Goldie's Gabs

New Blog Location

2009-10-05T12:03:00.000-07:00

I was just doing some blog maintenance and realized that I have quite a few pointer sites still pointing to this blog on blogspot. If you've been checking here on blogspot and wondering when I'm going to post...I've moved the blog location to: http://goldiesgabs.com/

(I had been redirecting the URL to blogspot but it broke, so I decided to self host.)

So come on over to my new site and I'll go see if there are any other widgets still pointing over here.

Tangible and Virtual

2009-02-11T12:42:00.000-08:00

Just ended a three day training session for work. Not for my usual sort of job but a more "get your hands dirty" kind of job. It was a really fun, class. Most of the students were desk workers like me, but there were two guys who were the supervisors for the type of job we were training for and had real life experience, as did the instructor.

It was fascinating, they had these stories of real life situations where being careful about safety meant the difference between life and death, or stories about things they built with their hands, or stories about hard work on the job and the connections with their co-workers who stood by their side through the hard work.

On the last day of the class in another "just talking about stuff" session one of the other desk workers students said, what I had been thinking in the back of my mind, "I'm trying to think of any good cubicle stories and I can't think of any." It isn't that there aren't any, but so much of what we do is solitary, or so very intangible that it is hard without the context and a like understanding to see the passion or realness of the struggle.

There are some that come up, but there is no working hard in the rain (unless there is a leaky roof) and lots of jobs don't directly touch people's lives or essential services. Sure we have our struggles and challenges, and they seem as real...but when you try to share them in the telling it is hard to find the bridge.

Now I'm not hanging up my desk job apron and going out to look for something more physical to do for work. Society and day to day life just as essentially relies on these software systems and applications as they rely on the physical layers. However, how much do we see the impact of what we do, of the code we write. How does it impact other people's lives. And how does the virtual become graspable beyond those with the specialized knowledge. Is that possible or has it become too complex.

In a sense the stories that they told were modern day moral stories. How easy can we make modern day moral stories of our lives and our actions and our projects? And then, how long does it take before we can look back and see that what we did today was a great story. So maybe today is making a good moral story for tomorrow, but its worth looking and seeing if your cubicle or coffee shop story will be something to share down the road, and if not why?

The Father of the Rothschilds

2009-01-25T10:47:00.000-08:00

This week we read a story about Maier Anschel Rothschild - the founder of the Rothschild banking dynasty.

This story is taken from volume 4 of The Storyteller by Nissan Mindel

Waking Up Angry

2009-01-12T10:27:00.000-08:00

Ed: What follows are some personal thoughts, but I thought that perhaps my lessons learned would help someone else

Today I woke up angry, and that's good. I was angry at me for forgetting who I am and what my strengths are. Sometimes something is hard because you are making a big difference and changing something that needs changing. And sometimes things are hard because your doing it wrong.

For me, it was the latter. The problem with a decent amount of competency and stubborn headedness is that most things that you put your head to you can do reasonably well, even if its not your thing to do. The only problem is that it takes all your time and energy and you aren't doing what you are good at and can make a difference doing.

Somewhere along the way I got back to my younger self and was trying to hang out with the cool kids. I'm not one of the cool kids, and I probably never will be, and trying to be there is just saying cool is the only way to be.

Instead teaching classes that people clamor for (I have 2 emails in my inbox and one person who pesters me once a month to see if I'll teach again) I've been busy organizing things and running events, and at the same time being behind scenes too much to be very visible, unless you were paying attention.

Sometimes its your smallness that gets you to realize that you're on the wrong path. And I guess that's what it was for me. I need my projects to give me a sense of overall benefit, and yes, I like continued recognition (as long as people are still talking about what I did.) Teaching and virtual worlds, and blogging all give me that feedback. So does participating in things like Seesmic and the other social parts of Web 2.0 - for the fun of it.

So it's time for me to stop trying to be all that I can be, and instead be me. Sometimes you have to stretch beyond what you can do, but sometimes you have to come home and focus on who you are and what benefits you.

Goldie's Stories - A Little Light Dispells a World of Darkness

2009-01-04T00:49:00.001-08:00

This week we read the story that is in the epilogue of the book Truths Revealed: Modern Stories of Miracles & Faith which is written by a friend of mine. It is a story about darkness and light.

This story is from the epilogue of the book Truths revealed: Modern day stories of faith & miracles by Tzvi Jacobs

Goldie's Stories - Episode 23

2008-12-28T13:44:00.001-08:00

In today's story we complete the stories from Legends of Judah the Macabee with the story of the Miracle of Chanukah.

If you haven't caught the whole series here are the links to the series in order.

The Rise of Antiochus Epiphanes
The Hellenizers
Antiochus Takes Action
The Death of Eleazar the Priest
Hannah and Her 7 Sons
Rebellion in Modiin
The Death of Matisyahu
Judah the Maccabee Goes to War

And today - The Miracle of Chanukah

This story comes from Legends of Judah The Maccabee
by S. Skulsky

Goldie's Stories - Episode 22

2008-12-27T20:54:00.000-08:00

Today's story is a continuation of the book, Legends of Judah the Macabee, Today we read chapter 8 - Judah the Macabee goes to war.

This story comes from Legends of Judah The Maccabee
by S. Skulsky

Goldie's Stories - Episode 21

2008-12-26T10:59:00.000-08:00

Today we continue the daily story from an adaptation of Aggadot Yehuda Ha Makkabi. Today's story is about the passing of Matisyahu.

This story comes from Legends of Judah The Maccabee
by S. Skulsky

Goldie's Stories - Episode 20

2008-12-25T21:55:00.000-08:00

Today's story, the continuation of the history and story of a Chanukah - Rebellion begins in the mountain town of Modiin.

This story comes from Legends of Judah The Maccabee
by S. Skulsky

Goldie's Stories - Episode 19

2008-12-24T17:16:00.000-08:00

Today's chapter is the story of Hannah and her Seven Sons. This is an incredibly sad story associated with Chanukah. (In fact, I could not keep entirely from crying at the end.) With that in mind I have also included a happier Chanukah story that I recorded last year of Herschel and the Hannukah Goblins.

Hannah and her Seven Sons:

The previous story comes from Legends of Judah The Maccabee
by S. Skulsky

Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins:

The previous (and second) story comes from Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins

Goldie's Stories - Episode 18

2008-12-24T09:49:00.000-08:00

Today we continue the daily story from an adaptation of Aggadot Yehuda Ha Makkabi, which tells the history leading up to Chanukah, as well as the story of the Miracle of Chanukah. Today's story is about the Antiochus's challenge to Eleazar the Priest.

This story comes from Legends of Judah The Maccabee
by S. Skulsky

Goldie's Stories - Episode 17

2008-12-22T18:23:00.000-08:00

Today we continue the daily story from an adaptation of Aggadot Yehuda Ha Makkabi, which tells the history leading up to Chanukah, as well as the story of the Miracle of Chanukah. Today's story is about the Antiochus's first actions to attempt to crush out Judaism.

This story comes from Legends of Judah The Maccabee
by S. Skulsky

Goldie's Stories - Episode 16

2008-12-21T16:23:00.000-08:00

Today we continue the daily story from an adaptation of Aggadot Yehuda Ha Makkabi, which tells the history leading up to Chanukah, as well as the story of the Miracle of Chanukah. Today's story is about the Hellenizers.

This story comes from Legends of Judah The Maccabee
by S. Skulsky

Goldie's Stories - Episode 15

2008-12-20T22:33:00.000-08:00

This week we have something a little different. In honor of Chanukah we will be reading a daily story from an adaptation of Aggadot Yehuda Ha Makkabi, which tells the history leading up to Chanukah, as well as the story of the Miracle of Chanukah. Today's story is about the rise of Antiochus Epiphanes.

This story comes from Legends of Judah The Maccabee
by S. Skulsky

Goldie's Stories - Episode 14

2008-12-13T20:16:00.000-08:00

During the time of the Alter Rebbe, the first Lubavitcher Rebbe, there were many who opposed the teaching of Chassidus, that is, Jewish Mysticism. Some of these opponents trumped up charges that resulted in the Alter Rebbe's arrest. This week we hear some stories from the first imprisonment of the Alter Rebbe.

This story comes from the book The Arrest and Liberation of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi: The History of Yud-Teth Kislev

Goldie's Stories - Episode 13

2008-12-06T21:34:00.000-08:00

This week we hear the story of a student of the Baal Shem Tov and the directive that the student was given to follow after the Baal Shem Tov's death.

This story comes from Volume 3 of Extraordinary Chassidic Tales, an unfortunately out of print series of books.

Twitter and Links

2008-11-22T17:53:00.000-08:00

Chances are you may have come to this post because someone (me?) twittered the link. (Or you may be someone who stops by regularly via rss or other means, for which I thank you.) At the same time I have fairly recently complained about linking in twitter. Of course a real explanation takes more than 140 characters and so...here's a blog post.

The person, who had followed me so I was checking their twitter feed, and the top tweet asked, "How do you get more followers." My response was provide more content than links (as 90% of the page was links to their blog.)

So are links bad? Of course not. I tweet links all the time, including about my blog posts, and just as this person replied - I do like to know what other people are looking at on the internet. But that comes, of course, with a caveat.

I want to know what people I think are interesting, or I think have some common interests with me, or people I am friends with are looking at on the internet. There is plenty of stuff out on the internet I have no desire to look at.

When I use twitter to find these links I essentially am filtering by who I follow.
And how do I chose who follow? I ask, is the content of that person's tweets interesting, is this someone I know by other channels is interesting or shares a common interest, or is this person a friend.

As you can see by how many I follow, I follow back most people who follow me. I once tried cutting back the list followers to a "manageable amount" and that very day I had great conversation via @ message from someone I had just unfollowed. At that point I decided I'd follow those I think are interesting and would be someone I'd have a conversation with, and trust I'll catch the right things in the mighty flow of the twitter stream.

If you want people to follow you - and that is your stated goal, share who you are so people can known if you are a person they want to follow. That's the real secret, and I've read the same or heard the same from many. So share your links and announce your posts but also share some thoughts and comments in your twitter stream. We'd like to know you.

Goldie's Stories - Episode 12

2008-11-22T17:39:00.000-08:00

This week is Thanksgiving in the USA. So this week we have a story of Herschel of Osteropol and a goose dinner...or foot to be specific. Story is based on the book The Adventures of Herschel of Ostropol retold by Eric A Kimmel.

Goldie's Stories - Episode 11

2008-11-15T18:52:00.000-08:00

This week we read an unusual story about Reb Shmuel Munkis, involving sorcerers, whisky and a trip to Liozna.

This story comes from the Early Chassidic Personalities series book on Reb Shmuel Munkis, by Rabbi Sholom D. Avtzon

All Your Passwords Are Belong To Us

2008-11-12T17:03:00.000-08:00

How much do you value your online identity? How often are you asked to share your login and password to a) find out your ranking b) locate your friends c) easily combine all of your feeds into one place.

I would bet that the answer to the first question is - fairly highly and the answer to the second question (if you are using social networking sites much at all) is fairly frequently. If I guessed your answers correctly then we have a problem.

Today twitter is a flurry about twitterank and the possibility that it was a twitter identity phishing site. Posts on mashable and zdnet talk about it in more detail. But calling the users gullible is really just ignoring the problem.

This problem doesn't just exist on twitter, and it doesn't just exist for people who want to rank themselves against others. The problem is that we have information, sometimes a lot of information, on many sites that we want to share with other sites.

As long as access to this information requires providing the login and password to a particular service to access that information people will continue to give out their login and password.

The truth is the services have trained us (beyond our natural tendencies) to give out that information by not implementing API's to allow access to the data in a more secure fashion.

The solution is not to be found by telling thousands of people to guard their password - that will not work. Rather the services need to implement APIs that allow the sharing of the information (and the revocation of the sharing of that information) that are as easy to use and as widely used as the "give me your login and password" solution that exists today.

Sure some features can be provided by third party tools - but (ahem, twitter are you listening) security actually needs to be implemented on a site by site basis.

There are some people who never share a login and psssword, but there are also people who still refuse to run AJAX. For the vast majority of the public there are at least some services that are critical enough to them to use that they need to share information between sites. It's time for web 2.0 to get to the next stage where there is a way to securely share that information.

