I wrote a thing.
I normally just write code. It’s safer that way. But a change is as good as a holiday, so earlier in the year, I tried writing in English. With sentences and paragraphs and everything.
I wrote a paper to summarise the Conversational Internet project for submitting to W4A, the 10th International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility. And I’m pleased to say that it was accepted.
If you’re in Rio for WWW 2013 next month, look out for it!
I’ve tried to explain IBM Watson to a lot of people this year. A common theme in questions I’ve had has been comparing it to search engines like Google.
Sometimes people ask why one is “better” than another. Sometimes they just ask how they are different.
It’s not surprising. A natural response to learning about something new is to put it into context of things that we already know.
In addition, we describe Watson as a question answering technology and over the last few years many people have perhaps become a bit conditioned to thinking that if they have a question then they can Google for it.
There are many differences between search engines and Watson, both in what they can do, and in how they try to do it.
Here is one example.
I am now the happy owner of an iPad mini. Obviously I couldn’t let this happen without a mention. But… the Internet is full of reviews of the iPad mini already and doesn’t need another. 
Instead, I’ll write about the gadget that the iPad will be replacing. The gadget that has been pretty much everywhere with me since I got it three years ago. This is my chance to say goodbye to the venerable Asus T91MT.
The T91MT is a small Windows 7 computer. It’s the size of a netbook, but has an 8″ screen that swivels to switch into a tablet mode. It has a touchscreen with multitouch support and a stylus.
I got it in December 2009, but it feels like I’ve had it for longer than that. It’s fairly beat up by now, so it looks like I’ve had it longer than that, too. I think the stickers are the only thing holding the case together at this point.
I loved this thing. As much as I am now loving the iPad mini (and believe me, it’s sweet), there is a part of me that misses the T91MT.
Why did I love this thing so much?
I’ve written about some of the talks at Everybody Technology which was an event about how to make technology inclusive.
I gave a short talk there, too. It was about my Conversational Internet project. I’ve written about it a few times already now, so I won’t rehash it here, but I talked about the Extreme Blue prototype and some of the work that’s been done since.
Luckily for fans of funny voices everywhere, it was recorded.
What might it be like to read the BBC News website with a screen reader?
I thought this was interesting.
Using a screen reader :: YouTube video
Imagine if you needed to rely on a screen-reader to use the Internet. Seriously – give it a try.
Start the video playing, put the volume up a bit, and *shut your eyes*.
Try and follow along.
What’s it like? Imagine if you’d not seen the page before, and had to try and figure out the structure of the page from what is read out.
Choose a story that you’d want to click on, and without looking, try and work out how many times you’d need to press up/down/tab to get to it.
A month ago I got a Fitbit Ultra. It’s a small gadget that you carry around with you all the time to monitor your activity. How many steps you take, how many flights of stairs you go up, how far you walk, how much sleep you get and how restful it is, and much more. It also comes with apps and tools for monitoring stuff like diet and weight. And it makes all of this information available to you, both through a website and through an API.
This isn’t really a review – there are plenty of those about already if you’re interested (Of all the reviews I’ve read, The Verge’s review is the closest to what I would write if I was gonna write one). Instead, I want to talk about the fitbit from the perspective of a data-geek.
Before I start, it’s worth putting this in context. I am loving the fitbit, but I don’t pretend that it’s necessarily something you have to get. Put it this way – I used CurrentCosts to monitor my home energy usage on the web and on my mobile, I wrote code to find out which keyboard keys I press most often, I made a whole website to visualise patterns in what I watch on TV, I wrote code to make map visualisations of where I go with my mobile, I wrote code to use a webcam and face recognition software to measure how my mood changes as I watch different TV programmes or play different console games… I could go on (no, really), but you probably get the point.
I find this sort of personal data stuff fascinating. I’m not the only geek in the world like this – Stephen Wolfram wrote a great blog post last month about some of the stuff that he collects that really puts me to shame.
But when I say that I think the fitbit is awesome, just bear in mind where I’m coming from, okay?
In this post, I want to give examples of the data that it makes available, and what sort of things you can do with it.
