Exclamation blog: Stories, Ideas and loud noises
All I Really Needed to Know, I Learned on Twitter
Yesterday was a busy day for me. I was in and out of meetings and wasn’t in front of my computer too much. You know, the kind of day when you’re sitting there in a conference room guessing how many emails will be in your inbox when you get back? 50, 75, 100?
Meanwhile, there were two news developments that I was eager to follow: The Pennsylvania primary and Yahoo!’s earnings. Normally on busy work and news days, I rush to my desk, fire up a browser and scan my RSS feeds and a few sites I know can get me caught up.
But yesterday was different. When I got back to my desk, Twitter was open in my browser and before closing out, I did a quick refresh to scan the latest from the people I follow.
Right then, I had one of those Twitter “eureka!” moments. Rafe sums it up elegantly when he says, “The people who laugh at Twitter do not understand it. Pity them.”
You see, as if a genie granted me three wishes, a handful of “Tweets” gave me the gist of the news I was so desperate to follow all day. Special thanks goes out to CNet’s Dan Farber who was live tweeting the earnings call and providing succinct updates as they happened:
-Yahoo CFO: Traffic acquisition costs are up 4 percent because the company has to compete. about 19 hours ago from Snitter
-Yahoo’s headcount dropped from 14,300 at the end of last year to 13,800, including 600 new hires, offset by the company’s layoff. about 19 hours ago from Snitter
-Yahoo generated first quarter free cash flow of $647 million, up 75 percent ….it includes a $350 million one-time AT&T payment. about 19 hours ago from Snitter
-Yahoo CFO: “Advertisers’ budgets may fall, but the ROI of online ads compared to other media may cushion the impact on our industry. about 19 hours ago from Snitter
-Yang affirms that will choose whatever option maximizes shareholder value, including MS….more money! about 19 hours ago from Snitter
In 5 Tweets, I had all the information I needed. Sure, there was no analysis, but that could wait.
On to the election. I read a quick note from Fred Wilson who Tweeted, “i’ve just learned more about the PA primary on Tweetscan than CNN and MSNBC combined,” and posted a URL with the majority of news updates and comments on the election from around the Twittersphere. After a quick scan, Fred and I were on the same page. Too close to call. Anderson Cooper can wait.
As I left the office to head home and watch the final results come in, I couldn’t help but marvel at how easily I was able to catch up on the news of the day thanks to Dan and Fred.
Sure, the era of information overload has its drawbacks, but sometimes we forget how sweet it is when it all comes together just right. Thanks guys. And thank you, Twitter.
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…
No Plans Friday Night? Brave SF Singles Turn to CrazyBlindDate.com
In the interest of full disclosure, I will begin by saying I am not a big blind dater.
Maybe I’m not adventurous enough but I find the idea of forced mingling with a complete stranger seriously anxiety-inducing. Nonetheless, I have to admit that I’m intrigued by the recent birth of various blind dating websites– and when I heard that a friend had given CrazyBlindDate.com a try I immediately tracked her down to get the details.
“Ok, I admit, it’s a little scary,” she prefaced her account of the evening’s events. “But I was feeling gutsy so I thought ‘why not?’”
Gutsy indeed.
CrazyBlindDate.com coordinates dates for users on “extremely short notice” in San Francisco, New York, Boston and Austin. Users log into the site, create a profile and are given a description of their “match”– that description being a blurry picture and summary of their interests. Users are then given a place and time for their meeting and in the case that they can’t find each other amongst the anxious throngs CrazyBlindDate provides an anonymous number through which to text message.
The site makes it very clear that a “Yes” response to a date is absolutely binding, going so far as to say that “being late is mean.” CrazyBlindDate also instructs users to “stick around for at least 20 minutes (less is rude) and be nice.” The site even allows the most skittish customers to go on double dates with a friend and assures safety by only allowing dates to take place in public settings ie. a local coffee shop or bar.
Clearly the site is generating interest among lonely/bored/excitement-craving urban dwellers and coverage of the site’s launch in November has appeared in publications and blogs including TechCrunch, WebWare, the Stanford Daily, Cnet News and KillerStartups.com.
