Google Transit and SXSW

I'm a big public transportation fan, and will be taking the bus to SXSW every day. Google Transit might help; I'll provide a report.

Official Google Blog: Music, Movies, Mayhem, and the Metro

technorati tags:sxsw, google-transit

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Flat panel display at SXSW

SXSW's panels aren't listed by speaker, but a Good Samaritan has provided a flat list that contains just topics and speaker names. I'm going to use this!

Searchable SXSW Interactive 2007 schedule

technorati tags:sxsw, information-design

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UPA needs volunteers

If you're in Austin, the 2007 Usability Professionals' Association (UPA) conference will
be held here June 11-15, 2007. Follow the link to volunteer.

Volunteer Opportunities - UPA 2007

technorati tags:upa, usability, conference

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A roundup on civil-military relations

Civil-military relations are important in the current age of netwar, in which governments, NGOs, press, paramilitaries, and other organizations leverage arguments as well as weapons. This roundup looks like a good place to start if you're interested in reviewing the literature.

Civil-Military Relations (Smart Power Blog)

technorati tags:netwar

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Freebase aims at the semantic web

Lots of people are posting about Freebase, which aims to semantically link user-generated content from different sites.

This is cool, unless it achieves consciousness and kills us all

technorati tags:freebase, semantic-web, skynet

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Blues Traveling Beyond Thunderdome

Blues Traveler frontman John Popper has been arrested for a stash -- of weapons.

What's more interesting is the stash of contraband discovered inside the vehicle, which was outfitted with a siren, a public address system, and several hidden interior compartments. Besides a "small amount" of weed, officers found: four rifles, nine handguns, a switchblade knife, a Taser, and night vision goggles.

Austinist: Blues Traveler Singer, Austin Man Busted For Huge Stash

technorati tags:john-popper, blues-traveler, thunderdome

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Accessibility and graphic design CAN be friends

A pointer to articles explaining how.

Graphic designers misunderstanding Web standards | 456 Berea Street

technorati tags:accessibility, graphic-design

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The vomit beam

On Danger Room, they sound giddy about this (no pun intended):

You never know what's going to land in your mailbox.  Last night, I found a weapon that shoots an invisible wall-penetrating beam that makes people so dizzy they fall over. (It can make them puke, too, but I'll get to that in a moment.)

Okay, okay... it was only a description of the device that I came across, going through my (mostly junk) mail. The less-lethal weapon was one of many novelties described in an invitation to the "Navy's 07 'Opportunity Forum" for small businesses.

WIRED Blogs: Danger Room

technorati tags:nonlethal, weaponry, vomit-beam

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Nokia's new ad service: consumption as a networked practice

We are witnessing the shift from individualised and pesonalised media consumption towards consumption as a networked practice. You see networks are sticky in ways that mass media never was, it requires a very different approach to what we create, how we create it and how we market it. And, the change wrought by the networked information environment is structural.

Communities Dominate Brands: The 7th Mass Media gets a new service

technorati tags:nokia, ads, consumption, net-work

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Conferenceer and SXSW

SXSW's panels listing isn't great; I really wanted a flat display of all panels. But you know what's almost as good? An iCal feed:

Conferenceer

technorati tags:sxsw, conferenceer

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Sun rises in the east

Slashdot | Microsoft Wanted To Drop Mac Office To Hurt Apple

technorati tags:and-the-world-is-round

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Scribd

I'm trying to figure out if this service makes sense or not. Comments?

Scribd, a site for sharing documents, is coming out of private beta this morning with a fresh Angel investment of $300K on top of their original Y Combinator nest egg of $12,000. Scribd is most easily described as a text version of YouTube. It is a social network that lets you tag, share, and comment on uploaded documents (.doc, .pdf, .txt, .ppt, .xls, .ps, .lit).

