life, the universe & everything
I haven’t blogged in a quite a long time (20 days) due to being overwhelmed with life. And funny enough, I just recently found out that my desire to multitask in order to combat the overflow of life activities might actually make me less efficient. I’m not sure that I believe that entirely, but it is something to think about (and apparently think about alone, not in conjunction with driving or blogging or anything like that).
So here is a short list of what life activities have been juggling in the past 20 days:
1. Halloween
Upon returning from my Organic trip to LA, we had to plunge head first into decorating the house and building our costumes for our Strickland 2nd Annual Halloween Bash. Many many hours and a few days later, our house was transformed (pictures here). We built a serial killer clown complete with wanted photos and two crime scenes in our showers (victims strangled via balloon animal). I tackled double the amount of tombstones this year so that we could have a proper graveyard. Lon built the most terrifying demon baby and seance room imaginable. All in all a success.
2. Eurotrip
Tom and I are living in about a week for an 18 day Eurotrip. We are going to be doing some high tech documentation of the trip that I will explain in a farewell post before I go (notice the Twitter feed I’ve added to the side of the page). In addition, we’ve been figuring out new ways to make our trip itself be more tech enhanced. This includes using Google My Maps in combination with a GPX export tool and a GPX editing tool to upload wineries, restaurants, and attractions I’ve researched to our Garmin device, complete with descriptions and photos I collected from the internet. Fun!!
3. Web 3.0
Upon returning from LA, I gave a presentation of my Web 3.0 deck to the Organic Detroit creative team. I was then asked by Chad Stoller, Executive Director of Emerging Platforms, to go on a road show with my presentation to the other Organic offices in December. Since I’m going to be out for a good chunk of November, I’ve been trying to polish my deck, via his great recommendations, to include some more tangible and easy to imagine examples of what Web 3.0 could be. I’ve been having a lot of fun with Photoshop as of late to create the following fancier interfaces to some already prominent Web 3.0 front runners:
Things are moving quickly. I probably will only have time to post one more blog before I leave. But when I return (refreshed and reinvigorated), I will have a whole slew of experiences, thoughts, and consumptions that I will be itching to share. More on how I plan on sharing those next post…
technorati tags: garmin nuvi, social search, web 3.0, joost, wink
web site: google maps - my maps
I have posted a few entries as of late on the Organic blog about Web 3.0, once on the new Adobe Thermo software coming out and another on the creepy AI direction the web is starting to take. The one thing I haven’t posted about is the idea of the mobile web continuing to explode, more people using smarter devices and more useful applications being developed for them.
So I am going to just come right out and say that I LOVE the My Maps feature on Google. This feature allows you to save points on a map and add notes, pictures, and icons. It is a great way to see how close things you are planning on doing on a trip are in relation to each other, locate nearby businesses on your route, and just generally amazingly useful things.
Although I can’t post it here, because it contains contact information for the people I am interviewing in LA next week for Organic, I just created an awesome map for my trip. I mapped out all the interviews, but also added icons for nearby cafes that have internet access, restaurants that people have been recommending, and the best LA wine stores from Dr. Vino’s blog.
It’s so fun, but it is also an INCREDIBLE tease as…
1. It doesn’t work on my Motorola Q
2. There is no export to GPS units for cars
So, there is no way to have the technology tell me that whilst I am driving that there is an awesome wine bar coming up about 10 miles away and I should take a detour to go check it out. Again, I am back to printed out maps and planning where I am going the day before hand. I long for the day when technology can actually service spontaneity.
Still, even with the limitations of what I can and can’t do with my phone… pairing a site like Yelp with the Google Maps mobile app is pretty powerful. It is a power that I have grown accustom to in life, and a power that I am going to miss so very much when I go smartphoneless in Europe for 18 days. A time when a technology like that could have really come in handy.
I’ve been techno-spoiled.
Update: I just found a website that lets you convert your Google My Maps into GPX or upload to your Garmin GPS unit. While this does nothing to solve the problem with my Motorola Q, I’m sure that there is some GPS-enabled cell phone out there that would accept GPX files. Since I happen to be renting a GPS unit in LA, I am going to test out how this all works (rental companies might not let you upload to their devices). If it is a success, then Tom and I are going to be vacationing future style with a European GPS device rigged with our special wine and food lovers dream map. Hurray!!
technorati tags: google my maps
web site: Sony Bravia Play Doh Bunnies
Sony just released an adorable and amazing stop motion advert (as the British say) for their Bravia high-definition LCD televisions. As someone who attempted a stop motion project for a film class, it just boggles my mind how this was done. In fact, looking at these behind the scenes photos only makes it more amazing.
