OCTOBER 1, 2009

I have four kids at home. My life schedule after work is a blur of activities, logistics, dishes, homework and mediation of disputes that last all the way until the last kid is stymied once again after he thought he figured a way to stay up past his bedtime. On a weekly basis, it is a schedule truly worthy of a NASA super computer to figure out. So watch TV in prime time… are you kidding? No chance.

Yet, I’m from the TV Generation… we grew up with sitcoms, dramas and now reality shows. I was bred to watch TV and spent much of my adult life working in 24-hour TV news at CNN. I’m in the 24-54 demographic for Pete’s sake… I am TV’s best friend! But life has changed and so have our schedules and so has technology. I don’t know what is taking so long and why others don’t see this all coming together like I do. So, let me put it this way, I know what I want went it comes to watching television and it suddenly dawned on me the other day that soon I will get it.

It’s really quite simple: I want to watch what I want to watch, when I want to watch it on whatever device that I choose. I want that device to be two-way, wireless, handy, with a killer screen, with charged and long lasting batteries where applicable and constantly capable of connecting to the news sites, entertainment sites, social networks, app stores, ebay and I’ll throw in Google Earth because, well, it’s cool. Is that too much to ask?

Yet I don’t have that today. Or don’t I? I already pay iTunes/NBC $1.99 for every episode of Law & Order, which I watch at my convenience on my iPod touch and rarely in prime time. I can also go to NBC.com and watch a missed episode there. I have the Verizon FIOS service at home, which brings a host of services into my house on one thin strand of glass. And that’s my point. It’s already one pipe to the service providers such as Verizon. It’s me and my way of looking at the world that divides that pipe into TV, phone and internet service.

You have heard of IED’s in Iraq… well how about IAD’s at home? Internet Assimilation Device - is there any question that in perhaps less than 5 years a TV will be little more than another outlet to display a connection to the internet and all the world it opens up? Honestly, it will be easier to find the programs I want to watch that way. Will anyone ever need a TV Guide again?

The truth is that very shortly there is likely to be little difference between the capabilities of the 3-inch iPhone screen, 6-inch Kindle screen, 10-inch Netbook screen and 75-inch home theatre screen. They will all draw content from the same locations and give me the same choices of information, entertainment and two-way interaction.

Anyone see it differently?

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SEPTEMBER 2, 2009

What if you could see a portrait of how the internet views you? What would this portrait look like, and how would the tnternet view you?

Leave it to the geniuses at MIT to figure it out. Personas is a project on display at the MIT Museum. It uses complex algorithms and other smart stuff to scour the web for websites, articles, and other tidbits about you. It then characterizes the data and spits it out as a bar graph sort of visual that serves as a “personal profile” of who you are on the net.

I first learned about it through my friend Liebchen and I decided to take it for a ride. It was fun to see the computations as the site scanned references to my name and produced a graph that lists “Committees, Legal, and Genealogy”as my biggest attributes. I wish I knew more about what the terms meant, but the whole deal was intriguing nonetheless.

Besides being a fun way to spend five minutes of your online time, MIT recognizes that projects like Personas take a step closer to mining and processing the vast amounts of information online: “It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world, where digital histories are as important if not more important than oral histories, and computational methods of condensing our digital traces are opaque and socially ignorant.”

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AUGUST 28, 2009

Today, I was driving to work when a state trooper rammed into my car from behind, because he was on the cell phone and not paying attention. He gave me a ticket for “Failure to control speed to avoid a crash.” FML.

That’s just a sample of the funny tidbits you’ll get at the site fmylife.com. What does the f stand for? Well I can’t really tell you without getting fired, but I’m sure you get the point (and if I am fired for writing this it would probably be an FML.)

The site collects stories and anecdotes from users that illustrate their bad luck and misfortune. The stories are usually comical, in a “I’m glad that didn’t happen to me” sense.

Is your life not so unfortunate? Then maybe you should submit a story to MyLifeIsG, a site that shares the opposite, stories of fortunate events, or general “I’m pimp” tales.

What if you life isn’t G or unfortunate? Don’t worry, there’s a site for you too. It’s called My Life Is Average.

