herestomwiththeweather

Coffeehouse 2.0

2008-06-23T00:17:00.000-07:00

An interesting thing happened on Friday. I showed up for the weekly Jelly at 10. The wireless router was on its last legs. I twittered a heads up. At 10:25, I decided I would be more productive at my client's site. It wasn't a wasted trip as I got to talk shop with a few people before I left.

Back at Cafe Caffeine, Jelly was still happening but without wi-fi and wi-fi is the sine qua non. So, after weighing alternatives, Stephen Gutknecht and Sarah Vela chose a plan of action. Since the manager of the coffeehouse was away, Stephen assumed the risk of the purchase of an Airport Extreme which Sarah picked up from the nearby Apple Store at Barton Creek. By noon, Jelly had wi-fi.

Soon afterwards, the manager arrived and Stephen emphasized that it was his choice to do it and wasn't looking to force them into buying a particularly expensive router. Management appreciated the grassroots energy and reimbursed Stephen for the router.

Chalk up another win for local independent coffee.

The 5x5 meme

2008-06-09T20:59:00.000-07:00

...tagged by Ashley.

What was I doing five years ago?-- As this week is, it was another week with Friday the 13th. On Thursday, June 12th, 2003, I took some time off work to make my annual pilgrimage to Seattle for SIFF 2003. On Friday, I saw Dirty Pretty Things and PTU. On Sunday, Kopps, Surplus: Terrorized Into Being Consumers and Yes Nurse, No Nurse. Two weeks later, on June 26, Auz sent me an email titled "YABI #1." It began

(Yet Another Bad Idea)

Working Title: gnuFlix

Essentially: physical P2P network as backend to Netflix type system

Five Snacks I Enjoy-- 1) a ziplock bag of cookies, pineapple, cantaloupe and carrots 2) junior mints 3) chocolate brownie cliff bar 4) tortilla chips 5) leftover takeout.

Five things I would do if I had a billion dollars-- 1) build a proper stadium for the Ice Bats 2) a pedestrian bridge from my apartment to the other side of Congress 3) twitter from the moon 4) liberate the muppets from disney 5) ashtray, paddle game, remote control and the lamp.

Five places I have lived-- Seattle, Silicon Valley, Houston, Austin, and Oz.

Five Jobs I Have Had-- See here for four of them. I also can install hardwood floors.

I won't tag anyone.

Austin Creative Commons Salon

2008-03-25T15:51:00.000-07:00

The Creative Commons Salon is back at Cafe Caffeine tomorrow. With 16 in attendance at last month's initial meeting, stories were shared about how Creative Commons was being put into use here in Austin. If you have questions about Creative Commons, this is the place to be. There were several people last month who really knew their stuff, including people I recognized from That Other Paper and Barcamp Austin.

David Neff will talk about how the American Cancer Society is using creative commons on Sharinghope.TV. David was recently interviewed about SharingHope by Connie Reece. If you're looking for music, Jamendo and CCMixter will be reviewed. I've spent many futile hours trying to find good creative commons music so I'm looking forward to this. Of course, Trent Reznor just released Ghosts I-IV under creative commons license and has seeded bittorrent sites himself with the first nine songs.

Update 3/30 - Recaps from Gloria and Alexandre on Wednesday's salon.

Six Word Memoir

2008-03-15T17:20:00.000-07:00

Nobody has to think too much.

I was tagged by Ashley to write a six word memoir.

Here are the rules:
1. Write your own six word memoir.
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like.
3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post.
4. Tag more blogs with links.

Tagging: the facebook blog

Barcamp Austin 3

2008-03-09T23:36:00.001-07:00

Barcamp was seriously good. Lots of rooms. Lots of choice. Chip has a good writeup. Free beer was provided by Independence Brewery.

It was standing-room only for David Neff's morning presentation about Sharinghope TV. RSnake packed as much web application security as humanly possible in half an hour. Rich Vázquez facilitated a conversation about Creative Commons. We needed more time but he mentioned the monthly Austin Creative Commons salon. There was a very high energy conversation on Social Media, Community Media and Social Justice and once again, we needed more time. No worries, though because after that, David James gave a demo on his CommunityGoals project. After that, I snuck out to Dorkbot for an hour and came back to hear Joel Greenberg talk about the future of hydrogen.

Revelations 2:26:08- The Book of Bill- A Bill Hicks Tribute

2008-02-20T10:35:00.000-08:00

Feb 26, 2008 will mark the 14th anniversary of Bill's passing. To honor his memory, the Bill Hicks Foundation teams up with Cafe Caffeine on their monthly "Popcorn Night" to present a special screening of the Hicks classic "Revelations"- featuring some of Bill's most memorable bits and biting social commentaries. Come have a cup of joe and pay homage to one of the greatest social wits to grace us for 32 short years. And yes- there will be free popcorn!

