I really want to try and keep my blog going but if you had asked me the first half of last week what I was going to do with this blog I would have said that I was going to shut it down…
I really don’t want to, it’s not that I think I have anything interesting to say or that I think people will be interested in what I have to say… It’s more that I really want a blog!
I am not great with the English language when it comes to writing… My grammer is poor and my spelling is poor, probably a few reasons why it’s taken me years to try and kick start a blog. I have so many things I want to say about what I do for a living and also so much I would love to share about technology I love and play around with… I struggle to put my thoughts and findings into words.
If the past is anything to go by then I will probably not post for another couple of months now and when I do post it will be about how I have not posted for a while and how I really want to blog blarr blarr blarr!
Last year I started my blog up on the back of my website and closed everything else similar to blogging sites and services. The idea was to have one main area where I would post everything and on a regular basis… As you can see this is the first blog in a long time…
Two things to note. Firstly I am now engaged. Secondly I am writing this post in bed on my iPhone using the wordpress app. Awesome!
I will try to find the time to redesign the blog to fit in with the rest of the ‘jgm’ look and feel and I am going to try and blog more about things I am doing and what I find interesting.
I am working on a sites called My Shopping Assistant and I am going to try work some late nights to get that finished by the end of Feb. I will blog about that more closer to the time.
I have also just got a Joggler which is awesome. I think I will do a post on that soon…
Hope everyone is well. I am looking for some freelance work at the moment so stay in contact and let me know if you have any leads.
I am happy to share with you another great event put on by SuperMondays.
We are very happy to announce that David Cohen (CEO of TechStars) and Kevin Mann (Take Publishing) will be running an innovation seminar especially for the startup community!
David is a successful entrepreneur in his own right, helping to found several software and web technology companies which were subsequently sold. David is now the Executive Director of TechStars an acceleration programme based in Boulder, Colorado and Boston, Massachusetts and has helped 38 startup companies setup bringing capital, connections and real-world experience to provide a unique opportunity for early stage start-ups.
Kevin Mann at Take Comics was one of those startups. Take Comics was the first (and to date only) overseas team to be accepted on the TechStars programme – and is based in Teesside!! Kevin will help provide insight into what it is like to be on an acceleration programme and what he has got out of it.
Finally, we will be running a competition at the event where two lucky people will win tickets to the Le Web conference on 8th & 9th of December in Paris! You can find more here: http://www.leweb.net
Date & Time: Friday 20th November @ 15:00 to 18:00
SuperMondays, in partnership with Thursday Fizz, Adesign Association, Refresh Teeside and VBUG are proud to announce:SuperChristmas is the Christmas party that brings our organisations together to round off an excellent year and to set the scene for 2010. The party will start at 7:00pm on Thursday 17th December 2009 at Hoults Yard.
The ticket price includes a light dinner, ceilidh dancing, and as much free beer/wine/soft drinks as the budget will allow…all served in a farm house theme decked out with bales of hay!
Everybody is welcome, so please do invite your friends … there will be no presentations on the night so leave your laptops, notebooks and netbooks at home!
As many of you reading this blog will know, I founded Refresh Teesside and earlier this year we had our first event. The idea behind Refresh Teesside was to provide a local event for the developers and designers who run most of their business in the region and give them a vehicle to get together and chat.
I went to Teesside University and was lucky enough to get a job in the industry as soon as I graduated. I am originally from Leeds; However I have grown to be very passionate about the digital industry in the North East. There are many networking events in the region. Adam, who I work with at Koodoo Creative , attends many of these including BNI, NECC, Network North and Entrepreneurs Forum. These business networking events are great for him to generate leads and network with other businesses. He enjoys this and enjoys handing out business cards and talking business. However, I am much more interested in getting together with other people who do what I do. What I mean by this is I am not that interested in what clients other businesses have, I am not interested in generating leads because thats not my main job. I work as part of a reasonably small team, with only a couple of developers in our development team. Therefore, I dont get to chat and run ideas by other people who have similar knowledge and mindset to me. This is one of the reasons why I started Refresh Teesside.
