From the iPhone Developer Site

You must be enrolled in the iPhone Developer Standard or Enterprise Program to access the development resources for iPhone OS 3.0 beta…

I was finally able to log in to try and grab the download (which was made available today) but when I click the iPhone 3.0 link this is what I get.

Looks like I’ll have to pony up $99 to get in on the fun early. It’s a shame they won’t let the University Program in…

With all of the funding talk of Ning in the blogosphere and FastCompany, I thought that they would be a good topic for this week’s blog post.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but from my brief use of the Ning site… I’m not finding their platform too compelling.

Maybe I’m spoiled by Facebook… or trained is a better word… I can’t help but look for features on Ning that I’m used to on Facebook. Or maybe it’s the style/functionality of Facebook that I’m looking for. I get this odd feeling that Ning is simply aiming for quantity over quality. It’s true that the site was established as a platform for people to create their own social networking site. Although it might be unfair to compare Ning with a SNS like Facebook feature-wise, they are competing time-wise with users already invested in other SNSs.

Ning provides the social networking tools that are used on popular SNSs. Features like, Videos, Photos, Blogs, Groups, Events, Forums, An Activity Section (a News Feed ala Facebook), and Member List. Sure you’ve got all of the ingredients to make a Social Networking Site work… but I haven’t found an individual SNS compelling enough for me to join on Ning.

So that’s what worries me most about Ning. Let’s start out with the look, or the lack of consistency in Ning’s look. Everything from the banner on the top of a Ning SNS, the color scheme, the layout/order of all the modules (Video, Photo etc…) is different (this is both good and bad). There are some more well done than others, but it really just boils down to a bunch of content on one page, which is overwhelming to me and I’m assuming many other users. The one consistent feature, is the navigation bar on the top of the SNS starting with Community, My Page and so on. So there is a freedom to create a specific look for your SNS, but that freedom allows for sloppy, over saturated home/community pages for a SNS created on Ning. I’d prefer the initial page on a Ning SNS to be clean, less cluttered, easy to navigate, and concise. When it’s easy to throw things together and call it a SNS, the end result may not be so compelling.

But I could just be taking the idea of Ning the wrong way… it sure is allowing for the long tail of SNSs. This is a good and a bad thing. Good because any interest, niche, hobby, etc… can be made into a SNS of sorts. Maybe not as in depth as Facebook or MySpace, but with all of the components that constitute a SNS will be present. I think a SNS needs to be compelling, and have quality content for users of its site that are passionate for the particular niche the Ning SNS is trying to fill. The sheer volume of different SNS variations on Ning are mind numbing, and will continue to grow. Whether or not the Ning approach proves effective will be something to watch for… but call me pessimistic when I say that it will be hard to convince users of larger SNS to find/create their niche on Ning and continue using it. There is something too generic/stale about Ning that I think will never go away… and that will keep each individual Ning SNS from getting a fully invested userbase. Oh… and I’m curious as to what Ning’s business model will be to monetize their create your own SNS platform, besides online advertising…

If you combine my day job of fixing computers, my constant thirst for new technology tools using web/mobile/personal computing, and the passion to help… you can imagine how excited I was to read about TechSoup.org in this NYTimes article

First of all TechSoup.org is a great resource for information on useful software and web tools that are helpful in the technical administration/management of a nonprofit organization. At the home page, there is a daily news feed of upcoming online tech events (to discuss new and useful technologies with other TechSoup users and moderators of the site), links to free downloads of software to increase productivity (or just useful) and updates to the various sections of the site.

There is a separate “Learning Center” where there are how-to’s, worksheets, case studies, profiles, and product comparisons are written for all budgets and all levels of technical expertise. The Learning Center is great because it is written in a way that is easy to understand, and each article is specific to a particular topic. From consultants, to Internet connections, to training and volunteers, a variety of aspects are covered in depth.

