Thru-the-mist

New TSA Pat-Downs

2010-11-23T15:29:00.003-05:00

All this talk about new body scans and aggressive pat-downs at the airports have me seriously considering changing my travel plans. You read these headlines and then you have to become more informed, so you can make reasoned decisions about your feelings on the subject... Yessir, if I can come up with the money I just might have to start flying more often! Some of us can't be too choosey, you know.

And after hearing that the agents have to go through several weeks of training and continual daily testing -- well, who knows, that might even help with our unemployment problems!

Facebook Re-invents Email

2010-11-16T12:47:00.002-05:00

Facebook announced yesterday the release of their Titan project - a re-definition of email in the context of a Facebook-centered world. I can fully understand why they would want this. But what does it say about us, and what behavioral shifts might it reinforce?

Technology seems to be helping us move further towards continual "content snacking" -- to feed our voracious need for constant realtime updates in order to validate our existence. Our ADOS (Attention Deficit - Oooh, Shiny) mindsets already mean we cannot drive two miles without being on our phones.

Our messages (and thought processes) get shorter
We no longer communicate via written letters, because we don't want to spend the time & effort to get out pen and paper, perhaps actually THINK ABOUT IT, then compose & write the letter, find an envelope, address & stamp it and then mail it. Now Facebook (from listening to high school students) decides that email is too slow; and we don't really want to leave Facebook and fire up some sluggish email software just to mail someone a message, when we can just do it right there in Facebook! Wow. Now we'll get to spend even less effort engaging our brains before we put our (figurative) mouths in gear.

I thought mainstream media was doing a good enough job of that.

Facemash vs Winkleface?

2010-10-11T16:14:00.002-04:00

The Social Network gives us an intriguing look into the creation of Facebook -- a tool perhaps best described as "permission-based stalking". And while the film has elements of jealousy, loyalty, friendship, power, money, envy, social status, recrimination and lost innocence, it skips lightly over the immense amount of coding, arguing and just plain "testing" and "fixing" that are required to keep up with an ever-expanding user base and the inherent feature wars that helped it grow.

I cannot help but wonder what Facebook might have become:

if it had stayed within the walled vision of Winkleface?
if Eduardo's fiscal conservative Ad-supported view had taken over?
if Perky Parker had stayed clean?
if the west coast VCs hadn't stepped in?
if the addictive allure of the "who's Hottest" Facemash hadn't kick-started it?

What are your thoughts? What were the key influences?

New Augmented Reality Device Goes Open Source | Singularity Hub

2009-11-20T14:26:00.001-05:00

via singularityhub.com

The uses for augmented reality keep piling up, but this is the first actual new "device" I have seen - as in new hardware vs just a phone app. Wow! Right out of Minority Report!

The demo is awe-inspiring, and the fact that MIT has made it Open Source means that it will quickly become a commercial product. And the price point shouldn't be that bad either. The total cost of the demo version is under $350.
Exciting stuff indeed!

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The Evolution of Social Media

2009-10-14T11:51:00.001-04:00

via webdesignerdepot.com

For those who think social media is a fad, a fast-forward overview of thirty years of social media history should provide some perspective. The article takes us through the ever-shifting ways we have used social media tools to connect with each other through several decades. I think it provides ample evidence that we are evolving ever newer ways of connecting and communicating.

As Clay Shirky pointed out in the book Here Comes Everybody,
"Every webpage is a latent community. Each page collects the attention of people interested in its contents, and those people might well be interested in conversing with one another too. In almost all cases the community will remain latent, either because the potential ties are too weak, or because the people looking at the page are separated by too wide a gulf of time, and so on."

In several ways I think that Google's Sidewiki is a step toward recognizing the potential of "community" in every web page.

As Shirky indicated, we are continuing to experiment with various ways to use these new communication tools. And they will continue to evolve. The article from Cameron Chapman at WebDesignerDepot is a real help in providing perspective.

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Bringing Social Media to your doorstep

2009-10-04T23:29:00.001-04:00

Jeremiah's blog post about Google Sidewiki points out one more reason that brands need to be monitoring constantly -- Sidewiki is letting them comment right next to your web page!

Best take a proactive stance and welcome visitors to your site via that sidewiki space. And then monitor that space regularly for comments.

in reference to: Damage Control: Social Media Reversals « Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing (view on Google Sidewiki)

Google Sidewiki entry by Jim

2009-10-03T14:46:00.001-04:00

I already see that owner comments stay at the top, then I see subject-matter-experts, then comments as they have been voted on by viewers. Now if Google uses my contact info from Gmail to float my friend's comments higher, that is really starting to look like a "social relevancy' ranking. That kind of functionality could drive adoption quickly. Otherwise, if the small space just lists things sequentially, there isn't much value-add.

in reference to:

"see what Google is doing right? They are turning the whole web into a social network."
- Google’s SideWiki Shifts Power To Consumers –Away From Corporate Websites « Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing (view on Google Sidewiki)

Sidewiki is a game-changer

2009-10-02T14:06:00.001-04:00

Indeed the consumers own the social media and the release of Google's sidewiki emphasizes your point that brand owners can no longer afford to not participate. Social content can and will be published -- and now appear right next to your own corporate web content.

in reference to:

"The reality is, CONSUMERS own social media, not brands and certainly not agencies. Whether we like it or not, we now must market our brands in a landscape where consumers have the tools to make their voice heard, and the technology to hear what everyone else is saying. Any more hesitation on the part of a brand to participate and engage in dialogue with their consumers is extremely risky. It's not about waiting to get this "right", but about participating now (ie. small pilot programs with a focus on learning, experimentation, and quick wins), and doing so with a spirit of honesty and transparency."
- Saatchi Wellness: Who Owns Social Media (view on Google Sidewiki)

Google’s SideWiki Merging the Social Web with Web Pages

2009-10-02T13:39:00.004-04:00

via web-strategist.com

A week ago Google announced Sidewiki, a free toolbar service that lets anyone (anyone registered with Google, that is) add comments to any web page... yes, ANY web page. This raises all sort of questions about who can and will monitor such comments. Of course there are usage policies that you agree to follow, but the real question -- for the owner of the web page -- is who (and how) will these policies be monitored and enforced?

