On Posting and Life

By Shana | Published: June 24, 2010

While techically I am in the middle of reviewing the last NYTM (yes I did see that smashed IPAD, that was great, we should do that again!), I realized it has been a while since I have posted.

Part of the reason, I’ve been moody.  Graduating and it’s uncertainity is hard on me.  It’s also hard because the way to deal with how I graduated is making it hard to keep to a daily schedule.  I’m slowly creating one for myself.

Part of the reason is I probably need to have wordpress attached to me- to capture what I am thinking when I am thinking it.

Part of the reason: I really needed a break.  How did I know that: I got sick, with bronchitis, basically from the day of the NYTM (or right before, hard to tell) for another two weeks.  My mother got pnemonia at the same time.  I don’t think I would have been sick if it wasn’t for feeling worn down.

However, I feel Like I am back.  So here is to being back.  Now to figuring out how this works into my life.  If you have tips, pass it on.

Posted in Random | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Art for LULZ

By Shana | Published: June 12, 2010

Note: Now I am going to think of way to really put this in practice.  I hate galleries, I like the idea of media phreaking as an artist.  It’s something I would do not as a gallery professional.  Frankly I would take my art anonymous before anything.  I think it would work better.  I really hate this idea of process process go into gallery process some more.  Not subversive enough.

(Galleries do not promote something about anonymous land, nor about the idea that most things you see do have a pornographic element to it.  They just put all that back in, by being very pornographic about image and by taking down anonymity of art people.)

Technology is for the LULZ.

By that, I mean the LULZ are part of the essential nature of technology is set up in such a way that its essential problems are often uncovered through a somewhat antagonistic social lens which helps us understand technology. . As we grow away from industrialization as a society, large questions of personal participation and how we interact with others start to involve technology. Consumption, its creation, its participation, and its explanation become the Modus Vivendi to understand technology: It is the starting point for the vast majority of individual uses of technology. By doing so, we can help place technology in a more complete framework about its everyday uses and misuses by everyday people.

Conceptual pop feminist artists like Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer start pointing us in directions to analyze technology. The texts they use (such as Kruger’s
“I shop, therefore I am” and Holzer’s “anything is a legitimate area of investigation”) point to how weak yet how strong the viewer is in relationship to the society s/he inhabits. They poke fun at how there are many actions the viewer can take, yet the structure of society makes such action by an individual, alone, pointless. The individual has yet to encounter the other.
Conceptual web artists take this message further: 0100101110101101.org make art through engaging a wide variety of anonymous users in prankster tricks where only inaction is the inherent point. NO FUN(2010) and Vaticano.org (1998) both point to the inability of the vast majority of users to really act in the face in the face of a disturbance of their functional reality.
Other net.art practitioners such as Jodi.org and Blast Theory are still working within a paradigm in which recreating and guiding the viewer through artificial reality to point out the lack of choice with actions. Jodi chooses tactical meanderings and hidden messages: The individual still encounter alones. It is Jodi’s perspectives on the web, and one has to take apart their work to understand it. Blast Theory chooses to move the web into a constructed reality that encounters real space through GPSs. While innovative in turn, it does not point to the reality constructed here by the vast as of yet.
a new generation of artists, such as Mark Beasley and jonCates of criticalartware, Brian Piana and Jason Sloan have noticed what Henry Jenkins, Manuel Castells, Lev Manovich, and Lawrence Lessig have noted: Within those limits placed upon us by society, the act of recombining other pieces of what we already take part of is potent- that recombining work is inherently critical, even if it is only local. Their work starts to move us away from the act of being “alone” in which we are with “others” vis a vis the data we share.

Netmarenetdreams.net takes this idea to a whole new level by collectivizing the idea of sharing by making a gallery of found and made net objects every year, even if the location is “unreal.” Miltos Manetas repeats this trick for the Venice Biennale, which had an Internet Pavilion for the first time this past year. Art becomes a shared decision of a community through re-combinatory means. Alone, these works mean nothing, once gathered, they have artistic aura again despite that they are infinitely accessible to the public and shareable by that public. Context for links becomes everything- however choice is always factored in through the fact that this is a community of artists.

However, for the vast majority of people on the Internet, what is meant when engaged in sharing is by no means clear. While we share content, and engage in collective activity, most of it is still in accordance to some sort of predetermined path, a passive one oriented towards consumption. In that, we are not much further removed from previous technologies, where we are told what reality is by those far above us who make it. When we recombine it, we generally recombine it on their terms.

