Alastair Mc Donald introduced us to the world of geocaching (pronounced geo-cashing), a treasure hunting game which is played by thousands of players around the world. The game is an intriguing mix of treasure hunting, navigation, and outdoor hiking/walking. Players (geocachers) place caches in hidden locations around the world and log them on a geocaching website. Anybody with a GPS device can then try to locate the geocache.

A typical cache comes in the shape of a tupperware box that contains a pen and paper. Once located the player can open the cache and sign the register. There are many types of cache and these are listed on the geocaching.com website.

Players are encouraged to find local caches and place a few themselves. Alistair has been playing for a few years and now has 14 caches located around the country.

Gavin Elliot and Justin Turner from the Ecommerce Experiment told us about how they plan to revolutionise the ecommerce market.

The Ecommerce Experiment was setup in early June by the Carrot Media team. Over the next three years the team will setup and run an online shop. During this process they will blog about all of their experiences. The team plan to discuss each step in detail including:

1. How to setup a bank account
2. How to source and buy stock
3. What development platform to use
4. What marketing tools work

You can follow the team on their blog and twitter.

Mike Parker from OrangeBus told us about how he uses Drupal to ‘Work less, Surf more’, a story which told us how he uses Drupal for rapid development.

Drupal is an open source development environment (released under the GPL) used by tens of thousands of people to power scores of different web sites, including Nike, Sony, Yahoo Developer Network and Beyonce (if it’s good enough for Beyonce it’s good enough for me). Drupal makes web development easy by combining an excellent PHP, mysql and user interface in a powerful environment that allows for third party modules and plugins.

Mike used an example of a website that he developed in 45 minutes to demonstrate how easy it is to develop using Drupal and the CCK, Panels, Five Star and Views modules. This was Mikes second presentation to SuperMondays.

Our final presentation of the night was from Ryan Dewhurst who introduced his  ’Damn Vulnerable Web App’.  DVWA is a PHP/MySQL web application that is damn vulnerable. Its main goals are to be light weight, easy to use and full of vulnerabilities to exploit. Used to learn or teach the art of web application security.

Ryan first released DVWA in December 2008 and since then it has gained quite a following. It has been developed for the use of information security professionals and students to test out their skillz and/or toolz in a legal environment.

The newest version of DVWA is 1.0.4 and was released at SuperMondays under the GPL.

The group want to thank our four speakers for their time and commitment….and Northern Film and Media for their sponsorship!

July 3rd, 2009 | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

This month, in a break from tradition we will be running the event under a ‘un-conference’ format in much like the ‘barcamp’ and ‘cloudcamp’ events.

A un-conference is largely a US event format that has the attendees as the drivers and not the event organisers. The topics, speakers and format is largely decided by the attendees and is rather fluid…basically the success of the event depends upon the imagination of the attendees!

Have you ever wanted to talk about a project that you were involved in or perhaps a technical issue that you wrestled with and solved? If so then this is your chance to get up and tell your peers!

People can indicate their intention to get involved on the SuperMonday’s Google Group in advance of the event. Anybody who indicates their intention to present to the group will be allowed to do so, but if we are over-subscribed we will pass the topics to an online vote. We realistically only have 90 minutes to do this with (between 18:30 and 20:00) so if you are interested please try to keep your talk/conversation/demonstration to around 15 minutes in total.

Presentations can take the form of PowerPoint presentations, ‘round table’ discussions, hardware demonstrations, Lightening Talks or Birds of a Feather formats…actually any format that you choose. We only ask that the topics be technical and preferably about opensource technologies.

We are really excited about this event and we hope that the community gets involved and participates!

The following people have offered to present:

• Mike Parker – Rapid Application development with
  Drupal
• Chris Justin, Gavin will talk about the eCommerce Experiment
  (www.ecommerceexperiment.com).
• Ryan Dewhurst  –  ’Damn Vulnerable Web App’.

What is dvwa?
Damn Vulnerable Web App (dvwa) is a web application that is damn
vulnerable. Its main goals are to be light weight, easy to use and
full of vulnerabilities to exploit. It has been developed for the use
of information security professionals and students to test out their
skillz and/or toolz in a legal environment.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dvwa

June 16th, 2009 | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

This month’s event was different from previous SuperMondays events for a few reasons, not just because of the fact that we held it on a Tuesday. This month we changed the venue, the format of the event and the topics of the speakers. We hope that you liked it!

During the first hour we were encouraged to walk around ‘Space 2’ of the Culture Lab to speak to various product designers about their research projects. This including presentations from Tom Martindale and his multitouch surface computer, John Dawson and his interactive computer application and Guy Schofield and the rapid prototyping facility that Lab uses.

