Facebook is beta testing a product in the same space that so many giants have attacked and fallen short. The curated question-answer service has stumped the biggest of bigs. Has it been about social scale all along?
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. (more…)
AllThingsD- Almost Famous: Chris Messina of Google
A minute with Chris Messina of Google. We talk Buzz, Facebook and the future of openness at Google. (more…)
The Best (and Creepiest) Map Mashup Evar
Maybe it isnt dymanic like the map I made of flickr pictures in my most recent mashup post, but this one is infinitely cooler.
This is a heatmap of the places where you were most likely to find me over the last 3 months. Thanks to Foursquare, the location-based nerdmeasuring contest, I logged a couple hundred “checkins”, mostly on the stanford campus. A little Python sorcery and the Foursquare API later you get a cool heat-map of my places.
The two hottest spots are (predictably) McClatchy Hall where I work/attend classes, and Escondido Village, where I live (and of which I am currently Foursquare Mayor). Below is a zoomed-in version
You can also see my occasional check in at the Palo Alto Caltrain Station where I make my commutes up to AllThingsD where I Intern, my occasional checkin at the Aregalla Gym, and even a couple checkins at Facebook HQ.
Weird, yes. The good news is I had to login and authorize this thing eight ways from Sunday to get the map to populate, and event then, no one entity has enough of the info to create a new map- so not too bad.
This is the data marketing companies are starting to salivate over, especially if the data can be logged in real time. We already are offered deals and coupons based on Foursquare locations, but look out for similar offerings in Google maps, NYT.com and wherever else money can be made.
What Fresh New Hell is This? – Facebook Adds Pickpocketing Feature to its iPhone App (Updated)
Many of us followed the twitter griping surrounding Facebook’s recent privacy settings changes. Today’s release of Facebook 3.1 for iPhone is maybe the most frightening yet. For the first time, everyone’s favorite drunk-picture dissemination platform is reaching directly into your pocket for other people’s info.
They’ve even timed the release for the moment when all the world’s nerds-bloggers and nerd-journalists are distracted by the bright lights of Vegas and CES 2010.
This tweet from @hreingold sums it up pretty well I think: @WithDrake Every time Facebook hamhandedly changes privacy settings, I have to consult EFF to figure out exactly how I am being screwed
For a little background: Facebook now treats your list of friends— along with your name, profile picture, current city, gender, networks, and the pages that you are a “fan” of — as “publicly available information”. Maybe more importantly, the user can no longer throttle the privacy settings on that info. But that was last week’s problem.
I love upgrading apps. I get a little warm, fuzzy, “I’m getting something for free” feeling. However, the needle on my crap detector jumped to 11 today when I downloaded the iPhone Facebook App ver. 3.1. These screens, which appeared after the new Facebook 3.1 install, caught my eye.
Syncing grants Facebook full access to your address book. If you already sync your Gmail contacts with your iPhone address book, that means you will also be handing over the email addresses and names of everyone you have ever emailed.
I especially like the Last sentence on the second screen. Facebook may have no liability here (god knows we’ve all clicked “yes” to enough user agreements), but they seem to be trying to release themselves from an ethical dilemma of their own creation by asking if you could go around to your umpteen hundred friends and ask if its cool if you expose all of the data you store on the min your address book, to Facebook.
They don’t tell you what they might be doing with all this new data, just that you should make sure its cool with your friends. That’s like asking your friend to lend someone they don’t know their car. But don’t worry, this guy is cool. He’ll either wash it for you or sell it.
For LOTS more on Facebook and privacy, I recommend the EFF. Update 03.04.2010 Found out today that this post was cited as supporting evidence in a motion filed by epic.org before the FTC. Its buried in part 37, but its there. Have a look at the original documents.
Thursday’s NewTeeVee Live conference at S.F.’s Mission Bay Center is aimed at foretelling, and maybe saving, the future of TV.
The prognosticators have, for years, put TV in line somewhere behind Newspapers in the lemming-like march to the cliffs of new media. Players like Adobe, Cisco, Ooyala and Comcast are all in the room talking about turning that herd.
I’ll be live blogging from several of the sessions today, Starting with the 1:30 session with Kevin Lynch, the CTO of Adobe Systems
Live with Kevin Lynch, CTO of Adobe Systems
1:44- Lynch says Adobe’s purchase of Omniture has more to do with their high resolution metrics for flash video.
1:49- Lynch, ” [on Apple] We are partnering with 19 of the 20 top OEM’s for Smartphones. We are eager to work with that other once they get themselves to that place.”
