May #NYTM The Review!!!

Note: after this point- we’re Moving in with NYU.  See you downtown.

GoodCrush’s RandomDorm (yes I was able to test this)-

A) Still isn’t working for me.  Though I may retest, I can’t tell if this is a multi-tab eater thing.  Or it may be a University of Chicago thing?

B) I really do like you Josh, (in a funny tease you way, you’re a nice guy), but this is just a cute version of ChatRoulette if/when it does work.  Though why would I share ChatRoulette on Facebook?

C) Yes, Like many people, My college email works.  And it will still sort of work once I graduate.  Where do grad students fit into this???

Zoomino

So I saw the demo.  And now am waiting five days to see if I am cool enough for Zoomino.  Essentially it allows video linkies in your site (like little underlines, a la Zemanta, of videos, which are little popups).  And people can share them- yet, they’ll be traced back to you.   And the videos are provided contextually.

A very small neato, service.  If it works.  Contextualization = cool.  I mean, I wrote that about Zemanta and Surphace before.  It’s just one of those things that seem to need support from a larger Internet land.  It’s also not clear how this all fits together into larger internet land.  As much as people want context and to fill in the gaps of their knowledge- some information should be their explicitly.  It’s not clear what kind should or shouldn’t be.  Zoomino will probably fit into the awkward space.  Video is one of those things where you want to see it, viscerally, and fall in love with it…And Zoomino does Video.  Linkies that pop up to video, while cool, feels…eh. A nice extra?  This is something we need to work out, clearly- the next stage of look/feel of the web….

(this is older material clearly, I write this stuff in stages)

Gamechanger- so for those of us involved in little league, or high school amateur leagues (not me):  Apparently, the old system is to used aging software which you input paper ballots (yes that’s right, paper) of all the stats for baseball and softball etc, after the game.  The new system: Gamechanger.  Which has a requisite Iphone App.  And text messages to parents.  And Iframes for local papers.  Which auto updates every friggin stat.  And has figured out a revenue stream (what I don’t know).  So now you know- someone is on second base.  And if someone is or is not about to go All State RIGHT NOW if they score that double.  (This is hugely important- this could determine the next stage in MLB, since they recruit from high school)

My brother used to wrestle in a private school league.  So when are you going to introduce other sports, like lacrosse?  (Hugely important for scholarships….which is why parents obsess….)

And while I am not a baseball fan (I’m not) the potential behind this is huge.  You don’t need to charge a lot to realize there are lots of baseball/softball players doing amateur games on paper who want to keep their stats clean.  You don’t need to realize that there is a lot of sport scholarship money that rides on correct stats (all the better if it is in the real-time).  It’s the matter of lining of up who will pay for what and how much.  The data just has to be realized.  Good job on finding oddball premium data that people will pay for if displayed and made useful in the right way. Even if you are lame for being Iphone only (though kudos for realizing that Blackberries make up a larger percentage of the market….something else I have said before….)

Long Demos:

Bit.Ly- they redesigned their base page to simplify your life.  So now we have embraced the one box paradigm of shorten link and message. And it reminded me: I need to figure out what is the best way to use Bit.Ly.  I use Tweetdeck which auto-uses Bit.Ly – but that doesn’t help me very much with Bit.ly analytics with links.  Suggestions are welcome. (they were a filler, someone had to pull out because they were accepted into a pitch contest and are in a quiet period…)

SeatGeek-

Again with the Sports! (though not exclusively so, also concerts)

Let us pretend, that,….

I am buying tickets to go see the Dirty Projectors on September 11.  So I register for the website, and boom- there is a Farecast thingy in the lefthand upper corner saying- ‘Wait.’  So I wait.

In the meantime, I see a per say, “scrape”, of all the secondhand dealers of Dirty Projector tickets.  There is a slider to locate how much I want to spend on tickets (up to $200 right now.)  In theory, the center of the page should have a seating chart (this location never bothered to give one out.) so you can figure out what exactly you are paying for.

However (and this is a big however), if I search for say, Ravina: Nada.(Tanglewood, however, is cool enough to show up?)  So if you are looking for a sort of concert event, or if you are more particular in taste (Vandermark is another name that doesn’t show up, despite Ken Vandermark having won a MaCarthur Fellowship…Nor Does Zorn- and he even got mentioned on the Colbert Report…)

They also aren’t “scraping” (actually they are directly dealing with the secondary sellers, they take a small cut…). So in theory, you may be able to get a better price on that place of all things being sold, bought, argues, and being made fun of, Craigslist (buyer beware, it is Craigslist, it can be awesome, it can suck).  That and Ebay!

