Monthly Archive for February, 2008

Page 3 of 7

Augmented Reality: A Preflection

Published by Jarred on February 20, 2008 in Computing, Culture and Humanism. View Comments

A Story
While I usually take the bus to work in the morning so I can get in some reading, on my way home I usually end up taking the Metro and making the 20-minute hike up Mt. Saint Alban to our apartment building. It’s nice to get some exercise and fresh air after sitting in front of a computer all day.

As I near the end of my walk each night, I walk right by the National Cathedral. It’s been getting darker a little later these days as we move towards springtime, and so the light on the cathedral has been especially beautiful the past week or so. Tonight as I walked by, I peered up at the heights of this enormous building, trying to make out some of the gargoyles. I’ve always heard that there was a Darth Vader gargoyle up there somewhere, but I had never seen it and had no idea where it was.

I considered pulling out my iPhone to look it up on Wikipedia, but it just felt like a little too much effort and I had to hurry and grab some dinner before a basketball game on TV. Besides, why stare down for three minutes at the glowing screen of my iPhone when I could spend those three minutes watching the glow of the setting sun on the facade of the cathedral?

In those three minutes looking at the cathedral, I thought about how lamentable it is that the wealth of information and the empowering connectivity of the Internet is tied to screens. It is indeed a remarkable advance that, with devices like the iPhone, the full Internet is now in our pockets. But it’s still on a screen in our pockets. When we want to look something up on the web, we have to briefly tune out everything and everyone around us — our reality — so that we can focus on the screen. Why do we have to abandon the object of our research, in order to research it?

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Wacky Weather

Published by Jarred on February 18, 2008 in Random and Science. View Comments

So I walked out of my apartment this morning to head to work for a few hours, and it was hot outside. I was wearing a winter jacket and I had my knit hat in hand in preparation for what I thought would be a chilly stroll to the Metro. It is February, after all. I had even considered throwing on a sweater. Good thing I didn’t, because it was HOT. When I finally got to work, I looked up the temperature. The high in D.C. today is 74 degrees.

I ate lunch outside for the first time since at least October. I pushed up my sleeves, put on my sunglasses, and walked around in the sunlight. People were happy. Birds were chirping. Ladies were looking good. I felt like exercising for the first time since Thanksgiving.

Beautiful. Thanks, global warming.

I went back to the weather report, hoping that the trend was going to continue. Hmmm… Tuesday, high of 46? Wednesday, 45?? Thursday, 33?! Talk about a buzzkill.

It’s interesting how much the weather can influence behavior and emotions. Our bodies and minds seem synced to the seasons. Is it the temperature? The light? The attitude of the people around us? The fact that something is changing after months of the same-old same-old? Some evolutionary cause-and-effect that we’ve developed over thousands of years?

What do you think… or does anyone actually know? I’m sure there have been studies done. Bruce, I’m looking at you.

Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Flickr user Yago Veith.

Monday Links: February 18th, 2008

Published by Taylor on February 18, 2008 in Business, Email, Environment, Philanthropy, Politics and Social Entrepreneurship. View Comments

Apparently, some of you folks don’t have to go to work today. Aren’t you special. Since I’m clearly bitter for not having the day off, let’s cut the commentary and get straight to the links:

From the “Things That Make You Go Huh” file, something seemingly obvious that never occurred to me: endless storage on gmail–>rarely deleting email messages–>lots of servers using tons of energy–>negative environmental impact due to archived musings from friends and frantic “OMG!@!11 NEW STAR TREK MOVIE TRAILER” messages from Jarred.

Speaking of email, here’s a (currently) free service that allows users to track whether email recipients click-through on links in their messages. Kind of creepy if you ask me, though anyone who receives political campaign or corporate email (frequent flier promotions, etc) should know that they’re already tracked in this way.

For anyone interested in philanthropy and social ventures, Tactical Philanthropy highlights a goldmine of free articles from the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Stanford usually publishes their articles behind a pay-wall, but for a limited time they’re allowing free access to 2007′s most popular articles, including (my personal favorite) “A New Era for Business.”

An interesting Washington Post article on guerrilla activism–environmental activists inserted leaflets in Kleenex boxes accusing the tissue maker of “wiping away ancient forests.” Is this really a trend?

“The leaflets may be part of a trend known as “shopdropping,” in which people leave items at a store, the reverse of shoplifting. Items left on store shelves have included the business cards of personal trainers tucked into weight-loss books and CDs of unsigned musicians.”

Anyone looking at the Democratic primary deadlock and wondering about the original purpose behind Super Delegates should check out this Op-Ed by the estimable Mann and Ornstein. The authors are insightful as always, but I still view a nomination decided by Super Delegates to be a worst-case scenario in terms of future voter engagement and turnout in the general election.

Finally, in honor of Presidents Day, take a few pointers from George Washington’s “Rules of Civility.”

Enjoy your day off………

Untwisting Twitter

Published by Jarred on February 18, 2008 in Social Networks and Web 2.0. View Comments

Have you heard of Twitter? If you’ve heard of it, do you know what it is?

I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer to one or both of those is “no.” I consider myself a close follower of web developments, and fairly adept at figuring out what some of these newfangled services are for… but Twitter is one of the rare ones that had me dumbfounded. It literally took me months to understand why anyone would use this, and to understand why all the bloggers that I follow see it as such an important service.

And if it took me this long to figure out what Twitter is or how it’s useful, then it has a ways to go before it hits the mainstream and becomes adopted by the masses.

After drilling down to the FAQ, Twitter describes itself as “a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?“ Anticipating your next question (“But… what is the point?”), the FAQ responds:

As it turns out, your best friend is probably interested in knowing if you’re “loving the new Radiohead album.” And yes, your Mom may want to know if you’re “skipping breakfast in favor of a latte.” You might want to know if your significant other “feels like taking a roadtrip.” Find out what your friends are doing; keep each other abreast of your quotidian rituals.

If you’re still not following, let me try to help. Twitter is basically a mix of instant messaging, text messaging, blogging, and the Facebook status update.

Like instant messaging, messages (in Twitter they’re called “tweets”) are often composed on the computer and can include links to other websites. Messages can also be directed to specific people, as opposed to the whole public.
It is similar to text messaging in that tweets are limited to 140 characters, so messages must be brief. (Twitter updates can also be made by text message).
It is akin to blogging in that tweets are logged in reverse-chronological order for each person on their Twitter page, and a user’s feed can be subscribed to both through an RSS reader and through the built-in “follow” function.
And finally, it is like the Facebook status update because a tweet usually says something about what the person is doing or thinking.

But still… why? We already have instant messaging, text messaging, blogging, and Facebook. Why is there a need for this service that pulls characterisitcs from each of those and makes something completely new?

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