Villagers with Pitchforks

February 21, 2010

Being Prepared…

Since Hurricane Katrina there has been a steady influx of disaster and zombie apocalypse movies. The fear that communities will be unprepared in a state of emergency has suddenly become a realization and that collective fear is manifesting itself in our pop culture.

I’ve never been the sort of person to subscribe to survivalist antics, but I happen to make San Francisco my home and if you look at the USGS quake mapping system, we’ve had hundreds of small readings from the past week. When my friends Carey and Joe talked about the NERT classes they are taking, it struck a chord. NERT is the SF Fire Department’s National Emergency Rescue Team. You can become a team volunteer by taking 6 classes on earthquake awareness, basic disaster skills, light search and rescue, medicine and team organization. The point is to reduce the stress on government emergency services and ensure that your own family members (and possibly neighbors) are as safe as possible.

Rumor has it that San Francisco is the only city with a disaster plan for parasitic alien invasions :) For a quick look at the NERT program, check out this video.

February 15, 2010

Why Popjam Misses the Point of Chatroulette

While panel talks on large social networks often turn to questions of privacy, safety and personal space, I cannot help thinking that there is an entire generation who is fearless in the face of an anonymous crowd. Yesterday at 11:00pm there were 20,000 people online at Chatroulette.

The premise of the service is that two anonymous strangers turn on their webcams to stare at each other through the great digital divide. Most participants are civil with a few exposing themselves or looking for others to expose themselves. While the nudity contingency is the minority, it’s the hint at a possible live freak show that seems to draw new users. The Chatroulette site has become such a meme that users are already posing as others including the entire male cast of Jersey Shore. Why am I writing this you ask?

In looking at mainstream sites, I wonder how online norms have shifted. Pornography always had a huge presence on the Web, but for those not looking for porn, it was YouTube and MySpace that formed the kernel of a meme. My generation of slovenly hipsters thought we were so edgy when the service once touted as the smallest, fastest and most standards compliant Mozilla image library was named libpr0n. The site FAQ is upfront in stating, “The main goal of the library is to render pornographic images in an efficient way.” But these aren’t live images. It’s just image rendering with a memorable name.

It’s time to face facts. In comparison to kids nowadays, we’re thoroughly vanilla. And if we actually think the new roulette style of Facebook chat Popjam is the same as Chatroulette, then we are missing the point.

In the last few years, Youtube videos and jokes once considered taboo have become perfectly acceptable for my father to print and post to the office bulletin board. Like a real life Quentin Tarantino film, the repetition of oddities and recorded perversities have desensitized even our parents. With a real-time feed, constant mobile connection and decent streaming video, a site that offers the slight hint of live soft core pornography may well be the last vestige of youth.

February 14, 2010 3 notes

Correcting Real Time Analysis

The other day I met Jeff Jonas for an hour long meeting at his PR agency’s office. Jonas is the chief scientist of the IBM Entity Analytics group, he built the system that foiled the MIT Blackjack Team in Vegas and he’s since gone on to do all sorts of interesting things like thwart criminals for the CIA and participate in several marathons. Essentially, Jonas is a finely tuned machine, and that day I’d had 3 hours of sleep and I arrived with toothpaste on my face. Needless to say, I was a little intimidated.

Halfway through the meeting Jonas tells me the story he likes to tell at the podium during banquet dinners. While on the last leg of a triathlon in South Africa, he saw a runner with what he thought was diarrhea on his backside. He asked him if he was alright and the man reached down, touched the substance and licked it saying aloud, “It tastes like mango.” A juice packet had broken in the man’s back pocket without him noticing it. Said Jonas, “This is what I do. I build data analysis systems that make real time assumptions and then build them to correct themselves.” At that moment I eased up and corrected my own assumptions about Jonas.

February 3, 2010

Experience Points

Experience Points This week is Social Media Week and there’s a heavy focus on cause-related activism and social good. However, when we arrived yesterday at the San Francisco Food Bank, organizer Jeremy Toeman of Stage 2 Consulting pointed out, “They can get 250 people to a demo night, but we can only get 3 of 7 who committed to show up to volunteer for 3 hours.” Jeremy suggested that there should be a Foursquare for social activism. I was thinking about it last night and if Foursquare itself decided to award more points for being on-site at a 401c3 charity then at a bar or restaurant, then perhaps the leader board would be a little more meaningful. In the past I’ve written about the Foursquare for Charity pilot project but on second look I feel like this is a bit of a money grab from sponsors. By awarding more points for volunteering and even for fair trade businesses the game mechanics would remain fun, but it would alter the value system.

February 1, 2010

The Situation

I don’t know why but today was just one of those days where I wanted to relate everything back to Jersey Shore. I was all like, “Damn. Why you creatures gotta keep hating on my situation. Why don’t you go creep up on Mashable’s boardwalk?” FML.

January 31, 2010

On The iPad

Sooo, the iPad launched this week…

Apple’s new device does not support the “closed system” of Flash and many have taken this opportunity to praise HTML 5. I’ve already established myself as a bit of an HTML 5 fangirl, but when Flash offers the majority of video and gaming experiences on the web, you have to think this decision is simply removing functionality for consumers. Regardless of how sleek and elegant new devices are, they should offer more access to media, not less. I want cross-platform mobile development tools, but that doesn’t mean I want all of the past work that’s been done to go up in smoke. Make no mistake about it, the second someone comes out with a prettier phone, music player or cheap tablet, I’m sooo outta here. If this were an 80’s movie, Apple would be the beautiful popular girl that no one actually likes. I keep holding my breath for a nice foreign exchange student to win prom queen.

January 25, 2010

Bullshitting About Outer Space

I just saw this video from X Prize Foundation Chair Peter Diamandis in which he admits he did not have the initial $10M to award to the X Prize winner when the event was first launched.

January 19, 2010

Wake Up America

This guy keeps sending me weird Barack Obama birther messages and YouTube videos and I can’t help reading and clicking on them. I’m just so fascinated by it. Like whoa, as a part time tech blogger I have a huge stake in clearing up whether or not Barack Obama is a Muslim Indonesian or not. I’m a Buddhist Asian Canadian. If Barack Obama were a Muslim Indonesian, I’d probably identify with him more. Plus, the birther keeps writing the phrase “Wake Up America” before he starts in on his tirades. Because of it I think of Good Morning America and I imagine him as ABC weather anchor Sam Champion. And I think, “Sam Champion, you should be ashamed of yourself! How would strong Black lady anchor Robin Roberts feel?” But I suppose she’d chuckle smugly alongside George Stephanopoulos while Sam was forced to report from the snow in a Fargo hat.

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