I was talking about making Wikipedia more accessible, and spreading the act of editing the web’s biggest knowledge repository to the larger web. It is a problem that contributes to the falloff of editors that Wikipedia is experiencing. \

I asked a simple question.

Can I currently share a fed of my edits to Wikipedia, and autopublish them to another source, via RSS or via an API call.

The answer I got was, no… not right now.

But, I was just congratulated on having made a real change to the way wikipedia works across the entire world. Now, or, rather, a week from now, all wikipedia editors will be able to use an RSS feed of their edits, to share them with the world.

Did you change spelling? Do you frequently author articles on Latin American History? Now you can share them automatically. I’m gonna plug mine into Tumblr or Posterous.

But I’d like my mouse to behave as though they are shaped like this. Though, only at the very edge of the screen.

Anyone with me?

1. Confirm you are tweeting from the correct account.

2. Keep it to < 120 characters

3. Get others’ @usernames to mention in tweets. Ask for their “twitter name” or “twitter handle.”

4. Lead with the important info.

5. Finish with only one correct #hashtag

6. When tweeting from a shared account, finish the tweet with your initials, like this... ^DM (after the #hashtag.)

Tips

1. The audience is different for each account.

2. Add value by tweeting the fun bits that wont be covered elsewhere.

3. If you make a factual mistake, just tweet again with a correction. (The twitterverse loves honesty)

4. If you begin a tweet with an @username, only followers of you and that person will see it. To hit all your followers, instead tweet “.@username says….”

5. Retain your own voice.

Examples

Also check out Twitter for iPhone in 5 Minutes.

2010
iPhone 4
Operating System – iOS 4.0
Processor – 1 Ghz ARM A4 CPU, 512MB Memory
Graphics – PowerVR SGX 535, uses system memory (28 million triangles)
Screen – 614K pixels
Data Transfer Speeds – .04-20MB/s (3G-WiFi)
Storage – 32GB Flash Drive
Dimensions – 4.5 x 2.31 x .31 inches
Weight – 4.8 ounces

What will the device be like in 2020?

I just clicked on an innocent looking Facebook ad asking for beta testers. What followed was a page explaining how Facebook was launching a new product that involves getting users to ask and answer questions that will be published to Facebook as a whole.

Drake’s Note: I’ve copied and pasted the beta user offer from Facebook at the bottom of this post. Decide for yourself if I’m reading this right.

For those with only a moderate level of tech obsession, the service Im talking about is one in which users interact with each other, posing and answering questions, that can then be searched by all. Sort of what user forums are for software.

Google has tried it, Yahoo has tried it, and Quora, a tech-darling of the moment, is trying it. I’m a beta tester for Quora, and have used several ask-answer type services online. A missing link for many has always been scale of the user community.

We’ve all heard the, “if Facebook were a country statistics”… or, if you haven’t, heres a handy info-graphic (thats already 2 months old).

I include the graph only to say that Facebook has scale if it has anything, and even including the recent privacy hullabaloo, the 80% of users who could care less still add up to a ferociously huge user population for an ask-answer service.

Ok, ok. Yes. Google has scale. Yahoo, well, they once had scale. But both boast core services that are based on moving freely in and out of their pages. Nothing keeps users in like walled garden.

Additionally, there is something inherently social about asking questions that the early ask-answer crowd seems to have missed.

Yes, I want an expert to answer my question about how a catalytic converter works (or wikipedia), but if I want to know how to throw the best dinner party, I am just as likely to take notes on an answer from a friend of mine who throws great parties as I am from Paula Dean. Maybe more so.

Quora realizes this. They have built out a whole social networking component to their service, and encourage you to connect the other networks you are already a part of.

But what’s harder? Getting people to know one another, or getting wannabe pundits to pontificate about something they are interested in… on the internet? I know I’m an easy sell on the latter. Just ask me

Below is the copy and pasted text from Facebook’s, “so you wanna be a beta tester” questionnaire. Decide for yourself what they are up to.

Help us build the future of Facebook.

We at Facebook are preparing to launch a brand new product to the world. We think it will be as exciting as Facebook Photos and Facebook Events, but we need your help to make it great.

As a beta tester, your job will be to ask great questions and provide great answers about your favorite topics. Economics? Skydiving? Relationships? Mexican Restaurants? It’s up to you. You’ll be the first person outside of Facebook to use this product. Your expert writing will be seen by tens of millions of people — including job recruiters. And we’ll bring our best beta testers out to California to tour Facebook headquarters and meet the team.

Ready to get started?
Before we can give you exclusive beta access, we’d like you to submit three great sample questions and answers. We’re looking for evidence that you can write clearly and authoritatively on familiar subject matter.

Here are some guidelines to follow when submitting your questions and answers:

Choose provocative questions. Write about things you know. Some examples:
How can I get over my fear of flying?
What are some fun family activities to do with two small children on the weekend?
What caused the U.S. stock market to crash in 2009?
What’s the secret to throwing a great housewarming party?
What are the main differences between Google Chrome and Internet Explorer?
What are women looking for in a relationship?
What methods has BP tried to clean up the oil spill?
What should I do to prepare for the Bar exam?
How did The Beatles find success?
Write detailed, articulate answers.
Where relevant, cite and link to third-party sources such as Wikipedia.
Your answer must be original. Plagiarism is unacceptable.

