My Hometown - 2.0

I guess it shouldn’t surprise me to find blog sites focused on my new hometown of Laurel, Maryland. One of them is a blog by the City of Laurel, and another is set up as a local online newspaper, but interested citizens set up the other three. This surprised me – why do people care so much about reiterating the local news?

I liked it, though! It made me feel some kind of community spirit that I haven’t had since I was a kid. We used to have block parties, where somebody would set up some fold-out tables in the middle of the sidewalk, and all of the neighbors would bring a pot-luck dish. The kids would play hide-and-seek endlessly, and the adults would sip beers and chat late into the evening. We knew every family in the neighborhood, and people would really go over to their neighbor’s houses to borrow a cup of sugar (ok, it was in Hawaii, so it was normally a cup of mayonnaise).

These blogs are filled with hope in addition to information. The blog Laurel 2020 is focused on plans for future development, and hot-button issues, like the future of slots. The author set up a google map to show future locations planned apartment communities, the planned Konterra Town Center, and the Laurel Commons (which will replace the Laurel Mall). Other blogs are Laurel Connections and South Laurel News.

Do these blogs just replace a local newspaper? I have to admit, I much prefer a quick update in my RSS reader to picking up the weekly (usually soggy) papers thrown on my driveway. I usually deposit them directly in the recycle bin. However, it offers more than those papers, because the opinions are better rounded. Not only do the authors read several local papers, they personally attend council meetings and experience life in this city. The commenters also add flavor, sometimes with insight and other times with sheer frustration.

This feeling was resurrected in me by those bloggers. I have felt more “at home” in Laurel than any of the other places I’ve lived as an adult, and now my sense of community spirit has been solidified by the obvious care that these bloggers have for our home town.
Pot luck anyone?

Café Press: User Generated Commerce

Ever have a great idea for a t-shirt? My boyfriend claims he came up with “save the boobies” as a breast cancer awareness slogan long before he saw the now- famous bumper sticker “save the ta tas.”

The problem is, it costs a lot in overhead and then marketing in order to sell your witty ideas, right? Café Press is all about turning your t-shirt, bumper sticker, poster, calendar, CD, book making skills into quick cash. Just like everything else in the Web 2.0 world, it is free free free!

Check out their “Start Selling” blurb:

“You can sell
Merchandise you design including t-shirts, posters, mugs, bumper stickers and much more.
Books printed on-demand. Learn more
Audio and Data CDs. Learn more


What CafePress.com does
Gives you a FREE online shop to promote your products
Produces each item when ordered using our unique print-on-demand technology
Handles all payment transactions including major credit cards
Ships your products worldwide
Manages all returns/exchanges
Offers customer service via toll-free phone and email
Sends you a monthly check for your earnings on sales!”

How can this possibly work? When a customer orders a book, greeting card, or other printable object, Café Press grabs the item and ink, prints it up, and sends it off. The customer pays for the item, and Café Press splits that loot up – you get paid for your creativity, they get paid for stuff and shipping.

Next time that funny phrase comes to mind, don’t “Tweet” it – instead, head over to Café Press, and let your quick wits make you cash!

I perused their product line, and was pretty impressed with the variety of wall calendars with lovely photos and drawings.

My favorite product is the CD of “favorite campfire songs” for sale for $6.00. Wait – did my grandma put that up here?
My favorite story was about the woman who uses her proceeds from Café Press to walk in the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer walk every year.

GAS: Pay-Per-Click=Green Donations

Green Any Site – GAS – is a website that is using the power of Pay-Per-Click advertising to benefit the environment.

What a great idea – “recycle” some of those advertising dollars back to the environment! We are so bombarded online with annoying ads constantly reminding us to buy-buy-buy. The reason they are there is to fund the web site you are visiting. “Real Estate” – just posting the ad on the site – turns some revenue, but the big bucks are in click-through, and bigger bucks if you make a purchase as a result of a click-through.

This is due to sales affiliations. Online retailers will pay a percentage of the price of the item purchased using a click-through link. For instance, if I was enrolled in Amazon’s affiliate program, I could write this blog all about the greatest invention ever (sliced bread, right?) and provide a link to purchase it on Amazon. If you click the link and buy it immediately, I get a portion of that sale. I don’t get a portion of any of the other items you add to your cart.

