Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth

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March 28, 2008

DC Cherry Blossoms Walking Tour

Today during my lunch break I streamed some live video over my N95 mobile phone from the Tidal Basin in Washington DC, home to the annual blossom of DC's famous cherry blossom trees. The first video didn't work so well - I had the video at such a high resolution the network crashed - but the second take worked like a charm. The video is about 16 minutes long, and features lots of cherry blossoms, some helicopters, and my disembodied voice talking about the history of cherry trees in DC. My wife Susanne and daughter Kayleigh even make a brief cameo - they were touring the cherry blossoms with my mother-in-law and I bumped into them near the FDR memorial. Enjoy! -andy

Tags: cherry blossoms | flowers | history | live | Nokia N95 | streaming | trees | video | walking tours | Washington DC

Posted by acarvin at 3:17 PM

Andy on All Things Considered, Sunday, March 30

Just wanted to give all of you a head's up that I'll be on All Things Considered this Sunday, March 30. Host Andrea Seabrook got a kick out of all of the Bit Torrent analogies we came up with yesterday, so she figured she might as well have me on air to talk about them. I don't know the exact time I'll be on air, but it'll probably be in the middle of the show. It broadcasts in many places at 5pm ET on Sundays, so that would mean looking out for me between 5:20pm and 5:40pm ET, give or take. Check your local listings to see when it airs. If you can't figure out when it's airing locally, you can always check out the live stream offered by WAMU here in Washington DC, which also airs the show beginning at 5pm ET.

Thanks again to everyone who contributed analogies. When we recorded the segment I talked about several of them, but we'll have to wait and see what gets edited in or out. -andy

Tags: All Things Considered | Andrea Seabrook | Bit Torrent | NPR | on air

Posted by acarvin at 2:38 PM

March 27, 2008

In Search of the Perfect Bit Torrent Analogy

So I was leaving NPR to grab some lunch and I bumped into a colleague as I was exiting the elevator. She grabbed me for a moment and asked me, "If you had to explain Bit Torrent to a five-year-old, what analogy would you use?"

Apparently, she's working on a radio story about Bit Torrent, the peer-to-peer protocol created by my fellow TR35 alum Bram Cohen. Not that our target audience is made up of toddlers, but given how not all of them are necessarily tech-savvy, it makes sense to come up with an analogy that translates well to a broad audience.

Before we get to the analogies, here's a quick technical overview of what Bit Torrent is. Like I just mentioned, it's a protocol for enabling what's known as peer-to-peer software, which means that rather than downloading a piece of content from a single source, your employ software that checks in with other users within a network who may have bits and pieces of what you're looking for. So if what you wish to download is an hour-long video, the software checks for anyone that might have it. One person may have one section of the video, another person may have a second section, and so on. The software assembles the bits and pieces of the video from all the sources that have it, so eventually you download a complete copy of it for your own personal use. And because your computer is part of this file-sharing network, other users who seek out the same content can automatically download what you've assembled on your computer to their computers as well, share-and-share alike.

It's not terribly complicated, but would the average NPR listener be able to follow all of that without saying, "Huh?" Maybe, but maybe not. And so I get grabbed outside of the elevator by a colleague searching for a good analogy.

As I walked back and forth to lunch, I came up with two potential analogies, both of which take place in a rural setting.

The "Can I Borrow Some Sugar" Analogy. Let's say you're in a rural community where the closest grocery store is far away. Rather than hiking to that store every time to buy ingredients for a cake, you and your neighbors agree to share sugar, flour and the like. So if you've got a recipe that requires sugar, you just check in with your neighbors and borrow what you need. They can do the same with you whenever they need something. And if you end up making some extra cakes or have leftover ingredients in the process, you share those things too.

The "Free Produce" Stand Analogy. The last time I went driving around rural Vermont, I noticed two things. First, lots of people would leave unwanted items - tools, used clothing and the like - in front of their homes with a "Free Stuff" sign next to them. If you drove by and saw something you needed, you could just take it. And when you were done with it, you could put it outside your home and do the same thing. Lots of homes also had produce stands based on the honor system. You'd pull over, grab whatever produce you needed, and stick an appropriate amount of money into a box. So I was thinking of an analogy somewhere in between these two scenarios: rather than heading off to get to that distant grocer, you could stop at your neighbor's house and grab a sample of whatever free produce they were growing. Similarly, you'd also share whatever produce you were growing on your property. That way, neighbors replenish each other as needed, taking the grocer out of the equation.

These seemed like okay analogies to me, but not perfect, so I put the question to my friends on Twitter. Eugene Chan quickly asked if I was familiar with The Amish Friendship Bread Analogy. In that one, a person makes a batch of fresh bread, but saves some yeast and dough as a starter. They take this starter and share it with their friends and neighbors, who in turn can produce their own bread, make new starter, and pass it along to others as well. The next thing you know, no one's going to Safeway anymore.

Meanwhile, Andrew Donoho took the Amish meme one step further and suggested The Barnraising Analogy. In that scenario, everyone in the community comes together with whatever tools and materials they each possess - wood, saws, hammers nails, etc - then work together to build a barn for someone. The recipients of the new barn are expected to reciprocate by helping out with supplies and manpower during the next barnraising, further the virtuous cycle.

Jen Simmons then offered up The Free Book Shelf Analogy. This is one I know well, since NPR has bookshelves of free books scattered throughout the building, given the huge number of review copies we receive from publishers. Anyone is welcome to peruse the shelves for a book. When they're done reading it, they can either return it, or find another book from their personal collection and donate it.

Eric Grant took the book analogy and concentrated it even further by sharing a blog post from Robin Good that might be described as a Book Assembly Party Analogy. In Robin's example, a group of people are sitting around a table with fragments of the same book. No one person has a complete party. They then begin to swap pages with each other, seeing whose individual pages pair up best with someone else's pages. Eventually, they've reorganize their disparate collection of pages into chapters, then chapters into nearly complete books. At that point, everyone around the table is happy, because even if there isn't one complete copy of the book, they've organized themselves in such a way that it's possible for them to share the chapters they've got and allow each other to read the full book.

One of my favorite analogies so far came from Meg Fowler, and might be called The Bottomless Candy Dish Analogy. You know what I'm talking about. There are some people in every office who always seem to have candy on their desks. No matter how greedy people get, they always seem to get replenished, particularly candy dishes in common areas. It's not because one person is constantly going out and restocking candy for everyone, though. It's because other people have some candy to spare (read: Halloween or Easter) and replenish the supply.

Ironically, there's one last analogy I should throw in now, and it's what I just did to write this post: The Ask Your Twitter Friends Analogy. There was something I needed - a good analogy to Bit Torrent - but I wasn't sure if I had it on hand myself. So I pinged my friends and colleagues via Twitter, and they in turn sent back to me a variety of ideas, some more complete than others. Though no single analogy ended up being perfect, taking them together as a whole, they accomplished what I was looking for: useful suggestions for explaining Bit Torrent to a five-year-old an NPR listener. And that information is something I'll always have and be able to share with others who may request it in the future, becoming a resource I can offer that can't be depleted. And by sharing all of these responses, other people will have access to that knowledge too, spreading it even further, with no one ever being able to stop it.

