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Editor’s note: Below is a guest post from Nova Spivack, CEO of Radar Networks, about a new computational knowledge engine called Wolfram Alpha being developed by computer scientist…

More design mediating interaction

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 19:45:00 -0700

How does architecture affect academic study? From The Independent

Hat tip to The Browser, an excellent intelligent (the human kind) link aggregator. Thanks to Marginal Revolution to pointing me towards that.

Update: This piece presents some ideas on public transportation as social structure mediating a city’s interactions.

My night with Lawrence @Lessig, Shepard Fairey, and @metmuseum or: Why I love the internet

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 10:51:38 -0800

Awesome story from my friend Jake about the power of Twitter search, intelligent copyright law, and collective engagement.

FTW, Jake. FTW.

jakelevine:

I had the opportunity to join my friend Eric at the New York Public Library tonight to hear from Lawrence Lessig, Shepard Fairey, and Steven Johnson (event details). Lessig began with his Remix presentation, which I had never seen live. He is an incredible presenter and works wonders with Keynote, but even more impressive is the passion with which he articulates his understanding of modern cultural exchange and expression.

Some seem to have forgotten that copyright law exists not to protect profit and extinguish any attempt at derivation, but to encourage and protect incentives for creation. Without copyright, art could not support the artist. Artists, frustrated by their inability to generate revenues from their creations, would turn away from their passion and talent, and leave the rest of us in a cultural vacuum. Copyright, however, like all law, is subject to abuse. Some wish to include in the notion of ‘protection of art,’ all works that draw any material substance from that which came before them. This includes, but is not limited to, a video of a baby dancing to vague echos of a Prince song. The mother who made this video uploaded it to YouTube to share with the child’s grandmother. Shortly after, she was served with a takedown notice from Prince’s representatives.

This is just one example of the abuse of copyright law. “Fair use” should be clarified to include any transformative work of art. Duplication should be prosecuted, but creation and derivation, timeless elements of artistic expression, should be unequivocally encouraged.

As I left the New York Public Library (but not until after a Tim Wu showed up to ask Lessig a question), I checked Twitterfon for Twitter updates. Lo and behold, I had a reply waiting from @metmuseum.

Some background: yesterday I posted a photo that I had taken in Times Square on the way home from work of a massive Metropolitan Museum of Art advertisement. The caption attributed the photo in the ad to a photographer (who I have yet to track down) “via Flickr” and what I imagine is a Creative Commons license (another Lessig endeavor). I thought this was so cool that I wanted to share it with my friends. After posting to Tumblr, a link was automatically posted to my Twitter account. I can only imagine that whoever runs @metmuseum tracks “metropolitan museum of art” in Twitter Search and came across my picture, prompting the following reply:

”@jrlevine @jrlevine Great photo! It’s nice to see the ad lit up at night http://tumblr.com/x2z1ckjan#timewemet”

So there we are. After posting a picture I came across in Times Square, that had been licensed from an amateur photographer under the Creative Commons license, my post, syndicated across the Twitter universe using the amazing search function, ended up in front of the 1500 eyeballs that follow @metmuseum.

This is the power of collective online engagement in action. This is the next generation of creative expression colliding with a brave new social universe. A young New Yorker walks out of a lecture on free culture by the leading expert in the field (that he heard about from said expert’s blog/twitter) to find himself getting credit, before a crowd of 1500, for a picture of a picture that was only made possible by the very system that our leading expert works so hard to fight for!

Ok fine, maybe it’s just a coincidence. Or maybe it’s a taste of things to come. I’m putting my money on the latter.

New Bon Iver EP at Amazon for $0.99. Thanks to @chrismessina for...

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 09:59:00 -0800

New Bon Iver EP at Amazon for $0.99. Thanks to @chrismessina for the #deal tip!

Hearst May Close SF Chronicle

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:15:14 -0800

Hearst May Close SF Chronicle:

Hearst says it might have to sell or close the San Francisco Chronicle if it can’t lay off a “significant” number of employees “within weeks.” From the release:

Hearst said that the …

"People point out that there’s a significant sleight-of-hand in every status update, because the real..."

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:19:55 -0800

“People point out that there’s a significant sleight-of-hand in every status update, because the real answer to “What are you doing right now?” is always just “Updating my status.””

- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15wwln-medium-t.html?_r=2&ref=magazine

New Internet, key to identity?

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 15:18:32 -0800

From the Times:

The Internet’s current design virtually guarantees anonymity to its users. (As a New Yorker cartoon noted some years ago, “On the Internet, nobody knows that you’re a dog.”) But that anonymity is now the most vexing challenge for law enforcement. An Internet attacker can route a connection through many countries to hide his location, which may be from an account in an Internet cafe purchased with a stolen credit card.

