Personal websites - forever?

I had known Dan Kliman a number of years.  I never met him, but knew him from an email list, Facebook, and perhaps some other social networking sites.

Then I heard the terrible news:  Dan died mysteriously in November 2008.  He was 38.

I waited for Facebook to remove his page.  But of course they didn't:  No one told them he was gone, and even if they had, Facebook would probably not remove it unless the owner told them.  (Yahoo had a similar policy:  Even if you were accidentally locked out of logging in to your profile, the profile would remain, although I suspect Yahoo's recent change to personal profiles might have eliminated many of those orphan profiles.)

So at least on Facebook, Dan "lives" on.

Since genealogy is one of my hobbies.  I was struck by the similarity of gravestones to web pages.  A gravestone functions not only as the marker for a decedent, but as a brief opportunity for them or their family to provide a few words of identity ("Susan Smith, born...died..."), of relationships ("Beloved mother, sister..."), and the occasional summary phrase ("She was a friend to animals and men" was what I recently saw on a gravestone).

Does the web have a corollary to a gravestone - a permanent marker to an individual?

The vestiges we see on Facebook have no guarantee of permanency.  Presumably, in a few years' time, Facebook (like Yahoo has apparently done) will decide it needs to clear up some of the space alloted to profiles not logged in recently, and clear them out.

I don't think there is a permanent online graveyard.  Like cemeteries, the owners of such a site would need to montetize the investment (many older cemeteries in New York City have cleared away gardening and now use the land for interments, in part to raise their assets).  And their mission statement would need to guarantee that successive owners/investors maintain the site in perpetuity.

Perpetuity.  In the web's fast-moving and fast-developing world, that seems almost like an imposssibiliy.  So it'll be interesting to see if anyone comes up with a graveyard for the web.

IgniteNYC, February 23, 2009

The latest Ignite NYC was held on February 23rd at the Santos Party House a few blocks south of Canal Street (the center of New York City's Chinatown). Santos Party House is a small disco-like space, much smaller and less comfortable than Webster Hall (the site of a previous meeting).

There were only a few chairs available, and since the bar was in the same space, the rumbling of conversation was loud and intruded upon what came from the stage.

The first item was scheduled for 7:30 but began 10 minutes late. It was "Know Your Meme" a simulation of a TV game show which, in 20 questions to contestants on stage, was supposed to provide a history of Internet technology. It went on for an hour and it was terrible! It was not well rehearsed, not well delivered (they seemed to be talking to themselves and had no interest in being heard by the audience nor capturing the audience's attention), and it was amazingly stupid. Seeing it as a colossal waste of time, a number of people left. Memo to IgniteNYC and O'Reilly folks: NEVER DO THAT AGAIN!!

The main part of the program was scheduled for 8:30 but didn't going until after 9 PM, no explanations or anything. It made me and the audience somewhat irritable. Finally they began.

The format of Ignite is based on Pecha Kucha - 5 minute talks with PowerPoint presentations. Based on presenters' experience, there are two kinds of talks. Some are just a single idea, fleshed out with details. It's like a topic sentence followed by details. Those tend to be less interesting than those that try to give a cause-and-effect presentation (problem --> solution) which for me presents more immediacy. There was a mixture of both.

Michael Galbart's "Images On the Internets Seem Realer Than They Are" fell into the first group: a one-point talk about the frequency of altered images found on the Internet. His point was that Internet images seem more real than they are due to the ubiquity of Photoshop and similar programs that facilitate altering images. It's a good assumption that the majority of images you see on the net (even from news organizations) are altered, even if only slightly. The problem is that some images become fixed in the mind whether truthful or not, e.g. the photo of Sarah Palin's head grafted on to a swimmer wearing a US flag bikini and carrying a gun - apparently an image that has been seen by many as being "real."

These cloning techniques have now become part of main and popular culture. The photograph released by Iran showing 4 missles being launched simultaneously was a fake - it was really only one with the others being replicated. The image of President Bush's talk to the army - where you saw a sea of faces in the audience. Really they were just duplications of the same group of faces. (One clue for revealing crowd is to look carefully at the eyes - to see if they are all facing the same or different directions.) All magazine covers are Photoshoped.

