Peter Van Dijck’s Guide to Ease

I have my new laptop, and the program’s I’m installing are in order, Firefox, M$ Office, Visio, putty, CutePDF, iTunes, Skype. So far.

Tech Confidential Blog: Adaptive Path and Sierra Ventures forge partnership: “Adaptive Path, the cutting-edge Internet consulting and design firm that has helped define Web 2.0, said today it has agreed to provide Sierra Ventures’ portfolio companies with consulting services in exchange for equity. The two firms have not consummated any deals yet but anticipate that Adaptive Path will work with three to four of Sierra’s portfolio companies per year.

For Adaptive Path, it provides them with the upside that they lack working on an hourly basis. After watching former clients such as the Flickr founders go on to riches via a sale to Yahoo!, Adaptive Path is willing to take the risk that equity provides in exchange for the potential reward. It also builds upon the entrepreneurial experience they gained building blog analytic tool Measure Map and then selling it to Google earlier this month.”

I had a query something like this returning many duplicate rows:

SELECT entries.permalink, video.id, … FROM entries, entries2video, video WHERE entries.feedid = ‘1′ AND entries.id = entries2video.entryid AND video.id = entries2video.videoid ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT

It turns out the fix was pretty easy: instead of “order by id”, make it “order by entries.id” (which makes more sense). I am not sure why, but this fixed the problem of returning duplicate rows.

Henry Jenkins and Danah Boyd published a full email interview about MySpace and such. They encourage sharing, so here is my remix of that:

What is MySpace?

Danah: “When youth login, their first task is typically to check messages in order to see who has written them. While email is still used to communicate with adults and authorities, MySpace is the primary asynchronous communication tool for teens.

After checking personal messages, youth check friend additions, bulletin board posts, event announcements and new blog posts by friends. They visit their friends’ pages to see new photos or check out each other’s comments.

The vast majority of social network site use amongst youth does not involve surfing to strangers’ profiles, but engaging more locally with known friends and acquaintances.

[...] these sites give youth a space to hang out amongst friends and peers, share cultural artifacts (like links to funny websites, comments about TV shows) and work out an image of how they see themselves.”

What is the controversy over MySpace?

Henry: “Much of the controversy has come not as a result of anything new that MySpace and the other social software sites contribute to teen culture but simply from the fact that adults can no longer hide their eyes to aspects of youth culture in America that have been there all along.”

Q: What do ’social networking software programs’ provide participants? What’s their down side?

danah: “By giving youth access to a public of their peers, MySpace provides a fertile ground for identity development and cultural integration. As youth transition from childhood, they seek out public environments to make sense of culture, social status and how they fit into the world. Interacting with strangers helps them understand who they are and communities of interest allow them to explore ideas and values. Although youth are able to socialize privately with one another in the homes of friends, most are not allowed to spend time hanging out in public, unaccompanied by parents or adults.”

Q: What educational use might/does MySpace or other social network software have?

Henry: “Teachers are discovering that students take their assignments more seriously and write better if they are producing work which will reach a larger public rather than simply sit on the teacher’s desk.”

Q: The proposed bill appears to offer protection to minors from online predators, by limiting their mutual access. Is predation a real danger with MySpace?

Danah: “Statistically speaking, kids are more at risk at a church picnic or a boy scout outing than they are when they go on MySpace. Less than .01% of all youth abductions nationwide are stranger abductions and as far as we know, no stranger abduction has occurred because of social network services.
[...]
The fear of predators has regularly been touted as a reason to restrict youth from both physical and digital publics. Yet, as Barry Glassner notes in The Culture of Fear, predators help distract us from more statistically significant molesters. Youth are at far greater risk of abuse in their homes and in the homes of their friends than they ever are in digital or physical publics.”

Q: You have said elsewhere (and several years ago) that virtual gaming experiences of today are analogous to the unfettered play in the backyards of the 1950s — very core & essential experiences. Have social networking like MySpace or games or other new media technology become core experiences now?

Henry: “As I suggested above, most parents understand their children’s experiences in the context of their memories of their own early years. For the baby boom generation, those defining experiences involved playing in backyards and vacant lots within suburban neighborhoods, socializing with their friends at the local teen hangout, and participating within a social realm which was constrained by the people who went to your local school.