Goldie's Stories - Episode 10

2008-11-08T20:31:00.000-08:00

This week we read a story about Herschel of Osteropol a common character in the folklore of Eastern European Jews. His stories always have a bit of wit and cleverness. This telling of the story is based on the one found in the book The Adventures of Herschel of Ostropol retold by Eric A Kimmel

Goldie's Stories - Episode 9

2008-11-01T20:12:00.000-07:00

This week's story is a modern day story that takes place in Tel Aviv and is taken from Tuvia Bolton's Torah Online weekly mailing.
http://www.ohrtmimim.org/Torah_default.asp

(Reference for the video: tefillin)

Goldie's Stories - Episode 8

2008-10-25T19:54:00.000-07:00

During the time of the Tzemach Tzedek, the third Lubavitcher Rebbe, there were many women who's husbands had abandoned them without giving them a writ of divorce. This left them without their husband and without the ability to remarry. These women are called agunot. This week we read a story about how the Tzemach Tzedek, helped an agunah find her husband.

Also, I will be at the Thin Air Summit, the first New Media Conference in Denver on November 8 & 9th I'd love to see you there.

Goldie's Stories - Episode 7

2008-10-18T22:26:00.000-07:00

This week we read a story about the Tzemach Tzedek, the third Lubavitcher Rebbe, and the work he did with the Cantonists and in helping others avoid that fate.

For those who don't already know about the Cantonists there's a bit of an introduction to that period of history at the beginning of the episode.

This story is taken from the book The Third Judge.

Goldie's Stories - Episode 6

2008-10-11T19:54:00.000-07:00

This week we read a story about Reb Shmuel Munkis and the Kabbalistic question he gives to his fellow traveler.

This story comes from the Early Chassidic Personalities series book on Reb Shmuel Munkis, by Rabbi Sholom D. Avtzon

Goldie's Stories - Episode 5

2008-10-04T22:38:00.000-07:00

Last week we read a story about the Rebbe Maharash, the fourth Lubavitcher Rebbe. This week we read an Erev Yom Kippur story about his wife Rebbetzin Rivkah, her son, and her grandson.

This story is taken from Extraordinary Chassidic Tales, an unfortunately out of print series of books.

Goldie's Stories - Episode 4

2008-09-27T21:18:00.000-07:00

This week we are reading a story about the Rebbe Maharash, the fourth Lubavitcher Rebbe. Although he was known as the Baal Shemske Rebbe because so many miracles occurred when he was Rebbe this story shows the power of belief to cause a transformation.

For those who are interested in more from the behind the scenes I usually read through some of the dozens of story books that I have in our house (many of them collections of stories) to find ones that seem right for the time (season/calendar wise) and length. One story I had considered I realized was too long, and I didn't feel up to rewriting the story. I decided that the bagel story would be a good one, but I couldn't find the book I had read it from. So, while I am reading the story, what I am reading is my writing of the story as I remember it.

Goldie's Stories - Episode 3

2008-09-20T22:06:00.000-07:00

This week's story is a story about Rabbi Akiva and his wife Rachel. When Rachel met Rabbi Akiva, then a shepherd in her father's employ, he was illiterate. But she saw wisdom in him and agreed to marry him if he would go to learn Torah...which of course first meant learning to read. The long story short - he became a great sage and his teachings are still taught and studied today. But this story, based on Midrash HaGadol, takes place earlier in the story.

This story can be found in the book No Greater Treasure: Stories of Extraordinary Women Drawn from the Talmud and Midrash.

Goldie's Stories - Episode 2

2008-09-13T21:44:00.000-07:00

This Thursday will be the 18th of the month Elul, which is the anniversary of the Baal Shem Tov's birthday. In honor of this, this week I read two Baal Shem Tov stories from the book "Extrodinary Chassidic Tales"

Thin Air Summit - Speakers and Registration

2008-09-08T16:32:00.000-07:00

I know my blogging about the Thin Air Summit, the New Media Conference in Colorado (Nov 7-9), has been a bit sparse here. In our Web2.0 and New Media discussions on the web one of the mantras that runs through them both is "try something beyond what you've done before." With the Thin Air Summit I've been doing just that, and it has been a little scary, and thus the blogging sparseness. Luckily I have an excellent team working on this with me and it has really come together. I am really looking forward to the event.

To tell you a bit more about the conference (and to quote our website):

We are offering hands-on learning sessions and discussion panels presented by nationally-recognized and local New Media professionals. The size of the Summit is limited to 100 attendees, ensuring an intimate, intensive weekend of collaboration, education and community.

We have our Keynote Speakers, Dave Taylor and Jerimiah Owyang. Right now we are working on finalizing our speaker and panel line up and we are still accepting speaking proposals until September 18.

If you speak on new media, specifically blogging, video or audio and would like to present, I'd love to have you submit a proposal to present.

Proposals will be reviewed by the planning committee and speakers will be selected based on their knowledge level, experience presenting in a 'learning' environment and the relevance of their proposed topic to the conference theme. This is our first year, so we're on a shoestring budget, but the experience we're planning to create should be well worth your time.

You can submit your proposals at: http://www.thinairsummit.com/presenting/

We will be opening registration shortly and I will post an update here (as well as twittering about it.)

Goldie's Stories - Episode 1

2008-09-06T22:07:00.000-07:00

At the last Denver Area Podcaster's meetup Len Edgerly spoke on his Kindle Chronicles podcast and gave six lessons on podcasting. One of his points of advice was to start before you know what you want to podcast on, and when your subject finds you, you will already be ready. He also told a story about a poet, William Stafford, who advised his students to write a poem a day. When one complained that he couldn't do that the teacher told his student "Lower your standards."

So in that spirit, I have started a podcast now rather than waiting for all pieces to come together, knowing that it will improve as I continue.

Without further ado - Here is "Goldie's Stories with Goldie Katsu - Episode 1"

Life Streaming and Sweetcron

2008-08-28T19:05:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I hang back a bit before trying out a new application, especially in a crowded app space (another X app?). At other times I seem to jump in at the beginning. The past couple of days there has been a lot of talk about Sweetcron (no not corn, cron) even though it wasn't released until this morning. This afternoon I downloaded the latest version (already 5 revs out from the version I downloaded this morning) and installed it at http://www.goldiekatsu.com which until now just had a placeholder wordpress blog that said come here for more.

Sweetcron bills itself as an "Automated lifestream blogging service." What that translates to is - a way to create your personal friend feed friend on your website and throw in a blogging tool on top of it. The visual style lends itself to a "tumblr" sort of blog, and it will throw in whatever feeds you send it.

I set it up and threw some feeds at it and looked at the result. It is an interesting seeing my "output on the net" in a sequential format. You can see when I blogged relative to my tweets and plurks and photos and whatnot. Even though this isn't that different from friend feed, somehow the visual format, and having it on my host as my website made it a different experience. The stark list made me look at what I was putting out on the web, and variety there was or wasn't in that output.

Interestingly I have never done a "today's tweets" post because I tend to think of my twitters as primarily chatter and conversation and not something to list daily as something of consequence. Ironically on the website that bears my name, that is exactly what most of the content is. 140 characters is much easier to write than most other output.

Right now my sweetcron is an experiement, and it has proved to be a bit of an exercise in self reflection. What am I putting out there on the web, and is it what I want to be the reflecton of me?

The Trouble with Twitters

2008-08-26T11:12:00.000-07:00

I must confess, I am a twitterer. But you probably already knew that, and possibly wandered here from my twitter profile in the first place. I find I get a lot out of twitter, from useful information, social connections, news about events local and virtual, and more. The challenge is in taming the flow of the information.

Way back when I started using twitter I followed the basic policy that as long as someone who follows me isn't a bot, a commercial, or way too offensive I follow back. That was great at the beginning but once exceeding around 200 people being followed it became hard to follow the tweetstream as so much information and so many people are twittering. Sometimes the things I wanted to hear about just got missed in the rapid scroll of tweets. Some people only follow select people I can completely understand that policy, the nature of twitter changes significantly when the number gets large. Some people consider this elitist, I just consider this a different way of handling information flow.

I have considered cutting back the number of followers, but how do I pick. Once I went through a winnowing process and the next day got into a really interesting @ discussion with someone I had just unfollowed, who was promptly refollowed.

I tried setting up a second account with a "short list" but I usually ignored that stream, and keeping it up to date with new connections of people I do want to hear just proved too much bother.

The other problem is it isn't like I have one list of people I want to listen to. I'm involved in many different groups and activities and different people speak to different focuses. What I have wanted for a while was a way to group friends and be able to chose which group to look at. Twhirl's searches came close, but Tweetdeck really seems to have hit the nail on the head. I think that tweetdeck may be the start of a new breed of twitter clients.

For the first time in ages I can actually catch the conversations I was missing, and that also means I catch the main timeline more often too because I am getting value out of twitter again. It isn't enough to just "read what's current when you have time" because not all tweets are equal - I wanted the volume up higher on some tweets, and now I can have that. Thanks tweetdeck for giving me my twitter back.

Pseudo Biker Poetry

2008-08-18T02:43:00.000-07:00

The hot spell that held Colorado in its grasp seems to have broken and quite a bit of rain has fallen in the past few days. In looking at my old stack of poetry I found a poem from 1991 that seemed a good fit:

The first rain has fallen
Bringing in the moist cool fall.
The oils wick up
And the plastic paints take on a new demeanor.

My tires make their way across the tarmac
That grips half heartedly
And I remember,
Shift smoothly.

The crisp air brings many memories
And the chimneys begin their scents.
The autom rides have beauty
And new challenges to bear.

Ride swift and wll
Before the frosts come.
But remember wet leaves
Grip not as well as warm asphalt.

09/26/91

Memories of the Fourth

2008-07-04T18:34:00.000-07:00

So it is the Fourth of July, and a Friday. I'm pondering if I am up to a 2.5 mile walk to go see fireworks or if I will just watch the ones that go high enough to see them from my house. The Fourth of July has always been a special holiday in my family. My grandparents lived in Massachusetts, and so more than one Fourth was celebrated watching the fireworks over the Boston Harbor listening to the Boston Pops.

But even a stronger memory, perhaps because I was a older, is my memory of the Fourth of July in Nevada City. I can't place what year it was, or even how old I was because my summers in Nevada City, from when I was about 11 until I was somewhere in my 20s have sort of a timeless quality about them. It is one place that truly feels home to me, even though I have never lived there. Anyways, one particular Fourth, as usual with my mother's whole family together it was decided that we would be in the Fourth of July parade in Nevada City.

Wait, you might, say, you mean several weeks/months before it was decided and your uncles put an entry in to be in the parade. No, that isn't what I meant. It was the fourth and it was decided there. We all dressed in red white and blue, my Uncle Saul and I had our fifes (my uncle gave me one) and we headed to somewhere close to the start. I recall Uncle David talking with someone but I am dubious that it was anything official, but shortly after the starting point of the parade my family entered the parade; my Grandma, my Grandpa, my mom, my uncles and me all started marching. We waved at the crowd and played Yankee Doodle Dandy on the Fife and Uncle David proudly announced us as the "Levi Clan" and we marched along the parade as the crowd applauded.

So when I think of the Fourth of July I remember sparklers, my dad setting off fireworks, going to the beach north of Santa Cruz that was like a war zone on the fourth (yes, my friends had mortars, yes the sand was sometimes made glass), good food and friends, but most of all I remember marching in the parade in Nevada City because we decided to.

Surreptitious Posting

2008-06-06T14:49:00.000-07:00

It's not a Fishbowl, It's a Habitrail

2008-06-06T12:20:00.000-07:00

In a lot of places I hear people talking about how we are in our little echo chamber, or fishbowl. I get that concept. I have talked with people who have written (and had published) books on film who when I talked to them about video on the net said "Oh yeah, my husband sometimes sends me funny videos from YouTube." Yes, there is a huge digital divide, no question about it.

Lately though I've been thinking it is less of a fishbowl and more of a habitrail. I have been working on building connections in Colorado and trying to create a network where those of us creating and involved in this new media/social media/web2.0 stuff in Colorado can start to meet each other and know about each other here in Colorado rather than finding our neighbors at some conference in Las Vegas.

What this means is that I am meeting a lot of people who are in the "fishbowl" who only know about some small segment of the fishbowl. Some of these people are well connected individuals yet when I mention people who I think are incredibly visible, like Loic Lemeur, Chris Brogan, Cali Lewis, or Gary Vaynerchuk they respond with a blank look. They have no idea who these people are.