If that doesn't explain the essence of Bit Torrent, I'm not sure what will. But I'm open to further suggestions. :-) -andy

Tags: Amish Friendship Bread | analogies | barnraisings | Bit Torrent | Bram Cohen | cakes | candy dishes | free stuff | ingredients | neighbors | NPR | peer-to-peer | protocols | recipe | Twitter

Posted by acarvin at 2:03 PM

March 26, 2008

Coming This September: A New Baby!

For those of you who have been wondering why Susanne has been getting sick so much over the last month that my mother-in-law has been staying with us to look after Kayleigh, I might as well spill the beans now. Susanne is pregnant again, due at the end of September!

This Monday was the beginning of her second trimester. That means she's 13 weeks along. We've known for almost two months but haven't advertised it too much given our history with difficult pregnancies. We were actually getting ready to shell out the bucks to begin IVF treatment when we found out she was pregnant. Talk about a pleasant surprise! Unfortunately, the surprise came with extreme morning sickness - so much so that Susanne lost over 15 pounds and had to be put on an IV and a medicine pump. The IV came out last month, and yesterday she removed the pump, so for the first time in six weeks, she's now wireless and untethered. She'll still have to take anti-nausea meds for a while longer, but the worst is over.

We're absolutely thrilled to be expecting another baby, and the timing couldn't be better, as we're in the process of buying a house in Silver Spring. We just accepted the seller's terms and are sending in a home inspector next week. If all goes well, we'll close the deal on April 28. Our second baby, our first home - talk about a momentous year! :-) -andy

Posted by acarvin at 8:44 PM

March 25, 2008

Live from the Salt Lick: BBQ and the Future of Mobcasting

I'm back in Austin, TX for a couple of days of NPR meetings, so last night I convinced my colleagues to make the 45-minute trek outside of the city to the Salt Lick, an old-time barbecue joint with some of the best BBQ in the area. While we waited for our table, I thought it would be a great occasion to break in my new Nokia N95 video phone. Using the streaming service Qik.com, I was able to stream a live video as I toured the barbecue pit, watching cooks slapping briskets onto the fire and slathering them with their tangy sauce. (I also managed to let the video keep recording after I thought I hit the stop button, so the end of the video is kinda funny.) This video is an archive of the live event.

As far as I'm concerned, being able to stream live video from a mobile phone to the Internet is an absolute game-changer. I'm hoping I can get some of these phones into the hands of NPR colleagues so they can test them out in the field, but imagine the possibilities when everyday people can press a button on their phones and start broadcasting. I keep thinking of the Tibetan protests that took place against the Chinese government, or the Burmese monk protests last year. In both cases, there was a limited pool of video available, and much of it came up after the fact. Imagine if a protestor - or a whole group of them - were able to broadcast what was going on around them in real time?

It's very much an extension of the mobcasting concept I advocated three years ago. Back then, I talked about using open source tools to allow protestors and citizen journalists to post audio and video to blogs and RSS feeds as events unfolded:

[W]ith the proliferation of video-enabled smartphones, it seems that it would be a natural progression to mobilize the millions of people who are buying these tools with an easy, no-nonsense way to capture socially-relevant footage and get it online in near-real time....

...A quick example: imagine a large protest at a political convention. During the protest, police overstep their authority and begin abusing protesters, sometimes brutally. A few journalists are covering the event, but not live. For the protestors and civil rights activists caught in the melee, the police abuses clearly need to be documented and publicized as quickly as possible. Rather than waiting for the handful of journalists to file a story on it, activists at the protest capture the event on their video phones -- dozens of phones from dozens of angles. Thanks to the local 3G (or community wi-fi) network, the activists immediately podcast the footage on their blogs. The footage gets aggregated on a civil rights website thanks to the RSS feeds produced by the podcasters' blogs. (Or perhaps they all podcast their footage directly to a centralized website, a la OneWorld TV but with an RSS twist.) This leads to coverage by bloggers throughout the blogosphere, which leads to coverage by the mainstream media, which leads to demands of accountability by the general public. That's mobcasting.

Back then, though, we were limited to somewhat crude mobile podcasting tools like Audlink.com and Audioblogger.com, both of which are now defunct. Today, we're seeing the deployment of new services that allow for near-real time audio and video posting, like Utterz and Kyte.tv. These services also incorporate social networking features that allow users to track each other's content, comment on it, and cross-post it to various social media sites, like Twitter or Facebook. And now with Qik, near-real time becomes actual real-time. Rather than waiting for you to finish recording your content before posting it from your phone, Qik streams it with just a 5-10 second delay. That's not so different than the delay you see in "live" broadcasts on TV news or radio.

In some ways, the term mobcasting is more appropriate than ever: groups of people using mobile phones in coordinated actions to cover an event without any easy way to censor them. It's both exhilarating and intimidating at the same time. It's just a matter of time before there's another government crackdown, police beating incident, voter intimidation or other incident that authorities wouldn't want the rest of us to see. But we will see it. Live. -andy

Tags: bbq | citizen journalism | Kyte | mobcasting | mobile activism | mobile phones | protests | Qik | Salt Lick | smart mobs | Utterz

Posted by acarvin at 10:19 AM

March 21, 2008

The Best Dog Toy Ever

The guy who built the toy offers some background:

I built the ball machine because I thought my dog Jerry, might like it and that it would be something fun for me to build. So after two years of on and off work, with many safety features such as IR proximity sensors to protect Jerry and my son from the machine, I finally complete.

Far from being a replacement for me, I was always right there with him enjoying his fun. And with all the troubles that I went through to build the ball machine, I still end up throwing more balls than that the machine could count! According to the computer, he played with the machine by himself only 3 times in his life.

I recently put this video on YouTube to keep alive my earlier memories of him and (hopefully) provide some "humorous distractions" for anyone that might drop by.

I wonder what the cat equivalent of this toy would be like?

Hat tip - BPP and Andrew Sullivan

Posted by acarvin at 1:46 PM

Man With Burger King Crown, Unassembled

Photographed on the Red Line, approaching New York Avenue heading into Washington DC.

Posted by acarvin at 9:45 AM

March 20, 2008

Lessig Launches Change Congress: Political Reform a la Creative Commons and Wikipedia

Today at the National Press Club, Professor Lawrence Lessig launched the Change Congress project. Created in conjunction with Joe Trippi, the project intends to employ the strengths of the Internet to end the impact of PACs and lobbyists on congressional policymaking. What's really fascinating about this initiative is that he's taking the lessons learned from creating the Creative Commons copyright initiative and applying it to political reform in a way that's never been done before.

In his speech, Lessig gave several examples of policy changes that should have taken place but didn't because of the influence of money, such as combating global warming or limiting the recommended allotment of sugar in our diets. These are policies that should have been no-brainers, but industry influence upended the process. He noted that when the country's forefathers talked about independence, it wasn't just about independence from Britain, but independence from improper influence as well. In that sense, he argued, their goal of achieving independence has failed.

But Lessig thinks it's still possible to remove this dependence between Congress and money once and for all. The Change Congress project will take a three-step approach to the issue.

