At Codebits (Lisbon, Portugal), Josette Garcia met with Celso Martinho and José Alves de Castro to discuss SAPO’s latest IT innovations including their latest Android phone. SAPO is part of Portuguese Telecom.
Codebits:
Once again I have been to Codebits and cannot stop being amazed by this very special conference. Organized by SAPO and inspired by Hackday
Balloon Launch
The event lasts 3 days and includes talks, a programming contest, quizzes and lots of fun as well as a balloon launch. The technical presentations are given either by invited speakers or by the attendees. For the first time the programming contest lasted 48 hours. The attendees group themselves into small units (with a minimum of 2 persons). After 48 hrs, each group has 90 seconds to present their project.
Not everybody can attend Codebits. Those who wish to attend need to apply by giving some information – who they are, what they do, why want to attend. This is followed by a screening process to ensure that the audience is made solely of “techies”. The event is completely free for the attendees – no entry fees, free food, free entertainment and sleeping facilities if so wished.
SAPO-themed check-in
During Codebits, SAPO also introduced a few new projects; two of them really stand out:
– MEO Jogos, a platform that allows Portugal Telecom fiber clients to play games from the comfort of their homes without the need of a powerful machine; around 20 awesome games – with new titles added often – running on PT’s servers as if they were local, and available at less than 10 € / month; much cheaper than buying a console and the games, but only possible thanks to PT’s optic fiber network.
– SAPO a5, SAPO’s first smartphone – an Android 2.1 with 512MB RAM, a 600MHz ARM processor, 800×480 multi-touch screen and a 5Mpixels camera for less than 150 €; but that’s not all: the address book has strong integration with several social networks and the terminal comes bundled with several apps developed at SAPO for the Portuguese audience – weather, movies, sports, news, etc.
Following Codebits, they announced another big project: Music Box, a platform that allows subscribers to play music on their computers, smartphones and even TVs, and while the service has a small fee, most current Portugal Telecom clients get it for free.
A few other minor projects were unveiled or revamped during Codebits – Photos website, for instance, got a major revamp; an Alerts platform and a few things related to authentication with SAPO’s services were launched.
History:
SAPO was created 15 years ago by university students from Aveiro University including Celso Martinho who is CTO. SAPO stands for Servidor de Apontadores Portugueses Online. SAPO means frog or toad depending on which definition you read.
Shortly after that they were bought and eventually ended up being part of Portugal Telecom, where every year they’ve been strengthening their position getting more and more involved with all the other companies in the group.
O'Reilly Bookstall
They currently have a team of over 150 techies working on pretty much everything, from photos to videos, maps to health solutions, etc. – the works!
One other interesting fact:
SAPO has also been founding and funding several laboratories in Portuguese universities. The faculty provides a room and someone to lead the project; SAPO provides free equipment and gives students scholarships and mentoring to develop new projects and ideas. In the end, some of these students get the chance to work at SAPO.
Join Guillaume LaForge, Graeme Rocher, Tomas Lin, Peter Ledbrook, Dierk Koenig and others passionate about Groovy & Grails
Groovy & Grails eXchange 2010, December 16-17th at Skills Matter in London
Join Guillaume LaForge, Graeme Rocher and others for talks and open space sessions at the 4th annual Groovy & Grails eXchange. Be part of an informal day of deep technical insight and friendly discussion to learn, adopt and share new innovative ideas, tools and practices for enterprise web development with Groovy and Grails.
With a maximum number of 125 delegates, we aim to provide an informal and intimate environment where you can share experience, demonstrate new ideas and techniques, talk to the experts and generally have lots of fun.
Stay Tuned
Follow updates on speakers and programme or suggest ideas and topics on twitter, tag #grailsx
Community Offer
We are pleased to offer the next 20 tickets for this 2-day Groovy & Grails conference for just £225- get yourself a ticket now and pay just £225!
The Agile, Lean & Kanban eXchange 2010 is an annual conference for and by the Agile community, from developers to testers, from Agile leaders to Architects, anyone interested in agile methods for better collaboration, teamwork and better software. This year, the Agile, Lean & Kanban eXchange attracted more than 125 participants from around the world for two days of conference and unconference. Most SkillsCast Video’s are now online, you can find them here
The themes for this year’s Agile, Lean & Kanban eXchange were:
- Collaboration and Teamwork
- Agile Requirements, Analysis and Validation
- Leadership, Value & Visibility
- Code Craftmanship
- Quality & Delivery
SkillsCasts
Most SkillsCasts Video’s are now available here, featuring talks by Antony Marcano, Andy Palmer, Marc B. McNeill, Karl Scotland, Rachel Davies, David Laribee, Allan Kelly, Jan Machacek, Erik Doernenburg, Patrick Kua, Aslak Hellesøy, Nik Patel, Tom Roden, Jon Jagger, Benjamin Mitchell and many others passionate about Agile. If whilst watching, you like to share your thoughts and ideas with others, you can use (twitter) tag #agilex
I am notoriously disorganised. Ask any of my friends, they’ll tell you – I couldn’t arrange a bunch of flowers. Ask my boss. Ask my wife! But for some reason contrary to all laws of nature, I have become an event organiser. The event is Ignite and, so far, I’ve done alright.