All of that is changing. Contemporary children and youth enjoy far less physical mobility, have less time outside of adult control, and have fewer physical places to hang out with their friends.

Much of this activity is being brought online. What teens are doing online is no better and no worse than what previous generations of teens did when their parents weren’t looking.

The difference is that as these activities are being digitized, they are also being brought into public view.

Video games bring the fantasy lives of young boys into the family room and parents are shocked by what they are seeing. Social networks give adults a way to access their teens’ social and romantic lives and they are startled by their desire to break free from restraints or act older than their age. Parents are experiencing this as a loss of control but in fact, adults have greater control over these aspects of their children’s lives than ever before.”

And after Yahoo and eBay made a deal to work together (Paypal and Skype will be all over Yahoo, and Yahoo ads all over eBay), Google today announces a deal with HP, outbiddig Microsoft for a LOT of money: Google will be the default homepage on all Dell computers for the next three years, and they’ll come with Google Desktop installed too. Take that M$.

Still, an expensive buy (supposedly a billion dollars?) to get something that Microsoft pretty much still owns by default: the browser and the desktop.

JungleDisk uses Amazon’s S3 and is free to use (you just pay Amazon for storage). Very promising for storing all your fotos and stuff.

Is there an easy way/tool/software to connect to a mysql database and visualize the tables in it nicely so I can print them out and work through them? I’ve been downloading and trying software, but nothing works so far.

Any suggestions in the comments very welcome! Thanks.

The fight between Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and eBay continues (and Amazon I guess, a lot of people forget about them). Now Yahoo, eBay join forces in partnership. Makes total sense.

Have Money Will Vlog is a new initiative to try to get money for videoblogging projects. The guys are still trying to work out the best model, but since they launched today, any since money pledged will be used for good causes only, go leave them a few bucks! Be a good guy, do it!

The blip.tv guys are some of the most clued in video technology guys around. Sure, blip.tv is no youTube, but thank god for that. They have a much brighter future. They did it again today, and launched a “very unofficial” Windows Movie Maker plugin.

It worked perfectly for me, here’s the movie.

Super easy!

Windows Movie Maker comes pre-installed on every Windows XP computer (it’s in the accessories folder in your programs), and for simple movies it’s actually quite nice. The plugin is a download and it installs in about 12 seconds (yes, I timed it). I don’t know how they did it, but the site mentions “Blip.tv support in Windows Movie Maker is not endorsed in any way by Microsoft”.

This will make me from a lazyvlogger (who doesn’t post often) perhaps into an active vlogger. It’s really cool. Add blip’s cross-post to your blog functionality, and you got a 1-click winner.

Here’s a screenshot:

"dhlovelife - emergency episode!"

Darryl Hanna is turning out to be one of the most "real" videoblogging voices of the famous people that are trying it out, she’s really rocking. This video is great coz it’s about an important issue, a local garden about to be closed. Check it and share it!

Watch movie (Quicktime, 4.1 min, 13.8 MB)

Original post, from daryl hannah’s love life:

(Via Mefeedia)

florecitaPlastika - Florecita Plastika: “An online experiment with words and images by Eliyahoo Cohen Talgam.”

When I was in Laos, I sprained my ankle badly, and the village doctors tried to heal it by calling out to the spirits. Maria made a great video: thevillagedoctors.mov (video/quicktime Object)

"KANJI VIDEO 2 COLOURS": Learn Japanese. I really like these earning videos. If I were learning Japanese, I’d put them all on my iPod. Bu I’m not. But if I was! So there.

Watch movie (Quicktime, 2.8 min, 7.3 MB)

Original post, from Learn Japanese:

It’s video time again and this week we are studying numbers. This video was created by the multi talented Mr Stan Fairbank. If you liked this video then check out Kanji videos 1, Makiko’s self intro, Drinking with Beb, What’s your favorite word ? days of the week and the famous ALT Rap ! You can also see a veritable cornucopia of videos relating to life in Japan and more at our sister site News From The Other Side.Yoroshiku very much !

(Via Mefeedia)

"Eye CandyEye Candy". Pretty cool and nasty. Happy tree friends is Eeeeuiiiw!

The ad in front of the movie didn’t bother me, maybe coz it’s a cartoon too.

Watch movie (Quicktime, 2.1 min, 8.8 MB)

Original post, from Happy Tree Friends:

Candy can be very, very dangerous for your eyesight!