After curbing my initial self righteous response I realize that chances are some of their big name people are unknowns to me. Yes I blog, but I'm not "a big blogger" my focus is video, so yes I know people who are visible in video. For those into audio there may be a whole other group of "must knows" that I may be ignorant of, and then music - who are the connectors there?

I may know a few people in each of these groups through twitter but really I swim in the social media tools, video and virtual worlds areas. Furthermore, even though I treat these areas as contiguous really each is its own area. Rather than being a big fishbowl it is more like we are in a habitrail. These worlds all connect through those tunnels but each section is mostly aware of the room they are in.

So I would say, yes we should ask, "How do we get out of the fishbowl or echo chamber?" But perhaps a first question is "How do we communicate across the habitrail?"

On the Other Hand

2008-06-05T14:33:00.001-07:00

Transcription can be found in the comments. You can click on the image below to make it bigger (and slightly more readable).

(Why in the comments? Are you reflexively reading my typed text first? For many they do.)
(Normal typewritten posts will be returning shortly.)

Post Mortem on a Handwritten Post

2008-06-05T11:44:00.001-07:00

Follow up on my previous handwritten post.

Also, I can add, after transcribing the first post, editing is much easier in the digital form, and length seems more apparent when measured in pages.

Untitled Handwritten Post

2008-06-05T11:31:00.001-07:00

Ok, Eric started this meme, and PurpleCar got me thinking, so it is time for me to join in.

What is this meme? Well since I can't just link it here I'll tell you. Write a blog post. No, not type, write. And now you can see my fine hand :)

So a few thoughts popped up when I read PurpleCar's post.
1) All fo my fountain pens were dry. Shows how much I write.

2) If google can't scan and index this is this a way to have a private chat?
(and can google really not scan this - I am reminded of evernote.)

3) The difficult in providing links in a graphical post, andhow on my old websites I used image maps.

Of course if you are reading this (unspellchecked) post in its original you both can see and are good at deciphering handwriting. The text to speech converters won't work on this, and it pr is a slower read, just as it is a slower write.

Goldie

Of course I can link in the transcript, so I will.

New Media Conference in Colorado

2008-05-16T16:14:00.000-07:00

In a number of posts before I have talked about the plans for a Podcamp Colorado. These plans have morphed and grown to the point where we realized that we were really creating a New Media Conference and associated Film Festival and should call it like it is.

That said, this November, November 7-9th we will be having the first Thin Air Summit, a conference on New Media, Independent music, and Web 2.0 technologies.

You can read more details about our transition from Podcamp to a Conference here.

This is a project I will be heading up and I am very excited about the project. Web technologies and virtual worlds make it so that we can connect with people globally but at the same time we need to recognize the gems in our own back yard. In hearing about all of these new media conferences all over the world I have wanted to come and meet in person the people I have made friends with through Twitter, Second Life, BlogTV, Ustream and other places. Now I want to invite all of you to come out to Colorado this November and meet me and see what is so awesome about Colorado.

World of Warcraft Academic Conference

2008-05-16T00:42:00.000-07:00

This past weekend there was an academic conference in World of Warcraft. When I first heard about the conference I was intrigued by the concept. The topic of the use of virtual worlds for research was intriguing, but even more so I was intrigued as to how the conference would work

As many of you know I have attended more than a couple of conferences in Second Life so the opportunity to explore a conference in another virtual world was right up my alley simply from the point of view of comparing the technologies and the experience.

Unfortunately I was only able to attend one day of the conference, so my observations are limited to how it ran on the very first day. I will post links to other blog posts reviewing the event at the end.

Looking at the content of the conference, the session I was able to attend was more discussive than instructive. Certain questions were presented and the group shared their thoughts and experiences, some backed by fact some backed by intuition. Although less structured than a standard conference session it was an interesting round table discussion.

My personal recommendation for future sessions would be a little more focus, and a glossary. I asked a number of dumb questions, "Can you define what you mean by x," and after each question a number of people whispered to me that they had had the same question. That said, with the question and answer format it is harder to keep control of the discussion and it is hard to know what exactly would need to be in the glossary.

From the technical standpoint it was very different from the experience of Second Life. Although I recognize the focus of this conference was one that would likely appeal to people who already have experiences in virtual worlds I am going to look at the experience from the perspective of the challenges of holding a conference in a virtual world. (Yes, I know that WoW is not designed for it. This is merely looking at the challenges given the design of the world.)

In World of Warcraft there are no ways to limit who can enter an area, kick people out of an area. This presents a considerable level of risk to a conference. You can try to pick a remote location but a horde of people with the same group tag heading in a general direction (with the initial starting place announced in a public place) is pretty easy to track. If someone wanted to they could have rounded up a gang and entered into battle with the attendees which could have been pretty disruptive, unless we all decided to hang out as ghosts for the duration of the conference.

Another challenge was getting to the conference. Luckily I had been in at the beginning and had been added to a group for the pre-conference raid. This meant I had indicators on the map indicating where the people in my group were which allowed me to find the location. Without teleport (in general) or an easy way to mark and travel to coordinates on a map getting to a location or directing a person to a location requires that they have a reasonable ability to follow directions, as in go east along the hills and then turn north at the tree.

One thing that they did that was clever was to use the guild chat (think group IM for those familiar with SL) for the conference. This meant that even if a person was not present they could participate in the event. There was no remote viewing of any presentations, but then there is no way to bring a presentation in to World of Warcraft so this was not a problem.

Over allit was a very good first experiment with holding a conference in World of Warcraft. Although a conference is not the standard fare for how people interact in World of Warcraft it is not completely beyond the pale of reasonable interactions. We often see people using applications in different and unexpected ways. I would say that holding a conference in World of Warcraft is not for the faint hearted, but as a place to gather and play and discuss I think a lot of benefit can be found.

---
More on the conference:
Stereo Left, Right, Centre on the conference
A flickr group of photos

If you were at the conference I'd love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to comment below.

Technology and Travel

2008-05-14T22:24:00.000-07:00

While I haven't traveled that often as of late, I have traveled quite a bit throughout my life. As a child I traveled to Europe and about 15 years ago I traveled frequently for work. However, back then travel and personal technology were not so closely linked. As a child I'd get puzzle books to entertain me. When I traveled for work I had a cell phone but it was just to make calls.

This trip I observed how technology was constantly part of the journey. I recognize this is by choice and not the experience for every traveler, but I suspect that in the future it will be the more common experience.

What follows is more simply observations of the experience. There are definitely some points below that deserve further thought. The changing focus of presence will have impact on how we interact and form relationships and what our expectations are of these relationships. It even has the potential for creating societal divides if not done with awareness. But for now, what follows is mainly my observation of my interaction with technology.

----

Of course I brought my laptop with me, but it stayed in its bag except for when at my parent's house, well and right now as I type this up at the airport. However, my little blackberry phone was in regular use. I was photoing the sights that caught my eye, some every day sights some slightly more artistic. Then these photos were sent up to the web, via email. Some went to Flickr, and more went to Brightkite, which I thought I would try to use more, since I was actually traveling rather than staying all in one zip code.

As I sent these pictures off I realized how much of my life I share and make public, and how different that is from only a few years ago. We live as mini-celebrities. "Look I'm here, and this is what I saw!" I suppose we have no paparazzi but ourselves, but the sharing our life as if others care is an interesting feature of our new digitally connected life. Yes,, I know other's care...but the visibility is far more than just your family/local friends/coworkers that might have seen the photos before. Even more so, because of the ease of taking and posting the photos shots of a grocery store with a Tapas bar got taken while it would have been silly or trivial to take such before.

Beyond the photo sharing nature of the trip there was also the IM client on the phone. I think I had 3 phone calls the whole trip, but I was chattering with people in private IMs and in twitter and even in chatterous.

I may have been no where near my "computer" but my phone stood in its stead. This constant partial connection is an interesting experience. Even wandering about in the world and spending time with people there were moments of communication with those distant.

Even with all that connection when I got online I still was doing catching up on missed messages on twitter and touching base with a few people through email.

I realize I have a few projects getting ramped up, and I also realize that I could have disconnected and the world wouldn't have ended. Even knowing that, it seemed natural and comfortable to be checking in and touching base with electronically connected friends. In a sense I shared my travel with others, which is a different way to fly.

Twitter, The Sichuan Quake, and Emergency Response

2008-05-13T16:53:00.000-07:00

Eric Rice started a thread of discussion on The Sichuan Quake and the Hubris of Twitter Users on his friendfeed. I had more than 255 characters worth of though (or whatever the comment character limit is), so I thought I would blog about it here.http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

For those not on twitter or not following the twitter/earthquake discussion, there was much discussion about how the Earthquake in Sichuan China was reported first on twitter (see Scoble's article for an example) and a counter discussion on how we are overstating twitter's importance. What follows is my take on the subject.

Ok there are a few levels here. First off for local response first responders are going to want a coordinated form of communication. Hand talkies - whether ham or other format that convey voice would be my first choice. During a lot crisises these days people are relying on cell phones - everyone has one and they seem reliable. This isn't necessarily bad (at least in the US) because the phone companies have disaster plans and set up temporary communication towers quickly and drill on this. Yeah a ham radio may be more reliable but if you don't carry it on you and your standard system is cell phones it isn't going to help in a crisis. Finding a way to make the tools on-hand work is going to be way more useful.

Does this mean there is no use for Ham radio anymore? No, I would say that Ham radio is still very useful - they can be part of a disaster response, they have an ability to send messages great distances when local trunks will be overloaded even if functioning. Ham radio operators are part of RACES and ARES (and I suspect other country equivalents) and they drill and prepare to respond to emergencies. Ham radio is often part of the backbone that coordinates the overall response.

So that's great for local but what about outside of the local area. Well Ham radio will get some messages out, but tools like Twitter have the ability to spread the message quickly - among those who are watching. This means friends on twitter may be updated by a single SMS message that their friend is ok. This is way more efficient and taxes the phone trunks much less. This also means that interested people can know faster, and it may provide a connection to those in the situation that is helpful. Yeah it may not get a first responder to their door but when you are in a situation like that you can be perfectly healthy and safe but concerned about your friends. Twitter can provide a comfort that way.

More important than the local and the immediate friend/family connections twitter has it's true power in a great way to get the news out beyond the local area. It does give a personal face to a disaster, and it may become the source for news reports in the future, but even more importantly it can be part of early detechttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.giftion and early response, both of disasters, but also of potential epidemics. If you look at the INSTEDD program (video) it was started on the basis that scanning local messages for reports of diseases and disasters (as GPHIN was doing) was finding diseases like SARS months before organizations tasked with detecting this - such as WHO. Things like twitter are going to only speed this up - because the crawling can now see near real time chat rather than blog posts which tend to come a bit later along. I believe it is these features that extend outside of the locality of the crisis are where tools like twitter are adding something new.

So yes, twitter is an awesome tool and it is reporting things earlier - and better yet it is reporting it in a way that gets the message out with details that may help with early detection and early response. Should it be the only communication system. Of course not. Relying on any single system in an emergency creates a weakness in the response system, a single point of failure. Are we overstating twitter's importance. Probably, but some of this is the amazement that twitter does provide this feature so well and part of it is our desire to help explain why twitter is useful to those who look at it and go "Why?" Our excitement about our new tools shouldn't reduce our response and attention to disasters, for that would be true hubris, but at the same time these new tools have a place in improving our response and reaction time to these events.

Found Writings

2008-04-28T16:01:00.000-07:00

This past week was Passover, and included in that time was a lot of offline time. The offline time provided quite a bit of time for reflecting on things, but it also provided time to look at what I had on the bookshelves. In addition to many good books I had a wonderful find of a printout of my poetry, a bundle of which I knew was somewhere, and I have been looking for it, but also there were a few additional sheets of paper including a few poems I had thought I had lost forever. (n.b. much of my poetry is somewhere between poetry and prose.)

Ironically all of these copies of poems are print outs, so these all existed in some electronic medium at some time, and some of them (the ones I thought I had lost forever) had been posted on web pages. Although you cannot rely on online data fading away, you also cannot rely on it remaining available.

Having found my poetry I thought I would post a few of poems from the stack:

Pavonia Station
The dragon stirs
It's warm breath rustles the air.
The little mice scurry for cover
In the moldy lair.
Long last the green eyes gleam
And its sleek body slithers forward.
The scales peel back.
Unwittingly,
Oblivious to our host,
We enter.
"Hoboken Train!
Hoboken, Next stop and Last Stop!
Please watch the doors"

4/18/1995

Early Morning Shift
If you wake up in the morning
And see the sun bright rise
You'll know that I have gone
And rubbed my weary eyes.

