Villagers with Pitchforks

I'm Wearing Pants...and an Additional Hat

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:05:00 -0800

For the last week my usual blogger cave of pajamas and dirty cereal bowls has been dormant. Instead, I’ve been scheduling my ReadWriteWeb posts, showering and making my way to SOMA every morning before 10am. In other words, I am putting on pants.

THE STORY
In 1999, only 2 years after Larry and Sergey had renamed the BackRub search engine to the now search-giant Google, brothers Pirouz and Peyman Nilforoush turned their love of blogging into a business. From a basement in the Toronto burbs, the two decided that in addition to working on their own properties, they’d offer hosting services to a network of indy gaming, entertainment, music and tech blogs. In exchange for all their hard work, they received ad space and revenue share. A decade later they’ve got 200 major tech and consumer electronics partners, deals with major manufacturers like Sony and Verizon and more than 120 million unique visitors per month. That company is now known as NetShelter and I’m happy to say that as of this week, those brothers are my bosses.

WEARING 2 HATS
I’ve just taken a position as NetShelter’s Senior Social Media and Publishing Strategist. While I’ll keep contributing as a writer to ReadWriteStart, my daytime gig will be working under the direction of former CNET Editor in Chief and GM of Yahoo! Tech, Patrick Houston. Patrick is already teaching me about the wonderful world of publishing, and soon I’ll become a resource for publishers like MacRumors, SlashGear, the IEEE and IntoMobile. For the next couple of weeks, instead of producing a ton of public content, I’ll be sponging up everything I can learn from NetShelter’s many publishers and staff.

I’ll keep checking my RWW email, but if you’ve got a breaking story, the best way to pitch them is to email tips[at]readwriteweb[dot]com. If you want to chat about NetShelter, email me at dana.oshiro[at]netshelter.net or better yet, hit me up on Twitter at @suzyperplexus. Huzzah to a new year and a new gig!

Foundry Group’s Brad Feld recently posted a video where...

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:10:39 -0800

Foundry Group’s Brad Feld recently posted a video where individuals in Time Square were asked whether or not they knew the difference between a browser and a search engine. Lucky for search-giant (and now Chrome creator) Google - most did not. The video of the mistaken search engine had the blogosphere in an uproar as the tech-savvy marveled at what they believed to be the stupidity of the masses.

It reminded me of Rick Mercer’s “Talking to Americans” series in a which a CBC television personality interviews Americans and gets them to comment on fake Canadian factoids. As a Canadian myself, I know how much Canucks love this program. While many believe that Canada’s favorite pastime is hockey, it is in fact making fun of Americans. The stereotype (at least in Canada) is that Americans are less intelligent than their northern neighbors. However, it seems to me that intelligence has little to do with both the Canadian and the browser exercise. It’s more a reflection of the sad fact that most people outside of the realms of tech and Canada just don’t feel the need to care about either subject.

Using a basic web cam on augmented reality markers, the varied...

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 08:38:04 -0800

Using a basic web cam on augmented reality markers, the varied space between the two markers prompts different sound and feedback with the idea that the entire process is creating a new type of musical instrument. I think this idea would be even cooler if it were recreated using 3 phones: 1 as the video camera and the other 2 as the markers. In this way you could come together with your friends for a collaborative tabletop music experience.

Intimacy and Search

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:53:00 -0800

When a woman is on the verge of tears and you’re having an argument, don’t stop to Google something. It will only make it worse. Don’t change your Facebook marital status to read “Married to Bitch” and don’t start a Twitter thread to rally your friends into the argument. Really intimate moments, especially fights, are best kept offline. Up until about 2003 or so, people actually understood that as common sense.

Did you know that when Larry Page and Sergey Brin first started working on Google it was originally called BackRub? In 1996 a back rub was something tender given to sick family members, colicky babies and spouses. If someone you weren’t familiar with tried to give you a back rub you would have whipped your head around and screamed, “Back off hippie!” or “Who told you to be a pervert?”

The name “Google” is less intimate. It’s the number one followed by 100 zeros. For someone who lives for intimate moments with the people I love, I find it strange to see my identity become so infinitely searchable through other people’s uploads. And I find it even more strange for it to be searched by anyone other than my mom and potential employers. No one’s ever really crossed the line, so it doesn’t bug me that my past thoughts and mistakes are there for everyone to see, it only bothers me that I don’t get to offer more indication as to who I aspire to be.

…Well, that and the immortalized mullet.

Being Prepared...

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 10:40:00 -0800

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.

Why Popjam Misses the Point of Chatroulette

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 15:47:00 -0800

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.

Correcting Real Time Analysis

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 09:19:29 -0800

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.

Experience Points

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 07:41:04 -0800

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.

The Situation

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:32:04 -0800

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.

On The iPad

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 14:46:55 -0800

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.

Bullshitting About Outer Space

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:33:59 -0800

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.

Wake Up America

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:19:10 -0800

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.

