MIT Media Lab's Personas
Personas is an interesting project by MIT Media Labs that provides you with a visual representation of the use of your full name online. It really is an aggregate of all people by that name so it’s more interesting in an artistic and an infographical sense. I created one for " Marc Lehmann " as an example. MIT’s detailed explanation is as follows:
Personas is a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, recently on display at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab (Please contact us if you want to show it next!). It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one’s aggregated online identity. In short, Personas shows you how the Internet sees you.
Tron Legacy
I remember as a child walking out of the movie Tron and thinking "I love anything to do with the future". Movies like Tron, War Games and Star Wars were the seeding inspiration around my life as a product builder in financial markets and more recently in web applications.
What’s really interesting is how Apple is promoting these pre-release HD trailers. The content is rich and attracts traffic. Very smart Apple. Is the strategy is to get conversion to Quicktime format? Or, is to get high end CGI work to be associated with their brand which is also very strong in device and web design.
They are also pushing the new fantasy scifi called Avatar which is definitely worth a look even just for the pure CGI talent.
5 Twitter Indicators
Making a followback decision is a little easier keeping these indicators in mind…
- Gaming = Followers / Following
- Snub = Following / Followers
- Newbie Status = o_0
- Groupie Ratio = Ave # followers of those you follow / Ave # followers of your followers
- Bankwagon Status = joined Twitter more recently that Ashley Kutcher and Oprah Winfrey
Online Video AKA Lap TV
Often I find myself sitting next to Emma on the couch working on watching my laptop while she watches the TV. I realised I am only about three TV shows from zero dependence on traditional TV content (House, Boston Legal and NCIS are the TV shows if you are interested to know). If they were available on my Lap TV I would watch them on that device.
The key point is “device”. If all my on-demand web based video content were available through HDTV and it had a keyboard and internet access then I’d be happy to switch to the plasma TV from my laptop. The TV is just too restricted in it’s content control and in a user experience sense despite me having disk/dvd/cable content recall at my finger tips. I feel it has a chasm to cross while the internet is only as short “device” leap away from winning the battle. It would remove my need for any Cable or Commercial TV access.
What I Watch
ABC’s iView
This is world class TV on demand produced by Australian’s own ABC network. Being with iiNet as my ISP it’s also completely free bandwidth usage. iiNet have high quality customer support for the record.
TED
TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader as it provides a wider content set and provides video’s online through it’s website for free. A customer of Saasu’s, Stephen Collins from Acid Labs, is also passionate about this video content source and he actually got the honor of an invite to TED and went recently to the 2009 event.
Stilgherrian Live
Stil Gherrian’s regular chat show and the odd road trip or special broadcasting via ustream.tv. Covers news, journalism, politics and technology. I have suffered a bit of a laughing fit disease reading the chat streams and watching the video I have to say. The whole audience participation through conversation direction is where I see my consumer attention heading in the future. It simply adds a richness through consumer participation that TV will struggle to compete against if it’s best effort are those stupid red and yellow buttons on your cable remote control.
iJump TV
iJump is about how marketers and communicators are using social media to connect with their customers and audiences. This is what I call Reality Net. Reality TV is scripted, while Reality Net tends to be very adhoc and ultra-candid. Simon Young is a bit of a mad young thing so the interviews are very engaging because the perspective you get just isn’t something you would get in a TV style interview process.
Joost
A way to watch videos – music, TV and movies over the Internet. It’s a video and channel approach. Think of it as a hybrid YouTube/CableTV offering that is free.
Vimeo
Uploaded and shared videos that I find it easier to get higher quality content from than traditional YouTube and Google Video type channels.
Photo: Aaron Escobar
Why Teens Don’t Twitter
Why no baby tweeps?
- Teens don’t want mum and dad to see their chat. Tracking = bad idea. No, very, very bad idea.
- Their personal brand is already promoted on Myspace and Facebook through status updates (also with photo content). Why risk leaving this party for one with less people who are also a lot older. Platform loyalty is strong.