First, he wants members of Congress and the public to go online and pledge their support for up to four different goals: no longer accepting money from lobbyists and PACs; banning earmarks; supporting public financing of campaigns; and achieving total transparency of how Congress works. Users will be able to do this in the same way you select a Creative Commons license for your website. Their website will have a form that lets you select which ones you support, and it'll generate a code you can put on your own site. This code will contain metadata driven by the semantic Web - essentially, a collection of URLs, each defining which of the policy goals you support. (update, 4:20pm: when I wrote this paragraph, the site's badge generator wasn't up and running yet, but now that it is, it seems that the code generated for users doesn't contain Semantic Web metadata yet. Update 4:37pm: I'm now told that Semantic Web metadata might be rolled into the badges very soon, possibly later this evening or tomorrow; a volunteer is working on the code and hopes they'll use it. -ac)

Embedding this code into your website, whether you're a policymaker, a candidate or a member of the public, will let them reach step number two: tracking who supports what. In the same way that search engines can pick up websites that employ different Creative Commons licenses, Change Congress will be able to pick up which sites support each of the four policy goals. They'll then be able to map out where support is strongest and where it's weakest. Then, they'll deploy crowdsourcing, just like on Wikipedia, to get an army of volunteers delving into the details to see who's just pledged support and who's actually supporting the cause in measurable ways. This information, too, will be mapped for all to see and scrutinize.

Step number three will be to employ these tools for raising money. The public will be able to make small donations - even just five or 10 dollars - to candidates that share the same policy reform beliefs as they do. This will allow for grassroots fundraising to take place, not unlike Emily's List or the Obama campaign. Taken all together, he describes his project as a "Silicon Valley approach" to policy reform.

Lessig admitted there will be naysayers, particularly those who feel there are other problems more important that reforming Congress and the flow of money. To them, he gave the example of the alcoholic. An alcoholic faces many problems - loss of family, employment, health, etc - but none of them can be solved until the underlying problem - dependence on alcohol - is addressed first. To Lessig, before we can solve all the major policy issues of our day, we must first eliminate Congress' dependence on money and outside influence. Once this can be done, the real work of implementing important policy solutions can take place. Harnessing the power of the Web and its seemingly endless community of concerned citizens, he may just be on to something here. -andy

Tags: Change Congress | Congress | corruption | Creative Commons | crowdsourcing | influence | Joe Trippi | Lawrence Lessig | lobbyists | PACs | reform | Semantic Web

Posted by acarvin at 2:42 PM

March 17, 2008

Email Scam Invokes NPR Benefactor Joan Kroc

I never thought I'd see an NPR reference in a so-called 419 fraud email scam, but apparently there's now a fraud scheme making its way around that pretends to be "the Joan B. Kroc Foundation." Kroc, you may recall, was the widow of McDonalds restaurant magnate Ray Kroc who left more than $200 million to National Public Radio in her will. The scam claims to be doling out cash to nonprofit groups. If you respond, they'll end up demanding a hefty processing fee or even direct access to your bank accounts.

Here's the text of the email:

JOAN B. KROC FOUNDATION 03/15/2008 07:30 AM Please respond to dkofi@live.com

Subject: Your Grant.

JOAN B. KROC FOUNDATION
Registered in England & Wales (No. 2826074) 15 High Street, London, NW8 7NG (UK) United Kingdom
====================================
Tel/Fax: +44 703 1935 095
====================================
Dear Sir/ Madam,

We wish to inform you that the above foundation has short-listed you for the grant of US$550,000.00 for your humanitarian/organizational activities; this grant is in recognition of your programmes and activities. Mrs. Kroc, who died on October 12, 2003, at age 75, left $1.91 billion to 10 organizations.She was the widow of Ray A. Kroc, the founder of the McDonald's Corporation. Her gifts were: $1.5billion to the Salvation Army, in Alexandria, Va., to construct and endow up to 50 recreational and educational facilities across the United States and UK; $200 million to National Public Radio to support the network's operating reserves and endowment; $60-million to Ronald McDonald House Charities to be distributed to its programs worldwide; $50 million to the University of Notre Dame to support the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies; $50-million to the University of San Diego to establish the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice; $20 million to San Diego Hospice and Palliative Care to support its programs and services; $10 million to the San Diego Opera to support artistic programming; $5 million to KPBS radio and television, in San Diego, to establish an endowment and operating reserve and create a capital-equipment fund; $5 million to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Diegoto build a high school; and $500,000 to Mama's Kitchen, a meal-delivery service in San Diego for people with AIDS. Before her death, Mrs. Kroc gave $5 million to the University of San Diego to endow a lecture series at the Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice.You're therefore requested to contact Kofi Daneils either by e-mail: dkofi@live.com or call: +233 245411574 for details and procedure to obtain your grant.

Sincerely,
Ms Anne Brown
UK Foundation Secretary.
====================================
JOAN B. KROC FOUNDATION USA Office (Head Office):- 2435 California Ave. Seattle
Washington 98116 USA. Fax: +1 (413) 376-2751
====================================

Hat tip to Pat Aufderheide of the Center for Social Media for passing it along. -andy

Tags: 419 fraud | email | Joan Kroc | NPR | scams

Posted by acarvin at 9:20 AM

March 14, 2008

Is that Tibet or Kathmandu?

I just took this screenshot of the WashingtonPost.com homepage. The caption for the photo seems to suggest it's of monks protesting in remote parts of Tibet, but that totally looks like Bodnath Stupa in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Here's a pic I took of Bodnath in 1996:

Is it just me or is the Washington Post photo just completely mislabeled?

Posted by acarvin at 1:18 PM

My XO Laptop Arrives - Finally!

After 122 days of customer service hell, my XO laptop - aka the $100 laptop - finally arrived. It's cute - very green. I'll post more about it later after I've had some time to kick the tires. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 9:25 AM

March 12, 2008

Get My Vote: NPR's User-Generated Political Commentary Initiative

Eighteen months ago this week, I started working at NPR as senior product manager for online communities. I've spent a lot of that time working with shows on social media experiments and educating NPR staff about the role Web 2.0 can play in journalism. But I've also spent much of the last year working on a big project - one that would have NPR dive head-first into user-generated content. The project is called Get My Vote, and we've just launched a public beta of the website.

As the name suggests, the project is based around a basic premise: what will it take for political candidates to get my vote? Every person has their own reasons for selecting a particular candidate, their own litmus tests, and we're asking the public to articulate this in the form of open letters to the candidates. Using Get My Vote, you can upload your own commentary - audio, video or text - and talk about what issues or concerns will drive you to the ballot box. NPR is then planning to incorporate these commentaries into our shows throughout the rest of the election cycle.

We've also designed the project in such a way that local stations - both NPR and PBS stations - can create their own Get My Vote initiatives on their websites by embedding Get My Vote widgets. That way, a station can localize the project. A station in Arizona, for example, might create a local version of Get My Vote focusing on immigration perspectives, while a station in Massachusetts might challenge users talk about what it would take for local mayoral candidates to get their vote. So while most users might end up talking about the presidential candidates, I'm hoping it's used for state and local races as well.

On the Get My Vote homepage, you'll see that we're using a tag cloud prominently. These tags are submitted by users when they upload their commentaries. For example, a commentary from an Iraq war vet about healthcare for vets might include tags like "Iraq," "healthcare" and "Walter Reed." The more often a particular tag is used by commentators, the larger it appears in the tag cloud. That way, you can get a sense of what topics and ideas are being referenced most often by commentators. Clicking any tag also will show you all commentaries associated with that word or phrase.