I’ve noticed that the latest in humor sites involve various sharing of personal events. Whether it’s that drunk dial you made last weekend (Texts From Last Night), or a note with a not-so-hidden subtext (Passive Aggressive Notes), or an embarrassing moment involving your parents and Facebook (Oh Crap. My Parents Joined Facebook), it seems like every moment of our lives is worthy of inclusion on some internet meme site.

So what exactly are these sites saying about our pop culture today? First, the limits of what we consider private and public are being stretched to new lengths. Social networking introduced the idea that details about ourselves should be open and shared. Now even our less graceful moments can be shared, as long as they are funny to somebody else.

Does that also mean our sense of what we consider decent and indecent for public consumption is changing? I’m not entirely sure.

I don’t have all the dots connected on this yet but there’s clearly a trend with the rise of these types of internet meme sites.

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AUGUST 12, 2009

I just returned from two weeks out of the country. For me, this meant two weeks of not being at my laptop 24/7, tethered to the internet, repeating my endless cycle of checking work email-personal email-Twitter-Facebook-Google Reader-personal blog-book blog-and so on.

For the record: I survived. Of course, I did have my Blackberry, and added international coverage before I left, so I was able to check work and personal email pretty regularly. But there were times when I was able to log on via computer (thanks to overpriced hotel internet service and some kind woman in Paris, also named Gayle, whose wireless network was blissfully unsecure). And when I did log on, the first and often only place I checked? Facebook.

For me, Facebook was the perfect lifeline to the outside world. It was via Facebook that I was able to partake in the collective grieving over the untimely death of John Hughes. I sat in my dark hotel room watching this montage of Hughes movies set to The Who’s “Baba O’Riley” and felt grateful that I was able to share my sadness in his death by linking to the video and hearing what others thought.

It was via Facebook that I kept up with where my friends were, how their respective vacations were going, and what was going on at the office.

It was via Facebook that I got a recommendation for this amazing bakery in Paris that I never would have found otherwise.

It struck me that my transcontinental addiction to Facebook only underscores that social networking has profoundly changed how we live, and specifically how we define our individual communities and sense of belonging. Too many days off of Facebook and I feel out of it and disconnected.  A few years ago, I remember fearing that mass media disintegration - brought about by the internet, video streaming and iPods - was in fact threatening common experience and the sense of societal belonging that comes from experiencing events simultaneously with others.  That fear is now gone, replaced by the knowledge that social networks are in fact doing the opposite: they are redefining, and strengthening, our personal communities and in fact facilitating shared experiences.

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AUGUST 7, 2009

Last week, Bill Ives pointed out an interesting debate by Stanford University on whether web video and television should converge and offer content across both mediums seamlessly. In light of some related developments, such as the proposal of a “TV Everywhere” payment model in March, and the increasing value of online advertisements that run alongside episodes, I think this debate really hits on an important issue in the growth of online media consumption. Now that the audience watches shows both on their TVs and online, will the lines between these two mediums blur? The Stanford representatives theorized:

With the convergence of media, we expect the emergence of appliances that will be able to display some sort of standardized media format. These devices will most likely vary in size, intended placement (living room, kitchen, bedroom), and functionality, but will have the common capability of being able to interpret the given converged media format. […] [T]hese information appliances will be able to provide a richer environment for viewing and interaction.

The idea of having fully integrated multimedia appliances in your home is very appealing. I currently watch a lot of shows on my TV through my cable provider, but I also watch some shows on official network pages online and download shows to watch on a computer hooked up to the TV. I would definitely enjoy the opportunity to easily watch a video from a TV, computer, or handheld device in any room of the house. It would also be convenient to have a universal format for video content that I can store and share (at least within my household) with no difficulty. However, the biggest challenge in this vision is developing an effective payment scheme that leaves both consumers and media/cable companies satisfied.

When “TV Everywhere” was first proposed, watchdog group Public Knowledge issued a statement criticizing the model, pointing out that the internet already operates on the fundamental concept of offering accessible, open content. “TV Everywhere”, as proposed by Comcast and Time Warner, aims to make cable TV content available both on TV and online - essentially asking users to subscribe to a cable package if they want the convenience of viewing premium cable content online. It is clear that the reasoning behind this plan helps preserve the revenue that cable companies earn by offering content in packages, as well as the relationship between cable companies and cable networks. With such a closed distribution method, cable companies hope to maintain control over who can see their content. This is definitely a model that conflicts with current video distribution models online like Hulu, which encourage sharing and discussion.