- It’s not an SMS killer when it comes to communicating with their friends…yet. They tend to SMS in less than 50 characters in chatspeak (textese) and it is more efficient arguably.
- Voice is important to teens, more so than adults. In gaming, calls and self expressed conversation.
- Teens want certain people (or groups) to know certain bits of info, but not everyone. “Careful or Joe will find out about the party and turn up”.
- Immediacy is really important to teens. Arguably Twitter is immediate, but to send it is. Is everyone listening. Generally a mobile SMS gets attention instantly from another teen on the receiving end of a message
- Like news sites, forums and social networks in general. A demographic can get in there and through the content they generate it will cause a disinterest barrier to the other demographics. The barrier being “I’m different to these guys and that’s bad”.
What will change their minds…eventually
- It ain’t cool yet. Teens are cool hunters.
- One to many communication. Update lots of friends at once.
- Bragging – very easy on twitter, you just need to be subtle.
- The social tools they love are causing a convergence between “status updates” and “posting Tweets”
- Visual identity of avatars and photo’s are important to teens so the richness of Twitter over SMS gives it an advantage.
- Teens solve for easy. Laziness is well catered for when you can update all your friends on an event through twitter and get 2nd and 3rd degree promotion.
- As Teens grow up their older work/social contacts will influence them onto it.
- They don’t mind forums so Twitter could be an easy move once they understand it.
- Brands they love are moving into spaces like twitter and draw cards will pull more and more teen consumers across.
- When Twitter is cool (in their demographic) it will take off with them. Teens being cool hunters are now more likely to adopt Twitter because twitter now hangs out at the Facebook party.
Quick Tilt-Shift Hack
Tilt-shift is a very appealing technique to me. I love photography and when I first learned of the technique from Adrian Lynch on his Flickr.com account I had to learn more.
I used a de-focus feature to blur the top and bottom of this photo I took in Tokyo. You can see the miniaturization effect. Even though it’s not great quality you can get the idea that defocusing the fore and back ground areas around your subject makes it feel miniature. In many cases the top and bottom thirds of the shot is all that you need to de-focus in a gradient manner.
Essentially your brain thinks it’s a macro/miniature photo because there isn’t any depth of field in the photo. Brain Trickery at it’s best.
The Wikipedia page on tilt-shift has a good detailed explanation.
On holidays? 7 Reasons to Stay Technology Connected:
I have had a few discussions with tech savvy customers about avoiding tech during your holiday break. This topic is clearly a divided camp.
Personally I can switch off from tech for about a week but that is about as long as I can handle going dark (as Geeks call it).
Here’s 7 reasons supporting an argument for staying connected:
1. You’re the tech guy/gal
You can’t avoid tech anyway because someone is going to get a geeky present for Christmas and you are going to have to get it working for them on their outdated Windows Me PC.
2. You just love it, it’s like a hobby anyway.
If tech is your passion in life then taking a break from it may not be a great holiday for you. Be careful not to confuse Passion with addiction. Addiction is more of a love-hate relationship to something while passion is pure love-love. Passion makes people very happy.
3. Your customers might not like it.
I confess to have at least one unhappy customer (that I know off) this Christmas because they couldn’t personally reach me. I make myself far more available to customers than most people in my position. I make no excuse, I needed a break. It’s a personal choice and there is a personal brand cost attached.
4. You could break your flow (your work mojo).
Flow is that space you get in where you can operate really quickly and effectively almost without thought. Martial arts experts, artists, writers, coders are typical environments where flow can be achieved. Stopping breaks your flow and it can be hard to regain it without a lot of Red Bulls and caffeine (in my industry at least).
5. Avoiding the e-mail buildup.
When I take holidays I find that the buildup of e-mail is overwhelming on return. You could adopt an email bankruptcy method to deal with this (I don’t have the guts to do it). If the size of your email inbox generally matches the size of your peptic ulcer then maybe it’s a good thing to keep the inbox small.