Om Malik now on stage interviewing Quincy Smith currently of CBS interactive… though he will be leaving at the end of the year.
1:52- Smith, “3 [free] minutes of Beyonce online may ruin the album sales, but 3 minutes of CSI might be the best thing for it.”
1:57- Smith- Torrents are everywhere and slick. Everyone knows where the world is going, the question is how to get there? I wonder why TV companies arent adopting torrent protocols?
1:58- Om asks about why Smith hates on Google, Smith bobs and weaves, changes the subject. Mentions that Apple is cool too.
2.00- Om, “Wait, are you saying that Hulu takes traffic away from other network sites and the ‘big screen’.” Smith to Om, “Are you feeling empowered in that chair?” Smith continues, “You could argue that [views on Hulu] take hits away from the main web site.” I think to myself… uh, yeah. I’m not gonna watch John Stewart on Hulu, THEN go to comedycentral.com for the same content.
2:07- People who use “discovery” engines [for music] are more passionate consumers of music, says Quincy Smith.
2:08- Smith claims he may go back to being an investment banker… not sure why certain young VCs don’t like the “banker” moniker. Om reminds him what sort of rep. Wall Street has at the moment. Smith doesn’t flinch.
I’ll be heading off in a miunute to do an interview for an upcoming Almost Famous column at AllthingsD. Head over to NewTeeVeeLive to see the livestream of Micheal Gregory of Auto-Tune the News.
4:02-
Back up and live at NewTeeVee with Randi Zuckerberg, Dir. of Marketing for Facebook and Andy Mitchell, VP of Marketing for CNN.
4:03- I was given 3D glasses on the way in… and now Andy is talking about partnering with Facebook at the Obama inaugural.
4:06- First Facebook attempts with CNN flopped, there were tech issues associated with the connection during the debates.
4:10- CNN had 20 million streams on inauguration day, despite the fact that the inauguration video feed was for the pool. Randi says its because Facebook made is social.
4:16- (Inside my head)… There is a major difference between listening to the geeks and doers talk about innovation vs. the marketing team.
4:18- Randi says Facebook is working to add geographic data to user’s updates.
4:20- CNN’s Mitchell says they will be creating an event around news topics. Me: Is CNN making the news? Sure sounds like the CNN is in the “News Business” and not in the Journalism field. Does their news business get in the way of their Journalism?
4:22- Randi and Andy leave the stage.
First Column at AllThingsDigital
Almost Famous: Brizzly’s Chris Wetherell
A new feature wherein All Things Digital looks at up-and-coming and innovative start-ups you should know about.
This week: A video visit with, some questions for and a few pertinent stats about Chris Wetherell and his creation, Brizzly, a Web-based social media reader, one of many in the hot status update arena.
Who: Chris Wetherell
What: VP of Technology, Thing Labs, creator of Brizzly.
Why: Brizzly is a Web-based social media software client, for microblogging sites like Twitter or Facebook, expands attachments automatically and allows users to describe and define the trending topics for all its users to see. It’s in invite-only beta.
Where: @cw (Twitter); massless.org (Wetherell’s personal blog); San Francisco (HQ for Thing Labs and Brizzly)
Who else: TweetDeck, Seesmic, TwitIQ
Five Stats You Won’t Find in his Facebook Profile
Worst Job: Assembly line at Fujitsu, making rack servers
Has a Geek Crush on: Mihai Parparita, Google developer in Boston
Gadget of the Moment: Roku’s digital video box. “It’s got Netflix, You Tube and TV. Damn.”
Wishes There Was an App for: The legal arena. “They need to, like, use a computer.”
Fails at: Anything related to email
Bio in 140 Characters
From Beaverton, Ore. Dropped out of Berkeley. Got hungry as an indie rock drummer. @Google Reader. Left Google, invented Brizzly.
The Five Questions
Why should I care about Brizzly?
It depends on what you’re looking for. If one of the things that interests you is how a large community is experiencing life–I mean really interested in the community and not just the idea of your friends–then Brizzly does that a little more easily than other things. [Brizzly's assets are] no small difference for those who are interested in it.
Why are all Twitter-related logos, including yours, so darn cute?
Yeah, we’re a little cheeky, right? I think it’s probably just because of a pendulum swing. I mean, the last thing [Thing Labs' CEO Jason Shellen] and I worked on was the exact opposite. Google Reader is not cuddly. It’s friendly, but cuddly it isn’t. The other thing is, we were hoping to try what strong branding is like–in terms of anthropomorphic animals. The bear design [was drawn by] both Jason and [Twitter Co-founder] Biz Stone.
