dorian moore : (digital media) technologist

I've just put live the 4th installment of Agrifashionista.tv, Iron Man by Jen Liu.
A story of Party Monks, Rock Guitars, Brass Bands, a Princess and Salvation.
Watch, think, and leave your comments below.

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Posted by Dorian Moore on Monday, September 22, 2008 at 17:08 GMT

It says here on NullRiver's Website that their NetShare data tethering app for the iPhone has been banned. Shame. That would have unlocked a much better world for me. I'd have paid my phone company to be able to use data tethering via my iPhone. It would be easier and cheaper than the 2 phones/1 phone and a dongle option.

It's added to the mass of dissapointments I've had with the iPhone and app store since their launch. I'm such a fan of Apple kit generally but the iPhone is starting to bug me more and more, especially the walled garden. As is much more clearly explained by others elsewhere having such a closed environment could be Apple's downfall in the mobile marketplace in the not-so-long term.

My list of gripes with the iPhone so far (not that we need another list of these)

* my settings/preferences being trashed when I upgrade some apps.

* inability to stream audio from iPhone to AirTunes

* inability to sync wirelessly, and copy files onto my iPhone at will

* the fact that no decent sync API appears to exist for 3rd party apps to I have to sync them manually, and frequenty via MobileMe. I've not check for this but I have 4 apps that all sync independntly of iTunes

* heavy iTunes dependency in the whole phone management system.

* The fact that if i switch iTunes libraries on my laptop I can't then sync ( i have a rather large iTunes library I don't take with me on my laptop, but I can't even sync my address book and calendar if I connect when launching this iTunes library)

* the usual suspects (bad 3g, bad battery life, no copy & paste, no multi-tasking, no inter application (or data) communication, app store policies/no freedom of distribution for applications, icons moving around on update, inability to remove 'core' apps, limitation of hardware/software access to third party apps (such as camera/gallery), no 'sms contact details', no mms )

* generally there is a lack of hackability which a lot of apple devotees (myself included) had come to expect because of OS X. Apple have got the balance wrong here.

Let's hope that Apple are investing some of that money they are surely making into fixing these problems. I'd really like for someone to jailbreak and hack Android onto the phone That may do the trick nicely.

Posted by Dorian Moore on Sunday, September 14, 2008 at 13:41 GMT

just checking out iTunes genius features. Was quite happy to be recommended a Charlemagne Palestine album I don't have, but - as expected - when there are no matches Apple tries to punt you the top selling albums. Hint to Apple: if you don't think my music exists, then it's pretty likely not going to be pop music, is it?

[Yes, I know I'm just being smug 'cos i have lots of music that won't likely ever exist in the iTunes store.]

• 

  Not Genius. Well Ghedalia Tazartes is in my opinion...

Posted by Dorian Moore on Wednesday, September 10, 2008 at 12:12 GMT

Having just read http://alistapart.com/articles/mappingmemory I felt inspired to post a link to it after having read the first article in a long time which resonates with how I work, and what I do.

I have a lot to add to it, but as ever it's not something I can ever seem to easily put into words. It's inspired a lot of memories of why I do what I do, and the parts I'm very interested in. It reminded me of many projects I've worked on over the years, not just the mapping projects but also developing intranets, managing large swathes of dense information, creating extendable publishing structures, managing multi-media information sets and more. And it more reminded me of things I have thought of but have not done and should.

Though for the meantime its on with today's work, rather than distracting myself from it. Still it is these forms of inspiration that drive us to produce anew, so I shouldn't berate myself too much.

Tags : architecture building, cartography, mapping, memory, psychogeography, structures, webdesign, work,
Posted by Dorian Moore on Saturday, September 6, 2008 at 12:04 GMT

Nice visualisations of incidental information captured during journeys: http://flickr.com/photos/yesyesnono/sets/72157600558783656/

More background here: http://www.yesyesnono.co.uk/

[thanks Dan]

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Posted by Dorian Moore on Friday, August 29, 2008 at 11:59 GMT

www.ayurvedic.me

I've been slowly working on the design and identity for Angie's Ayurveda Practice over the last few months - amongst everything else - and have just put up the start of her website.

