This guest post was written by my girlfriend, Micol, aka @psymic. She doesn’t always like capitals at the start of sentences, but we both care strongly about the following issue.

we entered the low stone building by a heavy wooden door standing ajar, and stepped into a chilly room. the entire place was crammed with boxes of produce, freshly harvested and washed, beads of moisture still clinging to the cabbages and crisp curly kale. the carrots on the other hand, were righteously filthy, crusted in dirt like some 6 year old after a day making mudpies in the garden. onions, leeks, potatoes, broccoli, parsnips the size of my head, beetroot, chard, spinach and lettuce, a cornucopia of squash and pumpkins sprawled over the floor like a centerpiece you can pick from. i was giddy with glee and filling paper bags like a kid in a candy story. a refrigerated (did it need it?) section showcased local dairy products like goats cheese and yogurt, and a butcher shop at the back was stuffed with cuts of meat, pheasants (plucked and wrapped), guinea fowl and sausages of every sort. there were locally made jams and honey, biscuits and breads. there were no lemons.

this is the kind of place where you can find the freshest foods, knowing the veg has been cut, plucked, twisted, clipped or pulled up from the ground, possibly that very same day. the meat is from beasties which have spent their lives literally chilling in the forest, doing a bit of rooting, a bit of digging, and a lot of munching. you can pick up some yummy gifts for family (thats what i say but they never actually get that far) like smoked garlic from the isle of wight, and chilli rub for barbecues. in short, the award-winning Warborne farm is the kind of place you make a detour for when you are a couple of foodie geeks exploring the new forest national park, and you wont leave without a car full of luscious edibles.

and Warborne farm is the kind of place which due to a great big pile of odds stacked against it, will be closing after christmas, once everyone’s got their birds delivered for the big day. people just arent visiting the farm shop enough. one of the reasons is that the prices are higher in the farm shop than at the local supermarket. that is not open to discussion, the price of a bag full of freshly picked organic kale, crisp and lively, will undoubtedly be slightly higher than a bag of chopped up, withered kale from a supermarket shelf. you are in fact paying a premium for your food to be beautifully fresh, organic, and grown in the area. but let it be known that george heathcote, who owns and runs the farm, ensures the price of his produce is always lower than or matching the prices at the local waitrose.

so for people not willing or interested in spending the extra few quid on their shop, there is the supermarket. but there are those who can afford it, and yet still dont make regular trips to the farm shop. the reason is semantic. to be called a farm shop, it is not possible for the shop to stock foods they do not grow themselves or are not grown locally. although they would happily stick a basket of lemons in the shop, they would have to change nomenclature. residents in the area want to get their shopping done in one fell swoop, so the local somerfield, or even waitrose is a quicker option. this is understandable, and this is why its a real shame that the local government isnt doing more to help support independent farmers like George and his crew.

why discourage the obvious hard work and dedication it takes to make a place like Warborne farm? The food they produce is of excellent standard, and the farm shop is a little jewel of a find. imagine how excited we were to discover it, what an awesome place crammed with delicious grub, and so unique… but then how disheartening it is to hear that it just wont be around much longer. places like Warborne farm should be supported through hard times, not made to jump through silly legislative hoops that supermarkets never seem to have to deal with (or have armies of lawyers to work through). if they want to stock loo roll and lemons, then let them – they will be providing an essential service to local residents, as well as being a special destination for food enthusiasts who find their way there. Warborne farm is what makes this country beautiful and rich, and able to sustain a positive future. they fight for quality and traceability in the food we eat. but keeping the place going has become an exhausting battle for George and his gang, one that just doesnt seem worth it anymore, even if his loyal customers have begged him to reconsider. farmers get a bum deal in this country, and its outrageous! they should be rewarded and their enterprise encouraged, or pretty soon we’ll be depending on imports for all our food, from cherries to chicken, bacon to bread.

support enterprise. support quality and traceability. support small businesses, and wonderful, unique places like Warborne farm!