Tuesday Feb 26, 2008 7:30pm Cafe Caffeine 909 W. Mary, 512-447-9473. This is a donate what you wish at the door event with all proceeds to benefit the Bill Hicks Foundation for Wildlife Rehabilitation. For More Information: 512-461-2355 or visit www.billhicks.org, or www.cafecaffeine.com

The Bill Hicks Foundation for Wildlife- is a A Not for Profit Texas Corp which aids in the rescue, rehabilitation and release of orphaned, ill and injured Central Texas Wildlife. In 2007 alone the foundation's team of licensed rehabbers assisted over 500 animals and continued their care and placement of 8 Wolfdogs.

For more information, please visit our website at billhicks.org or the wildlife page of www.billhicks.com or call foundation director Lynn Raridon @ 461-2355

" Until you can name all of the animals, shut up and go back to the garden" -Bill Hicks

Barcamp Austin III

2008-02-19T14:32:00.001-08:00

Barcamp Austin III (sign up here) will be held March 7th and 8th (twittering, too). Whurley and Giovanni did a great job last year. If the logo is any indication, this year will be crazy.

Ever since the Barcamp Texas at Elysium, I've been surprised how meaningful and fun these events are. At the first Barcamp Texas, I remember unwisely thinking that Matt Mullenweg was making a stretch advocating Wordpress as a lightweight CMS. Well, that's exactly what I found myself doing this past weekend using this handy guide.

I was a lurker that first time but have given talks at the four I have attended since then. I've learned to talk less and converse more. Everyone gets more out of it that way. With slideshare's synchronized audio, I'm not even sure what good showing slides live are anymore unless they're just an aid to a conversation rather than the main focus.

See you at Barcamp!

Hazel Henderson to keynote unMoney Convergence

2008-02-10T19:02:00.000-08:00

More info here.

Complementary Currency for Insomniacs

2008-02-04T21:22:00.000-08:00

I added a synchronized audio track to the slideshare presentation.

| View | Upload your own

Barcamp Texas in Bryan, TX

2008-01-27T22:33:00.000-08:00

Update 2/4: slideshows from Barcamp Texas.

The last time I was in Bryan, it was 2005 and I was hanging out with my friend Maia at Revolutions. The fact that a place like Revolutions even exists should have been a revealing datapoint that Bryan was changing...I ran into fellow lonestarrubyconf volunteer Ben Burkert at the co-working space and was surprised to learn that he was part of their Downtown Cartel. I've been using their hashtags.org and learned it was written in Django/Python. Hashtags lets you browse keywords used in Twitter. For instance, here's the hashtag for barcamptexas.

The venue was changed last minute due to some regulations. Cody and the gang did good work improvising. In addition to the official venue, there was a lot of activity in the Creative Space co-working space next door. It was a great place to reconnect with folks so I missed most of the presentations. There were good quality presentations. Chip Rosenthal told me I missed a good talk by Tom Peck from AppEngines on Google Gears. Anyway, throughout the day, I heard a clear preference for smaller more interactive birds of a feather type rooms/conversations over the standard dual track presentations.

Silona interviewed several people using a new video service called seesmic. The interviews were informal but turned out really well.

Bonuses: The pizza at Mr. G's was great. The t-shirts were great. The wireless was great.

Social Networking Sites are the Diseases of the Internet

2007-11-26T23:18:00.000-08:00

Update: 11/27

I usually don't say much about online social networks since Danah Boyd pretty much says everything that needs to be said. The exception to this rule seems to be matters of privacy policy and even here I've learned the futility of my speech.

However, today's spot on article by Cory Doctorow How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook finally gave me the motivation to talk again about online social networks.

First, an online social network is not the same thing as online social networking. Online social networks need not be about online social networking. LinkedIn, MySpace and Friendster are online social networking sites because the main point is to grow the network like a virus (one might argue that linkedin is mainly about getting business done but i don't think that's the main point).

The fax network is given as an example of Metcalfe's law. Cory hints at the difference but does not make it clear. Let's make it clear. The fax network has a main purpose beyond spreading like a virus.