If the articles still don’t answer questions you may have, there is a robust community of users on TechSoup’s online forums. This particular post got my attention. Users in this thread introduce themselves, and talk a little about how they use Flickr as a tool in their nonprofit organizations. There are many other threads like this, and it is all very worth reading through

They also have surveys which are interesting to look at, and may be useful in future papers/topics I am thinking about writing about.

Also, part of their website is dedicated to helping computer refurbishing companies and organizations connect with those nonprofit organizations who need more computers but don’t have the funding necessary to purchase brand new computers.

Their blog section is a great addition also, as it “offers news, tips, and highlights from around the Web to help your nonprofit get the most out of technology”. Think of techcrunch or mashable but with a nonprofit focus and commentary.

Overall, from my brief experience with this online community, I’d have to say that it’s very well developed and has tons of useful information. Going back to the original NYTimes article that sparked this discovery, I am excited to find out what other possibilities there are for nonprofit organizations to exist and find a sustainable return to continue without solely relying on donations. Wikipedia is a great example of a nonprofit organization that does not have a great sustainability plan. There have been plenty of articles about this including this one by Forbes. The Internet Archive and Mozilla are two examples presented in the article that do have good sustainability plans, and are also able to achieve their nonprofit goals.

If anyone knows how I can get involved in organizations like TechSoup, or projects similar to it let me know. I’d love to do some work this summer (for the internship maybe) learning more about it. If I have time, I definitely want to try and help an organization that is just down the street from me called SIPA (Search to Involve Pilipino Americans) located in the heart of Historic Filipinotown in Los Angeles. I would love to see improvements to their technology center, finding ways for their kids to use their computer lab in more effective ways that are more conducive to learning about Pilipino culture and developing their identity.

Imagine an Internet connected navigation device. A lot of cell phones come with built in GPS modules/mapping software (Google Maps). These may be able to access the internet and show the traffic for particular roads. Now that personal GPS units are either built into the car or as a portable unit, personalized navigation is becoming ubiquitous. But without real time traffic conditions, especially in heavy metropolitan areas, navigation can be a bit troublesome and not as convenient as it can be. Yes there are also GPS units that also have real time traffic as reported from different traffic organizations (Ex. Sigalert), but most users would probably value a real time poll of information from people who were actually driving those roads. Wouldn’t it be more efficient and valuable if the information came from the drivers themselves? For instance, you have a friend who is driving on the freeway or street that you’re going to drive on, and you were wondering what the driving conditions were like. Normally you would call that person, and they can tell you how fast they’re going, what the traffic is like, etc… from their experience. You then (at least in Los Angeles) plan your route accordingly… take the 405 instead of the 5, or the 60 instead of the 10, or just avoid the freeway and take the side-streets.

This is where the Dash Express comes in, a combination of GPS, and online community type features. Being connected to the internet provides a two-way connection pipe for the device to communicate with servers on the Dash Network. The main feature of the device is to report back speed and location information back to the Dash Network (both passively and anonymously) so that other users of the device can use that data to provide current and average traffic information over time for specific freeways, and streets. A device can theoretically provide the best route (of shortest distance, and the least amount of traffic based on the data collected from other users) to get to your destination quickly and easily. There are a couple things to be skeptical about with this feature. One, it will only be as good as the amount of dash users in the area you are driving, as the pool of information gets larger, the better the traffic data. It will be interesting to see how much data will actually be needed to get a good sample of information for accurate traffic reporting. Two, the company is not only charging a premium for the device itself, but a monthly fee to use the service. Without paying a monthly fee, the Internet connected features, like real time traffic, will be disabled. There is definitely a high entry cost for this device, and it will be interesting to see if people will be willing to pay a premium to access this information. There are plenty of other features, gas price lookup when you search for nearby gas stations, and a web portal for your device so that you can send and share information with the Dash Express from any computer that has access to the Internet. Lists of destinations, addresses, and more can be distributed to your own and other Dash Express devices owned by other people (your friends maybe?). The key here is that they need to get the device out to as many people as possible, and I think down the line they will realize that they need to severely discount the device itself and try to make the money back through the subscription model, or keep the purchase price high, but take out the subscription fees altogether. Something needs to be done to get the device and/or the technology to more users (licensing software/network to other manufacturers… imagine buying a car with compatibility to the Dash Network). The Dash Network will improve as the user base becomes larger. This definitely sounds like a game changer, but we must wait and see… It’ll be great to see if this idea actually starts to take off.