Scribd “YouTube for Documents” Gets $300K

technorati tags:scribd

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Presence

Presence is a communications app that allows you to signal whether you're available for a phone call: a way to avoid telephone tag. Think of it as an extension of the status tag in your instant messenger:

Presence helps solve this problem by letting you know the availability of the other party to take your call, before the call gets made.

It's free:

Fast forward to today… our business plan is to deliver, for free, a great mobile presence application to handsets beginning with BlackBerry but ultimately extending to any Symbian or Windows Mobile handset. We’ll make money from additional presence enabled applications that depend on that infrastructure.

GigaOM » Does Presence really matter?

technorati tags:presence, mobile, phones, voice2.0

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Exit strategy?

From the New York Times: Questions About Cheney Remain. "In legal terms, the jury has spoken in the Libby case. In political terms, Dick Cheney is still awaiting a judgment."

From This is London: Will a blood clot force Cheney to step down? "Dick Cheney has been diagnosed with a blood clot in his left leg, leading to speculation he will be forced to resign as U.S. Vice-President."

"They communicate with condiments"

Bill Hart-Davidson pointed out this great post about condiment codes of Waffle House kitchens, along with a Flickr set. From the post, the author tells how he realized that the waitress and short-order cook placed condiments in order to record and communicate orders.

"I noticed how the pack of jelly was in different locations on the plates in the queue and then realized the waitresses hadn't said a word to the chef all morning. After a little digging around, I found this flickr image of the grill cheat sheet explaining exactly what condiment means what and how to arrange them on a plate to indicate a specific order."

GooglePhone rumors

The post includes a link to another post with purported photos.

More Google Phone talk | News.blog | CNET News.com

technorati tags:googlephone, iphone

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Hillary/1984 mashup

You really have to see this video that Obama supporters made by mashing up Apple's famous 1984 video with video from Sen. Clinton's website. It's a brilliant ad hominem attack.

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

technorati tags:campaign2008, obama, clinton, 1984, ad-hominem

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Edwards' vandals were nonpartisan ...

... not Bush supporters, as was assumed.

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

technorati tags:edwards, campaign2008, secondlife

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Live like a project manager

This lengthy list is a grab bag of advice from a project management standpoint. Like similar lists, this one has a lot of obvious stuff, a lot of underspecified stuff, and the occasional brilliant gem.

A project manager's guide to organization - Lifehacker

technorati tags:lifehacking, project-management

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Claims, warrants, evidence

Andrew Samwick points to a disjuncture between claim and evidence in a recent speech of Hillary Clinton's, and dissects the warrant. I don't carry a brief for or against Sen. Clinton (or any specific candidate), but I appreciate the incisive examination and I hope we'll see more of this applied to all candidates' speeches as 2008 approaches.

Vox Baby: Senator Clinton's Letter and Speech

technorati tags:campaign2008, claims, reasons, warrants, toulmin

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Workstreaming

From Web Worker Daily:

There is a web worker replacement for face time: workstreaming, the publishing of work-related activities and events to your remote colleagues, usually via RSS but sometimes in other formats and ways.Workstreaming is the next generation of the 11 pm email you send to your team to show them that you’ve been working all evening. Workstreaming is related to lifestreaming, producing an RSS feed of all the bits and pieces of your online self in date-time order. But lifestreaming incorporates everything from the personal to the professional to the trivial, while workstreaming is only about showing what you’ve just accomplished, what you’re working on now, and what you’re planning to do in the future.

Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive Workstreaming: The New Face Time «

technorati tags:workstreaming, net_work

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USA Today roundup

USA Today is going to a social networking format.