The second part of the evening was in a more traditional lecture environment. The event was opened by Professor Atau Tanaka, the Chair of Digital Media and the Acting Director of Culture Lab. After a brief introduction to the facility, its place within the university and a synopsis of some of the work that is undertaken there Mr Tanaka passed over to Patrick Oliver.

Patrick described the Culture Lab as a place to research the interaction with computers in everyday life. Projects such as the ‘Ambient Kitchen’ push the bounds of pervasive computing and apply them to everyday tasks in a normal domestic kitchen.  The kitchen has many computers and sensors placed in the floor, walls and inside the appliances which collect data to be relayed to a collection of computers which analyse the data and provide feedback on a collection of displays around the room. The Ambient Kitchen is typical of several of the projects at the Culture Lab in that it captures the users motions and actions with a view to understanding what they are doing so that helpful prompts can be given if necessary. The work has many applications but it is most powerful when it’s applied to provide ambient assisted living for older people or people with dementia. The ultimate goal is to help people with everyday tasks such as making a cup of tea or preparing a meal.

Dr Jayne Wallace also introduced us to her work at the Culture Lab. Jayne is a digital artist with a background in contemporary jewellery. The core of her work considers how jewellery can act to play a role within what we each consider personally meaningful for us in our lives, in an emotional context, and how the expression of fragments of this can be enriched through the integration of digital technologies. Developments already exist in wearable electronics and digital product design that have taken the body as a location, but in many cases such digital objects miss many of the subtleties and inimitable qualities associated with jewellery. You can find more information on the work that Jayne undertakes here:
http://www.digitaljewellery.com/

Our final speaker of the evening was Andrew Waite who introduced us to the concept of ‘honeypotting with Nepenthes. Nepenthes is a low interaction honeypot which emulates several known vulnerabilities across multiple services and protocols. It’s ultimate goal is to capture live malware samples as the honeypot is being ‘exploited’.

A honeypot server should have no legitimate services installed upon it and as such it is assumed that all of the traffic that is targeted at it is considered malicious. Running a honeypot gives you an insight into how systems are being probed and as part of a broad IT security policy they can help you to secure your network against attacks. If the honeypot is placed externally, it can provide an early warning system for attacks. Placed internally they can help identify any internal infections.

Andrew has been running his honeypot for over a year and in that time it has had over 2000 recorded attacks with over 900 unique malware specimens, the first of which was recorded within 30 minutes of gaining a live network connection!

Andrew uses this data, in combination with server logs and intrusion detection software to help predict, prevent and secure his IT network. Doing so gives him a fully rounded understanding of his IT security needs. You can read more here:
http://infosanity.blogspot.com/2009/05/may-supermondays-presentation-aftermath.html

‘If you know your enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles’ - Sun Tzu

We are very grateful to Atau, Paul and Jane and all the staff at the Culture Lab for opening their facility for such an inspiring event. We would also like to thank Northern Film and Media for sponsoring the event. Finally, thank you to Shuoling Liu for all his hard work with the video recorder!

May 29th, 2009 | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Our new image was chosen by 56% of the voters as their favourite. The image was designed by James Rutherford from Creative Nucleus. The full results are:

May 28th, 2009 | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

This month Culture Lab will be hosting Super Mondays, a strong and vibrant community of IT enthusiasts based in The North East of England who meet up once a month for a range of IT user group meetings and some unstructured discussions.

The event will start at 18:00 with tea and coffee and demonstration of several of the innovative technology projects including the ambient kitchen and surface computing.

At 19:00 we will then go upstairs where we will hear from the following speakers:

1. Patrick Olivier – Cultural Technologies
   Patrick will talk about the work of his lab at Newcastle University on cultural technologies and human-computer interaction.
2. Jayne Wallace — Meaningful Technologies
   Jayne is a post-doctoral researcher in the School of Computing Science at Newcastle University and has been developing her practice of digital jewellery design as a means of exploring how we can use digital technologies to create objects that can hold more significance and meaning for us than mobile phones and the usual gadgets. Jayne will talk about her methods, designs and how the space for digital technology design is much wider than we might at first think.
3. Andrew Waite — Honeypotting with Nepenthes
   Andrew has been running a Nepenthes honeypot for over 12 months. During this time has has collected over 800 unique varients of malware. Andrew will bring you through how he did this and more importantly why!

PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS MONTHS EVENT IS BEING HELD ON A TUESDAY!

This months event has been sponsored by Northern Film and Media.