The morning has come
And i have risen to my task
I sit now at my terminal
In its hews I now bask.

Morning, bright morning
will the sun not rise soon
In darkness I ride
Wishing I slept till noon.

12/23/1992

Dreams
Sunrise comes
Too early and too late.
My dreams have come and gone
In that sotten dark,
'Tween Witches hour
And dawns breath.
The dark road
On that darker mare
Carried me through
My restless hours.
Asleep,
Yet not resting.
Eyes closed,
But not unseeing.
Tossed and turned.
The sun creeps under my eyelids
Telling me to rise.
A new day is come.
And that dark riptide
Shall be left behind
In yesterday.

6/5/1992

Bedika Chometz

2008-04-18T12:32:00.000-07:00

Last night was when we performed bedika chometz. It is a ritual where we hide 10 bundles of bread (well wrapped) and then search the house for any chometz (including the 10 pieces we just found.) The search is done by candle light after dark in preparation for Passover.

Passover is a holiday chock full of symbolism. Bedika chometz fits in with that definition. Each year it seems a bit different and this year it seemed poignant.

You see - chometz - which is leavened bread - is something which is puffed up, it stands for one's ego. 10 bundles corresponds to the 10 levels of the soul. As we search it is dark, and we are searching by candle light. Darkness, well think of any time that you thought was dark, it is place of limited vision.

In preparation for Passover, which celebrates the redemption from slavery - in particular the redemption from Egypt but in general (or perhaps in a personal sense) it is a time for personal redemption from whatever limitations or shackles we are experiencing.

So as I searched I thought of how the soul of (hu)man is the candle of G-d, and so how in the darkness we search out with the light of our soul to find any hidden ego, at any level of our soul, whether it is ego in our expansiveness or ego in our limits on things and so on. Through this searching we prepare to go out from slavery into freedom.

In a simple ritual we are shown that we hold the keys to our own shackles. If we can see beyond our own ego, burn it away (the found bread is burned the next morning) we can leave beyond that which is holding us back.

Video Photos and Fun

2008-04-11T12:34:00.001-07:00

It is fun watching as video evolves on the net and how many different ways video can be served up.

The latest in that genre is "A movie is a moving photo" - the 90 second videos on Flickr. There are quite a few folks playing with that and I'm having fun with that idea too. What would a picture look like if it could move. Or if you were making a snapshot of life rather than a movie. There is lots of potential with the idea. Sometimes imposing ridiculous limitations actually brings out more creativity.

Here are my first "Moving Pictures". I'd love to see yours.

Adventures of the Virtual Sort

2008-04-09T08:09:00.000-07:00

Before you is a passage. Blocking the passage is a large sign made up of a wide plank with four pendant planks.
The top plank invites you to press with the words 'Install World of WarCraft(tm)'

A small creaking voice of warning is heard 'don't press that - turn around! turn around!'.

Do you
1) Press Install World of Warcraft(tm)
2) Listen to the warning and press Exit Installer or
3) waver and examine the documentation.

With a bold stab of her staff she presses "Install World of Warcraft" and proclaims loudly to all who would hear her "She who hesistates is lost""

And with a swift motion she was hurled into another world.

Post and Attitude

2008-04-06T16:48:00.001-07:00

I've been thinking a lot on the technologies we use, the way we communicate, and on virtual worlds, real worlds, human interactions.

So why no posts. Well sometimes the reason is the distance between idea and cogent post gets to be a little long, but lately it's been more of an issue of attitude.

As I put it today, I've been feeling my inner snark a bit more lately. Most of my thoughts have been on how things are broken, what I don't like about different services and general complaints. A few negative posts here and there I'll let fly, but I'm hesitant to post when my thoughts seem overly negative.

The down side of this is that if I sit on an idea for too long it gets a bit stale sounding to me, and then I don't post it either. Perhaps I'm overly concerned with the balance and that it will all even out in the end.

So what do you think about negative posting?

Does Trademark Use Belong in a TOS?

2008-03-25T17:40:00.000-07:00

Hopefully I will correctly have followed the guidelines and read enough in the four of the, I believe, 8 pages of trademarking law and guidelines that this post will not result in my account in the Second Life® virtual world being revoked. The strange wording of the previous sentence was predicated by the new Terms of Service and specific brand guidelines that would prevent me from saying my account with the name of the virtual world between my and account.

Now I agree that the corporation that owns and operates the above mentioned virtual world (neither which I am certain how to properly address since it isn't clear that just mentioning them as proper nouns is permitted) has a right to protect their copyright, and perhaps even a responsibility to do so. However, I have three major issues.

1) The guidelines are not exactly clear. (as is evidenced by the above awkward wording and references.)

2) We are describing a virtual location that lots of users reference. When referring to other trademarked terms a person can a say I love company A and I hate company B and I work for company C and not be violating trademark, even if it they do so in their personal blogs. The new branding rules are very confusing. I've studied law and I find it confusing. The not so great with legalese users are going to get lost in the pages of requirements. I'm not sure how to find the balance between protection of trademark and reasonable use but I can tell you it isn't there yet.

3) This is my biggest complaint. These do not belong in the TOS. Yes, trademark should be defensible, but when it remains trademark law it means if you flub up you will get a cease and desist notice first and you can fix the problem. Sometimes it is an innocent mistake or a use from a time previous to the branding documents. When it goes into a TOS it means that a violation of these rules can result in a summary cancellation of the users account and a forfeit of all of their intellectual property and investment in the world with little or no recourse.

Now, I am not a lawyer, I could be misreading these things. Also it is likely a legitimate thing to put into a terms of service. If I object I am free to remove my account.

That said, it seems to me that it is a valid complaint and a cause for unease that these trademark laws are appearing in the Terms of Service. I know of at least one person who is canceling a project. It certainly has caused me to pause and consider the risk of the projects I am proposing.

Are there any lawyers out there who would care to comment?

P.S. Finally found a 9th page 3 links down from the page referenced in the Terms of Service with the chart of usages, I can now tag my post appropriately.

MediaCasters.tv

2008-03-22T22:53:00.000-07:00

Having watched so many events from a distance and wanted to be there I think MediaCasters.tv is an an awesome idea. What is Mediacasters.tv? Well to quote their press release:

Live events stimulate conversations, but those offsite can’t really respond until later, when “the moment” has passed. What if you could engage from anywhere right as something interesting happened? In real time? Using super flexible, lightweight “social media” tools that make anyone a mediacaster.”

And that is an awesome idea. As I have watched live streaming and chat programs and more evolve and spread I have been wondering - Why can't we create a way for people who can't come to the event to participate and join in the event? I mean, it isn't going to be the same as being there, but it can certainly allow partial involvement and move this "distance is shorter because we can use the network" to the point where it involves participating in actual events.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing how Mediacasters.tv evolves and I'm hoping I will be able to make it down to join in the last day of Boulder Startup Weekend 2 to see it first hand.

I'd love to bring Mediacasters.tv into Colorado Podcamp. New Media is global and local - what a great way to enable both. Thank you Laura "Pistachio" Fitton.

Is Griefing Free Speech?

2008-03-18T03:43:00.000-07:00

I just went to an incredibly interesting panel at Life 2.0 on Intellectual Property, Privacy and Identity in Open Virtual Worlds. One thing that came up in the discussion was griefing, and was griefing free speech. Several people posited that it wasn't but I think that the issue is not so cut and dried. I also think that the supposition that griefing is limited to virtual world situations is incorrect. There are physical world analogies to the acts of griefing, and we may consider the real world analogies, as acts of free speech.

Just as a note, I am not saying that griefing is just fine - I am asking that we think about griefing in the context of speech and ask at what point an action goes beyond the bounds of valid free speech. Outside of virtual worlds there are disruptive actions taken, ften in the name of free speech. Some of these disruptions are seen as protests that are valid free speech - as they do not threaten the lives of others, and then there are protest actions amd disruptions that go beyond that that leave the domain of reasonable/valid free speech.

Likewise there are disruptive actions that some people define as griefing that may be seen as free speech and then there are points where griefing goes beyond reasonable/valid free speech. Defining that boundary of where virtual world disruption goes beyond "reasonable/valid free speech" is tricky because we want to use physical parallels, but an action in a virtual world is not necessarily identical to its analogue in the physical word.

One more point to mention, free speech does not only apply to protests and speech that are for "valid causes" (who decides valid.) Some of the fundamental cases that defined free speech as we know it now (within the US) were based on the rights of some less than pristine characters. Rights exist for scoundrels and angels alike.

To look at griefing and free speech in more detail lets look at some edge cases.
(For these examples I will ignore the aspect of this being private property verses a public venue. Private domains fall under a much different legal scope than public domains. Private domains can restrict who comes and what they do to a much greater extent.)

Lets take a look one of the more publicized "griefing" incidents in SL, the CNET interview with Anshe Chung. If the protesters had only held up signs protesting Anshe Chung and her business practices I think most people would claim it was free speech. However, when they threw phalluses it was elevated to "griefing" in most people's eyes.

Why? Because of the offensiveness of the object? Is free speech made invalid because it is offensive to some? Because in a physical world throwing something would be a valid action? But an we say that throwing things in a virtual world (which does not have the same physical impact) has the same status as throwing something in a physical world? The flying objects caused no physical damage to the people and created no laundry bills unlike throwing rotten tomatoes or rotten eggs

I am not saying that CNET and Anshe shouldn't be upset by it. Furthermore the effect on the public perception of SL adds to the emotional ire towards the event. But many protests in the real world have caused ire and affect the reputation of institutions. But at what point did the protest cease being free speech? And, at what point did this become griefing? Is that boundary the same?

Lets look at another example. Noisemaking devices can be very disruptive. Lets say that on some sim some group left a bunch of noisemakers that would alternate when they would make noise and turn off and on, over a period of time and then the noise makers would delete themselves. Would this be griefing? It seems disruptive and perhaps pointless and I know some would claim that it is griefing.

Well what about the Cell Phone Symphony at Improv Everywhere. I would posit that this is a near identical example, and something see as a glorious example of making art with free speech. And it also parallels some examples of griefing in the virtual world.

How much does the perspective of where it is (real/virtual), who is doing it, and why they are doing it change our desire to call something a valid act of free speech? Are the difference that change our reactions ones that actually change the validity of their right to speech?

It is true that (at least in the US context) that freedom of speech can be restricted in time, place and manner. But the ability to restrict these (within the public space) is limited and speech cannot be simply prohibited because it is offensive to some. This limitation on the restriction of speech within the public sphere brings us to a few questions which I think need to be asked, and do not yet have answers.

What are the public places within a virtual world? Must there be public places within a virtual world? If there are public places, to whom to we redress issues of excessive limitations of freedom of speech? If there are no public places, does the right to free speech exist within a virtual world?

Yes, right now virtual worlds could simply be left, or the protests published outside of the world, but as virtual worlds become more of a daily reality, does that mean that freedom of speech erodes?

Free Ingrid Betancourt

2008-03-17T22:21:00.000-07:00

I just watched this video about and responding to the kidnapping of Ingrid Betancourt. It really touched me and if you haven't seen it yet I think it is important to watch.

To do more you can go to the Agir pour Ingrid Betancourt website. I don't know of an English website supporting this cause, but if you do please let me know and I will update this post.

Colorado Podcamp Update

2008-03-07T10:49:00.001-08:00

If you didn't already know, planning for Colorado Podcamp (yes, I know the word order is usually different) has begun.

If you are interested in it and haven't gotten involved join the Colorado Podcamp Google Group we are using for planning/coordination.

We are also using TalkShoe for weekly meetings (except for the week of the Denver Area Podcaster's meetup.)

The next Talkshoe meetup will be Thursday March 13th at 7PM. There is more on the talkshoe site for the call.

Yesterday's call was excellent. We got to talk with Angelo Mandato who is "point" for Podcamp Ohio. He talked a bit about what makes Podcamp an "unconference" and about what they are planning for Podcamp Ohio. They have also been using talkshoe and have their sessions up on their website - so if you are in Ohio be sure to check them out if you haven't already.

We also talked about ideas for Colorado Podcamp, next steps, fundraising and promotion ideas and all sorts of stuff. If you would like to here more I've embedded the most recent episode at the bottom of this post.

