Since I’ve had my iPhone I’ve become interested in the names people give their wifi networks, the way that the phone brings them up for you as you walk around made that inevitable. So I took to writing them down - I found that I was interested in what it said about the thoughts of who set them up. ‘Secure’, ‘Home’, or peoples names – or those who cared so little they left the default on. I collected these ones here on my normal travels around Birmingham (UK) in January and February of 2008 – the larger ones in the ‘cloud’ do represent multiple networks with the same name, but I haven’t done that scientifically.

I think it works quite well as a poster - I uploaded the graphic to a cafepress store so I can buy one when I get some royalities of some of my other shops.

Since leaving the BBC at the start of the month I’ve been working on an incredibly interesting project that is trying to build a huge photo album of the West Midlands* in 2008 - The Big Picture.

The Big Picture is a project for Arts Council West Midlands, being run by Audiences Central (who have employed me), and is in a very modern way based heavily on Flickr to hold and organise all the photos we’re gathering. The site - inthebigpicture.co.uk - has been put together by 3Form, and is doing a lot of clever stuff with the API, it can be used completely as a front end for Flickr and includes some smashing geotagging features.

It launches today, so go and have a look for yourself.

I’m working as Online Editor, which so far has included a lot of copywriting and decisions about how people might use the site, but I’m hoping to be able to work more off-site after launch as we’ve got some fun stuff planned for Facebook and other social media sites - and also in the real world too.

For launch week we’re out and about across the region - Wolverhampton today, ending in Brum on Friday afternoon, full details on the site - do drop by and say hello if you’re around.

*The West Midlands in this case includes Stoke, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Hereford and Worcester, Coventry and Warwickshire as well as the more traditional Birmingham and The Black Country.

The Tate have launched Tate Player a range of rare film and audio files from its archives online.  Artists in conversation as well as archive video pieces - including some classic Gilbert and George. Sadly not embedable, but fully RSSed up.