Jeremiah Owyang writes in his blog (http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/09/24/googles-sidewiki-shifts-power-to-consumers-away-from-corporate-web-teams/) about shifting power to consumers and away from corporate website publishers. Others have written about this being a field day for the lawyers. It will be interesting to see how it shakes out. Adoption will be very much based on the ease of access and the value-add that the service provides.

In a July 17th post http://blog.niccllc.net/where-is-search-headed I wrote about the increasing need for "social relevancy" ranking. In that post I said, "... the folks who thunk up the PageRank algorithms we all use today are likely focused on it." I didn't know how prescient that statement was.

It seems that Sidewiki is already demonstrating that it intends to sort the page comments based on who provided them and their "voted upon", perceived value. If they then use your Google profile to start adding additional levels of social "relevancy" ranking to these comments, things could get very interesting.

This seems to me to represent a HUGE step toward merging "content providers" and "content consumers" into one level playing field. Lets keep watching to see where it goes!

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We Are Living In Augmented Times

2009-10-01T15:30:00.001-04:00

via artimes.rouli.net

The latest update on Augmented Times (artimes.rouli.net) has some cool new videos and this wonderful mockup by Matthew Buckland and Philip Langley of possible future AR social networking apps. The technology is largely all available and is waiting for the right "spark" to make it all come together.

Combining AR with facial recognition, social engagement & networking, mobile & GPS features - the times are ripe to see some big new launches. It will happen faster than we can imagine.
...with, of course, self-improvement and real estate ads liberally sprinkled in.

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Like a commenting system

2009-09-30T21:28:00.001-04:00

...but commenting systems still have lots of control by the site owner/publisher. Who provides the controls in sidewiki? Does anyone mediate the comments? And given our increasingly "uncivil" public discourse tendencies, what keeps these comments on target?

in reference to:

"actually a universal commenting system"
- Google Launches Sidewiki — More Like a Universal Commenting System (view on Google Sidewiki)

Augmented Reality Games

2009-09-29T10:02:00.001-04:00

via vimeo.com

I am amazed by the flurry of augmented reality "personal" applications being introduced lately. While the technology has been around for a while, people figuring out different ways of layering real-world views with data is simply phenomenal.

One of the most engaging and exciting to watch, however, is the gaming interface shown in this video. More about the game can be found at http://julianoliver.com/levelhead

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BIONIC EYE: Augmented Reality on the iPhone

2009-09-24T11:14:00.002-04:00

via mashable.com

Now here is an app that is immediately usable and meaningful. I love that it doesn't require web or wi-fi connection. Sure it requires 3GS, but it is great to see this kind of app in the store! Now if it could just tell me where I left my keys.

Good post on this at http://mashable.com/2009/09/24/bionic-eye/ and keep those augmented reality apps coming.

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We Are Living in Exponential Times - Did You Know? 4.0

2009-09-16T11:56:00.001-04:00

via youtube.com

The growing tsunami of digital content continues, as our mobile devices evolve into wireless leashes that keep us tethered to the online content we seem to crave and the social tweets that stroke our collective ego. The sudden commercial flurry of "augmented reality" mobile apps and the patent on adding AR to contact lenses... where is it all headed? No one seems to know, but in the near term it means that lots of advertising dollars will be headed to the wireless mobile world. How about tweet ads and RSS feed ads? Special personalized coupon discounts that project on your AR contact lenses as you walk down the store aisle. The technology all exists today. Shift happens.

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Storing and Searching Digital Conversations

2009-09-08T11:50:00.001-04:00

Wow! New to me, but it seems that startups Dexrex.com and Silentale.com are both aiming to "store all your digital conversations in one place and allow you to access them (and search them) from anywhere."

As our various social conversations start to bleed over from one service to another, it is increasingly difficult to track them. Google's Wave product seems to offer promise of pulling our "conversations" into it's interface. The above-mentioned offerings combine various instant messaging client conversations and mobile SNS texting and Silentale (just launching in beta) aims to consolidate your conversations and contacts from all platforms that you use: your webmail, your social networks, and your mobile phone. By “digital conversations”, Silentale means literally anything you say to someone privately (email, chat, sms, dm) or publicly (twitter, @replies etc).

Tools like these will become more necessary as new social media services attract each of us and encourage us to venture outside the social sites we started in.

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Lifestreaming - does "Hub and Spokes" Work?

2009-08-28T10:27:00.001-04:00

Steve Rubel's post on the changing model of how we interact with social media is right on. As we drown in increasing levels of digital noise, we each struggle with how best to interact with it.

I sold office automation software in the early days of email. There was a predictable adoption curve within companies. Once folks got used to an electronic inbox, they soon wondered why they weren't getting as much email as others around them. It didn't take long for the novelty to wear thin and they were eventually deluged with so many NEW messages that they struggled to keep it all organized. Nowadays each new popular social media tool seems to be going through a similar track.