PC and Mac Brightness

2008-03-02T21:31:00.001-08:00

On my previous post I mentioned something in passing about PC brightness versus Mac brightness. Hache asked if the PC/Mac brightness was a Machinima specific thing (in the comments.)

The PC brightness versus the Mac brightness is a general display difference (at least in the default settings.) I first came across this back in the days of the "Browser Wars". Web pages that looked great on a Mac would be way to dark on a PC.

I still find this to be the case that the PC displays things (with the default monitor settings) much more darkly than the Mac does. This is true on both of my XP boxes, a laptop and a desktop.

CGSD has an article about how to adjust gamma for web images images to look good on both PC and Mac. It also points to a few other resources on gamma and explains why the difference exists.

Interestingly the article implies it is an issue of graphics cards but with Macs moving to Intel, and there being PC/Mac cross compatible graphics cards I wonder if it is more a backwards compatibility reason now. You don't want the gamma on everything to suddenly shift if you are on the same platform.

Obviously you can calibrate the monitors differently but most users are going to go with the default calibration, so it is good to know what the differences are. It would be cool if there was an easy way to set up monitor calibration files for both the "mac" view and the "pc" view and swap between them if you are developing graphics and video for the web so you don't need to test it on two machines.

Actually I would be surprised if information on how to set up the two calibration settings didn't exist, but having never looked extensively into calibration (and not having success on a quick Google) I don't know where one would find the settings (other than creating them yourself.) Anyone out there have experience working with the PC/Mac gamma compatibility?

Mac Video and Machinima Pointers

2008-02-29T11:47:00.000-08:00

Well last night I have a bit of adventure in video editing, and its cause was something I've run into before but just didn't catch this time. Since the best mistakes to learn from are from other peoeple's mistakes I thought I'd share what happened, how I got there, and how I fixed it.

I'll also share some observations from my first attempt at Machinima (movies made using 3d games or virtual worlds)

So the first part will be Mac specific, the second part more generally applicable.

This was a pretty simple project. Take video of a walking tour, take snippets and make a reasonable short video of the tour. I thought I'd do this in iMovie08 1) because FinalCut Pro isn't on my machine and 2) FinalCut Pro sounded like way overkill.

I imported my .mov files into iMovie08 (after having fiddled with them briefly in iMovieHD). I started editing but soon found that every click and movement of the play head resulted in the machine stopping for a good 5-10 seconds. (Spinning beachball.) With about an hour of screen capture footage that was to be cut down to 5-10 minutes things didn't look good.

I finally gave up, exported the video I had made thus far (to preserve voice overs) so I could import it into FinalCut Pro.

And that was when it all became clear - there was no video on the export. Audio was fine but the video was all blank. The codec that the original video was in was one that iMovie08 doesn't like. The solution is - convert the video to something iMovie does like, like H.264. (There are probably other codecs but I know that one works.)

A bit of converting (using Quicktime) and re-importing and iMovie was all happy.

The way I got here was I used Snapz Pro X to capture the video. The default codec that the version I have choses when encoding video is not one iMovie likes. However, when you go to save the video you can edit the video encoding settings and save as H.264 - and you will save yourself a lot of headache.

(And as an addendum. I just found this awesome blog, Unlocking iMovie '08, with lots of good pointers on iMovie08 - including info on features you might think are missing but aren't.)

As I was editing the video I was reminded how it takes practice to take in a scene and see what the camera sees instead of seeing the filtered scene that your brain presents to you. Our mind does a great job of filtering out noise but that isn't what you want on film. Experienced film makers probably know this all intuitively but for the rest of you I'll share my bloopers.

1) Turn off distracting information - I remembered to turn off the display of HUDs, but I left SL voice on - which since I wasn't actually recording the SL Voice resulted in a unnecessary lovely white dot above my head and in odd places in the scene. Turn off extra displays, look again, and then make sure there isn't anything you missed before going on.

2) Look at your lighting - Most of my scenes were fine, but in one area it was night with minimal external lighting. I adjusted the exposure on that scene, which resulted in blown out colors but otherwise the details of the scene would have been near invisible on a windows PC. I could reshoot but the smarter thing would have been to notice the light and done something about it before shooting the scene (force sunrise/sunset)

3) Lose the pointer arrow - Most of my scenes I did ok with this, but in one scene I have this little arrow moving occasionally on the screen. There are times you can't avoid this but use what tools you have when you can (e.g. camera controls) and don't just randomly leave the mouse pointer in the middle of the screen.

I'm sure I'll learn more with my next machinima, but those are my lessons from this round. I hope they proved helpful for at least a few of you. And if you have pointers for me feel free to leave them in the comments, or drop me an email. (goldiekatsu at gmail)

More GTD Thoughts

2008-02-23T19:50:00.000-08:00

If you were wondering about my sudden posts on GTD, I've been gradually picking up various projects and tasks and then suddenly work (yeah the one that pays me) started picking up at the same time a couple of other projects did. My "Gee I really should get organized, maybe tomorrow" became a "Wish I'd started this yesterday." That and at the previous BWET (Boulder Women Engaging Technology) meeting Gwen assigned us the first 20 pages of the book Getting Things Done. I have already read the book, and then encourage others to read it so I was ok with reading it again but thinking "Yeah, brush-up refresher no big deal."

Ok, maybe big deal. Right at the beginning Dave Allen talks about a key thing that is so important and obvious that you can totally miss it. So you have something you want to get done. What does "done" look like. Define it, write it down.

It is so easy to get caught up in projects and sub-projects and tasks that the goal you are aiming for, the outcome, can get lost.

For example. I want to start an podcast (as in the formal thing that you can subscribe to). Outcome - regularly produce video content that people can subscribe to. But the thing is I'm into so many different things I wasn't sure what particular topic to do my podcast on - so action define topic. Not a bad action but over time (weeks) you have to ask is it leading to outcome or just holding things up.

Last week I was talking with someone who talked about how she is into lots of things and she tried out different topics as podcasts and them moved on if it didn't work for her. What a great idea. Sure eventually I'll want to find the topic/niche but if the answer isn't forthcoming making various podcasts to find the niche that works for me may get me to my outcome a whole lot faster.

If I was tied to just the actions - well I haven't found my topic, can't move on. But by focusing on the outcome - what done looks like - I can say - wait this next action isn't getting me where I need to go - time to rethink.

So I'm very glad that I had that reading assignment, and I've already benefited from the reading.

And before I go one more thought that was inspired by RJ Moriarty's comment on my previous post.

On first blush GTD seems to expect you to have considerable physical space - the mega inbox and filing. But for those of us who are online/with computer folks a lot of this physical stuff can be moved to on the computer. (See this lifehacker post on the paperless home.) Yes, mail comes in and there is some paper to use, but you can scan in needed documents, and most of my inbox I send to myself in mail. More space than what you have about your desk isn't absolutely necessary.

As far as the contexts (that is where you do a particular task) well that isn't necessarily about place. "On my Mac" can be anywhere my Mac is. And a lot of my contexts are actually hats. When I'm at my computer I can be doing work for my job, doing SL projects, doing non-profit activities and other stuff too. With lots of "bosses" so to speak I do focus blocks - right now I'm @ work, right now I'm @ the non-profit, etc., so even though I'm in the same physical space I'm in different contexts. But really, you only need as many contexts as are useful for you. "Out in the world", "at work", and "at home" may be enough depending on what you do and how you work.

What if GTD Was a Competition Sport

2008-02-19T12:09:00.000-08:00

I am, once again, trying to get into the swing of using the Getting Things Done (GTD) method of time (or more accurately action) management. If you haven't heard about GTD I recommend checking out 43 Folders on GTD, however the starting point is gathering all the tasks, projects, things to get done and putting them in your inbox(es). That part isn't necessarily that hard - but the next step - processing that inbox - now that can be a challenge. Just as an example - how well do you process your email inbox - does it get cleared and then magically build up seemingly overnight. (Ok, maybe it is over a week or so but it is still fast.)

Really my email is my main inbox. I will email myself notes on projects/voicemail/etc. so it really is a general collection area so letting it build up is a fast path to ruin. I realize that some of this comes from lingering through my email frequently rather than giving it focused attention at specific times each day but it is sometimes hard to motivate myself to just do it.

Anyway, I was pondering this and in a silly mood the other day and thought, what if GTD was a competition sport. How fast and how accurately can you sort your in-box. In my mind I envisioned the ESPN coverage of the competition and laughed at myself. But I wonder if there was some way to make task management a game where you can win & level up if it would make it easier to keep up on it? Sure keeping on top of stuff is its own reward but sometimes the pain of getting through that inbox seems greater than the pleasure at the end. What tricks do you use to make this process easier.

Oh and for those who want to see the geeky ESPN coverage that played in my head, here is an approximation.

Ann: Ok, Goldie is getting ready
(Goldie stretches & cracks knuckles)
Ann: The clocks are about to start
Beep beep buzz of the starter clock
Ann: And she's off!
Ann: Look at her go
(clicking dragging data flying)
(Cuts between other competitors and similar observations)
Ann: Oh wait - she's spent more than 2 minutes on a task - that's a penalty - 4 points
Ann: Wait...she's getting up? Her filing isn't by her desk!?! Oh this is going to cost her some serious time.
(scene continues)

Peasful Thoughts

2008-02-07T23:40:00.000-08:00

It is Friday, which means it's a Frozen Pea Friday.

In an amazing set of coincidences I was just sitting down to eat some frozen peas (that had been subsequently warmed up) when Chel Pixie asked if I could make a video for the frozen pea fund.

If you haven't made it to the site yet, click the link above or the one here, and donate the equivalent of two bags of frozen peas to the fund to support breast cancer research.

Colorado Podcamp

2008-02-05T15:04:00.000-08:00

Back in December I mentioned that discussion were beginning in the area of a Podcamp in Colorado and that I would keep you updated on the plans.

We have started working on the initial planning of Colorado Podcamp over at the Colorado Podcamp Google group.

Right now we are still defining the structure of the event as well as a more specific date than "some time in the summer". But the event will be a BarCamp-Style gathering for people interested in New Media which includes blogs, vlogs, podcasts, vidcasts and more.

If you are interested in find out more, participating in, or helping plan this event please join the Colorado Podcamp Group.

We haven't had our first planning meeting but that will be coming soon. I will keep you posted here, and of course on the group.

Social Connection Across the Virtual/Physical Border

2008-02-05T14:35:00.000-08:00

What an exciting year this is turning out to be. My official work has begun to pick up, and I'm pushing personal project internally. In the social media/startup/podcasting/tech sphere I've started to meet up with people in person. Very exciting and interesting to watch.

Online social media is an interesting phenomenon. In a sense it is like the old forums/read news and text based chats in that there is enough distance that a person who is perhaps a bit more shy can feel comfortable speaking in the virtual environment. The interesting twist is that with the addition of video and virtual worlds you begin to feel that you are interacting "for real". While this is true to some extent, real friendships and relationships are created, it has been somewhat startling when you transfer that to the physical realm.

I suppose it is a bit more startling for me. I spent about a year homebound with very little personal interaction beyond the online medium. For that time who I was in groups in online reality (whether virtual worlds or twitter or chats on blogtv etc.) was how I interacted.

The real shock came when I could finally walk well enough to go to a meet up where I knew no one and I found myself feeling uncertain and shy. (This was complicated by the fact that I wasn't sure how to introduce myself, my resume has one name, my public presence has another.) I was shocked at the way I reacted.

Then I thought of how I had acted before my convalescence. Sure I'd join in discussions in groups where I knew people but when it wasn't strictly work based I was on the shy side. Walking up to someone I didn't know and introducing myself was not really something I did.

Here I was expecting myself to act as my outgoing online self, but that hadn't been my modus operandi in the physical world. The contrast is probably why I skipped the meet up for the following couple of months. But I also reflected on my reactions (and got some combo/business cards that make introducing myself much easier.)

Today I went to the Boulder Open Coffee at The Cup. It was a great meet up. I also decided that I was going to embrace my online style and make it my in person style. It was a bit scary at times. I could tell I'm still getting the hang of it but it was promising. And I'm hoping to make it to the New Technology meet up this evening, this time with more confidence.

What I have found is that although the online networks are incredibly powerful (and can cause a person to grow) it is important to go try it out in the physical face to face world. The interaction is different. The combination of the two realms is awesome.