To our readers
- Ken Paulson, Editor; Kinsey Wilson and John Hillkirk, Executive Editors

Quick Guide to New USA Today Features
- USA Today

Bravo to USA Today
- Michael Arrington, TechCrunch

USAToday.com Goes Social, Sorta
- Stowe Boyd, /Message

USAToday.com Refashions Itself as a Social Network
- Steve Rubel, MicroPersuasion

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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Google Apps, the market analysis

PC World's Harry McCracken argues that Google Apps has a narrow niche right now, but could grow into something significant with time:

So who might want Google Apps in its current form? Well, there are certainly scads of workers in the world who really only need basic tools. There are absolutely many companies--especially small ones--for whom $50 a year is a far more appealing pricetag than several hundred dollars for a copy of Microsoft Office. There are definitely corporations who'd rather offload the management of e-mail and other applications to an expert like Google than to worry about them themselves. And there are unquestionably organizations who are adventuresome enough to be willing to be among the first to try dumping Microsoft Office for a Web-hosted alternative.

Whether there are enough of them right now to make Google Office a viable business, I'm not sure...

Of course, Google is one of the few companies on the planet who can cheerfully pour resources into businesses that aren't viable if it feels like it. And if it's really interested in pursuing this--rather than simply yanking Bill Gates's chain--Google Apps could evolve into something interesting.

PC World's Techlog Google Apps vs. Microsoft Office

technorati tags:google-apps

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Google's "Dog Food Initiative"

PC World has an article about Google "eating its own dog food," i.e., using Google Apps internally. This part is not surprising, but worth repeating:

All of the applications "were really built from the ground up to focus on collaboration," Glotzbach said in a follow-up interview. "Using them ourselves has really helped us expand on how we work with one another, making [communications] more real time, making it easier to collaborate when we're traveling, when we're on the road, from a mobile device, from any PC or workstation inside the company."

He describes an incident in which he began a document outline, shared it, and collaborators built the document together, like a wiki.

But Googlers also use Microsoft Office and OpenOffice for their work. This point is a bit downplayed in the article.

PC World - Living with Google Apps--at Google

technorati tags:google-apps, dogfood

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The transparent society comes of age

Virginia Postrel has a really interesting post on the "transparent society," in which everyone can watch everyone else. She points out that younger technology users have generally accepted the implications, but problems come largely via adult policing.

One point I found interesting is that she acknowledges the problems of a transparent society, especially for those of us who have grown up expecting privacy:

Aside from the old-fashioned notion that some parts of life don't belong in public, I don't want to live in a small town where everyone knows everyone's business, and I wouldn't want my teenage persona following me around forever.

Sound familiar? Hiere's Michel Serres:

When everyone knows everything right now about everybody and lives by this knowledge, you have antiquity's notion of freedom and the ideal city, and also the ideal of modern philosophers since Rousseau, the ideal of the media and social science, of the police and bureaucracy: poll, clarify, inform, make known, expose, report. A terrifying nightmare, one that if you've lived in small villages or large tribes, you'll want to avoid all your life, for it is the height of enslavement. (Serres 1995, p.68)

Dynamist Blog: The Transparent Society and Its Clueless Adult Enemies

technorati tags:serres, postrel, transparent-society, panopticon, agora

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ConflictWiki

Distributing knowledge about conflict:

One reason I've posted some "academic-like" posts on this site, in addition to files, is the hope of using MountainRunner as something of a repository of knowledge. In spite of my writing skills, I'm still hoping to accomplish this and have decided to create a wiki after looking at entries like counterinsurgency, Blackwater, public diplomacy, SWET, Muhammad Khalil al-Hakaymah, and even John Nagl on Wikipedia. These just aren't adequate for the needs of the SO/LIC, PMC, public diplomacy, smart power, and terrorism communities. As these groups are intricately linked together and require greater or at least different details on these topics.

ConflictWiki (Updated) (MountainRunner)

technorati tags:conflictwiki, netwar

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Linden Lab looking for tech writers

Just saw this via the Austin Tech Writers list.

Linden Lab is seeking a full time Documents and Technical writer. This position will take on the expansive Second Life Knowledge Base and tame it in record time. This role will also be responsible for preparing the transition from the current format to a new service, and edit incoming articles for style and content. Long term expectations will be for this role to maintain this and other support documents in accordance with release schedules and retain editorial control over the Knowledge Base and other forward facing support documents.

