Introduction to Web APIs w/ Christopher Castiglione
General Assembly put together this trailer for my Introduction to Web APIs online video series. Check it out!
The Sound of Songwriting My New CRAWDADDY! Column
The Sound of Songwriting is my new column at CRAWDADDY! that reveals, through individual interviews, the intimate process behind crafting compositions and the art of storytelling through musical expression.
Here’s a snippet from my interview, the first in the series, with Courtney Taylor of The Dandy Warhols:
“Songwriting? That’s something that I don’t really know how to do.” Courtney Taylor felt that I ought to know this before we even began our interview to discuss that very subject.
As we sat upstairs in Webster Hall on a chilly November day in New York City, the Dandy Warhol’s lead singer and songwriter wanted to make this one point clear: “I don’t write songs, they just happen to me.”
The Sound of Songwriting with:
Courtney Taylor of The Dandy Warhols, Sam Beam of Iron & Wine, Tim Kasher of Cursive
Expression Engine Should Be GNU (and Free?)
This isn’t the typical argument that Expression Engine should be GNU and “free” because it is too expensive, rather my argument focuses on the fact that the EE pay wall slows its growth and inhibits innovation.
As far as Content Management Systems go, Expression Engine is an efficient, functional solution for both developer and clients. But unfortunately, snappy functionality isn’t the only factor you need to consider when choosing a CMS. Compare EE with two of its “competitors”, WordPress and Drupal, and you’ll find that EE falls short on a number of other issues including: price, smaller community, less updates, and an unfortunate licensing situation.
Price on its own shouldn’t be listed as an “inadequacy”. If the world’s greatest CMS charged a fee it would be well worth the extra money for the service. But there is a hidden cost to charging for a CMS. My argument is that many of EE’s inadequacies stem from its price wall. EE has a flawed business model which limits its growth and long-term sustainability. Therefore, Expression Engine should be free!
Issue #1: EE Has A Smaller Community
EE’s barrier for entry is high – a commercial license fee of $299 per install – leading most developers to seek alternative solutions. As a result the Expression Engine platform has a much slower growth rate and a smaller user base than its rivals.
If there are less people using the software, then we can assume the following. EE has…
*a smaller community of developers
*a smaller amount of people offering support in their forums
*a smaller amount of add-ons (i.e. extensions & modules)
Despite anecdotal evidence that EE enthusiasts provide, “I think the support is fine”, and “There are plenty of modules”, the hard numbers prove that Expression Engine has a much smaller user base than Drupal and WordPress. It has less developers to share support question with, and less add-ons being developed.
Issue #2: Less Updates & Less Code Proofreading
Expression Engine has been slow to release new versions of its software. (See corresponding version release dates for: EE, WordPress, Drupal.) Why is this important? Technology changes everyday – it’s important to constantly evolve.
Furthermore, in my experience it has been much easier to upgrade WordPress and Drupal installations to new versions than with Expression Engine.
Even now as the latest EE version 2.0 has been released my admin panel is still only alerting me of version 1.6.9 – which must be downloaded and manually installed on the server.
WordPress, on the otherhand, has automatic upgrades announced the day they are released.
Historically a smaller user base tends to suggest that hackers are less interested in hacking the code, but in the case of software development it also means that there is less distributed proofreading of the code – and therefore a smaller likelihood that vulnerabilities are going to be found. To put that another way, the larger the community, the more likelihood that someone will come across a security flaw, and that the bug will get patches more quickly.
Lullabot blogger Nate Haug recently did a comparison on the level of security between EE and Drupal. His assessment begins,
You can see that ExpressionEngine has had only one security advisory over the course of 3 years. Over that same time period, Drupal has had over 80. It’s easy to draw the incorrect conclusion there that ExpressionEngine therefore is more secure.
But as Haug concludes, fewer reported vulnerabilities does not mean less vulnerabilities! It only means they haven’t been reported. Point in case Haug was able to find 3 security vulnerabilities in version 1.6.2 of Expression Engine. Secondly, Haug explains that EllisLabs quietly fixes security vulnerabilities, further leading their customers into a false sense of security.
Issue #3: Licensing & Ownership
Expression Engine is a proprietary product. And as is with all property, law determines that one particular person (in this case, EllisLab) has the authority to decide how the product will be used. Therefore, nothing stops EllisLabs from discontinuing EE development or refraining from issuing licenses in the future.
This is in contrast to WordPress and Drupal which are “in the commons” (aka. in the public domain). No single person has exclusive control over the use and configuration of these CMSs. If the lead developers of an open-source project decide they no longer want to develop the product, the community goes on, and the product can be used freely by anyone; forever, without a license, and without having to report to a central authority.
A Better Business Model for Expression Engine…
Expression Engine would be a better CMS if there was a free version!
Revenue Idea #1: Sell Support
EllisLabs insists that the price is justified because they have “a team of committed developers and technical support specialist”. In my experience developing CMSs I don’t feel that the EE community has any better support than an open-source community. EllisLabs’ stance on this issue rubs up against a very old (and famous) argument addressed by the Richard Stallman’s 1985 GNU Manifesto,
If people would rather pay for a [software] service than get [software] free without service, a company to provide service to people who have obtained [software] free ought to be profitable.