Amazon has been grabbing that highlighted info off of user’s devices and aggregating it for publication on their site. The page where they display the info looks like this.

I own a Kindle and I don’t recall any opt in or out of transmitting such info. I’ve combed the Kindle agreement, which is mostly about wireless services for “Whispernet.” Amazon’s included wireless update service for Kindle. I had to poke around for quite some time before I could come across anything that could be construed as justifying the theft of privately created data.

Nine paragraphs into their “Conditions of Use” statement for Amazon.com, you find the following

REVIEWS, COMMENTS, COMMUNICATIONS, AND OTHER CONTENT

Visitors may post reviews, comments, photos, and other content; send e-cards and other communications; and submit suggestions, ideas, comments, questions, or other information, so long as the content is not illegal, obscene, threatening, defamatory, invasive of privacy, infringing of intellectual property rights, or otherwise injurious to third parties or objectionable and does not consist of or contain software viruses, political campaigning, commercial solicitation, chain letters, mass mailings, or any form of “spam.” You may not use a false e-mail address, impersonate any person or entity, or otherwise mislead as to the origin of a card or other content. Amazon reserves the right (but not the obligation) to remove or edit such content, but does not regularly review posted content.

If you do post content or submit material, and unless we indicate otherwise, you grant Amazon a nonexclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, and display such content throughout the world in any media. You grant Amazon and sublicensees the right to use the name that you submit in connection with such content, if they choose. You represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content that you post; that the content is accurate; that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity; and that you will indemnify Amazon for all claims resulting from content you supply. Amazon has the right but not the obligation to monitor and edit or remove any activity or content. Amazon takes no responsibility and assumes no liability for any content posted by you or any third party.

That bold section may hold the key. If Amazon is arguing that an user’s highlighting on their Kindle device constitutes posting content or submitting material in any way, then they could make the case that those additions fall under this section of their agreement.

The language is broad, and they could easily stretch it to cover this behavior. Amazon users already silently contribute to the “users who bought this also bought” feature on the site.

Do I believe Amazon is evil? No. Dumb? Maybe. Deficient in short term memory? Youbetcha.

How much heat did they take from the regular blogosphere, not to mention the EFF crowd when they quietly crept into our rooms that night last year and removed Fahrenheit 451 from our devices?

Why risk it? Why not just ask? Why not say, to the users, “Hey, we have this incredible idea, and we’d like your help. We want to build a library of the most amazing quotes and passages from all the books in our library, and we can do it if you allow us to see what you are highlighting.”

For now though, we are left nervously staring at the little white device in the corner, wondering what juicy tidbits from last nights reading it is whispering away into Amazon’s indemnified ears.

I was never this suspicious of my books.

I recently got turned onto DSLR cameras (Canon 7D & 5D Mark II) after a long run with 35mm adapters. I used these fantastic image making devices to DP my new music video for the band. The video concept was really a dream made reality, in which we recreated an Iconic scene from the classic 1980’s film “The Blues Brothers.” a scene in which Ray Charles performs the song “Shake Your Tail Feather” with Dan Akroid and John Belluci.

I chose the Canon 7D, primarily because this was before the 5D firmware finally came out and I got sick of hearing the rumors so I just went with the 7D to shoot the video. (a week later the firmware actually was released this time). I used an array of old 80’s Nikon AI Prime Lenses to shoot the entire video, to really try an emulate the look and feel of the vintage film.

For comparison, here’s the original scene from the Blues Brothers.

This is just one performance test, but frustration runs high when you touch it here and it opens something there. Click through to see the video.

Robot Touchscreen Analysis from MOTO Development Group on Vimeo.

MOTO Labs tests the sensitivity and resolution of current smartphone touchscreens such as the iPhone, the Google Nexus One, the Motorola Droid, the Palm Pre, and the Blackberry Storm 2.

For more on this story, go to http://labs.moto.com/robot_touchscreen_analysis/

Almost Famous: Chris Messina from E. Drake Martinet on Vimeo.

A minute with Chris Messina of Google. We talk Buzz, Facebook and the future of openness at Google.

In a feature of “Almost Famous” we’ve dubbed “Need to Know,” All Things Digital talks with top players inside tech companies–much as we talk to emerging and innovative entrepreneurs–who are perhaps not as prominent as their influence suggests, but who should be.

Warning: Sordid details ahead.

This week: We took a trip to a little company called Google (GOOG) to talk with Chris Messina, Google’s open Web advocate. Openness? Google? We couldn’t pass this up.

Who: Chris Messina

What: Open Web advocate

Why: Chris has been in early on all kinds of pioneering open Web projects. He helped run Spread Firefox–Mozilla’s community marketing effort–co-founded the BarCamp user-generated un-conferences, and single-handedly invented the Twitter hashtag: #. No joke. He just made the move to the search giant.

