How much money do you think is in a typical fully-stocked ATM?

Not that I’m contemplating anything. Just wondering. Also, Any ideas about how to put a false bottom into a duffel bag? Just curious. [Tags: doep puzzle atm]

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John McGrath has launched TagsAhoy.com, a site that “lets you search your personal tags across a number of tagging sites (del.icio.us, Flickr, Gmail, LibraryThing, Squirl and Connotea.” He says he’s got’s plan for adding lots more, including more services and more doodads, such as tagclouds.

But being able to get all your tagged resources in one spot? Sweet! [Tags: tags tagsahoy john_mcgrath everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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Leisa Rechelt posts about her talk on “Ambient Intimacy” at Reboot, and includes her slide show (which is almost all graphics and snippets…and looks terrific).

Ambient Intimacy is a term to describe that sense of connectedness that you get from participating in social tools online that allow you to feel as though you are maintaining and, perhaps in fact, increasing your closeness with people in your social network through the messages and content that you share online – be it photographs or text or information about upcoming travel.

There are lots of other terms that people have used to describe this kind of connected experience including Situational Awareness, Hyper-Connectivity, Hive Mind, Social Presence, Distributed Co-Presence etc. I still prefer Ambient Intimacy because it combined the human ‘ickyness’ of ‘intimacy’ with the distributed and non-directional nature of ‘ambiance’.

These are all ways of getting at the fundamental paradox that the Web is a crowd of unique faces, a roar of distinct voices, a choreography of Brownian motion, an intimacy of details, distributed friendship, communities of acquaintances, topic-based affection, a continuous intermittency, a plenum of parts… [Tags: leisa_reichelt ambient_intimacy reboot09 everything_is_miscellaneous]

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The 700 mH range of the public airwaves is coming up for auction. It’d be nice if it got used for the public good. There’s a good discussion at Slashdot. [Tags: 700 slashdot fcc open_ spectrum wifi ]

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There’s a video of a cool gesture-based system over at Perceptive Pixel. And there’s even an electronic music soundtrack that’s like annoying music from the future.

Jeff Han apparently demoed this at TED last year. Now he’s got the video of the demo up on his site, with zero further info. It looks very cool, but, of course, cool UI’s are not necessarily usable UI’s.

So, we’ll see. Sometime. I hope.

[Tags: user_interface perceptive_pixel gestures coolness]

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Moira Gunn interviewed me for TechNation about Everything is Miscellaneous. We talk about the three orders of order, “meta-business,” Wikipedia as a guide to what humans are interested in, and the Internet and politics. Here’s the excerpt. [Tags: moira_gunn wikipedia politics business everything_is_miscellaneous ]

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Over at the ongoing conversation about Everything is Miscellaneous at The Well, Jamais Cascio defines “fauxsonomies” as folksonomies gamed by “metadata added with the conscious intent to confuse or obfuscate,” or to weight them for spammish reasons. Great term. Very clever, Jamais!

Since nothing has ever been said on the Net just once, I googled “fauxonomy” and got 53 hits, plus eight with Jamais’ spelling, including one by Tom Coates at PlasticBag.org. In fact, Tom has a fauxonomy tag at del.icio.us. (Google revealed that I’d blogged Tom’s post about it in April 2005. Ah, the pleasures of having a poor memory.)

Nevertheless, I was delighted to get reacquainted with the term, this time with a definition attached. [Tags: folksonomy tagging ]

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Bill Griffith’s automotive column in the Boston Globe today has a nice quote from Saab USA’s new general manager:

“A blogger, I think he was from Tasmania, immediately made a post on behalf of Saab owners,” Shannon said. “The gist was, ‘You’re working for us now, and you better take care of our baby.’ “

Evidence? Nah. An anecdote that expresses a whole bunch of themes? Yup.

[Tags: marketing cluetrain saab]

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John Palfrey of the Berkman opens the conference by looking at the digital age from the point of view of students,

Students: “It’s not about being digital. It’s about students who are born digital.” This is a profound difference, JP says. He points to four traits of students,always on and always attached.

1. Digital Identity. The natives assume they have ’em.

2. Natives arre multi-taskers “but in ways heretofore unseen.” The Socratic method changes when every student has a laptop in front of her. Everyone has multiple IM sessions going. “It’s not necessarily a good thing” but it’s the fac.
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3. Natives assume media comes in digital form, and thus is malleable. And it’s searchable. “Research now means a Google search.”

4. Natives are creators. “This is a huge shift from previous generations.” From consumers to creators.

These changes are not all good, JP says. Henry Jenkins has identified the “participation gap” (an effect of the digital divide). There are ethics challenges and transparency problems (“who created what”).

Teachers:

1. Digital identities: Should faculty members have Facebook accounts? Is your teacher your friend?

2. Emergent tools: “How do we capture this extaordinary move from consumers to creators?” Should teachers start using wikis, e.g.?

University: What about it ought to be reborn?

1. Digital ID: What does it mean for Harvard to have a digital ID? now that both students and info are born digital, how does a university understand its identity?

2. Digital info: JP points to Dan Gillmor’s Center for Digital Media as a site trying to figure out what things like accuracy and fairness mean. He also points to PLoS.

3. Open Access: One Laptop Per Child,Access to Knowledge , OpenNet Initiative and many others are responding to this need. The “Open to Harvard ID Holders Only” badge is up in front of Harvard’s digital information, and it doesn’t need to be, says JP.

Now JP raises “hard questions.”

What is the relationship between the university and say, Reed Elsevier, Google, RIAA, MPAA, Second Life? Should the U be striking exclusive deals with Google? Should the U deliver the RIAA’s cease and desist letters?

“What is the best way to invest in libraries in a digital age?”

“How do we fund and sustain the generation of digital knowledge?” Should we be looking at funders, or should we be adopting a business model like Google’s or Times Select’s?

“How does this generation of new library scientists learn?”

“What is the impact of an outdated copyright system?” Should the U be taking a leading role in improving the system? [Tags: is2k7 john_palfrey]

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I’m at The Berkman Center’s Internet and Society Conference (“Knowledge beyond Authority”). Yesterday was an an invitation-only day for about 100 people. Today is a public conference:

Stream: http://www.law.harvard.edu/media/2007/06/01/berkman.rm

Second Life

IRC: irc.freenode.net/berkman

I found portions of yesterday’s meetings a little frustrating. It was a fantastic set of people, from all over Harvard, other universities, non-profits, open access folks, and representatives of the content industries (journal publishers, entertainment industry). There were many great discussions, but with some I think I’m just out of step with the times. I thought we spent too much time trying to find “common ground” with the content industries. Especially the Hollywood folks seemed to think common ground means a tit for a tat: We turn in file sharers and they let us have more access to their copyrighted content for educational purposes. I hate that deal. Whatever you think of file sharing, it should not be tied to the ability of the university to advance knowledge, research and education. We might as well be talking about giving away the stadium’s naming rights in return for more academic freedom.

That sounds good, but in fact it’s obstructionist. In fact, at one point I was so exercised about this that I behaved badly. And not in the cute or righteous way. More in the rude asshole way. I feel terrible about that, and have apologized to the person I was rude to. I really don’t like the self-righteous me. And it gets in the way of thought.

Charlie Nesson , the conference creator, has inspired me with the idea that the university can be the leading defender of the Internet and of the needed expansion intellectual rights. I’m not ready to be realistic. And that’s a problem.

Mary Wong is opening the conference (after Charles Ogletree ‘s welcome … subbing for Charlie Nesson who is in the hospital having something fixed (he’ll be fine)). She says the discussions yesterday focused not only on the challenges around universities using licensed material, but also around the licensing and commercialization of material generated by the university. She says there was a lot of discussion of the vagueness of Fair Use. Is there anything we can do to clarify it? And if we did, would that new understanding, intended as a floor, get taken as the ceiling, thus actually limiting Fair Use in practice?

[Tags: berkman harvard a2k copyright copyleft digital_rights education is2k7]

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