Dianesis : An xoplosion of gear and swag

Posted on April 1st, 2008 by metasj.
Categories: chain-gang, popular demand, indescribable.

Auntimame has an interesting XO peripherals site, and while I’d like to see us set up an official cut-rate store, it’s nice to see this getting off the ground. Some of the gear there gives new meaning to the word “awesome”. A green USB-latching XO viewfinder? Yes, please…

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Lessig ‘4Obama’ transcription

Posted on February 5th, 2008 by metasj.
Categories: Blogroll, metrics, chain-gang, popular demand.

First things first. I’m no no-holds-barred Obaman like Larry Lessig.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Boyish Orator’s style, and give him a leg up over Her Royal Cleverness, but don’t stay up nights worrying about the future difference to world peace their differential election would make (other things keep me up, even in politics), and not because I don’t think peace a devastatingly important realm for immediate change.

At any rate, Lessig taped a Barackish paean, and Ball and Prime started simulscribing in gobby. Gobby sessions exert a gravitational pull on me and soon I was transcribing myself, to exercise day-cramped hands — though I would never have listened to the piece otherwise. You can read the result of our labours.

The promise of making a set of ideas more accessible and revisitable is an infinitely better reason to divest oneself of twenty minutes of life than amusement or boredom… Which makes me wonder why we don’t see dotsub everywhere, at least among the sj crowd of one. Maybe it just needs a gobby plugin, or a way to find two friends and start transcribing in tandem. I’m even feeling the itch to ride a tandem bike or sidecar. Ach. Time for a seaweed shower.

2 comments.

Wiggy World!

Posted on December 10th, 2007 by metasj.
Categories: popular demand, Uncategorized.

wiggyworld.net .. what are they up to?  Are they connected with WackyWorld?  Erik Thomsen, call your office.

0 comments.

Intel and OLPC trade noogies for neckrubs

Posted on July 13th, 2007 by metasj.
Categories: international, popular demand, %a la mod.

Intel’s Will Swope joined AMD’s Arenas and others on OLPC’s board last night. Designs of our Gen-1 machines won’t change, though this gives them input, along with our other members, on future designs. Intel will also continue making and marketing Classmates… though the comparisons between the devices are likely to become more helpful and less marketing. This is not the first rivalry set aside on the board; my cynical side is always delighted to see companies which are rivals in other arenas able to come together around our educational goals.

We have an Intel group working just one floor above us in Kendall Square; it will be interesting to see what they think.

bv and bh

Gizmodo sez: “Hell freezes over“, with a delightful jesus diaz illustration (above). But I’d say it only got momentarily cool down there; Intel has been working with open source communities and on education projects for some time. Keep your eyes on the fiery gates, however. My acronymic archnemesis may start open sourcing his platforms one day… See also: slashdot.

1 comment.

Entrepreneurial free content creation

Posted on March 2nd, 2007 by longestnow.
Categories: popular demand.

Background: Kiva has been on my mind a lot lately.  Zvi has been helping them with their tech infrastructure of late, so it naturally comes up each time we talk.

I spoke Tuesday about OLPC’s content plans to the Media Lab OLPCclass, and gave a passionate argument for free content yesterday to a tough but tremendously well-meaning audience.  There were questions about business models for creators.  The most poignant comment of the night: ‘it is a shame that as a civilization we’ve figured out how to monetize collecting gold in World of Warcraft, but not how to support this incremental work which is absolutely essential…’

Reflecting on this, and on efforts to raise funds to sponsor local content creation through microgrants, I had an idea: why have a central authority raise and hand out funds to seed content creation, when we can distribute both efforts? What about an interface such as Kiva’s to allow people to select open-content learning material ideas they want to support for a given amount of money?  They wouldn’t be expecting to get the money back; but instead an intellectual return on investment — a few more chapters of an ongoing work, or a few chapters of translation, which even if not completed could be picked up by other people and turned into something great.

A clever person in a wealthy region might spend 40 hours writing a brilliant educational work or list of 100 projects; but with less effort could perhaps donate to a dozen good proposed projects by creators closer to the target audience, or working natively in other languages — often creators in poor areas who would gladly spend 40 hours writing in exchange for what the original person might earn in 2.   As with Kiva’s microloans, these content microgrants would pass through a local microfinance institution, and the prospective authors’ projects would be vetted by field partners to ensure their sincerity.

I think one could make this a reality with minimal changes to the current
Kiva interface, which is quite lovely.  OLPC has always been focused on grassroots creation of content in native languages, with donations of existing material as a seed or important secondary element.  Because of our short timelines, distributing sponsorship as well as creation has a definite appeal.  I wonder how this meshes with Sasha’s ideas of distributed financing of open source software efforts…

Entrepreneurial free content creation …

0 comments.

OLPC developers program

Posted on October 30th, 2006 by longestnow.
Categories: popular demand.