There is a great deal of tension among cable providers and content distributors right now, especially in the face of the current recession. After reading about the TV/online video debate, I really think that this struggle to figure out a good way to make money will greatly affect the way we consume our video in 5-10 years.

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JULY 29, 2009

In January, when Congress and the Obama administration decided to allocate around $800b for an unprecedented economic stimulus package, the federal government announced its commitment to spending the money in a transparent way, with plenty of opportunity for citizen oversight. Reviews of the administration’s transparency initiatives have been mixed, with commentators of all ideological stripes faulting the President for not following through on a few campaign promises, including a seven-day public comment period for all bills on the President’s desk. But, I think, by any objective measure, the Obama administration has been among the most transparent American administrations in history - not that that’s saying a whole lot.

A few months back, though, I talked about how transparency can come back to bite you politically if the appropriate context is not given for the information disclosed. And it’s happened again - recently, political bloggers seized upon a report from Recovery.gov, the federal government’s searchable database of stimulus projects, suggesting that the feds paid $1.2m for two pounds of frozen ham.

Any reasonable person would look at that and assume there was a typo, or that some key information had not made its way into the report. But our political discourse features more than a few unreasonable people, who assumed the worst: that the federal government had bought ham at $600,000/lb. Luckily, the USDA cleared things up - apparently 760,000 lbs of frozen ham, packaged in 2lb units, were purchased, with the meat going to food banks hit by state budget shortfalls. But, regardless of the perfectly reasonable explanation for the mistake, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear this tale around the Thanksgiving table in a few months.

Jake Brewer writes about the episode at the Sunlight Foundation’s blog, criticizing the USDA for having to resort to a press release, rather than simply disclosing all the information within Recovery.gov. And he’s right - a database of government spending isn’t very useful if relevant details like “quantity purchased” aren’t readily available. But I think this misses the point: you can disclose every fact in the world about a government transaction and still have someone take it out of context, sometimes in a dishonest manner. The episode of the fish passage barriers, from a few months ago, is a perfect illustration of that.

I’m starting to believe that transparency for transparency’s sake is putting the cart before the horse -  what’s needed before transparency can work as a check on government secrecy and power is a cooperative and thoughtful atmosphere, one where an observer’s first instinct in a case like this is “that can’t be right” - not gleeful celebration over having caught one’s political enemies emptying the treasury for a package of frozen ham. We’re not there yet.

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JULY 27, 2009

Mashable writer Ben Parr took a moment recently to reflect on the future of the web as Google continues to pave the way to new and innovative developments for online activity. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that while we are refining the way we use current social networks and engaging in dialogue over its uses, developers at Google and other companies are focused on the next game changer. Parr suggests that Google’s overall strategy is to get people to spend more time online, where it earns most of its revenue. With developments like Google Wave, Chrome OS, and HTML 5 coming up, it’s clear that the most influential web company is poised to do exactly that. Google Wave will allow people to move a great deal of collaborative business work online. Google’s new operating system based on its Chrome browser will help web applications launch instantly. HTML 5 is the newest iteration of the code that structures the web - it will include changes that allow web applications to interact more seamlessly with computer desktops, which will help people share media much more easily. Of course, one of the two core spec editors for HTML 5 is Ian Hickson from Google (the other is from Microsoft). All of these developments help us get a glimpse of how, in the near future, we may be seeing our web usage (and by extension, social activities) become the central component of our computer use.

Digg got hit with a lot of negative press recently because of their decision to direct all links shortened by the Diggbar to an intermediary page on Digg.com - effectively directing a great deal of traffic to Digg.com by forcing users to first visit the Digg story page before seeing the page that was originally linked to. Complaints about this change pointed out that this severely hampered the usefulness of the Diggbar as a URL shortening service. It seemed like an attempt to inflate traffic to Digg.com, not a sincere attempt to grow the community by providing value for Diggbar users.