GAS takes this concept a step further. They provide a little “bookmarklet.” Before adding anything to your “cart” when you shop online, click the GAS bookmarklet. This sends the notice that you clicked-through GAS to make that purchase. Keep clicking the bookmarklet as you add stuff to your cart, and when you make the purchase, a portion of the sale is paid to GAS. GAS then donates 100% of the profits to the organization that registered users have voted for. This month, that company is Conservation International.

How much money are we talking about? This varies with each online retailer’s affiliate program. For Amazon.com, see the Referral-Fee Rates below:

I see two big questions here – first, is this fair to the “little guys”? Shouldn’t advertising revenue go to the site that you actually linked-through to purchase? Second, is this fair to the “big guys”? Will the Amazon’s of the world shut down GAS as soon as it gets popular? It seems likely that they’ll notice the link added to every item in a person’s shopping cart pretty quickly.

I think I’ll “green” my purchases whenever I go directly to the shopping site (which is most of the time), but not when I legitimately click through from another site. I’ll use it as long as it’s around – probably not for long!

The Digital Age: Does Anyone Care About Privacy Anymore?

John Palfrey, author of "Born Digital" was interviewed about privacy concerns on “The Digital Age.” His research shows that the “Digital Natives” of the Millennial Generation are often not concerned about internet privacy – until it is too late.

He uses the analogy of getting a tattoo to describe the content that people put on the internet. Like a tattoo, people post content online in a moment when they have passion for it, without realizing that this is something they may not be able to get rid of later in life, even in they want to. Sort of a cyber-tattoo.

For instance, it is very simple for someone to take a picture with a Blackberry and instantly post the photo to their Facebook page. Once done, this picture may be picked up by any of their “friends” and posted elsewhere, perhaps distributed virally. One big difference, though, is that “friends” can’t force someone to get a real tattoo, but they can post content about someone else online, which may lead to a cyber-tattoo.

The reason this can happen so easily can be described with another analogy – it’s like people picking their noses in their cars. People perceive greater privacy online than they necessarily have. They perceive a certain level of privacy when posting online. They imagine an audience of a small group of friends. However, those friends have other friends, and friend-groups change and grow over time, so content becomes visible to more people than the user originally imagines.

It is not just young people who over-share online. The greatest risk-group are adults who use online dating sites. They share large amounts of very personal information about themselves on these sites.

On one side of the debate over online privacy are those who say – who cares? Maybe we just no longer prize privacy like we used to, and maybe it doesn’t really matter. Or, maybe it does matter and it is better to be more open and less private. Some who are anti-privacy regulations feel that sharing information fuels innovation.

However, others are very concerned about massive information sharing, and information storing. While they may be harmless in unconnected bits of data, many companies are now tying our information back together – linking our online and offline behaviors. When these bits are connected, they can show a large amount of information about us.

We know that companies want this information so that they can market to us well. However, other companies may use the information against us. For instance, insurance companies could raise our rates and credit companies could lower our scores based on assumptions made from our cyber-profiles. Check out this blog from choklatsoda - A New Type of Profiling

There is also the issue of true criminals. By allowing them to hold information about us, we are forced to “trust” these companies who are aggregating information about our lives. However, there are no regulations that they need to protect this information.

Who “owns” the information about us? Who should protect it?

Questions about Privacy

Why do people expect privacy when they post information online?
Why do people want privacy?
What do people think online privacy is?

Did people who “locked down” their Facebook/MySpace/Twitter expect an encrypted “portal” to their friends? Do they feel “tricked” that these sites are using their information for profit? Do they even know?

Do they feel like the personal information they willingly divulge is like their own “property” – that they can get information back after it’s been

Is this about friends versus foes?
Is it that we hate sales people? That we don’t want marketers “in our head,” figuring out ever-better ways to pry us away from our cash?
Or are we afraid of something bigger? Do people think that Gallup is going to stop taking opinion polls, and instead just use web analytics to judge how many people are against the War?

Or is this about our inherent problem with metadata – circumstantial evidence being used against us? Do we only want people to know what we tell them directly, and not what can be derived from our “stats” or linked to our behavior in another way?

Do we secretly like finding more out about people than they want us to know by tracing their online identity? Do we secretly like that they can learn about us this way too? Do you like it when you are googled? Do you like googling people? Do you go further – looking up real estate values and court records on people?