We've also ensured that the commentaries are embeddable on other websites and social networks - a first for an NPR project. There's an embed code available for commentaries that you can grab and place in your website. You can also click an option to post on another blog or network, giving you a list of more than 20 sites where you can upload your own Get My Vote commentary, or someone else's. For example, here's a video featuring Texas musician and author Kinky Friedman talking about the death penalty:

Speaking of Kinky, you'll notice that some of the videos in the site have been produced by NPR staff. That's mainly because we didn't want to launch a site that was devoid of any commentaries, so we put together a few just to get things going. Soon enough, I expect the number of user-generated commentaries to far surpass the numbers of commentaries we've produced for the site.

The site is now in public beta. This means that anyone can now access the site, upload their own commentaries and explore the site in general, but we're still working out a few bugs and other minor fixes. We're hoping that if you have any problems with the site you'll alert us through the contact form. Over the next few weeks we'll continue to tweak the site, and soon after that, we expect some of our shows to begin using it on air.

So when you get a chance, please visit npr.org/getmyvote, upload your own commentary and please let us know what you think. Our team is really eager to hear what you have to say. -andy

Tags: commentaries | election 2008 | Get My Vote | NPR | open letters | politics | UGC | user generated content

Posted by acarvin at 9:51 AM

Billy Bob Thornton vs. the Studio

Watch the Video

Tags: All the Pretty Horses | Billy Bob Thornton | creativity | directing | Hollywood | interference | movies | screenplays | sxsw

Posted by acarvin at 9:33 AM

March 11, 2008

Oh Lord, Won't Ya Buy Me an N95

Tags: n95 | nokia | phones | songs | video

Posted by acarvin at 10:43 PM

Mary Anne Mug Shot

Says the AP:

This undated photo, supplied by the Teton County Sheriff's Department, shows Dawn Wells, the actress who played "Mary Ann" on Gilligan's Island, who was sentenced Feb. 29, 2008, to five days in jail, fined $410.50 and placed on probation in Idaho after pleading guilty to one count of reckless driving. The guilty plea came as part of an agreement with prosecutors in which three misdemeanor counts -- driving under the influence, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a controlled substance stemming from an Oct. 18, traffic stop -- were dropped.

Gotta love that smirk on her face. -andy

Posted by acarvin at 6:18 PM

Examining My Own Role in the Zuckerberg/Lacy Twitter Mob

By now you've probably heard about the fiasco that was the Mark Zuckerberg keynote at SXSW 2008. Zuckerberg, the 23-year-old founder of Facebook, was interviewed by Business Week tech journalist Sarah Lacy. Many people in the audience, including myself, thought her tone and method was unprofessional, and said as much over Twitter while the session took place. Before long, hundreds of people were probably tweeting their complaints, some of it professional criticism, some of it sexually hostile. By the time she opened the session for audience questions the mood was downright caustic, and it's almost a miracle the audience didn't tar and feather her.

Ever since the session ended, people have been talking about what a mess it was and the role Twitter played. I've been to countless conference sessions where Twitter's been a useful back channel for sharing information about what's being said. On other occasions, it's been a way to complain about a session and find like-minded people who aren't happy with. The Zuckerberg-Lacy session, though, evoked a Twitter backlash I've never seen before. I was even invited to talk about it this morning on NPR's Bryant Park Project. During that conversation, I felt it necessary to acknowledge that I was one of the people who was complaining about the keynote on Twitter as it was taking place. I also talked about it last night with blogger Marshall Kirkpatrick about how everything spiraled downward, and how vicious it got.

These conversations made made think about whether I, too, crossed the line. I figured the only way to know one way or another was to share exactly what I said on Twitter. You can read the transcript of my twitter posts below.

wifi punking out in room A. Sticking to phone for now.

Free seats at the keynote are going, going - gone?

Groovy music, kinda Gorillaz club remixish, warming up the crowd.

Is that @jonnygoldstein up front holding up his laptop to use his webcam? Use the n95, dude!

Dancing is breaking out.

Sarah: if you don't know who this guy is, please give up your seat.

Zuck: facebook is trying to help people connect, build empathy relationships.

Zuck: we launched Facebook in Spanish, taking off in Colombia to organize against FARC. For some reason the crowd laughed.

So far the conversation's been a bit shallow. Let's pick it up, people.

Zuck: lots of FB users in Lebanon. He said imam but I thought he said eMom.

get to the point, Zuck...

Zuck: FB helps Lebanese kids choose something besides lives of terrorism. What? Come on, now.

The interviewer is a little too Like Oh My God. Ask good questions, please.

Interviewer: so let's talk about me for a while...

Zuck: FB is building an infrastructure, a platform to help solve the world's problems. (is that in their biz plan?)

Zuck: you shouldn't need a big org to have a voice and channel ideas.

Did someone just yellow Microsoft Sucks or This Interviews Sucks? Or was I just thinking the latter?

"the world of advertising is changing" isn't an announcement. It's a comment, an opinion. Not a product launch.

Anyone wanna bolt and go see Jeffrey Tambor instead?

Lacey might as well say it: So, whaddya doin' after the interview? Wanna go hang out?

I'm outta here. what room is tambor?

There's a bridal showcase going on. Gotta be better than the Zuckerberg fiasco.

Reviewing it myself, clearly I was pretty harsh at times. But did I cross the line? What do you think? -andy

Tags: Facebook | keynote | Mark Zuckerberg | mob mentality | personal attacks | Sarah Lacy | SXSW | Twitter

Posted by acarvin at 5:26 PM

Live-Tweeting SXSW: Billy Bob Thornton

Here are my notes from Billy Bob Thornton's Q&A at SXSW, taken from my Twitter posts during the session. -andy

Room for Billy Bob is filling up. No signs of protesters. Just lots of men and women with iPhones and Eee PCs.

btw, have I mentioned I have yet to see a single XO laptop at SXSW this year? Maybe they're all lost in the supply chain like mine.

Doing a demo of twitter to some attendees of SXSW Film Fest. Say hi, everyone!

Billy Bob Thornton just walked in. Man, he is skinny.

Thornton opens by quoting Johnny Cash:

"The best advice I can give you is don't pay attention to anybody."

If you're just trying to please people, you're not gonna do your best work

BBT: "Art by nature is someone's vision of something. You can like it or not."

" But if you let the audience tell you how it should end, it's no longer your thing."

Billy Bob says he won't take off his sunglasses because he was out too long last night.

BBT tells story of working at a party when he was young. Guy with German accent tells him, "What actors really need are good writers."

Turns out it was Billy Wilder.

BillyBob: When I did Armageddon, I had to pay off a divorce, and I needed some money.

BillyBob: My manager said you can do all the indy films you want, but every now and then your pic needs to be seen at the bus stop.

BillyBob: I like to do the indy films. With films like Armageddon, you see 50 scripts. 48 of them make you want to throw up. 2 might be ok.

BillyBob: Armageddon did a lot for me, so I won't knock it. Don't knock anything in entertainment because I could be working in a saw mill.

BillyBob: God bless John Ritter. He was one of my best friends, an amazing guy.

