I've just been whitelisted to use Google friend connect on this website so i shall be editing the template in due course to allow my readers and my friends to leave comments and make connections via this site. Hopefully I can divert my attention away from Facebook status updates and use this site to generate interest in social events and happenings. I hate Arsebook I would rather have my own private social network page which I can manage and update myself. Watch this space....
Posts tagged with musings
01.7001 Google Friend Connect...
01.7001 The 4th Dimension in Social Media
As some readers may know I only recently set up this site and between my consulting work, web design and doing my own personal projects I've had barely enough time to really sit down and write about something meaty. I want to open up another dimension in social networking or rather I wish someone else would...
When I was talking with Mario F. Ruckh of My Heritage at the FOWA 2008 I was instantly grabbed by the concept of his site. It was nothing new mind you - yet another site that would facilitate the greater part of the middle classes in finding out whether they were related to nobility...yawn. Geneaology has never really excited or ignited passions in the wider public because it has always been such personal and private past time. The only time you would share your family history with outsiders was if it was somehow exceptional and interesting or if you thought it was exceptional and/or interesting. Most people's families aren't that interesting... or are they?
Leaving aside the grand stories of royal families and great dynasties, historians these days tend to relish getting their hands on primary source accounts of ordinary peoples lives. Social histories as opposed to royal-dynastic or military accounts can be more tedious and at times very difficult to uncover especially from the distant past but the data offered by primary source material about peoples lives, attitudes, socio-economic backgrounds and motivations could be far higher more valuable.
MyHeritage.com is currently in its fourth round of funding and has an international staff. Its website provides comprehensive tools for recreating massive family trees though be careful because you can only go so far with your family before the owners charge to increase the size of your tree. What if we could combine family data to recreate social networks from the past and therefore trace histories of individuals back to perhaps 200-300 hundred years with fairly good accuracy before records really degrade. Some families may be traced up to a 1000 thousand years with a fair degree of accuracy due to the existence of primary souce books and artefacts that may confirm certain connections.
All of this information could also be geo-tagged and then combined with archaeological data or architectural/land ownership data to show a pattern of human interaction and movement that is more accurate than any historical social model yet in existence. Is Google doing this yet? I know that KML data in Google maps has time data associated with it so, for example, one can view Londons Financial District and view buildings from different time periods in multiple locations appearing and disappearing by using a time slider. It's pretty cool.
Now imaging taking a city like Split where the Emperor Diocletian built a palace which becaom a provincial capital and over 1500 years later still has people living within its ancient walls, some of whom can trace their family lines back 500 years or more due to the existence of some very musty books. Now lets imagine we can re-create the different phases of the architectural elements of the city and overlay that with the social data, familial connections and ownership patterns of the town.
As a historian I get so excited about these possibilities and yet as so often is the case the people working at my heritage never quite saw just how valuable their data wasfor social research and modelling. This because they are so desperately trying to monetise it and conventional internet business models (none of which are a guarenteed money earner in the long term) are capable of taking into account the intrinsic value of much of the metadata. Most business know that their data is valuable but even the hi-tech ones don't always see how they can leverage all aspects of it.
I'll be posting more on this topic as its my pet project to work on an interactive museum exhibit that will take advantage of these technologies...
01.7001 The Beginning
In the beginning there was a post...
As you can see I haven't really done anything with this website yet but for those of you whom I've met personally and given my card you may have visited this site and seen the rather boring first post with the missing picture. Slightly unimpressive huh. Lately I've been using the old Arab proverb "the door of the door maker is always broken" to describe the state of my website but I have slowly realised that I must really make sure my online presence is as good as my offline one so here is the first real post.. its about me and where I'm at now.
Currently I'm traveling, not for the sake of it mind you, but to make a documentary. I'm in South East Asia, and more, specifically Bali, documenting the Capoeira groups that have been springing up all over this part of the world. Its a self-funded one man show so no guarantees on a perfect piece of work here but its an attempt to try and make a film from beginning to end. I did a an Msc in Digital Design and Media and hence have been testing out the 'media' part of those qualifications to see if I can cut it.
I love documentary films and I love Capoeira (if you don't know what that is I shall be writing another post later). I've been doing the latter four four years and since first coming out here in December 2007. I made some amazing friends and I wanted to share the experience of some of these young Capoeiristas in Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore with other Capoeiristas and hopefully with a wider audience. The spread of this art has happened in a similar way that Kung Fu left China. First some Brazilians left their country and with little help began groups across the United States and Europe as well in Capoeira's ancestoral home of Angola.
Now with the help of movies like Only The Strong, Ocean's Twelve Catwoman and Meet the Fockers, the Internet through YouTube and many specialist websites groups are springing up everywhere. some have the help of Brazilian teachers and Masters others organically try and copy what they see and form new groups usually based around the acrobatic movements at first but later learning more. Its an art that appeals to all ages and races, bringing people together to play a game, a language of the body used to express many different things. Here in Indonesia I'm beginning a road trip with members of the Bali group to go Jakarta for a Batisado, literally 'baptism' though it has no religious connotations other than the word. It is an initiation for all new players and a ceremony to award cords (cordao) to the players of the game.
I'm in two minds about returning to Bali after the event as I have to re-shoot some interviews in Kuala Lumpur and visit my auntie in Singapore its a tough call but I think I have to make a decision tonight. The trouble is whether or not I should follow my plan because I think that in order to create a story I have to follow just a few characters around for a substantial part of time. However I had wanted to document the rise of the South East Asian groups entirely - though a budget of 3000 pounds is really not enough for that. Hence I shall have to miss the Philippines and I shall only be attending one day of massive event in Singapore due to a problem in changing the dates on my air ticket. I think to be honest that its about the story here in Indonesia....
I shall fill you in with photos and video once those areas of my site are working. ciao for now
Jamie.
01.7001 Welcome to the new site
Hi there you have reached the new site of Jamie Archer. After much deliberation i've decided to use The Unstandard Wordpress theme by Derek Punsalan. Its a very simple magazine style that over the coming months I will be customising for use on my site. I had more ambitious plans to release my first Wordpress theme but I have been snowed under with so much work its been impossible. Perhaps web designers and developers should become familiar with an Arab saying - "The door of the door-maker is always broken."
I think it neatly sums up the state of a lot of developers who are so busy with work they never have time for their own projects - or perhaps it a case of bad time management...? Anyway welcome and keep yours eyes peeled for new developments and nifty new features in the next few months.
UPDATE
The new site is almost finished. As you can see I'm using Hemmingway Reloaded by Startup365. I have used it before and modified it to extremes on client sites (The Golden Rock Retreat and La Huerta El Noque). I hope to make some more modifications as time goes by but for now its brilliant to finally have my personal site up and running again.
Thanks for visiting
Jamie