Author Archives: zephoria

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::

youth and those crazy hormones

When discussing the plight of teenagers with adults, i’m often chastised for viewing teens as mature humans capable of making reasonable decisions. All too often, people point to all that psychological research that indicates that teens are experiencing extensive hormonal rushes that impair their judgment. And then i go home to my 30-something friends who see a baby and start cooing as their biological clock begs for attention. And then i talk to people my mom’s age going through menopause and being about as coo-coo as they come. And then i get calls from my older male friends who are experiencing their midlife crisis and think that trading in their wife for people my age is a good idea. I don’t think that teenagers are the only population facing impaired judgment. In fact, i’m curious at what age one’s judgment is really all that functional.

What fascinates me in watching teens is to see biology and culture at complete odds. Their bodies are screaming SEX! REPRODUCTION! NOW! while adults are screaming abstinence. Evolution does not think that waiting until you have your career settled before giving birth is a good idea regardless of what culture says. Personally, i think teens are doing an astounding job at quelching bodily urges in favor of societal norms. I think we should give them a lot of credit for their strength!

I’m not saying that teens are all-so-mature but as one of my colleagues points out, the best part of being a 30-something year old guy in today’s age is that it’s assumed that you still haven’t matured beyond fart jokes. Maturation is a progression – we build on things we’ve learned in the past in order to grow. Every significant experience teaches us something as we grow older. Hopefully, we won’t throw away those lessons and regress to bullying and gossip mongering but sadly, many do. The problem is that we need to face those challenges in order to learn from them. The more that we’re coddled, the less we learn. I have to admit that when it comes to teaching in a college classroom, i far prefer the street kids to the protected ones. At least the street kids know why they’re in school and it’s not simply to get away from their parents. Their experiences have been rough but they’ve learned a lot and it shows. Even worse than protected college students in the classrooms is spoiled ones in a foreign country. ::shudder:: That’s when it becomes painfully obvious how little freedom we’ve given our youth compared to other cultures.

As best as i can tell, the last big cognitive issue is the ability to think abstractly, negotiate social categories, and recognize that there are multiple possibilities to a situation based on your actions. Ideally, you should be able to get that there are multiple interpretations to a situation but i don’t think that most adults get this so i doubt that i can hold that as a standard for maturation even though it would be nice. Once you get this around adolescence/puberty, it’s building time from that point forward. Experience, risk-taking, and consequences matter. The crazy hormones surge at all different times to get in your way but like external crises, you gotta learn to recognize and deal with hormones. Locking up folks who are going through hormone rushes is never a good idea even if i had the urge to lock mom up for a few years.

There should be a list of things that youth should learn as young as possible to be a part of society. If i were to start a list, it would probably include:

  • Learn to manage your own money including situations where you don’t have enough money for something really important;
  • Work to make your own money;
  • Learn how to come up with money for monthly bills;
  • Learn how to cook, clean, and do laundry;
  • Learn how to take care of small children;
  • Learn how to handle sickness and doctors;
  • Learn how to travel (airplane, bus, etc.) on your own;
  • Learn to travel respectfully to foreign cultures;
  • Learn how to handle being drunk;
  • Experience being bullied, embarrassed, ridiculed, taunted, beaten up;
  • Be exposed to people really different than you and learn tolerance and respect;
  • Face failure and learn disappointment + face success and learn humility;
  • Experience heartbreak;
  • Manage significant emotional or physical pain;
  • Handle the death of someone close to you.

Obviously, some of these are taboo and others really shouldn’t be planned for but still, i have to say, this is what i’d want my child to know before being on their own. I have to give my mom props for making certain i knew many of these things. My favorite was the fact that she made me work in fast food to learn why i was getting a college education. Anyone else have favorite lessons that they wish all young people learned?

Henry Jenkins and Convergence Culture

While i was off playing this summer, one of my dear mentors (and a good friend) went off and started blogging. There are few people that i respect more than Henry Jenkins and i’m *sooo* stoked to get a daily dose of Henry insightfulness – i deeply miss that from my days at MIT. I feel bad for not being around to properly welcome him to the blogosphere. **WELCOME!** I strongly encourage everyone to check out Henry’s blog – i’m sure you’ll find it as mentally yummy as i do.

For those who work in the tech or media industry and don’t know Henry, shame on you. Henry is the expert on participatory culture and really gets “user generated content” because he studies how fans create content and culture around their favorite artifacts. Over the years, he’s looked at everything from fan fiction to WWF, gaming to Columbine, children’s culture to media consumption. His work is seminal and uber-relevant to folks interested in media and tech.

His latest work is particularly relevant to those interested in what’s going on with YouTube and MySpace, Lost and American Idol. Henry just published a book called Convergence Culture which provides a set of case studies where media is converging in interesting ways. Video games are telling the backstories to movies. TV has become participatory. Etc. This is precisely why i find LA fascinating – old media and new media are converging because the consumers are making them. This is a must-read book for folks trying to understand why and how people are engaging in all sorts of new media practices.

PS: Henry also has a really good article on Four Ways to Kill MySpace for you MySpace folks…

PPS: In case you missed it before, Henry and i co-authored a piece on MySpace and DOPA…