contentious.com

"The ways of reaching an audience are now limitless. And there is a premium for “sticky” experiences that engage consumers, over the old-fashioned billboards and banner ads which consumers are more likely to overlook. And building these experiences can be risky, and costly.

"Still, companies are taking the gamble, buying up companies with no clear revenue model, and investing in experimental outreach strategies for which “success” has only a few solid metrics.

"To navigate the muddy waters of digital outreach you need a guide. Sarah Szalavitz is one of the more informed and experienced folks in the social media world. Founder and CEO of 7-Robot"

why the hierarchy crap? "At a press conference on Monday, Assange said that, along with The Guardian, “we had Der Spiegel and New York Times and us in a collaborative basement, if you like, working on this material.” The WikiLeaks website speaks of the three outlets as its “media partners.”
“I’ve seen Julian Assange in the last couple of days kind of flouncing around talking about this collaboration like the four of us were working all this together,” says Schmitt. ”But we were not in any kind of partnership or collaboration with him. This was a source relationship. He’s making it sound like this was some sort of journalistic enterprise between WikiLeaks, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel, and that’s not what it was.”"

"Early users of the service are offering long, thoughtful answers. That will change in time, but answers that aren't helpful will not be voted up. Will obnoxious partisan answers be voted to the top in a tyranny of the majority? Even if such an answer were to be at the top, the next one below it would likely be more informative, empathetic and useful. Facebook engineer Beau Hartshorne has also said on the site that users will be demoted if they ask questions that are really assertions. There will be individual Questions that get nothing but terrible answers – but in aggregate, due to the scale of the humanity doing the voting, I think the Questions experience will be on balance strong."

"There's something about their language, their methods, and their networks that resonate in this world, and I think that's a big part of their appeal to people who might be thinking about disclosing data. There's a certain technical language of encryption and surveillance that Wikileaks speakers have used when talking about journalism that I haven't heard inside many traditional media organizations. There's this notion of being "shadowy," being "everywhere," and being there "all at once" that I've noticed coming out of Wikileaks as well. I haven't seen Wikileaks invited to many future of journalism conferences — but they were the keynote speakers at last week's Hackers on Planet Earth conference in New York City."

Excellent exploration of the past and future evolution of a blog network.

"The next big step is to translate those papers and discussions into something that can be understood by people outside of the narrow discipline – the lay audience. That lay audience is also stratified. A scientist in one field is lay audience for another field, but is highly educated and tends to think like a scientist. Then there are generally well educated people who are interested in science. And then there are people who don’t even know if they would be interested in science. Thus, there need to be several different levels of presenting science to the lay audience. And there need to be both “pull” (for interested audience) and “push” (for not yet interested audience) strategies for disseminating scientific information."

How to tether your laptop w/ your droid incredible (if you pay for the service)

"The U.S. Copyright Office, a division of the Library of Congress, has authorized several new exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), one of which will allow mobile phone users to "jailbreak" — or hack into — their devices to use apps not authorized by the phone's manufacturer. The new rules will be published on Tuesday in the Federal Register.

"Jailbreaking iPhones in order to download apps that are unavailable in Apple's App Store had been a legal gray area: Apple technically had the right to request a $2,500 government fine for damages every time a user violated the law that bans "circumvention of technological measures" controlling access to copyrighted works — in this case, the iPhone's iOS software."

"the signal strength bars are almost meaningless and should not be relied on.

Incidentally, this also explains what’s going on when you have a strong signal, attempt to make a call, and can’t connect. The bars only indicate how well your phone can listen to the cell tower. They don’t tell you anything about how well the tower can receive your phone, but that’s a pretty important part of making a call. Similarly, the phone doesn’t know anything about what’s going on in the cell provider’s network past the tower; if you’re on a really busy cell it might not have any spare outgoing circuits to direct your call to, so even if the radio is working fine, you might still not be able to get through. If you’re on AT&T it’s probably all of the above at the same time of course."

"Another evolving area of computing concerns programs running on mobile devices linked in "ad hoc" wireless networks. AmbientTalk, an experimental language presented by Tom Van Cutsem from Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium, explores a new paradigm called "ambient-oriented programming," which departs from traditional distributed computing in two main ways. First, it does not rely on central infrastructure. Second, it assumes that network connections are volatile and unpredictable (as is usually the case with mobile devices passing in and out of range with each other). According to Van Cutsem, "AmbientTalk is smart enough to buffer messages so that when the connection drops, they're not lost, and when the connection is restored, it sends the messages through as if nothing happened."

