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Using GPS & Location to Enhance Social Networking

First there were social networks, then there were location-based social networks and now GPS and navigation-enhanced mobile social networks. This panel will explore how these emerging platforms integrate with existing social networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), leverage GPS navigation functionality and take location-aware social networking to the next level.

• Tom Marchioro, LBS Architect, Garmin International
• Daniel Gilmartin, VP Mktg, ULocate Communications
• Thor Johnson, SVP Media Markets, GyPSii
• Martin May, Founder, Brightkite
• John Adams, Operations, Twitter Inc
• Bryan Jones, CEO, Mobile Blasts Inc

Introductions

JA: Twitter. Location-based search services. Location and keyword-based searches. Hope to have more location based services in future.

DG: WHERE. ULocate. Boston-based. Friend-finder. Deliver yelp, local search, zip car to mobile. So, mobile-based locative service.

TJ. GyPSii. Next-gen social network. Launch first in China. Some traction in Europe. Coming to US soon. Emphasizes place.

BJ. Moximity. Existing social graph and overlays real information. So see where your friends go and what they do, without having to text. Still in beta and only in Austin, Texas.

MM. Brightkite. Ability to aggregate status updates by location.

TM: Garmin. Other people social networking. Garmin builds devices.

Interoperability

Text messages started in 80s; but no standard and not interoperable. 10-15 yrs later, IM still not standardized, not interoperable and not a monetized success.

OSLO. Commitment by 10-14 companies that allow people to have multiple accounts check a single point. Ie update Brightkite and then push to other providers. Like ping.fm.

May pro-interoperability, but some challenges. Social graph is different over different services. Pick social graph based on service. Who I follow on Twitter vs FaceBook, etc. Interoperability needs to take this into account.

Adams: Brightkite and Twitter have different ways of storing data. Single privacy setting: public or private. Brightkite higher granularity. Difficult to map these.

Marchioro: Chow created by Garmin. Sign up, launch application and member of all applications. Garmin has to brute-force some of the interoperability. Needs a precedence-model, which requires a central store.

Google Latitude new player.

Johnson. Still very early in social networking industry; much lower barrier to entry than the SMS model. Currently making some pieces talk together, will probably get swept away when bigger players enter the field.

Yahoo! with fire eagle should also be listed. Charter of Fire Eagle is location interoperability. Where you are is just a data point among others. Where you are now and then storage: where have you been.

Jones. If don't store more than current point, then severely limit functionality. But do to ability to predict.

Adam. Cross-authentication. oAuth is in public beta on Twitter. From a ux standpoint, have to give credentials out. This is bad. oAuth better for Twitter.

oAuth summary: Elect to use application. Application sends you back to original site. Two options: read only or read/write.

(Read the digital identity book)

Security & Privacy

Google Latitude stores only latest one. Some store more.

From individual’s point of view, location track is very invasive. Marketers would love, though. Can law enforcement go after that data?

May. Flexibility vs simplicity. If privacy too complicated, people don’t understand and won’t use. Control vs convenience. Brightkite is manual checkin. Not very convenient. People want it to auto-checkin, but lose control.

Adams: With services that auto-check-in; automation makes it difficult. People forget.

(GPS article in Wired)

Gilmartin: Google reading every email.

Jones: Privacy wins until value of service trumps the value of privacy.

Monetization

(History of SMS vs. IM)

Gilmartin: Two models MRC and free model. People pay $2.99/month for service.
Free: sponsorship, display and search.

—-

May: foursquare just came out at SXSW. Guys who created Dodgeball a long time ago. Just another data; how we use that data point is what matters. How can we add the location data point and make things more interesting.

Q & A

Q:
A: Johnson: Business model is based on the fact that most people don't upload and install software on their phones. In many of the most populous countries, people don't have laptops, their primary way to access the internet is via the phone.

Q: Chris Martin worked on Fire Eagle. Use oAuth. Have put a ton of work into security, privacy and interoperability. What does it need?
A: May: Would like Fire Eagle to have more auto-updaters. Google Latitude integrates with maps in phone.

Geohashing: take lat/lng and turn it into a string. If use for search, can utilize for radius control.

Rewriting the DMCA: How to Improve Section 114

This panel will discuss the ugly bits of the Section 114 compulsory license for digital/internet music usage and what parts are in it for historic reasons that don't apply in today's world; as well as changes that both users of the licenses (webcasters) and content providers (artists, labels) would agree to.

• Rusty Hodge, Program Dir, SomaFM

Who are the copyright users/consumers?

