Category: OpenTech

Video Footage of the iPod Shuffle Shuffle (Open Tech 2005)

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It’s taken a while (almost five years!) but the iPod Shuffle Shuffle video has finally surfaced, along with the rest of the event footage from OpenTech 2005. To remind you, I was chairing a panel on Media Hacking, and decided that I would do some “physical media hacking” to waken up the audience: The experiment was planned to go something like this. Two pairs of volunteers would come forward… with a pair of 512mb and a pair of 1gb iPod Shuffles. They would swap over their units with each other, and take away an iPod Shuffle with a different audio

Links From Wednesday 27th July, 2005

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Tom Coates asks where all the UK start ups are. Why are there no Odeos, Flikrs or Six Aparts in blighty? Link: Plasticbag.org More on Sony getting caught paying for airtime – Boing Boing links to a 1.1mb PDF that details off all the little perks these ‘desk jockeys’ recieved to push Beyonce instead of a tiny pub band round the corner that’s packing them in. I would like to ask them their show size and send one Addidas sneaker to them and send the other match when the airplay reaches @ least 10 spins. Link: BoingBoing (PDF Link at

OpenTech 2005 Thoughts After The Event

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So, OpenTech 2005, what did I think? Well, apart from my adventures with the iPod Shuffles (and my explanation is getting a nice tag-load of link love), I had a pretty good time. Not exactly stunning, but then I’ve found that most Tech Conferences in the last year or so to be more useful to me for the networking and staying in touch with people who may or may not be useful to me in the future. A case in point is Alfie and Suw, both of whom are now helping out Orgasmatones and All About Palm respectivly. Other contacts,

Pledge Banks – UK ID Card and UK Digital Rights

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In case you’ve not seen PledgeBank yet, it’s a site where people say they will do something, but only if a certain number of other people will join them in doing it. It’s had some great successes, probably the most notable one so far is reaching a £10,000 legal defence fund for those who refuse the UK National ID Card. So the following caught my eye, and is much more appropriate to my circumstances: “I will actively support those people who, on behalf of all of us, refuse to register for an ID card, and I pledge to pay at

The Apple iPod Shuffle Shuffle from OpenTech 2005

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Okay, not exactly one of my better ideas, but in the end nobody got hurt, and the iPod Shuffle with the PGP Private Key got back to it’s rightful owner. What am I talking about? My Physical Media Hacking experiment at OpenTech 2005. I’m still convinced the theory behind this is pretty sound (especially when you see the number of Apple fans defending the concept of the iPod Shuffleand the idea that listening to random music is the way forward). The experiment was planned to go something like this. Two pairs of volunteers would come forward from the OpenTech audience