Stallman went on to found the free-software movement which was immensely influential in spurring software innovation (Linux, Unix, Wikipedia, WordPress, Drupal, etc), and subsequently, profitable organizations that were developed to support the free software (Red Hat, Crowd Favorite, Lullabot, etc).
Revenue Model Idea #2: Sell A Fully Hosted Version
EllisLabs could give away a basic version of EE for free, while selling a fully hosted version for non-developers. (Similar to the WordPress business model.)
Revenue Model Idea #3: Sell An Enterprise Edition
EllisLabs could give away a basic version of EE for free, while selling an enterprise version. (Similar to Movable Type’s business model.)
Final Thoughts
To recap, the Expression Engine pay wall inhibits the project.
Looking forward, I don’t believe that Expression Engine can gain the same market share as WordPress or Drupal (at least not anytime soon - Movable Type still hasn’t recovered from their pay wall). But, it will help develop a wider community. And it will make Expression Engine a better product.
Capitalism breeds capitalism: whereas 99% of WordPress and Drupal plug-ins are free (giving back to the community!), in addition to the $299 Expression Engine start-up, EE users typically tack on another $350 for plug-ins (Wygwam $35, Matrix $35, Playa $75, BetaMeta $40, Structure $65, SolSpaceUser $100). Why have all of these separate niche communities developing proprietary code? Let’s reuse code! Let’s work together!
—
By the way, I’d really love to hear a counter argument in favor of the $299 licensing fee – do you believe the fee makes it more valuable than if it was open-source?
Get stoked on Web Typography
Samantha Warren is a typography evangelist (like the Billy Graham of font). Her talk at SXSW on Wednesday entitled “Get stoked on Web Typography” was a passionate exhortation on the art of creating and choosing fonts.
Warren emboldened the audience to be daring, “There really isn’t a long history of web typography, we are at the beginning of the web font revolution, and we can all be a part of the revolution.”
She noticed that in most of her favorite designs there was “no Arial”, and “no Georgia”. “The difference between Arial and Habano is rock & roll”, she affirms, pointing to recent album cover art from My Morning Jacket. Compare the two images yourself: on the left is the original My Morning Jacket cover with the Habano font, on the right is an example where Warren substituted the text with Arial.
“A question I often hear from designers and developers is, ‘How do you pick a font’”, she admitted. “It’s a difficult questions to answer, but I like to think of it as ‘How do you choose a pair of shoes?’ I think about the weather and my schedule for the day. Shoes just go with people!”
“This woman is wearing crocks, they are practical and they match, but they just really fit her style.”
“These are my Helvetica shoes.They go with just about anything. I’ve worn them on interviews, to dinner, or just hanging out with friends”
“Archer is a font that everyone is using these days. If you’re trying to communicate ‘friendly and approachable’, and if you want to say it the same way that Converse is saying it, then use Archer.”
Until recent years, web developers were stuck using only web-safe fonts (like Arial and Georgia!). But now sIFR and (more preferably) cufon are challenging developers to use non-standard fonts: to beautify and challenge design conventions on the web. This is Warren’s call for action: stop being so agnostic, 2010 is the year to “get stoked on web typography”.
Samantha’s slides from the presentation are on SlideShare:
Get Stoked on Web Typography SXSW 2010
…her blog is badassideas.com and you can follow her on Twitter: @samanthatoy
Get Dad on Foursquare, Twitter, and Facebook Mobile (from Any Phone)
In the day between SXSW Interactive and SXSW Music the private, open-bar parties of Interactive end, and the streets light up like Mardi Gras.
The other dramatic change I noticed?
When I checked into The Driskill during SXSW Interactive, foursquare altered me,
Via Foursquare: “You are checked in with 250 other people”
But one day later during SXSW Music I received a paltry,
Via Foursquare: “You are checked in with 6 other people.”
What changed? The hotel was just as crowded, if not more so during music, but it’s pretty obvious that the music folk are less inclined to geek-out. I was surprised how many of my friends, ones who even had foursquare and Twitter accounts, didn’t really understand how to use them, or how they could be valuable to their business. Also, I was surprised how many of my friends had normal cell phones where the only app was SMS.
So, I’d like to share how you can get involved with foursquare, Twitter and Facebook using any mobile phone.
foursquare
1) Sign up for a foursquare account
2) Sign in and click “Settings” -> Under Account Info click “edit” -> Add your phone number
3) Check-in via a text to 50500 (like this: @ Starbucks ! Spending too much money on coffee.)
Extras: From the web, you can visit the mobile address on the web to check-in, or use the desktop application FoursquareX which has a cool map view and plots your friend’s avatars around your location. (note: the SMS feature is only available in the US at the moment).