After the uproar from Twitter users spread, Digg published a blog post that explained how the change brings the Diggbar closer to its ultimate goal of strengthening the Digg community by allowing users to catch up on the conversations on the main site. In other words, the Diggbar is not meant to be a tool for URL shortening, but an extension of the main site. Although this reasoning seems to be made with the best interests of the site in mind, many users are still unconvinced. After all, it seems that the Diggbar’s initial URL shortening service built a lot of goodwill towards the site from users who weren’t already part of the Digg community because it provided a convenient and unobtrusive service. How can Digg’s focus on making the Diggbar a way to guide people back to Digg.com build goodwill quite as easily?

Amazon.com bought Zappos, the popular online shopping site known for its unique approach to customer service. This is an interesting move for the online retail giant, especially because Zappos is known for its relationship with customers and its appealing presence online. Seth Godin comments on this deal, saying that Amazon most likely recognizes that Zappos has the qualities that matter most in today’s market:

What you buy when you spend that kind of money is what matters now. And what matters is:

• A corporate culture that’s not the same (and where great people choose to work)
• A tight relationship with customers that give you permission to talk with them
• A business model that’s remarkable and worth talking about
• A story that spreads
• Leadership

Zappos has proven to be a leader in social media use, setting an example for other companies. Amazon may well benefit from investing in Zappos’ growth.

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JULY 17, 2009

I recently ran across Alice and Kev, a blog that chronicles the virtual existence of two characters in The Sims 3. Alice and Kev are a homeless father and daughter created by game design student Robin Burkinshaw. In Burkinshaw’s words:

I created two Sims, moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any job promotions or easy cash routes. It’s based on the old ‘poverty challenge’ idea from The Sims 2, but it turned out to be a lot more interesting with The Sims 3’s living neighborhood features.

The results of this experiment went beyond expectations, with both characters developing fascinating habits and relationships that fuel a surprisingly poignant (and sometimes hilarious) narrative. Burkinshaw dutifully recounts their story through regular posts on the blog, which has attracted a very loyal readership and a fair amount of praise from other blogs. Alice and Kev’s popularity inspired Burkinshaw to add links to charity donations sites; many commenters have said that the story is an eye-opening experience, and that Alice’s selfless character has caused them to re-examine their own attitudes towards giving back to their communities.

The most intriguing aspect of this experiment is that Burkinshaw’s simple recounting of Alice and Kev’s story online has managed to go further than simply revealing some of the advanced game mechanics in The Sims 3.  It has actually captured the imaginations of a very diverse audience through dramatic narrative and subtle social commentary. The blog format is perfectly suited to this project, since the posts can be syndicated through RSS and readers can visit the site to comment and discuss amongst each other. Each post generally gets over 100 comments, and one of the most common remarks is how close the characters’ actions are to real life situations. As Alice and Kev’s following grows, so does its community of faithful readers.

Lately, it seems like microblogging and lifestreaming have taken over the attention of thought leaders in social media. However, Alice and Kev is a good reminder of how much impact a simple blog can have. It is a cross section of pop culture, technology, and social consciousness presented as a creative piece of work. Because of the thought and attention given to the presentation of this story, it has the potential to spread awareness about homelessness and inspire change in people’s attitudes - something that is much more difficult to do through platforms like Twitter, where it is much harder to maintain focus on a single topic.

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JULY 16, 2009

A little TechCrunch/Twitter drama is playing out this week in the blogtwitterverse.

Apparently, about a month ago, a Twitter employee’s email account was hacked, and sensitive business information about Twitter - including business plans, meeting notes, salary data, financial projections, and partner agreements - was obtained by the hacker.  There was other, more personal information in the mix - salary data, names of people who had interviewed at Twitter, etc. All of that information was sent in a zip file via email to TechCrunch, a well-known tech blog. It now appears that TechCrunch intends to publish the hacked Twitter information, minus the personally sensitive stuff.

On Tuesday, TechCrunch first posted that it would publish the documents. That post prompted over a thousand responses, many negative, and also prompted TechCrunch to post an update, responding to the responses. TechCrunch’s position is simple: it received the information, the information isn’t personally embarrassing to any individual, the information is interesting, and it is going to share it. Even though the documents were obtained through unethical means, TechCrunch sees no ethical dilemma in making it public. The documents will eventually get out, it reasons, so why not be the one to publish it?

