Anyway, I found myself looking at quite a few spots on Google Streetview but getting the location of a spot over from one to the other is a bit tricky. To help make things a little easier, I’ve created the following bookmarklet which embeds Google Streetview directly into the spot pages on www.gowalla.com.

Please note: This has only been tested in Firefox 3.5, Safari 4 and IE8.

javascript:d=document,e=d.createElement('script');e.src='http://ixalon.net/gwsv.js?'+(new Date()*1);void(d.body.appendChild(e));

This will fire up the main bookmarklet script at http://ixalon.net/gwsv.js (take a look to see how it works.)

Drag the following link to your bookmarks menu to add it: Show Google Streetview

Visit a spot page on Gowalla (e.g. the Arc de Triomphe at http://gowalla.com/spots/23328) and then enter the above bookmarklet into your browser’s address bar. Even better, add it as a bookmark and pick it from your bookmarks menu when viewing the page. You’ll get something like this:

I’m not sure if it’s my taste in films, the excellent work of the festival staff, or a general trend in filmmaking, but this year’s line up at the festival seems pretty spectacular. There’s been a few films every day so far that I’ve been keen to see, where during previous years, I’d be lucky to find a handful over the whole festival. I think the success may be down to all these, but also that the festival is now reaping the rewards of moving from August to June. 2008 was the first June festival, and it felt a little subdued; I think film makers, delegates and the public didn’t know what to expect.

Thankfully it didn’t take us long to get used to the change, and with June being a quiet time in the Film Festival calendar yet also near the start of the summer blockbuster season, there seems to be a lot of films vying for attention. There still isn’t quite the buzz that’s associated with the main Edinburgh Festival season in August, but the line up of films (and the simplified logistics of getting around the city) makes up for it.

One unfortunate problem of not expecting such a plethora of great movies, is that I didn’t book many tickets in advance and a lot of screenings have sold out. I’m thinking that next year, if the line up is of this year’s quality, I’ll take a week off work, get a delgate pass and really get to see everything I want (and more!)

What I’ve seen, going to see, or would love to see this year, includes: Away We Go, Sin Nombre, Black Dynamite, Adventureland, Salvage, The Hurt Locker, Romeo & Juliet vs The Living Dead, Moon, Exam, Wide Open Spaces, Big River Man, Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (Guilty Pleasure!), Sam Mendes: In Person, Joe Dante: In Person, Darren Aronofsky: In Person, Wittertainment (Ok, not a film, but still jolly good fun!)

Hopefully some of those that I’ve not been able to get tickets for (especially Moon) will be chosen for the Best of the Fest screenings on the final Sunday of the festival (they are doing that this year?) Speaking of Moon, follow @ManMadeMoon on Twitter; the director of Moon and an amusing chap (in the nicest possible meaning of the word!) Also worth following are the Twitterverse’s movie reviewers at EIFF: @crappertay, @Filmstalker, @FilmFan1971, @itsonitsgone and @2weddings (If I’ve missed anyone, drop me a message and I’ll add you). Also, keep an eye on the tags #EIFF and #edfilmfest.

Now, the question is do my contributions to buyacredit.com and coproducer.org let me buy a “industry” delegate pass next year, or if not, do any budding film makers out there want a promotional website built?

Today a report was published by the Calman Commission; who were tasked by the opposition parties of the Scottish Parliament, with the support of the UK Government, to look at the relationship of Scotland within the United Kingdom. This relationship or “devolution settlement” is already a very misunderstood and highly politicised thing, which pretty much everyone will admit is so riddled with problems and patchy half-thought-out legislation that something needs done. I’m neutral when it comes to both party politics and on the independance debate; as with most things there are reasons for, reasons against and a lot of spinning in between – but one way or another, the problems with the status-quo need addressed.

The Calman Commission does have some suggestions that I think will be almost universally supported, for example devolving air-gun legislation to the Scottish Parliament. Air gun crime is a big problem in Scotland and there is widespread approval for stronger legislation, something that Westminster has been hesitant to address.

However the commission had a great opportunity to come up with some revolutionary and innovative means of addressing the more deep-rooted constitutional and financial concerns, but instead has either ignored the most sensitive problems (for example the West Lothian Question) or has suggested yet more half-way-house measures, for example, proposed income-tax recommendations. The report suggests that the amount of tax levied by the UK Government on Scottish persons (it’s unclear if this is working for a Scottish company or domiciled in Scotland) should be lowered by 10p per pound, the block grant that the Scottish Parliament is currently funded by would drop the corresponding amount and that the Scottish Government may choose how much of that 10p (or indeed over 10p) be charged. Revenue raised by this “Scottish Income Tax” would be sent to a new Scottish exchequer for public spending by the Scottish Government, the idea being that the amount the Scottish Government could spend would be partly a consequence of their decisions.

There’s a problem with this method. The Scottish Goverment can already raise or lower income tax by 3p in the pound, but all parties have yet to do so as firstly it will likely cause a beaurocratic nightmare and secondly, as the majority of other taxes (such as cooperation tax, VAT, etc) are still set by the UK Government, there’s very little in way to balance these changes other than direct cuts or extra investment in public spending. As far as I can see Calman’s suggestions still result in these two problems, with the only difference being that the Scottish Government would have slightly less of an reason to blame lack of funding for public spending on decisions made in Westminster. However, since it’s less than 50% of one form of taxation (I believe around £5-6bn of a £33bn budget) the majority of public spending will still be dependant on monies and decisions from Westminster. What’s more, Calman has suggested the Scottish Income Tax should be the same across tax bands, so that the Scottish Parliament does not have the device of altering the ratio of how much is raised between base and high-earners.