1) Sign up for a Twitter account (duh)
2) “Settings” -> “Mobile” -> Add your mobile number
3) Send an SMS to Twitter at: 40404 (or for an international numbers)
4) Go back to “Settings” -> “Mobile” to decide who you will receive tweets from, or you can set it up as DMs only
1) “Account settings” -> “Mobile” -> Add your number and preferences, click save
2) SMS “f” (with the quotes) to 32665 (FBOOK)
3) After you receive the confirmation text your status to 32665 “@ OMG. I’m Awesome”
Microsoft Bing: Behind the Scenes of The Decision Engine
The best opening slide of any panel at SXSW 2010 goes to BING:
As of March 2010, BING has 11.5% share (and growing) of the U.S. search market – which is a fairly big deal. So, how did they convince people that they needed Bing?
“We knew people were really happy with Google. So we asked ourselves, ‘How can we introduce a product that no body thinks they need?’, began Stefan Weitz (Director of Search at Microsoft). For the first time, the team fearlessly dove into these types of questions in a public panel: what followed was a degree of candor and humanness that’d I don’t think anyone would ever associate with Microsoft.
Bing and Farmville
Bing used a Cost-Per-Engagement (CPE) model (as opposed to the traditional CPM model) as a way to engage with their audience:
The fact is, more people use Farmville than Twitter. And they use in a different way, “more like a drug”. This gave the Bing team the idea to use the Farmville platform as a way to tell people about Bing. So, in exchange for learning a little bit about Bing, they offered fans some extra Farmville cash.
Bing’s results from using a CPE model with Farmville:
- Over 72% of users who clicked on the engagement became fans
- 59,000 users published the story to their newsfeed, extending the message across their network.
- Over 70,070 clicks were received on published feeds; on average each published story received more than 1 click.
- We received 400,000 new fans on Facebook within the first 24 hours
“The amount of engagement and feedback we received just from this community was enormous, because these people got exposed to us in a way that mattered to them. We’re not necessary moving past the CPM model, but there is something very important about cost per engagement”, explained the team.
Bing #Win, Big #Fail
The Bing team told stories of their triumphs: like the Bing Jingle Contest which was “something we just did as a lark”, yet resulted in a swarm of great press. #Win
But shortly after, when a group of high schoolers planned to perform the Bing jingle, the Bing team “innocently” shipped them a box of tshirts. Weitz explained the problem, “We saw this as an opportunity to engage with these students, but we went over the line. It felt inauthentic and overproduced. And when the video surfaced on Youtube we received a lot of negative press.” #Fail
5 Social Marketing Lessons From The Launch of Bing
1) You know nothing. Social media is one of the wackiest eco systems in the world, comparable to when the butterfly flaps its wing. The media circles that we gave the most attention to weren’t the same ones that gave us the most coverage and exposure.
2) When you screw up. Admit it quickly. Bing tweeted an ad for Victoria Secret’s mentioning that the girls were giving “VD advice” (Valentine’s day?). “What would have been a PR disaster 10 years ago, was covered up in 10 minutes by apologizing: ‘Oops! Our mistake.’ We laughed along with the Twittersphere and they calmed down.”
3) Have personality. As an example they give Zappos’ amazingly funny Social Media Guru video.
4) People want stories, not feature lists. The Bing team received an email from a 100-year old Cardiologist in Florida which read,”I want to thank you for naming your search engine after me.” To which they thought, “Well, clearly this person is crazy.” They followed up on the story, and met with Dr. Bing in Florida, only to find that not only was he unbelievably sane, but full of fascinating stories. The team went on to commission a documentary about his life which was shown at Sundance last year.
5) Give a Shit. People know when you’re not being authentic. People know when you’re pitching them.
The BING panel at SXSW: Aaron Lilly, Lynn Girotto, Stefan Weitz, Ian Schafer
Slides are available on SlideShare.
More information about the BING panel can be found on the SXSW site.
Gmail: Behind the Scenes
Meeting the team behind Gmail felt a bit like meeting the Wizard of Oz (except without all that evil stuff along the yellow brick road, right?). Regardless of which side of the Google debate you stand, it would be hard not to appreciate the honest and insightful musings of the Gmail team. Here are just a few of the highlights from Gmail: Behind the Scenes:
*On Gmail invitations: “The invite model wasn’t a marketing idea, we were just afraid that it wouldn’t scale it. It’s interesting that now this model is being used by other companies as a marketing strategy.”
*On project management: “One thing we do to make the projects fun is give it nick names. Like, for one project it was called “taco town”! Having nick names like this gave us a sense of community through laughter: it made it fun to say things like, “Let’s take a look at ‘spicy chilli chese’”.
*On criticism: After hearing danah boyd’s criticism of Google Buzz and Privacy at yesterday’s SXSW keynote (i.e. “google assumed that people wanted their social network in their email”) the GMAIL team admitted to their mistakes and has decided to invite her to speak at the Googleplex in the near future.
*On the power of visual persuasion: “People thought that Gmail got faster when we changed the color.”
*On the speed of Gmail: The team discussed at length their strategy to improve latency issues within Gmail. Essentially speed is always top priority: all new features go through testing to make sure latency isn’t added along with the feature. Added latency can kill a new feature. Latency (along with debugging) is one of the critical reasons they deployed Google Labs (allowing users to add/test new features).
*On technology: “We have this amazing technology called ‘work really, really hard’”.