What do we learn? That all images on the net are fake (e.g. Godzilla being attacked by a house cat). It becomes a lesson in trust - we begin to suspect everything.

So beware of fake images!

Next up was Jaki Levy's "How to Screw up Your Reputation Or the Reputation of Your Company Online." He spoke about PR mistakes and their resultant nightmares. Motrin: a bad TV commercial led mothers to protest. The company didn't respond to criticism (or praise). Their unresponsiveness was the path to ruining their reputation. Another road to ruin: Ask a question to which you already know the answer -- people will lambaste you. Wal-Mart: They want to show how college students should arrange their dorms. But students weren't interested - they already know how they want their dorms arranged. Another point: If you ask, you have to be prepared for all kinds of responses. When you ask dumb questions, expect dumb answer. Another way: call yourself a social media expert. Experts are deadly. Lying is deadly. Don't underestimate audience: they're smarter than you think. Be clear about your motives.

Karen Sandler's "Unchain My Heart" had no PowerPoint presentation on purpose. She went with OpenOffice, the open-source software. She confessed that she has an enlarged heart, meaning that she can die suddenly. So she has defibrilator, which she said was "like fairy godmother in heart looking after you." Being a geek, she asked for code to this medical device, but the company refused, telling her it was proprietary. So here she is with software that could potentially save or destroy her life - and it can't be studied by anyone. That lack of transparency makes it unsafe. Fortunately she came across a group that hacked the device, and found that it's data was not encrypted. In fact, the defibrilator could cause shocks which could be life-threatening. Fortunately, being a lawyer enabled her to confront the company on some of these issues - particular concerning transparency.

But the message is that doctors have to think about the devices they prescribe and whether they're really safe. They need to not ever take things for granted and need to know what these devices are about. We need to insist that people are safe on all levels. We need a free and open code.

Dennis Crowley presented "The Crowley Family vs. Family Feud: How You Too Can Win Fame and Fortune in LA." Dennis is the co-founder of Four Square - a redesigned Family Feud. His talk was how to get on a TV quiz show. How do you train? You become obsessive. You Tivo all shows and study them. Get a quiz book. Get into the mindset. Set up family tournaments for each other. Watch episodes on YouTube. You'll note: The best answers are the most obvious. Round numbers are your friends. Never pass. When they talk about "random people," what they really mean is "random people in L.A." His episode will be aired March 4.

Alex Bisceglie presented "DataVisualization: Muppet Fur Coats." It's about visualization (whether it's called data visualization or informaiton visualization) - translating data into comprehendible images. Without it, what can one make of the information that bombards us every day? Visualization helps us to navigate life. Visualization is how we help vet our presidential candidates (think of the various graphs and pie charts during the election season). It's how we encounter our social networks. It helps us understand the net. The main guideline is to keep visuals simple, otherwise they won't provide content.

Alex then showed various samples of visualization. A kindergardener's visualization: vampire electronics.

Then some bad examples. They take away from content because they're too busy. Keep it simple! He can't repeat this adage enough. Trends in data visualization come and go within a single year.

Information visualization is not art. You can't get data out of art, which tends to be much more complex. Again: Keep it simple.

Jonathan Kahan's "Cutting Edge Technology: The Samurai Sword" picked up on the previous talk's adage to "keep it simple" by using the metaphor of a katana (a samurai sword). Originally having a straight shaft, the katana was later modified to be slightly curved, which increased the sword's efficiency in being able to cut through most anything. (His PowerPoint presentation had numerous film stills featuring Toshiro Mifune and few with Tom Cruise.)

Jooyoung Oh spoke about "Unemployment 101." She left her job of 5 years. Updating her Facebook status was like breaking up with a boyfriend. At first you don't want to tell your parents, and you buy drinks for your friends. Cute, amusing, not to much to say, and a message that everyone feared but fear wanted to hear.

Similar was Naveen Selvadurai's "In Case of Fire, Break Glass." He spoke about his unfortunate experience of having a fire in his building and gave many tips on what to avoid and to be aware of in case there is a fire. Somewhat humorous.

