics for the circuit boards, and birthed a generation of hardware and software hackers who upended the world for the better. If you wanted your kid to grow up to be a confident, entrepreneurial, and firmly in the camp that believes that you should forever be rearranging the world to make it better, you bought her an Apple ][+."

As it happens, my parents bought me a video Genie (a TRS-80 clone) as my first computer, but that included schematics too. It wasn't long before I was designing and building my own software and peripherals, and even making a bit of a living from some of them. Computing wasn't a passive experience, it was an active, engaging, creative one. I don't see my kids doing that as much today. Sure, they play with Scratch, but it really doesn't feel like the same thing. It has something about it of the cut and paste mentality that has become so prevalent these days [boy I'm sounding like a grumpy old man - did I mention I've noticed I have more grey hair recently?].

To me the iPad is “Infantalizing hardware” as Cory puts it. In fact, around the same time I read “The Real iPad Review“, which gives a 3 year old’s view of the iPad (via the child’s dad - Adam Kmiec ). It says this:

“Is the iPad a killer device?  Is it a game changing device?  Will you love it?  The simple answer is YES…so long as you have the mindset of a 3 year old.  Harsh?  Yes.  But, it’s the truth.”

Yes, that is harsh. I mean no disrespect to the dear friends who have rushed out and bought one, but it is slightly distressing watching them going jab-jab-point-shiny-shiny. Adam also points out the hardware short comings that kill the iPad for me:

“No USB, no camera, no replaceable battery, no ability to create content and heck no cleaning cloth.  I could deal with all of these shortcomings and flaws if the price was something like $349.99 (in line with iPod Touch), but not at $499.99 (minimum).  At $349.99 it would be a nice affordable stretch and step up from an iPod and complimentary to a laptop.  But, at $499.99 I just don’t see how a current iPhone or MacBook user will find value in a device that does less than both of those devices.”

The lack of cleaning cloth is definitely a killer. What where Apple thinking?!? More seriously, the other features are a big issue… You see, my Windows Tablet PC has all of these features, and more, and it cost me a fraction of that price. Does it have the app store? No. Can I play angry birds with a multi-touch interface? No. Can I write my own apps on it (in a multitude of development environments)? Yes. Can I create my own rich content with it? Yes. Of course some have converted the iPad into a maker’s device, but there are other cheaper iPad alternatives out there. By the end of the summer there will be a veritable ocean of touch-screen web tablets.

I love Maker things. I love Dan’s Internet catapult. I love the devices people make with Arduino kits. I love the creative ideas of the kids at Teentech. I’m not a fan of things that make us passive consumers of information. I like creating things and planning things with people. Not everyone agreed with Cory, of course, and I’m coming from a slightly different angle. I don’t think we all need to be coders and soldering-iron-wielding-pcb-making geeks, but I do hope we can be a generation that doesn’t just consume, but that engages and creates!

It isn’t all doom and gloom though. Teenagers are surrounded by technology, and in the right environment the negative stereotypes about the people who create it can be broken, as they meet with the scientists and engineers behind the gadgets they love. Here is Maggie Philbin, talking about Teentech as we got ready for the day – streamed live (at the time!) via mobile phone.

By the end of the day everyone was exhausted, but delighted! The young students went away with a much clearer idea of the doors that studying science and maths open up to them, having met and talked with a larger number of enthusiastic (and dedicated) professionals. A warm congratulations to the sponsors, including the IoD, IET and the education bodies involved for supporting an amazing day. Adults and children alike were inspired. Much of what I want to say is summed up in this discussion with Maggie Philbin at the end of the day.

If you are a business that depends on science and technology,  get involved – Follow Maggie on twitter: @maggiephilbin or leave a comment here, and have a think about what you could do to support the next generation of Scientists and Engineers in the UK. There are plenty of opportunities to get involved and help, even if it is just letting the young people around you know what you do, and encouraging them to tackle the subjects they perceive to be the realm of boffins, and beyond what they believe they are capable of.

I have a couple more videos I’ll be adding soon!

Teentech Mentions:

• The tech new blog.
• BBC News.

If you aren’t familiar withGoogle Analytics, it’s basically a bit of code that you embed into your web site. Although essentially invisible to the user, the code reports back information to Google, including how long you were on the website, which web pages you visited before and after, what web browser and operating system you are using and if you are a new or returning visitor. It’s great for web site owners. We get to see what content is popular, where readers are from and so on. Of course we aren’t the only ones using the data. The terms around how Google can and can’t use Google Analytics data are quite vague  - you might want to read them before you next visit a site that uses it.