May 8th, 2009 | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (1)

 Roxy Bramley from Northern Film and Media was first to the podium to tell us about the Digital Dockyard (www.digitaldockyard.com). The dockyard is a new social network for the North East’s new media and gaming sectors. Created in partnership with Northern Film and Media and 4iP the dockyard hopes get developers working together and perhaps pitch on some exciting projects that can be funded in part or in full by 4iP and Northern Film and Media.

 Sarat Pediredla from Hedgehog Lab was next up and he told us about the journey that he took when he decided to leave his well paid job and start developing a new suite of enterprise products, the first of which (fixx) was released a few months ago. Sarat described his seven pillars to product development (from a business side):

1. Market research – get it done! But take the results with a pinch of salt. In Sarats case the research told him that there was no need for another product like Fixx…Sarat felt that this was incorrect and went ahead anyway but he did so with open eyes!
2. Funding – developing a product takes several months, usually 6-9 months. To cover the costs of this work you will need some sort of funding, this can come in a few ways, including:
   • Debt funding (loans from banks etc)
   • Equity funding (business angel or the POC from NStar)
   • Bootstrapping (money generated from other activities such as consulting work
3. Patent – Many companies waste time and money on this area…Sarat feels that you should have a look at this area but get on with your product development rather than spending too much time and money on this area.
4. People – They are the hub of your business, choose them wisely!
5. Execution – Many product development projects fail to reach their true potential because of a lack of direction towards the end…often due to the boredom of working on the same project for such a long time. To truly succeed you need to drive through this boredom and deliver the project with enthusiasm!
6. Quality – Every aspect of the product development cycle must be developed with the highest levels of quality. Everything from the product literature, the installation process, the user interface and the reliability of the product must be perfect!
7. Customer support – this is often overlooked, but at your peril! Fanatical customer support is an extension of product quality control. If performed properly it will make your customers feel ‘warm and fuzzy’ and this will lead to more business through referral.

 Rob Mathieson from Tipstar then brought us through the steps he followed to raise the £150,000 that he needed to get Tipstar off the ground. The process started fifteen months ago when Rob came up with the idea. After some market research he found that the project needed significant development work and had some particularly expensive licensing costs. Raising cash was the only way to get his product to market.

If you need to raise money you MUST develop a business plan. No investor will even look at your project if you don’t have a very comprehensive and well researched plan. Things to consider are:

1. Market research is of paramount importance. You must understand your market and your competitors. You must find out who your customers are, how much they spend, what services they currently use and who their suppliers are. You must then use this information to locate your competitors (real or preseved) and find out everything about them. Rob recommends that you get a copy of their accounts from Companies  House to look at their finances. All of this information is needed so that you can market your product and get your potential customers to move to your services.
2. Project Plan, how are you going to deliver this? What are your milestones? These should be for development and finance.
3. Money, how much and when? Can you do this on a shoe string? If not then you need to understand how much money you need and how you are going to raise it (loan, debt or bootstrap).
4. Staff, who will you invite along your journey? True success comes to people who build a team around them. Rob recommends the “Beermat Entrerpreneur” by Mike Southon, which suggests that a business needs four people, and entrepreneur, a techie, a sales person and an accountant. Choose these wisely as you will be spending quite a bit of time with these people over the next few years! In order to get the best people it is often a good idea to give them shares in your business…this will give them the enthusiasm to deliver beyond the call of duty! Rob also recommends that you get a good accountant and pay them well for their services!

Many inventors take months developing their products and they don’t release them until they are finished. Rob believes that you should get a proof of concept up and going immediately so that you can show potential investors and business partners what you are talking about…rather than spending your time talking about vapour.

Product Architecture is key…but remember that your trade partners and investors only care about system stability and scalability…they will look at you with glass eyes if you tell them what operating system you are using or what development methodology you use. Keep it short and simple, all you need to do is convince them of your abilities without boring them with jargon.

To raise money in this market you need to be approachable, sociable, reliable and above all you must deliver upon expectations. Newcastle is a small place and the community of investors and professional advisors is very small…be careful out there!

April 30th, 2009 | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

This months Supermondays event will take place on Monday 27th April at the Bedson Teaching Center at Newcastle University. The Bedson Teaching Center is located off Queen Victoria road, you can find a map here:

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/travel/maps/navigator.php?x=7&y=3&w=4&h=4

Our speakers this month are:

1. Sarat Pediredla — Taking your idea from a napkin to real money - An insight into Software Product Development
   After working behind the desk in IT organisations for many years, where developers were constantly delegated to second-grade citizens, Sarat realised that there is a great opportunity in building a company that was centred around software developers.
2. Roxy Bramley — An introduction to the Digital Dockyard
   The Digital Dockyard is a new social network for individuals and companies working in the North East’s new media and gaming sectors.
   Created by 4iP with support from Northern Film and Media, the dockyard is, “A repository for ideas and information, bringing together the digital scene in the North East”.