Traditionally, crackers for the LULZ, from the likes of 4CHAN, hacked material for the sake of humor about the situation described above, on the unwilling creators and consumers who floated along a given path, seemingly choiceless.

In an odd twist of fate, their darkness, their need to just lash out at consumption for the sake of drama, points to how one can point out the very disruption consumptive technologies cause. Technology and its consumption cause structure to exist in society. It creates inherent drama as we adapt to structure and that structure adapts to us, as we try to find space to be expressive within the choices of more powerful creative entities. When we put data out there, we both reinforce and undermine its power, if we are aware of the oddity of the drama. The LULZ dramatizes, and points to the drama of consumption and creation-it points to the awkwardness of the very existence of consumption and participation, and how there are always alternative choices if one thinks and grabs holds of others. The audience has to encounter and react. One could not cause the drama if it were not inherent to the materiality of technology, which it infinitely bends by many people. By pointing out that it is disruptable and disruptive, one realizes,

Technology is for the LULZ.

Related articles by Zemanta

Posted in Art, Media Theory, Metaphor | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

DNS and Speech

By Shana | Published: June 9, 2010

I just received an email from OpenDNS.  I use (by myself, natch) their home service to configure my DNS, with Google as a fallback.  In it was the following message:

This is big: One out of every three public schools in the United States is now using OpenDNS’ award-winning Web content filtering, security and DNS resolution services. We couldn’t be more thrilled at this unprecedented adoption. OpenDNS is the best performing and most affordable way to secure a network and what better validation than use by schools, for which Internet safety is of the utmost importance.

And I realized something extremely important.  I grew up in an environment without massive web filtering, back in the age of portals.  As a result, I was allowed to receive the following on my computer and on my school computers (despite it being a fairly religious school):

 

…

It’s ironic that you used a metaphor of death to describe the consequences of including gay/lesbian/bisexual/questioning information on your district’s site. Gay and lesbian teenagers commit suicide at two to three times the rate of their heterosexual classmates, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. A 1991 study at the University of Minnesota found that out of 150 lesbian and gay young people surveyed, 30 percent of them had tried to kill themselves at least once as teenagers. On the “lighter side,” there’s also the verbal and physical abuse of out gay high schoolers and those merely suspected of being queer.

…

It’s incredibly ironic, that as technology gets better, this question from the web of 1999 might not even be seen by a high school student in web 2020.  It also speaks hugely about how we as a society are harnessing the web: we can now shut others’ information out at will if someone uses a connection we are providing.

What’s hard about this selection of information is that we eventually prevent certain groups from understanding certain types of information.  Already I am having a harder time finding the research papers I used to read for fun on the internet.  They are becoming paywalled en mass.  However, I am finding more references to various types of material, and more citizens research.  It’s a difficult, brave new world.

As odd as this sounds, will information overflow cause a new sense of class and education: where some people get educated in a new set of values and others don’t?  Or alternatively, will the shut-out process mean better vetting of material and a die-off of older cultural artifacts (like the one of this letter writer.  There was a NYTimes editorial about how in the US GBLT+ relationships are viewed as morally acceptable over 50% of the time in polling for the first time.)

We shall see.  And we’ll definitely see what students will consume.  Morality be damned or saved.

Posted in Ideas | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

On Taxes

By Shana | Published: June 9, 2010

I’m going to post about the New York Tech Meetup Later. (they delayed it because it is internet week)

Right now, it’s all on taxes.  There has been enough talk between such a variety of different people (some in the tech world, some not) about taxes.  In the tech world, there seems to be a lot of worry about if certain reformations would be passed that would effectively takes cuts out of VC funds to do funding because of the way income tax is done.

I find it an issue that I only vaguely understand.  It’s not that I don’t understand the ideas of carried interest being treated different for tax purposes than ordinary income.  (I do.)  It’s like most Americans, taxes are really boring.  Not only are they really boring, they are excessively complicated.  They are so complicated that on the Federal level, if you think you may take too many deductions, you must calculate twice (alternative minimum tax rate).

