Monthly Archives: August 2006

HT06, Tagging Paper, Taxonomy, Flickr, Academic Article, ToRead

Cameron is currently at Hypertext 2006 presenting a paper on tagging that Cameron Marlow, Mor Naaman, Marc Davis and i wrote on tagging entitled “HT06, Tagging Paper, Taxonomy, Flickr, Academic Article, ToRead.” As Cameron appropriately notes, “It’s possibly the least memorable title in ACM history, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.” Still, i thought that it might be interesting to many of you – it’s a new and improved version of our WWW position paper. Enjoy!

Download the PDF here.

oh dear cute chumby

I told myself that there was no playing with the chumby until i finished unpacking my new apartment. But then, in the midst of unpacking, i realized i had no clock. Since i knew that was the default application, i decided to unpack the chumby. I figured, what harm could be done in just using it as a clock, right? OMG, cuteness. It talked to me. It showed me an adorable little octopus. And then it found my network just like my Mac. And it made me register it. And then it told me that someone else had put together a Cute Overload application for it. So now there’s cuteness on cuteness. And there are Flickr photos. And news. And ooooohhhhhhh….. Sooooo cute.

I will not play with the chumby until i unpack, i will not play with the chumby until i unpack….

change in feed and other blog bits

I’ve just added a Feedburner feed for my blog. It would be great if you’d be willing to switch which feed you’re subscribed to but if not, that’s cool. I’m doing this for two reasons. The obvious is having something resembling statistics for my own curiosity. The other is that i’m hoping that if folks primarily use Feedburner, i might get a reduction in bandwidth from readers grabbing the feed.

Although i’ve been using del.icio.us for a long time, i mostly use it for myself. I decided to create a special tag of things that are relevant to others: 4blog. I’ve added del.icio.us to the sidebar of my blog. I’m not mixing my del.icio.us feed in with my regular blog feed because i just think that’s rude. So, if you want to subscribe to that separately, here’s my del.icio.us feed.

While i’m on the topic of my blog, does anyone have a good chunk of Javascript that might reduce the archive clutter over there on the left? Ideally, i could just list years and then you could click to open up the months per year. Except maybe the current year which would show all of the months. I keep procrastinating taking care of this so i thought i’d see if someone else has done it already.

open hack day at Yahoo!

Continuing on the geek thread, i’d like to invite everyone to Hack Day at Yahoo! on September 29. The way hack days work at Yahoo! is that you come with an idea of how to mashup different tools at Yahoo! and then you hack like mad for 24 hours. It’s super fun and very geeky. You have to signup to go so make sure to visit the website!

Note: much to my utter sadness, i won’t be able to go since i will be presenting a paper in New York that day.

geeks and werewolves (some notes on FOO)

This past weekend, i went to FOO Camp – Tim O’Reilly’s annual sleepover gathering of geeks in the backyard of his office. (Yes, i camped in an office park.) Because some consider it an elite event (you must be invited), i get squirmy about screaming, OMG this weekend was unbelievable! But the truth is, it was. I can’t do justice in providing a recap, but the conversations were quite illuminating and i felt refreshed, especially because i got to meet so many new and interesting people. One of the most fascinating of such new connections was Moshe Cohen from Clowns Without Borders. Laughter really is the best medicine. Speaking of which, there was much werewolf and a reverse scavenger hunt in cahoots with Ms. Jane. I even got to see Greg Stein give birth to a baby girl to break a tie! I’m really a big fan of connecting people through play and i love watching Jane do magic in engaging an audience. It really is great when people who should know each other first meet through play. One of the coolest things about Werewolf is that there is an intimacy that provides furtile ground for future professional conversations. I’m a strong believer that meaningful ties require more than just a work connection.

While i may have hosted far too many hours of Werewolf, i did also help host a session on teens misbehaving and attended many other talks. My favorite was a broad discussion about the future of IM hosted by Master Artur. I also got a prototype of a Chumby to hack. I haven’t fucked with it yet but i’m super impressed by the cutsie-ness of the device, the shwag, the octopus, the name. There’s just something that’s so endearing about it. And it’s fuzzy! Speaking of fuzzy, how much do you love Tim wearing my hat?? But anyhow, i will play with the Chumby and get back to you.

To get to FOO this year, i did a roadtrip with Kareem and Graeme from Fox. The conversation was unbelievably fun and uber geeky (in that delicious kind of way). Plus, we stopped at In-N-Out twice and i got to play with a really fun GPS toy that Kareem calls Peaches.