What can we expect from Thing Labs and Brizzly three months out?
We will have at least three richer sets of experiences, some of which include entirely different products all connected through our letsbetrends.com API.
Every geek has a memory where they saw something new and had to say to themselves, “Dang, I love living in the future.” What’s yours?
One big one for me was at Google–it was my first day and someone says, “Hey, have they taken you to see the robots yet?” I was like, “Hahaha… No.” They took me to this building where there was a room filled with these Rube Goldbergesque mechanical devices. Large cages with metal bars and wires, culminating in this ball in the center. This girl climbed into the thing. She put her feet in these stirrups and sat in this weird chair, and then this book slides out. The girl started tapping her feet on this base drum pedal and doing this thing with her hands, and then the book slides away [they were scanning the books]. I was like, “What is this?” and they said, “Well, this is Ocean [the internal name for Google Books].” What struck me was the scale. It was clear to me that they were going to scan ridiculous amounts of information very, very quickly, and I realized: Whoa, THIS is very different.”
Are you really competitive with rivals?
I just don’t have that kind of fight in me. I mean, I want to kick my own ass. I know there are lots of guys out there who can totally drop the names of someone they want to just crush. I just don’t have it. I get more frustrated with me, more than anyone else. I’m like Jim Carrey in “Liar Liar”: “I’m kicking my ass.”
Twitter for iPhone 101 Turn your device sideways if it helps you see the images. Next, go to my ‘Twitter 101 for Journalists’ Cheat Sheet Then, take it to the next level. Wan’t to post a picture, share a link, add your location or look up recent #hashtags you’ve used? It’s all easy. Click the [...]
Tweeting Guidelines 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 [...]
A few weeks back, The Newy York Times City room blog decided to give the crowd-sourcing business a try and build a photo montage of the NYC waterfront. New York has a working waterfront, and lots of it. Manhattan, after all, is an island. I went out to Brooklyn Bridge Park around dusk and looked [...]
The weekend of July 31, The New York Times’ City Room blog is asking you to help them cover New York’s waterfront, in a crowd-sourced storytelling adventure.
Below you’ll find all the info needed to submit some images and descriptions. Some of the best will be featured at nytimes.com and likley in the print edition of the paper.
They don’t have a post with instructions about it up yet, so I’ve pasted most of the email sent out about the project here so everyone can join in the fun.
Planned, shot, edited and filed all from the iPhone 4- this is my report from the gulf coast early in the week most experts predict the oil from the BP spill will begin to come ashore.
I’m currently on a road trip on my way to become an intern at The New York Times somewhere between the tech reporting and social media desks. Predictably, I picked up a new iPhone 4 on release day, with the hopes that the new camera and editing tools would make it a formidable news gathering device.
While my comrades and I didn’t see any oil on the beaches yet, we came across some very interesting preparations underway by the local population, as well as plenty of orange BP sponsored oil protection booms.
Facebook is beta testing a product in the same space that so many giants have attacked and fallen short. The curated question-answer service has stumped the biggest of bigs. Has it been about social scale all along?
Lick Observatory has been doing science since the late 1880s, when the first telescope was installed there. These photos were part of research for a forthcoming article. UC Lick Observatory
This past weekend, a little crowd of journalists, app developers and designers got together under the watchful eye of one Burt Herman to engage in an act of positive rebellion. They were there to wake up the old grey lady, drag her out of her bed, and teach her to dance like lady Gaga instead of like Grace Kelley.
There has been much hubub about Amazon peeking over the shoulder of its Kindle users, possibly without their asking. How are they justifying it? They may be treating your highlights as “communication” as defined by their web terms of use agreement. Highlighting = content creation = contribution. That’s a new one.
It’s an homage to my favorite pulp movie, shot on my favorite line of cameras. Bonus points if you can figure out who is playing the tambourine in the video. It took me a couple times.
This Sunday, 8am California time (15:00 U.T.C.), Lens, the New York Times photo blog will attempt to realize a web 1.0 dream- synchronization of a worldwide action. The blog staff, led by NY Times Sr. Staff Photographer James Estrin, has planned and publicized an event to document a single moment in human history on a global scale.
My Digital Media Entrepreneurship group from used a Stanford d.school technique to brainstorm 100 possible names for our product, organize them by theme and then cut them down to the final four, all in under 10 minutes. Here are two quick photos of the process
We all need to find insights about how to make our projects more relevant to users, but have only a finite amount of time to gather user data. If we were bigger and funded, we could to focus groups and A/B testing out the wazoo. Instead, I suggest you take a page from the Stanford design school (d.school) playbook.