To me, that’s a sign of a system out of control.  When only ~50% of your population pays taxes (federal, I have no idea how state and local taxes work, and this may not include sin taxes or sales taxes which are attached to items at purchase time)

Everyone has to pay taxes:  It should ideally be a small amount.  Why- because everyone should be partipating in things involving this country.  If you want a standing army, you got to pay for it.  If you want a road, you got to pay for it.  And it is not fair to say that just because some people get more use that they should pay for it all (perhaps they should pay more, but all, that’s silly.)  I hope that this country is made up of mostly nice people.

That being said: I think largely we are able to function the way we are is because our tax system is really messed up.  By really messed up I mean the following:

1) we start out with a base rate:

2) you take a ton of deductions

3) you may or may not need to calucate ATM

4) you hope all is well and pay your taxes

Why is there a step 2 and 3?  And what does that tell you about step 1?  Probably that the rates at step 1 are too high for everyone!  Further, it tells you that taxes are extremely complicated to do (another overhead problem).  It makes otherwise good citizens very stressed about taxes- they end up paying other people to help them pay their taxes.

That money, that is going to pay accountants (not that accountants are bad people), could have been spent on other areas of the economy (or altenatively, on a much flatter tax structure)  Instead, we pay legions of people to help us pay/not pay taxes.  And that makes me want to rid myself of a curl or two.  This all could be so much simpler.  We could all get a simple form, add up the value of our income/assets that made income that year, and pay a flat fee based on a very simple income bracket tax system.  No questions, less audits!

If the average person can’t sit down over the course of two nights and do their taxes by themselves: We have a social problem.  If said average person is also not paying taxes: We also have a problem.

And this is already before how complicated it is to pay state and local taxes.  Some of which has similar problems (did you know that the county I am currently living in allows for about 10% of houses to be improperly assessed…)

So think on that for a second:

End deductions.  make way for a flatter tax system for all.  Stop trying to label certain kinds of income for individuals “carried income” and “ordinary income”

At the end of the day- cash is king, and the tax man knows it.  So just pay your taxes in the simplest way possible.

Please!

Related articles by Zemanta

Posted in Ideas | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

While everyone else was having a Privacy Scandal

By Shana | Published: May 21, 2010
Jewish Men Hidden In Birds' Head
Image by ShanaLC via Flickr

I saw the weirdest thing recently.  While we are all having conniptions about privacy, the last person I would ever think threw a wrench in the entire argument about having privacy.  Maybe.

A fairly obscure blogger (who I like to read), named Hasidic Rebel, decided to unmask himself as Sholom Deen to the greater Jewish Blogging World (and only a few days before to New York Magazine.)  What makes this situation even more interesting is that Mr. Deen, a former Skver Chassid, blogged on and off anonymously for nearly 7 years, including a totally anonymous interview with the Village Voice.

It is someone whose family probably can (and was) socially shunned for his behavior, and if he took it over the line for too long, attacked finacially, at a minimum (depending on the behavior).  To come out is not an easy thing at all.

He’s written about his children, his sex life, religion, food, everything under the sun.  Some very intimate details of his life are spilled out on his blog and on Unpious.com.  It seems so od

And this is happening as my college friends slowly jump Facebook for privacy shifts.

It’s all very interesting to watch, because as our New York article and favorite quoatable Jewish Person on bike controversies, Baruch Hertzfeld (he runs Traif Bike Gesheft) mentions:

“Once a Hasid shaves his curls, he’s a hipster,”

And while it’s true (or sort of true, it’s a process, just trust me on this one, and no, I’m not a Chassid…don’t ask…), it’s just interesting to watch the techie-hipsters of New York slowly “take apart” parts of the tools that allowed this to happen in the first place- things like Facebook.  Now privacy is in, when for these whole other group of people, coming out is probably going to be the new thing. (no guarantees, depends on Rabbis and how rebellious 20 somethings get.)

Maybe we all need to re-examine this privacy thing more closely.  Social media makes us banal.  We’re exposed: our tastes, our loves, our passions, our joys.  (and our negatives, but lets not harp on the bad).  it feels excessive strange when social media suddenly has made us more exposed to marketing via our emotions.

It flattens the world- it makes the center of gravity of culture pull towards the center.  What if you are barely orbiting that ball- and you want to grab ahold of it.  Some of that marketing, and some of that community building, is extremely useful.  That flattening process is much easier if information is available in the hows and whys, and you can document what is happening to you.  Especially if in the process, you build a community along the way.