BillyBob: Just finished Eagle Eye, a Spielberg production.

BillyBob: Sometimes when you're jumping off a ledge w a 9mm it might as well be like going to Whole Foods to buy muffins.

BillyBob on Burt Reynolds: he would always give me advice, he was very dramatic, so you listened very hard.

BillyBob: You can start thinking your own stuff is so amazing. You should really wait til later before you start thinking these things.

Retweeting jtamboli: Christian Coalition complaining about Verizon blocking SMSs from NARAL last year

BillyBob: Bruce Campbell cracks me up. We were so much like soap opera actors (in Intolerable Cruelty)

BillyBob: I'm so glad that scene was in there so people don't think I did a shitty job.

BillyBob: When you read a screenplay, there's a rhythm to it. The good ones have a real musicality.

BB: Editing in particular is a very musical thing.

BB: If you don't listen to movies, too, you're missing a lot. People want to see things blow up, and that's fine, but you need to listen.

BB: When you go to a show you want to hear the band but see their stance. If you went to a Stones concert you wouldnt just close your eyes.

BB: I hadn't quite found my legs as an actor (before sling blade).

BB: When you see a bad guy in a movie who's earnest and mean every second, you're not as afraid of him.

BB: bad guys who are quieter, act like regular ones, are the scariest ones.

BB: I play a lot of humorous, not-nice guys. But not necessarily bad guys.

BB on Sling Blade: I didn't want to rush it. If u started doing that movie with the idea that people would be bored with it you'd be screwed

BB: We thought maybe 10 people would see that movie. I said I made it for my mother, brothers, family. If they liked it, I'd be satisfied.

BB: That gave me the luxury of taking my time, shooting master shots letting the whole scene play out...

BB: Once you're famous, the pressure to entertain gets strong and you have to think about it more.

BB: Scorsese met with me about playing some part before sling blade.

BB: Scorsese said call me if you need me for anything. After Sling Blade was shot, I called him up. Would he look at it?

BB: Should I cut it? Harvey Weinstein wants me to cut it?

BB: Harvey and I had a thing over it. If you start cutting things, it could end up seeming longer.

BB: Scorsese watches, calls back, says "Don't cut a moment of it."

Even if I didn't like the movie, the thing about it is, this is the last chance you're ever gonna get. You'll win an Oscar. I swear to God.

When you do, you're never gonna make a movie the way you want to again. They'll get on you.

Once they got you're number, it's over. When ur under the radar, they don't care. "Oh, you're a filmmaker at SXSW? What's ur little film?"

BB: So you can make little movies, people call you a genius, then they sign you and start telling you how to do it. And Scorsese was right.

BB: Sling Blade was the last movie I made where no one said a word about how I should make it.

Sorry I haven't been tweeting. Billy Bob just told a long story about fighting with Hollywood execs and I was shooting video of it.

BB: I'm gonna do another movie from a book this fall, then a film on Floyd Collins, who was trapped in a cave in the 1920.

BB: They made a film about it- Ace in the Hole. In it, the reporter wanted him to stay stuck. In real life, it was a reporter trying to help

BB: whenever someone's trapped in a hole, everyone's interested. The media does whatever sells.

BB: If people were interested just in puppies, that's what the media would show, so we can't just blame them.

We kinda have to have a cultural revolution to change this. I'm anti reality TV, and the next thing you now I'm flipping channels and woah!

The next thing you know you're watching American Idol. People who hated it get sucked in. Imagine the people who love it; like their bible.

BB: Let's quit being jealous. Go to a movie wanting to love it.

BB: Everybody wants to be on tv; nobody wants the other guy on TV. Now everyone's a star. I wanted Jimmy Stewart to be a star, not me.

BB: It's just that we need to start respecting this stuff and loving it again. If you see a band... you come on stage and you see the guy...

Who's there with his arms crossed. So I pick the guy out and sing to him.

BB: It's like if you see a cashier working late, tell them it must stink, I know what it's like. Kill them with kindness.

BB: we're always bitching about movies dying. If we're gonna change it, do enjoy. Enjoy shit again.

BB: People are easier on new guys. It's like when someone can't play well.

BB: Relax - that's all that I'm sayin'.

Billy Wilder: He told me to write my own stuff, create my own characters. There's an actor on every corner. There's something unique in you.

Wilder: You're no Clark Gable.

BB: What he was saying that you're not a handsome guy, but not ugly enough to be a character actor.

BB: You've got Tom Cruise and them some ugly guy. He was saying, "this is you, here. You've got to use your talent as a writer."

BB: Let's say you're a half-assed sculptor. If you do a painting, it'll be half-assed as well.

BB: Think of yourself as an artist, not an actor, or you'll be standing in a breadline.

Audience Q: Do you think you'll have freedom in future films?

BB: One of these films will cost 35 mil, the other 17-18 mil. The latter I won't have total control, but I'll have most I need - final cut.

BB: My manager and I are like a married couple, been together 17 years. He says to me, "Are you an idiot?"

BB: My manager says "If you go to George Guber Lindsay's film fest I'll kill you." But they're my people. It means big themes to them.

BB: Lucas Black was there, he's now 25, and I started balling watching Sling Blade scenes. He's 11 now. That's stuff you don't get every day

So I told my manager Kiss My Butt and I went anyway.

BB: "Don't be callin' no famous people," I told him when he said he was trying to cast people for his film already.

BB: "Why would you tell him that? I don't want him in this part. I want this guy I know."

BB: Remember the heavy guy in Sling Blade. I went to school with him since the 3rd grade, a furniture salesman. Never acted before.

BB: My manager wanted Sam Elliott. (he does hiliarous Sam imitation playing the part of the repair shop guy.)

BB: That's what's wrong with big movies. Big famous people for no reason.

BB: You want to be able to see the characters, not actors. That's the trick.

BB: The reason why I haven't made the cave movie yet is because I need financiers who will give me complete control.

BB: Paramount wanted me to do it for 15 mil plus with Tom Cruise. They'd then give Tom 30 and me 15 to make it. That just sucks.

BB: anything you create and turn over to someone else it's hard, a little odd. But as a writer you just have to give it up.

BB: except when you give it to a director who doesn't know the dif between his butt and a hole in the ground.

BB: The ones I have the most trouble with are directors who just stand around and be important.

BB: The guys I've loved working with - Levinson, Coen Bros, Raimi - they're incredible. Then you guy other ones... it's astounding.

BB: Mike Nichols knows how to talk to actors because he came up as an actor.

BB: I was scared of him. I'm still scared of people.

BB: Mike Nichols is very smart - smarter than anyone around him. Travolta said, does Mike just make you feel that tall?

BB: I boned my wardrobe change, he figures it out. Mike just goes, this voice from back in the dark, "Oh, come on!"

Every time someone bones it, he says, "Oh come on! What are we, children?"

Q: Dir cut of All the Pretty Horses?

BB: I think it's a great thing to put your stuff out again as you intended. But I don't know. I'd do it, as would studio....

BB: But Daniel Lanois did the score, but they took it out and replaced the score. He's not really happy when they say we'll put it on DVD.

BB: on the flip side, now people are gonna watch on laptops what it'll never be on the big screen. Maybe a big city limited engagement.

