In the Arms of Strangers

This 15 mile trip takes you from Lincoln road in South Beach, Miami, South to the Lighthouse in the state park on Key Biscane Island. I’ve mapped the route in Google Maps should it be of use.

Miami’s cycle lanes are better than expected, this route has dedicated lanes apart from sections of the I1 through Downtown Miami. These lanes are three feet wide, fast and in pretty good condition.

End to end, the terrain is flat. There is a slight hill over the Rickenbacker Causeway, but it’s not too difficult even for an out of condition cyclist.

The first part of the ride has beautiful views of Miami’s wealthy homes as you pass over Venetian Way. The Downtown section is a little trickier and you’ll have to keep your wits about you but traffic is light on the weekends. Rickenbacker Causeway also has great views, with beaches, yachyting and wind surf schools along the route. You’ll also pass the Miami Seaquarium towards the end of the causeway. The last mile or so is along the quiet, leafy roads of the Bill Baggs park. The end (or mid-point if you’re riding back) has a reasonable cafe, lighthouse and beach.

A safe, fast ride from South Beach through some great views and into a scenic parkland.

After a year of preparation we finally moved into our new apartment in Miami this week. Moving to the US with or without the backing of a big company is a stressful process, but the work visas came through for us both so we’re now able to work in Obama country.

I’ve some exciitng new projects in the pipeline which I’ll talk about as soon as I can, in the meantime, I’ll put that Will Smith track on one more time…

This weekend I ‘attended’ the ‹Head› conference. ‹Head› is billed as a ‘global web conference’ with sessions broadcast (via Adobe Connect) either from one of audience attended Hubs (London, Manchester, Brighton, San Franciso and Switzerland) or from various private locations across world.

Unfortunately the first day was blighted with tech issues (for me), but on Sunday I was able to tune my village’s archaic copper wire to watch facinating sessions from some top class speakers.

Webcasting technologies have been around for a long time, but I think this is the first time a web conference has been set up as an online focused event. If you don’t live in a big city, the cost of attending a conference in person can be prohibitive (let alone the environmental cost of all that travel) so I hope ‹Head› will be considered a sucess and Aral and others will organise more!

On October 17th 2007 I set myself the challenge of not reading a printed book for an entire year. The plan was to consume the same content via other means, either one of the numerous ebook formats and devices or by audio.

What did I learn?

There were some awkward highlights; not being able to read the guidebook on holiday in Milan, relationship angst over my refusal to read recipe books (JamieOliver.com and BBC.co.uk/food just about got me through) and being unable to read last years’ Christmas presents spring to mind. But I made it. The inner pages of not one a single printed book of prose passed before my eyes in 365 days.

Overall I’ve read less and less as the year went on. I used to be an average reader, tackling four or five mainstream novels, popular science and history titles a month. Since going ‘digital’ my main problem was finding anything of interest. After I’d polished off the Cory Doctorows, found a few passionate small/self-publishers, individual titles which authors were pushing, and ticked off a few classics I was dredging the ebook sites to find anything of interest. Any book advertised in the mainstream media simply didn’t have an electronic version. After a six months I pretty much stopped looking. Last year I’d been an avid reader, by the end of 2008 I ended up reading barely a single book a month.

Content & Devices

If I started the same challenge this year I think the experience would have been different. Waterstones are selling ebooks online, the Sony PRS 505 is now freely available in the highstreet, Amazon released the Kindle but more importantly Apple’s iPhone has opened up ‘large’ screen e-reading to the masses (and forced other phone manufacturers to up their game).

It wouldn’t have been plain-sailing though, there are still problems. To draw parallels with the music industry, simplified access to content was key in increasing downloads. When iTunes purchases became simple and delivery to the device was seamless then the music download sales soared. One-click downloads of cheap tracks became a no brainer. Compare this with finding an ebook, deciding the correct format for your device, perhaps registering a device for the DRM, making a ludicrously high payment and sometimes even having to wait days for that payment to clear before getting your download by email. Painful. But let’s be honest, content sales margins are wafer thin. Apple makes its profit from sales of the device. They innovate on this device every 6 months, bringing features you never knew you wanted, in order to sell new devices. They don’t care too much about slicing a few pence from sales of the latest pop song for £0.79.

The Sony Reader is currently priced at £200 (the new one is rumoured to be closer to £400), the device is clunky (for anything other that .lrf or .epub formats) DRM riddled and PC focused. But the competition (Amazon’s Kindle) isn’t even available in the UK. Although the book industry is looking at these peudo-book ereaders as the next big thing, I don’t I think the dedicated ereading devices for traditional books are ever going to turn over massive unit sales.

I see electronic reading devices as ideal for short-form writing; catching a quick 5 minute read on the bus to work. Micro-chapter US blockbusters, poetry, novellas, news articles, blog posts and short stories will be perfect for mass adoption of ereading. The industry needs to adopt an appropriate content model first and existing devices need to become viable ereading devices. The market for short-form reading isn’t going to invest £200 in a one trick pony like the Sony Reader. The only people who’ll buy ereaders are book fanatics who’ll continue to buy printed books aswell. The Sony Reader and the Kindle are alternative consumption methods for biblophiles, they certainly aren’t replacements for the printed book.

Short-form and new-form content

So, to be brutal, I think dedicated devices will sell a few thousand units to booklovers but won’t affect traditional book sales. Exposing electronic versions of all publications would be fantastic. Strip out the DRM, allow the passionate fans to distribute to other passionate fans (just as they would lend a book) and let fans raise awareness to increase print sales. Consider reader to reader DRM-free ebook distribution as a marketing channel, not as a threat to sales.

But I think there is a more exciting opportunity for publishers whereby if they were to embrace short-form content, innovate new-form content (such as location aware, or even rich media enhanced texts) and partner with device manufacturers then there is potentially a lucrative new revenue stream with traditional publishing brands becoming synonymous with ereading on existing multifunction devices such as phones or netbooks.

Somebody thought of a device that could be used to log its location at predefined intervals or by pressing a button. The original idea was to combine this information with photographs to match up your snaps with their location. Nice. But dull. A genius took this idea and thought “I’ll tie that to my cat. That’d be badass”. Mr Lee’s CatTrack was born.

You program the intervals that the device will try to log its location via a Windows application and then strap the thing (which is about the size of a matchbox) to a backpack/harness effort on your long-suffering pet. Set them free and, when they return, display the data on a Googlemap.

I’ve done a couple of tracks with my cat and not only does he roam far further than we thought, the little git clearly has some local neighborhood hangouts. I’ve yet to try the CatCam out on him yet (a small camera which will take photos at predefined intervals) as it’s a bit too large for our waifish feline. We’ve moved to the coutryside now so our cat will be sporting his little GPS packpack a few more times so we can see how his territory changes over the coming weeks. Pointless, but facinating!