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Archives - September 2008

The extreme sticky note experiment

19.09.08 | Permalink | 0 Comments

Utterly fantastic

Another fantastic bit of viral content from Office Max, following the storming success of Elf Yourself.

I’ll never look at the humble post-it in the same way again!

EepyBird’s Sticky Note experiment from Eepybird on Vimeo.

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Give us this day our daily read Part II: Twitlit

11.09.08 | Permalink | 1 Comment

I’ve posted on the advent of micro-publishing and literature in bite-sized portions before, so as a follow-up it seemed timely to observe the launch of the Twiller

You might remember the novel in its earlier form; it had a cover, and many pages, forethought of plot, editors and agents weighing in, and, oh yes, it generally had sentences and punctuation. And, finally, some poor suckers had to take the time out of their busy days to actually read it…

…Who has time for all those niceties? They’re so first half of 2008.

In my case, I’ve for the last two months been using Twitter to write a real-time thriller. Hence: Twiller.

However, while the technology might be new, as I’ve previously observed, the microblogged novel follows in that grand tradition of serialised fiction which was the height of fashion in the Victorian era. The fact that the greatest novelists of the time (such as Dickens, Eliot & Thackeray) chose to publish their newest works of fiction in installment - which was more affordable than purchasing bound hardcover books - democratised the consumption of fiction, sparking growth in the number of people desiring to read, and also in literacy rates.

Yet other forms of Twitlit are striking out in an entirely new model - self contained content in microformats. Copyblogger’s Twitter writing contest and Smithereen’s Can you put the wit in Twitter? respectively challenged participants to tell a short story and come up with witty wordplay in 140 characters.

Will this catch on?

Well, let’s check out the winners:

Time travel works!” the note read. “However you can only travel to the past and one-way.” I recognized my own handwriting and felt a chill.

Ron Gould

The lady at The Coffee Bean laughed at my joke when I ordered a “Synonym Roll”, and asked her if there was another word to describe it.

RhodesTer

I’m no literary critic, but I suspect longform fiction is unlikely to be killed off any time soon!

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Twitter Whore

08.09.08 | Permalink | 0 Comments

From the fabulous Lisa Nova (her McCain / Palin take off is superb), OMG LOL it’s Twitter Whore! So utterly on the money…

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Online identity and our personal histories

04.09.08 | Permalink | 0 Comments

[ photo courtesy]

Nowadays who we are - or at least how others perceive us - is increasingly defined by our online identity.

Our own personal histories are recorded on our blogs, twitter feeds, flickr streams, youtube channels, facebook pages and the like. We can create and shape our personal record, to build up a picture of the life we lead and ultimately who we are.

Of course, this isn’t a new behaviour, since people have been recording diaries, family histories and photo albums for years - it’s just the technology that’s new, making it easier than ever to record our personal histories for posterity.

But it’s also allowed us to record the history of others who went before us - who weren’t able to leave their own personal records.

In the case of me and my family, I’m thinking of Yad Vashem, the foundation which documents the history the history of the Holocaust period and seeks to preserve the memory and story of its six million victims. They’ve set up a central database to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust, which features the following quotation on its front page:

“…I should like someone to remember that there once lived a person named David Berger”

David Berger in his last letter, Vilna 1941

It’s an attempt to reconstruct the names and stories of those who died in the Holocaust, featuring an estimated three million names. As such, building the database is a work in progress, which they’ve opened up to contributions from the public to help them build it further. Families and friends are encouraged to submit unrecorded names, and to add any further details to existing records so that their histories may be recorded.

Most of the Lindemann family was lucky enough to have been able to flee Nazi Germany, and it’s thanks to their escape that I’m here. My great great uncle Nathan was not so lucky, and was taken to a camp in Riga for the crime of being a Jew.

But thanks to the database at Yad Vashem, we’ve been able to add to Nathan Lindemann’s listing - submitting information about who he was in life, and uploading a photo to give a face to his record.

“When the Nazis rounded us up, they took away our names and gave us numbers. What we are doing here is taking away the numbers and giving them back their names.”

Arthur Kurzweil

It’s immensely pleasing that technology has allowed us to record his history so that his identity should be recorded for posterity, and that his memory may live on.

Our online identities aren’t who we are - they’re just one window into our personalities, and who we are in life may be very different from who we are online. But for those who aren’t able to record their own histories, an online identity is pretty bloody powerful.

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Show Us a Better Way and Free Our Data

01.09.08 | Permalink | 1 Comment

[ photo courtesy ]

The power of crowdsourcing is nothing new.

Lots of eminent people have written about it (Crowdsourcing, The Wisdom of Crowds, We Think, Wikinomics, Here Comes Everybody amongst others).

The world of science has long taken advantage of the power of the many, via the likes of Seti@home, Galaxy Zoo or Stardust@home.

Organisations such as Innocentive, Fellowforce, and Innovation Exchange serve as crowdsourcing exchanges.

The tech sphere got into the game with initiatives like Cambrian House & Crowdspirit.

Fans can share their love for music with Bandstocks, or football with MyFootballclub.

Brands got a piece of the action, with the likes of Dell Ideastorm, P&G Connect and Develop, Intel Cool Software & the Netflix Prize.

No problem can’t be solved (or at least, get closer to the solution) by turning to the hive mind - even gold and silver mining.

So it seems bloody obvious that democracy, government and civic participation should be ripe for harnessing the power of the people.

MoveOn has undoubtedly changed the face of political participation in the US.

The always-wonderful mySociety have been responsible for the likes of TheyWorkForYou, FixMyStreet, and the fabulous Pledgebank.

And now the Power of Information Task Force has launched Show Us a Better Way on behalf of the government, to encourage the development of new products that could improve the way public information is communicated.

The government has made available gigabytes of previously invisible public data, and a £20,000 prize fund to develop the ideas to the next level

Which has elicited some fantastic ideas - such as WhatWentWhere, an interactive map showing what public money was spent on what services where, or Access to Health, providing public transport links to services on NHS Choices.

But the Guardian thinks it’s about bloody time. Their Free our Data campaign has been lobbying for our public data to be made available since 2006. Give us back our crown jewels first highlighted the fact that government-funded and approved agencies such as the Ordnance Survey and UK Hydrographic Office and Highways Agency are government-owned agencies who collect data on our behalf. They’re part-funded by taxpayers, yet have historically charged for this data, with onerous copyright restrictions that restrict the number and variety of organisations that can offer services based on that most useful data.

In comparison, the US has made the data it collects available and free to all:

It is no accident that it is also the country that has seen the rise of multiple mapping services (such as Google Maps, Microsoft’s MapPoint and Yahoo Maps) and other services - “mashups” - that mesh government-generated data with information created by the companies. The US takes the attitude that data collected using taxpayers’ money should be provided to taxpayers free. And a detailed study shows that the UK’s closed attitude to its data means we lose out on commercial opportunities, and even hold back scientific research in fields such as climate change.

As well as stifling innovation, it led to farcical situations as a local authority having to pay Royal Mail £3,000 for every website that includes the facility for people to look up their postcodes, despite it being that very same local authority that collected much of this data in the first place.

So the Guardian have welcomed the launch of Show Us a Better Way as a fantastic first step of providing the public with the data that is rightfully theirs, to allow the wisdom of crowds to truly innovate and provide us with tools and products to utilise our data to its fullest.

Only there’s a snag - the data’s only available for the purpose of the competition.

However, as the authors point out, “history shows that once a piece of information enters the public domain, it is hard to persuade people that it should be taken out again.

The march towards free data continues.”

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