This is interesting… it looks like some users on Amazon.com think there might be a buzz campaign to help promote the product. It may be true but a device as new and innovative as this needs to have a good word of mouth campaign to help get the technology in the hands of more users. The more the better for this device.

So earlier today, I found an article on the New York Times entitled “Online Chat, as Inspired by Real Chat“.

The article begins with this quote

Compared with other forms of human interaction, online social networking is really not all that social.

It is true, online social networking is simply not as good as face to face social networking. There will be no replacement for the FtF communication that can only be imitated online to a certain extent.

The author presents the following analogy to online social networking on popular SNSs

People visit each other’s MySpace pages and Facebook profiles at various hours of the day, posting messages and sending e-mail back and forth across the digital void. It’s like an endless party where everybody shows up at a different time and slaps a yellow Post-it note on the refrigerator.

It’s true, most of the communication done on popular SNSs is asynchronous, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a bad thing. I think there is a reason why chat rooms have not reached a massive popularity amongst internet users since the days of AOL’s prime. For one, most chat rooms can become very overwhelming with several conversations between several groups people at once, in the same chat room. Let me put it this way, have you ever sat in a small room with more than a few groups of people, with several conversations going on at the same time? Not only is it hard to hear the person you’re talking to (as they try to raise their voice over the other conversations in the room), you might become distracted with the current conversation as you listen in on the other conversation. This is the dilemma that online chat rooms face if they adopt the same simple text based model.

There is promise in the use of chat rooms besides being just a chat room embedded on your Facebook/MySpace profile. For example, imagine watching a TV show on Hulu, or a clip on YouTube (both are streams that usually asynchronous/not live), but inviting your friends online to watch the show with you. Instead of everyone watching asynchronously, the show is synchronized to start and playback at the same time as each user is connected to the stream. As the show or clip goes on, the viewing experience becomes shared and comments/links/reactions can be distributed within a chat room that is overlaid or positioned alongside the video stream. This is analogous to sitting in your living room watching TV with your friends, or even watching a live TV show while chatting with your friends via IM.

Another idea I have deals with proximity. What if there was a way to filter conversations depending on your interest or location? This might be hard to understand so I’ll provide a brief example. What about a dynamic chat room that followed your browsing and reading habits online in a specific website (not the entire web, just one particular site)? Let’s take ESPN.com for example. You start off by looking at the front page, and your chat room is currently loaded into the Top Stories arena, but then you navigate to the NCAA Basketball home page and then your chat room dynamically shifts to a different room whose primary focus is with College Basketball. The conversations are moderated to make sure topics continue to be relevant, as well as being linked to your friends who may be browsing the same section on the site. Imagine discovering that your friends are also looking at the NBA Standings, a conversation can be triggered as each person debates why their team isn’t number 1.

So yes, chat rooms can make a comeback… so long as their implementation is more than just a 3-d avatar embedded in a web browser, or a chat box with no dynamic functionality.

So if you’ve logged onto Facebook this morning, you’d find out that Facebook has changed their Privacy controls quite a bit by adding more granularity. Here is what they posted at the top of my News Feed,

We’ve added more privacy options.

Now you can use friend lists to control exactly who can see what. We’ve also added the option to share information with “Friends of Friends”. For more details, check out the Privacy page.

So what does this mean? Let me take a look at all of the different areas we can now tweak, adjusting the visibility of a Facebook user’s account.