3. Rob Mathieson – How to get £150,000 in 15 minutes
   A brief presentation on how Tipstar managed to raise £150,000 of capital investment. Who to talk to, what to write and how to present it. This is built on the last 15 months of experience our team has gained and how we eventually got the deal we were looking for.

This months event is sponsored by Sunderland Software City and Northern Film and Media.

April 15th, 2009 | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Chris Barber from Carrot Media was first to the podium to tell us about a project that he as recently worked on integrating an online apparel shop into the Amazon.com market place. Chris’ client was already selling their clothing products very successfully through their existing online shop and on ebay but wanted to expand their exposure.

Amazon can expose your products to huge numbers of people and using an XML feed it is easy to manage your sales, stock and returns. An added advantage to the system is that all payments are handled by Amazon…which lends credibility to the enterprise.

Once the project was in place the client was very happy to receive the first order within a few days and since then orders have kept flowing. Due to the automated nature of the system it is expected that the system should manage it’s self and that the client will be able to use a simple CMS to add, update and modify products.

But the project was not as smooth as expected; Chris was amazed at the lack of support and documentation for the project and the time that it took to get the project completed. While the actual work only took two weeks to complete it took over three months to get the answers necessary to complete the project.

Chris felt that the project was a great learning experience and judging by the questions from the audience it seems that he can now be considered an expert in this area…if you have a need to integrate an online shop to Amazon.com then you should give him a call! You can download the powerpoint presentation here.

You can fiew a video of Chris here.

Oli Wood told us about Arduino, the open source micro processing board. Oli learned to read on his first computer, a Spectrum ZX. The Spectrum XZ was remarkably easy to write functional software on. Using the Spectrum and the later BBC Model B, a whole generation of enthusiasts learnt how to change the background colour of their monitors. Since then the scene has dried up.

Arduino was developed in 2005 by a team of Italian hardware developers (Gianluca Martino, Massimo Banzi, and David Cuartielles). They became frustrated at how hard it was to find an inexpensive, powerful microcontroller to drive their arty robotic projects.

In the winter of 2005 the team produced their first prototype with an initial 200 boards after a personal investment of €3,000. Since then they have sold tens of thousands of the unit to buyers all around the world.

Arduino is intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. There now seems to be a rather healthy community of people who are using Arduino in commercial, artistic and hobbyist projects. Arduino is a cheap and stable unit which is very well supported by excellent software and a vibrant enthusiast community. These are the qualities that make Arduino an excellent tool for rapid prototyping.

Tinker.it is the official UK distributor for Arduino. The official boards sell for around £20 each but due to it’s open source status there are hundreds of cloned boards that are available from a multitude if suppliers around the world. Some of these clones are exact replicas of the original but there are a few boards with smaller form factors and some with additional components and features.

If you want to produce your own boards there are only two rules, the first is that the team has reserved the name Arduino, which it trademarked. The second rule is that you can not distribute your board on a blue background. If anyone wants to sell boards using the name or blue colour they must to pay a small fee to Arduino.

You can see a video of Oli here.

If you would like to find out more about Arduino then check out the official website here:
http://www.arduino.cc

March 31st, 2009 | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (5)

The March 30th SuperMondays event has been announced, the speakers are:

 

 

• Oli Wood – Arduino
  The Arduino hardware is an open source circuit board which lots of developers, artists and home-hackers are using to build all sorts of interactive electronic kit.  It runs the Processing.org language (amongst other thing) and lets you go from zero to winking lights in an hour.  I’ve built a few bits and pieces with it, and I’ll tell you all about them and things that other people are doing.
• Chris Barber - Trials and tribulations of an online store
  How a small online business can integrate with the world’s largest internet retailer. A discussion of the business and technology challenges when integrating with Amazon.com.
• Sarah Taylor - A true shower to cubicle story
  Sarah and Chris run Urban Digger, a Gateshead based startup company. Urban Digger is about reinventing the city guide for the 21^st century traveller. Built as a micro-blogging platform with an initial focus on major European cities, Urban Digger aims to fast track high quality, local knowledge to city visitors, enabling them to plan their time more effectively. After two years under development, Urban Digger will be launching in closed beta on March 30^th. Sarah will take you through the highs and lows of turning their crazy idea into an exciting new business and the challenges of a competitive, fast moving industry. 

 

 

You can get your free ticket here:
http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/2133871

March 14th, 2009 | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment