Ed Batista

Where Have You Been All My Life?

I picked up a 1 GB iPod Shuffle almost on a whim this weekend.  Lord knows I love my 20 GB model to death, but it's a little too heavy for a shirt pocket or for exercising, it's expensive enough that I worry about dropping it or losing it, and the battery life isn't really that great.  (Yes, I know I'm spoiled.  Don't blame me--blame Steve Jobs and his army of engineering nerds toiling under the watchful eyes of their designer overlords.)  Enter the Shuffle.

I had no idea I'd love it as much as I do.  Light as a feather, drop-proof (all Flash memory--no moving parts), not exactly cheap--but a good sight cheaper than the 20 GB, and 12 long hours of battery life = digital music nirvana.  Then factor in 1) the absence of any chargers or other crap to lug around (it charges when it's plugged into a USB drive on an iTunes equipped computer), and 2) the 330+ songs I was able to cram onto mine, and I am truly in love.  It's pathetic.

My only mod has been to etch cross-hatchings in the on-off switch to make it easier to slide.  It's a little too slick as is and required too much pressure to toggle.  Otherwise, the damn thing is perfect.

UPDATE: iPodLounge has a great Shuffle tutorial.  Best tip: "When listening to a playlist in shuffle mode, press Play three times quickly to re-randomize the play order."

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Haywood Redux

The mystery is solved.  Haywood's very own Ted Pauly has dropped in to explain why his late, much-lamented band mentioned my obscure hometown, Mechanicsburg, PA, in their memorial site's "thank you" section:

We played one wonderful poorly (nearly un-) attended show at some giant empty hall-ish space (teen dance club) in Mechanicsburg in the late-early-nineties. I think the show was put together by the guys who ran proteen records. When we put together our thank you list, we tried to remember every good thing that ever happened to us, which included that jaunt to M'burg.

(Don't ask me how he found this even-more-obscure corner of the web.  I'm running into so many interesting people through my blogs these days that I only occasionally stop to wonder at the interconnectedness of it all.)

The only thing better than a solved mystery would be...two new Haywood songs.  Download "A Pair of Tragic Kites" and get "Mermaid" on Music for Robots, Volume One, a limited-edition CD from the site of the same name.  And that's just the tip of the iceberg, according to Ted:

We recently got back together to record some stuff, some of which is actually good(!)  In spite of the whole anti-climactic un-break-up-to-break-up style, we're going to try to release it all somehow some time.  That'll definitely be it until I tour under the name when I hit fifty, lining up some lifeless session players to replace the rest of the band.

Ted, I'm sure your old bandmates will understand.  Perhaps they could strike out on their own, a la Creedence Clearwater Revisited, and we'll have dueling Haywoods criss-crossing the country in 2025.  Life could be worse.

Many thanks to Ted for stopping by this humble online outpost, and to everyone who had a hand in bringing Haywood to life.  Until they see fit to release the rest of their recent output, show off your good taste: buy the MFR compilation or their back-catalog classics, We Are Amateurs, You And I and Men Called Him Mister.

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Michael Stein's Word of Net

Some people you respect because they're so smart, some people you respect because they're so decent, and some people you just want to kick back and have a drink with because they're so fun.  Michael Stein is on all three lists in my book.  In addition to his regular posts at Aether Madness, Michael's now putting out Word of Net twice a month for GetActive, where he's the "in-house storyteller."

In his latest column, Michael talks about what we can learn from the outpouring of charitable support that followed the disastrous December 2004 tsunami.  His primary point is that the growth in online giving continues: "The Internet accounted for over $350 million in tsunami relief contributions, eclipsing the previous online record of $211 million after the September 11 attacks in the United States...[and] Save the Children, CARE USA, and Oxfam America reported that 31%, 38%, and 80%, respectively, of total tsunami giving has come in via their websites."

But he draws another conclusion that I think is even more important:

AAAAAnalysis

Ever since my recent post on Seth Goldstein's "Media Futures" essay series, I've been looking at the world through his "Automata - Algorithm - API - Alchemy - Arbitrage" framework.  I find myself applying the same set of questions to every online community and activity:

• Automata: Are individuals spontaneously generating content?   Is the number of individuals and the amount of content increasing?   Are either likely to reach critical mass?
• Algorithm: Is there a means by which these individuals and their content can be aggregated, classified and rated?  Is there a means by which that output can be fed back into the development of new content?
• API: Is there an interface through which individuals generating content can identify and communicate with each other?  Is there an interface through which they can communicate with any secondary content-generators?
• Alchemy: How can value be added?  Is it sufficient to simply aggregate and re-package any primary content, or must other steps be taken?
• Arbitrage: Can the primary content be developed or accessed inexpensively, and is there a market lacking access that's willing to pay a premium in order to gain access?

