tagged: projects

April 20, 2012

Picle fm (Dalston)

I’ve been playing with Made by Many’s Picle app and decided that a nice use of the tool might be to marry the view out my window with the sound from the radio, as I get ready each morning. So that’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple of weeks:

The images are taken out the back window of my house in Dalston, London. It’s very rough. And the photos (taken with an iPhone 3Gs) are terrible. But I think there’s a lovely quality to it anyway.

The idea was born from a practical problem: the mic on my phone is really bad, so I wanted to get sound that would be richer and louder than ambient noise. But the radio is actually a perfect soundtrack to capture moments and locations (especially so, because I genuinely listen to the radio when I get ready for work).

This belongs to a similar world to Plumpton Mornings, by John Willshire, who’s also been mucking about with Picle. I’d love to see ‘Picle fm’ stories from other people, capturing the views and radio audio from different locations. It would be lovely.

You can view my Picle stories here. Although you can’t. Because this is the first. But maybe there’ll be more.

Introducing Bad Dollar

Today, I’m very excited to launch my latest side project: a self-publishing collective called Bad Dollar. The idea is simple: $1 stories about worse ways to spend a dollar.

Being a keen writer and Kindle owner, I’ve been excited about doing something with self-publishing for a couple of years. Bad Dollar is that something. And it’s also the result of another interest of mine.

I’ve also long been obsessed with the idea of making the act of payment an intrinsic part of a product experience. The thing about a universal currency is that it has no meaningful connection to the emotional experience of what you take home. That’s why the financial transaction always feels like a shameful, anodine bolt-on when you buy stuff online.

I thought it would be fun to sell each story for a very small amount; the sort of amount we readily waste on things that have little value (how many times have you bought a can of pop, or a weak coffee in a moment of boredom?). But then to make each story about a far worse way to spend the money. This way, each ebook is an advert for itself: an unquestionably better way of spending the money than in the story it tells.

At first, this was going to be a personal project (I’ve written one of the stories) but I decided to open it up and make it collaborative. So if you’re a writer and want to get involved, why not submit a story.

Hope you like it. And I hope you buy and enjoy just one story. I promise they’re a great way to spend a dollar.

leave a comment tagged: me, projects, writing

November 18, 2011

Finkle and the Fish

For the last fourteen months (on and off), I’ve been working on a short story called Finkle and the Fish. It’s been a real slog, but today, I’m proud to say you can now buy it in the Amazon Kindle store.

Here’s the opening page, as it looks on Kindle:

Warning: It’s a little… dark.

Update: You can buy the book for other ebook readers, along with six other short stories, over at baddollar.com

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December 13, 2010

Poke hack day 2010

In 2009, I was very happy to be on the winning Poke hack day team with Egg Watchers. But you’re only as good as your last 24-hour project.

Last week was the second Poke hack day. We split into teams, unplugged the phones and set about solving this year’s brief: To make our neighbourhood better. I’m writing a proper blog post about it for the Poke blog. In the meantime, here’s the idea my team and I made. It’s called Eastern Super Mayors.

In case you’re not from the UK, the name is a pun on a place called Weston-Super-Mare ;)

Our idea was to take the ‘dormant’ power of Foursquare mayors in East London and turn it into genuine influence. After all, mayors are by definition venues’ most regular customers and they are also, often very ‘connected’ individuals. They are exactly the sort of people venues should want to make happy. So what if we gave each mayor in the neighbourhood a chance to rally their friends behind one simple, tiny demand to make their venue better?

We manually inputted almost 60 local venues and mayors into the CMS that Chris, our developer put together in just a couple of hours, so all the data on the live site was genuine. While some of us continued to work on the idea, others started contacted a few mayors to see if they wanted to get involved.

One of the things that continues to amaze me about Poke hack day is what you can actually get rolling in one day. By the time we presented this idea to the judges (22 hours after conception), we already had three genuine mayors not only making demands but actually campaigning to friends. And a fourth had contacted me too:

Not all the demands were completely serious of course. Or maybe they were, Dan?

To top it all off, we also managed to get one demand satisfied (and filmed) on the day, improving life – even if only marginally – for an entire company, Digit, who will be enjoying a cheese and chutney day this week:

Both Poke hack days left me blown away. I was truly humbled by the people around me. They are all insanely talented and driven and it’s great to see everyone pitching in and getting their hands dirty to get things done.

I will link to the full blog post asap. Here are some pictures of the teams presenting their ideas.

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November 18, 2010

Metaphwoar! videos are live

We filmed it. You can watch all the videos HERE.

I can’t quite bring myself to post my intro video on my blog, but it does explain the whole thing, so you can watch that here. Not that you couldn’t have found it yourself. Shall I just keep linking to the same Vimeo album? OK then. Here’s a couple to warm you up:

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November 10, 2010

Metaphwoar! by Poke

Last night, was Metaphwoar! – an event I put on for Internet Week Europe. It was a playful format, inviting speakers to share one metaphor that would change the way people looked at something. As you can see, it was a lighthearted affair:

To be honest though, it’s very easy – and self-interested – to say that it was ‘me’ that put it on. I might have come up with the idea, but Nik Roope got behind it, Poke then funded it and gave me an entire team of talented, generous people to make it happen. By my books that makes it a Poke event. I feel I need to say that here, because I failed to explain this on the night (I was a bit nervous and not thinking entirely clearly).

I also want to thank the ten brilliant speakers that were brave and willing enough to put their name to an event called Metaphwoar! and deliver a compressed talk to a bunch of people with access to alcohol ;)

The full line-up was Hannah Donovan (above), Darren Savage, Andy Cameron (below), Nathan Cooper, Mathew Wilson, Ramzi Yakob, Jess Greenwood, Katy Lindemann, Dave Bedwood and John V Willshire.

I think it was a real success. At least that’s what Twitter said. Thank you everyone who came and who said nice things. We hope to do it again.

‘Official’ photos and videos of all the talks will be online next week. Thanks to Dogg for the pictures in this post.

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November 6, 2010

Balloonacy sneak peek

Race starts on Monday

Metaphwoar! lineup confirmed

And it’s a stonking one. Emails are flooding in with people wanting to come. It’s going to be a brilliant night. Or if not brilliant, then at least terrible, but full ;)

Go see the final speaker list here. Hope you can make it.

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October 4, 2010