In 2001, The Speilberg film AI did an amazing job with storytelling with a hidden story across the internet through a small easter egg in the trailer, with a credit for the ‘Sentient Robotics Therapist’ at the end of the trailer. From searching from that name you could find an amazing depth of backstory around the film, including email addresses, phone numbers and real life events. This was one of the beginnings of a new style of storytelling. However, this is the hard way of storytelling that requires a lot of investment and effort, with a relatively small amount of people engaging with it (there is a high barrier to entry for the campaign).

On the other side is play. Heello launched in 2001, and one of the first things that happened is that an avalanche of fake accounts were created. The good thing about this, before every fake account got delete, was that for a brief period this was a new service where people could play. On the flip side, Quora acts in a different way. When someone posted ‘Why do you come here, when you know it makes things hard for me, when you know? ohhh, why do you come’, people would respond with things like ‘can you make that question more clear?’, ‘Oh, it’s a joke’ etc. This shows that some areas are rife for play, whereas others just aren’t.

Thirdly, there’s code. On this there’s a good quote by Tom Armitage: “To make art with technology, one does not use it as a tool; one must understand it as a material. Technology is not always a tool, an engineering substrate; it can be something to mould, to shape, to sculpt with.”

A great example of this stack of entertainment is the Old Spice campaign, which started with a bread and butter tv ad, albeit a well written one, that then went deeper with the responses and the 4chan style spread afterwards.

With publishing platforms online, there are platforms that are easier to tell stories on. Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, Heelo and blogging platforms are natural areas for storytelling, with some offering longer life for your stories (YouTube, blogs) than others (Twitter). Some other platforms provide almost no scope for storytelling online, like Facebook and Google+, as they’re service that rely on your data being about your person, so they can serve it to advertisers and monetise their platforms. However, none of these really provide a full entertainment stack.

The problem with digital, is that it’s all 1′s and 0′s and file systems (explorer, media players etc) and web pages all kind of end up looking the same. We’ve lost the associations we had with items like cassettes, VHS and records. At the moment, books look like a thumbnail, 255px wide, and a video looks like a 640 x 480px wide box. The way we present and group things isn’t a metadata problem, it’s a design/content/code problem.

Who are the people who are trying to figure this out? In Dan’s opinion, he gets excited when Steve Jobs talks about where Apple’s way of thinking is at the crossroads of liberal arts and technology. What Dan thinks is the best way to move forward on this is to get creatives and coders to work together in a harmonious way. He cites Pixar as a place where this has worked perfectly. In Steve Jobs’ words: “These are like ships passing in the night. One of the greatest achievements at Pixar was that we brought these two cultures together and got them working side by side.”

This post was a report on Dan Hon’s talk at dConstruct 2011 on 2nd September, 2011

The personal computer is nothing new. We no longer need to “keep up with the Jones’” over the fact they have a computer, we all have one. We hardly compete over the spec either nowadays, as fast computers with large memories are pretty affordable.

With such access to the great technology of today it is hard to think that computers used to be so incredibly low in memory, storage and graphics – yet so amazing at the same time.

In the beginning

Some of the first ‘personal computers’ (not those room-sized giants from the 1940′s) arrived in the 1970′s, with the Sphere 1 in 1975 and the Apple 1 in 1976.

The Sphere 1 was originally a build yourself machine but later pre-assembled. It featured a pretty low 4KB of RAM that would be no good for your average Call of Duty game, but it did the job. Possibly the best bit of trivia surrounding the Sphere 1 is that it was the first ever computer to use the command Control-Alt-Delete, apparently made famous by Bill Gates.

The Apple 1 was also a build it yourself machine, featuring the same amount of RAM as the Sphere 1 – no World of Warcraft then. Pictures of the Apple 1 show the company’s flair for design came a little later in life…

Best of the 80′s

The most significant developments, at least in the UK, were these three computers. Take note of the prices now, some far cheaper, although getting yourself an IBM 5150 could still set you back. (Prices found on Vintage-Computer.com)

BBC Micro (1981)

The BBC Micro was made by Acorn and part of almost every UK school at the time. This machine holds a place in my heart for that very reason. The machine was part of a BBC initiative called the ‘BBC Computer Literacy Project’ and had a heavy focus on education.

Commodore 64 (1982)

The Commodore 64 went on to become the world’s best selling computer due to a decent price point and some flexible hardware. The machine had a great presence in both the UK and US – unlike rivals Spectrum and Amstrad computers which failed to even make a dent across the pond.

IBM 5150 PC (1981)

In the 1980′s it used to be a common activity when buying software to check the label and look for the iconic phrase “SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS: IBM-compatible PC…” IBM’s first low-cost single user computer was often copied by lots of different manufacturers and would be known as ‘IBM Clones’.

Interestingly, Microsoft acquired the rights to the popular PC DOS operating system it ran, from which MS DOS was developed, which was used on all IBM-compatible machines.

Interestingly, the cost when first introduced was $1,000 and whilst you can now pick them up pretty cheaply, we noticed one going for $900 on eBay.

Post 80′s and the mobile web

The 1990s was a lot about the race of hardware improvements. With the introduction of  CD-ROMs for multimedia – music, video, games, education, etc the personal computer jumped forward in the range of activities it was used for. Despite now using USBs and downloading software online, CDs remain prevalent in our computer usage.

Then came 1996 and the first commercially available device for accessing the mobile web.  And the phone of choice for early adopters? A stylish Nokia 9000 Communicator – the birthplace of the mobile web as we know it? Quite possibly.