This sentence seems to sum up TechCrunch’s position the best:“[I]t certainly was unethical, or at least illegal or tortious, for the person who gave us the information and violated confidentiality and/or nondisclosure agreements. But on our end, it’s simply news.”

Late yesterday afternoon, TechCrunch posted Twitter’s financial forecast through 2013 - clearly interesting reading for anyone who has been watching the microblogging site’s meteoric rise and wondering how it plans to make money. In the post, TechCrunch suggested that it plans to post more of the Twitter documents, and also noted that it has been in negotiations with Twitter’s lawyers over the issue of the hacked documents. (FYI - here’s Twitter’s response, posted yesterday, to TechCrunch’s first post about the documents.)

[UPDATE: This afternoon, TechCrunch posted a significant amount of very sensitive Twitter business information - pages and pages about partnerships, threats, goals, projections, celebrities, and much more.]

I get that blogs aren’t newspapers, and that they are therefore not necessarily held to the same ethical standards as traditional print journalists. And I don’t even know whether a newspaper would be ethically obligated not to publish hacked material.  In my mind, the answer to that question doesn’t ultimately matter: the point is that scoops and traffic numbers should not be the most important things to consider when facing a dilemma like this.  Sometimes, you do the right thing, just because it’s the right thing to do. And TechCrunch should have taken a pass on the documents. Would it have cost them anything to do so, other than some lost page views? Meanwhile, the potential damage to Twitter is huge.

TechCrunch likes to play on the edges - I realize that. (See its statement last year that it would no longer honor embargoes.) But it is worth it? I’d have to say no.

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JULY 13, 2009

Via PC World comes the release of a new study by The Leading Question, a UK media strategy company, showing that illegal file-sharing among British teens has decreased by close to 33%. 26% of teenagers admitted to illegal file-sharing in the last month, down from 42% in December 2007.  Not only that, for the first time in the survey’s history, the data show that purchased music downloads outpacing illegal file-sharing.

The study’s authors suggest that the decrease in illegal activity has come partially due to the increasing popularity of legal, paid options, but also the pervasiveness of music streaming sites like Spotify, Pandora and YouTube.  Streaming sites have seen enormous growth, not only because of the risks of illegal file-sharing, but also because of the increasing ubiquity of wireless data services - with devices like the iPhone, streaming is possible from anywhere, making downloaded, local copies of music more or less obsolete. Throw in the computing industry’s recent trend toward netbook computers, with their tiny hard drives, and you have a whole lot of factors creating a greater market in online streaming, making the greater prominence of these services not too surprising.

I’m encouraged by the study as a music lover. But I’d offer some words of caution to record execs who think people are finally turning away from stealing their intellectual property: the terms you’re offering to sites like Pandora are more or less killing the streaming business model. Pandora’s announcement last week that it will begin to charge heavy users of the service has, anecdotally, driven quite a few people away - even if they can afford the very small surcharge that Pandora will ask of those who listen more than 40 hours a month. I definitely listen more than 40 hours a month and can afford it, but why should I pay, when there are countless alternatives?

Pandora power users have an enormous level of interaction with the service. We generally sit and rate tracks as they play, to improve the content of our personal stations. I even have a keyboard shortcut on my laptop for doing just that,  so I don’t have to switch windows to rate songs. This should give marketers an incredibly rich data environment with which to discern our likes and dislikes. You’d think that, to simplify things a bit, if Pandora’s algorithms notice a huge number of 24 year-old guys giving good ratings to both Weezer and Mariah Carey songs, that that might be an incredibly valuable piece of data for a record executive, who could then find or create an ironic nerd-rock band with a mezzo soprano lead singer - even using the Pandora service to introduce the band directly into our headphones.

If this occurs to me, as someone well outside the music business, it has to have occurred to the pros in New York, LA and Nashville. I wonder what’s keeping it from happening. But one thing’s for sure - the costs imposed on streaming sites by the music industry will ultimately end in those sites becoming less prominent, sending people right back into piracy.

As an aside, I discovered my new favorite song, Metro by the Vincent Black Shadow, on thesixtyone, a new site that makes music streaming into a kind of video game. I don’t know how to explain it better than that, so you should probably just check it out.

(image is of the basement of Plan 9 Records in Richmond, VA - my favorite record store growing up)

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