(Via Mefeedia)

"Brouhaha": a cool cut of some recent discussions in the vlogosphere about a post where someone was looking for a "hottie" to host a videoblog show. We not like this attitude.

Watch movie (Quicktime, 2.6 min, 15.3 MB)

Original post, from Bottom Union:

In case it’s not obvious enough, all of this is taken completely out of context. You can view the videos in their original context here: No Practice, Byte Me, Ryanedit, RichardBF, Nurse2be, Shooting Full Force, and MsKitka.

(Via Mefeedia)

The We Media people insisted on my feedback, so I wrote them this:

I was dissapointed with the conference because of the way it was set
up. Instead of having people who truly understand “we media” on the
stage, it was filled with representatives of old media. The
discussions on the stage staid on the surface. A good example was the
section about citizen media: it was illustrated not by a true citizen
media video, but by a video from the BBC. A video that totally
misunderstood what citizen media is.

The “assasin” section was cringe-worthy. Invite a blogger to your table! The whole conference felt patronizing to anyone in “we media”. We got to sit in the back, and listen to old media people who didn’t really get that: we don’t need them! They need us.

I won’t come back unless we media is on the stage, not old media’s interpretation of we media.

Oh, and please don’t invite people just for their star power. Richard Dreyfuss’s section was irrelevant.

We have a world to change, and I don’t have time to be the token blogger at a conference that makes us the “audience” and old media the
“voice”. It’s the other way round.

It’s harsh criticism, but this is how I felt.

Yahoo! launched its most significant homepage redesign ever today.

loadedpun » Mashup control issues: a great post on issues of control in mashups. These are the kinds of conversations we need to be having.

CARS Video Podcast: the upcoming Pixar movie Cars now has a videoblog. King Kong did it too (first? don’t remember..).

"en chile ya hace frío". It’s cold in Chile!

Watch movie

Original post, from puritito tomate tv:

[48 segundos; 3,6 mb]Etiquetas: gasco, chile, frío, pepa, vlogs, videoblogging, vlogging

(Via Mefeedia)

This is supposed to appeal to teens?

PCD Music Lounge Fan Club Release: “We are creating a nice, safe place for music fans to hang out, chat, dance, make friends, and generally have fun. Remember, when you are in The Lounge, you are in a public social environment.”

How… nice!

Joi Ito’s Web: Visa Waiver form is YOUR responsibility!

I use the visa waiver too, and I didn’t know that. US immigration are the scariest in the world.

Flash to jump beyond the browser.

Interesting. Adobe (=Macromedia) is developing a kind of “Flash browser” that we can build internet applications with that will, as one of its great features, manage offline-online usage, ie. you can use it while offline *and* while online. Competition: lots, but also XUL, the technology that Firefox and also Songbird, an iTunes clone use.

This could become an interesting space, but right now, I would bet on XUL over Flash, simply because it is already there and is slowly being proven/tested in real life apps.

A good movie overview of what’s new in Drupal:

4.7-whats-new.mov (video/quicktime Object)

Mapping a path for the 3D Web - page 2 | CNET News.com. I do prefer blog-speak over press-speak, generally.

In blog-speak: “It was pretty boring although the people were interesting. I was so relieved when we got to see an actual demo instead of boring pie-in-the-sky conversations. And the food was good.”

Press-speak: “During one break in the schedule Saturday, two members of the team producing Croquet, an open-source software platform designed for creating collaborative, multiple-user online applications, showed off their software. And as word spread about the demo, nearly everyone in attendance suddenly scrambled to watch.

Quickly, about 30 people gathered in a tight semi-circle around the two Croquet team members as they showed off the software’s ability to let people move in and out of rich virtual spaces easily and with little of the lag and complicated user-interface of virtual worlds like “Second Life.”

The demonstration was one of the highlights of a day filled with engrossing conversations, but short on tangible progress toward the road map everyone had come to create.

To some, the format of the event presented hard challenges to achieving the stated goals. But some felt that organizers had gotten it right.”

Morph-The Media Center conversation: so why doesn’t the wemedia blog mention any of the dissapointment felt in the blogosphere about the conference?

