Category: Tech

At times wonderful, and at times totally frustrating too. That’s technology, my experience of it anyway. I do a lot of stuff with technology and I suspect I will continue to do that.

Turing Fest programme

Posted by on in Festivals, Tech

A really good event. Well worth the visit. I think that if I manage to go to Edinburgh for next year’s festival I’ll have to try to get along to more stuff.

A visit to Turing Fest

Posted by on in Events, Places, Tech

I really wanted to get along to something at Turing Fest this year and as I was in Edinburgh I was able to. It was a bit of a stretch though as I was leaving on the day that Turing Fest started. Anyway, I got along for a session on the first day. The session was about aligning the interests of investors and entrepreneurs. Whilst it was largely based around the Edinburgh start up scene I learnt a lot about the venture capital process itself and how VCs and angel investors look at start ups.

I wish I could have stuck around for more of the sessions, but that wasn’t possible sadly. Maybe next year.

Launchpad: Clicks

Posted by on in Places, Sounds, Tech

An interesting experiment at Launchpad in the Science Museum. This made some cool clicks and percussive sounds depending on what surface you placed the boxes on.

Waiting for WeMo

Posted by on in Tech

I found out about Belkin’s WeMo technology a few weeks ago. It’s a really accessible method of implementing home automation and control it via an iPhone app from Belkin. The hardware is sort of modular in that you can buy a single unit which is essentially just a switch which can be controlled via the web / app. There’s also a motion detection modular as well. Whilst on it’s own that’s pretty amazing on it’s own, it gets better. WeMo also integrates with IFTTT!

What’s IFTTT? It’s one of the best automation services ever. IFTTT (If This Then That) allows you to make decisions and trigger actions using social services like twitter and facebook and loads more besides. It’s amazing. Anyway, you can control the WeMo hardware using IFTTT. Now that’ll be amazing.

The only downside is that WeMo isn’t available in the UK as yet. Hopefully it’ll be available in October. I hope it isn’t much longer to wait than that.