The Urban Screens Conference
On December 4, the Institute of Network Culture organized the Urban Screens conference at Trouw in Amsterdam. The conference celebrated the launch of The Urban Screens Reader: the first book to focus entirely on the topic of urban screens. In assembling contributions from a range of leading theorists, in conjunction with a series of case studies dealing with artists’ projects and screen operators’ and curators’ experiences, the reader offers a rich resource for those interested in the intersections between digital media, cultural practices and urban space.
Thanks to all the speakers and participants for their great contributions to this event! The videos will be online soon, and many of our reports are already online:
TEDx Amsterdam Video Slides
My 4-minute video TEDx video can be seen here on the TEDx Amsterdam site.
Society of the Query
Search is the way we now live. With the Society of the Query conference – Stop Searching, Start Questioning -, the Institute of Network Cultures aimed to critically reflect on the information society and the dominant role of the search engine in our culture. Although the focus was “the query in general”, the debate on Googliation and whether “Google is evil” was common throughout the conference. In the opening session Geert Lovink even mused, “We were going to call this the anti-Google conference.”
Below are five articles I contributed to the Society of the Query’s blog:
1) Siva Vaidhyanathan on Google Street View & Googlization
For Vaidhyanathan the biggest problem with Google is that as it expands into more parts of the world that are less proficient, and less digitally inclined, there will be more examples of friction and harm because more people are going to lack the awareness to cleanse their record. He asserted,”We in this room are not likely to be harmed by Google because all of us in this room are part of a techno-cosmopolitan elite. Only the elite and proficient get to opt out.” [read more]
2) Lev Manovich: Studying Culture With Search Algorithms
New media theorist Lev Manovich summarized his latest contribution to the field of software studies: cultural analytics. Whereas traditional cultural analysis relies on real-world resources (human interpretation and physical storage), cultural analytics relies on the computer and search algorithms in order to discern and interpret culture. [read more]
3) Yann Moulier Boutang asks, “Are we all just Google’s worker bees?”
What Google is selling is not an ordinary service, but a meta-service, one that depends on human contribution. He likens this human activity to that of the worker bee, and the economy of Google is dependent on the pollination of these bees. [read more]
4) Does privacy still exist in an environment of search?
What most people don’t know is that EU law grants users the right to access any personal data stored about them. Joris van Hoboken’s research investigates the impact of legal norms on the users’ freedom. [read more]
5) Matthew Fuller: Search Engine Alternatives
Matthew Fuller welcomed a cast of “alternative search engines” that offer some variety to the classic retrieval model of search. [read more]
All photos courtesy Anne Helmond and her wonderful Flickr photostream.
eComm Europe
Some photos and my slides from eComm Europe. I’ll post the video shortly.
View more documents from University of Amsterdam.
Using Google Maps & Google Earth In The Classroom
Longitude and latitude coordinates are like the words we use to tell a story and only gain substance when we use them in context. With a list of resources to help teachers, Google Maps and Google Earth are helping us tell stories better and bringing geographic data to life in ways that make traditional maps look more like decorations on the wall. This blog post shows how teachers around the world are using Google Maps/Earth in ways that support new competencies like visualization, simulation and play.
Original Paper (PDF): Google Maps & Google Earth In The Classroom
1. Literature
Google Lit Trips
Google Lit Trips is a site developed by English teacher Jerome Burg that experiments with teaching literature through maps. The site offers tips and tutorials for how teachers can integrate Google Earth into the curriculum of an English literature class. In addition there is a small library of existing KML files that other teachers have uploaded to share with the community. One example is a KML of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath that overlays placemarkers on the map of the United States, each representing a moment in time on the epic journey that the Joad family takes from Oklahoma to California during the Great Depression. Additionally, the labels “Day 1, Day 2, etc.” provide a time based narrative of the trip and can be used to elicit discussion in the classroom. For example, “What events occurred between Day 2 and Day 3 and why did the family travel such a short distance?”
As the KML file is capable of storing questions and images, Google Lit Trips also sprinkles these types of questions and brief summaries from the book along the trail. Ultimately, Google Lit Trips engages the student through the use of simulation and critical thinking. Google Lit Trips, in line with a statement by communication professor Ian Bogost, provides students with a variety of different ways to observe and reconfigure the basic building blocks of the story.
Whirligig
Inspired by Google Lit Trips, sixth grade English teacher Tom Woodward used Google Maps to plot the novel Whirligig by Paul Fleischman. In the story the main character travels to the four corners of the U.S. The image below shows Woodward’s use of photography and narrative to capture the protagonist’s journey around the country. Students engage with the visualization by zooming in on certain placemarkers and revealing additional text and images that work to supplement the novel.
The Golden Compass Project
Juicy Geography is a site where educators can share ideas and resources that typically pertain to issues of geography, earth science or technology. One teacher featured on the site shared his 8th grade lesson plan using Google Earth and the Phillip Pullman novel Northern Lights. Before the 2007 release of the film adaptation (aka. The Golden Compass) this teacher had his students imagine they were scouting locations for the movie. The students were asked to plot placemarkers in Google Earth – each representing the most suitable location for key scenes in the book. This cross-curricular project challenged the students to use literature, geography and technical skills in their visual narration of the novel. It provided a problem for which there was a multiple amount of solutions, thereby sparking creativity. In addition, this type of open-ended speculation allowed the students to be expressive without fear of being wrong.