Where: Factory Joe (blog); @chrismessina (Twitter); Googleplex (analog place)

Who Else: Open standards are Messina’s forte, but he’s been preaching the gospel of openness to many Google teams.

Five Stats You Won’t Find in His Facebook Profile:

Worst Job: You know, I’ve led a pretty padded life, but I guess my worst one was when I was a janitor in a print shop while living in Switzerland. I was living in an attic in this tiny town to attend this Swiss design school–which I didn’t like at all–and this is how I made my meager living while there.

Has a Geek Crush on: I first started learning Web design by reading Jeffrey Zeldman’s book. There are lots, though. More related to the stuff I’m doing now, I think John Panzer is a big unsung hero, he’s the one pushing the Salmon stuff (Google’s open comment project) forward.

Gadget of the Moment: I still love my first-generation Apple (AAPL) iPhone. It doesn’t have 3G and it’s slow as molasses, but I really like the form factor, the metallic finish, everything. It also allows you to take screenshots, which is the one thing really missing from Android.

Biggest Difference Being at Google: Even more email, if you can believe it.

Design Geekiness: My favorite font ever is Pennsylvania by Christian Schwartz. I also like Bello, Flama and Tungsten.

Bio in 140 Characters

Born an New Hampshire, he trained as a communication designer at Carnegie Mellon. He left for California and has been into the open Web ever since.

The Five Questions

What does being an open Web advocate at Google mean? Does it feel like you are working for “The Man”?

Generally what I’m doing here is a lot like what I used to do, actually. I have contact with a lot of different developer teams, and I talk to them about how they can use open standards in their work. Right now though, mostly I’m working on Google Buzz, doing developer relations and helping design the Buzz APIs. We’re trying to create these technologies based on stuff from the grassroots communities where these things already exist, as opposed to inventing our own standards. We document everything on the Google code site and then we just talk about it. It’s a little bit of an evangelism role, in the sense that we have to go out and be a part of the community and be a router for information back into Google.

Big companies seem to have their own agendas and needs to be met, and what I’m realizing now is that a lot of times, they also don’t have time or a way to go out and find the places where these needs are and these tools are already being developed. There are a lot of people who are really hungry for this information, but maybe just didn’t know where to go.

So how do you see Google Buzz as a part of the social Web landscape, now that you’ve been on the inside?

We approached it from a “pieces that are loosely joined” perspective so that we can spit out smaller communities that are self-sufficient, rather than one big monolithic project like Facebook Connect. We built Buzz so that Google can be one place that hosts the underlying technologies, but the capabilities can be spread and used by anyone who wants that social functionality.

The goal is to create a much larger social Web that is dispersed, as opposed to another monolithic silo that sort of sucks in a lot of activity and doesn’t let anything out. Facebook is just the most recent silo, there have been lots in the past. AOL (AOL). Prodigy. A lot of times they don’t mean to be that, but it just happens.

How do you see the competing philosophies of openness and proprietary technology and information at play on the social Web?

I think the way that I look at it is that facilitating choice is actually a good way to ensure you remain competitive. Also, right now, the social Web is in such infancy that competing on what is available now seems so premature. I’d rather see us spend the next five or 10 years building out the social Web so that we have good standards for identity, good standards for authentication and open ways to bring your friends with you to any site on the Web.

Because we’ve never had this social data before, there’s this mentality that it’s solid gold, and we should be hoarding it keeping it from everyone and only letting out little bits. In reality, I think markets work best when there is a flow of data. If I can’t take my data out of one network and move it into another, like I can move credit card balances from one to the other, then I think we are inhibiting the types of things we should be building, which will be much richer.

I already sign into 10 Google products a day with the same account. Is my Google account going to become more like Facebook Connect?

Well, the technology is there, but it’s more a question of motivation. It’s actually a problem I’ve been working on for the last two or three years. The first question is, how do you provide choice to people when they want to log in (what do you ask for)? The other question is, why would they use any one service or other, given the choice?

Facebook has solved that problem by just eliminating the choice. You just choose Facebook Connect, click a button, and it will be fine. And it works pretty well.

A barrier for us is that our tools are built on standards like openID and OAuth that were designed by people who cared a lot more about privacy. As a result of that, a technology based on openID doesn’t automatically come with all the social data that make modern applications work. We are actually working with Facebook on this problem, because it turns out the hardest thing to figure out is just what to put on the user interface–how do you quickly ask people what they’d like to share? We want to avoid making Web sites look like the side of a Nascar.

Google’s push into mobile is based on open standards. How do you see that proliferating?

You know, even the iPhone is actually just a platform that interacts with a bunch of open standards and accepted systems. It relies on 3G, sends email, SMS, takes pictures that are compressed and connects to other devices via Bluetooth–they are all open standards and protocols that have enabled these great tools. I think people are going to want more. I’m intrigued by Android, and it, plus the devices it runs on, are really getting there.