Archive for Technology
Tumblr: Autism for the rest of us
The American Prospect has a great profile of Tumblr as a medium:
It’s this built-in community — a more formal linkage than most traditional blogs have — that leads to Tumblr’s focus on curation. According to Tumblr’s Web site, each month the average user creates 14 original posts, half of which are photos, and reblogs three. If you follow someone because you love her impeccable taste in vintage photos of Stevie Nicks, you might find that she is frequently reblogging from another Tumblr — and then start following that tumblelogger, too. It’s akin to the way that taste organically develops; you like a band, and you hear them mention an influence, and then you go out and buy that record, too.
If you don’t know what Tumblr is, I suggest you check it out. Here is my tumblr, here is Dan Rothschild’s, here is Robert Reich’s and here’s Merlin Mann’s. The article makes the point that the unlike blogs, tumblelogs are not about original content so much as about curation of other people’s content. My tumblr is an idiosyncratic collection of things I like or find amusing. If you share my tastes, you’ll enjoy it. Other tumblrs curate a particular topic. There are many “Fuck Yeah” tumblelogs, such as Fuck Yeah DC, Fuck Yeah Lost, Fuck Yeah Leonard Nimoy, and one of my favorites, Fuck Yeah Owls. It therefore surprises me that the ratio of original to reblogged content is so high.
Reading Tyler Cowen’s Create Your Own Economy a while back, I thought he might as well have been writing about Tumblr. The (autistic) notion of breaking down culture into tiny fragments and then ordering them however makes sense to us is basically what Tumblr is about. In many ways Marginal Revolution is a lot more like a tumblelog than a typical blog.
The community aspect of Tumblr that the American Prospect article lauds is possible because Tumblr combines the best parts of the open web and walled gardens like Facebook. Unlike Facebook, your tumblelog is visible to the wider web and anyone can view and link to you. You could visit a tumblelog and not realize that it’s hosted at Tumblr. However, if you are a Tumblr user, you will know that you’re looking at a Tumblr site and you can choose to “follow” or subscribe to the site. You then experience the content inside of Tumblr’s interface, which makes much easier and enjoyable to consume lots of content, much like Facebook’s news stream. And like with Facebook’s interface, it’s easy to “like” and reblog content, and that’s where the community forms.
Other great tumblelogs: Soxiam, Westworld, Stare Hard, Yeah, I Was in the Shit.
Technology in Higher Education
I’ve pre-ordered a copy of Anya Karmenez’s new book, DIY U, addressing the hot topic in higher education these days–whether technology will change the higher education marketplace much as blogs and Craigslist have changed the media marketplace. The Chronicle has a interview where she speculates:
Technology accelerates disaggregation or unbundling of services. For the newspaper industry, it meant the stock scores went to one place and the classifieds went to Craigslist, so all of a sudden the features of the newspaper were being provided by a bunch of different places. And I see the same type of thing happening much more easily in education, through technology. So now at MIT the best physicists in the world provide free lectures, but you might still need one-on-one tutoring.
This is not exactly a bold prediction. And based on Kerry Howley’s review of Karmenez’s previous book, Generation Debt, I suspect that her reporting will be on firmer ground than her advocacy. Nonetheless, looking forward to reading.
More on academic entrepreneurship at Washington Post and AEI.
A note to Jeff Bezos
Hey Jeff,
How’s it going? Long-time fan, first time open-letter writer. Huge fan of your operation, despite your sometimes silly abuse of patent laws.
And for the last few months, I’ve been a huge fan of your Kindle. It’s literally changed the way I read. Every Sunday, for instance, I cruise through the New York Times in a matter of an hour or so. I literally couldn’t turn the pages in the paper edition in that time. And the best part is it only costs seventy-five cents.
I’ve been reading more fiction, too, since I got a Kindle. Better fiction, as a matter of fact. When I get the idea I want to read something, I go to the Kindle store and get it. I start reading a minute or so later. So when I have the momentum to start a new book, I can start it more or less immediately. No more reading about it on Sunday, ordering it, receiving it on Wednesday, and never getting into it. Old-school folks might criticize this as being a result of our on-demand culture, but I think it’s great.
The Kindle is a great piece of hardware. And for those of us who like to settle in with a book, newspaper, or magazine for more than a few minutes at a time, e-ink is vastly superior to the backlit, have-to-move-your-finger-across-the-screen-to-change-the-page interface of the iPad. When I open a book or magazine on my Kindle, I forget in seconds that I’m not reading a traditional book.
I love the way that I interface with newspapers and magazines, especially; I can get a table contents for each section or leaf through article-by-article. And none of the “Continued on page A12″ nonsense. It’s all there in the most easy-to-read format imaginable. The newspaper metaphor stands in a way that newspapers on the web just don’t. For magazines, I love paging through The Atlantic or Reason on my Kindle.