2. Biology
In a case study on the Google Earth Outreach site, Adelia Barber (a Ph. D at the University of California, Santa Cruz) has used Google Earth in her introductory biology class. She instructs the class how to interact and play with Google Earth from the perspective of an ecologist and engages the class with questions like:
Judging by the characteristics of the trees, what time of year do you think the picture was taken over Central Park in Manhattan?
The Tigris River flows through central Baghdad. Is there any vegetation growing on the islands and sand berms in the middle and on the edges of this river?
3. Physics
High school freshman teacher Dale Basler has found a way to teach physics with Google Maps.
Using local bus schedules, he had students race to map out the bus route and calculate the average speed of the bus. This project provided a game-like element in support of learning. The use of games to motivate learning is at the core of ‘play’. Games create simulated worlds that allow the student a space for trial and error, as well as the motivation to move forward with the game and solve problems.
Reflecting on his idea Basler commented, “The class was full of discussions about things like: which bus goes by which landmark or which bus is always late. The project made my lesson plan for the following week much simpler since I now established an example that everyone had an understanding of.”
4. History / Urban Development
The history icon allows anyone to browse satellite imagery from the past and make geographical comparisons. There is great potential to use these maps for teaching lesson about urban growth. The two images directly below show examples of urban development over a period of three years. The two images that follow show the World Trade Center in New York City on September 12th 2001 juxtaposed with a shot from the site on October 31, 2006. In this project students are encouraged to make observations based on the historical imagery and then deduce reasons to support their claims.
Urban Development Lessons w/ Google Earth
World Trade Center in New York City w/ Google Earth
Additional Reading:
Essential Skills for The New Media Landscape
Every location on the earth can be identified using a set of two numbers: the geographic coordinates longitude and latitude. By themselves, these coordinates aren’t very interesting – they are just data. In 2009 the international non-profit New Media Consortium predicted the use of geographic data (commonly referred to as geodata) as one of the six technologies that are likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning and research. The organization cites affordability and accessibility as two of the main reasons for why geodata is a “technology to watch”. In addition, they provide a handful of educational examples that incorporate the use of geolocation, geotagging and location aware devices. In this blog post I focus specifically on the pedagogical relevance of using Google Maps and Google Earth in the classroom. My claim is that Google Maps/Earth are important educational tools because they have the potential to reinforce essential technological and social competencies.
With a similar philosophy as the New Media Consortium, a separate organization called the Project New Media Literacies also strives to improve the future of education. Since 2005 the Project New Media Literacies has been researching the effects of the Internet, as a global network, on how we learn and interact with each other. If technology and media are an extension of humanity, as Marshall McLuhan once claimed, then the Project New Media Literacies has recognized that as technology evolves we must also “upgrade” our minds. The project was founded by media scholar Henry Jenkins and is a part of the MIT’s Comparative Media Studies department in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Project New Media Literacies is funded in part by a $50 million digital learning initiative launched by The MacArthur Foundation. Its goal has been to develop cultural competencies and social skills that are necessary for becoming fully involved in the ‘participatory culture’ of the 21st century.
A few of the new skills include:
Visualization – the ability to interpret and create data representations for the purposes of expressing ideas, finding patterns, and identifying trends
Simulation – the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes
Play – the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving
Networking – the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information
Distributed Cognition – the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand our mental capacities.
Transmedia Navigation – the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities
Theoretical Framework:
New Media Literacies with Interactive Maps
According to the definition supported by Project New Media Literacies, every map is an example of a visualization and the better visualizations are capable of making us smarter. Professor of cognitive science and author Donald Norman would agree with this hypothesis. In his book Things That Make Us Smart he argues that the essence of intelligence comes from our ability to work with representations of the world. He explains,
“The ability to represent the representations of thoughts and concepts is the essence of reflection and of higher-order though. It is through metarepresentations that we generate new knowledge, finding consistencies and patterns in the representations that could not readily be noticed in the world.”
Representations in general, according to Norman, are at the heart of reasoning and help us discover higher-order relationships.
Information visualization researcher Stuart Card’s definition of visualization differs slightly from the Project New Media Literacies’ in that he affirms that a visualization is “computer-supported” and “interactive”. Combining geographic representations with interactivity thus offers a way to use and play with static information. According to Jean Piaget, interactivity helps students generate knowledge and meaning from their own experiences. Based on his constructivist model of learning Piaget has argued that knowledge is constructed by the learner.
The significance of Google Maps/Earth is that they allow students to interact with, and use the data: they combine Norman’s model of intelligence with Piaget’s, meanwhile fostering the Project New Media Literacies set of ‘new skills’. Consider as an example Martin Gilbert’s The Atlas of the Holocaust, a geographic visualization of genocide re-purposed with an educational agenda (see image below). In his book, Gilbert overlays symbols and graphics depicting the deaths and movements of families during the Holocaust in Europe between 1933 and 1945. These maps are wonderful in that they allow a narrative to emerge atop what may have originally been a static dataset. As Dorling and Fairbairn explain, The Atlas of the Holocaust “shows us a story of the tragedy” and “presents the evidence of an event, and puts the event in our faces – on the map”. While this type of mapping reinforces visualization, how might teachers add the skills of visualization and simulation so that they can effectively communicate this story in the classroom?