A few people; some people from audio world. Some people from video world.

Several students here. People interested in law.

DMCA signed into law late 90s. With digital, people can make unlimited perfect copies of things. Legislation from a place of panic. With video, copies degraded. With digital, things don't degrade.

AM/FM radio have explicit exemption from using copyright works. When transmitting digitally (including satellite), fall under DMCA. Got some slight exemptions put into place by paying compulsory royalty.

By paying royalty, can play what they want without getting permission from copyright holder. Rates turned out to be ridiculously high. And that's just royalties for performance, not for composing.

Congress looking for feedback on things to change in the DMCA.

[Not sure her name]: concern is about fair use. The problem with fair use definition is extremely vague and generally can only be determined via trial. Culture is always built on existing culture, not invented ex nihilo. Fair use clause is important component of copyright law.

Studios made argument that digital copies would destroy their business model. Compulsory licensing.

Film professors can now de-encrypt a movie to show clips of that movie in their class. Problem is the inability to de-encrypt distribution formats and make clips/copies for fair use purposes without going through major hurdles.

1. Did it transform the original work for a different purpose/content?
2. Was the amount and nature of appropriated material appropriate for the transformed use?

Fair use a logical limit; could involve a 100% reproduction.

The terrible thing about the DMCA is it preempts your right to fair use.

Podcast considerable a mechanical reproduction, not a live performance, because it is downloaded. It is illegal. Streaming audio is cached and therefore illegal as well. If you have a track list, not allowed to announce ahead of time what you're going to play.

Recommends that if you post a podcast, don't also post a track list.

Interactive vs non-interactive use. Jukebox on-demand (interactive).

Goal is to come up with guidelines for print, audio and video. Here's what actually constitutes interactive/fair.

Rusty wants:

1. Commercial use should pay, but not exorbitant rates.
2. NPR podcast had to work out a deal to embedded music clips. Should be paying for incidental music rights. However reporting clips should be fair use.

Record labels often issue takedown notices when they encounter podcasts with embedded material.

Have robots that troll the net, issue takedown notices and it's the tuna net that catches the dolphin. ISPs then take it down, even if fair use. [Find NYT Magazine article on this]

When passed in late 90s, current use wasn't foreseen. Only the copyright owners were sitting at the table.

Actually EFF and others were there in 90s, but they didnt't have constituencies. And they still don't.

Biggest independent voice is probably Creative Commons. They want a bigger change, though, and not necessarily interested in fixing the DMCA.

Problem is that there's not that much good Creative Commons stuff out there now. When people get good, they want to go copyright.

When people build on culture, they build on the most pervasive stuff. And that's the commercial stuff. Creative Commons is cool, but it must exist alongside fair use.

One idea is that all noncommercial use be made fair use.

Discussion of remix culture. Mentioned that is is new, but it as actually very old. Happened all the time in the 19th century. Squelched during the 20th century (mass production), but back now with digital technology.

Discussion turned to fair use, remix artists like Girltalk and whether they should have the right or not and whether they should pay royalties or not.

The State of the Internet Memescape: 2008–10

Whether it's Weezer's "Pork and Beans" or LOLCat ubiquity, the internet memescape is getting enormously bigger and badder. This talk will assess current trends in internet culture and discuss how changes in the software and hardware environment will alter the construction, spread and evolution of online memes into the future.

• Tim Hwang, ROFLCon

Going to talk about the
* Past year
* Hardware/software that powers the “memescape”
* The future

Founder of ROFLcon: Web celebrity, Web fame, Web culture.

(Interesting map of Iranian blogosphere. Data map by subject/political affiliation.)

A lot of things we’ve seen before (funny vidoes, catchphrases).
But also new things: Emergence of web culture into mainstream culture. Emergence of books/realworld meetups.

Benkler’s Layers of Communication:
Content
Code
Physical

Connection between memes over time and memes happening at the same time.
Not random (dinosaur in a birthday hat)

Pattern underlying memescape.

