There’s been a lot of noise in the Blogosphere about Wikipedia, like this article at Techdirt. Wikipedia, in case you missed it, is an encyclopedia written collaboratively by ordinary people.

Some small town journalist seems to

write off Wikipedia based solely on how it was created and maintained, and not at all on the actual content.

It seems that the problem is really that it was compiled by a bunch of well-informed amateurs, rather than a professional like Al Fasoldt, the journalist in question. Of course, HIS source was an impeccably informed librarian

Along with my post, I sent an email to the writer, Al Fasoldt, giving him some additional information about Wikipedia, and wondering why, after telling us how you can’t trust any random info online, he trusted the email from a random librarian claiming Wikipedia was somehow untrustworthy. The ongoing discussion with Mr. Fasoldt has been quite a lesson in watching how a journalist (a) continues to make unsubstantiated allegations (b) seems to prefer insulting me and putting words in my mouth to actually responding to my points or questions and (c) sticks steadfastly to his belief that only “experts” can be trusted with information — and, in his case, only experts that he chooses. Yet, somehow, we’re supposed to find him more trustworthy than a self-correcting community.

Seems like the pros are running scared to me. If everyone starts to become a journalist, what future is there for journeymen like Mr Fasoldt?

Ironically, Mr Fasoldt’s ignorant ravings have garnered far more favourable publicity (like this) for the excellent and visionary Wikipedia than if he’d quietly ignored its existence in the first place.

I’ve written about my ideas on the future of computing before. In summary, there’ll be huge central servers, with “thin clients” about the size of a PDA, interfacing with them.

Well, Andrew Carton, via Emergic writes

Imagine this scenario:

Thus the Treo Zen acts as a thin-client and all the actual application processing can be done remotely… You could then do everything you currently do on your PC like watching movies, listening to music, playing games, working (of course), shopping, access information and services and all the countless other things that we currently or in the future will be doing via a digital network.

Looks like the idea is catching on.

The interesting thing about this BBC article on Smartphones is not that they’re going to grow by 50% in the next 5 years.

It’s that they’re already mainstream enough for the BBC to be writing about them.

Actually, I think the analysts are completely wrong in their forecast. It’s going to be 50.7563% growth. I’m a master at plucking figures out of the air too.

Hurray! No more Blogspam.

With our change to the new server (well done Torsten and the Creative Weblogging team) we have a few funky blogging features too.

One of these is if you’d like to leave a comment here (and please, please do!) you have to authenticate it by entering a number you’ll see on screen. It’s a pretty simple solution really to a problem that’s been plaguing us bloggers for a while now - Blogspam (he spits).

Blogspam is just the latest attempt at despicable marketing from the same stables as Spam, Spyware (don’t get me started) and their bastard second cousin, pop ups. In fact, the whole family aren’t too far related from banner advertising itself, which is the totally uncreative attempt of the advertising industry to apply old media values to a new media environment.

Marketing, these days, isn’t about holding people down and forcing them to be exposed to product advertising, no matter how hard they try to escape or explain that they hate you, your product and anyway, why would they, as a single man want to know about tampons?

Marketing, these days, is about engaging the consumer (in fact, “consumer” itself if so old media too. How about “customer” or even “user”. “Partner”? Anyone come up with something better which gives the person buying the product or service some respect they deserve as the judge and jury as to whether your company survives?). Anyway, yes, back to engaging. Engaging the user in intelligent or amusing dialogue that will stimulate them to find out more about you. And hopefully try your wonderful products and services. And hopefully go on to tell their friends all about you too, so you can engage in intelligent and respectful dialogue with them too.

End of that little rant.

Blogspam is practiced by sick (if clever) little shit-for-brains tossers. They post gibberish comments in bona fide blogs, along with their company’s URL. These comments have to be removed by hand by the blogger, who in the vast majority of cases are writing to share with the world. Not money (hah!), but love.