Recently I have noticed there are quite a few networking events and many individuals and businesses who are trying to get people together and advertise the talent in our region. Many of these events take place in Newcastle which is another reason why I started Refresh Teesside which would be a local event. There are many events in the region and many have their own individual agendas and target audience. Super Mondays, run by Ross Cooney, is a great event and is targeted at a specific audience. Thursday Fizz is again another event which seems to target creatives in general; However this event has been setup very well and has been well marketed. Its a successful event. Mark Easby is running a Twestival in Teesside this year after last years successful event in Newcastle. Robert Page has more recently setup NOCCI Middlesbrough which targets creatives in the region. I believe Refresh Teesside has its place as it has a unique agenda and target audience.
I am aware of the Digital City event First Wednesdays and Codeworks with the membership and events they run. I have this really frustrating feeling that there are quite a few people and organisations trying to promote the region and its talent, but some may have the wrong agenda themselves. By this I mean getting involved with setting up ‘another’ event for self promotion of some sort rather than trying to promote talent or the region.
I was recently made aware of a:design association which really interests me. I was invited to attend a focus group on Tuesday (25th Aug) which was very interesting. I really like the idea of having a not for profit organisation as an umbrella for all things in the region to make sure everyone stays on track. There were some really interesting points brought up at the focus group and I will be sure to stay in touch with the guys to make sure my thoughts are taken on board and also to offer my time to help out. I am going to see if we can run the next Refresh Teesside event in association with a:design so we show our support.
I cannot help but feel really frustrated that there are many many many people talking up the North East when it comes to digital media. Codeworks, Teesside University, Digital City and the government are all talking the talk about the talent in the Teesside region; however it really does seem to be all talk. I say its time for someone to stepup and group all the efforts and make sure they all stay on track. I would say running an event in assosiation with a:design would be a good start. You would have to prove the event in terms of how it will promote and how it is unique. I will be looking to do this with Refresh Teesside, lets see what happens!
Its been a while since I attended the TJam event at Microsoft London which was for developers to get insite into what customers want to help them shop with tesco.com. There is already a community preview API avaliable; however tesco are about to release at any time now the new Tesco.com Grocery API Beta Edition which is built on their new ‘martini’ platform. The new api will be much faster and will allow access to much more information including product nutrition and even information about which isl and how far down that ile the item can be found in the customers local tesco store!
I am trying to do some ground work for ‘My Shopping Assistant’ which will be something connected with the Tesco API but I have not decided exactly what yet. I have a couple of ideas; however have not set anything in stone as yet. I have some feedback from friends and family about what they would be looking for, and we will make use of one of the ideas so the time and effort saved for our weekly shop would be a reason to invest some time into the application. The idea is that there may be many applications (apps) which get built eventually so the website name My Shopping Assistant will be a home for them all. Then you will be able to access the differnent tools and utilities from this main site. I will not go into too much detail at this stage about what the website will do as the ‘TJammers’ are still waiting for the release of the new Tesco API.
Molly (our new puppy) has been with us for a couple of weeks now. Its been a very interesting couple of weeks with lack of sleep, plenty of cleaning up and lots of learning (us more than Molly)! We are now slowly getting into our routine and I belive Molly is slowly starting to fit in and accepting our place as her new home. She met Jack (Fionas parents dog) who is still coming to the idea of having a small dog running around and Pebble (my parents dog) who totally loves having someone to play with even if she does not quite understand she is double the size and strength of little Molly at the moment. We booked her into have her second injection last Friday (so we thought); however it turns out that she has not had her first injection yet (which we were told she has had) she has instead had a booster jab. So she has had her first injection now and we have to wait another week until she can have her second injection and then another week until we can take her out and about. We cannot wait as we feel this will really help with getting her trained and fitting into a routine comfotably. If you would like to see some more pictures then check out my flickr stream using the tag ‘molly’. (I have also just found out that if you add /show/ onto the end of any flicker link you can view those pictures in a nice flash gallery! Nice!).