It doesn't say whether you'll be paid in Linden dollars or whether you get your own island.

Documentation and Technical Writer/Editor | Linden Lab

technorati tags:secondlife, tech-writing

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Stalking with Facebook

Saw this via TechMeme. What interests me isn't the nature or politics of the dispute (peace: I'll fight you for it!), but the fact that social networking makes this sort of stalking possible. Not the panopticon, the agora.

Michelle Malkin: Facebook nightmare: College Republican targeted by stalker speaks out

technorati tags:facebook, stalking, panopticon, agora

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KairosNews on Google Apps

cel4145 asks:

Can We Dump GroupWise and Switch to Google Apps Education Edition? | Kairosnews

technorati tags:google-apps

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Slife

Slife is a new application for the Max OS X that lets you visualize and organize your computer activities like never before. Slife observes your every interaction with applications such as Safari, Mail and iChat and keeps tracks of all web pages you visit, emails you read, documents you write and much more.

All activities observed by Slife are graphically displayed in visualizations that make it easy for you to understand where and how you are spending your time.

Slife Labs

technorati tags:slife, visualization, data-tracking

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Roundup on Google Apps

As you may have gathered, Google has launched the premier Google Apps service. Google Apps now comes in a free edition and a premier edition; the premier edition is $50/year (compared to Microsoft Live's $24/mo). Apps currently include Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Docs & Spreadsheets, Page Creator and Start Page. Advantages include tech support, guaranteed uptime, optional rather than required text ads, larger storage, etc.

Here are some resources on the launch:

• Wall Street Journal: "Google Further Tests Microsoft's Domain" - Claims that Google's email and calendar services are "now used by more than 100,000 small businesses."
• TechCrunch: "It’s G-Day: Google Launches Apps Premier" - A detailed roundup that includes links on Google's trust and security issues.
• InformationWeek: "Google Targets Microsoft With Launch Of Business Applications" - Core messages include simplicity and IT support/personnel savings. "General Electric Co. and Procter& Gamble are among the early adopters."
• FranticIndustries: "Google Apps Premier Edition now available" - "Paradoxical as it may seem, the thing I like best about these new product is that it’s not free."

technorati tags:google-apps

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Collaborative mind mapping

I'm not a big fan of it, but if you are, this looks like a good way to go.

Thanks to a tip from a reader and his gracious offer of an invite (thanks Robbie!), I've discovered MindMeister, a web-based mind mapping tool that does three things I consider to be absolutely essential for an online offering in this category. First, it is compatible with MindManager, the mapping application I use on both my PCs and my Mac. Second, it allows maps to be shared with others in either read-only or full collaboration mode. Third, it integrates Skype so that IM or VoIP chat can be conducted while collaboratively editing a map.

The Skype integration seems really smart. It would be nice to see something like this with collaborative office suites.

» MindMeister - collaborative web-based mind mapping | Office Evolution | ZDNet.com

technorati tags:mindmeister, mind-mapping, skype

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Wil GDocs remain free?

I think so, at least in the short to medium term, for several reasons. See the comments on a previous post. A lot depends on how Microsoft handles Office Live -- whose document sharing starts at $19.95/mo.

For fun, here's a snippet from a review for Office Live that nicely frames the new services-oriented strategy we're seeing across the sector. It's not like Microsoft is caught flat-footed, they're just trying to figure out how to leverage their legacy apps rather than be chained down by them:

The nice thing about this model, aside from the healing effect it will have on Microsoft's soul, is that it doesn't require customers to rip and replace what they already have. Instead, customers can determine which Office assets they'd like to use, in both software and service form, and utilize only those things which are of value to them. Cetinok told me that the Live Era changes Microsoft's business model in two ways. First, with the services model, the company can change the way in which it delivers software to users. A single services upgrade instantly upgrades thousands of clients, with no client-side software installs or deployment hang-ups. Second, the Live Era enables a new hybrid business model, where services can generated income for Microsoft in a number of different ways, depending on the situation. "Some of the things we'll do will be advertiser supported, transaction fee supported, or subscription fee supported," Cetinok told me. "It's like TV. Many TV shows are advertiser-supported, but you're starting to see product placement in network TV shows, while many people pay $10-$15 each month to get the premium programming on channels like HBO. There will always be high premium services and products, and those might come with transaction fees or subscription costs, but there will also be services that we can bring to price sensitive segments with advertising."

