An intimate sell-out crowd gathered tonight at The Independent in San Francisco to hear virtuoso acoustic guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela perform. Most of us heard about them the same way... some radio airplay on KFOG or word-of-mouth supported by audio and video snippets on YouTube and MySpace. Social media clearly helps new ideas spread fast with minimal advertising spend, especially when it concerns music.
My personal highlight from tonights performance had to be the guitar duo's rendition of Dave Brubeck's Take Five. RodGab, as they label themselves for short, will go far. Thanks to social media, even a middle-ager like myself, unconnected to the latest in music, quickly recognized their talents.
Fans may appreciate Mike Peyzner's excellent photos from the concert, including the shot of Gabriela above.
Finally, this weekend I had a chance to try out Flickr's relatively new geo-tagging feature, using images taken on a recent visit to the Grand Canyon in Arizona. I could zoom-in to specific satellite views of the canyon, and place photos from my trip onto specific segments of hiking trails visible in the satellite map imagery. Despite the high number of photos already available for the Grand Canyon region, I applied the world's first Flickr geo-tags for photos of the Indian Gardens and Plateau Point, both well-known hiking destinations accessed via the Bright Angel Trail below the South Rim. In a modest sense, I felt the joy of a pioneer :-).
Flickr geo-tagging is a fascinating social media user-experience for both the content tagger and the viewing audience. Andy Laakmann, founder of Webshots, actually discussed a very similar notion around the year 2000. But at that time, sateliite-image enhanced maps were not readily available, nor were the rich browser UI capabilities and mapping mash-up API's that enable a compelling no-install user experience.
All goes to illustrate that every good idea has a proper place and time. Flickr turned out to be the right place, and August 28, 2006 the right time. For the curious mind, this approach surly beats spinning a plastic globe and flipping through textbooks. Variants of the Flickr geo-tagging experience could be of great value for identifying lodging and dining options, submitted either by the user community or advertisers, preferably an orderly combination of both.
This process of influence, imitation and inspiration may bedevil the those who despair at the future of copyright but is heartening to connoisseurs of classical music. Peter Robles, a composer who also manages classical musicians, points out that the process of online dissemination — players watching one another’s videos, recording their own — multiplies the channels by which musical innovation has always circulated. Baroque music, after all, was meant to be performed and enjoyed in private rooms, at close range, where others could observe the musicians’ technique. “That’s how people learned how to play Bach,” Mr. Robles said. “The music wasn’t written down. You just picked it up from other musicians.”A complete chain of digital media creation, publication and appreciation technologies have at last been made accessible to non-specialists, to stunning effect. Do those enjoying the fruits of the Internet revolution fully appreciate how fortunate they are?
At a moment in pop history when it seems to take a phalanx of staff — producers, stylists, promoters, handlers, agents — to make a music star, I asked Mr. Lim about the huge response to the video he had made in his bedroom. What did he make of the tens of thousands of YouTube commenters, most of whom treat him as though he’s the second coming of Jimi Hendrix? Mr. Lim wrote back quickly. “Some said my vibrato is quite sloppy,” he replied. “And I agree that so these days I’m doing my best to improve my vibrato skill.”
Tourists and locals alike can appreciate the rarity of this moment captured in a photo. Baker Beach in San Francisco is warm enough for shorts, and the horizon is sufficiently clear to allow a setting sun to cast a warm glow on happy faces. The norm is coastal fog, wind and sub-60 temperatures by this time of day.
While trying to upload some video on YouTube yesterday, I got the above message screen. They've got a great sense of humor!
Gathered up some key items on the evening before the 2006 San Francisco Marathon, and found the montage of gear and fuel rather eye-catching, so I caught it for posterity.
The event was great fun, shared with various SFRRC running friends under beautiful weather conditions. I came in around my goal, completing the 2nd half course in 2:01:33, beating my time in the first half of the 2005 SF Marathon by nearly 10 minutes.
