Crikey, I've been lax recently! With plays and birthdays over, pushbikes purchased and weekends reclaimed, I can turn some of my attention to writing about it all some more, and to picking up some new projects - most notably Josie Long's '100 days to make me a better person' - but more on that once I've decided what I'll contribute to it!

In the meantime, here's some more spectacular lighting and effects captured not so spectacularly on my ickle powershot camera. And the effects, not from me this time, but from the inestimable Flaming Lips at the Troxy. If there's a band better suited to confetti cannons and giant balloons, get me to the front of the ticket queue.

       

Click here to download:

Catching_up_and_capturing_the_.zip (12655 KB)

Late last week, Pew Internet released some research showing the continuing increase of Twitter, and the median ages of users on four social networks - leading a couple of blogs (RRW and DrewB) to highlight how Generation Y has woken up to Twitter, with double the number of 18-24 year-olds using the service since December.

While it's certainly true that under 34's dominate the social media space (Pew remarks Facebook's median age as 'greying up' as it reaches an ancient 33), what Pew and everyone else have skipped over is that 45+ users are growing at the same rate or marginally faster than Generation Y:

Whilst the overall numbers are still low, this seems to me to be a far more interesting trend. Could it be that once the baby boomers and older are introduced to social media, they like the same tools and interactions as everyone else? It sounds very obvious, but for some reason conventional wisdom dictates that they won't want to use Facebook et al, despite (as ReadWriteWeb points out) social communities designed for older people like BOOMj have never really taken off.

Talking round the office, we think it's partially about the following:

Gen. x-er's (and younger) are having children
As families move further away from parents and grandparents, and facebook, flickr and others become the defacto scrapbook for your photos, videos and thoughts, joining the same social networks gives parents and grandparents easy access to keep in touch and see their loved ones.

Status tools like Twitter are a great leveller
Twitter, far more than Facebook or Myspace, only really cares about what you've got to say, removing another set of barriers and encouraging people to speak with other's they may never have come into contact with.

It'll be interesting to see if the trend continues, especially as more older people are introduced to the web with the many digital inclusion projects running. But what do you think? Are boomers and older people struggling with social networking because the content they want is hidden in it, or are they enjoying it and finding uses for it? I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts.

(Disclaimer - I work for an older people's charity, but as always the thoughts here are just my own).

I've been spending a lot of the past two weeks putting the final touches on the lighting design for Woodhouse Player's production of The Lark. The show is the premiere of a new authorised translation of the original french script by Jean Annouilh, depicting the story of Joan of Arc. So obviously, we're all quite excited about performing it!

It opens this week in Leytonstone, so here's the obligatory plug, and a sneak preview with some shots I took from the lighting desk at last night's Tech rehearsal. Of course, no story of Joan of Arc would be complete with the burning at the stake, but to see those effects, you'll have to come along on the night!

[EDIT: The costumes are all by the wonderful Morgan, who's stolen my pics to claim fame for her needlework!]

         

Click here to download:

Sneak_preview_lighting_up_The_.zip (11962 KB)

The Guardian have details of the ever-growing national database of 'domestic extremists', that's lawful protesters to you and me, including the comedian Mark Thomas.

Very simply, if you have been on a protest in the last few years, there's a chance you'll be on this list. Several journalists are, apparently just for covering the event itself. The police have said this has grown out of tracking down animal rights protesters who really did take the law into the own hands - remember gravedigging and ransoms for corpses, anyone? The Guardian's hypothesis is that the department in question has expanded their remit to keep themselves in a job, which being the liberal-leaning wet blanket that I am, I happen to agree with.

What classes those who protest as a domestic extremist? When did it not become enough to police a demonstration or protest and arrest those who broke the law? Or perhaps, leaving protesters to break the law, and just taking a photo of it is better for PRing the protest afterwards:

So, how do those who lawfully protest best register their disdain and disaproval of this database? I imagine a lot of newspaper ink will be used up bemoaning the erosion of rights, and presumption of guilt, but I think immitation is the best form of flattery. Yes, the time has come to set up a secret database of riot police at protests, so that when this next happens:

We've got some key details on his police number, is actions and words, and perhaps a picture or two to pass on to the PCC. After all, we'd only hold these details on police officers who may be of interest to the public, and we wouldn't violate their human rights or data protection rights in any way by doing so, no, not at all.

So we're a few days into the Google Wave, but it is everything that was promised?

Well, it's very obviously a preview and there's not that many people to talk to yet, so it's a challenge to imagine what it could turn into. But here's some starting points.

Live embedding of photos, maps and documents
Wave will take an address and turn it into a map, plus turn photos into a gallery you can browse. Plus its easily updatable by anyone - so when a friend doesn't put a useful landmark on a map, you can update it, and everyone else sees it. Once enough of your friends are on it, it's going to make giving directions, or sharing photos of a gathering, that little bit easier.

'Muting' of conversations you don't want to be in
We all get them: mass emails, or mass facebook messages that once we've decided we're not interested, we'd quite like to not get every update afterwards. Wave's got a feature that can mute the conversations you're no longer interested in.

Live viewing of messages as they're typed
Now, this might seem very freaky first time you see it, and I know a lot of people who have said they don't want people to see what they type. But it does focus conversations nicely and saves time - you don't need to continue typing if a response makes it obvious someone's understood you. Instead, you can get on with reading the response, and get onto the next point.

At the moment, as Rachel Beer has noted, it adds up to a mix between email, live messaging and document collaboration. Which, when it opens up wider to users, could make a real difference to the way we write email and pass around documents. Before that can happen though, we'll need to see some of the promised add ons appear during the preview, such as updating to Blogger, tie-ins with Twitter, but most importantly, being able to add people with just normal email. Because until we can do that, you've got to have conversations in two spaces, and that will never persuade people to migrate over.

emo.povey@googlewave.com

Going to try Posterous to see if this all-emailing system can help me update more regularly.

Might port over the Tumblr posts soon...