Seesmic - My Excuse

2008-01-29T18:41:00.000-08:00

It's been a little over a month since I've posted here, which is a bit embarrassing, but as Dennis Howlett quipped - is anyone writing any more or are we all just doing seesmics. Judging by the infrequency of my posts he may have a good point.

Just to share a bit of the excitement on what is going on on Seesmic check out this article by Dennis on Seesmic's Next Steps which covers today's news from Demo as well as plans for the future.

And now for me to get to writing some more. :)

The Trivial Nature of Life

2007-12-23T13:35:00.000-08:00

The past couple of weeks I have been amazed at the dynamics of communities within the Social Media Sphere. Both the Frozen Pea Fund and also the nature of debate, such as the debates in Seesmic that have spilled out into blogs has been fascinating to watch. In a sense these things have existed in online forums and the like long before online video, but the nature of the current trivial communication mechanisms, such as Twitter and Seesmic, I think have broadened who we would encounter and how we can communicate, and in the case of video by providing tone of voice and body language.

Now I realize that in person meetings and gatherings convey a whole new level connection and people can just waste time that could be spent otherwise. That said, I have found it fascinating that these tools that enable us to easily communicate the trivialities of our lives give us more of the sense of a community or a tribe - where we might go beyond simply words and move to actions - such as raising funds for someone we've only met through 140 character snippets.

Here is a video where I talk more on the subject:

Frozen Pea Friday

2007-12-21T12:19:00.000-08:00

So much to post about and so little time on winter-time Friday's but before I go, a quick post. Please check out the FrozenPeaFund.

This is an incredible example of how our online communities and "tribes" come together and support each other. It is more that talk, it really is connection. More on that later.

Podcamp - Coming to Colorado in 2008

2007-12-18T21:59:00.000-08:00

Today I went to the Denver Area Podcasters Meetup. It was great talking with Eve and Jim and meeting them in person. I arrived a bit late, so there had already been some discussion, and that discussion included having a Podcamp in Colorado.

We are still at the very beginning stage of it all, but it was very exciting to start talking about it with others. I shared my ideas for doing the event PodcampXL style and I'd love to see those ideas develop.

We have yet to set up the wiki for Podcamp Colorado, but I will post the information on that once it is set up.

Virtually Tagged - 8 Virtually Random Things

2007-12-12T13:34:00.000-08:00

Ok, technically I've already posted on the 8 things about me meme, but those were 8 things about me outside of Second Life.

So....when Tara5 Oh tagged me I thought I'd do 8 things about me as it relates to Second Life. (Though looking at where the meme has traveled who I'm going to tag is a good question...but I'll worry about that at the end.)

1) I joined Second Life for the conferences. No, really. I kept hearing about Second Life, but it wasn't until I heard about Bar Camp being in SL and Lawrence Lessig speaking in SL that I though "Gee there are going to be conferences I want to go to in SL and I won't even know how to walk". So I joined SL. Of course it was over a year before I actually made it to a conference.

2) I chose my SL last name because it was the only name available at the time that was close to either my maiden name or my married name. Ironically Katsu means pork cutlet - which for someone who keeps kosher is particularly amusing.

3) I've helped set up two Arabic classes in SL - one pre-SL Voice (using skype+streaming software) one post-SL Voice. I find the potential applications for language learning in SL fascinating. Immersion and use of words relevant to the speaker are the most effective ways to learn a language. Within SL the likelihood of running into someone who speaks another language is pretty high.

4) I collect Linden bears, which are bears that the Lindens give out. The lore as I understand it was that it was started as a means to give residents a reason to start a conversation with a Linden. I have made bears for two Lindens who did not have them so they might have one to give out, but as of this writing, neither the bear I made for Cory Linden nor the one I made for Joe Linden has become an official bear.

5) I like to build in SL. I find sculpture and architecture built on the basic prim types fascinating. I love see what people can create from these simple shapes, and it was amazing how after I started building I would walk around and look at buildings and break them down to their prim components in my mind.

(For those not in Second Life "Prim" is short for "primitive" which is to say the basic lego shapes that make up Second Life. Just about everything you see in Second Life is built from boxes, cylinders, prisms, spheres, toruses, tubes & rings - the basic primitive types - which can then be cut hollowed and twisted etc. this is changing with the introduction of sculpted prims.)

6) I have been mistaken more than once for Golda Stein. Not that I look anything like her but I guess there was a time when there weren't so many Goldas and Goldies.

7) I did a Menorah lighting as part of last year's (2006) Official winter festival. This year the festival is after Chanukah so it didn't seem so relevant.

8) I'm trying to learn how to do machinima but so far I've only made one Seesmic video as machinima.

Ahah! And now I get to tag 3 more people. Hmmmm....I tag Mark Forman and going a bit cross media to Utterz I'm tagging Yxes Delacroix, and thirdly Akela Talamasca. You three get to write 8 things about yourself (or speak it), and then tag 3 more people at the end.

Have fun!

The Animated Menorah - an Utterz Experiment

2007-12-10T21:11:00.000-08:00

Since I was reading the book "The Animated Menorah" to my husband anyway I thought I'd call up Utterz and record the reading. The audio is cellphone quality, but if you'd like to listen along here are all 8 Utterz in one place.

Candle 1

Candle 2

Candle 3

Candle 4

Candle 5

Candle 6

Candle 7

Candle 8

A Chanukah Story for All

2007-12-08T20:16:00.000-08:00

A fun story for you to enjoy:

Friends, Romans and Countrymen

2007-12-03T23:00:00.000-08:00

lend me your ears. Oh wait...that was another post but a useful opening line.
It seems that the matter of friends, especially those made in the virtual context, has been on the minds of many. I suppose some of this is spurred by the 10,000 post threads (here) and (here) to start with. But it is a topic that has come up a few times, perhaps spurred by the fact that the social media sites tend to call connections "friends". Even gtalk has joined the bandwagon.

So what is the matter of digital connections. Are there such things as digitally made friends, or are we really more "Romans" and "Countrymen" to borrow the quote. I think of Romans being a bit like the "tribal" concept that was put forward in a New York Times article this week. To some extent we are creating our "tribes" or our social circles. In each "country" we join, be it Twitter or Seesmic or Facebook. I think that the idea is an interesting one not without merit. We all, on some level, seek to belong - whether our belonging is in that of the questioner and the one who rocks the boat, or whether we just want a crowd that we hang with.

I think we can see this tribal nature in the way we chose the tools we use. Twitter I think is a classic example of it. Twitter goes down, lags, does weird stuff - we all talk about going to Jaiku or some other service, but we keep coming back to Twitter because that's where our "friends" are, or as I would posit where our "tribe" or "community" is.

In a sense it is no surprise that we have this need for gathering. In many places the concept of "neighborhood" or local community is gone. We drive away from home to our jobs and our meeting places. We live distributed across miles and miles of our daily life. We travel from one end of the country/world to the other. For many of us there is no time or space where we can have that "place where we live". And if we don't travel then it is our neighbors who do. Humans are social beings. We tell stories, we desire to connect with others, we look for our place to belong. These digital worlds and countries give us a "place" where we can exist. We can find our "Roma" or our "tribe" even as we traverse the world, we have a "foundation of community" to base ourselves on, to take with us through our cellphones and laptops.

But wait, how solid is this foundation? Is this a false hope we pin ourselves on? Is our identity slippery enough that we can make and remake ourselves again? I think that the answer is that lifetime communities, and the attendant challenges of changing our identity are a thing of the past for much of us. We can be as slippery as we'd like or as real as we like virtually or in physical space. I think these social media tools are merely where we find our need for community met for now.

So I think that many of our "friends" are more members of our tribe. That said I think that there are real friends to be made out there even through this digitally mediated medium. Real conversations do happen, and people do form connections. There are some people who I have met only over the net who I do consider friends. And I think that this makes sense too. What sense of belonging would we have if we had no friends within the medium? What kind of an audience would Brutus have had if he had called out to Romans & Countrymen. For a community to become real, for the "tribe" to exist there must be more connection than just causal acquaintance or ones attention will wane with their needs unmet and they will move on to the next digital country.

Useless Tools of Importance

2007-11-29T22:25:00.000-08:00

The latest and greatest of the web provides us with a plethora of tools to play with and communicate with. Some of the tools out there seem pretty...well...silly at first glance. Some of these probably still seem that way to people who don't "get" what we are calling web 2.0.

Of course this "useless" moniker could have been applied to a lot of stuff that is now common place. Who needs a web page? Why do you need email? Wireless - what for? The list goes on - probably forever (who needs a telephone in their home...)

A few of these tools were tools I used on in my recent road trip. The two tools that took center stage were Twitter and Utterz, and to some extent the two of them together.

Twitter was definitely something that I didn't get when I heard about it. It sounds narcissistic at best, and pointless for the most part. Oh yeah, let me broadcast details of my daily life, like people care. Well the truth is - in physical space we do broadcast details of our daily life, not to everyone, but to anyone who is in listening range of our casual conversations. "Hey I'm heading to the x movie.", "I'm on my way to a restaurant", "I read this really cool book". Just over the web we didn't chat in public spaces and how many of your friends were really on line that you'd tell them online instead of in person.

Twitter sort of changed that picture, and although we may have started with only a couple of friends, or people we thought were interesting that we wanted to eavesdrop on, eventually this evolved. People we followed followed back and casual chit chat developed into relationships - in part by the other places where we could "go out and talk" like chat rooms on the live video websites, real life meet-ups and Second Life.

Utterz is a bit more recent. Quite a few people that I was following on Twitter were using Utterz (I know because their Utterz were tweeted.) At first I though it was yet another add on service - there are many out there. Eventually enough people were uttering that I had to check it out. (Ok, it got my curiosity going.) Something about Utterz is better than the other "record audio" services out there. You can call in on your phone and it records your message. You can send videos and pictures and text and also have it be part of your Utterz. And, and I think this may be the key feature, it can tie into other services - twittering, auto-posting to blogs, and the like. That feature is what let me know about it in the first place.

A road trip is an awesome time to spend time thinking, and experiencing the road. With all the thinking there is a desire to capture those thoughts because once back in the crowd of civilization that perspective can be lost. I suppose the answer for some would be to keep a journal of the adventure, or even record ones thoughts on tape. (Admittedly I did record some of my thoughts on voice recorders.) However Utterz and twitter added to this experience. They provided a way to record my thoughts and at the same time share them with others. The people who cared about my progress (and safety) on the journey could all receive messages as I progressed on my journey, and for others they could enjoy my journey vicariously. At the same time when I came to a place to stop I could check in and see the responses to my updates. It was a pretty amazing experience, and it was interesting seeing peoples responses to the journey. At the same time these "new tools" provided comfort for those who worried about me journeying alone.

Could I have done it without these tools. Sure - for now. But it may be that some time in the future broadcasting tools, and the way we gather information, will make tools like twitter and utterz essential, just like the "luxury cellphone" has become an essential item when traveling.

Voices and Volumes - What do You Know About?

2007-11-28T09:48:00.000-08:00

Continuing on the local thread, I just accidentally found out about a Denver area Podcaster meetup. It's been around for years. I've searched on "denver podcast" and "boulder podcast" many times before and have not found this site before. I've even poked around on the Meetups page and reviewed more than a few weeks of the upcoming events and not seen anything on this. Only now when I've wandered over to a local seesmicer's blog, have I found out about this event.

Meanwhile, I know about Jeff Pulver's social media breakfast in Boston today. I also have heard other tweetups and social media gatherings in San Francisco, Boston, New York, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and parts of the UK. All of this makes me ask why?

The only answer that comes to me is that some places have better spokespeople than other places.

Chris Brogan and Jeff Pulver are big connectors, verbal, regular posters on blogs, twitter and video venues - so we all hear about whats going on in Boston, New York & Israel.

San Francisco has its share of big names - Robert Scoble, Loic Lemeur and many others.

The UK has Loudmouthman (Nik Butler) and Phil Campbell and again, many others.

These people are verbal, visible in a global sense, and actively doing stuff. Even if I missed a tweet or two their blogs and videos and various media expressions - and the echoes on other blogs - all make sure I hear about the events that they are part of. In a sense this is the regional elitism that Eric Rice was talking about a while ago. (Yeah, which I said was really the fault of the local folks.)

So the question is, how do we address this? I imagine for people who are plugged into the local networks there is no perceived problem as they know what is going on. But what about the newly transplanted or the newly interested? How do we hook in and and how do we find out about these things. And judging by the varied attendance of some events it seems even the plugged in would benefit from more visibility.