Hub and Spokes
While Steve's "Hub abd Spokes" model seems attractive, I feel we use the different social sites much like the various roles we play in society... parent, student, friend, provider, spouse, lover, child, co-worker, neighbor. And we change "hats" frequently throughout the day. Likewise, we use different social sites to meet different needs, to connect us to different communities, and gather/share different opinions.

I really like Posterous, and I think the hub and spoke model may be the best way to stay connected to all of my different online social "spaces" - today. But that is more because it lets me maintain my presence in each of them with less overall effort. But it doesn't really help me aggregate or visit each of these neighborhoods. I am still looking for a good solution there, as the models evolve.

Re: Personal organization - I know I need to start organizing things when I can't see the top of my desk. Unfortunately, the same isn't true of the electronic counterparts. Your electronic inbox (or feed reader) doesn't fall over when it gets too full!

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Live by the (Social Media) Sword...

2009-08-21T13:01:00.001-04:00

When I posted just a month ago that Whole Foods Market had just become the first consumer brand to pass one million followers on Twitter, I didn't foresee how great a lesson they would become for brands just starting to use social media. Of course, Whole Foods Market is a company with a Facebook presence, a CEO blog, a Twitter presence and RSS feeds, and seems very focused on using tools of the times.

Therefore I guess it shouldn't have come as a surprise that when the CEO contributes an Op Ed piece on the hotly-contested Healthcare debate, the social media spaces where they have a presence reacted - well, strongly! It is not ever clear whether you're speaking as an individual or as the leader of a company (or as an elected representative, or professional association, etc.) when you make public pronouncements. It is even more open to interpretation in today's world of digital sound-bytes, that get quickly cropped of context, then instantly broadcast, copied, re-tweeted to an eager-to-jump-to-conclusions hungry audience.

I think at least one lesson for the newbie-in-charge of social media for any brand today is that social media is a two-edged sword that can help you clear a space and stake a claim for your brand, but can quickly and easily be turned against you. Yes, use it. But as with any tool - "With great power comes great responsibility." So be prepared to monitor that same social media space closely.

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Teachable Moments

2009-07-27T12:47:00.001-04:00

Over the past several days we have been reminded that the White House is hoping the hubbub surrounding the Gates/Crowley incident in Cambridge can become a "teachable moment" for America. While we no doubt need to encourage more open dialog on race issues and racial profiling, perhaps the real "teachable moment" needs to be directed at the Administration -- which let a single off-topic question become the dominant news cycle headline for several days; derailing an otherwise well-crafted and desperately-needed message on the need to work together for healthcare reform.

Failure to Teach
The Administration -- and the President -- should know better. The media today crowdsources its headline stories, reaching for ratings rather than providing reasoned context and interpretation. And in the last two minutes, the intended message of the press conference was drowned out -- lost in the background noise.

Failure to Listen
But the message was also missed because we as a population are losing the ability to listen and pay attention -- to sort out the bigger message. Even when the topic is something that affects us all, as healthcare certainly does, we cannot seem to stay focused... instead showing increasing signs that we have all succumbed to ADOS -- Attention Deficit... Oooh, Shiny!

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Social Media Diet Pyramid - Food for thought

2009-07-22T12:01:00.001-04:00

via gadgets.boingboing.net

A really interesting take on the standard food pyramid chart was done recently by Steven Leckart & Jason Lee. It depicts our daily social media diet, providing a little "food for thought". Makes one wonder what the minimum daily requirements are to stay socially relevant.

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Walter Cronkite - was special

2009-07-20T11:52:00.001-04:00

Walter Cronkite had a very special relationship with the television audience - he not only delivered the news headlines, he also provided context. Though the news timeslot was limited in those days, he had a gift for making us feel that he understood our concerns.

It is noteworthy that through some of America's most troubling times, Walter Cronkite was the one person we trusted to keep us informed - more trusted than our elected officials. So influential in fact that when he openly stated his views on the Viet Nam War in a TV special, LBJ supposedly said, "If I've lost Cronkite, we've lost the war."

That kind of influence doesn't come easily, and no one has replaced him.

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Celebrate Cultural Diversity

2009-07-19T22:34:00.001-04:00

Our country seems to be becoming more of a cultural melting pot as people move to follow job opportunities. But what I thought should be a "good" thing is increasingly being railed against by elements in our society who spout hate against anything that seems to threaten the status quo. How sad that we choose to see cultural diversity only as a threat rather than accept and celebrate the fact that our world is changing. Technology has the power to interconnect people from all across the world. I would hope that it would help us see how alike we all are rather than how different.

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Where is Search Headed?

2009-07-17T11:40:00.001-04:00

Alex Iskold talks about the future of search requiring a "Social Relevancy Ranking" as we get further inundated by social data feeds. I wholeheartedly agree! And the folks who thunk up the PageRank algorithms we all use today are likely focused on it. These suggestions seem right on-the-mark and very timely. It could totally change the way we view streams of information we get from friends.

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Information Overload - the Data Tsunami

2009-07-17T09:49:00.001-04:00

Some (apparent) Facts
Social Data Revolution by Andreas Weigend
"In 2009, more data will be generated by individuals than in the entire history of mankind through 2008. Information overload is more serious than ever. What are the implications for marketing?"

Who Consumers Trust by Nielsen
"Ninety percent of consumers surveyed noted that they trust recommendations from people they know, while 70 percent trusted consumer opinions posted online." And Search Engine results Ads score a comparative 41%.