Sadly I couldn’t make it to BarCamp London 7 this weekend, but thought it would still serve as a decent enough occasion to share some thoughts about the Rummble API via the interwebs. The API officially launched last month at Over the Air, however I was the first person to take it for a spin outside of Rummble in February. Since then I have taken an active role in developing Rummble, which explains the odd personal (we) rather than possessive (they) pronoun

• First, the Rummble API isn’t just about putting dots on a maps and retrieving local reviews and ratings. Not only is there a tonne of data at your disposal, but there’s also far more happening under the bonnet. It exposes a powerful trust profile algorithm, which is the product of years of research and coordination with founders in the field of subjective logic and reputation theory, giving developers the flexibility to seamlessly embed personalised relevant content.
• Rummble loves Twitter! Earlier this year we began an experiment called Tremors which scans the Twittersphere for content about locations. We’re now parsing over half a millions tweets per week, with a 90% match rate where a location has been established. Tremors data now forms part of our own core services and API. You can even sort results by tweetiness!
• Rummble recognises that ratings and reviews doesn’t fit into every mobile LBS use case. Users are also free to check-in to locations, and we handle the optional sharing the location updates via Twitter, Facebook and Fire Eagle without further API integrations.
• There are infinite cool new possibilities with the Rummble API and we want you to be creative. We’re a small and dynamic geek-friendly team based in London who have wide open door to developers. Come and visit us for a chat over coffee about your requirements. There are no support charges, and if parts of the API need tweaking then (in most cases) we can add new features upon request.
• You won’t get stiffed with API fees! Be confident that Rummble aren’t cruising for developers to send regular invoices to – we want to work with the most creative technical minds to create engaging social location-based apps and games. Founding members of the Rummble Developer Program will receive numerous benefits in the long term.
• Example code for Java, PHP and C# is currently available to help you breeze through OAuth and start rocking! Get instant access to Rummble’s registered users. Auth via Twitter and Facebook is also supported, which is a much bigger number

I’ll be talking more about the Rummble API at openMIC Mobile Innovation Camp in Guildford on 4th November, and hope to see you there!

I first saw Layar demo in June at Mobile 2.0 in Barcelona. Their concept is clever – instead of collecting street-level imagery from around the World, the service combines your live surroundings via the camera with layers of local information. Rather than trying to visualise a description of  the interface, you should check out the below video.

The exciting news is that Layar recently announced an API, which cleverly enables third parties to create custom layers (overlays) with their own content, populating Layar (the app!) with a wealth of quality local information.

I’m really excited about the potential for augmented reality. Watch this space!

I was delighted to receive an email from SlideShare announcing that my mashup* Being Location Aware slidecast has been chosen to feature on their homepage.

This made my day and motivated me to make the extra effort to either record future presentations live or from the comfort of the office. Despite having only created a single slidecast, I’m convinced that they have much more value than a silent shared presentation, and would encourage anyone to read the SlideShare slidecasting FAQ and give it a go.

If you haven’t already, please do watch the slidecast and read the related blog post. Feel free to share your feedback, add to your SlideShare favourites and embed the presentation in your blog.

Mashup* Being Location Aware took place last Thursday at Ogilvy UK in Canary Wharf. I had the pleasure of sitting on an experienced panel of GIS experts, and spoke about my perspective on location-based services. The debate was moderated by Tony Fish and further insights and analysis were offered by Dr Daniel Arthur of International Policy Dynamics.

My positive subjective view on the location-based market opportunity were backed up some research stats in Gary Gale’s presentation:

“The (User Location Market) … will nearly triple in revenue this year, to $1.3 billion from $485 million in 2007, and will reach $8 billion in 2011.” – Gartner Research

Here’s a slidecast of my talk (note that this post continues below):Being Location Aware

I sacrificed my slides about privacy to stay within the 5 minute slot, to avoid friendly fire a friendly reminder from Tony Fish. However location privacy emerged as one of the main topics of the evening.