Britta Riley spoke about "R&D-I-Y" or research and develop it yourself. I forget the details but it had to do with filtration of urine into drinking water. Rather than do all the work, her project enabled people to do it themselves. When people heard of this project they wanted to get involved. But they felt they needed to ask permission. Britta and her colleagues realized that crowdsourcing was how the project got going. It has to be a real sharing of ideas - wikis and instructables are not enough. One has to build the continuum of work already started.

Scott Rafer spoke about "An Overnight Success in Just 15 Years." He seemed to have great ideas but introduced them too early, such as the camera phone in 1997, and blogsearch. His goal was to find that one-hit-wonder. All it takes is once. Be late, then, you'll be boring. There are zillions of things to do and find out - just look at directories of hot spots in NYC. There are always crazy startups - why not you? The secret is to hit that one thing, and then you'll be invulnerable.

Noah B. Zerkin spoke on "Near Future Augmented Reality Systems." It was hard to understand and was about the fusion of virtual and physical worlds. (I think he made a pun on his name "Noah Zark - sounds like Noah's Ark.)

[By this time my patience and attention to the proceedings were dropping off, so I just too notes on snippets. Apologies for the more discursive narrative.]

Cory Forsyth spoke on using telephony in unique ways, or "How to Piss Off the FCC."

Ed Purver's "A Show of Hands" humorously demonstrated that direction in life is not always good.

Andrew Hoppin's talk "NASA 2.0" was actually good. He mused on the possibility of Web 2.0 techniques being applied to the space agency. For background, he pointed out that NASA was at its best when it had a specific goal of getting a man on the moon. After that achievement, having a lack of clear goals, they seem to have been less stellar.

Hoppin proposed new leadership for the agency. They should ask what works outside the fence? Perhaps "open-space events" attended by many people from which they could achieve crowdsourcing of ideas and possibly research and resources. It would be a participatory exploration. But they must change their culture and infrastructure to one that welcomes collaboration and increases participation.

Hoppin then riffed on various ideas. NASA could mix reality events and cultivate remote participation. "Open space" events. They should participate in outside communities, such as the monthly Hackathon in Silicon Valley. They could support existing communities. As a result of being open, they would receive accolades. It might be more of a challenge to provide ROI (return on investment), and to face internal challenges. But ultimately it could result in a change of culture within the organization, and result in community building, outreach, and awareness.

Space exploration would become less "owned" by NASA and would be shared with people.

Jen Bekman spoke on "Overcrowded." Deceptively, she appeared to begin with a negative attitude: How crowdsourcing is ruining everything. Look at the poor reputation of Wikipedia. Look at the multitude of sunset photographs on Flickr. What's the point of so much?

As it turned out, she was building up to a plug: She has an art gallery that has displayed art using the prodigious images of sunsets from Flickr. So go visit. http://www.jenbekman.com/

David Steele Overholt's talk was named after his website, Fail Often. There are so many constraints that we face every day: lack of time, goals, and contracts. The point is produce consistently, to do something everyday and not be afraid to fail. He suggested adding a single picture to your Flickr collection. There would be no wrong or right way. Just do it.

Rob Seward, the final speaker, seemed to be well-known among the crowd. His talk, "The Collective Unconscious of 1980s Florida," spoke about word association test at a Florida university. When he was age 9 he would look up dirty words in the dictionary. He'd find them, but the dictionary would never tell why the words are dirty. Presumably this was intended to explain that he's long had an interest in words and what people mak of them.

He presented a metaphor of an iceberg: there's a little at the top but the bulk is submerged, going to the bottom. That was a way to introduce his interest in words that give rise to unusual associations among people at the University of Florida. (i.e. analogies, for example: cheeleader :: whore, and democrate :: asshole).

I'm so late in posting this blog entry that I don't recall the details of the talk, but the research results is all at his website: http://robseward.com/blog/2009/02/23/word-association-apps/. He actually looks like a creative person and I'm sorry this didn't come out during his talk.

All together it was a mixed bag. For my taste, there was too much that was amusing without providing much substance, and there were too many talks that were more like navel-gazing. But it was good to hear the beat of Sillicon Alley even if it was soaked in beer.