Underlying patterns for content in 2008:
* The daily meme: Shorter memes. Numa numa was "funny" for like a year. Now shorter attention span. A lot of the shorter ones seem to emerge via Twitter.
* Real world emergence: Rick rolling. Gary from Numa numa always stayed online. Rick Astley "rick rolled" the Macy's Day parade. Forchan (anonymous image board): Anonymous protests against Scientology. Stuff white people like: from blog to actual book. On NYT bestseller. Twitter and Shorty Awards.
* Genres: Own self-referential world of … Hamster dance. Big meme in late 90s. Flash-forward to LOLcats. Former one-time thing, share link and that’s it. Latter has a community and develops memes within memes. Translating the entire Bible into LOLCat pidgeon. LOLCode. Hamster dance never spilled out. Lolbama.com

Underlying patterns for
* The daily meme: The function of the persistence of the internet. Now with the internet 24-hours day instead of less in the past. Mobile devices and laptops are much more diffuse than in the past. Everyone is on Twitter all the time.
* Real world emergence: Social networks are more popular than ever. And not just young people. The largest growth in Facebook people aged 25-54. Now there’s a market to connect with and sell to.
* Genres: Communities built around memes and the tools to build memes. I can has cheezburger. Shared knowledge about meme as you build new meme. And tools that make it easy to generate content.

Problem with Benkler’s layer of communication: missing people.

Stock market has lost a lot value and most of the world is in recession. This could be a boom for internet culture.

Supply

Lots of people sitting in front of the computer all day with nothing to do. And even when looking for jobs, good idea to publish something viral, but it’s easier to get hired.

Demand

Hire good looking people from the internet. Cost-effective choice in tough times.

People

If you’re an unemployed person looking for entertainment, what do you do? Can’t afford and piracy might not be appealing, so internet culture.

Proof: Correlation between decrease in value of Dow Jones and increase in Etsy and Vimeo pageviews. (see about getting graphs)

Question?

Once we understand it, can we hack internet culture.

Realboy: believable twitter bots. Bot identifies two independent groups talking about the same thing, but then redirects tweets from one group to the other to connect them. Bots with 25/50% follow-back

Hacker war between Fat and NYCR

Social Net Neutrality

Statements: arbitrary followbacks are damaging to the ecosystem.
Issue bug reports for various social networks.

Memes that have always been around. archive.org roflcon
Before the LOL: Cat photos with funny captions in the 80s

Bruce Sterling was a little bitter yesterday (wish I would have caught it!). Notes from Bruce Sterling's talk

With more people on the internet, is internet culture diverging or converging? Not just kids, but a lot of retired people on the internet now.

Anyone interested with working with Tim Hwang on a video documentary of Goatsy?

Q: What software do you use to track the memes you study?
A: Have to develop tools yrself.
Berkman center: media cloud. Eats RSS feeds. Generates associations between certain terms in the news.
Content analysis and mass RSS scraping.

Q: Are memes spreading internationally? And if so, what form do they take?
A: Nigeria and the 419 scam. Tim would like to start investigating international memes. But doesn't currently know a lot about it. Not just internet culture via nationalism, but also Internet culture across gender and class.

Photo by magerleagues

Browser Wars III: The Platform Wins

We're doing so darn much with the Web platform these days, from cross-domain access mechanisms to new drawing and graphics tools. But in the end, we still have to deal with different web browsers. This discussion brings the leads from Mozilla (Firefox), Microsoft (IE), Google (Chrome) and Opera (Opera) together for yet another incendiary discussion about the future of the web.

• Arun Ranganathan, Mozilla
• Chris Wilson, Web Platform Architect, Microsoft
• Brendan Eich, CTO, Mozilla Foundation
• Charles McCathieNevile, Chief Standards Officer, Opera Software
• Darin Fisher, Software Engineer, Google

Q: What’s in it for Google Chrome? Why join the “browser wars”?
A: Darin: Original goal was to make Firefox more successful. Then thought best way to move the platform forward was via competition.

No single majority browser engine at the moment. Where do we go from here? How do we cooperate? How do we compete?

Q: What's up with Silverlight?
A: Chris

Q: What's up with Opera? And comments on what Chris said?
A: There are scenarios where people will use Flash and Silverlight, but if you want to reach everyone, you have to really on standards.

If we continue going forward with standards, going to be as powerful as Flash and Silverlight.

Q: How are standards made? Standard itself is going to open source licensed.
A: Charles: Like sausages, you don’t want to know. Chris: Thinks it's a great idea for standard to have an OS license. Concerns about it getting forked.

[Open source model. Quote from license book]

Q: If there is a war, it's about JavaScript. Browsers competing here. JavaScript performance is a selling point. No longer a toy language.
A: Brendan: JavaScript panel trying to move quickly. Game plan is to get everyone cooperating on making material improvements. Fairly functional group. Biggest problem is writing spec.

Same as the CSS3 group, agree that different rendering engines are better for the Web.

Chris: IE 8 is taking JavaScript seriously. And not just JS, looking at performance holistically.