"Eternal damnation always makes me hungry"

Heard on the West Mall of the UT campus, around noon, as the speaker passed an itinerant preacher lecturing a large crowd on abortion.

Freestyle consulting for political campaigns

Jeff Jarvis' new blog, PrezVid, is all about how cheap video equipment and distribution are revolutionizing political campaigns. So far, the most priceless find is this guy, who offers candidates advice on leveraging YouTube. The setting is his dorm room, but the advice sounds spot-on.

High-powered consultant at PrezVid

technorati tags:youtube, campaign08

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Keep your friends close, but not too close

The dangers of social networking for campaigns:

Since John Edwards is probably doing more social network outreach than any other candidate, I pulled up his MySpace page. A quick click through to John Edwards' friends list reveals a porn photographer, a playboy model, a guy who calls himself "Sir Bitchmaster" and enough T & A to make Larry Flynt proud.

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

technorati tags:campaign08, edwards, sir-bitchmaster

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Europe proposes to track phone and net use very, very closely

A panoptic approach to security is proposed in Europe, and people are pointing out the flaws:

“This is an incredibly bad thing in terms of privacy, since people have grown up with the idea that you ought to be able to have an anonymous e-mail account,” Mr. Fleischer said. “Moreover, it’s totally unenforceable and would never work.”

Europe’s Plan to Track Phone and Net Use - New York Times

technorati tags:europe, telecommunications, security, panopticon, unenforceable

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Collaboration suites are spreading

Google Docs is what I've been using, but it's certainly not the only game in town:

» Central Desktop adds spreadsheets to their mix | Office Evolution | ZDNet.com

technorati tags:collaborative, office, suites

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Writing collaborative documents

I recently presented a talk to graduate students here at the LBJ school about how to effectively coordinate and write long (300-page) policy documents. The exercise was useful, and allowed me to crystallize some of the ideas I've had about how to manage collaborative work in the classroom; I'll likely recycle the lecture in my own classes when we work on group projects. The Powerpoint presentation is up at my site. Comments are welcome.

"the core dual elements of future social applications: flow and traffic"

Really, really leveraging the interconnectedness potentiality in web apps:

We are sending all sorts of traffic -- different sorts of messages -- flowing through the various implicit and explicit social networks that we define ourselves through, and through which we discover meaning, belonging, and insight.

This traffic flow -- made more liquid by RSS and instant messaging style real-time messaging -- is the primary dynamic that I believe we will see in all future social apps. Yes, we will want to have our traffic cached -- for search and analysis purposes -- but we will increasingly move toward a flow model: where the various bits that we craft and throw into the ether -- blog posts, calendar entries, photos, presence updates, whatever -- will be picked up by other apps, either to display them to us, or to make sense of them. We want to consolidate all into one flow -- a single time-stamped thread -- that all apps can dip into.

Some good examples follow. Read the whole thing, as Instapundit would say.

/Message: Traffic And Flow

technorati tags:flow, traffic

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Transcriptions

At the English Department of the University of California, Santa Barbara, they have an interesting research and teaching project on the information society:

Transcriptions is a NEH-funded curricular development and research initiative started in 1998 by the English Dept. at UC Santa Barbara to focus on literary study and information society. (See our history.) The goal of is to demonstrate a paradigm—at once theoretical, instructional, and technical—for integrating new information media and technology within the core work of a traditional humanities discipline. Transcriptions seeks to "transcribe" between past and present understandings of what it means to be a literate, educated, and humane person.

