Exclamation blog: Stories, Ideas and loud noises
Taking TV Fanaticism One Step Further
This is really no secret — I’m obsessed with The Wire. Anyone who cites, stands or otherwise has to occupy space within earshot of me has heard me prattle on about Omar, Michael, Marlo, Chris and Snoop, Lester, Bunk, McNulty, the sublime brilliance of the HBO drama, or how I think its going to end.
Rarely does a television show grab me in such a way that I end up having to watch every week. I can think of maybe four shows like that: The Wire, LOST, Chappelle’s Show and The X-Files. But when I see a show like this, I kind of go all-out.
One of the great things about great television is talking about it — coming to work and discussing gripping scenes, pointing out minutiae the people have missed, speculating on what’s coming next. And, like a lot of stuff nowadays, some of the best discussion is happening in the blogosphere. Best of all, TV blogs really give you the chance to geek out in a big way. Seriously.
Want to read a nearly 1,800-word deconstruction of Episode 8 of The Wire? Tim Goodman, the superlative TV critic at the San Francisco Chronicle has you covered. (Goodman’s “The Bastard Machine” on Sfgate.com is also must-read.) Need to get a complete breakdown of how Lost exists in a metaphysical landscape or maybe try and figure out just how the heck a polar bear got on that island? Lostpedia has your back.
Despite its often anti-social effect on people, television is an inherently social medium. Good TV causes us to get together to watch, talk about it and blog about it so we can talk waaaaay too much about it. It’s only bad TV, the kind we watch when we’re bored and by ourselves that turns TV into a brain-sucking waste of time … or as Homer Simpson says, “Television! Teacher, mother … secret lover.”
Unfortunately, I only have one more week to nerd out to The Wire – the show’s final episode airs on March 9 – but I still have Lost. And hopefully, mercifully, there is some inspired writer pounding out the next brilliant television show that will, in turn, inspire less brilliant people to write about it, and, in turn, inspire nerds like me to lap up every word.
Crowdsourcing: The Final Frontier at the UC-Berkeley Space Sciences Lab
Whether being used to locate billions of dollars in gold for savvy mining companies or tracking online contributions to Barack Obama’s campaign it appears that my esteemed colleague Chris was correct in dubbing 2008 the year of the crowd.
I was so intrigued by the idea of successfully enlisting random strangers to do important and interesting things that I did what I do whenever something incites my cat-like curiosity. I looked up “crowdsourcing” in wikipedia.
I was surprised to see that there is an unprecedented crowdsourcing program in action at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Lab. My friend, Ryan “The Brain” Ogliore, works there, and he was kind enough to offer some insight into his project, AKA, Stardust.
Would you tell me a little bit about yourself and what you’re doing?
I’m a postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Lab. I work on NASA’s Stardust mission: a comet-return from a Jupiter family comet called Wild2.
What is Stardust?
The Stardust mission captured cometary particles in a low-density material called aerogel. Before the rendezvous with the comet, the opposite side of the collector was exposed in a part of space where a stream of interstellar dust travels through our solar system. This material has been viewed astronomically before, but never has a solid sample been returned to the lab for study.
What does the Stardust crowdsourcing project entail?
The interstellar dust particles that were collected by Stardust are microscopic, and they make very tiny tracks in the aerogel. To scan the entire surface of the detector would take many person-years of microscope-searching. The detector containing the interstellar tracks was photographed digitally. The logical thing to do, then, would be to program a computer to scan through these digital images and find the tracks.
This turns out to be a very difficult if not impossible problem, because the aerogel contains many imperfections and cracks that would fool an image-recognition algorithm. A person, however, with minimal training, can identify these particle tracks with high accuracy.
So Stardust@home was created as a way to have hundreds of volunteers search the microscope images and identify particle tracks that interstellar dust made in the detector. Using test images randomly given to the volunteers, or “Dusters” as they’ve called themselves, we determined that they were very good at this task.
The volunteers are extremely dedicated, abundant, and talented. Unlike other projects, like SETI@home, which are essentially a large, distributed electronic computer, Stardust@home is a network of human brains doing something that (at this point in time) only human brains can do extremely well.
How long has the program been in place and what have your results been so far?
The project has been going on for a year and a half and we already have something to show for it: last week, three of the candidate interstellar particles, found by our volunteers, were extracted from the detector.