But I’ve been wondering recently: Are you pulling a Pete Rose and betting on the opposing team? Are you heavily invested in Apple stock?
I ask because Amazon seems to have made some decisions to make the computer-based aspect of the Kindle suck as much as possible.
Take your recent Kindle for Mac application. The other day at work I used the app to open a book I’d bought on my Kindle device to search for a phrase I remembered. But guess what? No search. You don’t offer it on the Windows version either. What gives? I can’t imagine Apple releasing an app without search. I know you say you want to have it in a future version. But that doesn’t do a lot of good right now. How hard could it have been to put this functionality into your current version? And what’s with the font rendering on Macs?
I know, I know, you wanted to get something to market, and you’ll fix it later. But that’s the problem. For those of us between about 25 and 45, “get it to market and fix it later” is what we’ve come to expect from Microsoft’s storied line of mediocre operating systems. The usual MS MO seems to be to release something and then, a couple of service packs or a paid upgrade later, it finally works as advertised.
Your competition now is Apple. They don’t release half-ass products into the market (anymore). Later versions improve on previous versions, but they don’t release products in glorified alpha state. In other words, Steve Jobs wouldn’t pull the crap you’re pulling now with your desktop applications.
And the Kindle store on Amazon.com. Where do I begin? You’re getting more Kindle newspapers listed all the time. But for the life of me, I can’t figure out how one is supposed to find out what papers have been added recently. Same for magazines. If you even have a page up in the Kindle store with these listed, I can’t find it. I don’t think it would break the norms of e-commerce to have a page highlighting new listings. That seems, well, pretty damn obvious.
And books. Oh, books. Through your Amazon Associates program, you give commissions to people like bloggers who link to Amazon books and get people to buy. Not so for the Kindle. The Amazon API is powerful, and if you gave people a profit incentive to use it to create new ways to display your content, much of what I’ve outlined wouldn’t be an issue, since people would take care of it for you. But you haven’t done this. Why not? You get between 30 and 65 percent of the purchase price of books. It’s not like paying a four percent commission to someone who came up with a neat way to sell your books would be a deal killer.
So, Jeff, I guess I’m a huge fan of your hardware. But your software is pretty mediocre. That’s kind of ironic, isn’t it, at least in the way that Alanis Morissette butchered that word? Don’t you think? I mean, Amazon built its reputation and business on the web. Hell, you defined what web commerce could be. You didn’t make your name in publishing. You certainly didn’t make it in hardware. But now you’ve built an incredible piece of hardware that has revolutionized publishing. And your web site that supports it, and the apps you’ve put together for desktop computers, are between bad and mediocre.
I really like my Kindle. I want to keep liking it. But in a couple weeks, you’re going to have to compete with something that claims to be a Kindle-killer. And I’m not sure that you’ll be able to compete.
So please, Jeff, don’t saddle me with an (admittedly lightweight, well-designed) obsolete antique that will fall into the where-are-they-now world of hardware. The Kindle isn’t the final word in e-book readers; it’s a proof of concept for what can be. Improve on it, not just in the hardware but in the web and desktop experiences. What you have out right now in hardware — even though Amazon doesn’t have its own line of fanboy-beloved operating systems and computers — can compete.
But it’s going to require a lot more innovation and work that Amazon currently seems willing to put into it.
Thanks for reading.
Just give us the earmark data
Today is the first day of Sunshine Week and I want to tell you about a project Jim Harper, Gunnar Hellekson and I have organized called EarmarkData.org.
Congress recently changed its rules to require members to disclose their earmark requests online. Unfortunately, they don’t disclose these in any consistent way. You have to hunt for where each member has decided to place their disclosure, so there’s no way to systematically analyze earmark data. The White House has promised to give us a unified database of earmarks, but so far hasn’t acted.
EarmarkData.org serves two purposes: First, it’s a petition that you can sign, asking the president and members of Congress to keep their promise and to give us earmark information in a meaningful data format that is truly transparent. Second, it’s a place for techies to help refine a data standard that Congress and the administration can use. We have a draft schema that we’re happy to give to Congress.
Now, I know what many of you are thinking. Why waste our time on earmarks when they only make such a tiny fraction of federal spending? Several reasons. First, I believe in incremental change, and if we can make a difference on this margin, I feel I’m earning my keep. Second, earmark spending may be small, but it is an enabler for bigger spending. Earmarks are how members are often repaid for their votes, and shedding light on this is a worthwhile endeavor. Finally, a more transparent earmark process can only help underscore what’s wrong with Washington and why we need institutional reform.