Put in the form of a question: what is the relation between being "well-read" and "well-informed"? How, in other words, can contemporary culture sensibly create a bridge between its past norms of cultural literacy and its present sense of the immense power of information culture?

About Transcriptions

technorati tags:transcriptions, knowledge-work

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New book: Philosophy of Technology

Jan-Kyrre Berg Olsen alerted me to this new book coedited with Evan Selinger:

Philosophy of Technology is a collection of short interviews based on 5 questions presented to some of the most influential and prominent scholars in this field. We hear their views on technology, its aim, scope, use, the future, and how their work fits in these respects.

The project sounds similar to Chasing Technoscience, which Selinger also coedited. Looks really interesting. Contributors include Joseph Agassi, Albert Borgmann, Mario Bunge, Harry Collins, Paul Durbin, Andrew Feenberg, Joan H. Fujimura, Peter Galison, Allan Hanson, Donna J. Haraway, N. Katherine Hayles, Don Ihde, Ian C. Jarvie, Bruno Latour, Bill McKibben, Carl Mitcham, Andrew Pickering, Daniel Sarewitz, Evan Selinger, Dan A. Seni, Peter Singer, Susan Leigh Star, Isabelle Stengers, and Lucy Suchman.

Philosophy of Technology, Automatic Press / VIP

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More on phones as wallets

Payments by mobile phones are relatively commonplace in parts of Africa and Europe, and are gaining ground here.

Smart Mobs: Payments by mobile phone

technorati tags:mobile-phones, payment

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When Linux is described as "revolutionary," this is not what I had in mind.

Cuba is switching, Venezuela is interested. Consider the irony of Cuba using "free as in speech" software. I guess it's less ironic than Cuba using Microsoft products.

Slashdot | Stallman Convinces Cuba to Switch to Open Source

technorati tags:cuba, linux, free-software

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Excel as your dashboard

A while back, I used Excel to track my many projects. I eventually migrated to Basecamp for its collaborative features. But if you don't collaborate so much, Excel makes a good "executive dashboard."

Building an Executive Dashboard in Excel 2007 with Conditional Formatting

technorati tags:excel, executive, dashboard

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Enterprise dashboards and work visualizations

Via Johndan, a blog on how businesspeople visualize work.

The Dashboard Spy on Enterprise Dashboards

technorati tags:work, visualizations

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Amanda Marcotte on quitting the Edwards campaign

The blurb says:

During my brief tenure as blogmaster for a Democratic presidential contender, I experienced the right-wing smear machine firsthand.

The word "smear" is unfortunate here, given the post that stirred up this trouble in the first place. Marcotte hasn't come to grips with the fact that arguments that work well in bounded networks of activity can and do alienate allies in less bounded networks. When Christians on the left react poorly to questions such as "What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?", you don't have to invent a conspiracy to explain why.

Why I had to quit the John Edwards campaign | Salon News

technorati tags:marcotte, edwards

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"We gave him a moustache so that we didn't need to draw a mouth."

Shigeru Miyamoto talks about designing Mario and the other Nintendo characters, as well as the ethics and future of game design.

Shigeru Miyamoto Talk Asia Interview - CNN.com

technorati tags:shigeru, miyamoto, mario, nintendo, wii

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Gina Trapani is lifehacking Yahoo Pipes

In case you're still trying to figure out how to use the thing:
Geek to Live: Create your master feed with Yahoo! Pipes - Lifehacker

technorati tags:yahoo-pipes

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UCD smackdown

Peter Merholtz of Adaptive Path savages usability guru Jakob Nielsen.

peterme.com :: Jakob Jumps The Shark

technorati tags:jakob, nielsen

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John Edwards campaign is in SecondLife, sort of

techPresident has a nice short article about John Edwards' campaign headquarters in SL. Like most SL places without an event happening, the headquarters is largely deserted. I liked this observation:

You can also put on an Edwards t-shirt and "Ed-head" shoes, send John a "letter," and there's a podium presumably waiting to be used by the Senator himself.