Steven Feldman raised some valid concerns about the current lack of consumer awareness regarding location privacy, and the possible implications of openly geo-tagging data. For example, a geo-tagged photo of your neighbours new Ferrari is posted online and a few days later it vanishes. Will there be a high-profile divorce case based upon evidence obtained from a locaton-aware service? (Maybe location isn’t the real problem in the latter?)

There is now an immense potential to openly share information, and it might not be immediately obvious why and how to be selective about the level of information to share openly. Among the benefits of sharing “private” location information are more dynamic social and contextually relevant services.

Sharing doesn’t always occur across completely open channels. Here are some ways in which location privacy is/should be managed:

• Gary Gale and Ed Parsons explained that Yahoo! Fire Eagle and Google Latitude both work on an opt-in basis. In other words, by default your location isn’t shared with everyone. Most traditional holders of private information instead require you to opt-out.
• Granular privacy controls should be easy to use and tightly integrated with leading location provider services. Per application, this should include:
  • who – which groups or individuals (similar to Facebook friend groups).
  • location accuracy – exact location, current town/city or hide location.
  • time – colleagues can find you within working hours, but not on evenings and weekends.
• Information about places you’ve been is usually less sensitive than your current location. A location “trail” is however quite sensitive, but could be the key to more contextually relevant services and hyper-local advertising.
• Rummble CEO, Andrew Scott, pointed out that the location-based service industry should avoid fuelling (often inaccurate) tabloid horror stories by continuing to develop a solid privacy foundation while focusing upon the benefits of sharing information with location-aware services and how to use them effectively.

Thanks to the entire mashup* team including Tony Fish, Simon Grice, Emma Jell; and to Robert Jones from Bluefire Consultancy for taking photos of the event.

The event has also been blogged by Gary Gale, Ed Parsons, Steven Feldman and mashup* event.

And finally, here’s Mr T’s view on mobile (unfortunately embedded video isn’t yet supported by SlideShare):

….if this is your first time at BarCamp then you must give a presentation. No shirt. No shoes. No rules. Tyler Durden would be proud.

Well actually it’s not quite that hardcore – you don’t have to give a presentation (I jest – of course you can keep your shoes on )

I’ll cut to the chase and say that BarCamp fits the bill for the tech startup world. There are many people with brilliant ideas, businesses and a passion for what they do who want to share and learn in a relaxed environment. It’s a lot like most good networking events, but with free presentation opportunities.

BarCamp is a well self-organised free “unconference” where all participants are encouraged to give a presentation about their chosen topic. At the start of the proceedings all participants are encourages to wrestle over a few stack of post-it notes and sharpies (marker pens) in order to scribble down and stick their preferred topic on the schedule.

Despite the apparent scotch tape and toothpicks, BarCamp is now attracting sponsorship from tech heavyweights, so don’t be surprised to find people from Yahoo! or Google lurking amongst eager bootstrappers.

The Twitter back-channel keeps everyone posted on what’s happening – #barcampmiami rose to one of the most popular Twitter trends during the event. There are a number of sporadic talks running in parallel, so keeping in sync via Twitter helps catch the buzz.

There are no glossy schedules, hopefully fewer headaches for the organiser and less unnecessary costs. If someone backs out of a talk you can count their slot being taken quickly.

I learned new things from some awesome people and was delighted to share by presenting in the courtyard sun about Agavi PHP Framework. It was fun, despite there being no hope of the projector working.

Sales pitches are discouraged and against the whole BarCamp ethos. Thanks however to @alexdc for making an announcement about Total Hotspots for iPhone during his introduction – people from BarCamp and FOWA should find the app genuinely useful since it enables them to find the best nearby free and paid Wi-Fi hotspots.