Google Maps/Earth can be a promising solution because it encourages students to learn through a simulated experience. A more recent example of genocide mapping can be seen in Google Earth’s Crisis in Darfur. Not only can students immerse themselves in a constantly updated simulation of the atrocities taking place in Darfur, but they can layer multimedia content over the satellite imagery. As the Project New Media Literacies’ has expressed in their latest paper, “students learn more through direct observation and experimentation than from reading about something in a textbook or listening to a lecture”. In this comparison of genocide maps, Google Maps provides a more dynamic presentation than The Atlas of the Holocaust thereby motivating students to make discoveries and generate opinions of their own.
Tim Berners-Lee in Amsterdam: On the WWW and Social Development
The World Wide Web and Social Development Symposium at the VU University Amsterdam welcomed a variety of prominent speakers to discuss the problem: How can the Web contribute to the social and economic development in the world? The event culminated with the VU granting Sir Tim Berners-Lee an honorary doctorate for his contribution to the development of the World Wide Web.
Much like a parent in awe of how quickly children tend to grow, Berners-Lee celebrated the 20th birthday of the WWW this year with a bit of pride, but mostly astonishment as to how much it has matured on its own. He reflected on the early years when he thought the Web would always be WYSIWYG and was surprised that so many people these days, even children, have learned to use HTML.
Berners-Lee likened the consistency of the Web to “something you pull out of the kitchen sink”, noting that “the Web has everything all tangled up together: lots of small things that fit tightly and connect to the big things.” Then in order to illustrate the size of the Web he continued, “There are more Web pages than neurons in my brain. The only difference is that while the neurons in my brain are going down, the amount of Web pages continue to go up.” He asserted that we have an extra responsibility to the Web because, unlike the brain, it was created by humans.
The questions that Berners-Lee received during the Q&A were certainly the same questions that he was being asked during the mid-90s when “cyberspace” went mainstream. Perhaps while in the midst of the creator they hoped to find more definitive answers to such worn-out questions…
- As an Internet user, how do I know what is the truth on the Internet?
- Is the Internet safe for kids, and what can I do to teach my kids?
- Do you feel the Internet is invading our private lives?
In line with Berners-Lee’s call for “extra responsibility”, Steve Bratt and Stephane Boyera followed-up with a brief introduction to the newly created World Wide Web Foundation – set to launch later this year – which is “the next phase of fulfilling Tim Berners-Lee’s original vision: the Web as humanity connected by technology.” The Foundation’s mission is to advance the Web and to fill the gap that impedes 1 billion+ people around the world from authoring and accessing content.
Within this context the audience viewed a trailer for the upcoming documentary about Yacouba Sawadogo entitled The Man Who Stopped the Desert (Sawadogo was present on-stage, but due to a language barrier choose to “let the trailer speak for him”). The Man Who Stopped the Desert highlights Sawadogo’s triumph in restoring food and life to many areas around the Sahara desert that were once abandoned due to draught.
At the time Sawadogo began using traditional communication to spread his innovate agricultural techniques. But the important idea that emerged here at the symposium is: as more Africans can connect, author, communicate and share these types of innovation and technology – then others can learn, and all together they can help lift Africa out of poverty.
(me) Speaking at eComm Europe 2009
I’ve been looking forward to attending eComm at the end of this month – Lars Rasmussen will talk about his new work with Google Wave, and others like Gerd Leonhard, and the people from Skype and Frog Design will be there.
Just got word that I’ll be giving a talk on ‘Free’ as a business strategy. I’ll post more info about the time/location shortly. But here is some info on my presentation…
Title: Sell What Can’t Be Copied
Talk Description: The concepts of ‘free’ and ‘freemium’ are excellent business strategies for getting people to use your stuff. Yet too often these ideas are misunderstood or poorly executed without a plan to monetize. How do we recognize the difference between what should be free and what should be sold?
Most business owners in this situation suffer from a marked inability to comprehend the underlying logic of the Internet when analyzing digital distribution. Digital products (digital music, videos, images and other content) live within the framework of the Internet, therefore they are subject to the logics of that context. By analyzing this context and looking closely at the influence that the Internet and blogging culture are having on online distribution, Chris Castiglione provides a definition for what should and shouldn’t be given away for free.
Cool, I won the 1st Round of the Amsterdam Antwerp Challenge!
Just received word that I made it through the first round of the Amsterdam Antwerp Challenge! (€100 for 100 words)
Here is my proposed business plan:
All cars manufactured today contain at least one computer. My idea is two fold: to develop sensors that connect the automobile’s meta-data to the Internet; and to allow developers to create online applications using this data. Conceptually, it is like Google Analytics, but for cars. Added feature may include networking this data to the local mechanic, friends, or other drivers. My theory is that this information will get degenerate parts changed more quickly, make the road safer, save the owner some cash and ultimately help the environment. In the future, car designers should think more like computer designers.