Except that in SL, it's impossible to tell if the candidate him/herself is the one animating that avatar. Wouldn't you want someone who's experienced in SL navigating your avatar, and a fast typist delivering the speech your speechwriters wrote based on the campaign themes identified by your demographers and focus groups? And, really, if they're doing all that, why not get a little sleep? After all, you've been driving hard on the campaign trail, and in this event you're not really needed!

What a great metaphor for the modern presidential campaign, in which the "candidate" is a sort of simulation animated by a smart but limited human being and her or his campaign team.

No, we'll be able to tell how involved the candidate actually is -- for this election, anyway -- because campaign speeches in SL are rare enough that someone will send a camera crew to Edwards' physical spot to record him operating the computer.

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

technorati tags:secondlife, edwards

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Lawrence Lessig at UT

If you're in Austin, lucky you: Lawrence Lessig will be in town Tuesday to discuss his book Free Culture, which is being read by all of our first-year composition students this year. Blogging Pedagogy has started a discussion for those whose students will attend.

Lessig appearance meme | Blogging Pedagogy

technorati tags:lessig, composition, writing, free-culture

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Military social networking

Surfacing the tacit knowledge and workarounds that experienced soldiers have accumulated:

Boing Boing: New gadgets blog aimed at enlisted military: Kit Up

technorati tags:netwar

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"'Since we don't have a computer, we know a lot more about what's here,' said Spinuzzi."

Sorry, but the juxtaposition was just so startling.

Web 4.0

If you are sick of Web 2.0, you might be startled to find out that even Web 3.0 is a little passe and we're talking about Web 4.0 now. Well, it's predicted for 2020-2030, so don't feel like you're too far behind. The article is short on details, but it includes an obligatory Ray Kurzweil quote.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this article is how I came to it: GMail helpfully showed it in the sidebar under "related links" as I was reading a colleague's email. It sort of makes me feel like I did when I dropped my insulated cup on the bus once, and a teenager two rows back lunged forward to pick it up for me: helpful, but a little too helpful, if you know what I mean.

» From semantic Web (3.0) to the WebOS (4.0) | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

technorati tags:web4.0, web3.0, web2.0, google-suggestions-are-a-little-creepy

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What would you think of lowjacking guest workers?

VeriChip is pushing this idea, and "they've persuaded a former Bush Health Secretary to get himself chipped."

Slashdot | VeriChip Implants 222 People With RFID

technorati tags:lowjacking, verichip

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International Journal of Communication

Via KairosNews, the International Journal of Communication is

an online, multi-media, academic journal that adheres to the highest standards of peer review and engages established and emerging scholars from anywhere in the world. The International Journal of Communication is an interdisciplinary journal that, while centered in communication, is open and welcoming to contributions from the many disciplines and approaches that meet at the crossroads that is communication study.

Editors are Manuel Castells and Larry Gross. Looks really interesting. No RSS feed.

International Journal of Communication

technorati tags:communication, journal, networks, castells

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What do you actually DO with Yahoo Pipes??

Some ideas.

5 cool ways to use Yahoo! Pipes - franticindustries.

technorati tags:yahoo-pipes

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What presidential candidates are purchasing Google keywords?

Democratic presidential candidates are way ahead in terms of social networking, but the Republican candidates are farther ahead in terms of buying keywords to make sure they top search results.

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

technorati tags:campaign, search, keywords

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More on Google Maps and Iraq

I mentioned a while back that insurgents in Iraq were apparently using Google Maps. According to the article below, so are civilians: they use it and Google Earth to plan escape routes. Web services are becoming a taken-for-granted part of our information landscape.

Smart Mobs: Survival in Iraq

technorati tags:google-maps, iraq

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The dutch accessibility law ...

... is apparently "awesome."

The Dutch accessibility law is awesome | 456 Berea Street

technorati tags:accessibility

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