"in Marin County. In recent years there has been a surge in the number of people dying alone intestate — without a will — leaving the government to deal with what has been left behind."

According to most of the answers here, they don't mean much.

"The best computer voices may be those that sound exactly like the person who's listening. If a computer voice matches your mood, your speech patterns, your accent and your tonal range, you're less likely to be annoyed by it, researchers said.

"How well a computer voice matches the listener's mood is not just a matter of preference — it's a matter of safety, said Clifford Nass, a Stanford professor who studies computer voices.

"In a 2005 study, Nass found that these emotional mismatches may actually be dangerous in driving situations. Sad drivers who get instructions from happy computer voices — and happy drivers who listen to sad voices — are more likely to have accidents, he said. The emotionally confused drivers are also less likely to be able to pay attention to the road."

Mark Fiore consummately nails the evils sides of mobile — something I need to write about more.

Looks like the BART airport connector project is back on in Oakland. This whole concept has serious problems, especially considering the current state of local transit issues. This money could be much better spend on bus rapid transit and on AC Transit.

I'm working my way through this. It's a good android for newbies who have a Droid Incredible. Rambles a bit, but a useful starting point.

"Goodbye iPhone, because Android, the new kid on the block, can completely sync with Mac also. Android can sync with Mac's iCal, Adress Book, and even iTunes. So you can get all your pictures, songs, album art, calendar dates, address book, podcasts, and more.

"This makes the need for MobileME obsolete. Because now, whatever you add to your iCal can automatically be synced with your Android cell phone, and vice versa. This also means that contacts can be changed either on Android or Mac and the other will automatically be synced. Pretty cool huh? Let's get started!"

"What might the Internet-owning power of the towel-clad spokesman hint about, yes, the future of news?

"There’s the obvious, of course: the fact that the ads are personalized. That their content is created for, and curated from, the conversational tumult of the web — “audience engagement,” personified. Literally. The videos are, in that sense, a direct assault on top-down, author’s-artistic-vision-driven, mass media broadcast sensibilities.

"But they’re an assault on mass media in another way, as well. The real hook of the videos isn’t the OSM’s awesomely burly baritone, or the whimsy of his monologues (the scepter! the bubbles! the fish!), or the postfeminist irony of his Rugged Manliness, or any of that. It’s the fact that we’re seeing all those things play out dynamically, serially, in (semi-)real-time. And: in video."

Good Android resource/news/discussion site

AndroZip app video tutorial. Seems useful. march 2010.

"For the seasoned pro, the Android tutorial can become a little cumbersome. If you would like ot skip this step, a short and sweet Youtube video shown after the jump reveals how."

"U.S. adults who use the social networking Web site Twitter are more likely than the average adult to be highly active on the Internet as well as in their communities, according to GfK MRI's Survey of the American Consumer.

"In addition to being active online, Twitter users are also socially and politically active. For instance, they index highly for all 17 of the public activities measured by GfK MRI. They are 209% more likely to have written something that has been published, 142% more likely to participate in environmental groups/causes, 141% more likely to be an active member of any group that tries to influence public policy or government, and 103% more likely to have attended a political rally, speech or protest in the last 12 months."

"Now, it’s a question of what came first: Twitter or the engagement? Is there something about Twitter that inspires people to connect with their offline communities and become more politically and socially active? Or are people who use Twitter already predisposed towards community involvement?"

Good video tutorial about a basic part of the Android interface

"Do you find it hard to find a contact or locate an application from a list of hundreds of items on an Android phone? Or do you find it stressful to search for an item by typing in its title while on the go?

"Gesture Search from Google Labs lets you search your Android-powered device by drawing alphabet gestures on the touch screen. It allows you to quickly find a contact, a bookmark, an application, or a music track from hundreds or thousands of items, all in one place. It is fast and fun to use.

"Gesture Search currently recognizes the English alphabet and requires Android 1.6 or above."

"Google Gesture Search, a freshman out of Google Labs, lets you find stuff on your Android phone by drawing letters on the touchscreen as if you were jotting on a notepad. In addition to Android's existing search by voice, image, and barcode, Gesture Search is yet another keyboardless input method for your touchscreen phone. At the very least, Gesture Search is a fun proof-of-concept; at most, it will hook a few dedicated touch keyboard haters. Here's how it works.

"With Gesture Search running, you write letters by swiping your fingertip on your touchscreen as if it were a whiteboard. With each character you input, Gesture Search live-searches your phone's contacts, bookmarks, and music and displays the results on-screen. Tap an app, contact, bookmark, or song to launch it or view the contact. (For contacts, tap the green phone icon to start a call.)"