My guinea pig friend ended up enjoying the experience– a quick after-work drink at a bar in Cow Hollow– although she was disappointed that her date wasn’t quite as magical as she might have hoped. She even admitted she might use the site again the next time her social calendar was looking glaringly open– certainly a positive review and one that led me to create a profile on the site though I have yet to schedule an actual “meeting.”
One week later I haven’t yet felt the need to “go out immediately, with reckless abandon”, but hey, you never know.
Reflections On TechCrunch40, Part II
I was viewing this one from the sidelines, all right. I spent most of last week in LaunchSquad’s new New York office, in Midtown - well, really the Garment Distric. It sorta makes sense, since LaunchSquad’s all about rolling up your sleeves, you know?
Most of my views on TechCrunch40 were largely filtered through my colleague Ryan’s views, since he was there, beaming me emails of cool companies to check out. So here’s my quick roundup:
Flock: They’ve got a hyperactive blog, and the people I know over there (Evan) are pretty cool. The browser itself is better and faster than both Firefox and Safari, but I can’t quite figure out what to do with some of the add-on features, especially the media browser and feed-reader functions. But I must say the in-browser blog editor kicks ass, and I’m using it as I type this.
Animoto : It’s a bunch of fun to use. Definitely competes with RockYou and Slide, but not nearly as robust. The fact that their stuff outputs to email, social network, iPhone, iPod, disc and a number of other formats is pretty cool. The production process is also fairly idiot-proof. Their load times and music partnerships are terrible, but that’s to be expected at this point in the game. As far as quality goes, though, this is pretty kick-ass.
My video’s right here, and LaunchSquad’s Jerry and Miko like it too.
“I don’t really share my photos except through facebook albums, but I know people who would use this” - sez Miko.
Ponoko: Like Etsy, but for furniture. My green-blogger pal GreenAmy would have a blast on this one. This will definitely catch on with the Make Magazine/Readymade crowd, but strategic partnerships are also needed to amplify the lifestyleish PR in this sector. The pricing model looks pretty ingenious, and as device printers (like, yeah, 3D) become more ubiquitous. Could be a prime acquisition for Etsy.
Musicshake: Doesn’t work on Macs, pretty much. Apparently huge with the WebKinz Asia crowd. Definitely one of those products that I’d want to try out with a room full of 9 year olds and videotape to see if they like it. I think it’s cool, but I’m biased, since I play music.
We’ll have part three from Ryan next week.
Reflections on TechCrunch40, Part I
TechCrunch has entered the fold of must-attend confabs with its inaugural TechCrunch 20, err 40, held last week at The Palace Hotel in San Francisco. As a newbie to the Bay Area, it was a quick study on the state of ideas and venture capital in Silicon Valley and globally. I couldn’t get the thought out of my head of it being a DECA competition for grown-ups and, as such, could have stuck to 20 companies. It was a lot like a web conference in 1999 or early-2000 — enthusiasm, opportunity and capital abounds. The questions I kept asking (both skeptically and optimistically) were:
How is this company going to get customers?
How will this company make money?
Is this company creating a need?
Why that name?
In thinking about the presenters, here are some thoughts around those questions.
Cubic Telecom will get customers because it’s a practical service — free international phone calls for the business traveler. The management team was smart, polished and experienced. If you ever travel out of the country, watch for the launch of Cubic Telecom later this fall.
CastTV and Mint are two different examples of companies that seem poised to make money fast. CastTV has impeccable search for video and will likely get acquired. That’s one way to do it. Create a service that outperforms any other and complements an existing company’s service and, voila, a couple hundred million (or more) could be yours.
On the other hand, Mint has a very smart, sustainable model that, most importantly, provides access to customers that advertisers want and has an excellent value proposition for its users — control your finances. I can aggregate all of my bank accounts and track spending, performance, payments and more with Mint. If I can get a better rate on a credit card than the one I’m using, Mint will tell me and direct me to the offer. This is the most basic example and one that shows you why the site is a win for user and vendor. Mint won the TechCrunch40 grand prize, so while I’m front running, it got my attention and had me logging on as a user by the end of its six-minute presentation
ZocDoc was another company with an idea that solves a problem I have: finding a medical provider. Around this problem, however, they’ve built a rating system and have gone deeper into the doctor’s profile than I find online with Blue Cross Blue Shield, for example.