[All my pics from the event: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8539228@N04/sets/72157614785598995/ ]

Hooray for the Geek Squad!

It happens to many of us:  Our computer fails in a way that we can't fix it ourselves.  

Mine wouldn't boot at all.  I called Dell, ran through diagnostics, and they said they couldn't repair it and that it wasn't covered by their warranty (which otherwise covers me until 2011), so I should call Geek Squad.  (Hmph - so much for Dell's warranty.)

Fortunately there' s a Geek Squad as part of the Best Buy store just a few blocks away from me.  I took my pc in.  

1.5 weeks later I have it back, the operating system reinstalled, and all my data (nearly 500 GB) rescued and successfully backed up on an external 1 T drive.  It's gonna be a pain to reinstall all the programs, but at least all my work is there.

What was the problem?  I occasionally leave my computer on all night to enable processing of files and to help clean up and to automatically download updates.  Microsoft pushed down an update, but it was incompatible with a sound driver (I use high quality sound software from M Audio).  That incompatibility led to corruption of one of the Vista startup files.  

Definitely another bad mark for Microsoft.  From now on, I do all my updates manually.

Kudos to Geek Squad!  Thank you very much!

Josh Greenberg visits the Brooklyn Public Library

Josh Greenberg, NYPL's Director of Digital Strategy and Scholarship (colloquially known as the digital guru), was invited to the Brooklyn Public Library's Staff Development Day to give a talk. Nate Hill (formerly of Catch and Release blog) has reported on it on the this entry of the PLA Blog.

[Sorry I've been so quiet - been working on too many projects - will try to get back on track soon.]

Life magazine photos on Google: is it good?

I'm sure most people now know about Google's digitization of the Life magazine photo archives:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/life-photo-archive-available-on-google.html

It may be thrilling but what does it mean? How are you supposed to find anything? I remember reading in 1964 or 1965 an article in Life analyzing the Zapruder film of Kennedy's assassination (the 45th anniversary of which is today). (As I remember it, the accompanying article indirectly expressed amazement that such a document existed at all. That may seem hard to believe today where cellphones capture and transact images of everything.)

I also remember an article from 1965 about the Russian conjoined twins Masha and Dasha. I tried searching for these things in the Life photo archive but with no luck.

Assuming that they've not yet digitized these yet, how is one supposed to search photographs? It's a question everyone's asking: how do you search a photograph for content? What if you're looking for a photograph of something whose content is not your main interest, but rather an association?

We have many hundreds of years to understand the classification and cataloging of book and book-like material - material that has text. But as far as I know, we don't have any standardized manner of cataloging photographs. To my knowledge, there are no efforts underway to try to come up with system that could be used beyond the domain of those who invent it (perhaps the Getty Center is working on something)?

Librarians, museum specialists, academics, or people from related fields should start an effort. The risk is that this will be another project Google or another for-profit institution) will undertake - and rob it from those whose thinking has greater historical, intellectual and sociological depth. (Interestingly, motion pictures have been around few years than plain photographs, but their nature has led to a greater cataloging history.)

So where's the effort to come up with standards for describing the content of photographs?

Initiative and leadership

"Churchill also understood, better than his own generals and admirals, the vital important of taking the offensive. As he told his generals in 1940, "the completely defensive habit of mind, which has ruined the French, must not be allowed to ruin all our initiative."

[Winston Churchill, as quoted in Carlo D'Este's Warlord: A Life of Winston Churchill at War, 187-1945, reviewed by Robert Kagan in The New York Times Book Review (November 9, 2008), 48.]


I used to think that once you pass a certain point in your career, then you can take on leadership roles. While that might be true for some situations, my current feeling (based on current books and articles) is that you have to take such leadership steps from the outset of whatever you do. You have to be active and show that your leadership qualities are an integral part of your personality, of who you are. You can not be passive; you must be active.

What would I learn from this?

Several months ago I was informally interviewing a someone for a position. I emphasized archival collections and mentioned some famous names that would be recognized. After acknowledging these collections, the prospective interviewee's response took me off guard:

"What would I learn from this?"

