SXSW

So I'll be going to SXSW Interactive next week rather than CCCC/ATTW the week after. As much as I'll miss the CCCC/ATTW experience, I really hate travel, so it's nice that I'll be staying in town -- and SXSW promises to have some fascinating presentations and networking activities.

I plan to blog the conference, so stop by and live vicariously through me.

Institutional Review Boards in the Times

Davida Charney pointed out this article on IRBs in the New York Times. The thesis: IRBs are prone to "mission creep" that progressively adds layers of bureaucracy and unreasonable restrictions to research. Money quote: "But to many faculty and graduate students, review boards are like a blister that gets worse with every step. Those outside of the hard sciences say the legitimate concerns over ethics and safety are largely irrelevant to most of their research."

I'm divided. On the one hand, IRBs are definitely encountering mission creep, partially because they like to err on the safe side. On the other hand, despite what the NY Times says, there really are ethical issues even in English studies, and the IRB should have a hand in determining whether human subjects are being treated well.

"This is the modern-day equivalent of hippies freaking out the squares."

Via BoingBoing, this analysis of the recent vandalism of John Edwards' SecondLife headquarters sounded exactly like hippies freaking out the squares. The description and picture of the vandalism are surreal, including "feces spouting obscenity." Bad trip. Ironically, the hippies are apparently Republicans with "Bush '08" tags, and the square progressives say things like "I have filed an abuse report with Linden Labs, and am awaiting their investigation."

You see countless news stories about this, over and over again: the gray humorless drones of political parties or corporations rushing to establish a presence in Second Life because it's the thing to do, only to find themselves staring directly into the collective Goatse.cx of the Internet's soul.

I don't condone the action, etc., etc. but it seems pretty tone-deaf not to expect this, especially with stories circulating last week about how the Edwards campaign headquarters were "deserted." Might as well paint a target on the thing.

Irony

I had not realized that Hillary Rodham was president of Wellesley College's Young Republicans in 1965. I'm also amused by the fact that people want to unearth her 37-year-old thesis in order to unravel her current political thinking.

Hillary Clinton's hidden thesis - Hillary Clinton News - MSNBC.com

technorati tags:hillary, clinton, thesis, republican

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Prioritizing email through virtual currency

Thank World of Warcraft for this idea on how to prioritize email:

Known as Attent, Seriosity's system is essentially a new currency--called the Serio--that corporate e-mail users spend to indicate a message's importance: the more important they believe the message is, the more Serios they spend on it. Recipients keep the Serios in the messages they get.

Similarly, when someone receives a message with Serios attached, they can indicate how important they believe it is by responding with an appropriate number: none or very few if they think the message wasn't valuable, an equal number if they want the sender to know they appreciated the message, or more than the original number to show they agree that it truly was crucial.

But Serios is a currency, and therefore a scarce resource, so people get a limited amount. The idea is that they have to spend the currency wisely, always making sure they have enough to send more with future messages.

A cure for e-mail attention disorder? | CNET News.com

technorati tags:email, attention, serio, wow

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Mobile phones are mass media

Via SmartMobs, an argument that mobile phones constitute a mass media shift.

Communities Dominate Brands: Mobile the 7th Mass Media is to internet like TV is to radio

Added: Here's a striking quote.

Thirdly the mobile is the first always-carried mass media. The phone is with us literally, within arm's reach, at all times. Seven out of ten people sleep with the phone within arm's reach even at night - and the vast majority of those have the phone in bed, yes thats true - that is how close is our relationship to our phone. We do take it to the bathroom with us. No other media has this intense a relationship with its audience.

technorati tags:mobile, mass-media

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Data storing in bacteria

Slashdot points to a Computerworld article:

"Computerworld has a story about a new technology developed by Keio University researchers that creates artificial bacterial DNA that can carry more than 100 bits of data within the genome sequence. The researchers claimed that they encoded "e= mc2 1905!" on the common soil bacteria, Bacillius subtilis. The bacteria-based data storage method has backup and long-term archival functionality."

Quick science fiction novel idea: researchers sequencing the human genome find that messages are encoded in it. Go.

Slashdot | Data Storing Bacteria Could Last Millennia

technorati tags:data, genome, science-fiction

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Nagless email reminders

Following up on my discussion the other day of how to remind people you've done your part:

The art of the nagless email reminder - Lifehacker

technorati tags:email

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Texas among global economy leaders

... if "leader" means "near the bottom of the top third."