This is a short sampling of some of my video work. All videos here were produced for D:AllThingsDigital, and featured both there at at WSJ.com. In all cases the writing, production and editing are my work. In cases where I’m in front of the camera it is following me, I had some videographer help. Hey, [...]
I’ll periodically be live streaming from in front of the University Avenue Apple store in Palo Alto, CA. I’m covering the fanboy mayhem for AllThingsD, but I figured we could have a little live video too. I’m tweeting the action from @withdrake. Scoble is here, Ben Parr stopped by, and as soon as my intrepid [...]
How I converted a standard Timbuk2 backpack into an iPhone-charging, laptop-toting, enviro-hipster envy making, solar power machine. Plus all the instructions for you to make your own.
ice folks at the MOTO development group have released this video detailing the performance characteristics of various touch screens on the market. It gets ugly for the Droid.
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.
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 late 2009, San Francisco Chronicle Staff writer and fellow Stanford grad student Kathryn Roethel and I followed the Coughlin family through several weeks of treatment and preparation leading up to Little Chase’s Make-a-Wish trip to Disneyland.
Early last week, Stanford’s graduate journalism Students used phones, email, text messages and twitter to reenact the earliest moments of reporting after the recent catastrophic earthquake in Chile. Did they do irreparable harm to the information landscape? To those who lost loved ones in the actual quake? To the reputations of their own brands?
The Nutshell: You head over to chatroulette.com, hit start, and your webcam and microphone are activated. You are immediately connected to another live human being, selected at random from the users online at the time. If a person doesn’t look interesting for whatever reason, you just hit next and you are shuffled over to the next random person. Sounds Harmless, right?
In August 2009, I had the pleasure of documenting the Braille Institute’s 2009 Cycling for Sight charity ride. The map is a set of 133 geolocated photos pulled from my flickr page.
Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Ning, email, digg, delicious….. Today the personal sharing options are endless. Using enough of thes services in concert most certainly connects you with more people than many “broadcasters” who have to be licensed by the FCC. That is it say, its powerful stuff.
Many of us followed the twitter griping surrounding Facebook’s recent privacy settings changes. Today’s release of Facebook 3.1 for iPhone is maybe the most frightening yet. For the first time, everyone’s favorite drunk-picture dissemination platform is reaching directly into your pocket for other people’s info.
For Redwood City parents coping with 5-year-old’s chronic disease, normal life is the greatest gift.
My colleague Kathryn Roethel produced an amazing magazine length story that I was lucky enough to photograph. Please read this amazing story of a remarkable little boy.
Canadian geese have come to dominate the lawns of the city’s beloved Memorial Park. In their Thursday, Oct. 1 meeting, the Cupertino Parks and Recreation Commission took up the unusual problem and discussed goose abatement strategies.
A new feature wherein All Things Digital looks at up-and-coming and innovative start-ups you should know about.
This week: A video visit with, some questions for and a few pertinent stats about Chris Wetherell and his creation, Brizzly, a Web-based social media reader.
The NYT Doesn’t Cost a Dime Anymore. I Don’t Know Why We Expect it to Turn on One.
In front of an audience of roughly 100, some of whom appeared to have arrived from the myriad alumni events happening on campus this homecoming weekend, Professor and Pulitzer winner Joel Brinkley moderated a combo lecture and discussion between some of Journalism’s giants-left-standing.
This is a test of Apture. If I were to write about Ghana, this is what Apture can do. I can also look at Stanford. And Miran Pavic. If I were to add a link to Make-a-Wish, it would be here. Damn.
Our original conversation with Mr. Bai was over an hour. We’ve selected a few highlights to give a sense of the experience had by those at the forum, and of Mr. Bai’s place in journalism.
On Sunday the 20th, the Graduate Program in Journalism Cohort at Stanford held the first installment of our “BlogLuck”. The goal of the program is to leverage the various expertises in the group into informative lessons and conversations to share amongst the group.
Background: In 2004, I was starting work at a radio station and playing the harmonica a lot. I would carry my harp case and practice amp to friends’ houses and jams various places. The gear setup wasnt bad, but I thought it could be better. the Jamcase was my first more involved build. It entailed [...]
So I’m almost finished with a fun little project to turn my SF style bike helmet into something a little more useful thanks to some clever tail light integration. That post will be up in the “Projects” page in the next day or two. However, while photographing the light I’m using, something very strange happened. [...]