Returning for a moment to the issue of elitism, i want to highlight Bar Camp. Bar Camp started out as an alternative for FOO and some framed it as the gathering for people who are not “cool enough.” There was animosity, jealously, and disappointment attached to it. It made me feel all guilty for going to and loving FOO. And then i moved to LA and connected to the Bar Camp folks here who have used that concept to build a community of geeks who gather monthly for food and are stoked to find ways to connect. Regardless of its origins, Bar Camp is an unbelievable mechanism for members of local communities to get to know the geeks amongst them. I’m completely in awe of how rapidly this meme has spread to cities around the world. During Bar Camp Earth this weekend, there were Bar Camps in Lithuania and India! In the next couple of months, there will be Bar Camps in places like Johannesburg and Shanghai. There may even be one near you.

One of the main reasons that FOO is closed is that it needs to be small to work. It was definitely pretty big this year, but still manageable. But it wouldn’t work with 1000 people even though there are certainly thousands of geeks who would benefit from such community building. The cool thing about Bar Camp is that it’s allowing many more people to enjoy the #1 benefit of FOO: connecting with interesting people. While FOO certainly has many Internet celebrities, Bar has people in your local community. The biggest value of both types of events is that they are doing so much to develop and enrich the geek community. While blogs and online connections are great, there’s nothing like physical co-presence.

Update:

For those interested in what was contained in this year’s scavenger hunt, Jane posted the complete rules as part of her write-up on FOO:

Please find the following objects:
1. A fully installed functional body modification (demo, please)
2. Spiritual computing object (demo, please)
3. A prop from the set of the 2042 Japanese remake of Snakes on a Plane (scene, please)
4. A viable alternate energy source (demo, please)
5. The new Third Life interface
6. When ThingLinks Go Wrong
7. Evidence of the most insidious viral marketing effort of the year 2007
8. The FOOFRACK™ Continuous Partial Attention Device
9. Proof that one of your team members is actually a Cylon, a Werewolf or a VC in disguise
10. A craft object from the BRAINS! Issue of Make Magazine (Vol. 13)

Rules:You have 60 minutes to “find” these objects.You can only use the 10 objects your team already has-no trading, no substitutions.You can hack and mod your objects any way you want.You cannot use an object to represent more than one item on the list.
Your success in finding these objects will be judged based on your live demonstrations and explanations. Prepare to be persuasive!In the case of a tie, teams will play a 60-second death-defying, single-object tiebreaker round.

heckle drive

I hate driving. Or rather, i hate when people are on *my* road. I spend a lot of time talking to them, even though they can’t hear me. I’ve always wanted a way to express what i’m really thinking. “Turn off your damn high beams.” “You should have your lights on.” “Do you need to tailgate?” Etc. According to Popgadget, there’s a perfect tool for my road rage: a href=”http://www.au-my.com/english/Drivemocion.htm”>Drive Mocion.

It’s kinda like a hecklebot for the road, no? Oooh… i want one!

(Tx Amy)

Research on Social Network Sites

UPDATE: This page is out-of-date. An updated list can be found here:

Research on Social Network Sites

Thank you!

I want to track down everyone who is actively doing research on social network sites. (Clarification: i’m looking for folks that are publishing in peer-reviewed spaces, not just researching for their company or blog.) Nicole Ellison and i are plotting to bring ways to bring everyone together. I’m also looking to create a list of all known publications. I know there’s more than what i’m listing so i need your help. Please!

Publications and Presentations

Save Your Space

Save Your Space is a website created by a Southern California organization called “The Friends of MySpace” (not affiliated with News Corp). They have put together a petition against DOPA and they’re trying to collect signatures of people of all ages who are opposed to the legislation. If you are (and you damn well should be if you’re reading my ramblings), please take a moment to sign. And then pass it on.

AIM and Plaxo

I just installed AIM for the first time in a bazillion years having used nothing but Adium and Trillian for forever. And what did i find? Apparently, Plaxo has teamed up with AIM for this Universal Address Book. My first reaction was to panic – i want nothing to do with the evil spamming service that has been the bane of my existence since it started. For years, i’ve gone out of my way to provide fake data every time someone sends me a Plaxo invite in an attempt to ward off stalkers and folks who want to connect the dots. As i’ve said before, i want nothing to do with Plaxo (see [1][2]). And then i started breathing and tried to remind myself that companies change, maybe it’s not so bad anymore. To catch my breath, i logged into Bloglines to surf for a few moments before continuing with the signup process. What did i find? Micki’s essay on how Plaxo is holding her data hostage. Back to panic mode.

Why why why can’t Plaxo go away? I don’t want it to connect the dots between who i AIM and who i email and who has me in their addressbook. I don’t want a universal addressbook controlled by some external organization that i don’t trust that spams my friends and keeps data hostage. I don’t like the lack of transparency and the massive amounts of data that they have. I do not trust them, Sam I am.

Gah. And i can’t figure out how to finish installing AIM without making a Plaxo account. ::wimper::