I can’t believe that I went to BarCamp Miami before doing BarCamp London. I’d love to be involved in bringing this fantastic concept to UK shores, however it appears already to be a massive success, with the first 50 BarCamp London tickets selling out in under 30 seconds. Wow!

I recommend that my friends back home sign up to the BarCamp London mailing list and follow @barcamplondon to keep a close eye on their next ticket release. Be quick!

Were you @ BarCamp Miami or do you have plans for BarCamp London? Get in touch via email, Twitter, Linkedin or comment on this post. Thanks.

I don’t know a great deal about Yoga, but suspect the position in which I’m writing this post on board the BA207 to Miami would be called “praying mantis”.

After a few days of remote working beside a pool (why not?), and Sunday hanging out at BarCamp Miami, my final destination will be Future of Web Apps (FOWA Miami). My mission is to spread the word, gain and share knowledge, and of course seek out serious partnership opportunities over cocktails with silly names on South Beach.

As discussed in a recent post, a partnership between Rummble and Total Hotspots began at FOWA London 08 and lead to the recent launch of an essential iPhone app – just one example of the benefits to be gained from getting out and networking at quality events. Andrew Scott and some of the Rummble team are currently making waves in Barcelona at Mobile World Congress, where they hit the ground running by picking up the TeleAtlas innovation award on the first day!

Wi-Fi is huge in America, and Total Hotspots for iPhone has Miami covered – including some of the best free locations. I’m sure it will come in useful for people attending FOWA and BarCamp Miami.

Unfortunately Wi-Fi is still non-existent on transatlantic flights. Gogo launched Wi-Fi services on some busy domestic US routes late in 2008, having received over $265 million in financing. Their aim is to make inflight Wi-Fi a reality with a roll out across over 2,000 commercial aircraft by the end of 2009.

However, at this time, the lack of connectivity isn’t necessarily a bad thing for me. Eight hours is an unusually long time to sit with a notebook (analogue) crammed with new ideas and a to-do list (digital) in need of pruning; all without the distractions of email, Twitter or real work. My appreciation for the RTM iPhone app has reached new heights (no pun intended)!

Please do Tweet or email me if you’re going to or @ FOWA or BarCamp Miami!

Aside from a few tweets, I’ve not yet had the chance to blog about the big event of last week. After just a couple of months in incubation, Twestival parties were thrown in 202 worldwide cities to raise funds for charity: water, that brings essential clean water to some of the most impoverished people. Donations are still being accepted and over 80 countries are yet to be counted, however the total raised is already in excess of $250,000!

This is an awesome achievement for Amanda Rose and all other organisers, and also testament to the power of Twitter as a platform for connecting people and making things happen. Rummble and Total Hotspots together pledged to donate £1 for each of our iPhone apps downloaded during Twestival and will soon figure out exactly how much was raised. A big thanks to everyone who helped spread the word and downloaded the app.

In December I hinted of plans for Total Hotspots to build an slick new mobile app, but couldn’t reveal any details about the platform or planned integration. Since then I’ve been busier than ever making these plans a reality with the help of some extremely talented individuals.

The big news is that Rummble and Total Hotspots have entered into a strategic partnership,  to release a hotspot finder for iPhone that’s based upon a combination of the Rummble’s LBS platform, Rummble API and The Global Wi-Fi Hotspots Directory.

The Concept

There’s no other mobile device on the market that’s caused such an enormous impact as iPhone. The platform enables developers to go wild with a blank canvas at their disposal to create dynamic new interfaces and applications that harness to power of the iPhone SDK, with commoditisation of location and “all you can eat” data. The App Store also presented a unique new distribution platform for mobile apps.

Gioel Molinari

During one of the most exquisite lunches of my life at The Fat Duck, courtesy of Micol’s techno-finance wizard brother, Gioel Molinari; we discussed the idea of creating Total Hotspots for iPhone. Our conclusion: that it would be massively useful if the the entire Total Hotspots database could be made available to millions of worldwide iPhone users, in an app that leveraged some of iPhone’s unique new capabilities. The challenge was turning this great concept into reality as quickly as possible without forming a black hole around the company finances.