So who do you think of as a voice from the Boulder/Denver area? Am I just not following them? How to do small local areas improve the "volume" of their local news and events so that people find them as easily as I find the "big center" events? Or even so that when I search for such events in Google they come up somewhere towards the top?

PodcampXL - First Form

2007-11-27T18:46:00.000-08:00

PodcampXL - Podcamp with the Local Focus

So here are my first ideas on how I envision PodcampXL Boulder.

Attendees:
First of all this is a local event for the Boulder/Denver Area. If you consider Boulder/Denver to be local then this is for you.

So who is this event for. This is ostensibly for/about podcasting but podcasters in a rather broad definition. If you have done audio or video on the internet that you have made public, whether an official podcast or a viddler video or a seesmic video or an utterz, (etc) then this is about you.

Also if you are interested in watching, listening to, or influencing video and audio casting this is also for you. You don't have to be making the content to have a stake in the content.

The event itself:
First off, this is a participatory event. Everyone is expected to contribute whether presenting speaking, or contributing opinions. If you aren't comfortable getting up in front of a crowd to talk there still are ways you can contribute to the content.

There are two parts to the camp.
The first part is creating and evaluating content.
During the course of the podcamp people will create 'casts in whatever format they prefer to present what they do - what their content is.

This would be started off or done concurrently with some workshopping on how to make 'casts. Different workshops would be held on various aspects of casting - the tools, the process, etc.

At the end of the camp there will be a showing of these casts. Depending on how many people are participating and how much content is produced we may need to find groupings of the casts and have simultaneous showings.
Also I would like to have several audio listening areas so that the audiocasts can have fair listening.

Watching is fun - but the point is to get feedback, and this is where everyone can contribute. These showings will be evaluated. The details on how they will be evaluated and what kind of evaluation will be done needs to be fleshed out.
Some possible ideas:

Where would you enjoy watching/seeing this
How would you categorize this
How would you promote this? (Would you promote this?)
What would you want to see more of/less of?

These are just ideas off the top of my head, but the purposes of the evaluations include giving casters things to think about to improve their work and thinking about what the next steps for casting are.

And that brings me to the second part of the camp. 'Casting has been going on long enough that it is time to ask where are we going next. There are plenty of blog posts on "getting out of the fishbowl", "How do we monetize", "How do we get distribution" and other areas. Its time to talk about these questions and think about next steps and how we reach those next steps. This is where ideally we will have not only podcasters but people who distribute media and promote media - both old and new - as well as business people and others who want to join the conversation.

So in addition to making content and evaluating it, we will be thinking about what 'casting means and where it is going.

What sessions go here? Well that's also to be fleshed out. Some ideas:

Monetizing podcasts - how to? should you? what is the impact on monetizing?
Out of the fishbowl - How do we get visibility beyond the already interested parties, like to those who's view of new media is "Oh yeah my husband forwards me YouTube videos" (Real quote from someone who is a film critic and has written a book on such.)
How audio content is different between mediums?
Social implications - Are we in an age of meritocracy? How do we preserve such a democratization of media - or is this destined to fade away like other moments of meritocracy? What differences does the easy 'casting present to how we learn information and share information?
Etc.

And then of course from these discussions and evaluations I would like to see the discussion continue, whether in living rooms, meetups, or in other ways.

But for all of this we need to come together and create this event and share in this event.

Get involved!
So if you are in the Boulder/Denver Area and are interested in a Local, Participatory, Discussive event let me know. If you want to help create it - really make sure you let me know.

Feel free to leave me a comment below or send me an email: I'm goldiekatsu at gmail

Thoughts on Location and Local

2007-11-27T13:53:00.000-08:00

I mentioned PodcampXL and an interest in doing one locally back in July which is when Eric Rice first mentioned it. Its nice that I was interested, but until now not much had happened with that.

Recently I took a road trip, which was prompted in part by a need to reflect on where I am and where I am going. Of the many topics of thought one was about location and community. Between twitter and Second Life, and the chatrooms of BlogTV, Ustream and Operator 11, and the recent advent of Seesmic a lot of what I think of as my community and my friends with like interests are found all over the globe. This in and of itself is not a bad thing. We are living in an increasingly global society, that is one of the effects of fast ubiquitous communication. However, when it comes at the expense of the local community that is a problem.

Sure I do have friends locally and a community that I live within, but the majority of the local community has no idea what I'm talking about when I talk about global friends, video on the net, cool new technologies, and the desire to think deeply of the consequences and future of these technologies. For that discussion I go to the net.

The network will always have a broader pool of people with similar interests. Yet at the same time the ease of finding such people with such interests over the network sometimes causes a person to overlook the local. Case in point, I was visiting Seesmic in San Francisco and Loic pointed out that there were a lot of seesmicers in Colorado. I had noticed that, but the truth is that I have not yet met any of them. In a sense it is kind of silly. People with similar interests are living (figuratively) in my own back yard and yet we wave from the distance over video.

So...that brings me back to PodcampXL. I know, it sounds like a super big podcamp (extra large) but as Eric Rice describes it the focus is local, extra local perhaps? Community comes together from doing things together. Sure gatherings are nice but what seems like the next step for me is to start working on this PodcampXL. It is inspired by podcamp but the focus is participation and presentation - of one sort or another - by all. I'd like to see this PodcampXL be the start of something rather than just a great event. Afterwards I'd like to keep the discussions going the working together going. How that works isn't clear to me, but it shouldn't be - it should come organically from the process of the PodcampXL.

Rather than describe the ideas of how I envision PodcampXL and make everyone scroll through my thoughts I will write more on my PodcampXL idea in the next post.

Now Back to a more Text Based bit of Blogging

2007-11-26T23:21:00.000-08:00

I have moved most of the Utterz off of this blog. If you would like to listen to my audio Utterz, mostly thoughts while I'm on the road., feel free to stop by my page on Utterz.

Made it home

2007-11-20T19:46:00.001-08:00

Starting mileage was 138881
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Mobile post sent by goldiekatsu using Utterz. Replies.

Echo Resevoir

2007-11-20T11:27:00.001-08:00

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Mobile post sent by goldiekatsu using Utterz. Replies. mp3

Public, Private and Otherwise

2007-11-13T16:27:00.000-08:00

As most of you probably know I am active on Twitter and Seesmic and Facebook and other web 2.0y sites. One of the themes that have been coming up a lot is about how we build relationships over these mediums. Loic Le Meur compares Seesmic to us all living together or being in the same room. Jeff Pulver calls it his social media living room.

I will admit I have some of those feelings. With these instant communication mediums we see into people's lives: Moments with their children, questions they have in life, ceremonies and celebrations, issues they think are important, what they are having for dinner or when they are drinking coffee. We develop a certain intimacy while never really being there physically. I mean, the ideal is that I will meet my Seesmic and Twitter friends but so far I have not.

That said, these living rooms, and bedrooms and kitchens we see are being shared on the public internet. Each tweet gets indexed by Google and our visages and words are easily brought up in a search. So that begs the question, how much do we share in public, even as we have the feel of a private space?

Last night, while my internet was down, I wrote up a post explaining why I haven't been posting which included the personal story of my past year, and ending with basically "I've been thinking lots, still have questions, am not satisfied, but time to get posting again." As you might note that post is not here. That might change, but putting those details down in my blog seemed to be too much of an exposure.

Now there are a a few points that make a blog differ from a Seesmic post or a tweet. My blog is, in a sense, where a person would go to find out more about me. Sure they might check my tweets or videos, but those sort of stream by. It is a public statement, but with so much volume as to make the information a bit of blur - at least for a human reviewing the data. So a statement here is a bit more permanent and likely read. Also, other than bits of data that slip I rarely share my questions and doubts and challenges with others, so perhaps I am just a bit less likely than most to share.

But I wonder how much people chose to show of their inner side. What makes someone comfortable to share the information? When is it appropriate? Is this sense of "private" and "public" a generational thing? a cultural thing? Do we become less sensitive to that boundary as we share more often, more consistently and more in private public areas? Or do we, in our minds, come up with our personal boundary - that we many not be aware of - and share freely on one side, and keep private what is on the other? And how do these boundaries, and the ubiquitousness of the social milieu affect how we interact in our actual private lives and relationships?

Right now all I have are questions, but I thought I would share them with you. Let me know your thoughts.

Regional Elitism & Web 2.0 - A Video Response

2007-10-23T11:50:00.000-07:00

A video response to the thread that Eric Rice started on regional elitism.
(Scobleizer's rejoinder to Eric can be seen here. Other parts of the discussion are scattered about the web)

An Autonomous Metaverse - in Text

2007-10-11T18:53:00.000-07:00

The video in the previous post seems to have disappeared so I will try to recap what I discussed in the previous post.

First there is the general lay of the land in law and virtual worlds. Since the people behind the avatars live in a physical space those people will fall under the jurisdiction where they live. What is legal or illegal in their country or city or etc. will likely apply to them in the virtual world.

The place where this begins to get interesting is really in the Virtual World provider space. While the provider is bound by the laws of where they and their machines reside there still is a question of how does the provider interact with the laws that apply to those that use their worlds. Although this has been dealt with to some extent by the Internet, there are many areas that are different as there are actions within a virtual world that do not exist on a relatively static web page. One would hope that providers will spend some time looking at the international legal spectrum and come up with a plan of how to handle these rather than just reacting to the cases as they are presented, but predicting how those laws will apply or appear even is not an easy task. (How many thousands of conflicting laws are there?)

So that is the obvious case - laws of the physical worlds will come to apply in the virtual worlds. But...what if the virtual world could be sprung free from the legal jurisdiction of the existing legal systems. What would you view as a "legitimate form of government" in that world? What kind of laws would develop?

Now at first glance it seems like that is a pointless question - how unlikely is an autonomous world. Well I don't know how likely, but to me it doesn't seem impossible. In fact, using existing technologies and legalistic oddities I could see how such a virtual world - or grid - could be created. Let us call this virtual world the autonomous metaverse. There are three components that I think are necessary:

1) Places for the servers
2) Anonymous network access
3) A way to get money in and out of the system and to the physical person

For the servers, having watched the legal dances of services such as bittorrent there are legal jurisdictions that are fairly hands-off on what is served up on the network from their locale. This would be the place to start for hosting the autonomous metaverse.

For the networks, on the video I was postulating that something along the Freedom network that Zero Knowledge Systems had created would work. But the Freedom network has since disappeared. Since then I have found out about the Tor network which provides anonymous communication on the network (and seems to have built upon the work that was done on the Freedom Network. Connectivity to the autonomous metaverse would be through Tor or networks like this - and be restricted to access through such trusted channels.

The money at first seemed to be a hard one, until I started thinking about what in the US we call "offshore banking". Either offshore banking or other anonymous banking methods could allow money to go in and out of the autonomous metaverse and be placed in some account that the physical person could access. The legality of this may be questionable for the person receiving the money, although I suspect there are legal means that could be used as well.

Using these three components the autonomous metaverse could work outside of other legal jurisdictions.

It would be interesting to see how law would develop, what laws would develop, how they would be enforced, and what would happen if one could cross from the autonomous metaverse to the standard worlds.

An Autonomous Metaverse

2007-10-01T22:58:00.000-07:00

I have been involved in a discussion over on Virtual Worlds Connect about how law applies to cyberspace. Some side discussions got me thinking about how one might go about creating a virtual world that could have an independent legal system. I thought I'd capture the general ideas in a video.

After the introduction to the more practical aspects of law and the metaverse, the alternative metaverse idea begins at about 2:20 on the time-line.

The video associated with this post seems to have disappeared. For the ideas contained in the video please see the post "An Autonomous Metaverse - in Text"

A Toy Before the Holiday

2007-09-21T17:10:00.000-07:00

I picked up one of those little tennis ball thrower dog toys a few days ago, but hadn't yet brought it in. Before it was Shabbat I thought I would bring it in and play with the dogs. Just bringing it in from the car the handle was a smell fest for the dogs - verry exciting. Then I opened the wrapping about the tennis ball launcher - tennis ball included. Ooooh new tennis ball smell.

Barak was beside himself.
He started bouncing around like he was on a pogo stick and then offering any behavior - perfect intent on me sit, down, stand, bounce and around again hoping it would get him the toy. Ember was wiggling with excitement herself. They seemed to have missed the memo about Akitas being aloof reserved dogs, but they got the goofball part.

