Rik Abel

Holy Photonic Fibers, Batman!

MASSIVE congratulations to my very good friend/homeboy Dr Pier "Science" Sazio on having his paper published this week in the extremely prestigious journal Science. Pier and his colleagues at the University of Southampton Optoelectronics   Research Centre and Penn State University have successfully made semiconductor devices, including a transistor, inside       microstructured optical fibers. This is, of course WAY cool, even if you don't immediately GROK the wider implications. Trust me, it's massive. Go Pier! You are  PROPER SCIENTIST at last! (JOKE!)

ULTRA BRAiN

A few months ago at ourdisco I met a Japanese 'Neo Punk' band called ULTRA BRAiN. They were immediately noticeable due to their very funky matching outfits, which you will be able to see in the YouTube video below for their song 'GhostBusterz'. Anyway, it turned out that they were recording their debut LP at Strongroom studios in East London, hence their appearance at Our Disco (which is, of course, the night out of choice for the discerning future-forward hipster living 10 seconds in the future. Like me, and ULTRA BRAiN. Anyway, for some reason I thought of them again this morning and did a quick googling and found that they now have a myspace page where you can listen to the fabulous 'Ninja Night School' and maybe even be their friend, if you are into that whole myspace friendy thing. (If you are, I'm here. Be my friend. Go on. I joined for research purposes, of course. Anyways, watch the video then I'll carry on...don't worry, I'll wait for you...

Wasn't that fun? Refreshing. Like a latter day super-psychedelic punk noise Japanese Monkees, only even better. Well, it seems their debut album 'Neo Punk' is out on 22 March. I would implore you to get hold of a copy by any means necessary. Or just by buying it online. I'll be taking advantage of my Man in Kyoto (hi Mikey!).

Proving that they are not only "the Best Band in the World" but also canny commercial operators, they also have a range of fabulous merchandise available at www.ultrabrain.tv, including t-shirts, hoodies, collegiate jackets and caps, but sadly, as yet, no crash helmets.

Not only are they the BEST BAND IN THE WORLD, they were also lovely chaps to a man - I was in Friendly Stranger mode (i.e. over the herbacious border) and had quite a few little chats with them. My favourite moment is when I asked if they were noisy and they replied as one, with big beaming grins "VERY noisy, yes!"

ULTRA BRAiN - the BEST BAND IN THE WORLD.

Headswell

Wow. I've just read the extremely complimentary post on Tim Cowlinshaw's blog (Sociable, Semantic, and Suitable) about little old Headshift and it's enough to make us blush. It's wonderful to know that people appreciate what we are doing (or even noticing at all!) and all the more so when they write so cogently and insightfully about what we are trying to do. Makes me a little embarrassed that I haven't written about or for Headshift very much (I'd say I'm too busy, but that's obviously just a pathetic excuse. I blame my youtube addiction...) I'll make a special effort to blog about what we build from our perspective from henceforth. Anyway, thanks Tim, and why not check out the sites we built to which Tim refers, gentle reader?

Arabic words in English language Map (click a word, any word...)

I'm quite pleased with the look of the 'tag cloud', I was thinking that they are generally rather dull and undesigned and I tried to make it looks at least somewhat spiffy. If I had time I'd go back and Ajaxify the word-definition pages a little, maybe round off those corners and add a few reflections and gradients, some scriptaculous fade-ins and the like, but alas I'm FAR too busy watching Ultra Brain videos.

Involving.org

I had no involvement in this - my genius collegue Rory was the designer on this puppy. I'm ashamed to say I haven't looked at it since it launched, but now that I have I'm LOVING the clean look and the subtle, accessible use of SiFR for those custom fonts. Way to go, chaps!

We've got lots of very exciting products/ideas/stuff in the pipeline and I have a few ideas of my own regarding urban gaming via social software/mapping/tagging mashups which I will be talking about soon...if you think you might be interested? (I just assume nobody who reads this even necessarily knows what a wiki is, so I might risk boring you all to death. Yes? No? Should I stick to crack squirrels and silliness?)

Spring is in the air, I've got a spring in my step and some fizz coming back to my neurons - I'm really looking forward to a fun and challenging 2006 at Headshift. I hope we can make some more stuff that makes a difference.

flagr - sharewhere

A few months ago I had an idea for a web app which would enable 'social tagging for the real world' - that is, you could use your mobile phone to add a tag to a location, complete with useful information such as description, photos, etc, which would then create a flag on a google map via their handy API. Wow this is neat, I thought...and I realised with some sadness that I'd never get around to building it myself. However, I took heart that if I had thought of it, it stood to reason that some geeks somewhere were working on the very same thing...

And so but, check out the newly launched www.flagr.com ('sharewhere' = very clever). Only three days old so I'm sure they will be adding tons of functionality (video clips please! RSS feeds for my tags so I can stick them in a blog sidebar! mobile support for UK!) but already pretty darn wonderful. Well done, chaps. You can check my tags here.

Newsvine - social news aggregator

Newsvine has launched, and its a beauty (as you would expect from Mike Davidson). Social news, dudes. Check it out, the promise of 'citizen journalists' really seems to be happening, which can only be a good thing. We the media, yes indeedia. Is the world ready for my inline-skating news column? I hope so...

Graffitti Loop

How To Enjoy Sushi (video)

I love sushi, but I was always worried I might be eating it wrong. Now, thanks to the Japan Culture Lab, I never need to feel culturally illiterate in a sushi bar again!