The Tsunami Effect
The implications from my perspective are that as we continue to drown in ever-increasing amounts of online data, fewer people are doing their own buying research through search engines and are instead tending to rely on recommendations from their peers and friends. The stats seem to indicate that I will look first at what my social network friends have to say, secondly to other consumer opinions posted online, then lastly to what I can find through the search engines.

Clearly this has implications for marketing and the monetization models that the search engines have achieved and that the social networking sites are grabbing for.

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Move from Lotus Notes to Google?

2009-07-14T13:06:00.001-04:00

Migrate from Lotus Notes to Google Apps using new tools just announced from Google. While their recently announced Chrome Operating System won't be available until next year, they are definitely rolling out tools to get Enterprise IT folks on board. In a tight economy, these approaches are making more and more sense for business use. Looked at your licensing budget recently? Is Google a solid enterprise strategy for you? Maybe its time to take a harder look.
(image from TechCrunch article)

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Twitter Goes Mainstream?

2009-07-14T10:16:00.001-04:00

I'm not sure how to gauge when a technology shifts into high gear, but Steve Rubel points out today that Whole Foods has become the first consumer brand to pass one million followers on Twitter. While known for social trivia, tech babel, celebrity gossip and the occasional political rebellion, maybe Twitter is finally coming of age if reasoned promotional campaigns can be successful in this space. The trick would seem to be knowing and watching your target audience well. Of course coming from a company with a Facebook presence, a CEO blog and RSS feeds, Whole Foods Market is focused on using tools of the times.

Still, seeing this success will undoubtedly get the attention of others in the digital PR and digital marketing arena. And who knows, maybe there's a business model for Twitter after all!

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Visualizations of Twitter Traffic

2009-07-09T12:37:00.001-04:00

As Twitter has grown in the public consciousness, so has interest in getting a handle on just what it is and what folks are doing with it. People may just want to know stats about themselves, or their followers, or more about subjects being discussed, or the volume of traffic on a particular subject, or the number of tweets from a particular person. All of this information is available through a public API from Twitter, and several nice ways to visualize the information is starting to be available.

Some of the better ones I have seen are linked here:
http://flowingdata.com/2008/03/12/17-ways-to-visualize-the-twitter-universe/
http://neoformix.com/Projects/portfolio/index.html
http://hashtags.org/

Let me know if you have other Twitter visualizations that you like.

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Google Heats Up the Tech Wars

2009-07-08T10:40:00.001-04:00

Ahh, it is nice to see tech innovation and competition heating up again, as Google announces it's entry into the Operating System market.

Google Chrome OS - What is it and what it isn't:
www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_google_os_becomes_reality_google_announced_the.php

googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html

Google docs and apps competing with well-entrenched desktop suites; Google's Android entry into the cell phone marketplace; Google Voice; the Chrome Browser and now a slim, supposedly speedy web-access-focused OS. Certainly the turf wars will abound, but with this open-source offering, enterprise IT has to be looking at ways to save BIG licensing dollars. Isn't competition wonderful?

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Information Foraging and "streams"

2009-07-03T10:23:00.001-04:00

Stream vs Firehose
So, "streams" are the new metaphore on the web as discussed recently by Nova Spivak, Steve Rubel, John Borthwick and other tech watchers. I agree with the "fluid" analogy, but I fear that instead of streams we are increasingly living with firehoses of information being aimed at us. With wave after wave of increasingly trivial information inundating our lives.

Quoting from Eric Schonfeld:
"...a stream. A real time, flowing, dynamic stream of information — that we as users and participants can dip in and out of and whether we participate in them or simply observe we are a part of this flow."

Information Foraging
Whether we are in the "page" era or the "stream" era of the web, we still have to find the nuggets of information that directly relate to what we are looking for. When it comes to pages, Google established itself as the premier tool to use, but what tool or tools will best help us cull the most appropriate "streams" of information out of the ever growing ocean of trivial "what are you doing now" nonsense? I increasingly feel like I am panning for gold at the bottom of the Hoover Dam - I spend far more time just getting drenched than actually finding anything of value!

Predator/Prey Relationship
Like predators looking for prey, we search out information in the fields we have previously found yielded good results. When the field dries up, we move on to adjacent territory - or we make do with less satisfactory prey. This analogy carries over well to the web, except that there is no physical price to pay (miles to travel) for moving to a new "field" - they are all literally "next door" on the web, but you have to know which way to step in order to get there. It will be interesting to watch and see what tools emerge to help us aggregate, filter, and manage these growing streams.

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The stream metaphor is here to stay

2009-07-02T15:24:00.001-04:00

Steve Rubel's comments on moving from blogging to lifestream really ring true with me. But whether it is push or pull, page-based or stream-based, 140 characters or 14 pages, I hope that it is more about increasing our communication with each other. Twelve minute newscasts forced us over time to get used to 'soundbite' news. The net lets us communicate so much more broadly and investigate and search out so many more sources -- and have it at our fingertips 24 hours a day if we need it.

My hope is that we are becoming more informed individuals who communicate more effectively with a larger community.
See Steve's article at:
http://www.steverubel.com/immediacy-vs-reflection-0

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Vizio releasing Twitter-, Flickr-, Netflix-enabled TV

2009-06-25T13:51:00.001-04:00

via crunchgear.com

Why do I need a Tivo any more? It looks like Marty McFly's video wall may well be here before 2015!
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/06/23/vizio-to-launch-the-most-internet-connected-hdtvs-later-this-year/

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Visualizing Job Losses

2009-06-24T16:19:00.001-04:00

Visualizing job losses in a gut-wrenching way:

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/06/the-geography-of-job-loss/

Watching the year-over-year job growth in different areas of the country; watching the impact of natural disasters like Hurricanes; then seeing the mounting job losses hit different parts of the country as the economy tumbles; I cannot help but be reminded of pictorial versions of nuclear destruction. Only this time it is more like neutron bombs -- the people are gone but the empty buildings are left standing.