Texas ranks 14th among U.S. states in terms of effectiveness at adapting to a new global economy, according to a recently released study.

Texas among global economy leaders - Austin Business Journal:

technorati tags:global, economy, leaders, texas

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Are you in SecondLife?

If so, Peter Merholtz wants to talk to you.

peterme.com :: Research and Design in Second Life

technorati tags:secondlife, research

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Carbon offsets as rhetorical practice

Everyone's piling on Al Gore for this business of carbon offsets. Now the Economist describes -- and derides -- the practice of carbon offsets, which (it essentially says) are an ethos-building move with problematic policy repercussions. Via UT's own Austin Bay.

technorati tags:gore, economist, carbon-offsets

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One-off whiteboards

In the vein of Doodle, the whiteboard app Skrbl allows one-off writeboards that don't require a login. Think of it as a scrap of paper that you can share on your computer.

Skrbl lets you create an online whiteboard in about the time it takes to read this sentence.

Without so much as registering, you can start a new whiteboard. Doing so creates a URL that you send to friends, colleagues or whomever (though you have to do this manually; Skrbl has no invitation tools to speak of). When they hit the URL, they see what you see and can collaborate on the whiteboard.

Create instant online whiteboards with Skrbl - Lifehacker

technorati tags:skrblr, ephemera

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Starting meetings on time

Scott Berkun has some solid principles for avoiding interminable, unfocused meetings.

Berkun blog » Blog Archive » How to start meetings on time (the honest version)

technorati tags:meetings, project-management

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Ning review on Lifehacker

Gina Trapani likes it:

but I only got my hands dirty with Ning 2.0 today, and it's dang impressive. In under 2 minutes I had a dynamic, user-based web site with registration, member profiles, a forum, video and photo sharing, and a blog, with a custom template. For a sports team, small group, or even Aunt Martha who wants to get her recipe community off the ground but doesn't know where to start, Ning's it.

Ning relaunches instant web community tool - Lifehacker

technorati tags:ning, social-networking

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Desktop apps, web apps

Lots of talk about desktop apps, web apps, and the thin line between them on the interface level. FranticIndustries has a longish post about the two, and specifically "what exactly do Web 2.0 applications and services need to do to be competitive to desktop applications?" He adds:

It’s obvious that in most cases, simply being a web application isn’t going to be enough: the online photo editors that I’ve reviewed are nice enough, but a software giant that has a huge user base might often be able to wipe them all simply by releasing an online, light version of their desktop application - and this scenario is very plausible in the case of Photoshop Online.

So, what conditions do Web 2.0 startups have to meet to make sure they can’t easily be replaced (because of zero switching cost) by another application, or to make sure that they add enough value over their desktop counterparts to be competitive?

The post, of course, is precipitated by Adobe's announcement that an online version of Photoshop is in the works. Speculation is that other Web 2.0 image editors have just become also-rans, but also that Adobe has imperiled its core desktop apps by signaling a desire to play on the thin client side. The thing to watch here is Adobe's new Apollo platform, which promises the ability to make web and desktop apps essentially the same thing -- alllowing a both-and strategy. Apparently developers are enthusiastic.

Let's also remember that Adobe, Google, and Microsoft are not the only players in the web app space. Morfik is getting good press for its AJAX platform:

In a nutshell, Morfik allows developers to use high-level programming languages (which give the developer more power - e.g. BASIC, C#, Pascal) to create web apps. It does this by converting apps from high level language INTO Ajax code. For example, says Morfik, all the rich internet apps in their labs were written in a high level language, then translated into Javascript. So essentially you can develop web apps not needing to know Javascript, or even what Ajax is.

You can also create web services using Morfik. In our discussion, I noticed that Adobe's Flex was being mentioned a lot as a point of comparison. In the case of web services, the Morfik developers told me their platform offers "everything in one box" - that developers can use external things, unlike with Flex.

Another feature of Morfik is that it can create "unplugged" web apps, meaning offline functionality. They've built real world examples (some which can't be mentioned publicly yet) that can run unplugged, with access to a central or local database - all via the web browser! Yes, offline web browsing and well before Firefox 3 has delivered similar functionality.