After the final demise of ExciteAtHome in 2002, I reflected a bit on my experience with the Internet Bubble, and among other things, read "The Internet's Coming of Age" a 2001 publication of the U.S. National Academies drafted by a committee including ExciteAtHome CTO Milo Medin and future Google CEO Eric Schmidt. This monograph outlined how the architects of the Internet foresaw the relationships between content (data), services (software applications) and distribution (network connectivity). One key attribute of the Internet architecture is the separation between the network layer and the application layer, deliberately putting the 'intelligence' of new services at the edges of the network (where servers executed software), and keeping the pipe 'dumb' (see CSTB 2001). The architects expected this would make innovation on the Internet easier, by eliminating any network dependencies when deploying a new application. If Internet application developers seem to be eating the lunch of the cable and telecom companies, it's in some respects a natural consequence of how the Internet was designed to work. Had the arrangements been different, the concept of "Internet-speed development" would not have arisen, and today's Web would have evolved for the worse.
Because each of these three legs - content, applications and distribution - requires substantial investment in capital, human or otherwise, I find rather comical the recent remarks by former @Home board member Leo Hindery on the impending death of the major Web portals. The economic role of portals is more accurately reflected by the Web applications they host than by the content they present. The expertise required to conceive of and deploy these software applications is quite distinct from the talent to create content (merely data to a software developer) or the logistical muscle to build physical networks (all those truck rolls for installing broadband access everywhere). The disparate nature of these talents contributed to the failure of convergence via vertical integration at AOL-TimeWarner and ExciteAtHome.
But there's no need to belabor the point further. The reaction of the blog-o-sphere (e.g. TechDirt, John Battelle) makes better reading. Twenty years from now, we'll all share a good laugh, because these bits will still be around for everyone to read with bemusement. In the meantime, let us hope that only a minimal amount of investment capital will get mis-allocated along the way.
"Join San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, and world class runners Dean Karnazes and Marian Lyons in Shape Up San Francisco’s first Stadium to Stadium Run/Walk for Health. From Monster Park to AT&T Park with a “Keep it Movin’ ” Health Fair at the finish line. Get in motion today! The purpose of the Stadium-To-Stadium Race/Walk is to raise health awareness in the southeast sector of San Francisco, especially among youth. The proceeds will benefit sports, health and educational programs for children."
Just discovered the Cooqy environment for eBay shoppers this weekend while catching up with Sarah Allen's blog. Very inviting environment built with the eBay developer APIs and OpenLaszlo. The project is still very much in progress, but already gaining some attention ( ZDNet | GigaOM | web search).
Neat little experimental front-end to an online news site. Found via digg at:
http://digg.com/technology/Google_News_Cloud
... then this flickr feed is my self-portrait in the making:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lyndonwong/tags/eatinghabits/
I recently volunteered to subject my eating habits to analysis as part of a sports nutritional study. I've never known much about the topic, other than the notion of fueling up on carbohydrates before endurance activities like long runs.
To minimize the tedium of recording every little thing I ate, I had the brilliant idea of photographing my food (...a picture can capture a thousand calories in an instant, and digital cameras make it viable to record everything). Of course, vanity quickly set in, and I started to:
1. adjust my eating habits to make the photo stream look more flattering
2. leave out photos of some between-meal snacks
OK, so I cheated, just slightly... but overall, my little experiment hints at one of the many potential benefits of leading a transparent life, aided by social software. Imagine if all of us had photo streams of our daily food intake... and concerned friends, strangers, and nutritionists weighed in with comments.
Since the public appetite for 'reality media' seems quite high, this could one day trump watching silly television shows. I personally would love to follow what Lance Armstrong eats week-in and week-out.
Over the weekend, I re-organized my homepage and briefly mulled over whether to incorporate a 30Boxes calendar badge. Was I comfortable with anyone being able to see my calendar? My little dilemma seemingly frames the new generation gap, between the young who eagerly live their personal lives transparently on the Web, and the old who cautiously debate what to make private or public.