“As soon as you start dealing with the public Internet, the whole notion of trust becomes a quagmire,” said Stefan Savage, an expert on computer security at the University of California, San Diego.

A more secure network is one that would almost certainly offer less anonymity and privacy. That is likely to be the great tradeoff for the designers of the next Internet. One idea, for example, would be to require the equivalent of drivers’ licenses to permit someone to connect to a public computer network. But that runs against the deeply held libertarian ethos of the Internet.

Proving identity is likely to remain remarkably difficult in a world where it is trivial to take over someone’s computer from half a world away and operate it as your own. As long as that remains true, building a completely trustable system will remain virtually impossible.

That all may be true, but in the meantime, I hope we can figure out a solution that works with our current infrastructure. IPv6 is an exciting possibility though.

davidhoffman: The new WhatTheFont iPhone app lets you identify...

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 15:05:54 -0800

davidhoffman:

The new WhatTheFont iPhone app lets you identify any font by taking a picture of it, just like its web-based brethren. And it’s free. I’m installing it right now.

Mobile Phone Numbers and Identity

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 08:22:59 -0800

Despite living in SF, I still have my 617 number and use it with a little bit of pride. Whenever I trade numbers with a fellow 617er, I feel a mini connection is made.

Annoyingly, some cab companies will only take 415 numbers, so I got a forwarding number to use for these purposes.

But this post makes an excellent point: numbers are one of the things that are unlikely to change, much more so than email addresses, so why not use them more as an identifier? Coupled with the physical phone, which we pretty much always have with us, this makes an interesting combo for login.

continuations:

We are spending a lot of time thinking about how identity will play itself out on the Internet. We are constantly running into the limitations of the existing arrangements even when companies from our portfolio are trying to collaborate. While there is definitely movement afoot with Facebook, Google and others extending their authentication to third parties and possibly moving the OpenID standard along (see previous posts on this).

But there is also another candidate for identity at least in some situations and that is the mobile phone number. I was reminded of that several times yesterday. First, I met with someone who has been living in San Francisco for quite some time but still has her 917 cell number. That made me realize that I have had my cell number for over 10 years and can’t imagine changing it voluntarily going forward. Then I spent some time with Jeff Lawson from Twilio, which makes it super easy for web developers to add voice interaction to their services. We talked about how IVR is often a pain, but generally that’s the case because the call starts out knowing nothing about you. Since mobile phone numbers change so rarely, that does not have to be the case! When I call say an airline, it should know who I am and immediately offer information directly relevant to me, such as whether my flight is on time. A good example (surprisingly) is the New York Times, which when I call from my home phone pulls up all my information and makes reordering a missed weekend delivery a cinch.

I know that phone numbers can be spoofed via IP telephony hacks, so I am not suggesting that the mobile phone number can easily be turned into a reliable form of identity for security critical applications, but it could be used much more extensively than it is today. This is especially true when you look at some type of multi-modal integration, such as calling in, being recognized and then being able to receive information back via SMS.

Photo

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 15:27:34 -0800

The comScore 2008 Digital Year in Review

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:34:58 -0800

The comScore 2008 Digital Year in Review

Go Ma!

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:51:35 -0800

A book my mom designed won the Caldecott Medal today. It’s called The House in the Night. This is the 5th book she’s designed that has won the award, which honors the best Childen’s book illustrations each year. AFAIK, that’s pretty unprecedented. Congratulations!

Even though she didn’t illustrate the book, I’ll give her a measure of credit for the award. How a book is design most certainly mediates how readers experience it, and I believe her design contributed to how the judges and other readers enjoyed the book.

In other news, the ALA announced the awards as they were happening on Twitter on @ALAyma. This excited my mother, who has to suffer through my ramblings about tech services and has heard all about the wonders of Twitter. This morning, however, I got the following email from her:

This is so much fun! Just wanted to let you know though, that Twitter failed about 3/4 of the time into the announcements. Luckily I had the video feed going on another window. Here’s the link, it won’t refresh. I must say I was surprised, I think of Twitter as low-tech and foolproof in a way.

I am about to join Facebook, one of my colleagues just put me up on her page!
Love,Mom

I’ve never been so proud…

Flowbee

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:35:41 -0800

Flowbee:

This is just what I’ve always wanted/needed! A vacuum powered home haircutting system!

The Big Picture always comes up with some great photojournalism.

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 14:02:45 -0800

The Big Picture always comes up with some great photojournalism.

Check my friend Ben in the Los Angeles Times!

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:07:10 -0800

Here. That rules.