One real world example I can quote is a French investment house, which is using Morfik technology to allow their salesforce to go out into the field and collect data on their laptops, in the browser but offline - then when they come back to the office, everything is synced up automatically.

"You okay?" "No."

Via BoingBoing, the Daily Mail has incredible first-person footage of a skydiver whose parachute failed to open. He survives. The camera keeps rolling as his companion comes to check on him, and we get this unintentionally hilarious dialogue -- hilarious only because we know he's going to survive.

Q: You okay?
A: No.
Q: Does it hurt anywhere?
A: Yes.

The CIO is struggling for relevance in the university environment

This post suggests that students are less reliant on university services; they are happy with a "dumb pipe" to Web 2.0 services. So university CIOs are basically cast as telecomm providers rather than, well, CIOs.

No wonder that the prevailing discussion among the university CIOs was about "relevance". Users no longer value what they do. It doesn't require a "C" title to keep fat pipes to the wide-open Internet open. A zillion free hosted services on the web have replaced the functionality of the IT departments service by service, just as minerals replace the cells in dinosaur bones. Talk of extinction was in the air, and rightly so.

The Long Tail: Who needs a CIO?

technorati tags:cio, university, internet, access

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GlobalIncidentsMap - analyzing suspicious incidents with mashups from publicly available information

The other day I mentioned Lewis Shepherd's work with the Defense Intelligence Agency, which involves RSS feeds, wikis -- and mashups. Wired's Danger Room mentions the interview as well, and adds this ostensibly unrelated example:

Check out GlobalIncidentMap.com. It's an attempt to create a worldwide, constantly-updated account of pretty much all the suspicious activities on the planet, from airport bomb scares to assassination attempts to packages left at bus stations. Every incident is plotted on Google Maps. And every incident is linked to a relevant news story, if available.

They add an update from a correspondent in the intelligence community:

"Simply put, we have things that are better than GlobalIncidentMap.com.  How do I know?  Because we contacted the kid who does it last year, when we first noticed it (we notice a lot) and asked how he does it."

WIRED Blogs: Danger Room

technorati tags:netwar, mashups, dia

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Reminding people of what you've done

On her blog, Clancy asks:

On another note, I just want to express how frustrating and irritating it is when I send stuff to people a couple of weeks or a month early, they forget all about it, then they snipe about my tardiness. What does one do about this? I want to send items out as soon as I have them done; do I also have to send reminders that I sent the items?

Answer: Yes! You may want to calendar the actual due date and send them an email the day before, reminding them that you've supplied the information and asking if they need anything further. Do this as a reply/forward so they can see the original timestamp.

A complementary strategy is to require some positive action from them when you turn something in. "When you get this, could you send me your thoughts?" "Once you have a chance to process this, I'm going to need X from you." Put the ball back in their court; the best defense, etc.

Whining | CultureCat

technorati tags:project-management, accountability, clancy, gtd

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Drupal gets nonprofit backing

Good news for them and everyone who uses them.

Slashdot | Drupal Gets Non-Profit Backing

technorati tags:drupal

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Is your candidate's website rating higher than her/his Wikipedia entry?

Now there's an alarming thought for the candidates. It's getting harder to control one's own message.

techPresident – How the candidates are using the web, and how the web is using them.

technorati tags:campaign08

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ThinkFree Office has a quarter million users

I tend to focus on Google Docs, since that's what I'm using, but the market for other web-based office apps is thriving. In registrations, anyway.

» ThinkFree Office - 250,000 registered users! | Office Evolution | ZDNet.com

technorati tags:thinkfree, google-docs, office

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"'Elizabeth Edwards gets it,' he said with unabashed admiration."

Rumors have been swirling that the Edwards' campaign's misstep in hiring bloggers can be traced to Elizabeth Edwards. Ann Althouse -- who, despite her differences with these bloggers, didn't advocate against them in their campaign roles -- has thoughts on the latest Salon article.

Who would you hire if you were campaigning for president?

I like this answer:

If I were a presidential candidate, more than a blogger or a pollster, I'd probabaly hire an anthropologist and a semiotician.