How did they digitally remove all of the poles later? How did they keep New Yorkers from messing things up? How could they tell where the bunnies needed to go from day to day, considering they were marking with chalk in a public place?
The high quality version is well worth the wait on their painfully load heavy web site, but if you are in a hurry, you can watch it on YouTube.
technorati tags: bravia, stop motion animation, play doh bunnies
web concept: Web 3.0
Somehow, I’ve found myself reading a lot lately on many different forms of evolution. There is the RNA-first theory of biological evolution, where the gene is the basic building block of all life. Its a truly remarkable theory, which I hope to learn all about next week on my plane ride to LA where I will bury myself in Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene. This return for me back to burying my nose in scientific reading was inspired by both a fascinating chapter in Carl Sagan’s Shadow of Forgotten Ancestors on evolution of the cell and by Douglas Adams’ quote in Salmon of Doubt citing Richard Dawkins as one of his greatest inspirations of all time.
Besides biological evolution, I have found myself researching cultural evolution. It was after reading an awesome article on Web 3.0 that didn’t hesitate to use the (previously foreign) concept of the meme all over the place that I decided to do some Wikipediing on the topic. The idea is that while a gene is the basic unit of biological evolution, the meme (an idea, a fad, a belief) is the unit of cultural evolution. This meme is passed along, replicated, and mutated until it either dies or becomes an part of the social fabric.
Thinking about both cultural evolution and biological evolution together in the context of what I do everyday, it struck me the similarities in the origin of our biological universe and the way the web evolves. The idea that stuck in my head was that the social nature of the internet allows memes to roam freely, information passing with ease from person to person in a way that builds upon itself. This is highly comparable to the “primordial soup“, wherein genetic units muddled about until forming symbiotic relationships that lead to greater organisms than possible before.
I will be giving a presentation to the strategy team at Organic on the definition of Web 3.0 and the current frontrunners present on the web today. But, in the meantime, I thought I would toss out a little science and a little web onto the blog page here, just to get the ideas out of my brain, so that I don’t get too nerdy when presenting to my fellow Organics.
In the beginning…
the evolution of the cell
- Free form DNA swam in the primordial ooze
- Membranes grew in order to house and protect the DNA
- DNA mutated slowly
- Useful DNA was passed along to future generations before the benefit of this information was even known
- Specialized biological tools (i.e. chlorophyll eating, protection from sickness) were incorporated into greater multi-cell organisms
the evolution of the web
- Free form HTML code swam in the primordial ooze of the web
- Web pages and sites grew housing and protecting the code
- Every information unit that was passed along to the next was an opportunity for mutation of that idea
- Seemingly good ideas (such as RSS) would pass form web site to web site even before it was know what the ideas could be used for
- Specialized internet tools (Google Maps) are incorporated into greater organisms
technorati tags: memetics, web 3.0, internet evolution, primordial soup,
website: netflix
I was browsing through our Netflix queue today. And (as you often do) I noticed movies I never remembered putting on my queue. For instance, there was this movie called Blackwoods and it was rated 1 star.
What is that and why would I put a 1-star movie on my queue? I scroll over to reveal that it is a Uwe Boll movie. Mystery solved, Uwe Boll’s unwatchable-but-can’t-turn-away train wrecks are a masochistic cinema experience that my husband and I sometimes participate in. But then I notice that the movie itself isn’t a 1 star movie, but a 2.4 star movie. Netflix has offered its “best guess” that we will rate it 1 star and is bold enough in its assumption that it decides to display its guess instead of the average customer.
I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. I started scanning the listings to see if there were other movies Netflix thinks I would like or dislike more than the masses. Turns out I’m going to love Motorama. Another weird assumption. I mean, Tom and I thought After Hours was weird (maybe a little too weird to be good) and I have always had a special place in my heart for the ridiculous Vampire’s Kiss featuring Nicolas Cage trying to suck the blood of pigeons with plastic vampire teeth.
I wouldn’t say that either of us LOVE those movies, but they are certainly interesting enough for us to want to view them. And at the same time, while we loath Uwe Boll and his critic-punching pompous German-loophole ways, we want to be the first to know when that horrible man puts out another horrible piece of trash.
