NYTech Meetup, The January Edition

Alright people, the New York Tech Meetup in ~4000 Words:

1) NYC Way

It’s a multi-app or multi applications within an application

I’m not an Iphone User and my blackberry, Hulda, (It’s the name of a biblical prophetess) is broken.  All that being lovely nice and said, even if I had an Iphone, how much of the multi-app is going to even be applicable in 6 months from now (health code violations as a start…)  At the end of the day, is this the best presentation of this sort of information, knowing where phones are going in the future, to the Internets and beyond! (ok that’s my idea of a joke)

And while the App is a money maker through its cash flow now, it still makes me wonder if people are thinking about the short versus long term plan of tech.  Make a product for now that is a game changer at the tips, but see that it has room to grow into something that essential for society.  Grow into your product.

2)TaxiHack

Tweet or email them taxi medallion number or the driver’s taxi licence number.  And then you get a stream -you can the drivers, the company, comments about taxi companies, etc.

They actually pull up that someone lost a camera in the middle of this.  This is the perfect opportunity for them, why didn’t they take it- they could have helped someone find a lost camera in taxi 4G60. (it’s the very last taxi brought up by Randy Meech)  And we’re all staring at it live.

It’s really obvious that not only is this a great lost and found system (we were just had it’s potential stuck in our faces), but it is even better if they can repackage the information and sell it as an alert system for the police and taxi companies.  If they can convince that a citizen’s initiative is better than what they are doing now (which may be nothing)

3)Yogoer

I happen to like this, because I like Yoga.  I’m already biased.  And I sent it to a friend, who also likes doing Yoga with her mother-in-law.  And I think their business model of booking classes directly is awesome.

But they need explanations of types of Yoga (I like yoga, and there are many types of Yoga)  And they need a better map, because I want to know more than just Kulandani out there.   There are many many different variations of Yoga (as yoga people know) Getting the nitty-gritty on that would be good because right now Manhattan looks like it has been run over by Hatha and only Hatha.  (Though knowing dance studios is very cool, I’m tempted once I find a job to take up ballet 1x a week)

Also, guys at Yogoer, I don’t know why you think you’ve met me, but you’ve never met me.  But I like you’re purple Jacket? It’s purplicious?

4) Drop.Io Congratulations on Presslift.  I did sign up.  I’m thinking of using it in a non-traditional way to get art out there.  New Media is Difficult, especially when you do art that talks about the culture jamming nature of the Internet.  This looks useful… but I won’t say for what (if you are hackable in a détournement sense, you are good in my moral world, and I tend to not be mean.  I get told I’m too nice actually for my own good as a rule, when it comes to art.)

The longer reviews:

5) BlazeTrak -I was actually surprised by this one.  They are cash flow positive.  I took a look at everything I could before the new York Tech Meetup and I just couldn’t imagine anyone using this.  This has to do with me being unhip in that sort of world.  Apparently I listen to too much classical (I promise this is slowly changing, but I will never give up my John Adams, He is a rockstar in his own way)  I apologize to the Gods of the Startups.  It seems they found a model that works by streamlining a kind of information searching that people really need.  Good job for figuring out how information flows.  May more people figure this out quickly.

One thing: My notes have two thoughts, briefly summed up as “What about Joseph Flom” (Joseph H. Flom was the first associate in Skadden Arps Slate Meager & Flom, and the last living name partner, and one of the most successful M & A lawyers in the United States.  If you’ve read Outliers by Malcom Gladwell, you would know that Skaaden Arps Slate Meager & Flom, now known as just Skadden Arps or just Skadden, was started because Jewish and Catholic lawyers could not get jobs at the original White Shoe firms, such as Sullivan & Cromwell.  Skaaden Arps & Flom ended up becoming a very white shoe firm during the late seventies and early eighties when hostile mergers started to happen, and only Jewish lawyers knew how to write the documents for them. Skaaden is now one of the largest lawfirms in the world.) I could imagine someone who had his/her heart set on being a lawyer, particuarly a white shoe lawyer, wanting to meet Joseph Flom to judge a legal brief.  This is especially true if you are not the top of your class at the top law school, or not even in law school yet.  A fake legal brief would be helpful here.