Maybe we need privacy to hide the last of our nonbanality, our quirks, our hopes and dreams, and that is what disturbs us all: that too much of the outside can see those elemental parts of us, and attach themselves to it, and reshape us without us knowing.

If you are a chassid, perhaps, the reach to banality is much longer, and the journey needs more exposure to the disinfecting light of the sun.  All those details need support and help along the way, it’s a huge transition, and an isolating one at that.

This is why Sholom gets to walk out and say his name.  Who knows though?

One of the oddball things t0 say now: Sholom, you are now banal. There is nothing serious to hide, so now, maybe, you can get the “in thing” about privacy.  There is less of struggle, you fulfilled the biggest step.  It’s now all about the little pieces that the center of lives (aka what those artisens/hispters/artists/what have you), those creative class types now come up with which you can co-imagine.  You’re part of the world now.   Congrats man.

 

And here is hoping I don’t get attacked for this…It’s speculation, not an assumed position about chareidi politics or life.

Posted in Ideas, Internet, Random | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

May #NYTM The Review!!!

By Shana | Published: May 11, 2010
"If you're not having fun, you're doing i...
Image by froboy via Flickr

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

Posted in Business, Internet, Media Theory, Reviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Can You Hear Me Now?

By Shana | Published: April 23, 2010

I was at the doctor today. (I’m fine, it was a physical, or as I say, a proof I exist/am alive meeting.)

I don’t use an Iphone/Ipod/Ipod Touch.  However, it struck me that I was listening to a lot of music recently, so I asked for a hearing test.

My hearing is fine (thank goodness).  I’ve been recently wondering, how many people close to me in age do not have good hearing anymore? They’ve given up their hearing to be less bored and be entertained in their own little world.

When I take the LIRR or the subway, I see tons of people with earbuds stuck in their ears, and another large chunk with headphones.  Sometimes, they play their music really loud.  I’ve been staring at them recently.  I wonder if they can see me, or if they are totally lost in their own little worlds.

And while it is good sometimes to check out (recently I have been realizing that I need that sort of space sometimes too) with your music, your podcast, whatever, I also have been realizing that we’re losing common spaces.  If we’ve managed to create ways where whenever we are alone, isolated, and bored we can check out into our own little worlds, why should anyone go and talk to anyone else?  I’ve talked to people on the trains and subways before, and I have learned wonderful things.  And yet I wonder in the future if it will be much harder to talk to someone who is a stranger, because we won’t be as used to transcending boundaries through our common spaces.

I hope we do figure it out though.  I’m sure there is a solution.  One of the interesting things about music, particularly good music, is that it is really social once you start to share it.  It’s why pirating has been a huge problem for the music industry.  We just need to figure out what sharing music means when we listen to it.

 

Gonna be a long bumpy road ahead of us, if we want to be able to listen to each other again….

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Belated Notes on the April 2010 NYTechmeetup

By Shana | Published: April 21, 2010
From upper left: Manhattan south of Rockefelle...
Image via Wikipedia

So why is this so late, you may ask? I didn’t go to the NY Tech Meetup, it was last day of Passover, which in Orthodox circles is kept as Yom Tov.  I stayed at home and took a much needed chill break, considering I’m applying for jobs, blogging, commenting, and handing in the last of my thesis in about 5 weeks (congrats to me!)

There are a few HackNY pieces:

http://manhack.com/ is very simple.  Name a location- find out where is popular with FourSquare Users.  Ok- they set it up for you so it is in NYC, which has a huge base of FourSquare users.  Trying Chicago, where there are foursquare users as well, and you turn up…boringness and practically nothing.  I don’t know how they are using the API, and what am I asking for is very simple.  Chicago.  Really big city that != New York.  Always test.  Never assume.