It works.  It found a niche.  Can they scale enough and break past even?  We shall see…  Otherwise, sure.  Why not?  I can’t think of a reason why?  My questions are largely about a sense of scale.  I don’t know the size of the market- how close are we to overvaluing/super-overvaluing these sorts of companies because there are no clear exits and no way to finance right now outside of the venture system/bootstrap system.  It’s ugly.  A company like this, which is largely about cash flow and servers, needs another way.

The company I honestly hated (and I still signed up for the closed beta for, just to be fair);

Identified.

As far as I can tell- I’m one of the few people in an 800+ person audience who is (and continues to regularly read) critical theory.  If you haven’t noticed a trend among the group of students you ideally want (I saw those Accenture and McKinsey logos, and I would bet my non-existing money that this is long term about prestige “jobs” since they hold the large campus recruitment events…being that I’m graduating from one of your competing school, natch. So I see how the game is played…and it is a hell boring game.  Oh, and I can read your credentuals- lots of banking/management consultant types. I have some amazing friends like you and then there are people who I kind of go, why did you do that with your life?).  I feel like I should show you some of the emails I get….

I’m on a famous, for those in the know list of “networked cultures, politics, and tactics.”  For reading sake, it’s good for my internet development and making me think.  You have to have tolerance, a lot of tolerance, for what will be in your inbox- it’s extremely informative for those who know how to read it, but some of the material is extremely inflammitory.

There is/was an argument going on right now about the state of realities on the internet versus life.

In one person’s email [names redacted on purpose, if you want, I can send you said famous list...Though I doubt you have the stomach for this list]^

> Nothing? Nothing at all?

Yes when we use absolutes, Facebook is our identity or Facebook has

nothing to do with our identity, this statement couldn’t be correct.

It’s well known our identities are now multicultural, of mixed

origins, globalised etc. why would we seperate out the parts of our

identity which are online simply becauce that is not part of the

‘real’ world.  It is becoming increasingly real.

> Your Facebook identity can be used to fire, convict, harrass or

> discriminate against you.

Yes and there are cases of this happening, people losing their jobs/

careers, lobbying groups putting pressure on companies/politics etc.

> Define reality. It’s subjective and there are plenty of people who’s

> social structure (friend-to-friend, dating, etc) is determined by

> their Facebook connections and communications. Data and things virtual

> are becoming reality for those people.

Yes it is and philosophy has been grapping with this for a very long

time. The problem is as a society we need at times to agree what is

reality, this often results is somewhat of a generalisation or

inaccuracies.

Let’s throw in an HR application for students!!!! I’m not sure which part I’m laughing in uncomfortable silence with.  Should I have my art piece apply?  You know, the one made by many people, of many people, rejoined by many people? (The issue, in case you miss it, I’m the element of fakeness)  Or is it the reverse issue: As much as the law wants to interfere: At the end of the day, it’s machine to machine, to patterning by HR in some joke of what is corrent as a way of filtering out candidates (even if that filter is illegal).  We already know that employers and colleges check Facebook profiles and tweets- and why should I facilitate that?  Or better yet- how?  And what should I do?

In other words OMG I’m friending you- I don’t buy it.  Why would I want to give up the pretty to you?  And while I recognize that colleges are a huge social media FAIL when it comes to jobs and recruitment, giving up your information passively to companies via the like button of Facebook tells you nothing about me or what I can do.

Perhaps once we work together (IE I’m already in a contractual work relationship)  Perhaps if I admire your design work (I think I am friends with IDEO, but I also admire the Microsoft mouse and the One Laptop Per Child, which are museum items for goodness sakes.  It’s up there with Bodoni fonts and my Chemex…nothing to do with Ideo per say, more with them as a design house..I like Alessi the same way.)  Or some other unique feature.  But in no way do you just get “liked.”

The companies I love, to be honest- I love the people in them.  I’m on good terms with people in companies and would do stuff for certain companies for the people in the companies (not the companies per say)  if the companies got huge and the people inaccessible, or said people left, why would I act for these companies?  Again, lays the facebook problem  From an HR perceptive:  You are a corporate entity, not a person, what am I supposed to say to you. “Oh JP Morgan Chase, you had a great shirt on at that college recruitment dinner.  Blue really sets off your logo.”  Why am I going to act in this way?  This also de-incentivizes a certain level of honesty and authenticity on the internet because of the “flattening of the body” problem.  Facebook, right now, only has one circle.  You, Company, are in that one circle- even if you don’t belong there.  Reality, however, has many circles of authenticity, and many circles of portrayal of the body.  Why would I screw that up?^%

(If I can figure out the exact process of how I got my first full time job through social media, I promise that one day I will give a nice junior/senior’s lecture for my college about Media and Business, or you don’t have to be That Guy to be Lucky despite the propaganda!  make your own)

And finally, even though I really can’t test, the idea I love in theory: StickyBits.