Same with more obscure forms of music.  Not everyone wants to go into hiphop.  What if my dream was to sing opera, or join a dance company, and I have no access to auditions because I live in the Appalachians?  What then?  I’ve actually been told I should sing opera (I’m not going to, I have no interest.)  They also have to scout talent just like hip-hop, and trust me, it seems to be hard to find people with dynamic range and that sound really loud on a stage that you can train from here to the ends of the earth.

Not that they should expand now, but a thought to think about.

6) Artlog – Yes the girl in the pink-red jacket is me who asked that question is me.

They went to me later and said “There is a lot of duplication of their content in the New York art space.” Sort of. I spent half an hour two days ago looking for an RSS feed.  And they’re up against me. I really don’t want to be in their position.

Here is why:  The last major piece I did (as both good and bad as it went, some things were really good some things were not based off my crit), was on Facebook. It sort of had independent consciousness of their own or its own (one participant requested a multiple pronoun to name themselves.  The project continues primarily in both english and Esperanto, which was not chosen by me… and it does some very strange things on its own.  If you want to join, leave a message at the bottom, we’ll hook you up to doing mass conceptual art on Facebook.)That’s right, Facebook.  And there is a quiet project going on on Blogger right now (which I should be working on)  Welcome to Net.Art and New Media.  Be very afraid of a reviewer with both business sense, a head for media theory, a head for how technology sort of works, and a head for the art world.

Although I signed up for the site, I really can’t say I am going to post links to it. On a personal level, I would rather use Facebook and Twitter and get stuff from Blogs, websites, and some very old listhosts in my field of Art. (That’s New Media if you haven’t figure it out.)

First lesson about the artworld: You are going to need people to post links: I don’t care about Diane Arbus.  The galleries do because she’s established and has been to auction or the secondary markets. (In Diane Arbus’s case, she’s actually been to auction, but that may not be the case for everyone.) Only being unloaded on the secondary markets is kind of bad in a way.  It means that no price is going to be publicly established (That’s the textbook economic explanation of an auction.)  It does mean though, that you are desirable enough for both a primary and a secondary market, that you haven’t made enough stuff, despite being alive, and that people want to predict that the stuff you will make next will be as good or better than what you made previously. And you can tell, if you are educated in the field.  The people who are being educated in the field though, especially on what is newer, are like me, and they don’t care about Diane Arbus.  Or if they do, they are photographers  So it means you are stuck trying to figure out who is doing what when for whom and what links you should be posting where for when before you are going to get any traffic.  Because otherwise we don’t care.  Sorry?

Second lesson: The links I do care about are often very insider links.  That deal with my field of art.  But no one there will probably like (though some coders would: They think FourSquare is the best thing.  Blast Theory pulled this off in 2004.  Or the bomb in this page by Jodi.org. (the link is valid, and I am not telling you where the bomb is.)  Or that the first virus written in Python was released at the Venice Bienneale by 0100101110101101.org. (Here is a picture of a screenshot of the virus’s code) And I am sure lots of people in the New York Tech Meetup would love hanging out here for a day (and you can because of the on-call program. How many techies would not want to learn how to use a 3d Milling Machine in exchange for doing a days worth of PHP?) When the art world actually starts birthing those people, your website looks like fun new toys to play with: That’s a bad thing.  A really bad thing.  It makes you vulnerable to someone who is willing in life to take up a very activist stances on art and technology and their intersections, and willing even late in life (when it comes to learn craft, such as coding) to take you down for the sake of art in some way, especially because parts of art, especially art on the internet, are politicized.  If you don’t believe me, look up the Electronic Disturbance Theater, who made something known as FloodNet for DOS attacks that are theatricalized.    Get out if you don’t want to play dirty with their politics because you will eventually have to coexist with people who are technologically better than you (and me), and are willing to drive hard to some end that you may find crazy.

Be aware also that artists who can compute are now joining the staffs of comp sci departments in sort of weird ways: NodeBox has artists on staff who are experts in computer programming because of what happened with Processing. (No one really really realized before Processing that yes, you really should develop a fully fledged language for creating images.  It is so damn helpful to learn programming that way, really, I promise.) Dave McClure even is recently admitting there is a drive now for artists in the startup scene, but if someone like me is looking at the world quite differently, you should be wary. There is an actual reason:  As Marshall Mcluhan Says:

The serious artist is the only person able to encounter technology with impunity, just because he is an expert aware in the changes in sense perception.