The project’s success is dependent on the work of the volunteers — this is real science, unique and exciting, that was made possible by the “crowds” of passionate people, eager to be involved with the science.
I think this kind of cool space stuff appeals to a lot of people, and the opportunity to actually search for an interstellar needle in a haystack is something people jumped on: every time you log in you can see a piece of never-before-seen galactic material.
Is there anything else you’d like to share?
The Stardust@home approach has proven successful and could spawn another image recognition project: instead of looking for interstellar dust, trained eyes can search for hominids.
Thanks a lot, Ryan!
(End of Interview)
Even aside from all of the amazing things that are being accomplished with crowdsourcing, I am constantly impressed by the underlying sentiment from which these projects emanate. More than anything else, I think that crowdsourcing highlights the willingness of people to pitch in and selflessly donate their time based on their desire for excitement, a challenge, or simply to help in whatever manner they are able.
As much as crowdsourcing can accomplish for the outsourcer, the fulfillment and sense of purpose it provides the crowd should not be overlooked or undervalued.
To quote Bill Nye – science rules!
FreeRice.com: The Ethics of Equating Hunger with Entertainment
To begin, let me say that FreeRice.com is monumentally addicting.
A charity website launched in October 2007 by John Breen, a computer programmer and creater of TheHungerSite.com and Poverty.com, among others, FreeRice.com is a free and innovative vocabulary game that raises money to fight hunger.
Visitors to the site are immediately presented with a word and four possible definitions– if they select the correct one, then they move onto another word and another level. Simple, fun, addicting…but not all that unusual.
To throw a charitable twist into the system, however, for each correct definition, FreeRice.com donates 20 grains of rice through the United Nations. While 20 grains may seem like a measly amount, to date, 18,329,818,750 grains have been donated — enough to feed 916,491 people for one day and certainly enough to quiet the most discerning skeptic.
Considering myself something of a writer and amateur vocabulary expert, I found myself strangely drawn to the site, its elegant UI and its claim that by playing and exercising my brain I can “feed hungry people.” What more, after only managing to reach level 42 after a furious ten minutes of play, my competitive fire was lit and I became determined to reach the mythical level 55, reserved only for the most talented wordsmiths.
Yet despite the charitable claims of FreeRice.com and overwhelmingly positive press (see here, here, here, and here), I can’t help but feel somewhat uneasy about the equating of simple entertainment with world hunger. Doesn’t it seem somewhat wrong and disturbing that one teenager’s SAT practice game can control another’s daily caloric intake?
While the idea behind the site is certainly original if not brilliant, to my mind it seems to be trivializing hunger and even further disconnecting westerners from the real problem at hand.
Does playing a vocabulary game make users more aware of the world hunger crisis? Does it inspire them to care? Does it even matter?
Thus while I continue to visit the site in moments of tedium, my mind frequently returns to the problematic idea of connecting gaming and the Web with the alleviation of poverty.
While the wide appeal of FreeRice.com is certainly better than nothing, I can’t help but feel that the power of the Web could — and should — be leveraged for so much more.
To do something right now to help world hunger, click here to donate to World Hunger Year, the innovative and reputable hunger charity founded by singer Harry Chapin.
Or, if you can’t afford to make a donation, you know where to go…
Yes YouTube Can?
Can John Legend and Scarlett Johansson have an effect on Barack Obama’s campaign? How about Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? The Pussycat Dolls?
A lot has been written about whether YouTube will influence the upcoming election; it’s nothing new. But has anyone come up with an answer? Many of these videos are judged on how many people have watched, but as anyone in advertising will tell you: eyeballs are one thing, influence is another.
For example, an Apple “1984″ ad spoof depicting Hillary Clinton as Big Brother got more than 7 million views on YouTube and a huge amount of press, mainly around who the creator was. As information came out about the individual who created the video, the fact that it was one random guy who felt like making a smear ad weakened the influence of the video.
Recently, Will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas produced a video (embedded above) that included 37 celebrities in support of Obama and was based around a speech he gave in New Hampshire. In just one week since it was made public, it has received 3.5 million views on its home site, Dipdive.com, and more than 7 million views on YouTube — one week, 10 million views. Plenty of eyeballs, let’s move on.
What stood out about this video was that it felt like the first political video that really carried some weight. While talk of young voters influencing elections has been a hot topic the past few presidential races, the reality is that this is the first year we are seeing a serious increase in young voter turnout — the New Hampshire primary showed a 14% increase in voters 18-29 over the 2004 race. The Huffington Post agrees that this year, young voters will be a decisive group.