Blogspammers ironically aren’t aiming their gibberish comments at you, gentle reader. But at the search engines. The idea is that some search engines operate by giving sites higher rankings, if they’re linked to many sites. This gives them the appearance of being more popular than they actually are.

Bloggers are pretty good at deleting these things, so I’m not sure how well it actually works for them. And I’m certainly not going to humour any of these companies by naming them here. But it has forced several high profile bloggers to disable comments altogether.

And since blogging, like marketing, relies on dialogue and feedback, this is a BAD thing.

What we, the people, need is a central site that names and shames the shitty, lazy underclass of marketers and their companies. A list of spammers, spyware junkies and blogspam scum. We, the people, can then avoid their products and services and pass the info to our friends. This could be a nice lesson in word of mouth marketing to these parasitical morons.

There, I feel better now.

According to Engadget

Jonís Guides has put together a pretty exhaustive guide on how to make your PC play nice with pretty much any Bluetooth device you might happen to own (and it seems like heís tested them all). It covers everything from setup to security and even has an advanced section for those who arenít scared of a little jargon.

The web at its bounteous best.

Engadget reports on another entrant into the mobile couponing space - Vivotech.

Theyíre working on using kiosks at the storeís entrance (which probably no one will stop at) to send ads, sales and specials to cellphones and PDAs via Bluetooth or IR.

Firstly, I’m not as sceptical that consumers won’t stop. In the UK, Sainsbury ( multiple grocer) and Boots (who aren’t sure what they are - could be their problem!) have used instore kiosks pretty successfully for 5 years or more.

However, I think that the dream, practical scenario for mobile couponing at the moment goes like this:

1. Consumer gets sent a coupon to their phone.
2. Uses a kiosk-type device to change the coupon into a paper one (via Infrared, Bluetooth, SMS or barcode reader).
3. Consumer presents paper coupon at retailer till for redemption in the normal way.
4. Optional - redemption at either stage triggers further mCoupon(s) to be sent to the user’s mobile phone.

This might be perceived as a fudge of new technology and old. But on a practical level, it’s the only way realistically that’s going to work.

Why? Well, on the surface, a model that allows you to send a mobile coupon direct to a phone, allows the user to present the phone at the point of sale and then have the retailer’s EPOS system handle the transaction is definitely the most sexy. And I’m sure that eventually, this is where we’ll end up.

But, there’s a few very practical problems that this needs to overcome.

1. The time it takes for someone to find the phone, then find the barcode/mobile coupon and for it to be scanned. This will seriously screw up till throughput. If the transaction could be done automatically by Bluetooth, for example, in the future, it would remove the need for the till operator to DO anything - every punter’s phone would just be automatically scanned and coupons deducted.

But until then, any Ops Director worthy of their name will fight this tooth and nail on the grounds of increased inefficiency and thus, increase in staff costs.

2. Retailers make a lot of money out of misredemption currently (I’ve used the term misredemption to mean redemption of coupons inappropriately by the consumer or the retailers). Do retailers really want to be held accountable to the manufactures like this? Not impossible to argue with, but it seriously disrupts the status quo, which is never very easy to overcome.

3. There’s a HUGE need for retailer staff training, which everyone always underestimates.

4. Even more complex is that all couponing relies, to an extent, on slippage (ie coupons issued and not redeemed. This type of scheme should (if it works) increase % redemption, especially if you move to an automatic redemption system, like Bluetooth.

Now you can argue that as long as the transaction is profitable, it doesn’t matter if you get 100%, provided that the misredemption issue is tackled. However, this is a marketer’s view - the FD would have a very different one, considering it a balance sheet liability. Again not impossible to overcome, but difficult.

5. Direct redemption needs a significant investment in educating the consumer.

6. You’ve also got “AirMiles syndrome”, to an extent, especially with the grocery retailers (who handle most coupon redemption). In other words, you can’t get a grocer until you can prove you can get consumers to use it. But you can’t get consumers until you have a grocer.