Making It Happen

Total Hotspots isn’t a big business and unfortunately doesn’t have a bulging R&D budget waiting to throw at the next “blue sky” project. It never received VC funding when bootstrapped in 2004, by me, and a small but experienced team of mentors/advisors, whilst I finished my degree in Business Computing at City University. Consequently Total Hotspots has been forced to remain profitable year-on-year in order to survive.

We could afford to outsource the development of an iPhone app, but certainly couldn’t afford for the project to fail. Raising extra finance really wasn’t an appealing route considering the looming economic crisis.

Whilst in the middle of writing specifications and exploring a variety of outsourcing options, I had a chance encounter with Andrew Scott – Rummble’s cracking CEO – aboard the all signing, all dancing, beer-swilling MySpace bus at FOWA London. (I wonder how many other new start-ups/partnerships emerged from this bus? We should start a Facebook group! )

There isn’t much to separate the large number of local search start-ups, however there are certain unique things about Rummble that really blew me away. With Rummble the focus is upon far more than the quantity of ratings and reviews, and more upon building a solid “trust profile” that taps into your social network; which becomes more accurate as you “feed” it more information. The output is a set of results that better fits your personal taste. Why receive a rating of  9/10 for The Ivy when I only eat at Dallas Chicken? Relevancy is a great way of rewarding users for taking the time to share their opinions.

Intelligent social data filtering is especially important in the mobile world. Even the iPhone, with all its visual funk, shouldn’t have to relay an untamed information “spray hose”. It should intelligently find the best nearby places for you, not a list of top rated aggregate scores from the masses. I had been dreaming of this kind of functionality but thought it would be overkill for Total Hotspots, but  certainly fascinating PhD topic if I were ever to venuture back into academia.

Not long after sitting down with Andrew, and agreeing to push forward with the project, we all went home for Christmas. On the 5th January, probably the most lethargic Monday of the year, I tried getting in touch with the person who had promised to feature the app on the Gadget Show. The program was originally scheduled to film on 19th January and broadcast at the start of the new series in March. They were already in Scotland shooting short sequences – suddenly our deadline seemed to be a ghost!

Rummble are one of the few teams that I’ve come across who have the right combination of talent, agility and motivation; to shuffle everything at the start of a new year and dive head first into a new project with such an outrageous deadline. Our plan was intelligently restructured, quick technical decisions were made and the “things you can’t do” book torn up. Everyone involved worked overtime to have a prototype ready for filming in Edinburgh on 12th January.

Since then the app has been thoroughly tested to make it launch stable, and the Rummble API is being more tightly integrated at Total Hotspots. It’s been very exciting being the first third party to explore the Rummble API over the past few weeks.  What started as a limited set of requirements to support the iPhone app has turned into a much deeper service integration plan that will continue over the next few weeks and months.

The Total Hotspots application has now been rebuilt from the ground up using the latest version of the excellent Agavi PHP Framework, so the development cycles can be cut down to rapidly roll out exciting new features that Total Hotspots users want. To avoid writing War and Peace, I’m going to save the details of for my next post. What I can announce is that our plan (although still not finalised) is to release the PHP REST client that was developed to interact with the Rummble API on an open and non-restrictive license. This should make it much quicker for future projects to harness the power of Rummble’s API with PHP.