The Obvious?: Oh I soooo know that feeling ….: “As I had feared, it was a complete waste of time. I’m sorry, I’m never normally this critical of a conference - particularly as I know first hand how much damned hard work it takes to put one on - but it was unexpurgated garbage. I had thought it might turn into ‘MeTooMedia’, but it went one step further than that and became ‘TheyMedia’. Instead of progressing the conversation, or even bringing it up to date, the BBC managed to thrust us into a timewarp and take us back at least two, maybe three years.

…..

All in all, the day was very insular and introspective, with a lot of people appearing to think that they are doing very well, thankyouverymuch, without the input of anyone who knows what they’re talking about. By the end of the day, I was beyond my usual state of British reserve and just about ready to spit feathers. I’m used to people not getting it, remember - I do this stuff for a living so I have plenty of experience of people talking out of their arse. But this conference brought me to a new level of frustration.”

I was extremely frustrated that day as well. With such a fabulous/famous cast of people, how can you put on such a horrible conference? I actually walked out the first day, I just couldn’t take it anymore. The second day was a bit better, but I had to leave early to catch a flight.

wemedia

WorldNetDaily: Arab airline hijacks kids of ‘South Park’

2006 White House Correspondents Dinner with Stephen Colbert - Google Video. You *have* to watch this video. It’s quite funny.

Whenever I blog like 5 posts of another blog in a row, it means I’ve discovered an interesting new one: “I met a guy last Saturday night and he asked for my phone number and, like, things were going well at the bar, so I give him my phone number and he puts me right into his phone and was like, hey, that’s ,that’s, that’s pretty quick and then he asked me if I wanted his number and I was like yeah do you want to put it down on a business card or something. I mean I’m a lady! Who thinks of jumping right into my phone. I got to take this as a process. If we call, if we have some sort of thing going.”

[The ad shows the Nokia 8801 and the line:] Nokia: It’s your life in there

“It’s like my cell phone is precious, it’s precious territory.”

This Blog Sits at the: Bloggers vs. the old media (are they panicking yet?): “In the early days of regime transition, the incumbent (aka New York Times, Wall Street Journal) treats the new challenger (aka bloggers) with a certain high handed indifference. If acknowledgment occurs at all, it comes with a patronizing pat on the head, as in “Hey, aren’t the newcomers charmingly amateur? Welcome to the party. Now, run along and get me a drink.” More often, bloggers are not acknowledged. They just don’t matter.”

Which is exactly what I felt at WeMedia last week, although there are also the ones that *do* get it and they are entusiastic and willing.

This Blog Sits at the:: “The Marketing Science Institute meetings on ethnography are
now over.”

Some good insights in ethnography in a business setting.

“But as it stands, almost all the b-school academics who care to teach this stuff were in the room [John Sherry (Notre Dame), Eric Arnould, Linda Price (Arizona), Lisa Penaloza (Colorado), Craig Thompson (Wisconsin) and Rob Kozinets (York and MIT)] and this is not a good sign.”

And this one: “One of the real challenges that remains stands at the border between outward research and inward process. Some corporate cultures have a hard time bringing the ethnographic insight fully in-house.”

Now Go read the whole thing.

Architectures of Control in Design » An astounding quote on the Mosquito: “Marketing Director Simon Morris said: “The noise has been tested extensively on dogs and cats who are totally unaffected by it.
“The device has a small range and it takes at least 10 minutes for the annoying nature of the noise to take effect.
“People have a right to assemble with others in a peaceful way - without violence or threat of violence.
“We do not consider that this right includes the right of teenagers to congregate for no specific purpose.�

I guess that includes MySpace, right? You can’t make this stuff up! (You could, perhaps, then you’d have V for Vendetta).

I was having a conversation with a startup around social software the other day, and those conversations almost always end up being around issues of control. I was trying to explain them that mechanisms of control don’t necessarily need to be mechanisms of all-out restriction, but are often social mechanisms of setting examples, social control, deciding what content to surface and such.

So today I am happy to find this excellent blog: Architectures of Control in Design

Column Two: Full site redesign? Start by addressing the home page. I have a lot of respect for James, but that’s the WORST advice ever. Starting with the homepage is a direct road to political hell in any company. I usually do my best to keep the homepage out of discussions until we’ve done other parts of the site. These days, I’m doing the same with the main nav - it all comes out of working on the rest of the site. James, this one’s just wrong, I find it hard to imagine you won’t go straight to politicohell (don’t pass by START).