Let’s give people software that allows people to attach content to barcodes. En mass.  In a streaming way.  Apparently the first entity* (and that choice of word is on purpose) to attach content has editable privileges above and beyond everyone else (the others can only further attach- the first person can delete….).

And while Stickybits makes stickers with barcodes to go with their iphone/android app, (I’m a huffy blackberry user, hence the problem) the real genius is not in the stickers (or t-shirt if you want someone to scan your chest).  Since anyone can attach content to any barcode-what if StickyBits came pre-attached to stuff.

That’s right, pre-attached.  Every can of Coke already had a coupon attached.  Every apple. Granted, someone could come and also do Food Guerrilla attacks about the nature of High Glucose Corn Syrup in our diets- but that shouldn’t stop the fact that essentially you now have the ability for in-hand item coupons for objects, even time based (because the first scanner has editable rights above and beyond anyone afterwards), with the possibility of analytics of purchasing (Does showing pictures of people having fun in your clothing make people want to buy your clothing if you stick it in a store???) above and beyond the normal.

It’s FourSquare for objects with poorly worked out game mechanics (Though working those out is difficult, especially in the context of IR with a functional object).  Don’t say I didn’t tell you so now. Just Like I said so for FourSquare.  So to be announced: Foursquare basically opened up a space which said: The space you are in is important.  Stickybits is opening up a space about the items in that space (albeit it needs to work more on execution.  What is supposed to be happening with the items???)  Space +items= a large chunk of your identity.  Got it?  Now we apply a data layer to it.  Good (or bad depending on your politic and mood.)

A blast to the brief past:

I finally got my Parse.Ly on.  And, oddly, it sucks.  I mean it may be learning from em, but that doesn’t make it suck any less.  The reason it sucks- you don’t have any clue of the starting sources, so it feels like it is scraping from the oddest possible places (or some is odd).  Either that, or I am very poor at describing what I want.  What might be more useful- the Parse.ly interface (The adjustable RSS feeds and all that jazz) after importing an  OPML file.  (add/subtract your rss feeds and rank them after the fact….)  In the meantime, the choices feel ultra random.  And in no way adjustable.  Like what is with the weird fashion blogs?  Would it help to know that I like really high heel shoes that are plain and black and really bright red flats?  With something like leggings?  And there are no pictures in the feed.  Turnoff…(Fashion is a good test since is something that changes quickly, you want current and top quality content, and you need to see how a person versus a machine views taste…)

Onto next month (and check the announcements at www.nytm.org, not here.  I’m lame that way.

*Why entity?  Because although legally corporations are people, they aren’t people.  However, since they are the ones attaching stuff to barcodes, irrespective of the worker who does it… same with person…a person is also an entity too. Better word choice.

^% Remember the quote above.  I can’t give everyone the same face.  Some choices have to be made.  And while all faces are authentic, they are not equally authentic to everyone involved.  So I end up flattened and sort of screwed up, because certain aspects of my reality cannot be shared. Maybe I should give certain internet spaces privacy levels that you can’t get at because in fact you are about jobs.  Think on the idea that this in fact may be a space much in the way the room you are sitting in is a space.  Where is it?  Does it have certain privacy barriers to it- do similar spaces have them?  What makes this space unique or not unique?  Think on it.

^Yes Andy, I may be a capitalist, but I read marxists and post/non-marxist (but people who come out of the critical tradition).  They’re a useful way of understanding the world because of where they locate the idea of the production of things versus people.  Makes cultural production a more nuanced idea, and makes the idea of media and mediation much more pronounced in some very specific ways (since people are beyond their labor, then what are they and how do they interact?  Besides, Ayn Rand doesn’t seem to really like kids, and they are a long term economic necessity.  Even if I don’t know how I feel about me having kids…especially right now….unmarried and unsure about life!)

Two weeks to hand in work! Good luck to me!

Related articles by Zemanta

• The NY Tech Meetup Says Goodbye to FIT (nextny.org)