An article in guardian.co.uk last week highlighted the findings of a survey that claims to have pinpointed the time when we are at our most creative to a very precise 10.04pm. Although the sceptic in me views these results with some incredulity, they certainly offer food for thought.

Taking creativity as synonymous with bursts of inspiration, ingenuity, productivity and resourcefulness, I thought it would be interesting to gather the thoughts of the IE team – which boasts numerous ‘real’ creatives amongst its numbers – and pose them the question: when are you most creative?

Early birds vs. night owls
Does the magic 10.04pm strike a chord with IE? Not really, it seems. There were a couple of night owls whose creative highpoints occurred ‘lying in bed trying to get to sleep, dark room. No noise, no distractions, no sleep!’ but the majority didn’t back this up. Whilst some of the team acknowledged that they experienced late-night bursts of creativity, the same people maintained that these were just as likely to occur first thing in the morning. Indeed, early mornings were generally cited as the optimum time for a creative high, with a couple of the team commenting that they go downhill after lunch and that the chances of a major breakthrough occurring in the afternoon are slim to none. Continue reading

A draft report from the US Army warns that Twitter and other online tools could be used to plan terrorist attacks. This may seem farfetched at first but if you consider their example of a Google Maps mashup whereby Twitter is used to report on military activity and then locations plotted on a map then it all becomes more feasible.

Twitter can also be used to remotely control devices and it is feared that it may be used to detonate explosives in the same way mobile phones were used in the Madrid Train bombings in 2004. A more light hearted and slightly disturbing way Twitter has been used for remote control is shown in the video below.

How 2.0: Make a Twittering Teddy Bear from My Home 2.0 DIY on Vimeo.

There have been concerns over the use of VOIP (Voice Over IP) technologies such as Skype (reportedly one of the Taliban’s favoured communication channels) for a while now. It is more difficult for security agencies to intercept conversations as well as being easy to use voice changing software and caller ID spoofing.

A security stir seems to always be caused by new technology from mobile phones to the VOIP but security agencies just need to adapt at the same rate.

Linda Nordling writes in the Guardian today about the efforts of academics to get their papers not just online, but search engine optomised (with some handy hints listed at the end of the article).

Within the wider education context though this creates a basis for some interesting debate. Will pupils be taught about search engine optomisation for their own creations as a matter of course? And if they do, will the geekly gifted outshine those with a more artistic background, and if so, who’s work is really better? Of course, one can apply this across all web based publishing - there’s a stack of stuff out there that’s great just waiting to be discovered (and the flip side is that there’s some awful stuff that has undergone a beautiful SEO experience!)

As you would expect, IE have a great track record in helping organisations to get the exposure they both deserve and need. We’ll help academia too!

I’m running the half marathon on Sunday. I’m no athlete so in order not to embarrass myself I’ve taken my training quite seriously. By seriously I mean geekely…

It’s well known that I really like spreadsheets - for organising everything, and my training plan has been no exception. It’s got every 144.52 miles that I’ve run in the 19 Hours 43 Minutes and 47 Seconds of training that I’ve done. It’s also got charts showing my actual pace and formulas to calculate my normalised half marathon time from every run.

That’s all quite geeky but this may just top it…

It’s live so you’ll know where I am whenever I turn my iPhone on. After the race I’ll find a way of exporting a record of it.

GPS tracking powered by InstaMapper.com

If you happen to see this post while the race is on then please do leave a comment - I’ll obviously be otherwise engaged…

There was a very interesting interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning about the future of blogging. Technology consultant Robert Hamman and Guardian writer/blogger Kate Bevan were discussing an article on the Wired website that blogging is dead. It was argued that blogging used to be something that gave amateurs a voice and now it has been overtaken by professionals, described by Wired as a “tsunami of paid bilge”.

The other argument is that as web has moved on, people’s attention spans have reduced and they don’t want to read a whole post. This is the why we have seen the rapid emergence of Twitter. Twitter allows users to micro-blog by posting Tweets of a maximum 140 characters. The portability and informality of this has really caught on with many people now Twittering from their phones, desktop apps and the web. As promised Twitter is something I will revisit in detail as I find it absolutely fascinating.

However, blogs are still a huge business, providing a personal space for people to quickly reach very niche audiences, and you will be glad to hear that we won’t be stopping our blogging anytime soon.

Listen to the whole interview on the BBC Site (sorry if you are outside of the UK it won’t play!) and read the Wired article.