These social networking sites have a security flaw. They work too well. They are epidemics and they are not where we find collective intelligence (although Twitter may be the exception - but unlike the 3 named, it has a main point besides growth - plus, it can't spread like a virus because it breaks almost every day)

The reality we are seeing is distorted due to survivorship bias. We generally only see the online social networks that succeeded through having no point and spreading virally: the social networking sites. We talk about them because that's where so many people are squandering their time. And because of the survivorship bias we make unnecessary assumptions: friends lists must be shared. Well, guess what? You can have a social network without sharing your friends list. That may inhibit the growth of the site, but it also doesn't create conditions for futile existence either and it forces the question of having a main point. Of course, I'm not saying sharing your friends list is always bad, but keeping it private does eliminate all of the problems Cory identifies:

It's not just Facebook and it's not just me. Every "social networking service" has had this problem and every user I've spoken to has been frustrated by it. I think that's why these services are so volatile: why we're so willing to flee from Friendster and into MySpace's loving arms; from MySpace to Facebook. It's socially awkward to refuse to add someone to your friends list -- but removing someone from your friend-list is practically a declaration of war. The least-awkward way to get back to a friends list with nothing but friends on it is to reboot: create a new identity on a new system and send out some invites

Somebody once said "I already belong to a social network. It's called the Internet." (I'm sure it's googleable)

Science

2007-11-16T03:43:00.001-08:00

Blog Readability Test

2007-11-09T23:14:00.000-08:00

Here are the levels of education required to understand the blogs on my blogroll (and my own blog) according to this site:

Genius:
A Denser Parlance
Open Source Currency

College:
Beyond Money
Educated Guesswork
Kaliya Hamlin
Austin Time Exchange

High School:
Worldchanging Austin

Junior High School:
Weblogsky
Duck and Gather
Evolution of Money

Elementary School:
Full Circle
Ashley #2
Strand3
HeresTomWithTheWeather

(via: Concurring Opinions)

Second Life at Cafe Caffeine on Monday

2007-10-10T20:59:00.000-07:00

The American Cancer Society raised $117,985.03 in their 2007 Second Life Relay for Life event. David Neff, the Director of Online Communications, and Jerry Markham, Manager of eCommerce-High Plains Division, American Cancer Society, Austin Corporate Office will be bringing Second Life to Cafe Caffeine Monday evening at 7pm. I caught this presentation at 501 Tech Club last month and it is definitely worth checking out. Today's New York Times article Free the Avatars mentions plans for interoperable virtual worlds lead by Linden Labs and IBM.

Check out this sweet ride that fetched $2000 in an auction. Worldchanging covered Second Life Relay for Life when they were just getting started.

Barcamp BFE

2007-10-07T12:25:00.000-07:00

This was going to be one of those "planting seeds" events although the venue had barcamp written all over it (I won't mention that ten miles after missing the exit, I wondered out loud "Have we already passed San Marcos?" and required the help line to guide us to Gordo's) For the next barcampsanmarcos, those of us in Austin and San Antonio need to remember to make a carpool section on the wiki so that, for instance, Silona and I don't have to ask around (thanks Rich).

In the morning, Jennifer had mentioned that her San Antonio neighbor Michael Verdi wanted to make it later (he was in flight) but since we had to be out of the building at 5pm, it wasn't practical. In between sessions at Barcamp Texas, Michael shared his impressive video blogging-fu and showed off his cool Sanyo Xacti. (Update: Giovanni just posted Michael's talk at Barcamp Texas.)

During lunch at the Root Cellar, I expressed how backwards Facebook is to Shaine Mata only to discover later in the day that he had blogged "How To Kill Facebook" two months ago. I guess some things go without saying. (Update 10/9: the facebook honeymoon is over) As a result of Shaine's blogging during an election, he became a legislative aide for Texas state representative Aaron Peña (I'm linking directly to his post of a Bollywood meets Texas ghost town meets Thriller video). The main theme our end of the table during lunch seemed to be carving out was how the constructive part of blogging (evolving, organizing, etc.) and its momentum can suffer from self-imposed censorship due to job obligations or disruptions due to having to blog through personal problems.

Erica described some kind of startup camp she went to in Toronto where the organizers demanded NDAs to be signed at the door. As you can imagine, hilarity ensued. More interesting were Erica's experiences with Startup Weekend in Boulder and Houston. Although the idea of cranking out a software application over a weekend is cliche (but when it's open source, it's genius), I haven't heard of people coming together to create a company over a weekend. In a way it makes barcamp look like a booger, but in another, it looks like more chest beating.

Speaking of chest beating, "Identity: OpenID, oauth and community currency" was the talk I did. Since everybody seemed to be using twitter, I used giving twitterfeed.com access to my twitter account to automate notification of new blog posts as an example of how oauth will be used in the future so that you don't need to give total access to one application when it only needs access to one resource from another ("valet key for the web").

Barcamp Houston and Creative Spaces

2007-08-26T13:40:00.000-07:00

I often describe the quality of barcamp talks as what you would get at open-mike nite. Rough stuff, but who cares? No matter what the conference or unconference is, it's generally what's in between the talks that turns out being the good stuff. Barcamp Houston was like the last Barcamp Austin in that there was a big room and a small room: much more interactivity going on in the smaller room than the big room. For both barcamps, the big room was more "formal" with the much larger, anonymous audience, professional video camera, etc. In the smaller room (and also in the coffee room this time), there were interesting conversations going on. The presenter was less a speaker than a catalyst.