• Profile
  • Before, we were limited to creating only one list of people called the “Limited Profile” where users could select portions of their profile to be shown, and the rest hidden to select Friends. In the previous system, it was an all in, the limited profile view, or a complete block of a user. This was limited because most users in the real world have multiple subsets of friends, that could be categorized under “Work/Professional”, “School”, “Family”, and more. These different subsets would only be allowed certain bits of information, such as pictures/videos, what you were doing exactly, or even who your other friends are. Now a user’s profile can be tailored exactly to how they specify them to be. For example, you may not want your professional friends to see any videos or pictures of you so you can create a “friend list” for them, and add that list to a limited group who cannot access those areas of your profile. This is powerful because it enables the Facebook user to more clearly define the offline groups in their Facebook network.
  • On the opposite end of the spectrum, it looks like Facebook has also allowed users to open up their profile more if they choose to do so. They have added a new grouping of access called “Friends of Friends”. This can be enabled for the different areas of the profile to make it easier for second degree friends to access certain bits of your profile, such as your contact info and basic information. This is good for those who have a small Facebook network of people and are willing to give more information out to more friends of friends that will help make more connections possible.

All in all, this is what I have been waiting for. I haven’t found any real faults with the addition of more advanced, granular customizations to the Privacy area of my own Facebook account. I believe it can only improve the usability of Facebook. In my first module paper, which I have attached here Facebook’s Pattern for Privacy Concern, it looks as if Facebook has answered my plea. Thanks Mark and Company!

If you haven’t heard already, Apple this past Thursday had just announced their software roadmap for the iPhone (and iPod Touch). If you haven’t seen the event, follow this link to go watch it. If you don’t want to watch the hour long presentation, or if software development details sound boring, a summary of what I want to discuss can be found here.

So what does the release of the SDK mean? Well for me and other current iPhone users, we will soon have an official method for developing and using 3rd party software. Previously, the only way a user could use 3rd party software on their iPhone was if they performed a “jailbreak” on their phone. In a nutshell, this is an unofficial way for users of the iPhone to gain access to run applications not created by Apple directly on their phone. This was in response to Apple’s request that all iPhone applications be created for the iPhone’s web browser in the form of web apps. Web apps were limited because they essentially did not have access to any specific iPhone functions such as the accelerometer, and even basic things such as read and write access to the iPhone itself. Additionally, it required that the iPhone have some form of internet access (cellular or wi-fi). Sometimes both might not be available, such as when you are on a plane, in a hospital etc. With the SDK, developers are allowed access to do all of this and more.

What’s most exciting about the SDK though is what developers discovered about making applications for the iPhone. As a prior user of a T-Mobile Sidekick (which runs Danger’s proprietary OS, has its own SDK and application delivery store, similar to Apple’s, but a closed and heavily protected architecture), and a Windows Mobile Smartphone (a completely open architecture, developers distribute the software themselves), Apple is not alone in terms of software development on a mobile device. What’s different about developing about the iPhone, compared to say a Blackberry or a Windows Mobile phone? It’s all about the operating system and the development environment given to you. From what I’ve seen during the keynote this past week, and the types of software that companies have developed and demoed, I am very excited. Unlike most other mobile phones, the architecture of the iPhone allows for a much more robust development environment that is much more similar to a computer desktop operating system than a mobile phone operating system. Because the difference between the iPhone and desktop like computing is blurring, the scope of development will follow.