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Life within the Live Mesh

2008-05-03T23:05:00.002-04:00

Though admittedly not clued in to the depths of the offering, I perceive the April 23rd introduction of Live Mesh (https://www.mesh.com/Welcome/Welcome.aspx) to be one of the first indications of the real impact on Microsoft from Ray Ozzie – Chief Software Architect since June of ‘06. This man (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Ozzie) is the creative mind that brought us Lotus Symphony, Lotus Notes and more recently, Groove Networks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groove_Virtual_Office).

Though Microsoft branded the Groove product after buying it a few years back, it was allowed to languish on the shelf with unclear alternative groupware offerings. Now do we see in Live Mesh a re-envisioning that could truly offer new territory for Microsoft to conquer? Not content to own the corporate and home desktop environment and with less than enthusiastic results in the tablet and handheld PDA market, Microsoft seems to be ready to “manage” and “synchronize” all of our personal data for us.

I can’t help but wonder if the over-zealous pursuit of Yahoo could be related to the same strategy… buying their way in front of one of the largest collection of eyeball-hours on the planet. What a wonderful way to introduce a toolset that offers to help organize our otherwise hopelessly disorganized digital lives!

Mr. Ozzie’s brilliance and vision has produced great products in the past that never quite found the market they deserved. Perhaps married with Microsoft’s marketing muscle and Yahoo’s youthful enthusiasm we will see the right product find the right audience at the right time. It would be refreshing.

The Economics of Information Flow

2007-07-15T19:16:00.000-04:00

I spent many years working with document management systems - software that would facilitate the distribution, flow and storage of information within an organization. I worked with both public and private institutions; large and small; everything from mid-size single office companies to extended multi-nationals; municipal, state and federal government to colleges and universities. And they all had somewhat unique patterns of information flow that were apparently driven less by their physical structure and management structure and more by the players who held positions of influence within the structure.

This holds true at a very granular level. The amount of and quality of information flowing in and out of any particular office is less about the function of the office than the management style of the person in the office. Anyway, over this time period I witnessed the growth and maturation of various internal proprietary email software systems and eventually with the opening up of the internet, the ubiquitous email systems of today.

Pay Attention!
How often we hear this dictum as we grow up. And there really is an underlying economics that plays out in information flow as we grow older. In a typical office environment you both create and read (consume) many items of information throughout the day. When you send a memo to someone, you are asking that they ‘pay’ attention to it. You are asking them to ‘spend’ time with it and they have to judge how much of their time it is ‘worth’.

The intended recipient looks for various clues to make these judgements, and as we moved from a world of paper documents sent via interoffice mail to the world of digital word processing and instantaneous email, the nature of these clues changed as well. In the paper world, I may judge how ‘formal’ a communication seems to be by how it is packaged… what kind of paper it is on… in a binder or not, and how it was sent to me.

As email systems evolved into a kind of dull uniformity with least-common-denominator functionality, a small set of meta-data sifted out as the only clues we have about such items. We can see a) From - who sent it, b) Title - what they called it (30 characters or less, usually), and c) When it was sent. Though it is little enough to go on, we clearly make decisions and prioritize how we view items based on these clues. Items from your boss likely get top attention; items you were expecting from someone or a title that hints at major organization changes grab your attention also.

Another reality though was the explosion of content. Email systems made it easy to create and distribute things, and even worse to forward items on to virtually any number of people. A physical inbox can only handle so many items before they topple out the side and onto the floor. An electronic one, however, has no such limit, but it easily stretches the limits of our abilities to deal with what’s in it!

The 1980s saw the explosion of inter-office email and the 1990s added email from the rest of the world through the internet. Yet we were given fewer clues than ever about the contents of each individual item. The beginning waves of spam added even more to the problem, since it often uses the from and title fields to grab our attention. There are now more emails sent per day than there are people on the planet! And the numbers will probably continue to grow.

Coupled with the rise of cell phone usage in the last decade, computer based instant messaging and the more recent rise of cell phone based SMS text messaging… we are increasingly flooded with information. Is it any surprise that we have a growing attention deficit disorder problem?

SNS Comes of Age
Our youth (and growing numbers of adults) seem to be seeking refuge in social networking software (SNS) such as MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn or others. They have more tools for creating connections with others and filtering out unwanted spam, and they offer many dynamic social networking tools as well. Many of the youth on MySpace indicate they no longer use email, but use only the equivalent messaging tools within the SNS.

The dramatic usage growth of MySpace (nearly the top visited site on the net) and Facebook (5 million new users in the past six weeks) definitely points to a growing trend, and recent calls for the development of common standards for social networking software sounds a lot like a replay of the call for email standards in the late 80s. Whatever direction this takes, we are rapidly becoming a society that though drowning in information seems to reflect a dearth of substantive human communication. Either the tools or filters to handle it better will have to evolve quickly!

Social Networks reflecting Class Divide

2007-07-10T17:48:00.000-04:00

Social Networks have been a growing phenomenon for several years. I'm not sure what drives it, but certainly things such as the growing mobility of our population, ubiquitous net access, and the shifting workplace that no longer provide lifetime employment opportunities. Things such as this tend to leave society's youth with no sense of community.

