Further to my last post, one aspect of bluejacking does interest me. A number of the innovations heralded in the next few years involve the practice of hooking together people who may not know each other, but are physically nearby. For instance, look at multiplayer Bluetooth gaming and the N-gage: the idea that people will sit on the trains looking to play games against new opponents is commonplace.

Technically, this is possible now. But what social conventions will we build around this? What mechanisms will we use to advertise the fact that we are interested in playing games with (or sharing media with, or learning more about) people around us who we don't know? And how will we politely request these contatcs?

Today, unsolicited interruptions from strangers via phones exist in the form of SMS spam - and are understandably unpopular. If my phone rings and gets my attention, distracting me from my train of thought or the newspaper I'm reading, will I be any less annoyed if the source of this interruption is nearby?

Bluejacking is interesting because it'll give us the first clues as to how people feel about these kinds of interruptions and how they'll react to them. Of course it won't give us the full picture - but we'll learn a little, which can't be a bad thing.

Update: "The useful mechanisms we've developed to help us play online with strangers, especially in MMPOGs, don't translate so well when our real-life bodies and legal identities are on the line. I wish I knew how to politely request gameplay without freaking someone out, or accept such a request without feeling a little creeped out myself. The problem is not, as Matt Jones suggests, just a question of manners -- although an etiquette of public computer-mediated contact with strangers is a good start. It's a question of physical vulnerability, and how close we will allow virtual strangers to get before we start slugging." - from Confectious

I've not written for nearly a month now, and I've really missed it. Not because I particularly relish writing a public journal, but because I'd taken for granted how useful this weblog has been to *me* - as the "outboard brain" that folks like Cory and Chris talk about, as a point of contact (which I think Joi Ito has mentioned), and as a space where I can stick up my blatherings and get interesting feedback from a wide range of people - some of whom I know, some of whom I've never met.

So, one fresh install of MovableType later, here I am. I've not had an opportunity to play with importing all of Radio Userlands old content, opting instead to just leave the web pages it created lying about on the server... and I'll be putting in a bit more effort design-wise as and when I get the chance.

Other plans include putting more effort into writing individual posts, rather than just chucking up lists of links, and clearly delineating the personal stuff which is undoubtedly of little interest to most people coming here. I'm also planning to work out some new categories for the site: the old weblog had practically every post falling into the "tech" category, to the point where it was nearly meaningless.

I'm also wondering, as I type this, what difference the change in weblog tools will make to my writing...