If you speak Spanish and are interested in immigration issues: diariodeviaje: Un dia sin inmigrantes

The immigrant movement in the US seems to slowly come together. Immigrants were always afraid (no papers, after all!) to organize. “A day without immigrants” seems (correct me if I’m wrong) to be one of the first political events to bring these people together. And then things might start to change.

Technorati Search: wemedia

So just to be clear: it’s been, overall, a very dissapointing conference. I wouldn’t go next time. Part of that are the way the discussion is structured, and the moderators. There are very few real stories, and few people really speak their minds.

The buzz with us token bloggers is one of dissapointment.

I am a terrorist.

One pretty cool thing happened in London at WeMedia - I met 2 terrorists. The first day, one of the bloggers stood up and said he’d rather not be called an “assassin”, he preferred the term “terrorist”. The whole first day made me so angry. It was nothing but cluelessness. Today seems better.

The second day, I met a lady who was actually a convicted terrorist in 3 countries. She was with the AIF (or something, the african something), and according to a laywer she met in Canada who helped draft the legislation there, that organization was retroactively classified as a “terrorist” organisation, hence, she is a terrorist.

And that reminded me of the movie V for Vendetta. At the end of the movie, crowds of people stand up and put on the terrorist mask. Hey, my terrorist is your freedom fighter. And now in 1 weekend, 2 people tell me proudly they are terrorists. I see a movement born there.

The word terrorist has been abused by the Bush governement enough, time to take it back.

I am a terrorist now. How about you? If you are, tag yourself with iamaterrorist.

wemedia, iamaterrorist.

So I’m at the WeMedia conference in London, it’s this big BBC/Reuters thing about journalism, media and stuff, and it’s pretty global - they have a guy from Al Jazeera talking and such. They just finished the opening notes.

It’s not that large it seems, a tv studio, a few hundred people, lotta journalists, some famous people, who all get to “ask questions” (Richard Dryfuss is into information? Who knew!). It feels like a BigMedia thing, it’s structured almost as a TV show (I guess they couldn’t help themselves - I’m almost surprised there’s no-one doing audience warmup), and at the end 2 business people (from Nokia and something else I didn’t get) got to push their products (The Nokia guy: “Our revolutionary technology that empowers blablablablabla”). Come on! So yeah, I was a bit annoyed with the talk about opening media and every single person who got to speak was famous or something (Jeff Jarvis? That’s their idea of a blogger?). Oh, I know, famous or rich, because either you speak or you pay like, I’m not sure, 800$ to get in. But all the bitching apart, it’s sounding pretty cool and interesting all in all.

Anyways, I’m looking forward to some of the panels and meeting some people, hearing some stories. I had to get up at 4:30am so I’m kinda grumpy. And also, I don’t have a plug for this weird UK electricity system so I’m not sure I’ll be able to charge the laptop. And I’m typing this in Notepad, I haven’t been able to connect yet. I’m making some movies too, but I won’t be able to upload them until later.

Oh and I noticed Adam Curry didn’t pick up his badge yet, he’ll be late then :) Damn famous conference people! Unconference it is not.

Update: no converter available today it seems, so not sure about the blogging.

I’ll just make notes until my laptop runs outta power.

Next session (second one, day 1).

Let’s play social media buzzword bingo!

“This age of transformation.”
“The global challenges we’ll be facing.”
“The developing world.”
“Empowerment.”
“Bottom up.”

Yey.

The Niti gentleman (from the UN) is talking now:
“I sensed there was something missing: relevance.”
“When we speak of media, it’s not just internet/… Don’t forget SMS, radio (in Africa!), television, …”

ps: I wonder if the video will be available online?

Back to mr. Niti:

“Economic power is shifting to the developing countries. India and China, and many others will become media powers.”

ps: everyone around me is connected, my laptop doesn’t wanna connect. darn.

“Street protest work very well for regime change. Armed protests haven’t worked much. Perhaps because it is far easier for the media to cover street protest. Maybe armed conflict doesn’t make as good theater … this emergence of transnational networks of activists, united around issues/policies …”

Sigh, can’t connect. Arg. Damn windows!

There’s some bloggers sitting around me (we got like the backseats ;) It’s like being black in the 40s in the USA, I really feel like we’re the token bloggers here. Man that’s dumb.

Movies coming soon, I did some vlogging.

wemedia

(Hey, I got connected at Reuters today!)