 

http://aviary.techatnyu.com/ A good Idea, a horrible name (what if you don’t play tennis, and instead, swim), and for some reason, won’t let me drag and drop items in Chrome. Essentially, there seems to be another layer of funny items onto Aviary.  Though Aviary is a lovely lightweight replacement for Photoshop- most people will not use the massive amounts of filters available in Photoshop.  Now they just need a plan,, a moneymaking plan (sigh)

http://dropioke.com/ A music site.  The actual music site is very simple.  You have an upranking and a downranking and a player.  However the process to get it onto the website is kinda long.  First- you need Drop.IO.  Then you need to upload your stuff.  Then you need to tweet it out on the public link with their hashtag (#dropioke).  All this is a long process- They really should just sit down and talk to Drop.Io about how to avoid all these unnecessary middle steps involving Twitter (though it does prove the idea of Twitter as information carrier)  One of the essentials of design is- do I really need to force users to go through that! If the answer is no- then why are you doing that task?  Granted, I doubt this is supposed to be a commercial site- yet I still want to say, in all things, remember, there is someone who is not you on the other end who is going to go at some point “What?”

 

Apparently Students made this Stuff:

http://cabsense.com/ An Ipod/Ipad/Android app for finding Cabs in NY.  and then Hailing them.  It has three views. (Compass, Map, and Scheduler)  And could be used as a distractor-thingy.  Aside that there are times where getting a cab in NYC is impossible (I’m told this is true late at night while very drunk in certain areas of Manhattan…though cabbies seem to want to pick me up when I am not drunk….) I ask, why?

Some days, as odd as this sounds, even though I know factually that the IPhone under contract can be cheaper than a blackberry in certain situations, I feel like certain Apps are a total lifestyle play.  I want to see the app that changed the world.  And I would love to see it from a student.  Particularly a student in NY metro area that doesn’t go to NYU or Columbia.  You all can do it!

http://www.wheredoyougo.net/ Is a heatmap of where I went with foursquare.  It’s an interesting use of the API.  It’s also incredibly not useful to me.  I mean pretty, interesting hack, yet ????  However, if you can make a very granular version, a heatmap of where there are lots of public checkins and when and to track that data over time may be interesting to businesses.  You could compare that visual data to say, the weather- or deals offered by certain businesses.  And see how you are doing for your own business.  That may be more interesting.  Me by myself is kinda boring.  I already know I like hanging around a variety of places, and don’t use Foursquare enough, thanks.

http://www.networkedorganisms.com Project Noah is an Iphone app that is also an ongoing attempt to categorize the world’s species.  They have missions (often sponsored by universities), the ability to geotag and what looks like (from the time I saw it at Ignite) an easy to use interface.  However, I profound disagreements with being so attached to the Iphone.  Although it is wonderful that they are attaching geotagging to a nature project that is being used in schools in California, and that they are trying to drive people to understand the world around them as a start to wanting to preserve the environment.  Still, I have to ask, what is the long term goal- who is this for (even if it is, everybody above the age 7 so that we can learn about nature together), how do you plan on facilitating the fact that we participate in groups around activities like hiking?  This iPhone app has the most potential as a social app (and it has some elements of that)- yet in reality, it needs to hook into say game mechanics and real life social mechanics to find out how to hook people into the phone as a tool beyond urban spotting.  I also have some worries about taking an Iphone into the wilds of say, Yellowstone, where the idea of towers is laughable in most that area.  This is inherently an app that has to be localized, and yet need some elements of the world out there to really work and make it fun.  I question how do you do both.  It’s difficult, I say keep trying, because cataloging nature by people is a great idea.  Especially if it can be sold to schools as a low cost education tool (do you know how expensive it is to teach earth science)

http://www.hangalong.com So I am not sure why I need this.  I’m telling people that I want to do something, and if someone wants to do the same thing as me, it will notify me.  Oh it has sms shortcodes.  Ok, and..

and..

and..

It feels like fake twitter.  That is poorly built with no direction.  There seem to be a number of people out there trying to be the next big twitter.  Stop- try doing your own thing instead.

The five minute-rs

http://parse.ly/ I registered, I watched the video, and I went through step one of the process.  And…they are holding back invites.  I can tell you, from the video, it looks pretty cool.  Imagine someone else doing your rss based on topics you preselect and categorize into five categorize (love-hate).  You star things you like, and can read in a two panel display, with a leadout, and a sharing IFRAME bar.  Ok, couple of problems:

Where are they choosing stuff from?  Do they have keyboard shortcuts?  And does this promote mental bubbles that are hard to break?  Are they keeping track of what is being shared and what is received and read?  Like all things RSS related, it’s input, and breaking input is an art, a science, and a necessity at times.  If I wanted to (and there are days I do) I could stay away from all things news related.  But then I would never know about volcanoes in Iceland, what a food desert is, and that there is still slavery in this world.  Further, some events really do hit us, like the Great Recession.  If I subscribed to only fashion blogs with pretty pictures on this thing- how long would the interruption take to get to me?

