A System of Loyalties and Protections
Posted by goodmind on May 19th, 2008
Social networks are largely feud-al societies, in the sense that they facilitate a good deal of communal fighting. BuzzMachine describes the eco-system which backs all this healthy debate as a feudal society of lords, vassals and fiefs;
“So Glam is a content network. But they don’t create all the content. They curate it. So we should curate more as we create less. That’s another way to say what I’ve said other ways: Do what we do best and link to the rest. Also: We need to gather more and produce less, so we also need to encourage others to produce more so we can gather it. That’s a festival of PowerPoint lines there.”
Indeed, a spirited Renaissance festival of PowerPoint lines and Web 2.0 serfdom surfdom. The point is, Glam clearly understands what it takes to succeed in a social (network) order, mostly by doing very little themselves, while “curating” or “gathering” what others produce for mutual benefit.
More importantly, instead of posturing as the sovereign king of the world wide web, Glam functions as a physical estate, or site to be populated. More than mere aggregator reminiscent of a primitive hunter/gatherer society, Glam is a centralized and highly lucrative platform for lords (advertisers) and serfs (bloggers/content creators) alike.
The Code of Co-rendered Conduct
Posted by goodmind on May 12th, 2008
” The ever wonderful John Resig finally posted his totally awesome processing.js code to the web.”
To merit such total awesomeness, this latest instance of transparency for the greater good (via Christopher Blizzard) has done much more than merely reinforce the superiority of the open platform approach to innovation, and improvement. It has also served to advance our own personal theories on the subject of this blog.
As Christopher Blizzard points out in his post, the code was released on Thursday, May 8;
“By Friday, someone had already duplicated the processing.js environment as a XUL program and someone else already created an editor where you can try out processing scripts directly on the web. That’s in one day after the code was posted on the web.”
Depending on your learning curve, it might take slightly longer than one day to absorb, improve, and re-distribute your take on the processing.js code. However, the point is that you can, eventually. The development code, or API is readily available, and so is the requisite information to make sense of it. We can measure the health of co-rendered activity not only by the good samaritan developers who release their precious codes to the masses, but also by the wealth of tutorials, and online resources produced to help the masses “process” the code, as it were.
Perhaps co-rendering, crowdsourcing, or whatever you want to call it, isn’t really so much about innovation through access, but rather education through access. Co-rendering isn’t the archetypal image of some pale 25-30 year old male hacking away at the iPhone API; it’s the middle-aged president of the PTA having the ability to create a flash demo for the elementary school website, advertising next month’s wrapping paper fundraiser.
It’s Your Move
Posted by goodmind on May 8th, 2008
Since the end of the Cold War, high profile chess matches had seemingly gone the way of communism. Democracy via checkmate has evolved to the next level with CrowdChess. (The Wisdom of Crowds has now officially spawned more spin-offs than All in the Family).
TechCrunch provided some surprisingly critical commentary on how the CrowdChess collective will fare in match play against the world’s best. Though the game is “worth watching;”
“…the voting system used is too democratic. In the current setup, each vote is weighted equally, independent of experience or rating. The concept of having a “human super computer” capable of beating any challenger is compelling, but we’ll never see anything like that if the voting pool is watered down by people who are clueless.”
We see the point, plus the rigid hierarchy, and correlation between rank and level of power in the game itself don’t easily mesh with the democratic principles of equality. However, wouldn’t any democratic election process be boring if it weren’t for the clueless people?
What Personality Type Are You?
Posted by goodmind on April 22nd, 2008
Can’t decide whether the glass is half full, or half empty? Then try a more conclusive test to see if you’re really an optimist, or a pessimist, particularly as it relates to your business pursuits, and brand identity. Determine whether the following statement is a pleasant, or an unpleasant truth;
“no matter what kind of company you are, your customers are having a conversation about your products and practices.” (Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com)
No matter which camp you fall in, it’s definitely an absolute truth, one that Salesforce.com has harnessed via their “Ideas” platform. (Making them realists, we suppose). Dell and Starbucks have already begun co-rendering the insights of customers, as brand notoriety is no longer a guaranteed glass half full scenario. In Dell’s case, it’s a box mostly empty.
Wall Street Rotisserie Style
Posted by goodmind on April 7th, 2008
Covestor, a competitive portfolio sharing service, first caught our eye simply because co-anything merits a second glance when you have a blog called Co-render. It’s not entirely unique in what it offers, nor is it particularly groundbreaking. De-institutionalizing fund management would be a perfectly noble aim, if it hadn’t already happened.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdfvWAp5GUw]
However (there’s always a however), Covestor as sort of a “fantasy investing” platform, does distinguish the service as a curiously legal form of online gambling. Covestor, like most fantasy leagues, relies on market indices, official ratings, and other user/investor activity to benchmark daily performance, and validate human existence and legitimize self worth.
While fantasy leagues flourish, betting on sports is typically discouraged, as it can have a negative impact on the outcome of a game. Will the transparency and competitive pull of Covestor have similar consequences? If so, we’d like credit now for coming up with the term “Outsider Trading,” as it applies to Wall Street panic, financial scandal, and general market activity.