6. Avoiding "behind anxiety" can keep you happy.
When I take holidays I find that the buildup of work-flow, thinking and decision making that needs to be done is huge. While you think about your work constantly then you aren’t really on holidays. You’re not present. Your little voice in your head is busy chatting to yourself about what you are really committed to mentally. Keeping digitally connected, if only for half an hour per day can release that mind energy into e-mail, your blog and the like.
7. Work and play are the same thing to you.
Why does your life need to be separated into groupings like work, play, tech, art, family etc. Can’t they just be collapsed into one if you can manage it. I personally love the web, blogging, digital photography and to me they all cross over to my personal life. My digital life enhances my personal life. I regard technology being a part of me and my existence, not separate to it.
Computing is Good For Kids Berkeley Study Says
I have had numerous arguments with parents who I wouldn’t call tech savvy. Generally these are parents judging Instant Messenger, Facebook or MySpace not having really tried them and not understanding the nuances of the technology. Parents who don’t want their kids chatting or putting any information online because of online predator threats.
Well this parental opinion is generally born out of ignorance in my personal experience. I have spent my life on computers from my first Apple 2e and in the last 15 years online. Like many of my readers I know what protection to install, what basic threats to look out for BUT most importantly I don’t run a household based on ‘fear of the net’. I’m not the George Bush of my home. I operate a home that is about exploration and self expression. Monitor, don’t stop child online exploration.
I was pleased to see a Berkeley report (see 2 page summary version) just out (hat tip RWW) which helps confirm this on their Digital Youth Research website.
Major Finding from the 5000 hours of research
Most youth use online networks to extend the friendships that they navigate in the familiar contexts of school, religious organizations, sports, and other local activities. They can be “always on,” in constant contact with their friends through private communications like instant messaging or mobile phones, as well as in public ways through social network sites such as MySpace and Facebook. With these “friendship-driven” practices, youth are almost always associating with
people they already know in their offline lives. The majority of youth use new media to “hang out” and extend existing friendships in these ways.
More evidence from TED speaker Sugata Mitra
Kids learn from their friends better than from adults is the theme from Sugata Mitra who shows how kids teach each other very effectively when a computer is available and no teachers. His theory is tested in remote India and this stream is worth watching. Good evidence to support the theory.
Screen Capture Tips for Mac and PC
I always forget how to screen capture because I’m a bit of a Switzerland in that I like and use both Mac’s and PC’s. So this post is my quick reference guide. Let me know if you have any others?
I’m a MAC
- Command + Shift + 3 = entire desktop
- Command + Shift + 4 = select part desktop
- Command + Shift + 4 then Spacebar = active window
I’m a PC
- Print Screen > Paste into graphics program = desktop
- Alt + Print Screen > Paste into graphics program = active window
I’m a Vista PC
- Accessories > Snipping Tool > pick method from ‘New’ drop-down
BarCamp Sydney v4
BarCamps are always good, always free and always inspiring. You find out stuff you had know idea about and debate with people on stuff you know a lot about. It’s a primordial soup of tech ideas and views without an internet filter applied.
Top 5 tips for BarCamp
5. Have something to say, if not your own quick speech, be prepared to comment on the days speakers to create the conversation.
4. Make sure you know your key tech terms. Make sure you have a firm grip on Memes, Tribes, Semantic Web, SaaS, Cloud Computing and a view on No Filters!
3. Keep you eye on the schedule, it moves like Obama boxing Republicans and if you miss something that everyone says was “really cool”, then it will sting like a bee.
2. Don’t go on a no drink, no pizza, no caffeine detox between now and 15 Nov. Bring all those healthy addictions plus one tech addiction for a tool called Twitter
1. Continuously thanks the sponsors. Microsoft AU, Atlassian, Pollenizer and Google AU are giving everyone an awesome day for free.
