Bring back the ballet to modern music

I think that I'm not alone in appreciating the beauty and grace of ballet. But, when you combine it with pop and lock robotics and Italo Disco, I think you've captured the essence of Divine Inspiration. Please enjoy this nugget of refined human movement paired with the wondrous sounds of computers masquereding as synthesizers.

Bill Gates sportin' Apple T-shirt

tenersi occupati dopo la pensione...
Originally uploaded by _Andrish_

Cats and dogs are sleeping together... Saw this on D. Hadzhiev's Friend Feed this morning. Its a decent photoshop job, but even better, a sign that Microsoft needs to reinvent itself. Its time for them to move into more hardware than the Zune and Xbox. Deliver the whole experience before its too late, Bill.

Made veggie taco filling with TVP this morning. Too easy. This stuff is Soylent Green.

Check out our jam on Wednesday Night http://ping.fm/iOWan

New Media Douchebags Explained

Don't hate on everything, or you too, may be labeled as such... Interesting that the first character is a former Multimedia Developer. Is there a backlash from the profession of media creation versus all the horrible production value that many of the Twitteratti still employ? There should be a happy medium no?

1996: Faludi Daze

It was a storefront on Townsend, I had a 13" monitor but a brand spankin new PM7200 in beige. Jonathan Mergy kept the Local H on da stereo way too much, but that's okay because their hit song, "Bound for the floor" continues to be the only one awesome enough to contain the word copasetic (i like to spell it kopasetic) in the chorus. That word is one of englishes bestest sounding words to me.

I'm in one of those Tofleresque Futureshocks. Social media has connected me with high school, college and other old connections, right? So, its only natural to reminisce. The parallel that Local H represents to me is unavoidable. Here's this Chicago-based rocker who has this prolific song-making, pop sense and he can't find a bass player that can keep up. Instead of prolonging the search, he adds bass pickups to his guitar adds a drummer and takes it on the road. This is bootstrapping a business right? One hit single can propel you to headline tours around the continent.

Twitter is being outed by Scoble and Arrington as consisting of a couple of servers manually administered by employees. Us cracked-up twits are like, "wha?" Is that how you spend your $5M-$15M in venture funding, letting your infrastructure whither away? With all the geek talent hangin around SOMA, how does this jibe? I'm tired of hearing about accidental businesses. Sling Media and now Twitter come to define this for me. As an entrepreneur planning out every last freakin' detail of the business strategy, I find this rock star approach to business planning to be offensive. You're right, I am just bitter, and that the DNA of a good plan will produce no red-headed step children, right? But, I'm a rocker like Scott of Local H. Just plug me in to good vintage gear, give me a drummer who can keep up, and let me roll.

Back to 1996, my co-worker and Mac guru was Jonathan Mergy. He decided that the Internet was too damn nice and needed to get angry. So, the whole Comcast/Arrington story is hardly original. Jonathan details that it was an exercise in DNS hosting and ran the thing on a spare Mac IIci with 8MB of RAM and the commercial webserver, WebStar. Well, it got slashdotted by Netscape's home page and we had to live with an overtaxed ISDN line for a while. But, that server kept going, and companies were pissed that searches yielded results to angry rants from their customers. So, what is old is new again. That's why I'm excited about the rest of this year. I'm gonna change the world freeing the consumer from corporate controlled media in that last bastion of the Content Wars... America's living room. Won't you join me in this adventure when we summon all the great thinkers of 1996 and combine them with the thought leaders of tomorrow.

To be or not to be... Machiavellian

After succumbing to a friend's exhortations to read the very thick Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, I came away not only of an understanding of the birth of the digital age but also with the supposition that wars are merely chess games paid for with human lives. After the declassification of Bletchley Park's cracking of the Nazi Enigma codes and revelations that the Allied forces had already cracked the Nipponese encryption even before the Pearl Harbor attack, I wonder how long World War II was allowed to continue and even wondering if it has really ever ceased to exist throughout our Cold War era and into our current War on Terror. I guess my basic question is how long humanity will allow this Machiavellian existence.