However, I'm kicking myself for missing Steven Evatt's SEO talk in the big room. We were in a few electrical engineering classes together at Texas A&M way back when. Maybe a podcast of Steven's talk will turn up.

Speaking of A&M, Cody Marx Bailey (who I met at Barcamp Austin) told me about their co-working space in downtown Bryan. This rocks. Cody also told me about whurley's recent presentation there which started with a blank document and only took form after asking the audience what he was going to talk about. Initial skepticism ("The nerve of this guy. He didn't even prepare.") vanished as whurley covered any open source question that came up.

Thanks Erica and the gang for another great barcamp.

Rushkoff on the Secret

2007-06-29T02:56:00.000-07:00

Until the inevitable South Park spoof, Rushkoff weighs in on the Secret:

What we're really looking at here is a get-rich-quick scheme. What the Secret is is the logic underlying the religious grandiosity of Amway or Mary Kay or any of the pyramid schemes. They all rely on a kind of bootstrapping that comes from nowhere. And it is true that maybe in a purely capitalist era when we're no longer selling each other things of value but we're really just selling each other symbols of value that something like the Secret works because it's really a matter of whose got the most charisma in order to sell his worthless beans to someone else so that they then think now that they've got that piece of value. So, where all value is phantom, then phantom systems for the creation of value start to make sense again. But it's a very cynical place to go especially when so many people in the real world are starving.

Rushkoff also comments on Jim Henson's The Cube and his upcoming book Corporatized. His last comment in the interview is something I've been thinking about lately:

We really are living in something of a cult. It's like we're all doing the Secret or something.

Lessig

2007-06-19T14:34:00.000-07:00

Lessig is shifting focus. He's going to address how money corrupts policy decision process. Awesome.

Update: Nearly three months ago...

Synchronicity, Rinse and Repeat

2007-05-09T23:24:00.000-07:00

The last week or so has been wierd. Lots of coincidences. Here's the latest example. I'm listening to concert songs on YouTube for background music while reading. Not 15 seconds after thinking I should pull out a recording of a show taped with my trusty DAT recorder (damn right - old school), YouTube presents a video of that show (1998). What are the odds?

Update: And soon after posting, I get email from ACLFest announcing the lineup. Bob is ubiquitous.

Social Engineering

2007-05-03T13:58:00.000-07:00

KGSR is playing Coldplay's Yellow. In my head, the music is accompanied by the video for the song. We are Web 2.0 now and what's in my head isn't Coldplay.

Maybe Joe Rogan was right

2007-04-19T13:54:00.000-07:00

Five years ago, Joe Rogan said we're 3 seasons away from the Running Man. Maybe he was in the ballpark.

Open Document Formats Bill (HB1794) is Good for the Local Economy

2007-03-27T15:17:00.000-07:00

Chip Rosenthal has been doing a good job getting the word out about the Open Document Formats Bill (HB1794).

Complaining about apathy and ignorance about politics is second nature, but it is obvious that things are changing and this would be a catalyst for a new renaissance of participation.

Open document formats is also a smart business decision. Locking our government into proprietary formats often means that Texas tax money will not be going to Texas businesses.

According to Intellectual Property Watch...

Since free software allows local businesses to adapt software to local needs, and does not require the payment of royalties to the original author, it allows local businesses to provide “deep support” which is of higher value than the “shallow support” provided for proprietary software. When problems arise with proprietary software they can only be fixed by the proprietor, limiting the role of local small businesses. With free software on the other hand, a local business is limited only by its skill levels, not by access to the code or the right to change it. Not only can much more value be generated locally, it can also lead to wider recognition for local innovators since improvements can be fed back to the global market.

I can't think of any reasons why not to do this.

Barcamp Austin II

2007-03-11T13:34:00.000-07:00

Rich Vázquez and I presented "Open Source Currency" (slides) at Barcamp Austin last night. Rich is the technical lead for the Austin Time Exchange (photo by Giovanni Gallucci).

Update: Rich's first post to Open Source Currency.

Wordpress Gets OpenID

2007-03-06T10:37:00.000-08:00

Johannes informs us that Wordpress does OpenID. You may recall that I asked Matt Mullenweg about this last August during his presentation at whurley's Barcamp here in Austin:

during his talk, Matt Mullenweg, founder of Wordpress, acknowledged the near impossibility of integrating applications because each uses a different authentication system. I asked what he thinks about decentralized identity solutions like OpenID. He said that it seems like there's not enough incentive for players (like Wordpress) to cooperate.

Yesterday, jonl noted that a venue has been chosen for Barcamp Austin II.

Berkshares on ABC News

2007-03-04T16:44:00.000-08:00

New England's New Currency