If you have your own server, you could look at Piwik as an alternative, it requires a database and a little setting up, so it isn’t for everyone, but I’m using it on the SocialOptic Blog and main site now, and it seems to be doing a sterling job so far. The data stays with the server you are accessing. If you don’t want your browser sharing that data, you’ll need to turn off javascript and cookies or run a third party plugin. Good luck with using your favourite sites once you’ve done that. When I changed my browser settings it pretty much broke the Internet experience for me – I couldn’t even comment on blogs anymore.

“if you have something that you really don’t anyone to know maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” – Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google (via Huffington Post)

Maybe someone should tell Merrill Lynch that (see Paul Clarke’s post on Civil Liberties) – Google Street map seems able to publish pictures that I’m not even allowed to personally photograph, or at least I’m told I’m not. It was a curious statement from Schmidt for two reasons:

1. If that’s Google’s philosophy on web privacy, it would have been nice to know that before we all started using their products!
2. Much of what businesses do is company confidential, or is private information for legal/financial reasons. Not everyone with something they don’t want in public view is doing something wrong.

The idea that people who want to hide their data from Google are doing something immoral isn’t a very user friendly position – publish or be dammed (as opposed to the usual publish and be dammed!)

Being out and about has helped to keep me away from Google – my Nokia phone has the Ovi maps product, so I’ve been using that to navigate – although someone did try and tempt me with a Google Maps print out on Tuesday evening when I was lost. Of course even the mobile world won’t be a safe haven for much longer. One of my favourite products, Evernote, is now available on Google Android phones. There is a whole eco-system growing around the Google Android phone, it there are some great products and services emerging. It’s a whole new world for Google – now the have an operating system, and full visibility of everything you do with the device. Great for providing more targeted advertising. Great for putting a free turn-by-turn navigation in your hands. Access to your Google shared calendar. Access to Google Street Map.

Based on my experiences so far, I think I want a lot more visibility and control of what data is being collected, how it is being used, and how I can opt out of that data collection. Google has some great products. I’m going to be glad when Monday comes around and I can start using them again – they really make life easier and make me more productive. However, after this week, I’m starting to think I’d prefer to pay for them in cash, rather than in my personal data – Unless Google is going to be a lot more open about its use of our data. In the works of Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google:

“if you have something that you really don’t anyone to know maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

A Week Without Google… …For me at least. This week I’m going to be going without Google in my life. It was a conversation with @monkchips that finally pushed me over the edge.

As he held up his Google branded phone to take a picture that with probably end up on a Google-powered photo site, indexed by Google search-bots, published on Google powered blogs, with Google-powered ads, viewed in Google built web browsers, maybe even on a Google built operating system, I thought of something I over heard recently:

“Big Brother won’t come in via the front door, he’ll come in via the backdoor, and pretend to be your friend.”

Now for the record, I have nothing against Google – I normally use lots of Google tools (and even paid-for Google products) – But I’ve realised that I don’t have a grip on how pervasive a part of my Internet use Google is.

The basic nature of the challenge is to avoid using any Google products – either through conscious choice or even indirectly. That means not only not using the products, but also not letting Google get hold of any of my behavioural data (information about sites I visit or things I search for). People have  variously said:

• That will be impossible – we’ll see!
• That will be easy – we’ll see on that too!
• Why would you want to?

To answer the last is that I’m just curious as to how pervasive a part of my Internet experience Google has become and how much data they really are amassing.  The only way to really know is to pay some attention to it for a few days, so why not a week? At the end of day 1 I have to say I’m quite shocked. I’ll post a full summary at the end of the week, but here are some of my observations from today:

The easiest thing to sort out was my iPod touch: I switched the default search engine to Yahoo, then didn’t use it all day. Done. Why can I only choose between Yahoo! and Google from the iPod touch browser, Apple? On my desktop machine I’ve been using Microsoft’s Bing, but that hasn’t been easy, what with my machine being an Apple Mac.

Firstly, I didn’t realise that Safari uses a “Google Safe Browsing” service, so that had to be switched off in settings before I could do anything else on my Mac. It actually looks like it is broken at the moment, as Safari says there have been no updates for two days.  One click in preferences and it was gone.

Here’s an insane thing: I couldn’t change the default search engine in Sarafi – the setting that I’m SURE used to be there is GONE! The site with instructions on switching Google off in the Safari web browers, returned by the Bing.com search engine, had both Google Friend Connect AND Google analytics, as well as google ads and google blog search on it. Doh! Foiled there as each of those services passes data back to Google, and so is off limits this week.