A Mallard-y of Our Times

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 23:05:00 -0800

Every few months, when Pat Robertson decides to say something so offensive that I am reminded he exists, I reminisce on his argument against the hate crimes bill. Last year Robertson argued that protecting GLBT people from hate crimes would force us to have to protect “weird guys” who like to “have sex with ducks”, oh and also pedophiles. And then it hit me - ducks represent all that is evil in society. As delivered through the gospel of YouTube, behold ye…

Exhibit A: In Bill O’Reilly’s argument to uphold Prop 8 and ban same sex marriage, he explains, “If the California Supreme Court had allowed the gays to get married, anybody could’ve got married. You could’ve married a duck.”

Exhibit B: In Kirk Cameron’s argument against evolution, Cameron reveals an artist’s rendering of a “crocoduck” to prove that “transitional life forms do not exist” and therefore, evolution does not exist. And finally…

Exhibit C: Materialism, greed and spats…

Here’s my LeWeb and Social Media Club House slideshow.

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:46:07 -0800

Here’s my LeWeb and Social Media Club House slideshow.

Tuxedo Cat Hat

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 12:51:02 -0800

I’m not sure what the deal is, but in the last 2 weeks in 2 different cities, I’ve seen men wearing live tuxedo cats on their heads. I don’t think this is an anime cosplay phenomenon, but it still has a decidedly Gothic Lolita effect. I wonder if the creatures are some sort of controlling parasite.

All Your Spams are Poof

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 12:04:00 -0800

It’s New Year’s Day and a particularly aggressive set of spammers have decided to inundate ReadWriteWeb with their fake comments and irrelevant links. In the same way that military strikes like the Tet Offensive and Yom Kippur War of 1973 were launched on national holidays, so too was our latest spam comment attack. The belief is that holidays create vulnerability. However, this battle to put a link on the site actually does nothing for your Google ranking. Don’t believe me? Click “view source” or “inspect element” and you’ll see that your link is accompanied by rel=”nofollow”. In other words, we’re telling Google to ignore you. So now that that’s settled you can stop your attack and go relax with your families. Happy New Year dumb-dumbs!

Christmas in Your Neighborhood

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 21:37:00 -0800

Merry Christmas! I know that’s not the politically correct thing to say when swaddled in organic cotton blankets and coiled into post-turkey fetal position in the warm hippie belly of Vancouver Island’s Prospect Lake community, but I don’t care. If being well fed and happy is wrong, then I don’t want to be right. It’s too bad mirth isn’t a sustainable energy resource. Everybody - Disco Christmas!.

Avatar

Sun, 20 Dec 2009 10:27:00 -0800

Yesterday our friend Brian was kind enough to get us tickets to Avatar at the IMAX in 3D. The movie’s premise is that scientists and military personnel don native-esque bodies to better negotiate for precious resources with the blue First Nation’s people of Pandora. Due to a lack of truly shared qualia there’s a war, the myth of the noble nature savage is perpetuated and things go boom. It’s all very Daniel Dennett meets Disney’s Pocahontas with a little Braveheart thrown in for the action lovers. Essentially my summary is this: Robotic Exoskeletons + Philosophy of Consciousness + Monsters = MOSTLY AWESOME.

Why Yossi Vardi is my New Hero

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 15:20:00 -0800

In my haste, I totally forgot to write about the hilarity of legendary Israeli entrepreneur Yossi Vardi’s LeWeb presentation. Best known in the tech world as the first investor in ICQ and the creator of Kinnernet, Vardi has acted as an advisor to the World Bank and UN Development Program on energy and developing world policies.But honestly, the reason Yossi Vardi is my new hero is the fact that he can get on stage at TED and tell scrotum jokes with a straight face.

Inspired by Kobe Bryant’s video of the athlete jumping over a speeding Aston Martin, Vardi showed the following to LeWeb attendees:

For more on LeWeb visit the Social Media Club House site.

Self-Expression as Political

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 15:58:38 -0800

Photo Credit: Chris Heuer

On Thursday morning, Chris Heuer, Fabrice Epelboin and I sat down to interview Skyrock founder Pierre Bellanger. Born out of the free radio movement, Bellanger’s pirate radio station has become the 3rd largest European social networking site behind MySpace and Facebook.

Says Bellanger, “We were trying to create revolution. My political act is to create a system of self-expression.”

And here’s one telltale difference between the Americans and the French. As an American, terms like “revolution” and “self-expression” used together make me think of the First Amendment and my ability to exercise freedom of speech. But in Bellanger’s sense of the word he’s talking about everyday unscripted stories shedding light on the issues. In short, he’s talking about life streaming, reality-based radio/blogging or social MEdia.

It’s easy to forget in this world of constant Twitter, Facebook and crowd sourced reviews that the mass distribution of amateur opinions can in some cases be a political act.

While we’re far from a true meritocracy, the barrier to entry for social media are lower than they are with any other major form of communication. As we cast a wider net and harness the power of the real-time web, we increase our ability to create meaningful dialogue. From dialogue comes action, and from action comes change.

In other words, we are more than just physical points in the Foursquare of the universe.

I’m at the point where I need to act, but I’m not sure where to turn. Joining Chris and Kristie’s Social Media Club House has been a great first step. In meeting international innovators and change-makers, I’m beginning to understand the difference between talk and action. The best compliment I could give anyone is that they “walk the walk.” Bellanger, Heuer and Epelboin walk the walk, and I hope to follow their lead and produce something great on my own.