It's a thought-provoking way of looking at the world, and more than a little addictive.  More to come soon.

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Nonprofit Blogging

Beth Kanter's continuing her great series of posts on blogging by nonprofits, including some thought-provoking dialogue in the comments with folks from American Lung Association of Minnesota and the American Cancer Society.  Very cool to see blogging moving from the techie-fringes into the nonprofit sector mainstream.

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Big Blue Blog

IBM is encouraging its employees--all 320,000 of them--to start blogging.  The mind boggles.  Hat tip to Todd Stephens.

Make Me Wanna Holler

And not in a nice, soulful way, like Marvin Gaye over there, but in a frustrated, tear-my-hair out kind of way.  What's the source of this anguish?  A man I'll call Mr. F., the Director of Planning at a New England nonprofit.  I'm sure Mr. F. is a perfectly nice guy, but today he almost gave me an aneurysm.  Here's an excerpt from a post of his on the Information Systems Forum*:

I agree [that] any new web site should include a content management system that lets you interact with readers, donors, members, or what have you. But for many organizations, a static web site--a brochure on the Internet, if you will--is a tremendous step. It makes them visible to all the technically savvy and socially inept types who only recognize that a group exists if they can find it on the web. Let's try not to be those types ourselves...and let's remember that nonprofits exist to make social change, not to show that they can play with the newest and coolest toys.

Arghhh!!!  Where to begin?

Buzzword Bingo

If your work involves technology or marketing in any way, you run across (and probably use) buzzwords every day.  Ever wondered why?  VC blogger Tim Oren recently posted on the up- and downside of buzzwords and does a masterful job of exploring their useful purposes as well as the ways in which they can be abused.

In response to a commenter who asked, "Why is the tech industry to quick to fall into the latest buzzword?" Tim writes:

Because detecting and analyzing a pattern in development of technology, to the point where it is a useful predictive tool, can require skills ranging across analysis of a platform's APIs, the prospects for nanometer scale fabrication, transactions costs economics effects, user's acceptance of new interfaces and form factors, Internet impacts on distribution and supply channels, just to name a few. It's a rare head that combines skill in enough of these domains to grasp all the factors likely to drive the trajectory of a particular technology. When that knowledge is combined with business sense, you get a Bill Gates. The rest of us need to find a way to speak to others whose knowledge is in different domains, who can't understand the minutiae, or command the intuition, that we have in our fields, and vice versa.

He goes on to discuss a timely case in point:

Rocket Science

One of the beautiful (and scary) things about the web is how many incredibly smart people you run into out there, and Seth Goldstein of Majestic Research is razor-sharp.  Over the last three months, he's been writing a five-part series (well, nine-part, actually, since he had to break up his final essay so all his ideas would fit) on Media Futures.

When you pull it all together, it's a sweeping assessment of where we are and where we're headed online.  Consider it a primer in the future of user-generated metadata, socially-constructed media, collaborative content development, and by extension, all consumer-facing online business.  (Yeah, he's that good.)

What I particularly like is his five-part alliterative organizing structure, which can by synthesized into a Cliff's Notes version of his thesis:

• AUTOMATA: That's us.  Goldstein sees cellular automata, i.e. those self-replicating cells you remember swarming across the screen in the Game of Life, as an apt metaphor for a world of uncounted numbers of self-publishing individuals, generating endless amounts of content and metadata about our behavior.
• ALGORITHM: The next huge, data-crunching challenge everyone's racing to solve is the creation of a "social media computer," built upon an algorithm as elegant and effective as Google's PageRank, that will make use of all that metadata and other "user generated content to automate the production of commercial content."
• APIs: We need new ones--not traditional application program interfaces, that define how software communicates, but ones that define and enable new ways of communicating among people, allowing us to identify peers and make connections through our own metadata.
• ALCHEMY: The "base metals" of "our browsing, clicking, searching and tagging behavior"--our metadata--have the potential to be magically transformed into "precious datastores."
• ARBITRAGE: But to make effective use of these alchemical reactions, entrepreneurial businesses will have to find ways to buy low and sell high.  The easiest way to buy low, of course, is to grow your own--to engage a user base who will freely and willingly generate and share their metadata and other useful content.

Short excerpts from seven of the nine essays follow below--the last two have yet to be posted.  Watch his site for what promises to be a gripping conclusion to a very thought-provoking series.

Putting People First

Jon Stahl pointed me to Stowe Boyd's superb essay, Metaphors Matter, in which he essentially says that collaborative and social technologies are too important to be left to the technologists: