Thought provoking article on Techcrunch about the shift from dedicated web pages to real-time streams.

“The stream is winding its way throughout the Web and organizing it by nowness.”

This real-time stream has been building for a while. It began with RSS, but is now so much stronger and swifter, encompassing not just periodic news and musings but constant communication, status updates, instantly shared thoughts, photos and videos.

The author presents a coherent stream metaphor: “A real time, flowing, dynamic stream of information - that we as users and participants can dip in and out of and whether we participate in them or simply observe we are a part of this flow.” He claims that the stream does not replace Web pages or search, for that matter, but it has the potential to completely transform them:

“Traffic occurs in bursts, depending on what people are paying attention to at that second across a variety of services. Someone might notice an obscure blog post on Twitter, where it starts spreading, then it moves to FriendFeed and Facebook and desktop stream readers such as Tweetdeck or Seesmic desktop and before you know it, a hundred thousand people are reading that article. The stream creates a different form of syndication which cannot be licensed and cannot be controlled.”

“The problem, more than ever before, becomes one of information overload. How do you keep from drowning in the deluge? Borthwick suggests letting go of the notion that you can ever master the stream, even just your own personal data stream of friend’s Tweets, updates, blog posts, Flickr photos, YouTube video finds and so on:

This isn’t an inbox we have to empty, or a page we have to get to the bottom of — its a flow of data that we can dip into at will but we can’t attempt to gain an all encompassing view of it.”

This is where I have to somewhat disagree. Yes, the average user must deal with information overload more than ever. Our emphasis must not be focused towards this notion of “giving up” or realizing that we can ‘never master the stream’. We need to build smart filtering mechanisms that help us navigate this overload and data-heavy information ether. We need to build systems that help us know when and where we *should* hop into the stream. We need to be able to set and identify levels of immediacy - I am not willing to miss out on any content from my closest friends, but will easily let other content slide by. Why can I not easily set preferences across the board and am constantly prompted to setup less-than ideal preferences within walled gardens?

“So jump into the stream and let it carry you away. Or you can stand timidly on the banks until everyone else around you has already taken the plunge.”

The information overload “problem” is that of smart filtering, and in a way, the article’s last sentence portrays one of the most promising filtering mechanisms - social & collaborative. By letting people you trust around you do some of the work, it becomes much easier for users to take the plunge and step into the stream.

So start classifying y’all. I want to be able to finally deal with all my feeds!

Technorati Tags: filtering, overload, web, rss

If you’re in New York today, and love the combination of art, interaction design and technology, you’d be foolish not to visit the ITP Spring Show (5-9pm @ 4th floor, 721 b/way). The calibre of projects in this show was simply spectacular - powerful concepts and really great designs. I am so glad I made it down to New York for this. Came back excited, inspired, and really wanting to make and build things! Browse below for a list of my favorites (see my flickr feed for more):

—

Jason Krugman’s Firefly 870 LED Prototype.

Firefly 870 L.E.D. Prototype Promo Video from Jason Krugman on Vimeo.

—

Che-Wei Wang’s 3.16 Billion Cycles - a stunning exploration of time:

3.16 Billion Cycles from che-wei wang on Vimeo.

—

FormScreen by Minsoo Lee:

FormScreen from Minsoo Lee on Vimeo.

—

Tom Gerhardt’s Mud Tub (http://dirtycomputing.com/) - an experimental organic interface that allows people to control a computer while playing in the mud.

—

Bestiary by Caroline Brown and Bryan Lence:

Dynamically generated projections on an interactive book interface.

—

Jackoon by Oscar G. Torres:

Jackoon Painting from Oscar G. Torres on Vimeo.

—

Mechanical Wooden Face - Eun Jung Park:

Mechanical Wooden Face from Eun Jung Park on Vimeo.

On May 6th, Arianna Huffington presented the opening remarks for the Senate Subcommittee on Cummunications, Technology and the Internet’s Hearing on “The Future of Journalism”. She began with a clear statement: Journalism Will Not Only Survie, It Will Thrive! She added that we are actually in the midst of a Golden Age for news consumers, who access stories from countless sources around the world, up-to-the-minute, enabling conversations and direct comments to the author and between other readers, enabling communities to form around the topics.

Even with the staggering numbers that we have seen over the past year (the newspaper industry shed an estimated 15,970 jobs in 2008, and 8,484 through April of this year), it is important to remember that the future of quality journalism does not depend on the future of newspapers. People have gotten used to getting the news they want, whenever, however and wherever they want. This change is here to stay. The discussion needs to move from “How do we save newspapers?” to “How do we strengthen journalism — regardless of which platform it is delivered on…”

We must not act as if we are still operating in the old content economy, as opposed to the new link economy. The survival of the industry cannot be found by “protecting” content behind walled gardens. The future is a linked economy - it is search engines, online advertising, citizen journalism and foundation supported investigative funds.

Arianna firmly believes in a hybrid future:

where old media players embrace the ways of new media (including transparency, interactivity, and immediacy) and new media companies adopt the best practices of old media (including fairness, accuracy, and high-impact investigative journalism). The emphasis should not be on subsidizing what exists now, but on how to rededicate ourselves to the highest calling of journalists — which is to ferret out the truth, wherever it leads. Even if it means losing our all-access-pass to the halls of power.

Unfortunately, this is a concept that has fallen out of favor with too many journalists who, like Pontius Pilat, wash their hands of finding the truth and instead are obsessed with a false view of “balance” and the misguided notion that every story has two sides. And that the truth can be found somewhere in the middle. But not every story has two sides and the truth is often found lurking in the shadows.

Technorati Tags: huffington, news, senate, arianna

If there was one day in the year I truly wish I could go back to Israel for, it would be today - Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day). It is the day I feel furthest from home; most taken out of context. A day that is such an important part of Israeli reality; a tremendously sad day where we commemorate those who gave their lives so that we could live, independent in our country.

A day where we sing songs teary eyed and add more soldiers names to the long list of fallen soldiers since the start of our young state. A day when we reflect on the continuing bloodshed and wonder if it will ever cease. A day when we stand silent and sing our national anthem proudly. And even with all the typical Israeli cynicism, today we come together, as a consolidated people still struggling to justify our right for a home.

On memorial day, a siren is heard throughout the country, and everything stops; all cars, people, everyone stops, and stands in silence. Such powerful, strong silence is overwhelming. Even kids know, that when the siren sounds, you stop, stand, and reflect.

One of my favorite Yom Hazikaron songs, translated from Hebrew.

PERACH (flower):

There, in the dust and the sky’s blue
a piece of peace exists
Sleep flower, sleep
Sleep little girl.

They took life from you
Oh, holy wars
Angels wept for you
With dry eyes.

Your smile, baby girl,
They buried in the ground
how does silence grow
from within the chaos?

Whoever pressed the trigger
Blood will stain his heart
In wars for justice
Children also die.

Yehuda Poliker

Technorati Tags: yom hazikaron, memorial, day, israel

We must never forget

Several weeks after the Israeli operation in Gaza, Danny Zamir, director of the Yitzhak Rabin military preparatory academy at Oranim College, organized a meeting of his graduates. There they chatted behind closed doors and shared their experience from the operation. A transcript of their conversation was initially published in the College paper, but was picked up by Israeli mainstream newspaper Ha’aretz and sensationalized on the front page.

The soldiers’ testimonies described cold-blooded murder of Gaza civilians and unreasonable commands passed during the operation. This lead to a promise by the military to form an investigation which was recently concluded, resulting in no file charges against any of the soldiers as their descriptions were based on hearsay. Their names have not been released in order to protect their identity, and the military investigative police did not publish any more information about the case.

Zamir’s efforts haven’t sat well with a certain patriotic constituency within Israeli society. The IDF is seen as a sacred national institution that is beyond reproach. I’m sure Zamir didn’t expect to be lionized for his efforts, he probably didn’t expect to be vilified either. Not only have Israelis accused him of smearing the IDF, they’ve accused him of aiding and abetting the nation’s enemies who are only waiting to pounce upon such stories to justify their hatred of Israel.  The IDF itself initiated this campaign by revealing that Zamir had been imprisoned briefly in the 1990s when he refused to guard a settler group holding a provocative religious ceremony at Joseph’s Tomb.  They attempted to shoot the messenger. (link)

While doing research for my Global Voices Online post, I scoured through Israblog, Tapuz and other Hebrew portals, trying to find posts from soldier first-hand witnesses who wrote about their experiences in Gaza. To my dismay, I could not find any. It is such a taboo topic; an Israeli must not help those haters validate their claims against our country. We were all soldiers. We all realize that these situations are not black and white. And even if these stories are somewhat true on a micro level, it is certainly not an IDF-wide phenomenon. But when they are taken out of context and amplified to the masses, it is easy to forget the source, while letting our emotions play out. Especially when messages are rapidly amplified through Twitter, the effects can be devastating ( a.k.a. what we saw last week re: #amazonFail)

Ever more often, we are witnessing the implications of living in a society with fast-paced, worldwide media coverage that can easily spin stories out from their original context. This is precisely how a closed door session between school colleagues turns into a worldwide news sensation against the reputation of one of the most powerful armies in the world. We must remember that the truth usually lies somewhere in-between, and make an effort to fact-check before letting our emotions passionately take over our logic.

Here’s a link to my GVO article:

Technorati Tags: Israel, global voices oline, testimonials, context, idf, soldiers, war, palestine, gaza

In Monrovia, Liberia a unique form of journalism exists where the news is written out daily on a chalk board for everyone to read as they pass by. Alfred Sirleaf established his chalkboard news service called “Daily Talk” in May of 2000, when he saw a need for direct, free and accessible reporting. Because of his provocative style of reporting the truth, the Daily Talk was destroyed twice before he finally fled into exile in Ghana. As peace returned to the region, so did the Daily Talk, and today it is one of the most read News Sources in the capital with thousands everyday taking the time to stop as they walk or drive by to get the breaking news. The Daily Talk in not only a board, but includes a small news room in the back, where he works on the next set of “articles” as viewers read the current set (using a rotating double-sided chalk board).  (link)

Alfred Sirleaf is the managing editor of The Daily Talk, a white plywood shed trumpeting the latest headlines along Tubman Boulevard, one of Monrovia main thoroughfares. “Those who don’t have opportunity to buy newspaper, go on the Internet, who can’t afford to buy generator to buy TV,” he said, describing just about everyone in this battered city, “I do all the dirty work for them, and I just give them exactly what they want.”

Alfred’s solution to dispersing information to the people around him is simple yet highly effective. He also seems to have made a business model out of this board, charging for advertisement space on the bottom. Alfred wants to make sure every Liberian can keep up with the news and play a part in the country’s young democratic government, but in a way that wholly depends on what type of information he displays.

But there are so many advantages to providing “analog” news:

Alfred serves as a reminder to the rest of us, that simple is often better, just because it works. The lack of electricity never throws him off. The lack of funding means he’s creative in ways that he recruits people from around the city and country to report news to him. He uses his cell phone as the major point of connection between him and the 10,000 (he says) that read his blackboard daily. (link)

Technorati Tags: mobile, development, blogger, analog, africa, news

flickr clock

I love the horizontal timeline below the image slices and I think the general browsing experience is well done. Its always an interesting challenge lining up events horizontally on one level. For example, when browsing through this clock, I first encounter a clip from the San Francisco Pillow Fight. However, when I click on the <next> arrow I am shown a cat sitting by a windowsill. All these events happen at the same time, and are as important for the person who placed them on the clock.

flickr clock timeline

Applications like these make me wonder how we will be consuming news in the future. Will we have a super-set of timelines streaming real-time video people are taking from events around the world? How easy will it be to switch from my personal channel (i.e. my cat on the windowsill) to my relevant events (for example places I’ve been to, people I follow or more general newsworthy events).

Technorati Tags: visualization, timeline, clock, flickr, video, news, events, pnn

Earlier this week I set out to build a little webapp - essentially a visual, easy-to-use wrapper over a mySQL database which included a wide array of data. Naturally, I set to add pagination to the app, along with filtering functionality. Automatically, I set out to search the web for pre-written modules. I wasted several hours trying semi-documented solutions until I broke down and finally decided to just write it myself.

I must say, it was actually much more complex than I’d thought. When controling pagination of a site, especially with dynamic content being pulled from a database, the application constantly needs to figure out where in relation to the database results, the user is browsing, how many pages forward or backward exist, and all the end cases (first/last pages).

In this example I used the jquery library to make the AJAX calls (no need to usually). The ajax call updates the #results div with the content. The .php file holds the majority of the functionality - calculates the number of pages (according to # of entries we want per page), then according to the current page, calculates how many before and after, creates the links, and makes sure the current page is not clickable.

Here are links to the files: (note - you need to insert your own database info in the php file for this to work)

pagination.html

pagination.php

And below is the .php code I created:

——————————————————–>>

<?php

$mysql = mysql_connect(”***your host***”,”***your username***”,”**your password***”) or die(mysql_error());
mysql_select_db(”****your db****”,$mysql) or die(mysql_error());

$NUMPADDING=6; // number of links on either side of the current page

$pagenum = $_GET['pagenum'];
$page_rows = $_GET['page_rows'];

$data = mysql_query(”SELECT * FROM entries”) or die(mysql_error());
$rows = mysql_num_rows($data);

//This tells us the page number of our last page
$last = ceil($rows/$page_rows);

// SQL QUERY
//This sets the range to display in our query
$max = ‘limit ‘ .($pagenum - 1) * $page_rows .’,’ .$page_rows;

//echo “SELECT * FROM entries $max”;

$data_p = mysql_query(”SELECT * FROM ***your tablename*** $max”) or die(mysql_error());

// FIRST
echo’<div id=”pagination”>
<ul id=”pagination”>
<li class=”first”><a href=”javascript:getPage(\’1\’,\”.$page_rows.’\',\’this\’)”>first</a></li>’;

// PREV
if ($pagenum>1) {
$prevpage=$pagenum-1;
echo’<li class=”previous”><a href=”javascript:getPage(\”.$prevpage.’\',\”.$page_rows.’\',\’this\’)”><- previous</a></li>’;
//echo’…’;
// —PADDING

if ($pagenum-$NUMPADDING>0)
$start=$pagenum-$NUMPADDING;
else
$start=1;

for ($i=$start;$i<$pagenum;$i++){
$tmp=$i;
echo’<li><a href=”javascript:getPage(\”.$tmp.’\',\”.$page_rows.’\',\’this\’)”>’.$tmp.’</a></li>’;
}
}
else
// no prev necessary
echo’<li class=”previous-off”><- previous</li>’;

// CURRENT PAGE
echo’<li class=”active”>’.$pagenum.’</li>’;

// NEXT
if ($pagenum<$last) {
// PADDING+++
if ($last-$pagenum > $NUMPADDING)
$end=$NUMPADDING;
else
$end=$last-$pagenum;

for ($i=1;$i<=$end;$i++){
$tmp=$pagenum+$i;
echo’<li><a href=”javascript:getPage(\”.$tmp.’\',\”.$page_rows.’\',\’this\’)”>’.$tmp.’</a></li>’;
}
//echo’…’;
$nextpage=$pagenum+1;
echo’<li class=”next”><a href=”javascript:getPage(\”.$nextpage.’\',\”.$page_rows.’\',\’this\’)”>next -></a></li>’;
}
else
// no prev necessary
echo’<li class=”next-off”>next -></li>’;

//LAST
echo’
<li class=”last”><a href=”javascript:getPage(\”.$last.’\',\”.$page_rows.’\',\’this\’)”>last</a></li>
</ul><br/>
</div>
‘;
?>

Technorati Tags: pagination, javascript, js, php, jquery, html, tutorial, code, example

I really do love the <a href=”http://nytimes.com”>NYTimes website</a>. They just seem to truly get it and don’t mind investing in experimentation. The times seems to place the user experience as a priority, willing to explore innovative ideas without thinking only about the business side or strategy. I keep coming back to the site because I enjoy consuming their content on their site so much more than on my RSS reader. Two things I noticed today made me super happy.

The Times lets viewers decide how to consume the multitude of UGC comments. These are usually the ugly, linear tail that is added onto the back of news articles. Here, the list defaults to a curated pool of comments picked by the editor. Its super easy to get different views by clicking on the pull-down menu. The options are - Oldest first, Newest first, Reader’s recommendations, Editor’s selections and Replies. Throughout the threads of comments, the ones picked by the paper editors are highlited with a different background color.

Why am I so excited by this? Finally a substantial paper decides to do something with user generated comments. Although they do get spammy, I still believe in their potential to highlight aspects of the conversation which the article is tackling, or missing out on. I’ve been working on a variety of concepts for this, some more artsy and some an exploration of possible interfaces. Very early stage ideas, but enroute to something bigger. Defintely inspired by the Times!

Secondly, seeing the synchronized Mac ad on their homepage just made me smile. Probably the first time in a while where I watched the full advertisement not once, but twice. A fantastic use of both skyscraper and horizontal advertisement spaces, synchronizing the two by allowing the “PC” character to walk over from one to the other. That little thing made the whole ad. experience just fun enough to watch. In addition, audio was opt-in rather than opt-out.