So I can’t help feel that we’re pretty much back to where we started. Whilst change for change’s sake is best avoided, there appears a real need for it throughout the political world of the UK. Yet it feels as if there’s still a great inertia in UK politics; that change is frowned upon and only begrudgingly granted in the most minimal of forms.

Despite a few teething problems, common to any new free service these days, VidZone works remarkably well. On my connection videos start streaming within a couple of seconds, there’s a good selection for a fledgling service, the video quality is decent for the majority of videos and the audio quality is as good as any other streaming service or music channel. There are however a number of minor niggles:

• Searching is a pain; it’s slow, especially when searching by track, and when searching by artist, you end up with results that when you follow them, there are no tracks available. It also doesn’t allow you to use a keyboard/chatpad unlike most apps/games on the PS3. Also bands with names beginning “The” are sorted under “T”, and searching for the prefix of the following word doesn’t seem to work.
• Adverts; not a pain in themselves, they are fairly unobtrusive, however when you click on them you are whisked out of VidZone to view the content the advert links to, close that and you are bought back into VidZone. The problem is your Now Playing content is lost so you have to queue up your tracks again.
• Video size; 4:3 videos are scaled to use the entire vertical resolution, widescreen format videos are not and appear in a small area in the centre of the screen. Apparently they’re working on this.
• Volume normalisation/Replay gain; seemingly non-existant, some videos are very quiet, some are very loud. This makes it quite hard to just leave VidZone on in the background for some ambient music. Edit: Excellent, they’re working on this one too.
• Startup; a minor niggle, but on starting VidZone you’re greeted with a startup progress twizzler thing (i.e. an infinite progress bar) for a considerable amount of time before it starts downloading track list data. I can’t work out what VidZone is doing on start up – it’s not accessing the network and it’s only a 30MB application to load. Then when you finally get into VidZone, your Now Playing queue has been cleared, so music won’t start playing until you queue up some videos. Possibly an option to reload your list, or start a-fresh would be nice.
• Inconsistent controls; when browsing songs, you have to use the square button to play now. Normal PS3 practice would be to use the ‘X’ button (which does seem to work in a few places.) Edit: Figured that one out – ‘X’ will play a song if your Now Playing list is empty (for example, the first time you find a song and press X, somewhat setting your expectation that it’ll always work like that.

There’s also a lot of unexplored opportunities that I’d love to see Rants Ltd and SCEE explore in VidZone:

• Take a leaf from last.fm and spotify; build in social tools, for example: playlist sharing, ability to show friends what you’re listening to, user-based video rating and associated “people who enjoyed this video also enjoyed” listings.
• Web integration; at least the ability to browse the track list online and ideally the ability to edit our playlists.
• Surely more can be made of the adverts? The best thing to sell to me when watching a video is something related to that track. What about Cross-selling track-related PSN content? For example, let me add a Rock Band or SingStore DLC versions of the track I’m currently watching to a basket. Don’t interrupt my viewing/listening experience though; it needs to be a quick 1 or 2 button press affair with an unobtusive interface overlayed on the bottom of the video (where ads and song information is currently shown). Give me the option to checkout there and then, but don’t force it.
• Track/band/video trivia would be a nice optional addition, similar to the overlays on some music channels. Has to really be optional though as many prefer to see the videos unobstructed by any overlays.
• A quick crossfade or some other smooth transition between tracks. Start streaming the next track earlier so there’s less of an abrupt break between each video.

Let me say again, that despite these quibbles, I really do love the service; it’s a great idea with a pretty good implementation. Seeing how receptive those behind the service are to feedback over Twitter, I’m sure that the creases will be ironed out over coming months. Every PS3 owner should at least give this a try – it is free after all.

So what is Operation: Sleeper Cell? Well, simply put it is an online fundraising game (probably one of the first, or at least most ambitious.) Players, or Agents, form teams and compete to solve puzzles for points whilst donating to Cancer Research UK and encouraging their friends, families, colleagues, complete strangers to sponsor them. Donations and sponsorship generate our in-game currency which can be used to unlock further puzzles and progress the game.

Most of all it’s fun and for a good cause, so please head on over and give it a go…

I’ve been spending a lot of my spare time lately working for BT agilemedia, developing their social fundraising platform BT iDonate. We’ve got a number of big charities on board and it’s being well received. We’ve so far launched facebook applications for: Dogs Trust, Childline, Scope (New Media Age’s Website-of-the-Week 28th Feb 08!), Great Ormond Street Hospital, Crisis, Help a London Child and Missing People.

The remainder of my time is being spent on the tech team bringing Law 37’s Alternate Reality Game for Cancer Research UK to life.

On top of all that, I’m in the process of sprucing up the busy forums SE-NSE which I’ve helped run for the past few years. In the near future there will be a major rebranding and very funky mobile version.

I’ve also a few photo-essays I’d like to do over the summer if I get time.