The Launch (work in progress)

I will follow up with another post that covers the launch in more depth. We still have some tricks up our sleeve and Andrew also saved me the effort by beating me to the chase on the Rummble blog. The highlights are:

• Apple approved the app less than 48 hours before the Gadget Show broadcast, but reviewed it faster than usually reported. Thanks Apple!
• Within minutes of entering the App Store, various website had automatically listed the app and tweeted a link using an XML/RSS feed from Apple. At this point we wanted to keep the news quiet for a few more hours and hoped that nobody would chance upon these feeds too soon.
• The news was first leaked on Twitter.
• TechCrunched on Friday evening – a big thanks to Mike Butcher for responding quickly to the late breaking news.
• Gadget Show appearance – now available on the FiveFWD website. Total Hotspots helped Wi-Fi to win in a head-to-head vs. 3G at Hadrian’s Wall.
• After 72 hours the app is the 4th most popular iPhone utility! Well, at least it is over here in the UK.
• Plenty of related activity on the website, via email and all over Twitter. A new Facebook Page and UserVoice Community were created.

I’d like to extend another huge thanks to the entire Rummble team. It’s going to be an exciting few weeks and months ahead! I will post all major developments and ideas right here on this blog, and on Twitter. If you’d like to get in touch to discuss the iPhone app and/or Total Hotspots then please don’t hesitate to email or skype me. Your comments are also welcome below. Thanks for reading.

Click here to get Total Hotspots for iPhone from iTunes

Today is a one of the most important days in political history. Finally the US, and the World, has a great leader in President 2.0, Barack Obama – of whom we should be truly proud. I’m confident that waving goodbye to Bush will indeed present a positive new era of change that has been resconating throughout Obama’s ground-breaking campaign.

Like millions of people across the world, I would love to be a part of history on the ground in Washington or a packed bar. However I have some work to attend to, and will therefore be watching it on TV, with one eye on the internet – where never before has an event been so well covered.

Qik enables people to stream their experiences live on the internet via their mobile phone; however, given phone networks should be pushed to full capacity, the quality of these feeds will probably leave a lot to be desired. Nevertheless, Qik have partnered with a number of traditional new organisations, including BBC and CBS to distribute spectator footage.

Ustream.tv also has an inauguration channel, which is now also access also available via their new iPhone application.

Even the traditional news networks are covering the event in true realtime social 2.0 style! CNN and Facebook have collaborated to create a mashup whereby live status updates from all viewers appear streaming in realtime next to the live inauguration footage. Your status update may optionally be shared with all viewers, which will easily be quite a few million people! The screenshot to the right shows my 2 seconds of inaugural fame.

Another staggering inaugral experiment comes courtesy of Microsoft Photosynth. This revolutionary software enables a number of photos to be stitched together automatically to create a 3D scene. Both Microsft and CNN will shoot many thousands of professional photographs and combine these with submissions from spectators! Given the scene is refined and improved with each additional photo that’s fed into the system, I’m expecting a fully immersive inaugural world to be created! [UPDATE: here's the finished Photosynth]

We can all play a small part in history; even from our desk – just send a Tweet with the hashtag #inaug09, and you can be sure that message will be archived forever as a personal thought connected with the event. This level of engagement in a political event is unprecedented, whilst somehow managing to blur the boundaries between global and individual participation.

And finally, on the eve of his inauguration Obama started tweeting again, after remaining silent since 5th November! Earlier this month, I wrote about a security breach at Twitter that lead to a number of high profile accounts being compromised. Thankfully this hasn’t prevented @barackobama becoming active again, along with a new @obamainaugral account. It would be a shame for Obama to abandon the new social tools that played such a major role in him winning the election. Twitter CEO, Evan Williams, will be pleased as he tweets his experiences live from Washington!

Here’s a more comprehensive list of live Twitter feeds to follow; and an excellent inauguration guide from TechCrunch.

UPDATE 21/01

• for the above CNN / Facebook mashup, there were 13.9 million live video streams globally between 6am and 11:45am, and over 200k Facebook status updates – via mashable. I wonder how many terabytes per second that is?!
• according to the Twitter blog, there were up to 5x the number of tweets-per-second, compared to last week. Some people experienced a slight delay, but the service remained active throughout!

No doubt there are more examples of enabling new technologies being put to use on this historic day. Please do share your comments below.