The new applications categorized under the "Web 2.0" moniker cater to a willingness to be open about one's opinions, travels, schedule and interests. The old, especially outside of software-focused fields, find these 'digital life' sharing applications of limited relevance, and even caution the young to beware of the consequences of public expression when seeking future employment.
But how carefully groomed and scripted should all of us be from the moment we exist on the Web? What should a prospective employer, customer, friend or romantic partner think of any person who surfaces nothing authentic from a Web search? Whom should we trust? In the Internet Age, the important choice facing all of us is not whether to be digital or analog, but whether to be transparent or opaque.
 | The disappearance of film-maker Hao Wu has been brewing in the blog-o-sphere for a few weeks, with requests by some concerned individuals to minimize publicity while Hao's family quietly communicated with his detainers. But Web-savvy sympathizers have quickly mobilized. Reuters reported two days ago on Hao Wu's detention by Chinese police, and Reporters Sans Frontieres reported earlier on efforts by Hao's sister to secure his release. I simply know Hao as a former colleague from Excite@Home who was justifiably proud that his first documentary film was aired on PBS station KQED in December 2005. I hope for Hao's speedy release. |
Thanks to Tucker Withington, I finally got a peek at the OpenLaszlo Meetup last week in San Francisco. Rain and traffic conspired to delay the return of my Yahoo commuter shuttle back to the city in time for the meetup. As a result, I missed free beer, free pizza, demos of exciting multi-runtime AJAX technology, and what was undoubtedly a cool party as well (see flickr photos).
Referring to the men rather than the mice, caught this morning at URL's Cafe on the Yahoo campus either debating the future of the Web, or just looking for some good cheese .
  |   | ... this brings to mind a book I'm currently reading, Noam Chomsky's "On Nature and Language", as well as a favorite read from several years ago, John Searle's "Mind, Language and Society". With the Internet getting better at revealing so much worthy of my curiousity, I am humbled by the saying, "Life is short." |
Well, after commenting back in November 2005 that three capable competitors may have a lock on the future of consumer software, here I am at one of them -- Yahoo. My mission here is to help software remain free for end-users by improving Yahoo's already formidable targeted advertising solutions.
I am among many old friends from the former ExciteAtHome, and I see from Y!360 that fellow OpenLaszlo proponent Marc Canter makes the rounds here as well.
   | While taking a short break on the island of Kauai, I've reflected a bit on my experience within the software sector, and reached a dozen conclusions. At risk of stating the obvious to some, and positing absurdities to others, here they are:
The above trends stray from the original vision of Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Movement. Beginning in the late 1970's, he observed that software code was a work of creative expression, and that intellectual property laws hindered the ability of software authors to advance their art, to the ultimate detriment of society. Stallman thus forcefully argued that software should be free, as in 'liberty', so that software authors could learn from each other. Now, software is free as in 'beer', and much like works of creative authorship under the old media, it attracts audiences of value to advertisers. So, while the few may continue to advance free software in the name of liberty, the many will advance free software in the name of marketing. The above leaves me with a few questions to ponder in the months and years ahead. 1. Will software follow older 'narrative' publishing industries in the sense that fee-supported works should be of generally higher quality than ad-supported equivalents? 2. Will new portals, or a new generation of software 'publishers', emerge that address the interests and needs of niche audiences? Or will a few existing portals dominant the entire sector for years to come? 3. What categories of software will be best supported by the different business model options? Well, the sun is starting to emerge from the rain clouds here on the north shore of Kauai. It's time to return to the beach. lyndonwong |
 | Life is simply more fun with cohorts like Oliver Steele. His latest hack-in-all-seriousness is Expialidocio.us, a witty extension of the social bookmarking application del.icio.us, created in response to a blog post by Jon Udell. Oliver elaborates on this and a few other recent 'short-form' programming projects on the openlaszlo blog. Interest in del.icio.us has surged since their recent acquisition by Yahoo. I find the bookmarking service quite useful, as it helps me to assemble a personalized library of online content, organized via labels (tags) of my choosing. Friends, colleagues, and in this increasingly open world, even complete strangers, can follow my interests via an RSS feed of my bookmarks. |