I'm sure there are many forces at work here, and they will likely make for a compelling thesis by some aspiring doctoral candidate, but the facts are that there have been overlapping and dramatically growing 'social networking sites' (SNS) on the net for many years. Overlapping in the sense that as popularity wanes for one, it grows for another. And when that happens, one looks for the 'features' that make one SNS more attractive than another.

Friendster was one of the first... and it was more than moderately successful. But in 2004-2005 the MySpace phenomenon took the forefront. Growth (though understandably difficult to accurately measure) has been such that if MySpace was a country, it would be about the 10th largest in the World! Teens have flocked to the site, and stories about it became the biggest nightmare for parents - who typically didn't understand it at all. But regular nightly news stories warned us about predators lurking on MySpace... and instead of "it is eleven o'clock, do you know where your children are?" it became, "Are you familiar with your child's MySpace profile page?"

In 2005-2006 a new player came on the scene. Starting in the Ivy Leage schools on the east coast, Facebook had limited access since only members of a select group of high end universities could set up accounts. The site quickly opened up access to more and more schools and recently has opened up access completely - to anyone.

While MySpace is still the hot site for teens, Facebook has been attracting a lower and lower age range (instead of just college and post-college students). In fact, go into any high school and you will find some teens with MySpace accounts and groups and others talking only about their Facebook accounts and groups.

An Emerging Pattern?
What is kinda scary to me is that over the past couple of years a researcher, Danah Boyd, has started to see an emerging pattern in the use of the networks. In her June 24, 2007 paper she discusses the emerging pattern of class divide reflected in who chooses MySpace vs. Facebook.

Teens who see themselves as college-bound are setting up Facebook accounts while those that don't are using MySpace. While this is far too much a generalization, her observations are compelling. And I can see the same thing from a personal perspective - from people I know and work with.

I suppose it shouldn't surprise anyone that our societal visions of class distinction would play out in any online 'society'. SNS offer virtual grouping capabilities by definition... so it is natural that it will reflect the types of grouping we display in everyday life. We hang out with folks we feel comfortable around - usually because we have several things in common.

Army Impact?
One of the scarier things, though, is that earlier this summer the U.S. Army cut off access to MySpace thru its networks. There were many reasons given, but the fact seems to be that the MySpace users were most all enlisted ranks, whereas officers tended to set up Facebook accounts. Hmmmmm.

At a time when we give verbal homage to worrying about class division and achievement gaps, and supposedly celebrate diversity, isn't it interesting that our unspoken views of class distinction are playing out in our youth's choice of social networks?

School Building Costs

2007-07-05T09:29:00.000-04:00

Fort Wayne just completed a petition drive regarding funding for a project to upgrade the infrastructure and “repair” most of the school buildings within the Fort Wayne Community Schools system. The project scope and various funding alternatives were all discussed at open meetings over several months. Any concerned citizens certainly had opportunities to attend, ask questions, and be informed. A remonstrance was filed against the project and the resulting petition drive yielded a resounding “NO” which effectively killed the project for at least a year.

What was the ‘vote’ about?

Many have commented that the dollar amount of the project was the main issue. And much journalistic space and high-sounding rhetoric has been devoted to that point. But from one who walked door-to-door and spent hours listening to conversations with individual signers, I would have to say that the dollar amount of the project had little or nothing to do with the actual vote.

The voters fell into two basic camps – those who accepted that the project was necessary for the city’s future, and those who would have voted against any proposal put in front of them. Indeed, some openly stated that they were voting against the city’s Harrison Square project (which had been voted on by City Council, but not put in front of the voters); some voted to punish the school administration for not having spent prior years’ monies on these building repairs; some were voting against the city’s expenditures on upgrading the sanitary sewer systems; many were voting against the state legislature raising their property tax rates; some areas were voting against city taxes due to recent annexation; and yes, more than one person indicated they were voting against the school project because they couldn’t smoke in their favorite restaurant any more due to the city’s new smoking ban.

Lack of Awareness

There were, of course, many who were unaware of the project, the remonstrance and the petition drive. But far greater was the number of people with no apparent reasonable understanding of the reasons for, or scope of the project. The entire process of examining the building needs, scoping and prioritizing what needed to be fixed, and determining alternative financing had been open to the public, but people seemed ready and eager to grasp at dramatically unreasonable and sometimes silly reasons to be against the project. (… we were fixing buildings in Nebraska or in South Bend…?)

Lack of Leadership

During this period there was little direction coming out of the supposed leaders of the community, business or political. Candidates running for public office avoided taking a position. Business leaders (who supposedly might actually want to hire students coming up thru these schools) mostly remained quiet. A few who were outspoken against the project had their facts in disarray, but then it is easy to take schools to task these days…

Current facts about society

Once, the larger society shared the cost of raising and educating the next generation. These days, the responsibilities are falling more to individual families, and its breaking the middle class (see May, 2004 article in The American Prospect by Amelia Warren Tyaqi).

At a time when more families with children will file for bankruptcy than divorce, motherhood is now the single best predictor that a woman will end up in financial collapse. And, contrary to every popular assumption, the parents who find themselves in the bankruptcy courts are not the chronically poor.

Yet it still does take a village to raise and educate a child. And the responsibility to fund it lies jointly with the state legislature and with a board with local taxing authority. And local folks must pick up the tab.