As a member of this voter demographic, it is pretty clear that while there is significant motivation to vote, for the most part we don’t necessarily dig deep into the issues or policies of each candidate… And let’s be honest, they don’t differ that much. On the democratic side, more of the talk is about who would be best to beat the opposition in the general election. Whose character would most likely get ripped to shreds? The fact is, many decisions are being made and answers are being found through non-traditional and non-qualifiable mediums, like YouTube.
So, back to the video. Based on Obama’s “Yes We Can” speech, the video uses one of the most influential groups of people on young people today — celebrities. These aren’t the ones getting pulled over for DUIs or in bitter custody disputes. These are sophisticated, well-respected (and very attractive) celebrities fully endorsing Barack Obama and evoking emotions and memorability that hasn’t been present in other political videos. It doesn’t reek of propaganda and the celebrities come off as passionate and physically invested in the Obama campaign.
I do not intend to endorse a candidate here, but want to point out how the simplicity of the “Yes We Can” video combined with the emotion and passion it evokes succeeds in not only attracting more than 10 million viewers in a week, but more importantly, helps influence a now powerful, and easily influenced, group of voters.
It’s a successful combination of eyeballs and influence. While Obama Girl will make you laugh, “Yes We Can” brings out a whole different set of emotions, Obama supporter or not.
FOHBOH: Chowhound and Yelp Meet The Kitchen’s Back Door
I’ve definitely seen my share of niche social networks. Every time I flip through the NY Times Sunday business section, it seems there’s a new article about social network for some group - Irish Firefighters have a little section of Firefighter Nation and Baby Boomers have probably a dozen choices (although I don’t know a single one that uses anything outside of Facebook or LinkedIn). So, when I learned about FOHBOH (”Front of house, back of house”), a social network for restauranteurs, last week, I was pretty impressed, because the network was behavior-driven, like LinkedIn or Facebook, rather than demographic-driven, like some of the new boomer social networks or social networks for children.
This past Saturday night, an old friend asked me, “There are so many new social networks out there; how do you gauge which ones are going to survive?” I think that the ones that are purpose-driven are the ones that are going to make it, long-term. For example, when I want to learn more about a prospective client, I usually turn to LinkedIn. When I want to figure out which PR or social media industry events I should attend, I check out Facebook or Upcoming. Those are purpose-driven visits. (So, advertisers trying to reach me in that way should rely on behavioral targeting.)
I’ve worked in restaurants through much of high school and college; when you’re 18 or 20 years old, making $15 an hour, in cash, is a pretty appetizing proposition. Through working at the Peninsula Creamery Fountain and Grill (still totally awesome) in Palo Alto and the now-defunct Ovens of Brittany in Madison, Wisconsin, I learned how to wait tables, bartend and do some food preparation. And I definitely met some really interesting characters. That’s a little bit of what I see on FOHBOH; it’s a place for restaurant owners, servers, sommeliers, vendors and wine reps to come together, and have really frank conversations. And the place is just vibrant; although it only has a little over 2000 members right now, typically 15 to 50 people are logged in at any one time, and the conversational level is pretty high - when one member solicits feedback on their blog, people respond.
Besides the obvious purpose-driven social networking and business-networking opportunities, FOHBOH reminds me of a very insider version of Zagat’s or Yelp. When you go into a MySpace Group and “eavesdrop” on the conversation, you frequently feel like you’re sitting in the quad of a high school or college campus; when you “eavesdrop” on FOHBOH, you feel you’re sitting at the bar in a restaurant that closed an hour ago, having a beer with the manager. And that’s the kind of totally candid feedback that I want, as a consumer, when I’m trying to get the lead on whether a restaurant is the real deal, or when I have a serious food question.
Jeremy at LaunchSquad turned me on to Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential; that was the book for the kitchen’s back door. Now, I feel like I’ve discovered where those conversations happen in real time.
23andMe Phase 3…A Family Affair
Well…a lot has happened since I last blogged about my 23andMe results. To start, my parents and sister also received their results, which is pretty neat, because we are able to share profiles on the 23andme site, much you can on social networks like MySpace or Facebook. Next, I found out that I am actually not from the Far East. More on that later. Last, there is inbreeding in my family. To quote my great-grandfather who married his sister-in-law, “I didn’t raise my daughters to marry strangers.”