BB: It's a possibilty. But I told Dan, unless you put in the music I won't. But it only exists on VHS in my house. And it's pretty damn good

end of interview - applause - swarm of fans.

Tags: Billy Bob Thornton | Hollywood | SXSW

Posted by acarvin at 5:05 PM

Live-Tweeting SXSW: Michael Eisner and Mark Cuban

Here are my Twitter notes from the SXSW session with Hollywood exec Michael Eisner and technology entrepreneur/Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.

Talking fair use with Pat Aufderheide as we wait for Eisner and Cuban to appear.

Eisner and Cuban are hitting the stage.

Eisner: Vuguru is just a name we made up for a company that's involved in content for the internet - story driven, content driven.

Eisner: one thing we thought would be interesting is see if the time had come for content to find a place on the Net and be monetized.

Eisner's blackberry was sending out static. Mark Cuban: "That's not me trying to get attention."

Eisner: All of a sudden we'll wake up, and professionally developed content for the Net is gonna explode. Eisner: What it won't do is eliminate TV, cable, HDNet, etc. Instead, one and one will add up to three.

Eisner: Home video with domestic syndication was better than it was before without them, for example.

Cuban: So how will make money from it?

Eisner says he was inspired by Sam Has 7 Friends - though he's struggling getting the name right. http://www.samhas7friends.com

Eisner: when you go to a myspace or a youtube or a google, every month they change their strategy.

Cuban and Eisner are talking about Chrysler and product placement. Let the woolgathering begin.

Eisner: If you're gonna have a pro b-ball time, you go watch high school ball, not pro ball. Cuban: Unless you make as many trades as I do.

Eisner: Those people who are working in Internet TV will be the spielbergs of the next generation. Cuban: The Net's now a feeder system.

Eisner: When thousands of people deliver content, if you own your own content, you end up with nothing.

Eisner: We've gone from yes we pay for content, then no, then maybe, then rev-share, then I dunno.

Eisner: I think googtube is learning, they've gotten better in just the last 4 months.

Eisner: When you don't know what to do technologically, you might as well tell a good story.

Eisner: people like me - old, drooling, wheelchair, with 3 beach houses and 4 wives - to get in a van and shoot on a shoestring, is hard.

Eisner: Then there's the group that 12-yrs-old. User-gen stuff, sometimes good, but pretty sophomoric.

Eisner: then there's the 20- 30-somethings trying to be professional. They're story-driven and willing to start from the bottom.

Eisner just said "ferkokte." Never thought I'd hear that at SXSWi.

Eisner: 99 pct of ugc is awful, 1 pct is fantastic. Cuban: but many in the 99 pct think there's is in the 1 pct.

NYtimes: aides expect Spitzer to resign. http://tinyurl.com/2uwz5x

Eisner: within five yrs, content on the Net will as important as TV broadcast/cable/sat content.

Somtimes Mark Cuban reminds me of Bruce Campbell. If Bruce Campbell were a billionaire with a sports franchise.

Cuban: I don't think broadband to the home won't get to the point of tv in a while, and it's gonna be a mess for a while.

Cuban: Most of the money being spent in the home for entertainment media is still for TVs, not PCs.

Eisner: Veoh, Hulu are developing platforms becoming the Tivo on the Net. Eventually we'll organize the Net onto your TV.

Cuban: I'm a geek, but I struggle to connect all my devices to my TV.

Eisner: Eventually there will be a few more Steve Jobses to make tech simple.

Cuban: eventually it'll actually just be different. It's not just an incremental changes.

Cuban: When you have five HDTVs in your house all recording streaming video, you'll be SOL.

Eisner: That's why I'm in content, because I didn't understand a word you just said.

Eisner: I had lunch with author Robin Cook, describing his new book, Foreign Bodies. Let's do an Internet series first, separate stories.

50 days of online stories, then the book comes out on Day 51.

Eisner: I heard Chris Anderson say everything's gonna be free and got really annoyed. He's just saying it to sell books. No free lunch.

Mark Cuban tried defending the Content is Free argument. "Then you should move to Russia," Eisner responded. What year is this?

Eisner: if there's a different model, I'm all for it. But it's just an advertising tool for him, saying that everything should be free.

Cuban just opened it up to Qs. People are getting in line but some dude in the audience just started talking. People in line not pleased.

Seems like this talk shoulda been called "In Defense of Gatekeeping."

No one is directing q's to Cuban, since he's just the moderator, not the interview subject.

Cuban: one of the great things about doing content on the cheap is you can redo it until you're satisfied.

Eisner: The All For Nots are as good as the Beatles. Again, what yr is it?

Eisner: I have a long history of believing in copyright. (laughter) But now I'm dealing with the Internet, and I'm conflicted.

Eisner: What separated us from the rest of the world was copyright and patents.

Eisner: paying people for creative work is no different than paying people for physical work.

Eisner: The concept of people being rewarded for the work they do is just as important as any type of work.

Eisner: The net is important, but it shouldn't be at the expense of other people's work.

Cuban: The problem is when everyone downloads at once. And p2p makes it works.

Cuban: Oprah had 500k simultaneous users for one application. Try multiplying that across everyone using HD.

Cuban: When they built the 405 in LA, they probably thought it was gonna be great. Eisner: and is is great at 4am.

Eisner: Nothing ruins a film like bad product placement. People in the audience yell, Spider Man! Transformers!

retweeting @dougH: "@gurt, the Stonyfield Cow, is now Twittering." Moooooooooooo!!

Some guy just took out his nephew's flat stanley and asked to take a picture with Cuban and Eisner. They said yes!

Cuban and Eisner are now holding Flat Stanley by each hand like a triumphant boxer. Eisner: "I think I must've missed this whole thing."

Dude sitting next to Pat Aufderheide is using and Eee PC. Man, it's cute little thing.

Cuban: Mark my words. Someday we'll start hearing about screen fatigue, when people get sick of watching stuff and will want to read again.

No luck interviewing Cuban. He let fans take pictures with him, but not questions.

Tags: business | Hollywood | Internet | Mark Cuban | Michael Eisner | sxsw | twitter | video

Posted by acarvin at 4:59 PM

Live-Tweeting SXSW: Should Video Games Replace College?

For those of you following my Twitter posts from SXSW, you know I've been trying to live-tweet the sessions I'm attending. So I thought I'd pull together all of my tweets for each session and make them available as a transcript on my blog, so they can be read more easily.

Here's the transcript for the session "Should Video Games Replace College?" Michael Anderson of the University of Texas System TeleCampus moderated the panel, and it also featured Aliza Gold of the UT/Austin Digital Media Collaborative, high school student Karen Lin and game developer Mike McShaffry.

Notes:

Someone just turned on the lights in room 8. People groaned. @pistachio: Yes, this is definitely the 8am college class.

Karen Lin: I think that video games can offer a new opportunity to learn. My AP classes are like 30 pages of reading a night, small print.

Lin: And if anyone gave me an opportunity to learn but not have to read, I would take it.

Mike Anderson: Imagine sitting in a class, you're inside a game & actually living it. And you're making decisions & seeing the ramifications

Anderson: Instead of taking a 100 question multiple choice test, you've leveled up.

Anderson: And instead of asking your instructor for answers, you ask your fellow gamers.