Over the last couple of years, Ignite has taken up a tidy chunk of my time. I attended the first Ignite in the UK, Ignite Cardiff on the 3rd December 2008. With my friend Imran Ali, I co-organised the first Ignite in Leeds at Old Broadcasting House on Jan 29th 2009, which I compered. I spoke at the first Ignite London, when Amy Thibodeau and Dan Zambonini invited me along as a guest speaker, and subsequently co-opted myself onto the Ignite London committee for Ignite London 2 and Ignite London 3. And I was principle cheerleader and MC for Ignite Leeds 2, though that was Imran’s show, really. So I’m thoroughly blooded in the ways of Ignite.
Earlier this summer, Andrew Tan, a student on the MA Innovation Management at Central St Martin at Holborn, London, asked the Ignite London Committee to speak to his fellow students about Ignite, as their final year assessment includes a lightning talk at the RSA. Andy Kervell and I were glad to volunteer. And it made me think about what Andrew needed to know before organising an Ignite, and what I’ve learnt since getting involved.
Some of this is obvious. Some of it could only have been learned through experience. These are not hard and fast rules, just suggestions, and for each one I’m certain there are a plethora of valid exceptions. There are plenty of people with more event organising experience than me out there who have their own, very successful ways of doing things. But for the newbie organiser, this might be a useful supplement to the instructions and advice on the Ignite site.
So here goes:
Why Ignite?
- Ignite is an innately democratic event. Every speaker gets the same length of time to hold court – 5 minutes, with 20 slides which auto-change every 15 seconds. Whoever you are, that’s your lot.
The rules for Ignite are arbitrary. That’s OK, there’s nothing wrong with a few arbitrary constraints – that’s the basis of all sport, of all games, of all form poetry. 5 minutes, 20 auto-rolling slides works for Ignite. It gives the event momentum, it allows the speaker sufficient time to make a point but means the audience don’t have to wait too long if any given speaker isn’t working for them. The auto-roll cuts off the rambler. Any shorter and it would be unsatisfying, any longer and you’re cutting down the number of speakers your evening can comfortably allow.
The format is open source, or at least not proprietary, unlike some other lightning talks. Ignite is not a franchise you have to buy into, that controls what you can and cannot do. This a bazaar, not a cathedral. O’Reilly are just there to help you make the most of it.
The Ignite format promotes clearly-thought out, well-presented communication. That has to be a good thing.
Anyone can organise an Ignite. It’s not a case of having to ask for permission, you just volunteer yourself and away you go.
Wherever you are, there’s an audience there for Ignite, and there are a host of potential speakers on your doorstep with a wealth of knowledge ready to be passed on.
Ignite is meritocratic – if a talk is good, there’s a mechanism in place to make sure people around the world will see it. Quality will out. This is one of the great advantages of Ignite having a larger infrastructure outwith your local event – word of a good talk will spread.
It is fantastically heartening to hear so many passionate people up on-stage keen to inform you, to make you think, to make you laugh. It’s a glorious learning experience. And if you’re the person who has made it happen – well, doesn’t that feel good.
Organising
- You can put on an Ignite on your own, but it’s not as much fun. For the sake of your own enjoyment, it might be worth enrolling a friend or two into the operation.
The more people on the committee, the bigger role the pub/coffee shop plays. As the number of emails increases, it’s wise to spend facetime with each other. It reminds you these are human beings with real lives you’re working with, not email-answering automatons. Talk about things other than just Ignite – it makes it more enjoyable, and it helps proceedings run smoother.
Make sure there isn’t another Ignite already happening in your area. Seriously, I learned this one the hard way. I had been trying to set up an Ignite in London for a few months. Eventually, I had a date and place lined up, I was about to announce the event, only to see that someone else had got in there before me. I had to back out (gracefully, I’d like to think) and let Amy and Dan, the organisers of the rival Ignite, have the floor. As it happened, it worked out well – Amy and Dan were fantastic and put on a great event, and out of sympathy they asked me to speak, and I enjoyed it so much I inveigled myself onto their team for the Ignite London scheduled for the first Global Ignite Week. When they headed off around the world for a year, I was able to help keep the event going, along with my fellow committee members, Claire Ross, Richard Johnson, Dave Joyner and the aforementioned Andy Kervell.
It might be that your city is big enough for more than one Ignite, but it’s tricky. The team that gets in first get to bagsy the nomenclature Ignite Your_City_Name, for a start, which is the equivalent of owning the deeds to the house. There’s an argument that says that if the second event focuses on a specific audience, for example it specialises in botany, architecture, music, then that’s manageable. There’s no conflict, no cannibalising each other’s audience.
When scheduling your Ignite, check for major sporting events. If you put your Ignite on at the same time as eg, the, World Cup Final, you’ll find your audience is decimated, and many of the speakers will find an excuse not to come along. You might think Ignite and football are two demographics with little overlap, but football overlaps with everything.