The question I kept asking was, why can’t I just do this on Yelp, where hundreds of doctors are getting rated now? The only incremental value I could see was that it linked to a list of insurance providers and could tell me if that doctor took my insurance. But isn’t this something that I can cross-reference on Yelp in a five minute phone call?
Speed was also an issue with ZocDoc. It allows you to see who has appointments available that day so you can get right in with that nasty case of poison oak or a cracked tooth, but I wonder if the doctors will keep their scheduling info up to date? What I did like a lot was CEO Cyrus Massoumi’s vision and conviction about solving this problem.
Look for more TechCrunch reflections soon…
Exclamation Conversation: Geekbrief.TV’s Cali Lewis And Her Nerdy Past
I love it when you’re reading a magazine like Guitar World or Rolling Stone and the editors unearth some interview with Duane Allman from 1970 that they never ran (translation: somebody got really stoned and lost the story behind the radiator). I ran into Cali Lewis at Gnomedex about a month ago in Seattle, and we sat down to have a chat, but, much to my chagrin, the audio fidelty (avoid recording podcasts on a cheapo Olympus Digital Voice Recorder) was too lousy to post on-line. So, before I let this one get locked into the vaults, I’m gonna ping out a lean-and-mean written version of my chat with one of the leaders in tech video podcasting today. As of today, Geekbrief.tv is up to Episode 227. One week’s worth of episodes, watched back-to-back, makes for the funniest and most bracing 15-minute tech news show I think I’ve ever seen. Don’t get me wrong; This Week In Tech is great for the post-game show and punditry, but when I’m running to catch a bus, I’d much rather be getting the download from Geekbrief.
I’m really sorry; I was eating breakfast when you gave your talk this morning; what did I miss?
Well, we started with no production experience at all;i had never been in front of the camera and Neal had never been behind the camera. We had a web company before the bubble burst, and after that happened, we took some time off. Nothing in technology really piqued our interest until we heard about podcasting, and when we found out, we were like, “Wow - we have to do this.” So, what we talked about was our story, but we didn’t want it to be about us: the fact that you can do anything you want to.
Tell me a little bit about getting into podcasting full-time.
When we decided to do podcasting full-time, we were in a bubble. We were in this frame of mind that nothing else mattered, that failure wasn’t an option and we were just going so hard and so focused on what we wanted to do, and getting it done. Yesterday, Guy Kawasaki spoke, and he talked about something: “Don’t worry, be crappy.” That’s exactly how we got started. We knew what we wanted to do, and we knew how we wanted to be, but Brief #1 was crappy. [The earliest easily searchable Geekbrief episode is Episode #7]. It’s still not where we want it to be. We found a video of Ira Glass on Current.tv - it’s an awesome inspirational video. He talked about how you have this vision and you have this talent, but it’s not “there” - you go through so many years…it doesn’t matter how long it takes you to get to this point, but you just have to start, and you have to get it done, and you have to do stuff to get to the point where your talent meets your expectations.
The Simpsons Movie came out about [seven] weeks ago, and I feel like Lisa Simpson’s sign in rising, and there’s been a lot of bloggage about women in tech, and especially younger women in tech. What do you think has been the trickle-down effect from your show? Have you heard any stories from girls that are like, “Yeah, I’m a geek and proud.”
I don’t think that it’s just my show, but I can talk about the audience of my show. Definitely, we’re seeing a change where girls are saying, “Yup, I’m a geek, and I’m proud to be a geek, and I don’t care what you say about me.” And, at the same time, they have that defensiveness, maybe, but I don’t think that people on the other side are looking at geeks and saying, “That’s a bad thing” anymore. It was, when I was growing up. We were cast aside, and the least popular…
Did you have glasses when you were growing up?