Then a found a YouTube video showing me how to change my default search engine – but of course I couldn’t watch that as it was on YouTube, which is another Google service and, incidentally, the world’s number two search destination.

Finally I thought, ok, I’ll just take “search” off of the safari tool bar. Would you believe I can’t remove the search box with out removing the address bar too? Apple, what where you thinking? Do they really love Google that much?

So, in the default Apple Mac web browser, I can either have Google search, or not surf the Internet. Nice touch. Time to find a new browser. Luckily there is a new browser for the Mac, Chrome, from ummmm… Oh, Google.  Time to fire up Firefox then, and change the default search engine on that…

Incidentally, Google launched five new services last week: 5 Fabulous New Features Google Unveiled Today. I know that one, Google Goggles, has already had some functionality disabled (the face recognition piece) over privacy concerns. I’d tell you more about the other new services, but the post is on ReadWriteWeb, which has ads from DoubleClick on it. Can you guess who now owns DoubleClick? Yup… That would be Google.

And he’s posted more about What to Expect at TweetCamp:

The aim, is to bring people together in person who know each other through Twitter, but don’t necessarily know each other well in person. Given that, of the people coming, there is the full spectrum of people who have never been to an unconference style event before, aren’t technical, and just use twitter as a social tool. There will also be hard core geeks and techies who make social platforms that use twitter, and regularly go to unconference style events. It’ll be an interesting mix of people, with one thread in common we all use twitter.

Looking through the attendee list, it is certainly a diverse crowd, which will make for some energetic conversations.

Unlike previous BarCamp events, where there’s been a high level of structure to the day, and clear starting and stopping of sessions, TweetCamp won’t be so defined in the same way. Since we’re not focussing on the ‘learning and sharing’ element of BarCamp as much as building relationships with people we know, we want for people to take as little or as long as they need to have the conversations they want to have with the people they want to talk with. There’ll be plenty of people there who will be having interesting conversations, and will warmly welcome you to join them!

The usual BarCamp / unconference two feet rule applies – if you decide you don’t enjoy the discussion you’re in, then you can vote with your feet. There are some knowledgeable and creative people going along, so most angles will be covered. I’ll put photos up in the usual place after the event, and I’m sure I’ll have something to write up on the Redcatco Blog too!

More on the logistics of the day by Jon: The Fun stuff happening at Tweetcamp.

I’ve been out buying gadgets to save on standby power. The exciting one mentioned in the video is this fellow:

It is a Standby Saver Energy Saving Unit – as seen on Dragon’s Den, apparently. As explained in the video, it shuts of the power to all of the sockets when the computer powers down. There is a version for for AV equipment too, which works off of the infrared remote control, and apparently one for use with games consoles in the works.

There was an alternative which I looked at, the Intellipanel – Desktop version, but it was a fair bit more expensive, and had things like a telephone line filter that I didn’t need.

The other device mention in the video doesn’t seem to be on-line, other than in the Maplin shop: Remote Powered Extension lead. If your plugs are more spread out, the Bye Bye Standby Energy Saving Kit might be a better alternative.

It turns out that the standby saver has a little button to turn the computer back on, which turns out to be a bonus. The PC it is wired too is tucked away under the desk, so the standby saver button acts as a remote power switch, on the desk itself and right by the keyboard. That saves reaching under the desk to switch the PC on.

The RF remote powered extension seems to be doing sterling service so far too.

Rather than trying to write up exhaustive notes, I’ll give some pointers to resources and I will link to the speakers talks as they blog them – please feel free to add links in to the comments. First, a big thank you to the sponsors, the event couldn’t have happened without them, and it just so happens that they are cool companies worth checking out too:  CurrentCost, Greenmonk, Pachube , ReactionGrid and Onzo.

HomeCamp2 showed real progress since the last homecamp. I found that really encouraging, as one of the challenges I’ve seen with the way barcamp format events are run is that they end up thrashing over the same issues. The HomeCamp crowd were pushing the boundaries further, and arguments had matured and discussions deepened since the last event.

Martin, of CurrentCost, talked about an exciting little device from the currentcost stable that has a switch sensor and some analogue inputs, which it transmits to the CurrentCost meter. Short translation: The HomeCamp community can get to work using CurrentCost to monitor gas and water consumption. That’s very exciting, well, it is for me. For those on oil rather than gas, it could also be used with an oil tank sensor. As someone once said, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Well, current cost is giving a way to measure household energy consumption. Still more to do, but progress. I’m enjoying the graphs from CurrentCost at home.

