It’s like the Unkle track says, “We had access to too many, uh, too much money. Too much equipment, and little by little we went insane”. Here are two more text-transcripts done collaboratively over Hydra from this afternoon’s sessions:
So. A bit delayed. Sorry to all concerned. I’ll post later about the experience of delivering a paper at Emerging Tech later, when I’ve had a chance to assimilate the whole experience, but if you’re looking for the PowerPoint presentation then here it is: UpMyStreet Conversations: Mapping Cyber to Space (5.7Mb). The paper was cowritten by myself, Stefan Magdalinski and Matt Webb.
“Mad props” to Webb by the way, who somehow managed to keep me sane through the whole thing and forced me to finish writing the thing by suggesting he might cause me physical pain – I’m a bit euphoric so I’m going to say that he’s one of my favourite people in the world at the moment. If people notice any hideous typos or mistakes through it, then let me know and I’ll amend it straightaway.
So I’m hiding in the Speaker’s Room with Vee McMillan – trying to get my stuff printed out for my paper (T minus one hour, fifteen minutes) and this woman comes into the room saying that she thinks she really wants to see Clay Shirky and she doesn’t know where to go to see him. And Vee says that she thinks it’s almost over and the woman looks a bit flustered and says that actually it doesn’t matter, she just really wants to see his face. Vee tells her where to go. She leaves. Excited. Groupie? Fan? Mother? The world needs to know…
Right. I’m going to keep amending this post as I think of things to say and get other things done. I’m in the middle of a talk with Tim O’Reilly at the moment (how cool is my life), but I reckon I can concentrate on two things at once and talk a little bit about the last presentation I was at (Eric Bonabeau on Biological Computing). Or in fact – rather than talk about Eric Bonabeau’s talk, I’m going to talk a little about playing with Hydra and how around ten separate geeks collaborated to try and annotate and comment upon a discussion in real time… But first things first – the incredibly messy (and extremely entertaining to write) set of notes on the talk in question:
Right. What you can’t see on this document is which pieces were written by which people – and that’s a terrible shame because all that extra information that could be of use just vanishes when you save it to a disk. More to the point, it makes it really hard to demonstrate when it’s worked really well and when it’s fallen apart. So in this particular case I’ve done a set of screen-caps to illustrate what’s been going on:
More later (hopefully) on the experience of writing (messily and collaboratively) with Hydra. Addendum: Here’s a screen-cap of the participants all colour-coded as of the end of the eventhydra_tray.gif
Ok. Finally it looks like Blogger is going to start catching up with the rest of the weblogging applications that have been developed or have been enhanced over the last couple of years. You can read all about Dano at new.blogger.com. First things first – they’ve been working on the interface. Here are a couple of (presumably rough – some low-fi) interfaces for the new system – which clearly aren’t designed to look their best on a Mac. Still – never mind, it’s early days:
While we’re at it – perhaps with less mass-appeal (but I guess we’ll see), keep an eye out for TypePad – the new Six Apart venture that’s supposed to be a turnkey version of Movable Type – kind of like Blogger, but more powerful. [Typepad stuff via kottke.]
Howard Rheingold – who is speaking at this very moment on stage in Santa Clara – just said that companies would like the get us back into the role of “Consumers” rather than “Users”. He says:
“Consumers passively recieve what is broadcast by a few. Radio, TV, movies, recorded music. Users actively shape media, create as well as consume, link together for collective action: PC, Internet, Web.”
I’m not sure I buy this. I don’t think companies have any interest whatsoever in specifically trying to define people’s relationships with media, they’re simply trying to protect their businesses. Defining the relationship is simply a means-to-an-end. This negative spin sounds too much like conspiracy theory to me. I think we have to find a way of convincing companies that their financial interest is in being at the forefront of some of these technologies – and I think (to an extent) some of the technologies we are trying to get into the common sphere will be lost or banned along the way. Yes – it’s a combative matter – it’s like in a court or in the political process – it’s important that both sides are able to put their opinions and debate and extend their arguments – but it’s not a black & white, “Good vs. Evil” thing. Ignorance versus Knowledge maybe (other people might say that it’s Business versus Communism, of course)…
So on Thursday I’ll be delivering a paper at O’Reilly Emerging Tech called “UpMyStreet Conversations: Mapping Cyber to Space”. The paper, which I have co-written with Matt Webb and Stefan Magdalinski, will be mostly about the basics of how Conversations works but will also include a more rigorous investigation of three areas where geocoded communities present new challenges to developers of social software.
In the latest Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue, which I swear to god I buy because of the pictures of the clothes, there’s an interview with James Marsden. In it he is asked the question, “Based on your fan mail and people who approach you on the street, who would you say is your fan base?” He replies:
Well, since X-men, I can add comic book fans, but before that I’d say young women between 10 and 24 and probably every gay man in the universe. Straight men all think I’m a pussy. I gotta tell you, if it wasn’t for gay men, I’d probably own a carpet cleaning business. I’m very popular with the gay community, which is lovely. There are plenty of people out there who have no clue who I am, but I have never met a gay man yet who didn’t know who I was. It’s great!
This – ladies and gentlemen – is what pardens for an enlightened attitude these days. Just think – all of us gay men lusting after James Marsden! How lucky we are to have someone as pretty as him to unite around! How we love him. I think we should all change our political identity to being Marsdosexuals! Maybe wave banners! Ah, we’re so loyal and friendly and loving. Much like Labradors! Wouldn’t we make such good pets? I’m going to say this once and once only – James Marsden, it’s not only straight men that think you’re a “pussy” and I think it’s a bloody sorry state of affairs if your kind of patronising, self-obsessed idiocy represents the world that gay people have battled for over the last few decades. You can take your “mad props to all the gay men out there” and you can shove em up your butt.
One of my windows in Safari is full of tabs – so full of tabs that I can’t actually find the stuff I want to work with without closing them. And Safari doesn’t have a neat “Bookmark all tabs” option like Camino, so I have to bloody bookmark them individually. Except I’m not going to do that, I’m just going to post the damn things to my site and let God sort ’em out later…
I’m off to SC for O’Reilly Emerging Tech Conference on Tuesday. I’m going against the grain this year by taking my iBook along, “blogging” in “realtime”, and taking digital photos of people. If there’s a box, I am out of it. If you’re attending as well, stop by and say hello…I’ll be the guy with the iBook and digital camera.