This is not something I want to share, but I’m going to anyway [nervous laughter]. My parents didn’t have a lot of money, and I had these huge glasses that covered my whole face, and that wasn’t fun. But I got contacts as soon as I could. And I enjoy my glasses now that I can fit glasses.
Now I know that Michael Butler [host of the Rock and Roll Geek Show], his daughter Martina has been podcasting for almost two years. Are you having teens come to you and say, “I wanna be like you in five years: what do I do?”
Absolutely. I get emails from teenagers all the time, and I’ve seen a bunch of teenagers that are incredible at video production. There’s this talent out there that just wouldn’t have been seen before. There’s a person [at Gnomedex] who I talked to his daughter in Second Life one time. I said, “Hi, Amanda.” He was telling me today that she went off Second Life and called all her friends and said, “I met Cali Lewis! I met Cali Lewis!” He and his wife were thinking, “That’s not really meeting Cali Lewis.” I’m really, really excited about how girls are coming into tech, and being willing to call themselves a geek. And I don’t really care about the term “geek” - it’s the idea. It’s the idea that they are into technology, and I can’t wait to see that grow.
How Lisa Simpson Made Math Cool Again and Saved Winnie Cooper’s Career
It’s been a week since the Simpsons movie came out, and although not every LaunchSquadder has seen it, we tend to think a lot about the convergence between pop culture and technology. Some people, like Dr. Sarah Greenwald, a math professor at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, do this for a living.
Let’s face it: math, like a lot of web technologies out there, has a critical engagement problem. People aren’t necessarily so upset about doing math, per se; it’s getting started that’s achingly difficult.
Greenwald has dedicated countless hours, along with Santa Monica College’s Dr. Andrew Nestler, in building curriculum that merges the pop culture of the Simpsons and math. Her site, Simpsons Math, contains over a hundred Simpsons math references - some of which can be critical points of engagement in the high school and college classroom.
It’s been a long, hard road on television for math, tech and science. Prior to the Simpsons, most TV characters (especially cartoons) that were obsessed with any of the above were (mis)cast as uber-nerds with unflatteringly anti-social, Aspberger-like qualities - think Paul from the Wonder Years or Scooby Doo’s Velma.
But Dr. Greenwald is hopeful for the future for the math and tech-obsessed, especially girls.
“I think it’s gotten better - Danica Mckellar [The Wonder Years’ Winnie Cooper] just released a book telling girls that being smart is cool. It seems like recently, in pop culture, there are these representations, that it is fun and cool, and yet there are still the same mad-scientist ‘Professor Frink’ [the ubiquitous Simpsons prof]-type representations that you see in some places.”
McKellar is best know for being one of the few Hollywood actors to have an Erdos number - the math equivalent of a Kevin Bacon number - for her mathematical paper-writing proximity to the prolific Paul Erdos. McKellar’s book, “Math Doesn’t Suck,” made the top-ranked stories on CNN this afternoon. In it, she tells girls that it’s better to be “cute and smart” than “cute and dumb.” Groundbreaking advice, this.
“There is some kind of ‘hip nerd’ now, and if you go back before the Simpsons began, that’s not the case,” Greenwald said. “I wouldn’t say I’d attribute the trend of “hip to be a nerd” to the Simpsons, but I’d say they’ve helped it a bit.”
Greenwald characterizes Lisa Simpson as really relevant to her students.
“I know my students are amused by Lisa - again, she’s kind of that nerdy character at times, and not portrayed as all that popular, but, on the other hand she’s very identifiable to them - they see a bit of themselves in her, and I think it helps them,” Greenwald said.
“Even though she’s not super-popular, she’s friendly, she’s identifiable, she’s likable, and she likes math and science. And it helps to have those kinds of role models.”
If you don’t get your fix of math/culture mashups in the Simpsons Movie or on Greenwald’s Simpsons Math site, you can always head out to Nerdapalooza, the world’s first nerd-rock festival, up in Eureka, 9/22 and 9/23.
Linkage:
Sarah Greenwald’s SimpsonsMath.
Dr. Greenwald, I presume? Meow!