Meet-Up is OK, but it’s the black hole of data – once it’s in there, it’s a swine to get it back out. Should you need to export your contacts etc, it’s not going to happen. Of the other online booking applications we’ve used, Eventbrite and Upcoming seem better.
Some people will sign up to attend your event but will fail to show up on the night. (I’m not being snotty about this – I’ve done it myself on occasion). At Ignite London, pre-booked tickets need to be redeemed by 7.30. After that, they become available to anyone who turns up at the door on a first come, first served basis. This didn’t quite solve the problem as, though we had great initial demand for tickets, and though we also made it clear there would be tickets available on the night, Kilburn in North London was a little bit out of the way for people to risk it, and as such, we didn’t reach capacity.
I know some Ignites charge the audience to attend. We haven’t done that at Leeds or London, preferring to fund the event through sponsorship. However, we were out of pocket at the last Ignite London, and we’re thinking of charging a small fee on bookings for the first 100 tickets. That would cover venue costs, would leave plenty of room for people to drop in on the night, (and to allow for the perception that if you turned up, you’d get in), and if the pre-bookers don’t show, that’s their choice – by paying, they’ve already helped us put on the event, so they’ve played their part.
We reckon about 15 speakers is the right number. Though I’ve seen successful events with just 7 and with 18.
We like to have two or three guest speakers, if we can. Ben Hammersley, Cory Doctorow, Russell Davies, Steve Bowbrick, John Graham-Cumming have all graced the stage in London at our invitation, but we were lucky that they all live in the area. A guest speaker is a known quantity when the majority of the programme is a gamble.
If you’re organising, you might be better off not speaking as well. If you’re worried about your talk, you won’t concentrate on the event as a whole. Let other people hog the limelight – your job is to make sure everything runs smoothly. If there’s another Ignite travellable from where you are, maybe there’s an opportunity to crash the bill there, as Dan Roddy from Ignite Bristol did in London. It’s not a bad idea to get some experience of what your speakers are going through on the night. (This point applies only to ordinary people – there are infinitely gifted people in this world who will effortlessly cope with anything thrown their way. Adrian McEwan is one such person!)
A couple of rules we set ourselves at Ignite London – if someone had used a particular talk at a previous Ignite (either in London or elsewhere), we prefer not to use it. You can see pretty much every Ignite talk online, so it would be unfair to ask the audience to stand through something they could see from the comfort of their own home. And if we can help it, no one gets to speak at two Ignite Londons in a row. It’s better to mix the line-up a bit.
One of the lovely side-effects of Ignite is the cross-pollination between events around the UK. Adrian McEwan and Andy Goodwin from Ignite Liverpool came along to Ignite Leeds 2, along with Adrian’s magnificent creation Bubblino. Tom Scott has appeared in Leeds and London, as has Matt Edgar. Dave Mee organises Ignite Manchester and spoke in Leeds. Liz Kearton is due to speak in Bristol at the end of this month and she spoke in London at then end of September. There’s quite an alumni of Igniters across the UK now, and it’s heartening to swap stories with them and give them a nudge should interesting speakers be heading their way.
Sort out your technology before the event. Make sure the venue has the appropriate connectors to unite the projector and your laptop. If you’re relying on an internet connection, check it works on your machine, check it again. Check it again. If any of the slides rely on sound, check it out prior to the event.
Give the speakers notice on what laptop, what operating system and what presentation software you are going to use.
Get all the slides onto one laptop. This is something to insist on. Open them before the event and set the auto-timer yourself.
Some people will send their slides late. That’s OK. Don’t fret about it. Occupational hazard. Make sure you have a USB memory stick with you.
If you can, add a countdown to each speaker’s first slide. That way the speaker knows when to start.
Allow for change-over time between speakers. Your speakers deserve an introduction and a quick bio. Your IT person needs a few seconds to switch slides, to switch lapel mics if appropriate. It helps if you can have the speakers accessible to the stage.
Allocate someone the task of recording the event, and of editing the footage afterwards. Hire someone, if need be. At Ignite London we’re very lucky to have Richard Johnson who does a remarkable job of filming unobtrusively during the evening, and then chopping it into bite-sized portions in a timely fashion afterwards. At the last Ignite in Leeds, Imran and I thought we had it covered, only for us to lose half the footage for each half of the show. (Sorry, Imran!)
Flip cameras and their like are perfectly fine. If you can, have separate cameras for the screen and the slides. If you try and capture both at once, the slides are so bright that the speaker will be in darkness.
Personal preference – if alcohol is available, schedule the more serious talks for earlier in the running order, and the more frivolous talks for later on. It’s not that drunkards are infantile, (OK, they can be) but once you’ve started on the belly laughs, to paraphrase John Shuttleworth, you can’t go back to savoury!