I would hire someone along the lines of a danah boyd and would have them go all over the net scouring blogs, forums, social networking sites like MySpace and social networking engines like Flickr, LiveJournal and YouTube.

techPresident – How the candidates are using the web, and how the web is using them.

technorati tags:campaign08

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Ning 2.0 roundup

I blogged about Ning a while back, but now they have relaunched. Ning is a social media creation platform; imagine creating your own MySpace. I can't get into the site right now, but here are some very positive reviews:

• GigaOm: Ning: let ‘000 Social Nets Bloom
• franticindustries: Ning, the meta-MySpace, relaunches; Ning v2 reviewed - create your own social network
• TechCrunch: Ning in Full
• The Social Web: Ning v2: another do-it-yourself MySpace?
• The Scoble Show: Build your own social space with Ning, version 2

New Department of Rhetoric and Writing site is up

Here at UT, we've gone through several changes recently. First, we launched our major. Next, we transitioned from a division to a full-fledged department. And now we've launched our new website. It's worth taking a look.

Welcome | Department of Rhetoric & Writing

technorati tags:utexas, rhetoric, writing

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Iraq's superbombs - made in Iraq?

Wired's "Danger Room" blog suggests that the "superbombs" we're seeing in Iraq are not necessarily of Iranian origin:

Where are Iraq's superbombs coming from, really? The Pentagon is claiming -- again -- the the Iranian government supplied the deadly "explosively formed penetrators" (EFPs). But the more you study these devices -- which use an explosive charge to a convert disc-shaped metal 'lens' into a high-velocity slug capable of smashing through thick armor at an extended range –- the more likely they seem to be home-made in Iraq.

It might be that their apparent sophistication has more to do with the flow of know-how than the leveraging of sophisticated manufacturing and design capacity:

It took years for the American military to learn how to make these weapons on the fly.  And yet insurgents in Iraq already have essentially the same capability. It's an example of what has elsewhere been called 'Intermediate Technology' which takes a lot of time and money to develop, but when it exists it can be quickly and cheaply copied.

WIRED Blogs: Danger Room

technorati tags:efps, superbombs, iraq, iran

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"In looking at Google's public technology discussions, it appears that a thin client, distributed computing future is exactly what they are expecting.

Marc Cuban thinks we are moving toward a thin client, distributed computing world, and Google will be the big winner.

Mastering multitasking

A link-dense roundup on multitasking, GTD style.

"Master your multitasking" feature - What's the next action

technorati tags:gtd, multitasking

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The wisdom of crowds -- and its limitations

Danger Room reports on the new online activity of guessing what "mystery weapons" are. These weapons have been found in Iraq by Michael Yon, an online journalist. Danger Room reports:

In either case, the mystery weapon generated an Internet craze of increasingly outlandish explanations (my personal favorite being a laser weapon -- a technology that even the U.S. has yet to master).

Danger Room also reports that another object is making the rounds, a "greenish orb." The accompanying picture is -- well, let me throw my own suggestion in -- the Locnar.

WIRED Blogs: Danger Room

technorati tags:netwar, wisdom-of-crowds

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More space

I was working in the same space with another professor the other day. We were at a conference table, and she took full advantage of it by spreading her papers across the table. I had printed my reading material four-up (i.e., four document pages printed on a single piece of paper; yes, I have good vision). Suddenly it struck me that we were doing the same thing: trying to get as much information as possible on the working surfaces we had so that we could see relationships among parts of the text.

Wii is successful in broadening the gaming community

Not only is the Wii pulling in people who have never gamed before (see the link below), it has also allowed Gen-X gamers to recapture their misspent youth. Do you miss playing Super Mario for the NES? You can download that thing quickly for a nominal price and get Mario jumping again.

Even some of the new games are reminiscent of the old games from yesteryear, particularly the tank game from Wii Play.

Nintendo's Wii a hit with the geriatric set? - Engadget

technorati tags:wii

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Defense Department analysts using Web2.0 to better analyze data

The U.S. Department of Defense's lead intelligence agency is using wikis, blogs, RSS feeds and enterprise "mashups" to help its analysts collaborate better when sifting through data used to support military operations.

Smart Mobs: DIA embraces Web 2.0

technorati tags:dod, netwar, web2.0

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Sense.us: collaborative information visualization

Smart Mobs: Sense.us - collaborative information visualization

From the abstract: "This paper describes mechanisms for asynchronous collaboration in the context of information visualization, recasting visualizations as not just analytic tools, but social spaces."

technorati tags:sense.us, collaborative, visualization

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