I was so flabbergasted I repeated the question in case I had misunderstood it. Here we were, a world-famous library, and a college student was asking what could be learned from working in it. In retrospect, the interview was over at that moment, and I should have told the prospective intern directly and sent them on their way. (If a person can not understand that working with people's personal documents has tremendous value, then there's no point in going on.) But I was nice and continued on for a few minutes.

I still feel justified in wanting to end the interview, but now I see the question is a useful one. Here was a typical college student who had very limited experience using a library. It was an potential opportunity to expand the mind of someone that was clearly limited. (Having worked on an elevator speech several months ago, I supplied what I felt was an appropriate response.)

How many countless other college students are like this? Students who've had all that they need or wanted in their textbooks, and never had to research anything that wasn't already known in their personal libraries or space.

I guess I'm spoiled in that I've always been curious about the world around me and have gone sometimes to great lengths to find out more about it. So maybe we have to get rid of the notion that a library is for "books" and start remaking and marketing ourselves as places to obtain knowledge, a space where one can not only relax but let one's mind expand - and that this is a healthy and necessary endeavor for life. Experienced researchers know how to do this. It's those who don't know and don't care that we must reach and move.

The end of print media is coming

“We have the luxury — the opportunity — of making a leap that most newspapers will have to make in the next five years.”

-- John Yemma, editor of the Christian Science Monitor, on their discontinuation of their print publication (from the New York Times, 10/29/08)

If one belongs to a smaller (especially non-profit) journals, one has seen this coming. Most newsletters and smaller print publications have already (or are in the process) of discontinuing their paper editions and moving to an online-only format. Many magazines have either folded or have limited the number of issues they print in a year.

This represents a huge change: in less than 5 years, I predict most average-budgeted periodicals will move to an online-only system. Any publisher that's a non-profit or that works with a low budget will similarly feel impelled to give up on print since it is too expensive.

Leadership

"Almost every study of performing arts institutions in the United States reports that dynamic artistic leadership is the most crucial factor in energizing companies and attracting new audiences."

- Anthony Tommasini, At City Opera, Concern Over a Visionary Whose Eye Seems to Wander (Oct. 4, 2008)

I may want to believe otherwise, but clearly personality is a (the?) driving force behind institutional management. Some leaders may prefer to be quiet, but those people who are extroverts will probably be able to do more (certainly in areas usually seen by external forces, such as fundraising).

Web 2.0 Expo: Museum 2.1

Now that I've finished summarizing the sessions I attended, I'll mention one social/networking aspect of the Web 2.0 Expo. There were plenty of opportunities for networking and socializing, from the various lunch venues and the waiting areas in the Javits Center that allowed one to plug in and charge one's batteries (literally - if your laptop was dying).

One of the lunches was a bit more scripted - and it was much better than just an open-ended meal. Tables were labeled based on mutual interest and one could sit down at the table of one's interest. In cases of excess interest, additional tables were created. I could have gone to the big choices (marketing, media, programming), but instead found something more in tune with my work: "Museums 2.1" as they called themselves.

It turned out to be a great lunch - not for the food, but for the interesting conversation. Most were staff of a variety of museums, as well as a staff member of Apple and 2 representatives of commercial firm (whose name and function I forgot, but who were interested in talking about what museum folks were doing).

Unfortunately the majority of what I remember was how we were all lamenting how difficult it was to get coworkers and bosses "on board" with recognizing the importance of the Web 2.0 world. I think all of the museum staff at the lunch table were greatly impressed and inspired by the Web 2.0 Expo. The problem most faced was communicating our interest in the value of Web 2.0 it to others at our institutions.

The people from commercial firms asked several interesting questions about how we deal with information/metadata about our materials. I remember we mentioned TMS - The Museum System as a way that many museums deal with their holdings. I remember seeing that some of the commercial firm people were surprised at the amount of metadata we had to use to create records of our holdings, and we tried to give reasons on why so much was needed (e.g. to distinguish between slightly different samples or manifestations of objects).

At the conclusion one of the participants collected everyone's name and email address and send us all a message so that we could keep in contact.

It was a very nice lunch experience. I wish more conferences and meetings would do this. It would be a great way to enhance networking among participants.