In the second of our series where we look into the digital lives of key new media players, Yoz Grahame, now at Linden Lab, fondly remembers his Sinclair ZX80, shares what makes him scream and recalls who has inspired him along the way.

Name:
Yoz Grahame.

Personal website or blog:
Website: yoz.com
Blog: cheerleader.yoz.com

Day job:
I've been Ning's Developer Advocate for the past year, but now I'm moving on to something new: Tools Program Manager at Linden Lab (the Second Life people).

How would you describe yourself to the world, after all we're all more than a job title?
Technological butterfly. Topical mayfly. Typical gadfly.

So, what got you started in the industry?
I've been interested in computers and the potential of networking them together for as long as I can remember - my dad hooked me with BASIC programming on our Sinclair ZX80 when I was six - possibly a bad move on his part, as he wanted me to be an accountant.

I started a CompSci degree at UCL in 1993, and it was absolutely the best time to do it. A bunch of us were rooting around in the department file systems and turning up all kinds of interesting applications, the most notable of which was NCSA Mosaic, the first graphical web browser. It all escalated from there.

We were lucky to get jobs with employers who actively encouraged us in our eagerness to experiment with new internet technology. A bunch of us started at Delphi Internet in 1994, which became Delphi Creative, then LineOne. I moved on from there to Douglas Adams's startup The Digital Village, where amongst other things I worked on h2g2.

You've probably seen more of the internet  than most.  During that time who has inspired you?
I had a close and wonderful friend who showed me, in all of the amazing things that she created online, that what all of this is about is connecting with people in an honest and real way, helping them, and making them happy. If that's not the end result of what you're doing, then you're doing it for the wrong reasons. It made her a close and wonderful friend to hundreds, and thousands more know and love what she created.

That's a great deal to live up to. What projects that you're working on at the moment?
Tragically, the huge amount of stuff that's been happening at me in the past couple of years - marriage, kid, startup jobs, etc. - has forced me to put many projects aside. I was quite involved in a couple of things that are now part of MySociety, such as (what used to be) FaxYourMP. The most fun thing I worked on recently was some random bits on Graham Linehan's sitcom for Channel 4, The IT Crowd.

Nonetheless, I still cling desperately to the idea that I may yet produce something substantial beyond the processes of natural biology. Most recently, I was trying to convince people that I could write a bestseller about the history of Winamp. Nearly a whole person believes me.

Is that your favourite application ever?
... The thing about Winamp is that it practically created a whole new category of software: media players with entertainment as the focus of their design. The skinnability, the visualiser, the Gnutella incident and the rest of the Nullsoft story [interviewer starts nodding off]... hey, I'm talking to you! Hey!

Okay, if Winamp's your favourite, what one bit of software would you put in Room 101?
Just one? I'm part of a loud, bitter and hate-filled online community that devotes itself to listing the thousands of candidates. My own contributions are here and here.
[Yoz's list is indeed endless, top when this editor checked: Firefox 2.0]

Is there anything else that makes you rant?
Blinkered Mac zealots are a regular one, though they've been a bit more tolerable since Mac OS turned into an actually-decent operating system. Also, web production agencies who look for excuses to do every project as an expensive pure Flash atrocity, when what their clients actually wanted was a simple website.

And the most annoying piece of jargon used in digital media?
"Mainstream media", often shortened to "MSM". Many bloggers continually and loudly whine about it, then repeatedly fall into the potholes that traditional journalism has spent decades learning to avoid.

Going back to what you're up to...what gives you most joy?
This sounds horrifically worthy, but I love helping people with technology. At Ning a large chunk of my job was answering support mail, and it was simultaneously deeply fulfilling and mind-numbingly dull. I love it when I can knock up a Perl script in half an hour that will save someone else a week of drudgery. I love creating quick demos of things that other people didn't realise were possible - or, at least, that easy.

And the least joy?
Being eaten by a walrus. Also, stuff that just doesn't work, the overall set of "computers and their software" fitting fairly snugly here. I love what you can do with computers, but by god, the objects themselves are hateful things.

Lots has changed since you were at UCL, with social networks, rather than simply computer networks, all the rage. Which do you use?
The London and Bay Area geek communities. I also speak the binary protocols of the Elders of Zion. (Oh, on the internet?) Right now, Flickr and Twitter are the only ones with which I do anything more than play people-pacman.

So, who is your "must read" blogger then?
Jon Udell. Until this month he was a columnist and blogger at Infoworld. He's the web technology equivalent of the best kind of TV chef or DIY expert - he'll show you how to put together web services in fast and easy ways with fascinating results. He's also a talented and amiable writer with a remarkably wide technology scope, who also manages to steer well clear of ego wars and ranting. He's just been hired by Microsoft, so from now on will be blogging on his own site.

And which websites do you find indispensable?
Gmail - more than the rest of Google put together
Bloglines
IMDB
Wikipedia
del.icio.us
Flickr

What distracts you?
Playing Flash games and trawling through the archives of my favourite humourists (Achewood, The Onion, Old Man Murray) are activities that regularly dive-bomb my productivity. Right now I am dangerously orbiting the black hole that is multiplayer dicewars.

Taking all that into account, do you still do old media?
TV: Doctor Who, House, Mitchell & Webb, Studio 60 - all via the magic of BitTorrent. Since arriving in San Francisco I seem to be buying second-hand books on a daily basis; the best of them was David Mitchell's Black Swan Green.

What do you think is the next big thing in digital media?
Social software that also works as a platform, so that the community can evolve it without waiting for the owners. The primary reason why Second Life is doing so well is that every day there are hundreds of new features, all of which have been created by residents using the built-in programming language. This is not a new concept; MOO has worked this way since 1990.

Finally, if you didn't work in this industry, what would you do?
Long-distance lorry driver on Tristan de Cunha.

Interview by Kathryn Corrick