mind this - by Lars Plougmann

Exploring the games-are-good-for-you point of view

As a parent, one of the decisions you have to make at some point is the degree to which you allow your child to play online games. Oops, let's rewind and try again: .. the degree to which you guide your child when it comes to playing online games. I suspect that the default stand-offish attitude to games prevalent in my generation is a left-over from earlier generations and I am not sure it is the best position from which to help our children develop a harmonious relationship with games.

The "default stand-offish attitude" usually promulgated by mass media goes something like this:

• Playing outside with other children: Good
• Reading books: Good
• Watching television: Ok in limited doses
• Playing online games: Bad (as in leading to anti-social behaviour, speech impediments and obesity)

I would like to see a bit more nuance in the latter three categories which are all about media experience, my point of view lumps the three types of media together to focus on the content:

• Reading books, watching television and playing online games that are not appropriate for the child's age: Bad
• Reading books, watching television and playing online games that are appropriate for the child's age: Good

A proper discussion of the topic would examine many more aspects of the argument: learning, impact on behaviour, content ratings and censorship etc. I don't yet know enough to form firm conclusions. As a parent I need to understand the topic better in order to be able to guide my child and increase the likelihood that they have good experiences with games.

That is why it is a pleasure to be able to dip into well-informed and inspiring viewpoints in order to inform my own. Two thought provoking pieces that I have enjoyed are:

• The recent talk given by Jane McGonigal at TED where she argues that attitudes formed in games can be productively applied to real life.
• "If gamers ran the world" by Tom Armitage, my former colleague, who outlines some of the useful things that games teach us: dealing with complexity and making smart, informed decisions.

I look forward to explore different viewpoints in future. I think a danger for the next generation is parents who don't understand games. If games can give our children meaningful experiences - or provide new ways for parents and children to interact - that would qualify as an epic win.

Local area World Wide Web

New York's 311 non-emergency hotline service struck me as a brilliant idea when I first heard about it. Imagine that on your way to work you spot a bollard that has been knocked over. Who do you call? The cost to the individual of researching where to direct the information is high and expectations of the call being handled efficiently are probably low. 311 introduces a single hotline where reports like the bollard example can be logged right away and routed to the proper authority.

An obvious expansion of the service, given that phones with GPS and cameras are becoming more widespread, would be sending a geotagged photo of, say, a nasty pothole or a broken swing at a playground to a 311-style email address. Often no explanation would be required, the picture would reveal the nature of the problem being reported.

While waiting for that service to become available in London it was a delight to learn about FixMyStreet. The site allows you to describe a local problem, which once it is logged on the site will get forwarded to the appropriate authority.

Looking at what had been reported in our local area of London I found this report detailing a problem that I had noticed but never really considered doing anything about:

The mix of mobile phone cameras, geotagging, easy reporting via the web and many eyes roaming the streets is promising.

Tags: FixMyStreet 311 geotagging

Assisted serendipity and the digital side of travelling

Twelve years ago, on a trip to San Francisco, two friends of mine passed by a one-hour photo shop and stopped to marvel at the photo printer in the window. The printer was spitting out freshly printed photos in plain view and that is how Rodney recognised his uncle in a series of photos, posing in front of famous San Francisco landmarks. Rodney did not know that his uncle was in San Francisco but after the discovery they managed to meet up. Small world.

What is the probability of somebody you know being in the same city as you at the same time? What is the Bayesian of finding out about it or actually meeting up?

The familiar anecdotes about the world being small are about to go out of fashion if a new fusion of social networks and the geographic web takes of.

Dopplr is a web based tool that allows you to publish your travel plans to people you trust. Log in, and the main page will show you who will be at any of the future destinations you are planning to travel to.

For years, Plazes has enabled you to find out who is close to your current position. In the new version launched this week, you can also input your future travel plans and see friends' future locations.

Whether boosting serendipity or just lending a helping hand with the logistics of a meeting, services like this would come in handy both for social purposes and business (of course, business is a social activity too).

The same way sharing a physical location ties people together, assisted serendipity makes sense in other dimensions as well. Adoption of social tools within organisations would, say, help a team in Finland find the people in China with an idea that solves a problem they are grappling with, and identify the influencer in Turkey who will sponsor the project to apply the idea. Without any of them ever having heard of the others before. Big companies like a smaller world too.