There will be new software coming down the pipe, the model is that the main LCD won’t have to be plugged in all the time. It only uses about 7 Watts, so I’m not too concerned about that, but it is a good idea. There are now over half a million Current Cost units in the wild, which is great news!

Joe Baguley, active in the BCS energy monitoring group, talked about his journey in home energy monitoring. He started using the Watson, but didn’t like it. Then he discovered Green Energy Options. It is a pretty comprehensive solution, which puts clamps on every fuse in the consumer unit, meaning that it monitors every loop in the house. It also has remote units that allow remote switch on/off of appliances. There will also be a touch screen as a control point, and the software looked very sophisticated, including profiling energy use patterns. Drop Joe a note and I’m sure he’ll tell you more about the Trio unit.

The next session focussed on gas usage. Ken, chief electrical engineer at Onzo, talked about the history of gas meters and AMR, circa 1999 – and the 7 rules of gas meter logging. First rule of gas meter logging, no-one talks about gas meter logging. – More seriously, there are number of challenges. It is, rightly, a tightly controlled industry and there are obvious safety issues with electrical things near gas meters. You aren’t even meant to have wires passing near gas pipes, let alone connected to them. Many gas meters are very old, and there is huge variation in meters. One of the gas meters down the road at Sandhurst academy is apparently date stamped 1922. Gas data is also privacy concern, since you can tell people’s life style from their gas consumption – e.g. when they are in and out, on holiday, etc.. – so it is best anonymized.

As Paul Tanner pointed out, unattended continious monitoring is essential. Plotting gas usage against outside temperature is a great way to assess the effectiveness of insulation and efficiency measures, but smart meters probably won’t be in full force until 2015. Some more modern meters do have sensor outputs, but there doesn’t seem to be an approved way to tap in to them. The gas companies need to step up to the plate and support the home monitoring industry. Gas is expensive, we use lots of it, and it is a finite resource. Are you out there gas folks? We want your help!

It was good to meet Mike / @Mikethebee – someone I’ve followed on Twitter for a long time, likewise good to meet @ribot. He lead a good discusion on water usage. Water meters are tricky, because not everyone has them (cue heated debate) and they location makes them tricky to connect to. Mike talked about using metering to check for leaks, drips etc… as well as monitoring usage. Optical monitors (for both water and gas) can take some tweaking, as Usman / @Pachube pointed out, but you can get them working.

Steve Lamb has a post about the morning: “Homecamp is all about using tech to reduce energy consumption“ As a side note, a couple of people talked about moving to using DC, so that they can use a wind turbine and battery, without inverters, to power their computers. I’d been thinking along those lines too, but didn’t catch their names to get in touch.

Discussions after lunch focussed on Energy and there was even some virtual world to real world interaction, thanks to ReactionGrid and people were joining from the US via video stream too (we had people from Belgium and Switzerland in the room).

Jamie Andrews, formerly of thecarbonaccount fame and now at AMEE (a neutral aggregation platform – enabling data portability), who are behind the magic in the act on Co2 campaign, talked about methods of building profiles for a domestic building energy usage. There are three main information sources:

• Estimated energy performance – via SAP or RDSAP
• Behaviour Surveys
• Empirical Data

Having more data means that refined methodologies can be built. Better methodologies means better policies. AMEE are active in some interesting areas:

• Demand response – Remember not all electricity is equal.
• Carbon intensity awareness – How’s your kettle? (usually a power hungry little monster)
• Geographical models – Facilitating local grids and community co-ops.

Bart, from Flukso, talked about some interesting things they are up to. Although at the early stages, they have converted a Fonera 220 wireless router into a power monitoring device. One to watch.

Usman, of Pachube (pronounced “ptach bay” ) has built an amazing community and set of resources. Pachube takes all sorts of geo-coded data and then allows it to be shared, manipulated and graphed. 

Tom Raftery joined via Skype video to give his Electricity 2.0 (which I first heard James / @Monkchips give in the US last year) – Tom’s slides, at least the version from eTech, are here. Some meaty ideas for the future of electricity.

The talk on The Web of Things  was a great bit of future-that-is-happening now, thinking about the impact of more and more ‘net connected devices. From iPhones to Nabaztag  and  Chumby’s (a gadget I’d not heard of – slap me with a wet fish!)

I spoke about “A nudge and a wink – changing behaviours with software” – I’ll do a write up and post over at the Redcatco blog in the next few days.

All in all a great day, wonderful people and lots to mull over. I’m looking forward to Homecamp 3 already!

If I haven’t mentioned someone by name, I’m sure they are in my photos somewhere:

Tags: flock

and

A big thank you to Pingdom for bring them to my attention (there are loads more here).