Have a reserve speaker or two, in case someone drops out. And a caveat to the ‘organisers shouldn’t speak’ maxim is that it might be a good idea for you or one of your committee members to put together a talk which you probably won’t use, but which can be opted in should someone drop out at the last moment.
Don’t worry if a few small things go wrong. Chances are the audience won’t notice, and if they do, they won’t mind.
People will complain. Regardless of how good it is, someone will tell you the vol-au-vents you baked yourself were too tart for their palate, or that one of the speaker’s shirt is clashing unpleasantly with the mirrorball. I even got someone complaining that the event was free last time – (mind you, I was hassling him to buy raffle tickets at the time – sorry, mate). Good buzz can survive snippy comments. Thank them for their feedback and move on. Or ask them to get involved in the next one – that usually shuts them up!
Speaking
- There are places all over the world with the same names. Make sure you’re not putting your name down for what you believe is London, Ontario when the event is in that other London, way over there in the UK.
When submitting your proposal, stick to one, or at the far outside, two ideas. If you can’t decide which tale you are most compelled to tell, then how can the organisers decide for you? Include a couple of paragraphs on why you want to tell this story. Remember, this is Ignite – you need to show you can be both informative and concise.
Even though slides play a big part in an Ignite presentation, the same rules apply as to any presentation. Work out the story you want to tell, work out the points you want to make within the story, then work out how you can best tell that story and therefore what slides you’re going to need. The slides are the final part of the puzzle, not the first.
Your first slide will probably explain who you are and what you’re talking about. The last one will have your contact details. So you’re down to 18 for telling your tale.
Less is more. You can try to cram too much into your five minutes. John Graham-Cumming reckons each slide is a tweetsworth of dialogue. That’s a good way to look at it. (The arrival of lightning talks and Twitter at roughly the same time is surely worth a more in-depth study).
Stick to the Ignite format. I know of one person who decided to go their own way – they got booed!
There are plenty of ways to hack the format to put your own mark on it. You can be creative, even within the constraints that Ignite places on you.
Be careful with stock photographs. They all look a bit generic to my eyes, even if they might raise a smile.
Practice. Practice. Practice. Tweak your slides, tweak your presentation, try it again. Film it and watch it. Learn from it.
It’s OK to have your notes with you, but if you’re spending even a short time reading them, that’s less time to address the audience. Don’t memorise your presentation word for word, but it’s best to have at least the gist of what you want to say loaded into your brain for immediate recall.
Stay off the booze until you’ve spoken. You’ll just sound daft if your speech is slurred.
Don’t worry if you make a bad start. You have time to re-group. You can turn it around. The audience will remember your last two minutes, not your first two, and besides, people don’t want to watch a robot, (unless it’s robots you’re talking about!). A few slips makes you human – you’ll get huge credit for battling on.
The audience wants you to be good. They are rooting for you. Don’t be frightened of them. Either they’ve done it themselves, in which case they understand what you are going through, or they haven’t, in which case they are chicken, and you can stand before them in the smug knowledge that at least you dared to step up on stage. But they are there to learn, to be part of something. They won’t worry if a few small things go wrong. They are on your side.
Enjoy it. This is a fun event.
This is not going to make or break your career. But it does look good on a CV. The ability to speak in public is becoming ever more important in the modern working life. Among the many other benefits of speaking at Ignite, it’s also good practice – the next talk you do might be for a job, a pitch, for a VC. But don’t speak at Ignite just because it looks good – do it because you have something you care about that you want to help the world understand.
Finally:
Being involved with Ignite has taught me a lot about what I am capable of. I can organise an event – albeit with a lot of help. I can step up in front of an audience and talk for 5 minutes and know it will be good enough so that I don’t get pelted with rotten fruit. And if I can do it, so can you.
But a word of warning – keep away from my fellow Igniters, Imran, Amy, Dan, Andy, Richard, Dave, Claire. I need them more than you do, and I won’t let them go without a fight!
I know I am going to think of a dozen more points as soon as I post this piece. Comments, please.
Christian Ahlert and his Minibar team are always doing interesting things, and if we at O’Reilly can’t always take part, we certainly admire from a-far. Now Minibar is running an app building contest on behalf of the Technology Strategy Board’s newly launched IC tomorrow platform, a “unique testing ground that connects app providers to major content owners and consumers, enabling the development of innovative business models and the creative exploration of content”. Sounds good to us. Developers should register their interest here and will then be invited to an app building briefing day on 4th of November at Skills Matter.
In the run-up to the competition, Minibar interviewed Chris Jackson, CEO of MetaBroadcast, who has been working with IC tomorrow since its inception. Chris explains about his experiences as the first to develop an app through the platform, the benefits of taking part in the contest and his hopes for the future of the programme.
Chris, could you tell us a little about yourself and your background in the field of digital innovation?
I’m CEO of MetaBroadcast, a design & technology company. We make video & audio services on top of rich data such as descriptions of content and records of what users like, dislike, watch, etc. Our main clients are the BBC and Channel 4, plus we do a lot of stuff for ourselves that we think is important.