We headed outside and I threw the ball. Sometimes Ember will actually play fetch, but this was not one of those days - today was keep away/hand off the ball and wrestle day.

They both race to get the ball and then the victorious hunter runs while the other chases, then the front dog stops throws the ball down and chases the other while the formerly chasing dog scrambles to get the ball. They bounded about the yard leaping and turning in the air. Ahhh the joy of a new tennis ball - the simple pleasures of life.

Twitter Tutorial

2007-09-18T00:26:00.000-07:00

If you aren't already on twitter - or if you have a friend you are trying to get into twitter here is a tutorial of twitter. The basics are covered in the first 11 minutes and the rest of the video goes into a slightly more in depth view of twitter.

The Patience of Dogs

2007-09-09T03:33:00.001-07:00

Some times I think I am very lucky to have dogs. Here it is late at night and as I prepare to say Slichot (penetential prayers - in this case in preparation for Rosh Hashanah) I look down at girl dog and ask her if she wants to say Slichot. I keep on prattling on in my primate manner and after looking intently and checking to see if there are going to be any words that she knows and needs to respond to she sighs and rests her head on my lap as if to say "Whatever you want mom."

When I stand up to begin she stands up too and stay standing for a bit, but when I finish I look down and she sound asleep on the floor, as she should be. She is a dog after all.

Technorati Tags: dog, slichot, rosh hashanah, patience

Wine Tasting - Kosher Wines

2007-09-01T22:18:00.000-07:00

I've never done a wine tasting before so why not do a self run one on camera :-)

This was a MealToday for Viddler. Wine tasting of a Malbec from Argentina, Cabernet Savignion from Solano, CA, Tempranillo from Spain & a Muscat from the Golan.

Blog Day - Across the Bridge

2007-08-31T10:49:00.000-07:00

Today Chris Brogan reminded me it was Blog Day. Now I feel a bit silly pointing out new blogs to check out, as I feel that I'm hardly an authority, but I can play too. In looking at my facebook connections (which really represents only a small portion of the circles I am in) I realize that I tend to connect different groups. So in that vein, rather than focusing on "new" blogs I will focus on blogs that are by folks that are not part of the "New Media" crowd on Facebook.

First we have Treppenwitz - Hardly a new blog or a small blog, but in looking at the connections map he's definitely in another circle. He writes about his life - sometimes it is about his politics but it is also about his family and work and fun picture stories.

Secondly, and I'm a bit surprised about this, is Gwen Bell. She seems more connected into the new media scene, but on Facebook she isn't highly into the Web2.0 cluster. She wrote about the Startup Weekend in Boulder but also writes about all sorts of stuff, yoga, karaoke, things that are important to her.

Third up, Mark Corner. His blog, Lose that Tyre, is ostensibly about weight loss, but occasionally has other interesting thoughts. I actually found out about the Thirty Day Challenge because of Mark. He followed me on twitter, I followed back and then he mentioned he started twitter because of the challenge and so I checked out the site. The other big cluster on my map is folks I've met through the Thirty Day Challenge. Since then, I get to find out about all sorts of cool things from Mark between the groups he lets me know about and his twitters. Check him out.

Fourth we have Neptunus Lex. He is a Naval Officer & Aviator. My husband turned me on to his blog as he has amazing stories. I have a renewed appreciation for what goes into landing on an Aircraft Carrier. I'd like to learn to fly, but I think I'll pass on landing on a boat.

Fifth we have Ouria Tadmor and his blog The World. His blog is mostly pictures and when he writes he often writes in Hebrew, which I don't know well enough to read, but I love his pictures.

Updated: Yeah I had problems finding 5 - especially because I forgot I was going to add this one. Caroline Middlebrook has a great blog. She writes really well, explains concepts really well and tells her story while she does it. I definitely recommend her blog.

What I find interesting is that many of my friends who were early adopters and creating the new web back in the early 1990's don't seem to be very present in the current new media. Yes, they still have their web pages, but not much else. I wonder what makes a person continue to explore and get involved in new technologies and what makes a person become satisfied with the tools they have and their personal projects and leave the early adopting to others.

Bacn and Paper Towels

2007-08-28T14:18:00.000-07:00

Ok, now that I'm seeing even people I think would know better complaining about Bacn, like Seth Godin I have to speak up about Paper Towels.

You want the info but later (otherwise you probably would have turned it off on the configuration of your twitter/facebook/pounce/jaiku/8apps/etc.) What do you do?

People - this has been around forever. When you are on lots of mailing lists you don't necessarily want the news in your in-box either - that is why G-d invented mail filters.

Each mail program has its own special way to set up mail filters - but you can have the bacn go straight to its own special folder. You know the domain the email will be coming from - it's really easy to filter.

So stop complaining about bacn - enjoy it in its right place and keep your email useful.

Below I will provide some tips on how to set up mail filters on some of the more common mail programs. (Sorry Linux users I don't know what the "common email program" would be for you but I suspect you already know how to do this.) Enjoy your paper towels and consume bacn responsibly.

(And if you don't want the service notifications - check your preferences - most of these services let you turn off their info emails.)

On to the email filters.

Gmail - They are called filters but the power comes from the labels. Label the mail and archive it (Skip the inbox checkbox.) Then click on the labels on the side bar (towards the bottom) to read your bacn when ready. Learn how to set up filters here: http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6579

Apple Mail - Set up rules and dump the mail in its own special mailbox. If you want you can create a bacn folder and then have a mailbox for each service - or you can just dump it all into a general bacn box. Ok...I'm not finding a great page on this but I'll augment the Apple support doc I found.
1) Create your bacn box (Mailbox-> new mailbox)
2) Select some Bacn
3) Follow the directions to set up a rule here http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=151480
because you already selected the mail you want to filter it will already fill in the the email address to filter on (you can chose other criteria if you prefer). Tell it to move the message to your new bacn folder.

Outlook - What you are looking for is user defined filters. Check out this page for the details: http://www.uh.edu/infotech/php/template.php?nonsvc_id=247

Outlook express - Details on filters for Outlook express can be found here: http://www.opentechsupport.net/forums/archive/topic/7626-1.html

Brief thoughts on Second Life & The Media

2007-08-26T16:07:00.000-07:00

I was just reading an article on ABC News about the SLCC. I find it amusing the constant "well only x people made a lot of money in Second Life".

What percentage of Internet users make real money on the internet. Is it even 1%? What use is the Internet then? Oh..it was started as a way to exchange ideas between scientists, educators, and inventors? People use it just to share with others and connect to family far away? Where's the worth in that? Could it be the communication and connection and creativity has its own worth?

SL is just a new medium that is still growing. It's also different. When companies first came to the internet few made much money or had more than a few brochures online. It took time to learn the new medium and now many businesses exist only on the web. Given time SL, or other virtual worlds like it will develop in to a new medium for business and yet still be a medium for play - not unlike the internet, but at the same time in a different way than the internet.

And for those who ask why would you spend money on virtual objects - what does your movie ticket buy you? 2 hours in the theater and a memory? How is that any more tangible than a virtual outfit that may be "worn" many times and is used to impress someone who might become a business partner?

Hype is hype, but given time and the development of more pervasive bandwidth and better computers virtual worlds will become as common as instant messaging and email.

Brain at Work & Visiting Grandpa

2007-08-26T02:51:00.000-07:00

In looking at the blog I've noticed I've not been posting much, and over on viddler I've not been videoing much. Now one theory might be that I'm not spending as much time on line lately, but really that's not the excuse. I think the problem is best described as analysis paralysis. I tend to have lots of ideas of things to write about. I've probably written about 10 posts in my mind - but getting them to the blog - now that's the challenge. I guess part of it is my public and private tendencies battling it out.

Some people are good at writing no matter their mood - in truth we all are human and have ranges of emotions. I often want to share thoughts when I'm in my darker moodier moods, but then I stop. I wonder - how will this inspire someone. How will this make their life better. It's my mood - why should I bother others with it. But in a sense, I'm doing the same thing that I HATE about some writing. "Oh yes, everything was tumbling down and I was violently ill but I had faith and it all came out wonderful because of my great faith." "Wonderful", I say to the author "and how exactly am I supposed to relate to you and learn from your story?" So perhaps those down days aren't so bad for writing after all.

A week ago I was busy packing for a trip to Nevada City to go to my Grandfather's 90th birthday party. It was wonderful to go and sad to go. In some ways Nevada City is the place that is most like "home" even though I've never really lived there. I have been going there during the summers for longer than I've lived any one place. My grandparents were always there along with my aunt and uncle and usually some more of my mother's side of the family.
It was in the summer that I would read what I wanted and contemplate the universe. It was a consistent "home base" more so than that which would be called "home" at any time in my life.

That said I have not been back to Nevada City in years for various reasons. And this past March my grandmother died. I couldn't make the funeral because my mother-in-law had died just 6 days earlier and I was physically unable to make the trip on top of that. So this trip "home" was the first time I had been back since my grandmother had died. As I stepped through the gate that led to the house I looked and saw my grandmother's touches on the house and cried.

There was the swan on the railing:

Which reminded me of the stories she'd tell me of Half-chick and Dapple Gray and other stories.

And then there were the details along the roof-line.

And the little planter stand she and grandpa would make together.

After a few seconds I composed myself and headed across the little bridge to the house and called out the family "yoo hooo" as I opened the door to announce my arrival.

Operator 11 Twitter Vox

2007-08-23T00:20:00.000-07:00

Wednesday I remembered that Loudmouthman had mentioned the Twittervox Show on Operator 11 and I asked him when it was. It turns out it was in about three hours from when I asked him. I was able to join in on the show, and it was the first Operator 11 show I joined and it was a ton of fun. Once the show got going it really felt like a round table discussion. We talked about twitter and second life and relationships built over virtual spaces.

Warzabidul, the host, blogged about it and pointed out that it was the featured show for today. You can check out this weeks episode here. If you can, join us next week on August 29th at 12PM PST for episode 3.

Workout Today - August 9

2007-08-10T12:49:00.001-07:00

This video is about motivation and about working out.

Thoughts on Later Adapters

2007-08-10T11:56:00.001-07:00

I'm listening to Loudmouthman and Jeff Pulver on the PulverTV show and they are talking about the reactions of people to their most recent missives on the subject of social media. They were noting that VoIP seems to be taking off but there is a slowness to grasp the value of social networks.

The thought that occurred to me is that people have a framework with which they view the world. For most this means that things that do not fit their paradigm just do not make sense. I think VoIP is close enough to phone that that is something they can grasp the value of (and free VoIP services help - it offers something they use for free.)

The temptation, given the above, is to describe the new technologies in terms of older technologies to help them grasp the new ones. Although as a teaching tool analogies are very useful and may well bring the later adapters online, the question I have is do these analogies limit us. When we see new technologies in terms of new ways to do old things (which I will admit I often see those patterns) does it limit our ability to see how new technologies can offer something new or allow us to something new - other than the same thing faster and shinier.

Technorati Tags: social media, web2.0, voip, definition, adaptation

Bread Soup and Cookies Part 3

2007-08-08T21:10:00.001-07:00

And now for the finally of the 3 part video - cookies or the making of Biscotti. This is the same recipe as documented below.

Bread, Soup and Cookies Part 2

2007-08-08T21:08:00.001-07:00

Here is the video wherein I make soup.

Bread, Soup and Cookies Part 1

2007-08-05T22:39:00.001-07:00

So viddler switched their contest from MeToday to MealToday. Yes, the premise is making a video about what you ate or made to eat on a day.

Here we have making Challah, part 1 of a three part series.

How I Do MeTodays

2007-08-01T00:25:00.001-07:00

What I do to do my MeTodays

Relay for Life in SL

2007-07-31T01:54:00.001-07:00

Today I explored the amazing builds that were created for the Relay for Life event in SL. They are going away soon so catch them if you haven't already.

You can still make a donation to the Cancer Society of America and have it be part of this year's relay for life at http://www.todayisave.com/alife

Me Today July 28th

2007-07-29T03:08:00.001-07:00

A question of timing and connections.

Me Today July 26

2007-07-26T22:33:00.001-07:00

Don't let your fears hold you back from what you want to do.

Me Today - Faces Edition

2007-07-25T19:06:00.001-07:00

Some days you gotta just be a little silly. This was one of them.

8 Random Things About My Desk

2007-07-23T00:46:00.001-07:00

It was late...I was casting about for ideas - so you have 8 Random Things (that were) About My Desk.