So check out the site, sign the petition, and tell your friends!
Muni-Fiber downgrades Burlington’s bond rating
Burlington, Vermont’s bond rating has been downgraded from Aa3 to A2 and placed on negative credit watch by Moody’s due to a high debt level. At Digital Society, George Ou places the blame on Burlington’s municipal fiber telecom:
In a city with approximately 20,000 homes and businesses, 4800 of which are municipal fiber subscribers, Burlington Telecom seems to have racked up a $50,000,000 debt. That works out to about $10,417 per subscriber which is a huge tax payer subsidy for relatively affluent homes and businesses that can afford the relatively expensive fiber service. Three out of four Burlington residents don’t subscribe to the municipal fiber service and it is likely that many of them can’t afford the service yet all of them are subsidizing the muni-fiber service with regressive local sales taxes.
Worst still, Burlington Telecom’s deficits and debt are rising which makes the prospect of financial stability more of a dream than reality. This is likely due to the low 24% adoption rate and a dearth of premium high paying customers which makes it extremely difficult to recover the high costs of building out 100% of the residents and businesses. There is even a criminal investigation to determine if millions of dollars have been misappropriated and a lawsuit to reclaim $17 million that Burlington Telecom took in 2008 from the treasury without notifying taxpayers.
Just last year, Burlington was crowing about its Aa3 bond rating and its fiscal prudence, predicting that Burlington Telecom would become self-sustaining in the near term. What a difference a year makes.
Via the Twitter feed of Cord Blomquist, and crossposted from Neighborhood Effects.
Interdisciplinary survey of Chatroulette
The award for academic entrepreneurialism goes to Alex Leavitt & Tim Hwang who earlier this week release the paper “Chatroulette: An Initial Surey.” Conducted over two days, the study “sampled 201 ChatRoulette sessions, noting characteristics such as group size and gender.”
They find that Chatroulette is “a probabilistic community: a community shaped by a platform which mediates the encounters between its users by eliminating lasting connections between them.” Uh-huh. I think it’s just easier to say that it’s a microcosm of the larger (and earlier) Internet–exhibitionists of the world, meet the voyeurs.
Putting the sample size aside, they found some interesting stats. Males accounted for 87% of their sessions, and 5% of chatters were exposing their genitals. While those two figures are probably related, “This suggests that–in spite of common assumptions–that the large majority of ChatRoulette users do not utilize the platform for sexual purposes.”
They finally make some interesting predictions about where Chatroulette, as a probabilistic community, will head.
After ChatRoulette users become more acquainted with the system (ie., do not browse solely to explore), we predict a decrease in explicit content, an increase in the consolidation of content genres, and an increase in the formation of celebrity figures.
Anyhow, this is all by way of making an excuse to link to this short video I made of persons on Chatroulette reacting to seeing Numa Numa Kid presented as their chat partner. Enjoy.
Bets I’m Willing to Make
I’m willing to stake $100 on each of these outcomes.
Outcome 1. By the end of 2013, a bill will be introduced in a US state or federal legislative body limiting the number of calories that a restaurant can serve a patron in one sitting (soup to nuts). It will, of course, be the restaurant’s obligation to count the number of calories served in a given meal, a costly proposition that increases meal costs (not to mention the menu costs) and will put small restaurants out of business.
But no bother: Who objects to paying $23 for a cheeseburger at T.J. O’Handjobs if Darci, who will be taking care of y’all tonight, is helping to keep our arteries unclogged and our waistlines slender? In this scenario, a dialog could run as follows:
Waiter: How was everything?
Woman: Excellent.
Man: Could we see a dessert menu?
Waiter: For the lady, of course. Though I am afraid sir has already consumed 1400 calories. Would sir care for an espresso or black coffee?
Clearly, this scenario plays out better in a nicer restaurant, preferably the kind where waiters wear poly-blend tuxedos and clip-on bow ties. At T.J.O.’s, they will have a special “Fatty Fatty Two-by-Four” hat they’ll put on you, and the staff will gather around to irrythmically clap and call you names. You’ll be given a celery stalk with a candle on it to celebrate your edacity.
Outcome 2. By the end of 2013, a bill will be introduced in a US state or federal legislative body requiring the registration of the MAC addresses of all networked devices upon point of purchase. For the less geeky amongst you, a MAC (media access control) address is a unique three or five octet identifier permanently assigned to every network adapter or interface card; think of it as your WiFi adapter’s social security number. Every networked device has one or more; your computer, Blackberry, iPhone, Kindle, TiVo, Slingbox, VoIP phone, and perhaps late model car and refrigerator all have them.