Next Gen “Fuzz Busters”
Posted by goodmind on April 3rd, 2008
For anyone seeking an excuse to splurge on a GPS enabled cellphone, let Trapster Mobile Service be your rationalization. It takes a “networked approach” to reporting speed traps, feeding information to maps, and alerting motorists to nearby police presence before it’s too late. Trapster is free of charge, and easy enough to use whether reporting or receiving reports; a critical factor in the success of most user-backed programs.
While the upfront investment in a GPS phone (and wireless data plan) may be offset by avoiding speeding tickets, be wary of accruing other types of traffic citations when using the Trapster service. In states where it is illegal to use a cellphone sans wireless headset, Trapster’s functional reliance on the “pound-1″ keystroke is unlikely to impress state troopers, no matter how slow you’re going. (via Gizmodo)
Become a Bitstripper
Posted by goodmind on March 26th, 2008
Given the gloom and doom outlook for the newspaper industry, we’ve never been able to understand why they don’t put the funny pages up front (not to mention why they’re so keen to shrink the Sunday comic strip space in general). In the smash success of Bitstrips, we at last have some concrete, co-rendered evidence that people are willing to invest significant time and energy in a comic strip. As per usual boingboing has graciously boiled down the essence of the website as;
“a fast, easy, sharing-friendly comic creation site — you make “characters” using a Wii-style menu, pose them and fill in dialog, layout your strips and monkey with the backgrounds, borrowing material from any of the thousands of strips that have been made to date. Once your strip is done, anyone can modify it — it becomes part of the commons. In the first two weeks of the site’s existence, more than 16,000 strips were created by the users of the service.”
In fact, Bitstrips has been such a hit that they recently suffered a server overload. We particularly admire their sense of humor about the black out (as evidenced by the comic below), and that they had the good sense to showcase the broad applicability of their service at the same time. Why make lemonade if life hands you lemons, when it’s far more entertaining to create a comic?
BIL and TED’s Excellent Adventure
Posted by goodmind on February 26th, 2008
BoingBoing posted an article titled “BIL is to TED as BarCamp is to Foo Camp.” The latter of which appear to be a network of user-generated conferences, and an annual hacker event respectively. If you’re playing along at home, BIL is the “self-organizing, emergent, and anarchic” forum for sharing ideas, the “bottom-up” counterpart to elitist TED. (TED coincidentally, is more or less the West Coast counterpart to the oft-alluded to PopTech conference).
TED is also distinct in that it was the subject of a recent piece in AdAge, as it will be engaging in a bit of its own crowdsourcing this week. Conference attendees will be able to create a product “from idea to prototype” in under 72 hours through Kluster; “a community for people who like to tackle projects and solve problems.”
Kluster uses a self described “powerful” decision making algorithm that can help large groups collaborate during product development, marketing/advertising initiatives, and event planning. This proposition will certainly be put to the test when all of those idea-generating egos attending TED have at it and try to crowdsource a product. We’ll keep you posted on what turns out.
How to Remaster a Classic Album
Posted by goodmind on February 15th, 2008
In simpler times gone by, a recording artist would most certainly balk at the idea of allowing their work to be sampled freely and liberally by other artists. Then Napster, DRM, iTunes, and American Idol all happened.
There’s plenty of giddy commentary on how the music industry business model has to change or die, and we’ve had trouble restraining ourselves on the subject in the past. Be that as it may, all signs point to an industry still steadfast in its commitment to producing an overpriced physical product, though consumer preference and buying behavior would indicate otherwise.
Is it really so surprising then that a pair of recording artists from previously referenced simpler times, have decided to eschew the industry standard of releasing a ludicrously overpriced digitally remastered Anniversary album, in a “beautiful new package, with extensive liner notes and photos, and featuring 7 previously unreleased tracks from the original album and a film?”
Though the re-issuing of “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts” by Brian Eno and David Byrne will be available with fancy packaging features, the contents of the 1981 album itself have some interesting features of their own;
“This is the first time complete and total access to original tracks with remix and sampling possibilities have been officially offered on line. In keeping with the spirit of the original album, Brian and David are offering for download all the multitracks on two of the songs. Through signing up to the user license, and in line with Creative Commons licenses, you are free to edit, remix, sample and mutilate these tracks however you like. Add them to your own song or create a new one. Visitors are welcome to post their mixes or songs that incorporate these audio files on the site for others to hear and rate.”
Facebook Guerilla Tactics
Posted by goodmind on February 6th, 2008
What is it with kids these days? Facebook is (yawn) making mainstream news again as a social event planner for the socially minded. It’s hard not to be smug in this particular instance, given that the group presently incurring the wrath of users is a Colombian socialist guerilla army composed primarily of the 12-18 year old demographic.
If FARC headquarters weren’t purportedly located in the heart of the Colombian jungle, they would probably have their own Facebook group page too.
Maybe as little as a year ago, mentioning “Facebook,” “organized protest,” and “Colombia” in the same breath would have been interpreted as a reference to Columbia University’s planned expansion into a working class Harlem neighborhood. Now the reach of the Facebook network is more global, both in terms of users and “content.”
It’s perhaps even slightly more impressive that through it all, whether organizing its own child army, or the protest of one, Facebook is still tapped into youth culture, as per its founding ethos. You don’t have to look much further than the CEO’s headshot to know that indeed, a child shall lead them.