Imagine the ease of use of a fully integrated Flickr application on the iPhone. The ability to take photos from the camera, upload them to Flickr, tag your photo with the multi-touch interface, or even edit and crop the photos within the iPhone itself without going to your computer. Or how about a version of Delicious Library for your iPhone that leverages the camera and intuitive interface to help you catalog your growing collection of physical music, movies, and books. How about games? A few games were shown during the event this past week, so this will obviously be a huge focus for developers. By having the ability to directly develop games for the iPhone, we will start to see much more engaging forms of gaming. Should the Sony’s and the Nintendo’s of the world be scared… I think so, why you ask? Let’s not forget that the iPhone has one thing both the PSP and the Nintendo DS don’t have. An always on internet connection through your wireless provider. They all have a wi-fi card, but you’re not always in range of a wi-fi access point. Can you say networked gaming on the iPhone?! Not only networked gaming, but can you imagine a Second Life client for the iPhone? Technically it might not be possible to run it all the time with the speed of the cellular data connection in the 1st generation iPhone, but I won’t completely rule the possibility out.

One word to describe all the readings from this week.

Inspired.

You could read Guy Kawasaki’s blog and learn how to Change the World.

You can learn what Y Combinator is all about, and find out that they want to help get your idea up and running.

You can create a network of tech rock stars by applying to TechStars.

Yes, we are talking about venture capital and the process of starting up. All of these great online communities, web apps, and the like… started from an idea, coupled with… a box of pizza, and cases of energy drinks. More often than not, a simple sketch can translate into a full fledged social utility as was the case with this one:

Click for the history.

Now I’m not saying that a transformation from idea to product is easy, it most certainly is not. But after this weeks reading, I’m finding that the core ingredients are as follows:

• 1 Tablespoon of Idea Salt (Just a little goes a long way)
• 10 Gallons of Motivation Juice (The more the better)
• 1+ Great Programmer(s)
• 1 Great Leader

Everything else is irrelevant, because from what I’m reading, the rest will follow. Take the time to develop an idea, make it presentable so that it can be understood, and take it one step at a time. More importantly, the key is to fill a known or an unknown need, doing so with finesse, with trust, and with simplicity.

I have a Moleskine waiting to be filled with tons of these little sketches, some pages already filled. If there is an easier way to get going on a start up, these ideas need to be written down, drawn out, and brainstormed amongst like minds.

I have an iPhone to help me look up things anywhere, like, is this domain name registered (www.chriscan.org), the latest developments on my RSS Feed Reader, and more.

A great example of this just happened recently at the Future of Web Apps conference this past weekend. Plenty of ideas were shared including a call-back service for calling companies that have automated call systems and long wait times (no more waiting, just get a call back when a human is ready to talk to)

Sometimes an idea might not be technically feasible at the time, like this call-back service I just mentioned. It may depend on other factors such as the willingness of other companies, groups, and people to participate. Sometimes it may be so far fetched that no one has any experience in tackling that idea. But from Guy Kawasaki’s blog, there is a quote from Steve Wozniak, one of Apple’s co-founder’s that resonates well with this post and it says:

Woz (Apple). “All the best things I did at Apple came from (a) not having money, and (b) not having done it before, ever.”

More importantly these two things give promise to these ideas that I have, and venture capital represents the enabler for these ideas. I am excited and motivated for this fall.

So in my ongoing quest to find all things interesting on the internet, I started noticing something strange this weekend. Do you ever type in the wrong URL for a particular website you want to access? We all do.

Normally you’d see an error like this in Firefox:

But if you have Time Warner Cable as your ISP, then you might have started to notice this when you mistype your URL:

Now I didn’t think much of it at first, but then the more that I ran into it, the more irritating it got. So Time Warner Cable is in a way, invading my privacy. Yes I suppose it might be useful if I meant to type in www.annenbergonlinecommunities.com (correct) vs www.annenbergonlinecommunitiess.com (which is incorrect). But more disturbingly, is what is suggested to me as “related searches”. I’m not sure what the hell is going on here, (I clear my cookies out all the time, and delete all private information from my browser on a regular basis) so I have no idea where it’s getting this information from as “relevant”. So military.com, blackpeople.com, Gay Boy, so on and so forth, Road Runner is telling me this is relevant to www.annenbergonlinecommunitiess.com???? Seriously now… that’s ridiculous!