Current facts about FWCS

The opposition stated that FWCS should spend money on academics, not buildings. If they really believe that then I request their assistance in lobbying the state legislature to balance the funding formulas such that FWCS gets its fair share of state funds. Currently FWCS receives less funding per student than any other urban district in Indiana, has the most diverse student population, and still it spends a higher percentage of its funds on academics than any other. I believe the academics argument was merely another smokescreen, but again, it is easy to take schools to task these days…

Compare to ACPL

Back in 2001, I carried a petition in support of the massive Allen County Public Library building project. It was just after 9/11 but there was a real sense of optimism that I felt going door-to-door. Sure this building project represented a tax burden, but there was a recognition that we have something very special in our libraries worth investing in.

Well you know, we have something very special in FWCS too; and something even more precious, our community’s children. But that sense of optimism isn’t there right now. People don’t have the faith in government. They don’t have faith that their jobs are secure. They are just ‘getting by’ on credit, and they feel like everybody’s trying to get a bite out of each dollar they have. Fort Wayne isn’t interested in investing in anything right now. Fort Wayne is holding on and diggin’ in. “I got mine, and to heck with you!” seems to be the rallying cry.

Facts about the schools’ condition

Whatever folks choose to believe, the fact remains that the school buildings have very real problems that need to be addressed. They will get worse; and things that are at first inconveniences, then problems, will become emergencies. And each emergency will cost more than what it would have cost to do it under this project.

What does it say…

What does it say about a community when its jail facilities are in dramatically better condition than its schools?

Democracy and the Middle East

2006-11-01T16:14:00.000-05:00

A major rallying cry for the war in Iraq was to help bring 'democracy' to the middle east. In hindsight it seems that although we eliminated a dictatorship, in many ways the war has succeeded in bringing more elements of totalitarianism to the people of the United States rather than instill any elements of democracy in Iraq.

Perhaps the real emerging voice of democracy in the middle east is through Aljazeera, which seems to be giving a limited voice to Arab communities that previously had none.

Graphical Visualization - Making Sense Out of Data

2006-08-17T18:29:00.000-04:00

I have long been a fan of graphical visualization of data. Examining tabular data vs. looking at graphs involves different areas of the brain, I am told. And we are quicker to see trends and relationships when viewing data graphically.

This arena has seen much activity in research areas in university environments over the years, but it doesn't seem to have hit the mainstream in accepted business tools, beyond the graphical charting capabilities of spreadsheets. Several years ago a few new tools appeared in areas that require a rapid grasp of trends, and more recently there have been some new types of graphical tools used in displaying search engine results. This is certainly an area that provides a large volume of information to be displayed, and site users are interested in sifting out the items that are closer to the target of their search.

The top graphical display tools I have seen are:

SmartMoney's 'Map of the Market' - a graphical display of stock market performance that is staggering in its ability to show trends, whether market trends in general or in particular sectors
LivePlasma (www.liveplasma.com and www.musicplasma.com) - a graphical display that uses Amazon's recent purchase history to visually display "people who bought A also bought B" information; a kick to explore
Grokker (www.grokker.com) - a search engine that "clusters" the results (groups them into like categories) AND offers a graphical representation you may use for drill down
Kartoo (www.kartoo.com) - another search approach that provides more visual clues on screen (relationships between results) and some nice mouseover clues as well
The TouchGraph browser - a rich though somewhat visually confusing display of data relationships

If you know of some good graphical display tools that really seem to work well in helping you see trends in data, please suggest them to me. Of the ones above, the SmartMoney site is without a doubt the best example. But it uses a piece of software that was developed separately (I believe in a university environment) and they license it for lots of money (too much for me).

As we get buried in more and more "data" we will graphical visualization tools to help "mine" it and turn it into "information" that we can use. Data mining tools try to find the relationships and correlations mathematically, but I would prefer to see better visual "glasses" we could use as overlays - so we the humans can see trends and relationships quicker and easier.

Check out the Group Writing Project

2006-08-07T19:39:00.000-04:00

I heard an inspiring interview on NPR last week. The 'always great' Diane Rehm show had a guest host interviewing the author of a new book titled 'This Is Your Brain on Music' that addresses new studies into why music in its varied forms has been an ongoing obsession of the human race.

Why We Like Music
The discussion hit home for me on many levels. As sentient beings we seem to be focused on categorizing the world around us... making it 'make sense'. Certainly a good survival trait, I suppose. The author, Daniel Levitin, commented about the brain being 'on the lookout for surprises' (again, a useful survival trait) and that musically the brain reacts to surprises - those things which aren't quite what was expected - and they stand out. But when the 'pattern' is repeated enough our brains tend to lose interest (or maybe just pay less attention). One of his examples (there are many on the book's web site www.YourBrainOnMusic.com) was Frank Sinatra. His musical phrasing made it virtually impossible to sing smoothly along with him, but also contributed to his enduring popularity.

How/When Learning Occurs
I found this fascinating because I have also heard discussions that the best learning occurs when the brain makes a new connection - linking things that weren't previously linked (that Ah-ha kind of feeling). Again, a valuable survival trait for the species. We make a connection, notice correlations, etc. that either prove valuable and are remembered or get pushed out of our active knowledge base as unimportant. But part of the thrill of learning is the joy of making the connections themselves. And very quickly, the 'surprise' or the 'connection' gets boring if it just gets repeated. (I feel a comment about "standardized testing" coming on here.)

It would seem to me that once a particular 'connection' is established, the best thing is to reinforce it in the brain by applying it as widely as possible to related 'tasks' - making even more connections rather than drilling the first one to death. Gaming seems to do a better job of this than standard classroom approaches.