What’s cool about being able to have “friends” on 23andMe is that my parents, sister and myself can compare our genomes. I can click on each of the traits in the gene journal (sprinter’s gene, bitter taste, body mass index, cancer, etc.), and a tree will appear that ranks each of my family members in increasing similarity to me. For example, when we compare weight/body mass index, I am related closest to my sister with 90.6% similarity, followed by my mother with 85.41%, and then my father, with 82.52% similarity. I also threw my brother-in-law in there as a friend, so it’s interesting to see that I had 81.2% similarity to him, someone I am not related to.
If you recall in my last post, my “ancestry” section said that I had the highest markers in the Far East, meaning that’s where I originated. Well, I thought it was strange, but I accepted the fact that there could be blonde-haired, blue-eyed Asians out there, and perhaps I was one of them. Recently, I went back to the ancestry section and behold! I am now from Sardinia! Since I have a close connection to 23andMe, I asked my brother-in-law what was going on. He made a few phone calls and found out that some of the site’s algorithms were incorrect, therefore giving out misinformation, but they had been since corrected This opens up a whole other can of worms and makes me wonder what other mistakes they made. How credible is this site? Or just like any other start-up product or service, it might just be in semi-perpetual beta. Seems like when it’s my chromosomes at stake here, they should be a little more careful…
Oh, yes…then there’s the incest. Simply, when I look at both my parents’ genomes in family inheritance and compare, there is a string common to both of them that is navy blue, signifying complete identity. For comparison, when I look at my genome, in this spot there is light blue, signifying half-identity, because they are my parents and I am half-identical to each of them. This means that they have descended from a common person or people.
So that’s the latest on 23andMe — new things keep popping up on the site — and Exclamation readers will be the first to know!
Geni: Family Trees Made Fairly Easy
Normally I turn down invites from new social networks; Bebo? No thanks. LinkedIn? I’m starting to use it less and less. Bandmix? Man, if I could get my ten bucks back, I would. What a stinker that one was.
So, when my wife’s Uncle DeeDee created a profile for me on the genealogy website Geni, I was a little sketched out. Geni is a social network of sorts; it’s a place where families can go and make up their family trees. Since the family tree was already made up (and I was neatly placed in the middle of 463 members), I figured I should do my part and update it. I was really surprised at how simple it was - it took under 10 minutes to update it, and, I’ve got to say, it was a cinch. And it looks pretty good.
Yes, you read that right. It’s not all that tough. In fact, I think it’s the closest my fifty-something mom and fifty-something uncle have come to social networking. My mom has spent at least three or four hours on the site, making trees, updating profiles, and inviting relatives. I noticed that a great-uncle of mine was missing, so I added him to the tree in about 15 seconds.
That’s the thing with Geni:it all starts with one person. My uncle DeeDee invited my wife, who, in turn, invited my mom and I. Two months and 463 relatives later, and this is starting to look pretty cool, and pretty coherent.
My mom has always had a yen for genealogy - one of her cousins wrote a incredibly thorough book about 22 years ago tracing our ancestry back to a small Russian village in the 1880s. I think it’s pretty cool that this site gives her the ability to put it all in a coherent format (and one that’s easy to email or print out for non computer-savvy folks).
Cool features include the Family Birthdays feature (it sort of looks like the Facebook birthdays feature) and the privacy feature, which, in some senses, mimics the privacy settings of more sophisticated social networks, in that it allows “layers” of privacy. For example, you can make it so the public, searching the Geni site, can see your name and location, but not your photo. It even has a “hide age” feature.
The key (obvious) disadvantage of Geni is that the deceased cannot update their own profiles, and even though Geni seems to be based around the family tree, once you drill down, it all comes down to the profile. There’s also a slightly disconcerting feature that allows any family member to update any feature of the deceased’s profile (i.e. favorite food, quotes, etc.). While it may be plausible to update a deceased ancestor’s occupation or upload a photo, it seems a bit strange to me that you could, say, denote that your Uncle Schmuel’s favorite food was gribines.
The single biggest concern about Geni is the business model. Although over 10 million profiles exist on the site, the company is not earning revenue at present. About a year ago, they alluded to charging for a premium service. Whatever happens, I hope the data stays put, because my mom will be really ticked off if somebody futzes with her family tree.