7. Inertia or “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Paper couponing largely works for all concerned - consumer, retailer and to an extent manufacturer, albeit with the misredemption issue. But the manufacturer, with most to gain from the new system, has the least power. The retailer, who has the power, has the most to lose in the short term ie the millions in misredemption it pockets every year and a considerable Ops headache.

In summary, mobile couponing is going to happen. But I’d put my money on half-way house solution that will be acceptable to the retailer. Direct to EPOS just has too many barriers to overcome in the short term.

Blogcritics’ Eric Olsen reports iPod-DJ is a funky new London party concept where you bring your iPod and upload your own fab sounds.

The concept’s pretty simple, really - it’s a digital music DJ club, people show up, sign in and get 15-minutes to play their favourite songs, people can also sign up to be judges, and we have managed to get great prizes together so far. Admission is free and the drinks are cheap.

Playlist is a growing community of switched-on tech-savvy music fans with broad tastes, excited at the great reawakening of interest in music that promises to transform the music business. Whatever music you want to play, just bring it. Playlist is about sharing the excitement and energy of musical diversity in a digital age.

Groovy, man. Sorry, I’m having language flashbacks.

Moco News reports that the Grand Daddy of photography, Kodak

has announced that it will offer a premium-content sport images service that will be able to be downloaded and saved as wallpaper on to mobile phones, in UK.

The French photo agency AFP will regularly supply the library with pictures from international competitions in a large number of sport categoriesÖThis wallpaper premium service is available in the UK at a premium SMS rate of GBP 3.

I know they’re trying lots of new things, but it must be awful seeing your core photography business simply disappear to digital and phone camera. But you can’t hold back progress, so no point in trying.

Photo from brilliant The Daily Irrelevant.

Meanwhile Picture Phoning announces one of Bonus Print’s forays into digital.

They invite you to - let’s get this rather convoluted process right. Take a digital picture on your camera phone, get it onto your PC, then upload the image to them, then visit their WAP site to download the picture to your phone “in just a few clicks”.

Their bargain basement charge for this is GBP 3.90 per image.

In my view, this is hardly “the easiest and most convenient way ever”. as their site warbles.

The point of all this, in case you missed why you should be charged so much dosh, is to make the the pic fit your make and model of phone.

If you were clever enough to go through this process, I think you’d probably be able to cope with re-sizing yourself. And camera phones automatically resize to fit anyway.

A limited market, perhaps?

Via Engadget we have this rather err….silly? scary? contrived? conversation piece - I mean, fashion statement.

Inspired by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Rabyís Design Noir, the victims behind Fashion Victims wanted to create clothes and accessories that dealt with the interactions between all the electromagnetic radiation of our gadgets and the ìrealî world. Notice how cellphone conversations always seem to annoy everyone around the person talking? Your desire to gag that loud-talking-man on the bus is a perfect example.

The Fashion Victims people take it a step further, with bags and shirts that get a little more ink-stained with each exposure to cellphone radiation (be sure to check out the video - the page scrolls right, not down, if you’re not cool enough to realise). Given how much people use their cellphones these days itíll probably take about four seconds to get totally stained, so fortunately they can be turned off when theyíve had enough, though not until we get a visual reminder of our impending sterility.

Moving swiftly on…

We’ve looked at these before, but they’re 1. Totally cool 2. Now in the UK and 3. Have the potential to revolutionise (sorry about the r-word, but I do try not to over-use it) the way we use mobiles and fiddly PDA’s.

Textually reports via Gizmo (not to be confused with Gizmodo)

The cigarette-lighter-sized VKB uses laser and infrared technology to project a full-size QWERTY keyboard onto any flat surface for almost any palmtop computer, PDA or mobile phone. It is also easily integrated into a mobile phone, with Siemens and Samsung having shown versions of the technology integrated into their phones at recent trade shows.

No details on pricing, though I came across a few references to it being c. $150. I imagine though that the day isn’t too far distant when the technology will be built-in to the phone itself.

Data entry has always been an issue for phones and PDA, expecially if you’ve got large fingers and don’t come from the thumb generation - like me. So this could do away with my trusty old laptop for almost everything.