Before founding MetaBroadcast 3 years ago I was Head of Strategy at the BBC, and a media technology strategist at consultancy McKinsey & Company. I started my career as an R&D engineer with the BBC and a coder of early web apps.
You were the first to develop an app for the IC tomorrow platform, can you tell me how you became involved in the programme and what you attracted you to it?
We won a grant from the Technology Strategy Board last year for a feasibility study. As a part of that process we developed watchsomething.tv, a novel way to browse video content. At the moment we link out to the content on iPlayer, 4oD, etc. We were excited to be involved with IC tomorrow, because there’s potential to get access to content that we can embed within watchsomething.tv.
Was there a reason why you chose to produce this kind of app?
watchsomething.tv is a TV app that goes beyond normal catch-up, the natural focus of most online TV services these days. Catch-up can be quite narrow, and that’s a real shame: there are some great shows from years ago that we all forget about or don’t know how to see again. From the perspective of the content owners, there’s real money to be made if their archive becomes more popular. Services like SeeSaw and 4oD have a great selection of that content online now. We wanted to put the best of this front and centre, and start to develop some smart personalisation UI and algorithms. The TSB believes in our pilot service so much that they featured it in events and publications, so the suggestion that we integrate it with IC tomorrow followed naturally.
There’s a second app of ours on the platform, too. Atlas, the video and audio index, makes it really easy to work with video and audio metadata. It’s not consumer-facing, but is available for other developers to use in trials and services.
What was your experience with the platform (given that it is in the early stages)?
The great thing about IC tomorrow is that it does a lot of the dull but necessary work for you, from using content to linking up with other applications, from reporting to help with billing.
As the first developer on board, of course there were a few rough edges but we got round them pretty quickly. We’ve got a fairly good Java library up on github now and there’s also some slightly more sketchy Python code kicking about. Happy to share that code, and tips beyond it!
How do you feel you have benefitted from joining the platform?
We’ve already had a great conversation with a big TV content producer. It’s pretty likely that will turn into an exciting project soon.
Past your own project, what other advantages are there for those taking part?
Well, I think the main advantage for others is having access to content. There’s also a chance to get hold of the right kind of early users. IC tomorrow is being actively marketed to a small group of motivated early adopters. There are some good tools to analyse their activity and to survey them so I think their feedback on new ideas and applications is going to be really valuable, too.
Over time I hope a community of developers will build, with lots of sharing of code and services.
What advice would you give to developers looking to make the best out of their time on the IC tomorrow platform?
Think content. Using this API is the pre-requisite to get really rich access to premium content, without getting tied down by all the admin that normally comes with that.
What kind of apps would you hope to see the contestants produce?
I think there are lots of interesting opportunities to link video and audio content to other stuff on the web. How about a cooking show that links to the ingredients on Tesco? Or a radio station sorted exclusively by tracks from artists that have upcoming gigs near you?
How do you envisage the future of the IC tomorrow platform in 5 years time?
In 5 years I hope the platform has made itself redundant. It’s really all about enabling links between different people and organisations. So I’d hope those links would evolve to be richer than a single central platform can support. IC tomorrow is a good opportunity to kick-start all that.
Lastly, have you any plans for your own future on the platform, perhaps another app maybe?
Absolutely. We’ve got a couple of other things in the pipeline. Recently we released gawp.tv, a prototype that records what TV you watch (or gawp at, slack-jawed), and builds a page that represents your ‘gawping’ habits. We’ve got another video navigation service coming soon. Both could benefit from integration with IC tomorrow.
As a company we’ve put a lot of effort into building personalised and social video and audio technology. Our API for building this kind of app will be released soon, and we’ll hopefully be adding that to IC tomorrow, too. There’s lots of possibilities.
If you are interested and would like to find out more please have a look at our TSB_Connect group and read IC tomorrow’s recent press release.
A fab weekend in Paris – no, this was not a holiday but a very good conference: OSDC France, which was held on 9th-10th October at la Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie, La Villette, Paris, near la Géode.
What is different about OSDC (Open Source Developers Conference)?
OSDC is a meeting of developers from the different communities who create innovative open source programming. The goal being: it is no longer time to distrust each other, it is now time to learn from each other, as many concepts and techniques are not tied to a specific language. Another good feature about OSDC – it is free and open to all!
la Géode
This year, OSDC was organised by les Mongueurs de Perl, AFPy (Association Francophone Python), Ruby France and the European Smalltalk User Group. The conference was divided into tracks: Communities, Web Development, Languages, Methodologies, Tools and Lightning talks. If you couldn’t make it to the conference, some of the talks will be made available, check the news on the conference website.
Are you an Open Source Developer? Don’t miss next year’s OSDC – it is a very friendly conference where you will learn lots of new techniques and in particular network with different communities who might use different technologies but will bring you a lot of new tools. If you are interested in attending, follow twitter.com/osdcfr.
The social side of OSDC is also very important. A GitHub Drinkup was organised as well as a couscous dinner and on the pavement drink up of the Perl Chartreuse, I am told a custom dating way back.