Tags: Dopplr Plazes serendipity geographic+web social+tools

The memory of you

Google are announcing that they are going to improve privacy measures by limiting the amount of data that can be used to identify you. With personalised services there is a trade-off between the usefulness of the service and privacy: The more data for algorithms to be unleashed on, the better the resulting recommendations, search results etc. Google are planning to introduce retention policies mandating the anonymisation of data after 18 to 24 months.

On Amazon, I can see orders that I placed in 1997 when I started shopping with them. My HSBC internet banking account only allows me to see transactions up to seven weeks in the past; if I am looking for earlier information I have to resort to printed statements which is annoying (of course, HSBC will retain that data for a lot longer but I don't have access to it). How can a service you subscribe to determine what a useful retention period is?

It can't. What I hope to see in future versions of many services is a way to set the retention period for your data as part of your preferences. As the B2B software-as-a-service market matures this will be a critical feature for many businesses with retention policies already in place.

What is likely to happen in the longer term is increased user ownership of your personal data and a choice of where you want to host it. A natural service area for identity providers to expand into.

Tags: Google privacy retention identity Amazon HSBC clickstream personal data internet banking

Towards a digital lifestyle: Paperless in Denmark

An announcement from KMD, a Danish IT services vendor, shows us another way to dispense with paper mail. The service is called e-boks and it is used by one million people, predominantly in Denmark, a country of 5.2 million inhabitants. (In a presentation at a conference in 1996, I predicted that the internet would be the primary way for government to communicate with their citizens. It looks like it is starting to happen.)

Remote Control Mail, a US based service that I mentioned yesterday, relieves you of paper by having a processing centre receive your mail and imaging it. The nifty thing about e-boks is that e-boks dispenses with paper all together.

The incentives for e-boks users are the promise of less paper mail to organise in binders, an online archive of important documents and the fact that the service is free. It is funded by the senders of mail who can send PDF documents to users at a 75% discount compared to cost of a stamp. So far, some 550 companies, banks, utilities, public councils and other public institutions have signed up to communicate with their customers, employees and citizens in this way.

The e-boks service supports several digital identity systems; all of them based on CPR, a state-run centralised register of personal information. Near ubiquitous use of the state-issued personal identification number makes it easy for the senders to divert paper mail to electronic when they receive updates of new users joining the system (or vice versa if users leave the service).

Tags: KMD e-boks Denmark mail imaging PDF paperless digital lifestyle

Towards a digital lifestyle: Postal mail

I love having information available. Preferably in electronic format, nicely tagged and searchable. Conversely, I hate paper, not just junk mail. Paper mail is a resource drain in terms of pulp, plastics, my time and space. That is why I typically sign up for email alternatives with my "suppliers" such as phone companies, banks, utilities etc. (although with some exceptions).

Consequently, I was excited to learn about Remote Control Mail (spotted on TechCrunch). You redirect your mail to the service, they image your mail and make it available to you via a secure web interface. If you need the physical piece of paper (their data suggests that this happens about 4% of the time), you check a box and they will forward it to you. With time, I would expect the service to develop rule-based procedures for dealing with your mail.

That's a service I would pay for. I wonder if anything like it is available in the UK?

Tags: digital lifestyle Remote Control Mail postal

The world of finance is not ready to support your digital lifestyle

Electronic billing and online account statements are my preferred ways of dealing with personal finance. No paper statements to sort and hold on to and the added benefit of being able to access your transaction history online. It also makes me feel better for helping cut down paper waste.
   For businesses too, spending pennies instead of pounds each billing period should be an attractive prospect.
   But there are a couple of reasons not to go fully digital. One is that the electronic services offered by some companies is insufficient. For me it is useful to have access to one or two years of my account history with a service provider. American Express only offers the latest three months' statements and once you select not to receive paper statements there is no online option to revert back.
   Another reason is that, at least in the UK, paper statements are a required element of confirming one's identity. Opening a bank account, changing mobile phone provider and a number of other situations require proof of address. In a country without a central database of its citizens, paper statements fill a gap. When we moved flats a year ago I opted for all utility bills to be electronic except electricity. And it was a good move: Those quarterly power bills get to travel to processing centres all over the UK every time  we apply for something new.
   At least it reduces Royal Mail's loss in postal volumes from the shift to ebilling.