From the video at least, I can say I really want them to copy Gmail’s star methodology more closely.  If I didn’t watch the video, how would I know that the star means things I like and not things I want to remember, things to come back to, things I need to share with My pretend cousin Lucy around her birthday.  People use tagging for many purposes, encourage it.

 

http://www.bantamlive.com/ Imagine a webpage that was designed from a small group of people to plan out a project, a business project. It has real time planning features, (Statuses, schedules, internal/external emails features, deal flow, slight project management flow, though oddly, no chat.)  A place to store documents.  One problem- it’s dead ugly.  I mean, it works perfectly.  It will help automate your workflow, it well help collaboration.  It’s just dead ugly.  They have a variable pricing plan (and a free version that is missing some very critical features, I tried that one.)

I think the first thing to thing about- I’m a weird creature, this is the first computer (set) that doesn’t have a custom background of my choosing.  (they do have names though.)  Most people decorate their desks/cubicles/offices.  Essentially, Bantam created the world’s first office online.  It has the online version of paperclips, sure, but it has no place to store my Fica plant.  And I do care about my online Fica plant, whose name is Bob.*    We’re sitting in a design crisis.  Just because something functions well, as in, it completes the task at hand (shlepping everyone in your project along), doesn’t mean it does design good.  Does it make them happy?  Does it personalize the experience?  Or does it make the task at hand mechanical?

This works, to be sure.  It is also mechanical.  And not cool mechanical, you can’t see the gears tick along.  And I find that problematic somewhere deep inside of me.

http://www.docrew.com/DoCrew/DoCrewIndex.html It definitely is a working flash game that integrates you into the game.  It’s definitely aimed at pre-school children.  The cartoons are cute and rounded, the way they should be.  They also are nearly not stimulating enough for kids and aren’t designed around the way actual kids learn.  I took two comparable games- a counting game involving mudpies by the DoCrew and Sesame Streets “Magic Numbers” Game on their website.  The amount of time needed to make clear that we were going to throw mudpies across the river was extremely long in the DoCrew Game- it also was extremely simple and did nothing to re-enforce the number (10), which felt arbitrarily chosen because it happens to be the first double digit number and usually the first one that pre-school children recognize.  Further, once I figured out that I was waving pies, life became sort of boring.

In contrast, while the mediation of Sesame Street was far less sophisticated- (I’m not there in the game after all), the game itself was far more immersive- The characters talked to me far more regularly, told me they were proud of me, gave me regular rewards (really important at say age 3), and consistently repeated the same lesson over and over in the game.  I was expected to count the number 6 and to remember the digit 6 in a variety of different ways (through blocks, through different patterns).  This is a normal way that media should be presented to children.

While the camera may be interesting, and especially interesting to parents- it is definitely more important that material is drilled so that children maintain and recall the information.  And while movement is important (fighting childhood obesity is extremely important), a gimmick isn’t going to get your kid to learn.  Spend your money/time with games that drill for media awareness, general literacy, and media literacy.  Until they get an education consult in on how children learn and respond this may not be as worthwhile as we think.

ThinkTank- I will try later- I need to move this blog and everything on this site- and this product needs to use the stack, which I will have to teach bits to myself…bleh.

Last note: HACKNY’s (seen here: http://hackny.org/a/ ) application’s are closing soon, on the last day of the month, so get to it.  Or else.

 

really last note: I need to go to Chicago soon.  It may be the last time for a long time.  Wow.

 

*There is no online office plant named Bob.  Though it would be cool if there was one!

 

Posted in Product Design, Reviews | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

In Honor of Arnold and Facebook

By Shana | Published: April 7, 2010
Facebook, Inc.
Image via Wikipedia

So Arnold wrote this piece about the growing dominance of Facebook (is that my internet home???).  In honor of some of the questions he raised, I am going to throw some possibilities out about the questions of search:

It might be that search is not the answer, finding is.  And finding, is inherently social.  It also, as a result, may not matter if Facebook is closed off as much as we think.

