We’ve been working in class with the challenge of telling a story via dynamic media. Specifically, we’ve taken on re-framing Jørgen Leth’s 1967 film “The Perfect Human,” infusing it with interactive narrative. (more…)
Mapping Your Political Shape
We had mid-semester reviews this week at MassArt DMI so I figured I’d finally share what I’ve been working on here. The assignment was to map the experience of “You Are Here.” Extremely vague, as usual (though that can be a good thing). My mind has been focused on politics a lot lately (what with the mid-terms and such) and it’s an area I’m considering exploring for my MFA thesis. So I jumped at this first major assignment with that in mind. (more…)
A Heat Wave, an Archeological Ruin, and a Foundation for Marriage
I’ve written a couple posts for The Good Men Project, the latest of which was just posted today. You can find it here.
Reflections On A Site Build, Part 1: Goals
A quick peek at the Wayback Machine will provide some insight into my every-changing goals when it comes to this website. From the time my father presented me with the gaboosh.com domain as a gift in 1999, into the Schaffzinino’s Multimedia Kitchen phase, through the gaboosh.media years, until now, I’ve always thought of this space as an important indication of where my head is from a career standpoint. So when it came time to reevaluate my goals in terms of what I do on a daily basis, naturally I had to look to my website for a corresponding change. (more…)
For The Win: Social And “The Decade of Gaming”
I never had a Nintendo. Don’t get me wrong – I always wanted one, my parents would never buy one for me (don’t worry, I still love them). I was forced to enjoy a good game of cards, or Monopoly, or Scrabble, or even Clue. But growing up in the late 80′s and early 90′s, all I wanted was to be able to play Mario Brothers 3 without having to visit my friend down the street. I’m not necessarily a gamer, but I’m certainly as competitive as the next guy: just check out my article at The Good Men Project, where I ask what it means to “win” at life. (more…)
Same Old Story: Location Based Services And The Marketers Who Love Them
In April I wrote a post for this blog about the value of location based services such as Foursquare and Gowalla. I suggested that those who deride LBS’s hold their criticism for a bit and look for the value. At the time, I wrote of “LBS’s” as one single entity because that’s just what they seemed to be – at least in the eyes of marketers: “let’s use check-ins to market our product, event, or venue.” But once you’ve made that jump, where do you go from there? (more…)
Thoughts on Nick Carr’s “The- Oh, Hey, A New Tweet!
I haven’t read the book yet, but I plan to, so I went to Nicholas Carr’s reading of “The Shallows” at the Harvard Book Store last night. The subtitle of the work is “What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,” a topic in which I have much invested; I have a brain and I use the Internet. (more…)
Why Location Based Services Aren’t Nearly As Annoying As You Think They Are
It seems there are three camps right now when it comes to location based services like Foursquare, Gowalla, and Whrll: those who don’t know what they are, those who use them and see value, and those who think they are an annoyance – a fad that just takes up room in one’s precious social stream. I am of the belief that LBSs (almost as awkward to say or type as the ROUSs) provide value to both brands and consumers, even if they do so in a way other than what the founders originally intended.
There has been a great deal of chatter about LBSs over the past few months, especially after Foursquare and Gowalla went at it for the public’s love and attention at SXSW in March. Amidst all of this buzz, I was fortunate enough to attend an Ad Club event where Dennis Crowley, one of the founders of Foursquare, spoke about his company’s journey. Dennis, along with co-founder Naveen Selvadurai, built Foursquare (which is really a reincarnation of the Google-killed Dodgeball), wanted a way to keep up with what their friends were doing on the weekends. So they built a system that let people “check-in” to locations, automatically alerting a list of contacts to their whereabouts. As the number of users and venues signed up with Foursquare increased, cafés started offering free coffee to those who check-in the most, users started showing off their “badges,” and restaurants started learning where their clientele were going before and after their meals. Through a series of [awesomely genius] discoveries by the developers, the venues, and the user base, the service now acts as a conduit between venues and consumers; it’s like a virtual membership card – without taking up more space on our key-rings.
I can certainly understand, however, why some of my tech savvy friends still wish 4sq and the like never came to be. In doing what startups do to promote their new service, LBSs are integrating with Twitter and Facebook streams. It’s free promotion. Normally this isn’t a big deal. One Tweet here, one status update there. But with the LBSs, what was originally intended to be shared with your close group of friends is now being broadcast to all who follow you on Twitter – which has come to include professional and social contacts. It’s a catch-22 of viral-ness.
I think eventually those using LBS’s will realize they need to opt not to share every single check-in with their social stream. Personally, I share only those which I would have Tweeted about anyway (I’m in London…I’m at the game…I’m the mayor of CVS ’cause I’m a hypochondriac…ok, maybe I should tone it down a bit myself). And until the volume of context-less irrelevant check-in updates diminishes, maybe LBS’s will still have a stigma about them.
But if you’re one of the naysayers, I implore you to look beyond the quasi-spamming and give it a try. The badges and mayorships seem petty at first. But brands and venues will continue to reward users for checking in. If you’re someone who likes to play with data, I suggest you check out the APIs being provided by these services. There is so much we can do when we have a better understanding of where people are going and when (especially combined with some of that open government data I was talking about a couple weeks ago). And if you’re into sharing more than just the fact that you’ve checked in (tips, photos, etc.), it turns out LBSs are for you.
And who knows, maybe your competitive spirit will inspire you to become mayor of your local taxidermist. Now THAT would be Tweet-worthy.
The [Scalable] Open Government
Last night I attended an event co-sponsored by MITX and MassDOT featuring the Massachusetts Open Data Initiative, MA government’s effort to make its data available to the public in a meaningful, secure way. We heard from a number (a large number, in fact) of members of the MA government from the Secretary of Transportation (the first real part of the initiative is live MBTA bus feeds) to the GM of the MBTA to a gentleman named Tim Vaverchak from the Mass IT department.
Mr. Vaverchak’s talk was last and, as there were so many speakers, each presentation was relatively rushed. But I felt that what Vaverchak was able to outline in the short time he had was intriguing. He spoke of the goals of the MA Open Data Initiative: move beyond just transportation, focus on business & constituent needs, don’t just provide data for data’s sake, allow users (constituents and developers) to rate the value of a data set. These goals were extremely reasonable – even surprisingly so: one doesn’t necessarily expect that from government.
But what the entire evening had me thinking about was an extension on the question of how government can provide data to the public and do it well: how can they do so in a manner that scales? By scale I mean both across departments within a state/local government, but also on a pure numbers basis: how can what MA does here be a model for nationwide data feeds? (more…)