Darin: V8 derived benchmarks from types of programs they thought people would build.

Charles: For years Opera had fast JavaScript engine and no one cared. Now, people care. This is a really good thing. Massive improvement in the speed of JS.

Q: about:security. Why does IE do it's own thing? XSS and clickjacking.
A: Chris: Need to respond quickly; otherwise leaving your users out to dry. IE saw the problem of clickjacking and looked at where they were in the product cycle and decided couldn't wait an entire cycle to address the problem.

Willing to be interoperable.

Cross-domain request sharing access things now.

Q: Chrome also has some interesting security
A: Two parts to security. Web (identity) and the operating system. Sandboxing to protect OS. If use file:// URLs, new rendering engine created.

Why did Java fail?

The applet model and required higher-priced, higher-skilled programmers.

How Social Networks Are Killing the Revolution

Social networking sites today do as much for real world action as paint on the walls does for the structural integrity of your home. Come discuss how we are creating a false majority-view mentality and how to overcome this to achieve large scale change in the world.

• Steve Swedler, Chief Prod Guy, Gangplank
• Jeremy Tanner, @Penguin
• Todd Huffman, Nucleator, BIL Conference
• Shannon Paul, New Media, Detroit Red Wings

What is the "revolution"?

Any type of change you want to see happen in the real world.

What is "friendship" online?

Three types of online friends:

• Familiar: People you already know.
• Validating: Seek out people on internet who validate your opinion.
• False: Spammers.

Validating can be the most dangerous, because it can lead to complacency. So much noise in validating network, may believe something is actually happening.

Why doesn’t it translate?

* False-majority view (sampling bias)
* Bigger silos (validating groups)
* Noise != action (anonymous)

Anecdote about Anonymous and the Scientology action. None of the Scientologists even knew about Anonymous.

What about Change.org? Smaller, specialized networks. Highly specialized, intentional networks. Attract people who are already committed to action.

Can we do better?

* Feedback
* Redefine social network retro
* Mobile
* Making the message actionable

Tools can be used, but David Armano example. Had the social capital. Made it personal. Rare event—doesn't ask for help often.

How to move people from discussion to action, in response to greeblemonkey.

Download and checkout the Obama iPhone app. Even though the election is over, it is amazing.

Creating feedback loop. This is a place where social networks can play a role in feedback and transparency.

The mobile Web has connected more of the world than the traditional Web.

In terms of redefine social network retro, use the phone, what about meetup.com? Seems like a useful tool for facilitating real world action.
(Someone asked it. Panel feels tools are a bit clumsy.)

The more human we can get online, the better our ability to effect change. Smaller, more applicable and relatable.

Questioner works for PETA and uses the power of their social networks to get people to stop selling fur.

It's a conversation, not direct mail. Don't just send them stuff.

Hmm… ultimate analysis: Only panel I wouldn't recommend. Posting because I was there, but not sure it's worth listening to the audio or reading the notes. I don't feel like I learned anything actionable; I mean, I guess the only thing I really learned was the obvious fact that if you think you're going to change the world via a Facebook group, it hain't going to happen.

Designing Our Way Through Web Forms

Although forms make the Web go around, they are often ugly due the generic way in which browsers display them, not to mention irritating to our site's visitors when they don't work as expected. In this session, panelists will provide specific details on ways to successfully create compelling forms for your users.

• Christopher Schmitt, Web Design Specialist, Heat Vision
• Eric Ellis, VP Sr Designer, Bank of America
• Kimberly Blessing, Senior Web Development Manager, Comcast Interactive Media

Twitter search for #formsxsw

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CSS3: What's Now, What's New and What's Not?

This panel explores how major browsers implement CSS3. The focus is on finding effective and efficient methods for developers to unleash their creativity while maintaining cross-browser compatibility. The panel covers current implementations, future plans from the major browser vendors and some discussion of the current progress on the standard itself.

• Molly Holzschlag, Pres, Opera Software
• David Baron, Mozilla
• Hakon Wium Lie, Opera Software
• Sylvain Galineau, Program Mgr, Microsoft

Please note: These notes were typed and published live. I'll clean them up at some point in the future. Audio forthcoming.

Interactive intro by Molly Holzschlag

David Baron from Mozilla. There is no CSS3. Split up, so development can proceed on certain parts.