So while it is interesting that Netflix has called attention to some out of the normal movie going activity we participate in, it has no way to grasp the subtlety of our movie watching tastes. But, how could it? How could Netflix know that we love The Butterfly Effect for being purely retarded, but at the same time highly watchable, and yet would probably never be interested in another Ashton Kutcher vehicle? How could Netflix know that we can’t stand Garden State (sorry Roxy) because of Zach Braff’s pushy voice-of-your-generation “these songs will change your life” soundtrack and so-quirky-she’s-cute Natalie Portman performance, but that most of the time we like character driven indies and Natalie Portman? How could Netflix know that we’d rather watch movies that are so bad that they are good (The Core), rather than movies that are mediocre (Running with Scissors)?
It can’t, which is why the straight forward rating system is innately flawed. I was actually pretty upset when the AV Club decided to move to one, as I found their reviews more meaningful without the letter grade. And now that they rely on the rating more often, I have a hard time telling if the new Lindsay Lohan vehicle is something I should pay money to see (while sneaking wine into the theater), rent, or avoid. Will any rating scale ever indicate the subtle difference between the sliding scale of “so bad its good”, “so bad it hurts”, “oh god… its trying to be self-aware of its badness”, and “so bad it is unwatchable, boring, and I had to turn it off”?
technorati tags: netflix queue, uwe boll, bad movies
web concepts: web 2.0, silly names and useless mashups
So for a while it was interesting, then it was funny, then predictable, and now it is just annoying. Why do Web 2.0 start-ups still insist on all the crazy “innovation” (aka boring conformity in the guise of silliness) when it comes to their names? There are about 30 posts a day on Mashable.com with the newest excessively web-2.0-ey named upstarts (see Streakr, Jaduka, Galaxi, the list goes on and on). It’s become so ridiculous that there are numerous web sites and articles dedicated to the stupidity and formulaity of it all: web 2.0 name generator, worst web 2.0 names, web 2.0 bullshit generator, and my favorite, the web 2.0 logo generator:
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A fully Twitter-integrated Google Maps mashup of the worlds stinkiest places
The web is so littered with junk like this that it is hard to find anything of use. Maybe someone can make a web 2.0 site to review, tag, and sort web 2.0 sites. Maybe it can integrate with Facebook and Flickr and publish out widgets to your iPhone. Oooh… and it can be a social networking site, a wiki, and user-generated video site all rolled into one!!!!!!
Sorry, I’m in a weird mood today, because I have recently accepted how wonderful the web 2.0 giant Flickr really is, yet how completely useless (although sometimes intriguing) and often poorly executed the billions of stupidly named mash-ups are. It is frustrating, because I really think there is so much more potential out there for Flickr, beyond a fun way to waste time.
Yeah, yeah… I know there actually are some useful Flickr apps in existence (although they are greatly outnumbered by stupid ones). But, here are a few I haven’t found yet, that I would like to see:
Maybe there are some of these useful tools already out there, but they are so buried underneath the piles of web 2.0 garbage, that I haven’t been able to find them. Maybe someone can invent a StreetSweepr plugin for Firefox that is able to block out particularly annoying, useless, and/or redundant web 2.0 apps from your browsing experience.
technorati tags: flickr mashups, web 2.0 names
web sites: RealTravel.com, Yahoo! Travel’s Trip Planner
While I love planning travel to unfamiliar areas, it can be time-consuming and intense if you let it be. There is an overwhelming amount of information to input from a variety of sources: magazines, travel guides (of various flavors), internet articles, forums, user-generated content, tv shows, friends and family. Being the organizational soul that I am, I’m always looking for new and improved ways to collect and digest that information into an itinerary-building, travel-ready form. I thought I would use the opportunity of my upcoming vacation to put a few popular travel planning sites to the test.
The sites: RealTravel.com and Yahoo! Travel’s Trip Planner
Test #1: design a walking tour for a day in Paris
Test #2: find a hotel near the vineyards in Burgundy
RealTravel.com
On their main page, RealTravel claims that they are “the travel guide and trip planner powered by advice from real travelers”. That in itself seems a little off. How exactly is the “trip planner” powered by advice? Much like that statement, the “trip planner” on RealTravel comes off as a bit of an after thought.
