Archive for the 'Computing' Category

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Kiva.org Matures Into The First True Social Giving Platform

Published by Jarred on February 4, 2009 in Computing, Microfinance and Web 2.0. View Comments

Yesterday, Kiva.org (which we profiled here) announced that it was creating a developer community and releasing a set of APIs. With this bold stroke, Kiva transforms itself from microfinacing product to microfinancing platform. This is very exiting, and I’m going to do my best to tell you why without losing you over too many technical details.

You may have heard Taylor or me mention the term “API” in the past, but I don’t think we’ve done a very good job of explaining what it means. An API (which stands for Application Programming Interface) is essentially a set of computer commands and protocols that allows one piece of software to request information from another. In short, the API is the language of software: the requesting software calls for information, and the source software delivers it. Each program has its own “dialect” that the requesting software must employ in order to get the information it needs; when a company “releases” an API, then, it is essentially publishing the dictionary and grammar guide for that program’s language.

For example, if you are using a Windows PC, every program running on your computer right now — from AIM to Chrome to iTunes to MSWord — is making use of the Windows API to access resources from Windows XP or Vista. Web applications often release APIs as well: Google and Facebook have APIs that allow developers to call for information from their services — whether it be search results, map tiles, or your social graph — and employ it in their own web applications (see my post on mashups). By releasing numerous and robust APIs, companies essentially turn what were once simple products into foundations that can be built upon by those willing to learn and use the language. The product evolves into what is called a “platform.”

Transitioning from web product to web platform is a sign of not only a product’s success and confidence, but also its maturity. The release of an API shows that the service itself is structured and strong enough to handle not only its own traffic, but also an unknowable number of outside requests. It carries a guarantee of a certain level of reliability of the service, as well — that it will suffer minimal downtime and will return clean data for every request. But perhaps most importantly, the movement from product to platform signals an realization by the company that its mission can not be achieved in its own walled garden. Whether your goal is to connect the world together like Facebook, or to organize the world’s information like Google: if your ambitions are lofty, then you have to open up yours doors so that others can leverage your resources for unique and innovative applications.

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Defending Social Media

Published by Taylor on February 2, 2009 in Blogging, Computing, Culture, Facebook, Lifestyle, Privacy, Social Networks and Web 2.0. View Comments

Reader Jared (not Jarred) left a lengthy comment on my post about what I feel is our growing need and ability to create and share content. In short: our attraction to social media. I want to pull out what I think is the essence of Jared’s concern, because it merits a more complete response:

Dig[ital] interconnectedness, to me, connotes an element of dystopic irony, a warning that we might not end up getting what we want out of this, and someday find that while social media was created and driven by a fundamental desire and longing for connection…it left that behind at some point in the past. [...]

The more data and content we create, the more noise. We keep finding more noise, more noise, more noise everywhere. White noise. [...]

It’s good stuff, this Internet….as long as we know what we’re getting ourselves into.

The issue of useless “white noise” comes up a lot. The fact that the web is for all purposes infinite, and the information online limitless, makes the idea of constant content creation by an ever-expanding group of people seem completely overwhelming. “I can’t even find time to read all the online articles in the NY Times every day” we think to ourselves; “My Google Reader is up to 4,000 unread items! I don’t need MORE content–I’m barely keeping up with what I’ve already chosen to follow!”

Questioning whether the social media we use and follow will allow us to connect and grow in meaningful ways is almost completely tied to the issue of noise. After all, absent the noisy distractions that Jared describes, the Internet would be an incredibly useful place. Anyone who skims through the comments section of any popular YouTube video (a phenomenon captured brilliantly by XKCD) understands the limits of the current social web: when everyone speaks with equal weight and access, a lot of useless and ignorant crap is published online.

But let me argue that the proliferation and widespread adoption of social media–even in the midst of more noise–will be a good thing for a few reasons:

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New to Me in ’08: Web Services and Software

Published by Taylor on December 30, 2008 in Computing, Lifestyle and Web 2.0. View Comments

This is a continuation of year-end posts. As a I said in my music post, I wanted to reflect on (in this case) programs and services that I couldn’t live without in 2008. Some of these debuted in ’08, while others are simply new to me.