Anderson: Imagine having a game about how to not start wars, rather than starting battles.

Gold: NASA recently put out an RFP for the creation MMORPGs that teach math and science.

Eliza Gold: As engaging as videogames are, it makes sense to apply some of it to schools and learning.

Gold: Part of what makes it hard for students to be motivated is because what's taught is taught out of context...

Gold: It's harder to learn material than way than when it's applied in an actual real-world situation.

Gold: Trig is much more interesting when you're trying to build a bridge.

Gold: It's possible that videogames could be used to help people learn curriculum in a real world sort of way.

Gold: The only thing that's standing in the way is attitudes. The structure of teaching methods hasn't really changed since medieval times.

NASA MMORPG RFP. @geosteph, were you involved in this? http://tinyurl.com/29d7xk

McShaffry: I recognized how games changed my behavior in the real world.

McShaffry: Kids playing Guitar Hero now have an appreciation for classic rock and now have a connection to you as parents.

McShaffry: College is going to be around for a long time. If they're lucky they'll incorporate games but games will _never_ replace them.

Anderson: Sometimes the learning is going on with the players in the game, not with the faculty. How will universities react?

Gold: They won't react well because that's not how universities are set up. But change is coming.

Gold: It's becoming less about what we have in our heads & more about who we know, & how we go about using our networks to find information.

High school student Karen on faculty talking like gamers: I don't think it'll be creepy. I'd be shocked at first.

Karen: Are they really trying to incorporate something fun into the curric?

Karen: I think people who are skeptical about using games in education it would spark something in them.

McShaffry: Games puts something into a fun and engaging environment. It may be quirky, but it's not stupid and annoying.

McShaffry: It actually functions as a learning piece.

McShaffry: And that's the big mistake that often in edusoftware: they try to force a square peg into a round hole...

McShaffry: and kids say that's the dumbest thing I've ever seen, so you've just wasted a lot of everyone's time.

Gold: Creating games that aren't about achieving points but interacting with the environment and having to pry info from it and other users.

Anderson: if we've got content access in Wikipedia etc, we need to be teaching kids about how to evaluate that content...

rather than teaching just the content itself.

This is a really great panel. Anderson's moderating it well...

Anderson: Games don't punish you for playing. McShaffry: Ultima certainly did. LOL

McS: You want to feel that it's just beyond your skill but that you can make it.

McS: In big classes, not everyone learns at the same pace; just the thin slice of kids in the middle.

McS: That's why our education system fails, because we don't have a system for kids to learn at their right level.

McS: But that's where games help, because they can measure a person's skill level and adjust accordingly.

Gold: A potentially huge advantage of games is their scale. A Halo multiplayer context.

Gold: Not necessarily 500 students to one teacher, but small groups of students working together within multiple instances of the same game.

Gold: One of the challenges, though, is the assessment of learning. That's a big part of school, and it's a big part of instruction.

Gold: How do you know that the student's you've taught have learned anything. The whole NCLB movement was about that.

Gold: Video games, of course, address that by assessing players as they play the game...

...but it's boiled down to pretty simple behaviors in the game, and that might be more akin to a multiple choice test.

Gold: So it's still out there as a challenge to develop interactive games that are more subtle, complex and rich.

Gold: When I talk to middle school students, do you learn anything from playing these games?

Gold: In their minds, they're like, well, yeah, I can play the game better, race better...

Gold: In their minds they weren't seeing the underlining skills that they were picking up in the game.

Gold: I think that that's another aspect of our challenge. When you teach someone, you want them to know that they've learned it.

Anderson: I think if they learned but didn't realize it, that'd be okay. It took me a year at NewsCorp to realize I didn't know anything.

Gold quotes Twain: Don't let school get in the way of your education.

McS: The only serious game that I ever got to work on was a navy game called 24 Blue, an aircraft carrier sim.

McS: They flew us out to the USS Truman, and we got to land on the carrier, spend four days there during flight ops.

McS: The Discovery Channel doesn't do it justice.

McS: When you feel the heat of the F-15 tomcat on your face and someone pulls you down and saves your life, that's when it hits you.

We were developing a game to capture the physical size and space, the hand signals used, who does what. It was all critical to human life.

McS: Can playing the game replace the experience? No, it's different....

McS: But it can show you more about what's going there so when you get there, you brain won't be as frazzled and terrified.

McS: If I'd played the game before going I would have known what to expect.

Gold: Games have a set of rules in order to win. Sims are more like a toy, a set of processes you can interact with.

Gold: There are rules, of course, but there isn't necessarily a way to win the simulation.

Gold: Games can be complex systems, and sims make that complexity a bit more transparent and available for the user.

Gold: Sims can help learners understand better complex systems, like running a city.

I'm so glad Anderson had a high school student on the panel offering perspectives with the game designers.

McS: In a few decades, we won't be interacting with hardware anymore, we're just gonna jack in, be in a virtual world ourselves.

McS: At that point, it becomes a matter of the sim industry being at a point where you can scan something in a matter of seconds...

...and having it become an instant simulation.

McS: That particular environment may mean you can learn and fail without horrific consequences.

McS: Guitar hero - one string, five frets. Can you learn guitar on it? No, but it teaches you something about the music.

Just asked a question about when students will be able to create their own games/sims in the classroom.

McS said the opening of MS's XNA game studio will democratize game development and distribution.

Tags: Aliza Gold | games | gaming | Karen Lin | learning | Michael Anderson | Mike McShaffry | schools | SXSW

Posted by acarvin at 4:47 PM

March 10, 2008

Zuckerberg Gets a Second Chance

I just got back from the Pangaea Lounge in Austin, where Facebook is hosting their "developer garage" party. The event was originally intended to be a series of presentations over food and booze about the Facebook platform and applications, but all of that changed after yesterday's disastrous keynote with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The audience was furious at the interviewer's flirtatious presentation and constant interruption of Zuckerberg, and it's caused quite a storm over the last 24 hours.

So earlier today, Facebook announced that Zuckerberg would participate in the developer garage and take questions on any topic from the audience. I went over there around 3pm and stood in the rain with scores of other people, until we got inside, where we were greeted by an open bar and a nice appetizer spread. For the first hour there was a series of presentations, but quite a number of people in the room were there solely for Zuckerberg.

When he came on stage around 4:30pm local time, he was relaxed and in a good mood. Without an interviewer managing him, he seem much more at ease with himself, fielding a variety of questions from the audience. For example, when asked about sharing user data with the government, he explained that Facebook is still committed to privacy but must also comply with applicable laws. In the case of China, one thing they're considering is not maintaining servers there, which would protect them from having to either reveal private user info on demand of the Chinese government or break local law by not doing so.

Another audience member asked Zuck about whether he would commit to working with any social network of more than 25 million members regarding data portability. Zuckerberg refused on the grounds of privacy. He explained that while he embraced openness philosophically, you can't always know the motivations behind other companies, and did not want to expose Facebook users to additional spam, etc. He also noted they plan to change the way apps developers can allow users to send out messages to others. Rather than imposing an artificial limit like 20 users at a time, the limit would be based on how the FB user community trusted the app. If it was well trusted, users would be able to send to larger numbers of people. If it's a spam trap, they would clamp down on it and impose harsher limits.