Understanding Media

(And I should make that a personal quote)

Third lesson: I’m not a Marxist, although I do rely on some Marxist/crit theory texts. (Why yes, I did just link you to a free book.  Why yes, if you do look up the Critical Art Ensemble, you will find out that Steve Kurtz was arrested for Bioterrism for preparing artwork with his wife who then suddenly died.  The case was thrown out because there was no known cause to the death and it was really not him.)  I’m pretty damn capitalistic, although I recognize the Marxist critiques of vision and means of production and human mode.  Not getting into that though.

It is important here to recognize that what everyone secretly cares about are not the Primary Galleries, but the auction houses, the secondary Galleries particularly the small ones, and the pop-up student/smaller-time curator run gallery spaces in some strange place in Brooklyn.  The page current at the top features Cheim & Read, and the roundup I got today also is showcasing some very “traditional” artspaces such as Exit Art.  You really need to start having some art leverage to be showing there.  And those people rarely publish prices.  Even if they do, the prices are not the real prices, if you donate work to somewhere prominent, like the Walker Art Center, that makes the price fluctuate.  Same if the artwork shows somewhere important- which is how you get into a good primary dealer (that’s why we love critics, who are starting to seriously move to blogging and discussion board, but I’m not telling you where.  You’re not l33t enough, yet.)

Guess what, maybe if you are an amazing MFA student at the top programs you’ll be there, but highly doubtful.  Yeah, not going to help you right now.  If you want to showcase something else, you need to be connecting where the prices are being made, the very first purchases as the pop-ups/student led galleries, and the secondary galleries.  And you would have to break taboo and publish the prices of what is being sold for for real by the galleries.  That would freak people out.  A lot.  You never publish real purchase price from galleries.  Ever.  And that would actually turn art into an investment.  (Which you may not want it to be…)  You’ll then find out that three-quarters of the stuff in Bushwick is worthless, or complicatedly priced, and that cultural production is not simple at the least.  If you are going to make a system, that is hackable by part of the art community is a variety of ways (don’t get me started),   (It’s one of the reasons I’m choosing a medium in which I can partially reject the gallery system.  Even though I am aware of the need to aestheticize more fully my imagination, I don’t have to act on every need to bow to the galleries, my work doesn’t have to be there to exist, since some of it deals with consciousness of the web itself.)

That’s why I asked what what I asked.  In no real way are they responding to the economics of the artworld, the artists, the galleries, anyone really beyond the primary dealers and maybe the museums.  Diane Arbus will still be pretty at the end of the day, that doesn’t drive the market, and anyone building an application to do anything for this market, has to drive its money.  Sorry guys.  At least I’m super honest.  And thank you for being honest with me afterwards afterwards.  It is a frustrating space to be in, everyone knows it, but if you are honest and saying you are aiming for the art consumer:

Define art consumer as people who buy art in its various types (that includes people who could buy my weird facebook profile and isolate it for the end of time, or all the material relating to it)  That market is skittish and wants someone else to tell them what is awesome, which is why the prices at auctions, the secondary market, being featured in a  big gallery or museum, and major critic write-ups become so important.  If you can skip the last two-three parts by getting the no-names, who functionally are existing on blogs and popup art fairs (and not art fairs like Blast Miami, damn you) so that people who want to buy, can see what prices they should be paying.  Basic Economics.  Reveal Prices- get cheaper, get fairer.  That makes people happy! And lets people enter the market more easily!

Really, lets just expose deep secrets of the artworld, which is sort of the point of this website underneath the muck.  It is not to socially network, the artworld is not out to do that (we can do that fine on our own, and we don’t need yet another site to do that with).  Besides, for those in the system OneArtworld already took your niche and filled it years ago quietly the way the artworld likes it.  It lists a few blogs here and there, primary gallery listings, etc.  And yes, they publish Christie’s and Sotheby’s pricings….with analysis. And to boot, it is not flashy and not socially networked, so I don’t have to get into stupid arguments with the Stuckists in the US at some stupid event because they can’t track me.  (I can draw and you can’t read. I drew figure, I’m conceptually based in figure and space. And I can teach myself how to paint, I was using gouache in some of my drawings. :-p All in jest I promise.) Yup…don’t say the insider didn’t warn you off…

7) Speakertext filled an Obvious Need.  A really obvious need.  And they have a business model somewhere in there obvious need filling.  And I like the fact that they paid their engineering team with phones. They are cheapskates who know their engineering team well enough to know how to deal with sunk costs and know what people want and what they will do to get it.  Always good in a startup.