Another friend of mine argues that Machiavellian human nature is as fundamental and unchangeable as Newtonian laws of motion. It might have been interesting to discuss that his laws don't apply to quantum mechanics, but the more interesting take-away is that we can never be so sure about the tenets we hold, whether physical or spiritual, and its absolutism.

What was behind the anti-Communist fury that has been propagandized in the USA for at the last fifty years? It was revealed by the AP today, that conservatively 100,000 Korean men, women and children were executed in 1950 in South Korea by their own government simply for being considered leftists. Right-Wing president Syngmun Rhee under the supervision of the US General Douglas MacArthur carried out this atrocity against his political enemies. This story has been suppressed for over 50 years. Did the US really go in to Korea to liberate it from Communists? Or, is it possible that we actually incited the Communist invasion in order to advance other interests that have nothing to do with improving the plight of Korean people. There is a valid debate on the ends justifying the means considering that I, myself, have enjoyed an excellent life here as an American citizen thanks to the quixotic trip of my parents and many others like them. But, clearly my parent's generation knew first-hand the plight of untold victims caught as pawns in this global chess game and chose their path. Where are you on the board? Can you make a move without knowing where your opponent's pieces are?

I've been looking at my own position on the global chess game for a while. Planning a technology start-up and unleashing a technology that moves us closer to an Orwellian future. Recently, I have been noticing that many futurists are very accepting of a world where you can google your shoes. Personally, I'd love to reclaim the countless hours lost looking for matching kicks for my boys just to get out the door. However, the ramifications of such a networked world is chilling when viewed through the lens of the 20th Century. How will Total Information Awareness be managed by the powerful? Having counter-culture thoughts and a cynical belief system has kept me underground. But, a new light shines where there was once, only darkness. Human history has given us many tools to understand ourselves even if we discover there is much more that is unknowable. What do I care if blogging or social network graphs etch my identity on the bathroom wall of human knowledge going forward? What I know now is that we all have the power or as the Romans called it, the potesta to change the world. I'm not afraid to make my move even if I can't yet see the whole board. Maybe it's worth investigating that "faith" thing people have been talking about for quite some time. I'm becoming a believer.

The Semantic Web is an Internet of Things

This is a repost of an article from my copywriter and collaborator, Richard Bloch. He asked that any comments (if any) be posted here on overlyfriendly.blogspot.com

Noted sci-fi author Bruce Sterling wrote a non-fiction book a few years ago called Shaping Things, presenting his vision on how humans will interact with the world of the future—not just with fellow humans, but with all the objects, both important and trivial, that impact our lives. One of the main points Sterling raises is that our world is rapidly being reshaped, whether we like it or not, into an Internet that represents not just information, but things.

One review of his book from the Amazon page sums it up quite well:

Type a few words into Google and you can find a sushi restaurant, a movie theater, concert tickets or a new car. But if you misplace your car keys in your house, you still have to search the old-fashioned way: room by room, cushion by cushion, coat pocket by coat pocket. If Bruce Sterling is correct, though, one day you’ll Google your keys. And your shoes. And your dog. This is the nascent “Internet of things” made possible by technology, including such items as radio frequency ID tags and traceable product life cycle management.

An “Internet of things?” That may seem rather odd. But given that the Internet is growing more portable, I can take it anywhere I’d like. By that I mean I can be “on the net” using my PC, my TV, my PDA, my phone, or any other device I feel comfortable with.

In a recent lecture at an interaction design conference in Germany, Bruce brought up what seems to be a rather trivial example—getting up in the morning to brush his teeth.

He presents a scenario of simply pointing his cell phone at his electronic toothbrush to determine how long it’s been since he replaced the brush head, find out what a new one costs, and even place an order.


Bruce Sterling from Innovationsforum on Vimeo.

That’s certainly convenient, but he could extend his interaction with this simple object by tying into an entire social network of tooth brushing experts to discuss dental care—maybe even using new optical fiber bristles to generate and share content that documents his entire dental infrastructure.

Or, he might just brush his damned teeth and get on with his day. It’s his choice.

You see, this New York Times article presents a vision of, for example, being alerted via text message when your dog leaves the yard. Sure, that’s convenient. But Bruce expands on that notion. He might suggest that a dog’s collar could be engineered to “know” Fido has left the yard and issue a command for him to go home. That’s even more convenient.