Simplicity is order of the day, keeping everything clean and minimal, maybe too minimal at the moment, but there is more to come in the days, weeks, months and years that follow.

Tags : angie ayurveda, design, family, website, work,
Posted by Dorian Moore on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 11:11 GMT

www.alisonleeper.com

A simple portfolio website for my Mum's printmaking practise, showing some of her works in preparation for the Perthshire Open Studios.

Tags : design family, website, works,
Posted by Dorian Moore on Monday, August 25, 2008 at 15:18 GMT

www.gerryleeper.com

A simple portfolio website for my Dad's jewellery and silversmithing practise, showing some of his works in preparation for the Perthshire Open Studios.

Tags : design family, website, works,
Posted by Dorian Moore on Monday, August 25, 2008 at 15:15 GMT

I've just uploaded our first set of visual maps to the site... a map is now generated for each of your Stories... here is my story. Simple, isn't it?

(By the way, if you can't see the map you probably need to install the latest version of Flash Player. It's freee, and it will only take a minute or two)

At the top of the map you can see my 'portrait': which shows who I am, where I'm from, and what I do.

Across the map are spread the locations in Folkestone I have a connection with. Or in my case the Location - the Folkestonomy Float (I admit, I have more connections than this, but Andreas was hurrying me back to London, and I got flustered doing my mapping...).

On the bottom right are the 'reasons' that people connect to their stories. Some of these are connected to locations, and some are not connected to locations. You can identify which story an item is in by it's colour.

So there you go, have a look, and see what you think.

In the coming weeks we'll be adding more maps onto the site, which show different sets of connections, which will allow you to see how folkestone, and the triennial, are connected out into the rest of the world, and how the spaces we've identified within folkestone are connected to each other (other than by roads and pavement...)

At the moment we are cleaning up a lot of the data we've gathered. Due to the larger than expected number of failures of our 'add-ons'* we've had problems with data being getting corrupted upon import, and so we're going through looking at all of your story photos and making sure the stories we have are correct, and trying to tie up any missing photographs to the stories... but pleae let us know if you spot any problems with your stories.

*word of advice, don't use cheap 1/4" jack plugs!

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Posted by Dorian Moore on Tuesday, August 12, 2008 at 18:48 GMT

Regular visitors to the site may notice that we've added a couple of sections to the left hand navigation: Map Items and Stories. These are my first steps in visualising all of the data we have, and the connections between them, so that we can create further maps over time.

The map items are all the plug-in items we have on the float. Browsing through the lists of items you can see how each item is connected to others, through connections Kathrin mapped out prior to the start of the Triennial.

On top of all the relations between the plug-in's there are your stories. These are the connections that are inferred by the mapping we make at the float. Each story is split up into a 'portrait' and a number of stories. The portrait reflects where the visitor we've mapped have come from and how they ended up at the triennial, the stories are how they are connected to the cultural spaces in Folkestone.

It's taken a while to get these up due to a number of teething difficulties with the whole setup - it's quite a complex system and this is the first version of it. We will now be uploading new stories onto the site each day, along with photographs, and if you've already come and told us your story you can search for yourself if you know your story ID, or if you gave us a name you can search by your name (or your friend's names).

Please let us know if you see anything wrong with your mapping: there are quite a few issues with some of them from the early days, and we've not been able to attach images to mappings as reliably as we'd like to, so there may be some missing or some attached incorrectly. A quick email letting us know the Story ID ( eg m48625ab2 ) and what's wrong and we'll get on with updating it.

This might not look like a map, in the traditional sense, at the moment, but if you start browsing through the links you'll start to see how places are interconnected by people's stories, how certain places are more fundamental to stories than others. These connections are a map, albeit represented like a text based adventure game on an 80's computer. My ability to see the map in my head probably comes from too many hours spent playing them as a kid.

My task now is to start to gather all of the data we have hear into some form of visualisation. The first step of this is for me to start visualising each of the stories we've been given. Once I can see the spread of those I'll be able to see how we can clearly map the relationships between the stories.

So, please keep checking back to see new bit's appear, and if you want to be kept updated of changes subscribe to out mailing list or our blog's RSS feed.

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Posted by Dorian Moore on Friday, July 18, 2008 at 23:42 GMT