With computers now doing incredible things at amazing speed, it is hard to think anyone would yearn for the past and want one of the old relics listed above. But strangely enough, in our search for gear for this post, we found a couple of sites obsessed with PCs of old.

If you head over to CommodoreUSA.net you’ll find brand new Commodore 64′s that apparently runs all modern PC software. The updated version (although you may not notice by looking at it) has all the features of a modern PC, with DVD drive (Bluray optional), memory expandable up to 4GB, USB slots and HDMI output.

So if you have been swayed by this post, or are fed up of Commodore emulators, this newer C64 ‘Ultimate’ can be bought for up to $895 – quite a bit more expensive than the original, but with a 1Tb hard drive and Bluray drive you can’t complain!

Putting on my old man hat for a minute or two, comedy ain’t like it was back in the day…

Because of this, we’re quite excited about The One Ronnie on Christmas day. As a teaser, they’ve released this brilliant sketch that covers off most gadgets that are out today…

Sit back, hold on to your mulled wine and enjoy:

Adobe tosses in Flash towel after Apple limits iPhone dev – Apple say it’s too slow to be useful.

A positive side to the volcanic eruption – French carpooling platform Comuto profits from volcanic cloud as traffic to the site has doubled over the past few days.

Ultrathin Silk-Based Electronics Make Better Brain Implants – kicking off a new era of implantable devices. Can’t wait to be able to download info directly into my brain, but will probably be waiting a long time…

Boy sues mother for Facebook harassment as she argues ‘parental duty’.  Although I want to agree with the mom, changing your kid’s Facebook and email password is a bit much.  Maybe talking with your 16-year old over a drink would provide for a more amicable solution?  Oh yeah, you also might want to actually have custody of the kid too.  Wow.

Photographers are suing Google Books for unauthorized distribution of digital images.  Apparently paying the the actual authors of the books isn’t enough.  Makes me think, does any one person actually own anything anymore?  Copyright reform please.

Microsoft is working on CoApp to make it easier to build and compile open-source applications on Windows.  Many projects have a variety of dependencies on libraries that aren’t part of the project.  CoApp makes it easier to check and acquire these packages so that source code will actually compile.

Apple Gives Adobe The Finger With Its New iPhone SDK Agreement.  Isn’t fine print great?  Basically this wipes out a couple million dollars in investment by Adobe, Monotouch, and a few others.  Daring Fireball has a great article about why Apple would do this.  This is what happens when one company is years ahead of the competition, they abuse the power.

Thumbnail source:  http://i245.photobucket.com/albums/gg65/bmerich/AppleFingerBite.jpg

There could be an exception to the ‘free’ rule as Freeview HD launches in the UK.

Grundig pushes BBC iPlayer to Freesat boxes – although some early boxes can’t receive the upgrade you need to get iPlayer. If you own one of these old boxes, you can get the upgrade for £15.

Diesel showcases clothes via interactive video – users hover over an item to find out more information and click to buy. Hmmm… better get that loan then

ITV adopts Pluck platform to boost interaction with This Morning, aggregating content from the This Morning website with Twitter and Facebook

Need to use maps for your website or app? Ordnance Survey frees up mapping data - good times

Fancy watching Top Gear in 3D? Cheaper 3D glasses option coming to homes this May

According to a Telegraph article, Facebook ‘linked to rise in syphilis’, though upon reading it, you may realize that the art of fact-checking is dead.  Syphilis is bacterial, not viral.

Eye-Fi Launches Pro X2 WiFi Card makes it easy to transfer photos and videos from a digital camera wirelessly.  Now with 802.11N!

British worker fired by Facebook!  Welcome to the new world of work!

Microsoft Game Room Opens on Xbox Live, check out the video!

‎Bill Gates Bets On Next-Gen Nuclear to solve world energy problem.  Solar was so last decade anyway.

‎Microsoft releases Messenger for Mac 8 Beta which will finally allow video chatting between PC and Macs using Live Messenger.

Bill Gates thumbnail source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nitot/3143449807/sizes/s/

A lot of buzz has been generated by Google’s annoucement of a Google Apps Marketplace.  Like app-stores before it, third-party developers can use it to sell and distribute value-added software that enhances existing platform functionality, in this case to Google Apps.  Although it may seem like Google is taking a play from Apple’s book, their model more closely represent another major cloud vendor which many of you may have heard of, Saleforce.

Salesforce has used their “AppExchange” since 2005 to provide unique customer solutions via their platform.  This trend is here to stay with most major players, Apple, Microsoft, Google designing or implementing their own models.

If you go down one level away from the tier-1 platform vendors, companies like Intuit are extending popular applications like QuickBooks to a potential army of developers who would love to monetize on the financial platform.  Intuit actually leverages Windows Azure to expose their cloud store.

The point being is that if you hate the cloud, too bad.  It is easy to infer that any major application with a large enough user base can benefit from the ingenuity of third-party developers.  Even before the cloud, Microsoft Office has proven itself as a magnet for great plug-ins and enhancements via OBA.  It is only a matter of time until these experiences are delivered seamlessly online with zero-installation requirements in the traditional sense.  If you still don’t believe me, here’s a shocker, the US Government has an app store, they even want to start regulating it!  It is a true test of success for any idea that the government wants to regulate.

Codeplex Foundation, which was started by Microsoft, names Apache Software Foundation co-founder to Board.

Cambridge start-up quadruples productivity by hiring 20 interns in a go!

The latest update in smartphone marketshare gains, Google rising, Apple on-level, Palm declines.

OnLive, a live streaming gaming service, to go live in June.

Finally for a bit of comic relief, here’s a comic strip for all you LOTR fans!