I still don't think he adequately addressed yesterday's keynote, though. He fielded just one question on the topic, and said that the problem was that the audience was frustrated with the fact that they couldn't ask questions until the very end. That may be true, but he audience was frustrated by the tenor of the interview from the very beginning. But I suppose it wouldn't have been good form for Zuck to say that the interviewer did a poor job, right? -andy

Update: I've posted my notes from the Zuckerman Q&A after the jump. They're culled from all of my Twitter posts from the event. -andy

Zuckerberg is about to come up on stage.
Zuck: "Yesterday's Q&A wasn't enough fun."
Zuck: "We can talk about whatever you want today."
First question was about API access. Zuck: "We're allowing people to map out who they're friends are... communicate thru a set of services."
Zuck: "In terms of that whole architecture, the wall is a social application... Exposing core information, like news feed..."
man he talks fast)
Q: Yesterday's keynote. reaction?
Zuck: "We were planning this event before then. One piece of feedback was that we didn't open it up to questions early enough."
Zuck: People were more interested in policy, tech questions, etc. That's why I'm doing this today.
Q on FB vs. Myspace. Zuck: The applications are very different. FB is about communicating more efficiently; it's not a media property.
Zuck: we don't measure how much time people spend on facebook.
Q: What happens when you become too connected, all relationships become flat?
Zuck: the frame thru which we're thinking is how facebook fits into your life, not the other way around.
Zuck: as time goes on, the avg # of friends increase... So we're working on more granular privacy controls - creating groups, etc. from web
Zuck: the average # of friends users have is around 150: the Dunbar number. FB helps you connect with people who aren't your closest friends

Zuck: as time goes on, the avg # of friends increase... So we're working on more granular privacy controls - creating groups, etc.
Zuck: The quickest group of info growing on the web is stuff you want to share with some people, but not everyone.
Zuck: it's not the solution to all the world's probs but it'll help people share info.
Q: plans for commerce? OpenSocial?
Zuck: No, I won't commit to working with any other soc net with 25 mil members or more. Though we're philosophically aligned....
...to data portability. Over time we're taking steps to share info on FB and elsewhere.
Zuck: Beacon is a part of the platform program; people don't always realize that.
Zuck: The best we can say now is that we're philosophically aligned to making it happen, but we don't know what others will be doing.
Zuck on commerce: We're mostly just offering commerce tools as a service to dev folks; we'll see where it goes.
Zuck on privacy/govt sharing: Protecting people's private info is a really important thing to do. So we're not openly working with govs...
But we have to follow the law. We're trying to figure out how to deal with China, like having no servers there....
...It's not a great set of tradeoffs.
Carmen from mediabistro: how does FB success affect your personal relationships?
Zuck: interesting topic for a developer garage.
Zuck: I have a small group of friends and I'm close with them. Building a company has been interesting, some strain, but it's been cool.
Icanhascheeseburger is here! His Q: Friends have stopped using fb. Why do you think it's happening?
zuck: an increasing amount of FB experience is platform experience....
zuck: one of the issues we've had is that we've aligned people's incentives poorly. Policies reward people for installing apps, not trust
zuck: instead of having limits like 20 friends to send to at a time, allow apps with real value to exceed those limits.
zuck: if users find an app spammy, we'll dial down their ability to send out notifications to multiple users
Q: for timeframe for outside services beyond fb.
zuck: additions to the beacon program, API. Eventually give people access to everything, but need to do it and avoid having lots of spam
zuck: A lot of the work people are doing is gonna be valuable, but I don't know when these privacy issues will be solved. 6-12 months, maybe
Scoble is talking about getting booted off of facebook briefly.
zuck: In news feed, if you share info and change privacy settings, it leaves others' news feed. With RSS, that wouldn't be possible.
zuck: i don't think anyone knows the answer at this point. That's why I can't commit to other soc net efforts. Openness is good, but...
we need to respect user base's privacy, so there's much to sort out.
zuck: it was your scraping, @scobleizer, that caused the problem, and we did reinstate you.
Scoble: but most users who get booted can't come back. Will you change that policy? Zuck: sorry I didn't hear that. Just kidding.
zuck: there's an appeals process so I'm not sure if it's true that people can't get back into the site.
Q: Palestine isn't represented as a country, groups have been closed.
zuck: our policy is to follow country list the US govt recognizes. We're not in the biz of defining what's a country and what's not.
zuck: but eventually as we let people map out their own networks hopefully this won't be much of an issue.
Q: you have apps for following congressmen, etc. What about making it even more local - state/municiple?
zuck: we'd like to see more stuff like that to exist, but we'd like the community to build it.
zuck: it's not the most efficient thing for us to build it. It's pretty likely someone else would do a better job than we could.
Zuck: thanks for coming. (applause)
A few more presenters, but tons of people are bailing. Nick from soc media, Chris from Causes.
Might leave the event soon. What's everyone up to? Anyone going to the EFF party?
...but he said the prob with the keynote was just the lack of time for audience questions. That doesn't explain away the first 45 mins.

Tags: Facebook | Mark Zuckerberg | sxsw

Posted by acarvin at 6:28 PM

Live From Austin City Limits: Spinto Band

Tags: Austin | Austin City Limits | concerts | music | Spinto Band | SXSW

Posted by acarvin at 12:34 AM

March 9, 2008

How Dev Hynes Got His Star Wars Jacket

Tags: Austin City Limits | clothing | Dev Hynes | Lightspeed Champion | Star Wars

Posted by acarvin at 8:59 PM

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March 5, 2008

Let's Play Stump Speech Bingo!

Having watched the presidential candidates give stump speeches a gazillion times, it didn't take long for me to start recognizing certain phrases. On Twitter, several of us even began to joke about having drinking games every time McCain said "my friends" or Obama said "hopemonger," for example. So it occurred it me it would be fun to create some kind of game for spotting all the catch phrases they use in their stump speeches again and again. So I came up with Stump Speech Bingo. I tracked down some code that would allow me to generate random bingo cards, which I then populated with stock phrases used by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Here's an example of a randomly generated John McCain bingo card:

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Since my blog isn't printer friendly, you won't want to print out this page. So I created a new page that would generate random bingo cards for each candidate:

• John McCain
• Hillary Clinton
• Barack Obama

Game rules: Before a candidate begins a speech, have each player print out their own copy of the candidate's bingo card. (It'll generate a new random bingo card when you reload the page.) Then, as the candidate uses stock phrases from his or her stump speech, look for them on your card. If you find a match in one of the boxes on your card, mark off that box. The box marked "BINGO" is a freebie that you can mark off immediately. As soon as you get five across or diagonally, call out "stump speech bingo!" and you'll be the winner. (If you're playing via Twitter, simply tweet the message to your friends.) If you have any questions about the game or would like to suggest other stock phrases from candidates' stump speeches, please post a comment here or email me at andycarvin _at_ yahoo DOT com. I'm also hoping to create special editions to be used at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions - stay tuned! And special thanks to Karl Geiger for making the source code of his bingo card generator available on his website. -andy

Tags: Barack Obama | election 2008 | games | Hillary Clinton | John McCain | presidential candidates | rhetoric | Stump Speech Bingo | stump speeches

Posted by acarvin at 8:48 PM