As I watch my Facebook stream go by I notice the following:

1) Users often don’t click on the “most recent” tab…

2) Facebook does some weird algorithm dance based on who I look at, what I click on, and other information that they gather about me.  and it is very weird.  And it may be the new Google algorithm and we just don’t know it yet, because it really feels unsorted out.

Sticking a link in seems to help…but only somewhat.  It also is very dependent on what that link is.  Random link is much less cool than IMDB.  Pushing through your own content is also very cool.  But totally random, not cool.

Only some people show up in the most popular links.  And those people are usually the people you look at a lot, not necessarily the ones you share interests with.  So you could be facebook stalking a frenemy going GRRRR, and their links and stuff will be popping through, and irritating you more, whereas the person you share stuff in common with (by say groups that you overlap with) may never show up.  Yes, very weird.  However, it does point away from the “we only look at ourselves and our echo-chamber” theory.*  Apparently Chat and poke may not be included.  So I can chat with certain friends all the time, and they will never show up in the most popular stream.  Such is Facebook’s analyses of my friendships on their system.

 

One last note:

In the past few days, I’ve seen a request for a search of the stream (for a Rav Hiddiya Quote I believe…) and an announcement of deletion from Facebook (contemplation of a slower internet life).  It may be a closed system, but it is a closed system that is generating a lot of heat, light, and energy.  This is causing a lot of confusion about how to find and give away stuff needed.  It is incredibly frustrating to not have that final step of the ecosytem, because in the interim it can sometimes feel like Facebook is a time suck.  Information is buried underneath Facebook, and it isn’t clear at all how to unearth it, which is why the flow system unattached to some search function seems to hit people in the gut.  It often feels like the information is going nowhere, very fast, and that one can be overwhelmed by the anti-social presence of large amounts of people hitting you with information that may not be relevant at that point (but may be for later)  Without some sort of deeper presentation or curating system, Arnold, you are right, there is going to be hell to pay.  People don’t want to feel like they are giving to a system without the system giving back.  It is one of the reasons Google worked so well.  Facebook needs to game up, or else it won’t make it as Social Search.

 

*no comment on my friendships.

Posted in Ideas, Information, Interfaces | Tagged , , , , , | 6 Comments

Flash Me! (Not really)

By Shana | Published: March 28, 2010
Flash Mob Pillow Fight! (2)
Image by mattwi1s0n via Flickr

Some interersting articles appeared on my radar about, of all things, flash mobs.

For those who do not know, a flash mob is:

A flash mob (or flashmob) is a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and pointless act for a brief time, then quickly disperse. The term flash mob is generally applied only to gatherings organized via telecommunications, social media, or viral emails. The term is generally not applied to events organized by public relations firms, protests, and publicity stunts.

 

(Thanks, wikipedia.)

There are two interesting aspects of flash mobs

1) They were meant as a form of performance art, a good descendant of the Happenings in art of the 1960s.  (awesome artworks, if you can catch remakes)

2) In order to make one, you really need to leverage the power of social media in some interesting ways.  You need to get a mass together without tipping off the location in advance.

In their brief history, they tended to be used outside in the US in  areas of the FSU to protest their lack of ability to be politically engaged.  Unlike most protests, these had very little actual political content (does eating ice cream sound like politics to you?)

However, in the US, flash mobs never seemed to tap into some of our more base feelings when we assemble en mass.

Until now.

Currently, there have been riots in Philadelphia, Boston, and Brooklyn that come out of Flash Mobs spreading on places like Facebook. They’re young, they’re “urban youth” and they’ve managed to spread the idea like weeds through social networks.

People wonder when I mention that Marshall McLuhan can be read in the negative voice.  He has a great line in where he quotes a General Sarnoff saying “We are too prone to make technological instruments the scapegoats for those who wield them…” Dr. McLuhan goes on and says “It had never occurred to General Sarnoff that any technology could do anything but add itself on to what we already are.”  With a more negative tone, the idea of a global village means the light political violence we “like” to wrought upon each other- it is now not only easier, but we are more able to let it get out of control.

We’ve already had the tendency towards violence and riots (as well as charity): A social network can easily compound the effect (thank you David Reed, of Reed’s law).  A social network compounded with communication technology, well that is a recipe for many things- potentially as we can see here, riots.

Oh, how we need to learn how to handle our machines before they handle us.

Related articles by Zemanta

Posted in Ideas | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment
SEO Powered by Platinum SEO from Techblissonline