I will post more info when I find out. Looks like in the meantime I’ll have to get started on the second round proposal.
More info: http://www.aachallenge.nl/
#picnic09 – Picnic Recap
Here are some pics and articles from my coverage while working at PICNIC ’09. I had a chance to sit in on an Ignite session and talk with Ignite founder Brady Forrest: Ignite: A series of Five-Minute Talks, STEIM’s Electronic Instrument Workshop and the Creative Commons Special.
#Picnic09 : Electronic Instruments. Feel The Future.
A few members of STEIM, the electro-instrumental music foundation located in Amsterdam, came together at PICNIC to show the importance of music in our increasingly complex and out of control culture.
“Say goodbye to control. Say hello to improvisation,” these were a few of the opening remarks made by STEIM director Dick Rijken. He stressed that in a world of less control we need to concentrate on training our intuition. For Rijken (and STEIM) musical instruments play a significant role in developing the skills of intuition and improvisation.
STEIM’s Kristina Anderson took the stage next to highlight a variety of “instrumental objects” that challenge traditional notions of music creation. One example was Dick Raaymaker’s Intona (1992), a video in which he records a live microphone as it melts under the heat of a blowtorch – or as Anderson explained, “the sound of a musical instrument burning alive.” Other examples included works by Sonia Cillari and Tarek Atoui that experimented with digital sounds being generated from physical body movements.
Frank Balde then demonstrated how the Nintendo Wii can be repurposed into an impressive musical instrument. In conjunction with STEIM’s junXion software Balde was able to manipulate the pitch, amplitude, and frequency of a variety of sounds such as a grand piano, bass guitar and techno drums. All of this culminated in a stunning musical performance by Balde which received an enormous applause from the crowd.
Finally, Robert Van Heumen and Ariel Qassis concluded the session with their beautiful, yet haunting live performance: an improvisation piece using real time sampling.
All the projects showcased seemed to show how creativity through musical experimentation bridges the gap between the human body and digital objects. Or in other words, music is where electronic sensors and the human senses come together to create art.
New Media MA Thesis! (final version)
The final version of my MA Thesis is ready!
Copy What Can’t Be Sold (and Sell What Can’t Be Copied):
What Musicians Have Learned From Blogging
Abstract:
The “crisis in the music industry” (declining profits blamed on piracy) has been presented in the media as a crisis for musicians. This thesis challenges such assumptions by differentiating between various components of the industry and by illustrating how some musicians are benefiting from, and sometimes even promoting, piracy and other types of free online content.
Studies of the music industry suffer from a marked inability to comprehend the underlying logic of the Internet when analyzing digital music distribution. Digital music lives within the framework of the Internet, therefore it is subject to the logics of that context. By analyzing this context and looking closely at the influence that the Internet and blogging culture are having on music distribution, this thesis updates outdated concepts and presents recommendations for musicians living in a ‘post-Napster’ era.
Through a wide range of academic texts, empirical reports, interviews and case studies, I equate the current role of the musician to that of the blogger, ultimately arriving at the conclusion: successful musicians must copy what can’t easily be sold, and sell what can’t easily be copied.
Breakdown:
Intro – Explains it all
Section 1 - P2P & Music industry background/history
Section 2 – Free music, and the benefits of piracy
Section 3 – Musicians that blog, and selling what can’t be copied
Conclusion – Sums it up (duh)
New Media & Music: an interview with the Silversun Pickups
As I was preparing for my interview with the Silversun Pickups I received a Tweet acknowledging that they had just rolled into town. Later that day I chatted with the Brian, Nikki, Chris and Joe of the Silversun Pickups before their show at the Melkweg in Amsterdam to discuss what it takes to be a successful musician in the new media climate.
You guys use Twitter quite frequently, can you tell me about your experience as a band using Twitter:
Chris: It is nice to have the photo option, it’s the best, the fact that you can just take a picture and put it out there. It’s so immediate.
Brian: It’s also, at one point we had a journal on our website and it became daunting, we were all daunted by it cause we thought we had to write these masterful paragraphs. But the Twitter thing, it’s like cliff notes. It makes it really easy.
Chris: Cos the twitter thing we can just put one line.
Brian: “hey we’re in Amsterdam.”
What was your motivation for using Twitter?
Chris: I checked it out to see what it was about and if anyone I knew was on it. And then I noticed our booker was on it, so then I kind of followed him and I was like “oh your on this?”. I didn’t touch it for 3 months, then one of our label guys found me on Twitter and was like, “lets have a meeting about this, you should do this more often for the band”, and I was like OK I’ll give it a try. And so we eventually got onto it.
Do you also maintain a Facebook accounts?
Nikki: Chris and I do
Chris: It’s definitely not a personal thing anymore. It’s like we understand people are going to come in and they know who you are through your band and so they add you as a friend. And then all of a sudden they accept you as a friend.
What was really nice about it was, on my birthday about a month ago all these people were saying happy birthday to me. I made sure to say “Thank You” to everyone and people were surprised like, “OMG my friends don’t even write on my wall.”