Today I am heading down to London to take part in the Tesco Tjam event. There are two parts to the day. During the day customers and creative thinkers will meet to drive ideas and innovation around what they would like to see from Tesco’s as a service. This information will be gathered by Nick Lansley Head of R&D at Tesco.com throughout the day. The second part of the day is an event for developers, where around 120 developers will meet for a presentation of the days ideas. At the event Tesco will introduce the new ‘martini’ API which will provide access to many more features and functions than the currently available preview API.
Tesco’s are really trying to give the developer community the tools to create the future applications for Tesco. Facebook applications, iPhone applications or full systems which will sit in you’re kitchen… you name it, your going to see it once ‘martin’ is fully tested.
The initial stage is nearly over. People have been playing with the preview release of the API for a while now. I have just managed to get PHP to connect to the SOAP API and managed to create a little application which allows you to search the tesco products database and then add things to your basket. This all updates your actual Tesco basket live so once you log into Tesco.com you can just go straight to the checkout. I am really finding this very exciting and the possabilities are endless.
At first only the developers who attend the Tjam event will be able to register for an affiliate account. We will be able to earn money when sending new customers to Tesco.com and also on the cart total at checkout if items were added to the basket using an application key belonging to that affiliate (its quite confusing – more info available on the developers form).
Its going to be quite an exciting event. I have been contacted by Nick to see if I would show some of my php code however I am not sure if I could do that in front of 120 other developers from around the country! I have sent him FTP to my application so we will see what happens.
Today is ‘Molly Day’! I am excited to announce we are heading up Newcastle way to pick Molly up this afternoon/evening. Those who have not yet been pressured into seeing pictures of Molly, you can view some on my flickr site. I will, of course, be adding more as she grows. Fiona and I are very very excited! I might even try to put a video together and post it on my Vimeo site over the weekend.
Some of you may have noticed the old blog feed will have stopped working, obviously because I have closed the old blog. Well, I have just set up the new one so if you are interested in subscribing to this blog, either use the normal methods or use this feed url. Thanks.
Fiona and I decided to go to the cinema on Wednesday to see the Hangover. I used to have an Orange phone when I worked at Applaud, so we got into the routine of going out for tea and then to Orange Wednesdays to watch a film. We drove past the cinema and noticed there was a queue all the way out the door and down the path. Neither of us like queueing, soFiona (being the iPhone addict that she is) immediately thought to book tickets online using her iPhone so we could pass the que ue and pick up the tickets from the ticket machine. Our tickets were booked within minutes, we passed the queue, and got our tickets. I have to say, it was a great advert for the iPhone!
I missed the opportunity to welcome my friend James Chorley back from his recent bike trip. He seems to do a bike trip once a year at the moment and when he mentioned that he was doing another one this year and that he would be tweeting his location with a picture every day my head started to spin with ideas. It gave me the idea of creating a bespoke website which would search through his twitter feed for the tweets he made whilst he was away, gather and process the information in the links and plot his location on a map along with the image and the comment from that days post. It was going to be a little challenge as he only told me afew days before he set off. With a few late night I managed to fit his desired design around the website and I am pleased to say it was a great success. James tweeted every day and his family and friends were able to track him on his dedicated site.
SuperChristmas is the Christmas party that brings our organisations together to round off an excellent year and to set the scene for 2010. The party will start at 7:00pm on Thursday 17th December 2009 at 
Its been a while since I attended the TJam event at Microsoft London which was for developers to get insite into what customers want to help them shop with tesco.com. There is already a community preview API avaliable; however tesco are about to release at any time now the new Tesco.com Grocery API Beta Edition which is built on their new ‘martini’ platform. The new api will be much faster and will allow access to much more information including product nutrition and even information about which isl and how far down that ile the item can be found in the customers local tesco store!