Selectors
Color

Selectors. Pretty well implemented. Some of the selectors are so. Using classes vs nth-child might be faster.
Color: Partial opacity/transparency depending on how you look at it.
Border-image: One CSS property to handle stretching and tiling.
Columns.
Text-shadow.
Box-shadow.
Border-radius.
Many of these properties are implemented by browser vendors with hyphen browser name prefixes.
Downloadable fonts.
Media queries. @media (min-width). [Nice!]
Transform. iframe with skew applied. Can click links. Pretty impressive.
Mask/clip-path properties. SVG filters in HTML.

Sylvain. Microsoft.

IE and CSS. Bugs, quirks, missing features, hacks.

Prior to implementing CSS3, must fully implement CSS2.1.

IE 7 did not pass CSS 1 or 2.
IE 8 regressed on CSS 1, but advanced on CSS2.1. IE 8 is now close to almost passing all tests.

CSS 3 in IE 8. No new CSS 3 properties:
block-progressions, box-sizing, background-position-x, background-position-7, layout-grid, layout-grid-char

Future:
* Opacity
* backgrounds & borders
* selectors
* web fonts
* media queries
* multi-column

Hakon Wium Lie. Opera.

Thank IE for doing 2.1 fully.

* Backgrounds and borders
* Fonts
* Transitions
* Selectors
* Media queries
* Generated content for paged media

Webfonts have been around since 1998, but problem was font format. Now TrueType and OpenType are pretty dominant. Not disagreeing about syntax, but disagreeing about font format.

Transitions nice—on hover add time-element and browser will interpolate between two states. Beautiful and amazing!

Most wide-spread use of media queries will probably be based on width.. Make it easy to style for mobile and various devices.

Also impressive work for paged media. TOC has auto-pagination and leaders. Page numbers auto-transformed into hyperlinks. Footnotes.

Find Hakon’s CSS book designed in HTML and CSS.

Q: Why separate and competing rendering engines?
A: DB: Competition is good for progress. Danger of single rendering engine is that the Web will stagnate.

Q: Layout system.
A: Code with layout in mind. Which is not correct. Separation vs integration.
(This was a good q/a. Get from audio)

Q: Creation of book via HTML/CSS?
A: HWL: Decided to try it; not sure if could do it. Yes Logic, Australian company. HWL joined board to make sure his books were fixed first. Commercial product. Antenna House in Japan. Currently, no browser can handle it.

Desire to do paginated browser, instead of scrolling page browser.

HWL: Going to post slides to homepage. David Baron’s are already up.

Molly Holzschlag going to tweet slide location: http://twitter.com/mollydotcom

Kick-Ass Mash-Ups with Punk Rock APIs

Tired of re-inventing the wheel? Wish there was a single grand unified API layer over everything? In this panel we'll gather data from a dozen different popular sites and services and present it all under a single API, using nothing but stone knives, bear skins, free online tools and client-side JavaScript.

• Kent Brewster, Web Guy, Yahoo!

Please note: These notes were typed and published live. I'll clean them up at some point in the future. Audio forthcoming.

About Kent:
* No formal education
About Kent and Yahoo!
* Listed as a Yahoo! employee, but only true for five more days.
About the tech
* Insecure
* Unauthorized
* Not supported by anyone
* Generally a bad, scary idea

If what you do is wrong, they can turn around and feed you bad things (steal cookies, etc).

http://kentbrewster.com/badges/

What he’s going to show us relies on the script tag hack. Douglas Crockford quote: “The script tag hack is not secure and should be avoided.” Douglas Crockford wrote this in response to Kent Brewster.
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Neocartography: Mapping Design and Usability Evolved

Designers are dropping maps into their applications with little concern for usability or design and users are getting "Google Map fatigue." We need to move beyond the simple pin-dropping and consider appropriate mapping interfaces. This panel will look at the current and emerging tools to provide compelling geographic interaction and visualization.

• Andrew Turner, Mapufacture
• Michal Migurski, CTO, Stamen Design
• David Heyman, Axis Maps LLC
• Elizabeth Windram, Senior User Experience Designer, Google

Please note: These notes were typed and published live. I'll clean them up at some point in the future. Audio forthcoming.

Andrew started with a slideshow of where we’ve come from: past/present comparison. Driving directions from the 20s compared to Google Streetview. Took old concepts and moved to the Web. Where has it worked/not worked. New paradigms for what is possible with cartography. (Will Turner post to SlideShare?)

• http://tr.im/carto_questions
• http://delicious.com/tag/sxsw+neocartography

Red dot fever

When the Google Maps API first really hit the scene lots of web programmers mashed up locations with Google maps and used a red splodge as a location. When you have lots of these symbols on a map you get a screen view that looks as if your PC has come down with measles, hence red dot fever.

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