Interviewed on BBC Outriders Podcast

ICCM seems to have caught the attention of several people from various perspectives of life, faith, and tech. One of those who (re)connected with me because of this was Jamillah Knowles who is the UK editor for The Next Web, but also still contributes to the BBC Outriders podcast that takes a look at the long-tail of the things happening with web and tech. Jamillah asked if I could answer a few questions about the recent ICCM event, as well as get caught up a bit towards what’s happening in faith and technology since the last time MMM appeared on Outriders. Here’s a snippet of what was talked about:

v5.5 – vCard, QR, AR on Deck

It has been a good while since publicly talking about the Digital Business Card Experiments, but I’ve been at work with several aspects of it. The other day, I decided to pick up things (I was resting, it came out) and finally get the digital business card back on track. To do so, I wanted to integrate as many pieces of tech I could that would literally put one’s mobile into the position of a magic wand, but also play off the ability for the mobile to become a canvas of sorts.

ICCM Presentations, Quick Recap

This month, I participated in the International Conference of Computing and Missions (ICCM) USA Conference in Colorado Springs, CO. This was a nearly-week-long conference where those persons involved in IT strategy and support for various missions and BAM groups came together for a time of rest, fellowship, and restarting. The theme of this year’s conference was Spiritual Reboot – ironically, this was something that I recommended last year. And indeed, for many of us, the 4 days or so in CO definitely served to rest and reset life in work, family, and ministry.

Quoted in Article about Ignite Charlotte at Charlotte Viewpoint

Its been a very busy and full week on my end (and next week is looking pretty similar). Nevertheless, I was happy to see Parul Joshi’s article at Charlotte Viewpoint as it had some quotes in there from her interview of myself and others after Spring’s Ignite Charlotte event:

Seriously, College Students’ PCs Need Minimium Requirements?

Was asked recently by a friend’s daughter who is going off the college this fall what might be a good recommendation for a laptop intone $500-700 range fher starting studies. Not a bad question, I asked her to send to me what the college recommends as basic system requirements for student’s machines. Now, I am taking a look and wondering, why should there even be a baseline?

Using TiddlyWiki to Archive Kindle Bookmarks

The other day, I entered a mini-conversation on Twitter where it was asked how someone could archive highlights and notes made in the Kindle reader (device, app, and service). My initial response was that you would simply go to Kindle.Amazon and simply copy and paste the highlights and notes into a text file, Evernote, Google Docs, etc. That’s not bad, and one route that I had one time started myself. I had a second thought that it might be possible (if Amazon has an exposed XML feed for this), that you could take the XML data file, and then run a rule against it using something like ifttt. That would have worked, but there’s no RSS/XML data file accessible. So I was back to the copy-paste routine, and since it came up, I thought to go ahead and do that for myself – but instead of using Evernote, Google Docs, or even a custom HTML file, I’m using TiddlyWiki – the content management system that I’m now using on my mobile device.

Essay Reading: Practicing Virtue w/Social Media

Jason Byassee and I were introduced to each other a summer or so ago by a mutual friend. Even in the short time over coffee that we had to connect and find out more about each other, the conversation sounded in part like this essay of his published at the New Media Project’s website. This was a good read, it went into my library immediately, and will serve equally well in religious and secular conversations.

Maemo/MeeGo Recollections Sparked Thoughts of Going Tablet, w/Refinements

The past days, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Internet Tablet. Ok, so much of that thinking comes from the energy that I’ve been seeing in news/social about Jolla Mobile. But, the other part was sparked in part from work with Tiddly Wiki that I’ve been doing, and the memories of my N800 sparked by recollections of Maemo/MeeGo by Texrat and Bergie. In a very real sense, I’m just about ready to sell both my iPad and N8 and get back to a device like the N800. But, I know what I didn’t like about that device. There are some refinements and impossibilities that need to be addressed.

Carnival of the Mobilists No 277

Nice to see a full Carnival of the Mobilists (#277) after a holiday weekend.

This week's @themobilists Carnival of the Mobilists #277 is out for your delectation http://t.co/f6FSGKPj

— Helen Keegan (@technokitten) July 9, 2012

This one might take a few days of coffee to get through.

PCs Are Trucks, But Mobiles & Tablets Aren’t Cars

Ah, the beauty of an analogy is that it can fit, but soon not fit as well. For example, there was a statement that Steve Jobs made upon the introdcution of the iPad that “PCs were trucks.” And to some degree, that part of things will stand true. A PC is a purpose-built machine, needing to traverse unseemingly data terrain, and create or expose the creation of something that will bring some kind of life expereince to others. Given such a description, mobiles and tablets are simpler, are context-specific, and give similar and different functionality. But, they aren’t cars. No, no. They are a lot less the self-propelled machine than the PCs they are in part derived from.

Were Mobile Phones the Wrong Turn

Amazing the things that get you thinking and wondering. Here I am resting on a nice (hot) Saturday, having fixed the arm holding my generator to my bicycle (provided by the good folks at Bike2Power), and I come across a discussion on Twitter that makes me think a bit…