I guess what really irks me is the fact that something so simple as an error message has transformed into an ISPs attempt monetize its users’ mistakes. Yes, I can see how this may be helpful, but can they make it any more obvious what they are trying to do? I’d like to see an initial page explaining what the DNS redirection is doing before they actually do it. And what about giving the users the choice to opt-in or opt-out in the first DNS redirection.

What this all boils down to is net neutrality. We’ve seen users’ Google home pages hijacked by ISPs before which made some people mad. So how does this all relate to the privacy concerns of online communities? Well if you remember, Facebook released a very unpopular feature called beacon. It caused a major uproar for it’s privacy issues. Well long story short, Facebook eventually gave its users the ability to opt-out from using the feature. I’d say I’m definitely a big proponent for letting the user decide whether or not to use a particular feature. Additionally, I say we give the user the choice from the start, before the feature is even used or implemented (like the ISP’s DNS redirection, beacon, etc). Why not make it clear what is being offered as a “service” to those users who don’t understand all of this legal mumbo-jumbo. Yes I know I can turn of Time Warner Cable’s DNS redirection here and beacon as described here.

But can they just make it easy on a user, especially the moms and dads, the less tech-savvy, uninformed average Joe/Jane of the internet. So yes, we can opt-out, but we need to critically think about the options given to us by our online communities, and now, even our ISPs. Give me the option to choose, and give me an explanation that even my grandmother would be able to understand.

This week the readings from class deal with intellectual property, so it’s kind of ironic that I just watched this documentary on the Metrolink for the hour trip from Upland to Union Station this week. The 60 minute documentary Good Copy Bad Copy, is about intellectual property, copyright and music culture as it relates to the digital age. The documentary is great because it takes interviews from different members of the music/movie industry, academics, and more as they provide their perspective on new media. What interested me most from this documentary (and related to our readings) was Lawrence Lessig’s interview, and his stance on digital copyright. While Lessig agrees that copyright is necessary and can’t be overlooked in the digital sense, he argues that it is important to keep the creativity for digital work alive by allowing users the freedom to manipulate and use digital material in it’s own context. This argument is the reason why the Creative Commons exists, for a brief summary, view this pdf.

The Creative Commons is important because it allows the creators of content to assign specific freedoms to their intellectual property that would be immediately applicable in their digital form. Flickr takes a proactive approach with the photos that its users upload by letting them attach a Creative Commons license to any photo uploaded to their site. All photos with the CC license can be viewed here.

While I don’t have Creative Commons enabled on my own Flickr, the fact that I can more easily share my photography with others and allow them to more creatively use it with my permission is great. I haven’t given much thought about it, but after the readings this week, I feel like I need to share my work with others in the same way I hope their work can be shared with me.

Getting back to the documentary… it’s clear that the ability to manipulate, develop, and create brand new content from existing musical releases is becoming easier, but it’s also allowing for more innovative and more interesting work. I can remember back in high school, about 9 years ago as a freshman, I was really involved in the whole digital-remixing phase long before it reached the ubiquitous nature of today with products like Scratch Live that most aspiring DJs use (interesting/controversial because it allows DJs to manipulate their digital copies of music on real turntables), and the ones that are solely on the computer (plenty are listed in the ArsTechnica article).

As an avid user of Virtual Turntables back in the day (yes I did use it on Windows 98, we go way back), I was inspired by a friend of mine who lived next door to me. With the power of the internet, a computer, and CDs ready to rip to my computer, I was ready to start a revolution (or so I thought). Night after night, I perfected my craft, I even made a few remixes that I posted to message boards. Thinking about it now I’d love to go back and listen to what I was putting together, but I have to find my old windows desktop… But to think, the power of what I had, what eventually would take place, I couldn’t even imagine… but I did find an old screenshot of the software

[UPDATED] After all of this, if you feel intrigued this school/work day off, you can stream the whole Good Copy Bad Copy documentary on Google Video blip.tv. Watch it embedded below:

from blip.tv posted with vodpod