All of these communications technologies: Twitter, Google Voice, skype, Flickr, etc are, lets face it and call a duck a duck, just data handling and interface engines. It’s all streams of digital information, that is, ones and zeros at the most basic level.
We are witnessing the slow death of telephony.
This week I officially started my employ as intern at allthingsD, WSJ affiliated tech sector news site. I attended my first staff meeting at their headquarters in the Noe Valley in SF, and hopped right in the saddle to write my first “Weekend Update”. Its a weekly wrap-up of some highlights from the previous week [...]
Hi Guys, I recently reupped my all access pass for the first time in about a year. I had just created a video and the combo of you $3-$25 pricing strategy and the quality of the new video effects sealed the deal for me. My only concern is that like MOST purchasers, I may have [...]
Below are a few audio pieces I put together surrounding the Cycling for Sight 2009 ride. [podcast]http://www.withdrake.com/newsite/wp-content/Podcasts/CFSGenesisStory.mp3[/podcast] The Genesis Story This is the genesis story of the ride, featuring ride co-founders Dave, Johnathan and Andy. They talk adventure cycling, crazy ideas and the line between genius and insanity. Give a listen. Its about 10mins. long. [...]
The following is an excerpt from a June 18th issue of the NYT online edition. I posed a question about growth of visual media in the online environment and the role of it’s producers. Assistant Managing editor Michele McNally had this to say. Talk to the Newsroom: Assistant Managing Editor Michele McNally The Changing Role [...]
Here is a little video mashup from my ride aboard the vomit comet. You can see more pics HERE, but please enjoy the video. I’ve addd a little video from inside the NBL (Neutral Buoyancy Lab) where I did my physiological training VIDEO. Its also where they have the 6.5 million gallon pool with the [...]
My hop finally came today after reporting to Ellington Airfeild at 7am. I was suited up, attached to my electrodes and sat down for a solid half hour of three seperate breifings (think pre-flight safety briefing on a commercial aircraft but in an acrobatic jumbo jet). The Vomit Comet du jour was a 727 operated [...]
The first NASA photos are up. Have a look. I’ll be writing a little story/recap about my NASA zero G experience probably from my flight out tomorrow. it feels about 500% more awesome than the pictures look. Also, look for some cool videos soon.
Greetings to all the return viewers, as well as first timers. The link below will take you to a very special video unlike anything we’ve produced so far. Its a combination of photos and sounds that gets to the heart of why CFS is so very special. Please come back to withdrake.com in the coming [...]
Just the beginning. Come back tomorrow night for lots more multi-media from the ride. Greetings again all. We gathered so much great multi-media material over the last couple days that its still being processed, chewed on, sorted and arrangted for your consuming pleasure. I plan on spending my day tomorrow finalizing some awesome features that [...]
Today our car route took us a little away from our bikers, so the media crew decided to roll out something we’ve been thinking about all along. There are a few pictures below, but the highlight of the post tonight is a very special kind of slide show. Throw on some headphones and hit the [...]
Check out today’s photos! We had a great ride from UC Santa Barbara to Pepperdine U, on our way to raising $75,000 for the Braille Institutes. A photo montage is below, or feel free to check out the gallery below that. Cycling for Sight 2009- Ride Day 1 from E. Drake Martinet on Vimeo.
Just a few photos from day one of the ride. High spirits and fresh legs all around. CFS09 has almost met their goal of $75,000, and you can log on to donate. Just click the banner at the bottom of the photo gallery for details.
Beginning tomorrow, withdrake.com will be home to all the latest updates from the 2009 San Deigo Braille Institute “Cycling for Sight” Ride. Dozens of both sighted and vidualy impaired riders will be braving the byways between Santa Barbara and San Diego in a three day race for funds, awareness and community. I’ll be documenting the [...]
The photography section of the site has finally been fleshed out. Have a look, tell em what you think, leave your comments. Just head over to “Photofolio” in the “projects” section.
Here are a few videos from my 2008 Sustainable Peoples project. Sustainable Peoples Webisode 1- You Already Changed the World. from E. Drake Martinet on Vimeo. Sustainable Peoples Webisode 2- Faith, Medecine and a New Way Forward from E. Drake Martinet on Vimeo. Sustainable Peoples Webisode 3- Micro Agriculture and a Lifetime of Activism from [...]
My 8 year old self is shooting temporally displaced spit wads at the back of my 25 year old head today. Jealousy, thy name is NASA. These are some iphone shots from this mornings briefing at NASA Ames. I guess this is post is the first of many about my experience as a test subject [...]