That was going to be my next question, it seems like it must be difficult to stay in touch with fans this way?
Brian: It does get a little overwhelming. Also, privacy is important too.
Joe: The band is an entity to itself. You have to work hard to keep it separate from your personal life.
Brian: Nikki and I were just talking about this. You’ll be waiting for a movie in line, and you really just want to see this movie and the guy in front of you in line will turn around and be like, “Hey man”. It’s cool at first, but then after an hour it’s like, ”…well, so you going to see this? Cool man cool. Expensive huh?” Yeah…… and it’s like “……awkward”
Do you feel that you are forced to be friends with people that your not friends with?
Brian: NO….we always try to meet people as much as possible. You just kind of notice it getting more intense, which is fair enough. But it gets hard.
Nikki: You meet so many people every day, it’s hard to remember.
Brian: I’ve started to just feign recognition. In LA. Someone just looks at me in a coffee shop and I’ll be like, “HEY!” and they’ll look back all confused thinking, “What??” It’s hard I almost feel like there is a little friend quota in your brain.
Yeah actually there is, it’s 150 friends.
Brian: Really? Yeah that makes sense though. In context, like at a radio station or in the same kind of room where we first met it is easier. I’ll see “Ed” and I’ll be like, ok, “radio station Ed.”
How much money do bands make these days? Or to rephrase that, what does it take to be a successful band?
Brian: We really thought we were successful before we had records out, like when the band started to feed itself. When we actually didn’t have to put any of our personal money into it – we were like, “This is it!”.
Joe: If you can go on tour and come back and not have to look at your empty bank account then it is good.
Brian: I think it’s a world of blue-collar rock stars now, which is totally fine, really. If you can get by and play music.
Nikki: We feel successful that we don’t have to get another job.
Joe: Yeah, the fact that we can do this for a living is pretty much as awesome as we could have hoped it would be.
Brian: At this point we’re living larger than we’ve ever have before, we have three or four cars each, and our own blimp…and so we’re broke.
Nikki: (laughs) Yes the blimps are expensive to upkeep.
Brian: As long as you can travel around and play and make records. Than that is pretty much fantastic
So you guys don’t have jobs anymore?
Brian: No…
Nikki: …we would be fired
So you aren’t all going back to work at Disneyland?
Brian: Hehe, yeah that was a funny one.
Joe: But yeah, I think the blue collar thing. It is possible to make a living and do this without that sort of extravagance of rock bands in the past. You don’t have to be The Who to make a living and travel. You can do it economically and smartly – we can all make a living and pay our rent back home.
Brian: I mean, there are still going to be the Kayne Wests and Lady Gagas, but the middle ground is much bigger. It’s amazing. People are really hip on what bands need. For example, now a days if people hear your song in a commercial they don’t get up in arms and say you’re a sell-out . They say “Great now they’ll be able to play my town.”
Joe: Yeah the way bands support themselves now…People are pretty knowledgeable about how bands get paid, it is more transparent.
I think people are willing to accept that there is a lot of free music out there and there needs to be a way for artists to make some money. For example, I know “Lazy Eye” was included in Guitar hero?
Brian: Yeah that was really just for fun. It was pretty awesome, a lot of kids like that game.
So that’s the coolest way to sell out I guess?
Joe: Well and that’s just another venue to get your music out. Because not only are people hearing your song, but they can play it if they want. Which is even cooler. They can play “Lazy Eye!”
Brian: Yeah and it’s hard! I’m not very good at it.
But you play guitar!
Brian: That’s why I’m bad at it.
Joe: Turning 6 strings into 4 buttons, it actually is kind of complicated.
Brian: We’re trying to work our way into scoring the next Legend of Zelda
Are CD sales important anymore?
Brian: CD sales are important, we still get some money from that.
But most of our money comes from shows, merchandise and licensing. But that’s something you got to be careful about. We get pretty strange stuff. And we turn down a lot of things, like TV shows. We’re just like, “Wow that kills me inside.” But then hopefully you get to the point when you don’t have to do that anymore.
Has the vinyl deluxe package been successful?
Brian: Yeah, actually it has. Vinyl is going up now. Actually there are two new shops in Silverlake, LA…one of our friends has one of them and he was on the news, it was like, “The one shop now making money in this economy…Oragami.” I have no tears for CDs, I’m like fine, just vinyl and digital downloads for vinyl.
It seems like some people want it cheap and quick, but other people want to treat the album like a piece of art. That’s what is interesting about the limited edition set, it’s not just something overproduced on the rack – you can really appreciate it.
I’m in the Wintercamp ’09 Publication
My posts on freeDimensional and Blender* are included in the Wintercamp ’09 publication From Weak Ties to Organized Networks. A free copy can be ordered on the site, and a PDF is available here.
About Wintercamp: In March 2009 the Institute of Network Cultures brought 12 networks to Amsterdam for a week of getting things done. The aim of Winter Camp was to connect the virtual with the real in order to find out how distributed social networks can collaborate more effectively.
*my Blender article is mistakenly attributed to Marijn
More posts from me and the other Wintercamp bloggers are on the site.