Flex and the City is a completely free 1 day event organised by the Flex London User Group.
Experts will share their knowledge through presentations and talks as well as showcasing real world applications leveraging the power of Flex in the enterprise market.
Flex and the City
The Barbican
London
20th October, 12pm-9pm
Alasdair Allan
Where does Astronomy meet the iPhone? What changes when computing and connectivity become ubiquitous? Astronomer and O’Reilly Author Alasdair Allan is a fine example of the modern eclectic technologist. He is a hardware hacker, a software programmer and an expert in the arcane arts of iPhone App development. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Exeter by day and by night he runs Babilim Light Industries. His first book, Learning iPhone Programming was published in March 2010, and the Rough Cut of his second book, iOS 4 Sensor Programming, is now available for download. He also recorded an O’Reilly Masterclass, Making use of iPhone and iPad Location Sensors. He is equally at home in his office crunching data or 15,000 feet up in the mountains on an observing run. He is at once a scientist of his day and a throwback to the generalists of the past. He blogs at the Daily Ack.
Your website says you are a “hacker, pretending to be an Astronomer, pretending to be a hacker” – could you explain what you do?
The way astronomers work is changing. Over the last few years isolated telescopes have been integrated into expanding smart telescope networks, spanning continents, and able to respond to transient events in seconds. At the same time the rise of data warehousing has made data mining more practical, and correlations between new and existing data can be drawn in real time. Astronomy, once a data-poor science, has become data-rich.
My own work over this period has focused on applying intelligent agent architectures and techniques to astronomy for telescope control and scheduling, and also for data mining. I’m currently leading the work at Exeter building a peer-to-peer distributed network of telescopes that, acting entirely autonomously, can reactively schedule observations of time-critical transient events in real-time. Notable successes include contributing to the detection of the most distant object yet discovered, a gamma-ray burster at a redshift of 8.2.
Fundamentally, I build the tools that let my colleagues do the best science possible. I’m one of those people who work in the cracks between disciplines.
Learning iPhone Programming
How did you get to where you are? How did you get into technology?
I still consider myself a “working” astronomer, but I do very different work now than I did a few years ago. My background is observational astronomy, and my doctorate concerned multi-wavelength observations of Intermediate Polar systems. However as time has gone by I’ve found myself spending more time playing with the toys than doing science. I’m still publishing papers, but a lot of what I do now is focused firmly on the technology behind the science. I spend more time building software, and poking at hardware, than analysing scientific data.
My first real computer was a PDP-11, things pretty much were inevitable after that…
When did you encounter the PDP-11?
My father worked for a fabrication firm and they had a PDP-11, although I was never entirely clear why…
I didn’t run into better (more interesting) machines until I arrived at University and encountered a DEC MicroVAX and the University’s network of Sun SPARCstations. Although as a result of long term exposure to that network, years afterwards I still wince when anyone mentions thinnet and NFS mounted home directories in the same sentence.
Did you get to program it? Did you have to learn C in order to do so?
Yes and yes. I’m probably the last of the generation that had to self-teach themselves programming, or at least teach themselves computing without the aid of the Internet. I did have sporadic access to Fidonet, but back in the 80’s and early 90’s phone calls were expensive.
Bearing in mind the relationship between the iPhone and Objective-C, have you stuck to variants of C ever since?
No. Astronomers are generally Fortran people, so I spent many years as a Fortran programmer. But I also used C, C++, and Java fairly extensively, as well as several other languages . Later on I became a Perl guy, and until the arrival of the iPhone I spent most of my time writing in Perl. I love high-level languages, and Perl suits the way I think. Interestingly I know a lot of Perl people that have drifted towards developing for the iPhone and now really like Objective-C.
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What tools do you use in your work, both hardware and software?
For software problems I usually make use of Perl, for hardware problems I’ll reach for an Arduino board. For combined hardware and software problems I’ll probably also pull Processing out of the tool bag. I tend to use MySQL if I need to back my software with a database, although these days I also think about using Google’s App Engine to back my application in the cloud. I use Amazon’s S3 for storage and CloudFront for content delivery, and to a lesser extent their EC2 cloud for number crunching. I’d probably use EC2 more, but I’ve got a super computer in the building next door. That always helps…
What languages do you find most useful?
I try to be a language agnostic, all languages are useful, and not every problem requires a hammer. I try and pick my language to suit the problem, not force the problem to suit the language. That said, my “go to” language of choice to solve problems quickly is Perl.
How do you reconcile being a hacker and being an astronomer?
If you’ve ever visited a research laboratory, or a professional observatory, you’ll see there isn’t any need to reconcile the two. The Hollywood version of a laboratory is far too polished, you’re far more likely to see one-off pieces of hardware held together by spot welds, gaffer tape and luck. They probably look like most hacker spaces you’re familiar with except with institutional decorating. Most laboratory physicists are makers. Astronomers spend more time with computers than physicists, so most astronomers are hackers.