Relationship to Humor
A related discussion is how the brain reacts to new information delivered within a group context. Most humor seems also based on making a new connection - puns being a rudimentary form. A joke is just an expected chain of events that takes a particular turn we didn't see coming. The fact that we were 'expecting' a joke usually helps set it up, but the best jokes are those you didn't see coming even though you knew it was a joke.

In fact, laugh tracks were added to most TV shows because audience testing indicated that the at-home audiences were 'uncomfortable' when joke situations were presented with no audience clues. Laughter, apparently, is a social signal that we 'get the joke', we have 'made the connection' mentally that makes the situation funny/ironic/stupid. When we hear a 'joke' but no one else is chuckling or expressing opinion, we are afraid that we're the only ones who see the connection the way we do.

Survival Skills
My own brain made the connection between (a) this interview on research into why we react the way we do to music of varying types by listening for unexpected 'surprises', (b) how we seem to learn by individually making 'connections' and brain pathways that we either keep or discard, and (c) the ways we react to humor, sitcoms, jokes by looking for the unexpected (surprise?) connection in the joke or situation or looking for validation or substantiation of our own experiences.

We are indeed complex beings and we have surrounded ourselves with even more complex social structures, but it seems we have a pretty fascinating foundation just looking at the way our brains are wired for survival.

I recall playing with my few week (or few month) old daughter, just doing stupid stuff like making nonsense noises and funny faces. She seemed to be mimicking me. As I would do something like an exaggerated blink of my eyes, she would echo the same. When I made a certain "ga-ga" noise, she would echo it back. As I stuck out my tongue, she would follow by doing the same. It never occured to me until later that this behavior indicated she was displaying knowledge of her own body, face and head. And then I wondered... how could she copy sticking her tongue out when she was unable to see her own tongue?

Workforce of the 21st Century

2006-07-11T09:45:00.000-04:00

Although I've been a technology fan all my life, it has been interesting to watch my kids go through different waves of technology adoption. Of my three children, the oldest (graduated HS in 98) got their first email address as a Freshman in college. The second (graduated in 2000) was routinely using email in high school and was addicted to instant messaging during college. The third (graduated 2002) was IM-ing during high school years (it seemed to take the place of 'hanging out with your buds after school'). All, of course, took to cell phones like fish to water.

But I vividly recall an incident in early 2001 that stood out. My middle child had a close group of friends who had gone through school together but went off to different colleges in different states. They maintained close ties through IM and email, and one evening were chatting online when one complained about a troublesome assignment (compiling & testing a short computer program) that was giving them fits. One of the group suggested another friend; they checked and found them online; that person suggested yet another friend; they IM'd the problem to that person, who suggested something to try. The original person made the suggested changes, uploaded, compiled and ran the program successfully! In fifteen minutes, five people in as many states helped solve one problem - and it took place between 11:00 and 11:15 pm!

That's the definition of the workforce of the 21st Century. Networked problem-solving; virtual teams. Its all there... and the kids are ready for it. Its the existing company structures and management that are not quite ready. (To say nothing of the teachers and education system.)

Intellectual Property as Collateral

2006-07-10T16:32:00.000-04:00

I'm well aware that the concept of 'intellectual property' is complex and is the subject of entire courses at the college level. But one thing that really bugs me is how differently 'intellectual property' is treated and valued in different places.

Houses... well they of course have different values in different parts of the country, but there seem to be some pretty consistent standards at play when it comes to "placing a value' on a house. Intellectual property is another matter. It is much more difficult, apparently, to assign a value using consistent means.

But - to the heart of the matter - a business in the midwest can raise business capital if it has "real" property as collateral. Even if that "real" property is twenty unused drill presses bolted to a concrete floor in an unused plant. But if the business has access to a concretely-realized idea, lets say in the form of some computer software or patented database - well sorry, Charlie, but that's 'intellectual property' and it can't be treated as collateral.

Doesn't seem like that logic has held back folks in Research Triangle Park or Silicon Valley, but that mindset has prematurely killed off many business start-ups in the midwest over the past decade. Maybe our own "rules" are starting to strangle new business opportunities...

The Information Age vs The Automobile

2006-07-10T16:07:00.000-04:00

We have heard for years that we have entered the "Information Age" but too much of the economy seems deeply tied to good old-fashioned manufacturing of hard goods. Perhaps those in the manufacturing sector are so ingrained there that they cannot get their heads high enough to see the changing times.

We hear talk (particularly here in the midwest) of technology and how it is changing things, but the only technology being spoken of is manufacturing technology! The area I live in is supposedly focused on how technology will free our economy from the rust belt mentality that has caused its economy to stagnate for several decades. But I see no real effective moves to educate our workforce or shift our economic focus to jobs that are not inherently just manufacturing jobs. And this while many such jobs are quickly moving offshore.

If the midwest really believed in the information age, it would long ago have shifted its focus to information-oriented jobs. But instead we watch while our children either (a) migrate to the coasts or various other areas where information-based jobs are valued, or (b) watch them slowly stagnate in second or third tier supplier jobs that are still tied to the automotive sector millstone.

For most of the 20th century the US economy was driven by or tied directly to the automobile. The recently celebrated anniversary of the "freeway" helped put our returning WWII soldiers to work. The government underwrote the American Dream with (1) a Veterans Benefit act that allowed the explosive growth of suburbia (and the housing industry) and (2) a first class freeway system to help tie it all together. Both helped fuel the automotive sector to dominate the second half of the century.

Where, oh, where is the equivalent economic idealism that will drive the 21st century?