Think this is crazy? I bet you thought ten years ago that the idea that you’d have to show a drivers license to a pharmacist and sign a legally binding non-resale agreement to purchase Sudafed was crazy too.
Ostensibly, MAC registration will be done to prevent malicious hackers from accessing the networks that so many companies and households do a piss-poor job of locking down. The sponsoring legislator will probably throw in some half-baked argument about child pornography as well. Of course, any hacker worth his salt can spoof a MAC address, and millions of unregistered network cards are already out there, but hey: it’s for the children.
Anyone care to stake a bet against either of these outcomes? Note that I’m not suggesting that they’ll pass, just that they’ll be introduced. I’ll denominate the bet either in 2010 dollars or 2014 dollars, allowing a meta-bet on near-term inflation.
Takers?
Should laptops be banned from class?
The Post has a piece on the “trend” of banning laptops in college classes.
[Georgetown law prof David] Cole has banned laptops from his classes, compelling students to take notes the way their parents did: on paper. A generation ago, academia embraced the laptop as the most welcome classroom innovation since the ballpoint pen. But during the past decade, it has evolved into a powerful distraction. Wireless Internet connections tempt students away from note-typing to e-mail, blogs, YouTube videos, sports scores, even online gaming — all the diversions of a home computer beamed into the classroom to compete with the professor for the student’s attention.
Cole, who teaches a course on “democracy and coercion” says laptops are “an attractive nuisance.”
My co-teacher and I have debated the merits of a ban for our class at GMU Law, and while I’ve vacillated on my position, I’ve ultimately taken the libertarian approach. Our students are all big boys and girls paying lots of money for a law education at a top school. If they want to surf the internet during class, that’s their choice as long as they don’t bother anyone else. We provide a clear incentive, though. A full 20 percent of their grade is class participation, and we’re serious about it.
Ultimately I think UVA’s Sive Vaidhyanathan nails it on the head: “If students don’t want to pay attention, the laptop is the least of your problems.”
Edward Tufte to recovery board
President Obama has named famed design and data visualization expert Edward Tufte to the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel, which advises the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board. They’re the ones who own Recovery.gov, and I can only hope that Tufte will bring some of his insights to that abomination of a website. Sadly it might be a few million dollars too late.
Can you figure out the scam?
For a few months now I’ve been receiving spam messages that go something like this:
Hello, I am bobby.frost business owner and i am emailing you to ask if you have any 3000 Gallon Vertical Water Tank,Capacity: 3001 Gallons,Size: 95″D x 106″H,Weight: 400 lbs in stock for sale and also i would like to know the price without shipping.Also let me know the method of payment you do accept .Let me know Asap Thanks, bobby.frost
Essentially they are contacting me as if I sell the item they want and asking for a quote. They come from obviously different senders, and they all seem to request quotes for industrial products (water tanks, chain link fencing, pipes and tubing, etc.)
So what is the scam here? I’ve looked everywhere online and can’t find any mention of this type of spam. Here’s a list from Wikipedia and one from the federal government. It’s not as if they’re trying to sell me a winning lottery ticket; they’re offering to buy something from me that I didn’t advertise.
The only thing I can imagine is that I’m expected to realize that I can quote them a price higher than I can buy the item for which they’re asking and then this will turn into some scam. That seems implausible, though. Any ideas?
In the meantime, I’m responding to one of these to see what happens. I’ll keep you posted.
Why is the power grid connected to the internet? And how does a smart grid work, anyway?
Here is White House cybersecurity chief Mike McConnell in Sunday’s Washington Post calling for a public-private partnership on cybersecurity.
Cybersecurity expert Jeffery Carr has a new primer on the subject titled Inside Cyber Warfare: Mapping the Cyber Underworld. In a recent interview he says:
The most worrisome thing to me is the vulnerability of the power grid. I just released a report on this — it’s Project Grey Goose’s Report on Critical Infrastructure — where I and my team of researchers document the problem. The Department of Defense has identified 34 critical assets to conducting its mission. Thirty-one out of the 34 are dependent on the public power grid.
Why is the power grid connected to the internet? It’s a question I haven’t gotten a satisfactory answer to yet. The one thing that might make sense is the much heralded “smart grid.” (Al Gore mentioned it in his NYT op-ed on Saturday.)
Here’s a proxy for how well people understand what exactly a smart grid is and how it will work: the Wikipedia article for smart grid. Someone on the talk page for the article said it best:
I can’t even find the words to describe how un-encyclopedic this article is. It’s not just the lack of NPOV – this whole article reads like it has been transplanted from some poorly-written speculative essay
Lots of federal money for the smart grid, though. Why is the Wikipedia article of such poor quality?