I’m slightly concerned about the pricing scheme, I mean what they are doing is really obvious with the text.  But right now they are free, and farming out transcription to Mechanical Turk.  So essentially they are making no money.  Maybe with long videos they should charge money- past a certain point of length? Like after 20 minutes, we will charge you for the links. But what is interesting that they’ve essentially created something that is absolutely neccessary for the web to function well with video.  But I have no idea how to make it work monetarily.  That’s bad.  Also Flash is still a little iffy when it comes to SEO.  So I don’t know how the links inside the video are going to work, though definitely the ones outside are really cool.  People will pick up on that.  But I’m not sure from a design standpoint I want to see the text, I just may want to use the text as a placeholder for the linkage, Maybe just pop it out.  Otherwise I just want to see the video, the text is distracting when I want to see what is going on.

All fixable problems, but still.  Either way, they are starting to break down the problem that yes, I fidgit with video just like everyone else, and yes, sound is a good way of pulling a video apart. (Though not all vidoes can be pulled apart via the transcripts.  A lot of videos made in the art world are like that, it will be sounds and scenes, but there may be very little script or no scripts at all, just sound, or perhaps no sound.)

There is definitely some sort of speciality version or something in here that can be pulled away from this, maybe a special version for Hollywood where the video and the text are seperated so that they can be better edited on the cutting room floor?  So now I can jump around pre-cut because of flash and see the scene and decide what I like?  And you pay extra hush hush money?

Something is in here, I just have no idea what.  I can tell you it may not be for the publishers of blogs, it may be for some totally different audience who also deals a lot with videos.  They may not need to link back and forth inside a video as badly as someone making a film. (It’s a painful medium to work with once the pieces are really tiny)

And then there is UDorse. Ok so I can totally believe there is an architecture site running putting picture endorsement labels on the site.  I think the technology is useful, the concept is interesting, (I signed up for it to try it, I don’t believe in just sitting there) but there is something gimmicky about it, something ghetto about seeing the tagging inside the photograph, (literally, there is a logo placed in the photograph) There is something also very sketch feeling about being so directly marketed to, and you can tell too easily with the tagging.  The tagging and game element is too marketing oriented and coupon-y because it is so obvious from that tagging is so clearly there.

Flickr also has most of the tagging functionality both within and without a photo.  It’s not clear that I need yet another photo engine.  I mean how many places do I need to stick photos (yes I know about redundancy.) Though the idea of a game around photography is really important as a brand building idea, why does it have to be through a new product,and why does that product have to have a “steal this tag” element.

I mean you essentially could build the same game inside facebook using the photos there and have it be a scavenger hunt.  With no stealing, and a lot of teamwork and building up of your friendship network instead.  Which would be interesting for a marketing company because it would show how far people would go to do some action or get some item, and show how far apart or close people really are.

That’s just me though.  Really.

Also General Tech Meetup Announcements.

WNYC is looking for volunteers to do Tech and Journalism.  It looks like fun.  They have grant money  and it looks like lots of fun.  Plus, they had by far the best presentation.  That was a great slideshow. Anyway www.wnyclabs.org.

Next Month is in Conjunction with Social Media Week, and is a funeral for social media.  Unlike Scott Heiferman, I want to see an actual coffin and a funeral procession if we can find a coffin to borrow.

Today is the last day to vote for the NYCBigApps competition, 5pm eastern.  The announcement was to Vote Early, Vote Often, but I think she has the wrong city.

(That’s Chicago, baby. I don’t think Blago would let you live it down.  FYI, Chicago is starting up there own Tech Meetup, and they probably would want friendly advice.  Leave a comment if you want to be connected to them, or find their meetup group.  They’re having Jason Fried of 37Signals speak next.)

NYClothingDrive.org is on. They ask for a small donation, the money goes to NYCares.  They will pick up your clothing.  FYI, for those interested, the most efficient way to drive between locations is a very famous computing problem, as explained to me by my friend Ioana.  (She is one of those people driven by theoretical computing…)

And that’s a wrap!  Have a wonderful January and a wonderful New Year!

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