We spend as much time talking about computers over morning coffee as we do talking about astronomy.
iOS 4 Sensor Programming - Rough Cut
What is it about the iPhone you like? Do you develop for any other mobile platform?
I used to develop for Series 60 devices, and PalmOS, and more recently I’ve played around with both Android and WebOS. However I think Apple have done an amazing job putting together a development environment that allows you to push their platform. I actually really like Objective-C, and the Cocoa touch frameworks are solid and well designed.
While I think Android in particular has a lot of potential, the development environment lags far behind Xcode and Interface Builder. Basically what I like about the iPhone is that despite being a theoretically “closed” platform it lets me scratch the itch far more easily than other devices. I can throw software together more quickly, and more efficiently, on the iPhone than I could on the other platforms.
If I could develop for Android using Xcode and Interface Builder I would. If anyone from Google is out there reading this I’d love to work with you to push Android development on the Mac forward using native tools.
What has the iPhone brought to Astronomy?
Look up into the audience from the speakers podium at most astronomy conferences and you’ll see a glowing sea of Apple logos staring back at you. Some time over the last decade, more or less corresponding with the arrival of Mac OS X, Apple has become the default computing platform for astronomers. We still have a lot of Linux servers, mostly hidden away in racks, but day-to-day, most astronomers have Apple Macbooks. The Apple Macbook, the iPhone, and now the iPad, have become tools-of-the-trade in Astronomy.
What has Astronomy brought to the iPhone?
Apart from me? We brought the Galaxy Zoo amongst other things, and you only have to take a look at the App Store to see how popular astronomy is on the iPhone and iPad.
The worlds of the iPhone and Astronomy seem very separate to the untrained observer – one is in your pocket, the other beyond the atmosphere. Is there a connection between the two?
A lot of people misunderstand my interest in the iOS platform. We’re moving away from general purpose computers towards more purpose specific devices. Among these are the iPhone and the iPad. The next generation of technology is ubiquitous computing, embedded devices, and mobile devices. Historically astronomers have always been on the bleeding edge of computing, and the processor inside my iPhone is more powerful than the processor inside the desktop machine I used to do my doctorate.
Why would an Open Hardware advocate such as yourself write a book about a closed platform like the iPhone?
I get asked that question a lot. Unlike a lot of purists I don’t view closed platforms as inherently evil. Technology is changing, we’re in the transition phase away from one model of computing and towards another. I’d argue that, despite the apparent closed nature of some of the devices, the underlying trend is towards more openness, not less. It’s just the things that are open and the things that are closed are changing, and with that the skills you need to work with the technology.
We’re moving away from general purpose computers towards more purpose specific devices. Amongst these are the iPhone and the iPad. The thing that’s changing here is that the tools and skills you need to play with the next generation of technology; ubiquitous computing, embedded devices, mobile devices. So you’ll need different skills than you might have used to play with the last generation of technology? The fact that you have to go out and learn some electronics to take part in the next big thing isn’t such a big deal.
What is it about the Arduino you find so appealing?
When I first started getting into electronics prototyping things in hardware was difficult. I ended up as a software person almost by default, it was just so much easier to try out ideas and see if they worked. However the current generation of micro-controller boards, especially the Arduino, has vastly simplified things. They’ve turned what used to be hardware problems into fairly simple software problems, and in the process speeded up hardware prototyping. Combining Arduino based hardware with Processing on the desktop gives me a great lever to attack interesting problems. Better yet, I’m now starting to use pre-release version of Processing for Android to quickly build Android applications to talk to Arduino-based hardware.
What happens when computing and Internet connectivity become ubiquitous?
Some people will become extremely rich, and some people will lose their shirts.
The signs of the next big thing; in the mainstream with devices like the iPhone, in academia with projects like Siftables and Google’s PowerMeter, and out on the open-hardware fringes with the Arduino, are everywhere. We’re entering a period of change, the next big thing is ubiquitous computing, and don’t let anyone tell you differently.
With open hardware like the Arduino arriving we’ve been given a new tool. In the same way the arrival of the desktop computer changed everything, the growing availability of open source hardware will do it again, and the death of the desktop computer might well spell the death of the Web, at least as we know it today.
In its place I think we’re looking at the arrival of something much more interesting, a pervasive information architecture. There is an important distinction to be drawn between simple embedded devices and ubiquitous computing, where you have a pervasive architecture of computing devices. Between independent gadgets responding to simple environmental conditions, and a pervasive information architecture shared across a number of ubiquitous computing devices.
Compared to a real ubiquitous computing we’re at the banging the rocks together stage:
“A big hello to all intelligent lifeforms everywhere…and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys.” -Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
How can we use distributed data to make better real-time decisions?
In many cases it is possible to extend data warehousing to real-time assets such as geographically distributed sensor networks, and there are some interesting architectures that are emerging which present both static and real-time data resources using the same interfaces. They can be viewed as a general way to co-ordinate distributed (sensor) platforms, preserving inherent platform autonomy, using collective decision making to allocate resources. Interestingly some of these architectures that I’ve been working on can, and do, make increasing use of users as mechanical turks in their own software.