Is this about our thirst for genuine people – people who say it like it is and don’t have anything to hide? Or maybe about gathering near-perfect business data to further capitalism?

Are there bigger issues at stake than being “spied” on? Do the companies that store and sell personal information care about what would happen if it fell into the wrong hands? Is this a safety issue?

Is it worth it? Should we all stop posting and let Web 2.0 die? Or should we lie about our ages and hometowns and only blog about vanilla issues so that we won’t be targeted?
Is it a legal issue? Is there a middle ground?

More to mull:
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/28/technology/29CYBERLAW.html?ex=1233982800&en=5556a18c088bfbe7&ei=5070
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/02/technology/02CYBERLAW.html?ex=1233982800&en=7e9844b14e6dd384&ei=5070

We Feel Fine

Ever heard of art imitating life?

“We feel fine” is data imitating art, imitating blog.

Most Web 2.0 communities rely on people to populate content, but this website uses an algorithm that requires no human involvement to create a sense of community. The software searches a multitude of popular blog sites for the terms “I feel” and “I am feeling.” Once it finds that catch phrase, it snags the entire sentence and any associated picture, and compiles the items. These feelings and images are presented in several artistic formats, resulting in a highly emotional, very personalized anthology.

In addition capturing to the sentence and picture, the program deduces other data elements to enhance empathy. The program attempts to determine the age, sex, and location of the author, and the tone of the emotion. With location and time, the program also determines the weather at the time the blog was posted. With this information, art is created. The “feelings” are presented in six different artistic movements.

Madness is a swarm of feelings, where color represents the tone of the emotion.

Murmurs presents each sentence as a gently scrolling list of feelings in reverse chronological order since their blog post.

Montage is centered on the pictures captured, with the feeling posted across the image. These can be saved and sent by clicking a link on the picture. Once saved or sent, the picture becomes part of the “gallery of montages,” where people’s favorites are displayed.

Mobs shows the feelings in representative blobs, to show a common thread. The gender, age, weather, and most-common feelings are displayed together.

Metrics shows the feelings grouped by deviation from a common population.

Mounds portrays all of the feelings recorded since inception in relative-sized mounds representing a particular feeling.

Finally, users can find feelings that represent themselves using the Panel. For instance, a user could explore depressed feelings of a 20-year old woman in San Francisco on a cloudy day.

“We feel fine” data has been collected every 3 minutes from several blog sites since 2006.

The authors of this website are Jonathan Harris, an anthropological story teller and computer scientist, and Sep Kamvar, a computational mathematician. They have collaborated on several projects that delve into peoples’ lives online.

See more about their online art:


See an even better video on Jonathan Harris, which includes his projects in Bhutan and a Whale Hunt.

TED: Ideas worth spreading

Most streaming videos can be summed up into two categories – YouTube and advertising. Perhaps entertaining, these videos are not particularly thought provoking, and are most often time wasters.

TED isn’t YouTube. This streaming media delivers lectures recorded at TED conferences around the world. They are all inspiring, sometimes funny, sometimes mind-blowing.

TED is run by a non-profit foundation, with the goal of spreading ideas that stir people’s perspectives. These talks allow people to cross-pollinate ideas with stories that inspire innovation and broaden the plane of understanding, encouraging “out of the box” thinking.

For instance, many lectures in the Art series demonstrate the innovation that occurs when art and science meet. In one story, an engineer was inspired by modern origami, and began to use computer programs to construct incredibly life-like origami creatures. Then, he became involved in applying the concepts of origami back to engineering in order to put big things into small packages, including air bags and space telescopes. (Robert Lang: Idea + square = origami)

TED Talks begin firmly in the real world. The TED foundation seeks out speakers to attend four-day conferences several times each year. These speakers include highly recognized thought leaders who have won Nobel and Pulitzer prizes, as well as emerging thinkers who have not hit the mainstream. The speakers are not paid, and the entire conference is recorded. Some of these recordings are posted online for free.

This is when TED.com goes Web2.0. People are highly encouraged to link, embed, email and show these lectures. The TED website allows comment threads on each video, and also has a tagging mechanism so that users can help rank and identify talks. Beyond basic users, those who become members of TED.com (for free) can upload profile information and connect with each other in the TED community.

The goal of TED.com is to spread ideas that help people better understand the world. Their hope is that this deeper and broader perspective will lead to new thoughts, more discussion, and perhaps a better world.