This implies that in the future, objects will be designed and engineered in a way to understand meaning and intent. If you view “meaning” in a linguistic context, well that’s really the study of “semantics.” And guess what? If you haven’t yet gotten used to Web 2.0 yet, don’t fret, Web 3.0 is on the way—and according the W3C Consortium, it’s called “the semantic web.”

While Web 1.0 gave us static content and Web 2.0 gave us dynamic user-generated content, Web 3.0 applies semantic meaning to all of that content. Right now, for example, your browser has no idea whether a piece of text such as “506” represents a price, a part of an address, or a freeway exit.

According to the W3C Consortium:

The Semantic Web is about two things. It is about common formats for integration and combination of data drawn from diverse sources, where on the original Web mainly concentrated on the interchange of documents. It is also about language for recording how the data relates to real world objects. That allows a person, or a machine, to start off in one database, and then move through an unending set of databases which are connected not by wires but by being about the same thing.

That part about “real world objects” gave me pause. How will I interact with this “Internet of things?” Given my frustration with a growing need to learn how to use all these new things, I hope designers don’t keep relying on the “same old same old.”

If I get my way, it won’t be through some crappy remote control device. Have you ever used Comcast On Demand? It’s frustrating, painful, and totally unnecessary. Finding content means transitioning through a series of clunky, deeply nested menus that you wouldn’t want to use to take money out of an ATM, let alone find something to watch.

That’s all silly and stupid considering that my Palm Treo is usually right at hand. The Palm OS may not be all that great, but it’s comfortable for me. At least it has drop-down menus and a functioning keyboard. Why can’t there be a “Comcast On Demand” icon on my Treo?

Another example: I recently got a new furnace in my house. My goal was a simple one—save money on heat. But what I didn’t consider, is that not only do I own a new furnace, I’ve got a brand new user interface, the thermostat. Yay!

No, it sucks. The old UI was simple, a lever. A four-year old could use that. Now I’m the proud owner of a wonderful digital interface that gives me the freedom to program my heating in myriad ways. The only problem is I don’t know how to use it, nor really care to learn. I can’t even remember where I put the instruction manual.

What kind of world will evolve as people have to spend more valuable time learning how to program furnaces? And why should all the user interfaces be different? Why can’t I just use the one I’m most comfortable with? In short, why can’t there just be a “Thermostat” icon on my Treo? I could monitor and control my furnace whether I’m sitting on my couch at home or in a hotel in London.

As summer approaches, I’m less concerned about heating these days. And while the climate here is rather mild, I still have a room air conditioner in my bedroom for the few days it gets really hot. Believe it or not, this room air conditioner came with a remote control. I never use it, nor will I ever. All I need to do is turn the air conditioner on or off. Would I want an “Air Conditioner” icon on my Treo? Probably not, but others might.

And what I really would like someone to invent is a way to reset the dozen or so clocks in my house – from the DVD player to the microwave oven (which for some strange reason always asks me for the date, as if it really cares whether I’m nuking something on a Sunday or a Wednesday).

Probably the most complex device in my life, at least in terms of moving parts, is my car. Would I want a “Car” icon on my Treo? You bet! I’d know before I left the house whether I need to stop for gas or whether there’s enough in the tank for my next trip.

Maybe I could even throw away my tire pressure gauge, knowing that my tires will let me know if the pressure drops to an unacceptable level. And perhaps someday, I’ll point my Treo at the air compressor machine so it knows exactly how much air to pump into my specific tires.

Let me be clear: I’m not advocating that people use Palm Treos to link into this “Internet of things,” but that’s what I happen to have – at least right now. Someone else may choose to use Windows Mobile, a Blackberry, a tablet PC, or even an iPhone if Apple allows it. My stuff. My choice.

The real potential, at least in the short run, is putting a halt to the growing number of devices and interfaces I need to do something as simple as watching TV.

For example, rumors suggest that Blockbuster is “developing a set-top device for streaming films directly to TV sets and is expected to announce the offering sometime this month.”

Oh great. That’s just what I need. Another “set-top” box. Another remote. Another user interface. Another learning curve, etc., etc., etc. Where will it end?