You’re building a near-space balloon – is that a work project or a personal project? Could you explain more?
It’s actually a work project supported by the University’s Annual Fund. Right now it consists of a bunch of parts spread across my desk, although hopefully we’ll get a couple of launches in before the British winter closes us down. I’m going to document the build as we go along and hopefully what will eventually come out of it is a generic kit that can go into schools, or enthusiastic amateurs can build. I’m eventually envisioning something a lot like Chris Anderson’s work on the BlimpDuino project, but for near-space (40km) weather balloons.
What is the maddest thing you’ve done for Astronomy – the thing you thought, ‘even I can’t believe I’m doing this?’
It’s a long list. Astronomers travel, a lot. I’ve stood on every continent except Antarctica, and there is astronomy going on even there. I work with some of the people doing that, so I’m still hopeful on that one. Most of the crazy happens when travelling, you end up in some of the remotest places on Earth.
Sometimes things get hectic, there was one time a couple of years or so ago when I flew out to a conference on the west coast, then back into the UK. I was in the country for just twenty hours, and then had to turn around again and fly back to the States for an observing run. The people paying for the conference, and the people paying for the observing run, were different. Neither of them were willing to pay for the one night of hotel accommodation in the States between the two trips, forcing me to fly home between the two. Let’s not get into the what that amount of jet lag feels like when you’re 15,000 ft up a mountain. On the bright side, I managed to see my wife for four hours, and do my laundry.
You do get relaxed about travelling, lost luggage, missed flights, interesting taxi rides. Although the time I got on the wrong plane on a dirt strip in the middle of the South African veldt, and ended up in Johannesburg rather than Cape Town, is still somewhat memorable.
Can you tell us a little bit about Babilim Light Industries?
My day job is as an academic, but I’ve got a lot of sideline projects going on. Enough projects in fact that I ended up rolling them up into a consulting business. I write software, for a time I was doing a lot of backend Perl for the banks, but these days it’s mostly for clients wanting applications on the iPhone. I build hardware, mostly distributed sensor systems; mesh-network based, usually using Ardunio and XBee as the basic platform. I also provide tailored training courses on how to build applications for the iPhone, I’ve done everything from single day introductory courses, to week long intensive deep dives, for various different clients.
Making use of iPhone and iPad Location Sensors
…and yes, I’m available.
How did you come to publish with O’Reilly?
I was in the right place at the right time. I was out at Apple’s WWDC in 2009 and my editor Brian Jepson, who I’d run into a few times at O’Reilly ETech and OSCON, tweeted that he was looking for authors with ideas for iPhone books. The rest is history: one book in press, another in Rough Cuts and an O’Reilly Masterclass under my belt.
My next book after the upcoming book on iOS Sensor Programming is probably going to be a departure for me, I’m going to hopefully sit down and write a book on “Making Citizen Science.”
Making Citizen Science sounds intriguing – explain more!
A lot of the commentators make the point that doing “real” science at home is pretty much impossible now due to the need for expensive equipment, and decades of experience. As a professional scientist I think that’s nonsense.
I think what people are missing is the shifting paradigm of how things are measured. I’m really excited by the possibilities suggested by (for instance) the next generation of smart phones, that hopefully might have many more sensors embedded (RFID, gas sensors, temperature/pressure) and for the large scale distributed sensor networks that might result. The web of things, ubiquitous computing and widespread availability of cheap hardware that makes good enough (not excellent, but good enough) measurements over a wide scale are going to give professional (and amateur) scientists a whole new lever on the world.
Amongst other emerging tools the Arduino platform has made building cheap sensor platforms within the easy reach of amateurs, and professionals, alike. One of the projects I’ll be talking about in the book is a pollution detecting hoodie which live logs geo-located level of pollutants to the Internet and alerts you to increased local pollution with embedded LEDs. You could imagine if they became widespread you could have a more advanced version that, either over mesh networking or perhaps Bluetooth, had peer-to-peer connectivity and stopped you going down streets that other people had already found to be too polluted.
Additionally some scientific disciplines (like astronomy oddly enough) have become data rich in the last few years, I literally have tapes and discs containing data I’ll likely never get round to analysing because I don’t have time. Likewise for all my colleagues, who have similar piles in their offices. The arrival of the new generation of all-sky telescopes (like the LSST) which will give us access to the sky in the time-domain isn’t really going to change that, it’s only going to get worse in fact.
All of these new trends puts doing “real” science at home well in the reach of most (educated) amateurs. Basically the push behind the book is measurement, you can’t have science without measurement. I’m hopefully going to try and teach people to quantise things, rather than relying on qualitative guesswork.
What does ACK in the Daily ACK refer to?
ACK, a packet message used in the Transmission Control Protocol to acknowledge receipt of a packet. I used to post a lot more frequently, so the joke was a bit more obvious, but blog posts have become somewhat sporadic over the last couple of years. These days I more frequently provides commentary in 140 characters or less.
Simone Longo writes:
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