Web Services and Software

lala–JRod and I haven’t been bashful in our adoration of this site. There’s a reason: this is an amazing service for music lovers. DRM-free MP3 downloads (note to non-techies: that means you can burn, share, trade, etc at will) for $.89 (paging $.99 iTunes Music Store…), or unlimited streams for $.10 a song. It communicates flawlessly with iTunes, automatically loading newly-downloaded tunes into your library. It also uses Music Mover (a free-standing program) to find the music you already own and make it available anywhere there’s a web connection. My workday is now filled with the joyous sounds of Fleet Foxes and Sigur Ros, and I’m more productive because of it. Amen. (PS–as evidenced in my music post, lala also boasts a simple and great embed tool)

Mint–A great one stop shop for tracking multiple bank accounts, credit cards, and investments. I tried a similar site (Wesabe) for a while, and ultimately brought my personal finances home to roost at Mint. This site has improved remarkably throughout the year, adding much-needed features like the ability to customize categories of purchases, the inclusion of stocks, and student loan tracking. I don’t know that I could live without Mint at this point.

TripIt–Another indispensable addition to my life in 2008. Being in a long-distance relationship necessarily means lots of travel plans. On top of that, my work requires fairly regular time on the road. With TripIt, I simply forward every e-ticket, hotel reservation, and rental car arrangement from my email account to TripIt, and it’s automatically imported into a comprehensive itinerary that I can pull up quickly or print out for reference. I love this site.

GoodReads–Were niche social networks a trend of 2008 or was that “like soooo 2007″ already? In any case, I started using GoodReads in earnest in 2008 and it’s one of the few non-Facebook social networks [did anybody try that Doostang thing?] that holds my attention. GoodReads does one thing (tracks the books you and your friends have read/are reading/want to read) and does it well with a simple interface.

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White Spaces and the Road to Ambient Intelligence

Published by Jarred on December 4, 2008 in Computing, Google and Privacy. View Comments

A reminder: the views expressed on Tropophilia are those of the authors, and not necessarily those of their employers.

Though outdone by a separate (but welcomed) victory on November 4th, Google and its allies scored a few political points of their own on that fateful day last month. In a 5-0 decision, the Federal Communications Commission voted to open up “white spaces” for general public use.

Non-techies, stick with me. I promise this will be cool to you too.

First, what exactly are white spaces? As you may recall from high school physics, radio waves exist on a spectrum of frequencies. This spectrum is divided up for different uses: FM radio, television, military, airplane communication, satellite communication, cell phones, etc.

White space is the “snow” between the channels on your TV when you try to use the antenna. They are unused frequencies in the spectrum that, as television broadcasters move away from airwave transmission to cable distribution, simply exist in the invisible ether serving no purpose. And as Google and other tech companies have quickly figured out, these unused frequencies could be used to build the next generation of wireless data networks… as long as the regulatory bodies say its OK. And last month, that’s exactly what they did.

OK, thanks for sticking with me, non-geeks. I promised you relevance, so here it is. From the section on the Free the Airwaves campaign site called “What are the benefits?”, here are three examples of how white spaces could be used:

Internet Access: TV white spaces offer nothing less than the possibility of affordable, ubiquitous, high-speed Internet connections to all Americans, anywhere, at any time.

Education: White spaces could provide America’s schools with affordable, mobile, high-speed Internet access. Teachers and students could be able to communicate and compete more effectively with their peers around the world. Videoconferencing could help enable distance learning for students in remote locations.

Public Safety: Over the past several years, it has become clear that giving public safety agencies reliable, interoperable voice and data communications is a matter of national security. Today, though, first responders continue to suffer significant interoperability problems. Unused TV spectrum represents a new national technology platform that could improve communications for America’s police officers and firefighters. In emergencies, devices connected to these important airwaves could ensure reliable communications at emergency sites.

While those are the practical uses, there’s more.

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People Send Us Things, Part I: The World Wide Web Foundation

Published by Jarred on October 9, 2008 in Computing, Education, People Send Us Things, Philanthropy and Web 2.0. View Comments

We like getting e-mail, tweets, and feed shares about cool stuff that you think we should blog about. We also like creating new “series” of posts to a) establish sub-themes for the blog, b) encourage us to keep posting, and c) give us some shadow of legitimacy to hold onto. Additionally, if you can’t tell, prepositions are my favorite things to end sentences with. Thus is born a series we’re going to call “People Send Us Things”, and this story passed to us by Brika is just what we were looking… for.

Not too many people can legitimately include anything approaching the following in their bio/resume:

In 1989 he invented the World Wide Web.

Boom. Street Geek cred: check. The man who created teh internetz is none other than Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and he’s on to a new project — the World Wide Web Foundation. This organization seeks to do the following:

to advance One Web that is free and open,

to expand the Web’s capability and robustness,

and to extend the Web’s benefits to all people on the planet.

Huh… that mission statement kinda reminds me of this little start-up in Mountain View. Anyway…

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