OLPC has a developers program for people who want to hack on the actual hardware, and not just an emulator of the same.  Please send in requests if you are interested in working on software designed for the machine’s profile, either tools or educational software, or have other burning reasons to try out a board.

OLPC developers program …

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Wikicities + Joi + JLevine = Wikia, Mark II

Posted on March 28th, 2006 by longestnow.
Categories: popular demand.

The Company Formerly Known As Wikicities, the world’s largest provider of MediaWiki hosting (and employer of an increasing number of my friends), this month closed a $4M round of series A funding from Omidyar and Bessemer Ventures (whence new board member Jeremy Levine) and a few lucky individuals (including one-name stealth disco star and serial board member Joi).  Congratulations all around.

Finding times when all board members are on terra firma at the same
time may be difficult… but with modern technology, also increasingly
unnecessary.  (I look forward to a photoset from inside Wikia Force One.)

The company is now known as Wikia (sometimes “wikia.com”), a name which you may recall fromits former life, adorning a related search engine portal.  It continues to host the world’s drollest wiki, and will hopefully be yet another channel for MediaWiki development, so that all those fine programmers still sitting on the fence about which wiki platform to use with can make up their minds with light heart and easy conscience.  Perhaps we need a live ticker…

“MediaWiki.  Powering 3.00001542% of the world’s public web pages.”

Anyway, Wikia has only been getting better this past year.  If you’ve had a burning idea you want to turn into a wiki, think about hosting with them.  Unlike every other online community aggregator I’ve seen to date, they really understand the need for free licensing, the importance of linking projects together and avoiding redundancy, and the utility of guiding communities towards producing meaningful lasting bodies of content, not just short-term attention sinks.  (I used to direct people at times to pbwiki and other hosts, but I have little patience for any ‘wiki’ whose default state is not world-editable.  For crying out loud…  why should every site need a ‘wiki password’ you must know to edit it?   I’ve stopped counting the number of pbwikis I’ve been foiled from editing, and I’ve stopped telling people about the site.  Sorry, David! :-/ )

Wikicities + Joi + JLevine = Wikia, Mark II …

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WikiWednesday Boston report: better late than sober

Posted on March 9th, 2006 by longestnow.
Categories: popular demand.

The first Boston Wiki Wednesday was a success, though it got started at
11pm rather than 6. Of the 5 people who had RSVP’ed, some had other
plans in the early evening, so we rescheduled…  Ivan and I
grabbed dinner at Nine Tastes
instead.  We were soon joined by Dustin, Erik, and her
Starkness.  They knew the beautiful people sitting next to us,
naturally. We covered speed reading and salsa preferences.

Later that night, we invited the Harvard Free Culture club to come join us at John Harvard’s; and talked about the Penn State wiki, wysiwyg dominance
of the editing world, why all the wiki software companies are on the
wrong coast, rewriting MediaWiki in Python, and the meaning of the
phrase “structured multilingual API”.  A moderate quantity of beer
and coke was consumed, theoretically putting SocialText out twenty-one
bucks.

Next Wednesday will be Wiki as well, when David Weinberger sounds off about trust, anonymity, and wiki editorial practices, at 6pm at Berkman.  Come join us.

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Clinton and Janeane Garofalo

Posted on February 19th, 2006 by longestnow.
Categories: popular demand.

So I landed on a random “brushes with celebrity” page while stalking my favorite American actress, and found this charming vignette about our Prez– :

In the fall of 2004, right before his bypass surgery I was sitting around the parking lot of Central Park’s ‘Tavern on the Green’, and out walks this handsome looking guy with white hair and a suit, casually leaving the place like he was Joe Schmo.

I looked at this guy long and hard and realised that it was Bill Clinton.

Apparently, so did dozens of other people. Someone (who was apparently a Republican) heckled him about raising taxes. Now, normally when a former president encounters a loser like this, he smiles waves and gets whisked away in his limousine.

But, Bill Clinton started debating him! The secret service guys were going nuts as an entire crowd of blue-staters formed to watch the former president and this dude with a stroller arguing over economic policies.

Then he took questions from the normal people off the street that gathered around him. NYC parks officials were called down to patrol the scene. He also took pictures with tourists, mostly young and female.

Bob Zmuda, Eat your heart out.

Clinton and Janeane Garofalo …

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Presentation on Wikipedia research tonight!

Posted on February 13th, 2006 by longestnow.
Categories: popular demand.

On Monday, February 13th, at 7 pm, join the Boston Wikipedia Meetup Group
and the Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science
Alumni Board in the Special Functions Room, first floor, Main College
Building of Simmons College for an introduction to researching
effectively with Wikipedia. We will cover finding information, cross-referencing and validating information, and contacting original authors.

We will also explore where to ask for help, how to make changes to articles, other ways to contribute to the community, and Wikimania.  Also local wiki groups and ways to get yourself or your group involved with local wikiphiles.

Directions to Simmons


Dinner afterwards at Thornton’s Fenway Grille, at 9 pm. : call 617.529.4266 for help getting there

Directions to Thornton’s

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