The interface is nice and engaging, more directed towards those still uncertain about their final destination. Finding the destination I was looking for (let’s try Paris first) was a little confusing. There just doesn’t seem to be an easy way to get to a list form of cities, much like I am used to from the likes of your Frommers.com and Fodors.com. While the site seems to be highly robust (full of restaurants, hotels, etc.), in truth the content is almost completely based from blog entries from travelers. In an effort to find a walking tour for Paris, I am lead to this post, a blog entry that had been user-tagged “walking tour”. Compared to the quality a walking tour from Frommers, the user-generated content is somewhat lacking. There is no bullet point breakdown of the stops on the tour, let a alone an estimated time. Hoping to find more of what I was looking for in “itineraries,” I disappointed to discover that a so called “itinerary” is just a table of contents of a travel blog that is somewhat poorly mashed up with a map.
With such a poor experience finding a simple Parisian walking tour, I had little hope for my Burgundy hunt. Finding a not-so-popular destination is almost impossible beyond using the search box. Hotels in “Burgundy” aren’t able to feed in hotels from Dijon and Beaune, two of the biggest cities in the region. So I basically have to know I’m interested in staying in Beaune in order to find a hotel in Beaune via this route.
Another not so fun thing… blogs are completely disconnected from information about the points of interest mentioned in them. So I have no way of clicking on a restaurant mentioned in a blog to read reviews, contact information, etc. The so-called “trip planner” is nothing more than glorified bookmarking. But, if you are looking for a site that makes exploring travel blogs and building your own simple and engaging, then RealTravel is a great resource.
Yahoo! Travel’s Trip Planner
It’s too bad that RealTravel has begun aligning itself (albeit loosely) with Frommers. Upon exploring Yahoo’s Trip Planner, I felt that it turned out to be a useful trip organizing tool that was lacking in the depth and quality of information (is there really nothing to do in Beaune?) that is contained in a travel guide site. And while what it has for big cities is pretty impressive, it lacks the useful navigation and editorial content that contextualizes the big lists of “things to do”, such as Paris in 5 days or Neighborhoods in Brief. In a few years, I’m sure Yahoo! will either buy out a resource or will have worked to collect its own information. But until that point, Yahoo’s Trip Planner is a more useful way to end the planning process, but not necessarily act as the exclusive place to begin it.
Since “trips” are also just glorified travel blogs on Yahoo!, in order to start I must choose to “Create A Trip”. Picking cities is easy and fun, and as soon as I start building a trip, Yahoo! starts to throw out suggestions for me (”What other people are doing in Lyon”). Navigating could use some improvement, as I’m constantly bounced in and out of Yahoo! Travel vs Trip Planner, and I find it difficult to read about other’s trips while viewing my own. Nevertheless, the site offers multiple ways for me to explore things of interest and at every point there is a big green plus symbol to “add to my trip”. Unlike RealTravel, adding a destination to my trip actually puts it into a useful itinerary building application, complete with Yahoo! maps mashup. And while Yahoo! doesn’t offer me a way to find a “walking tour” in Paris, it’s only a matter of time before commercial sponsors start submitting their own useful itineraries for those areas that are lacking. As for Test #2, I had to add “Marche aux Vins” to the Yahoo! database (just one of handful of things to do in Beaune) in order to find a hotel nearby, at which point the integration with Yahoo! maps comes in very handy.
Finally, Yahoo! succeeds in ways that I wasn’t really expecting from my travel planning resource. As I add areas of interest to my trip, they are clearly noted by color differentiation on the map. Points of interest are orange, points in my trip for consideration are blue, and points I’ve “scheduled” to attend are in green. It really gives you a perspective on what “must do” items are near “might do” items, or what hotels you were thinking of booking are off in the middle of nowhere. So despite it’s navigational faults, Yahoo! has actually created a useful tool. Now if I can only get it to factor in budget, print out pocket-sized maps, or better yet download my trip into an application for my mobile device.
web site: Lexxe
There is a great article from Read/WriteWeb about natural language search engines.
I decided to try myself, but got bored very quickly. For one, Lexxe seemed to provide decent results when Google did, and poor results when Google also failed me. So no improvement. The only difference really is that Lexxe seems to run a billion times slower.
Then, I started getting a little more creative, and Lexxe started giving me some interesting results. Apparently, God exists, so does Santa Claus, the Mayans got it right, and I’m already dead. So I guess I won’t be coming into work tomorrow. I wonder what other weird things Lexxe believes.
technorati tags: Lexxe, Hakia, natural search
RECENT WINES