At least Boing Boing’s spin on that article seems to get it right. Just read the headline—“The Web is the Only Set-Top Box That Matters.”

Or, more accurately, “the Internet of things” and how I choose to use them is the only thing that matters.

Written by: Richard Bloch

RickRolling the Baby

To think some of my friends didn't understand my mock-love of Rick Astley in the 80s. Vindication is mine! Rick is now the centerpiece of the Anti-Scientology movement. Why are the protesters in masks, btw? Are they really fearful of retribution for RickRolling? Weird stuff, but this particular video is quite persuasive of the power of RickRolling.

Obama speaks on Race in America

Obama speech on Race in America, will it go down as an important moment in American politics? Was he ready with this speech to embrace the racism and fear his opponents have been mongering? There is not a lot of background noise, but the message is clear.

Marley enjoys sipping at the Colonel's

Marley enjoys sipping at the Colonel's
Originally uploaded by kangham

Ok, it was a special occasion, an afternoon with Daddy. Of course we had to stop at the Colonel's to keep tabs on the triumverate (the secret oligarchy mike myers alluded to in So... I Married an Axe Murderer). Anyway, he's the oldest and growing up too fast.

Zander is happy and he knows it

Zander is happy and he knows it
Originally uploaded by kangham

Here's my youngest at the park on a cool, blustery day. Unfortunately, we lost that orange jacket.

Hardware as a Service

This is a concept I've been noodling on while reading Bruce Sterling's Shaping Things.
He describes the current transition of our produced world from one of gizmos to one of spimes. His assertion that gizmos represent the period between 1989 and 2004, where we purchased products that had a relatively short lifespan of utility. How many cellphones have you bought in your lifetime? Why did you replace them? It is not hard to argue that humanity needs to work at sustainable technology. The epoch of spimes starts at 2004 with the transition to RFID. Now, at first, I was concerned about the privacy losses and exploitation that this technology enables. But, Mr. Sterling has seemed to embrace its inevibility and suggest that we utilize its tracking capabilities to create devices that not only determine space but also time (thus the word invention). I am fully committed to helping make this dream into our reality. Design products to be reclaimed as their usefulness wanes, hence, hardware as a service.

Expanding my Twitterverse
So, now that Twitter is having problems keeping up with the massive updates, I'm beginning to understand that the critical mass they are building is inevitable. Sadly, after handing over my gmail goodies, I had less than 20 hits. Clearly, my last two years of communique does not contain the Twitterverse. But, how do you go about adding more followers? I thought the Public Timeline seemed as good as place as any to follow interesting tweets. Also, the ratio seems to be more friendly and conducive to social network relationship-building.

MLK speech, Beyond Vietnam, exactly one year before his death.

American Express to the rescue. Can Vonage and American Express's customer strategy be any different? Vonage has a tough road to hoe. Patent infringement lawsuits, open source and free competitors, and sketchy American broadband are too much to overcome. They did finally make it easy to port your number. But, at a cost. They'll make you purchase a new number first, and then charge you to cancel it. Luckily, I filed a complaint with Amex, and I was surprised to find out Vonage relented 80% of the overcharges. I can now consider case closed with them and feel loyalty to Amex and their customer service.

Vonage is shockingly obtuse to deal with. I'm liveblogging right now on a now 23 minute call trying to disconnect service. Actually, "Veronica" has put me on hold for the last 10 minutes just to see if I'll hang up and thus not completing the cancellation. Really scummy, if you ask me. They are without a doubt, the most dishonest company I've ever used. More details on my 2 year oddesey to follow.

What the Luck?

Today, I am concerned with luck. Well, because it is the ultimate over-simplification of a complex phenomenon. I lack the brain power to abstractly visualize the nodal points of my social network and calculate the probability matrices to intelligently plan out how I spend my day. Today, I found out about this guy... Scott Ginsburg who wears a name tag all the time...


There's always a lot of talk about luck on my favorite sports blog, Athletics Nation. I've even chimed in about the Chinese Proverb, I've always remembered, that "Luck is where opportunity and preparation converge"

Album Cover Wars

Memory Lane is being repaved.

Hello World