It’s rare that a seven-minute video will get me to change… anything. Today, I share with you one that did. It belongs to Dave Meslin. He used it in his Ted Talk, which is below. I watch Ted Talks all the time and like all of them, but for me to write about one here, it has to be REALLY GOOD. As in, watch it now. If you can’t, my summarized highlights are below the embed.
To me, the key point of this video is that often the reason people don’t care about important issues is because these important issues are not presented in a way that makes people think they should care, or are allowed to get involved. For example, he displays this portrayal of your stereotypical city bylaw notice:
Dense legalese that no one cares about. Phone numbers are buried at the bottom. He asks, if the city really wants people to get involved, why don’t they make an ad like this:
That was the first “holy cow” moment for me. It’s so obvious, and yet I never thought of it. Obviously not many other people have, either. That’s what’s so impressive. The applause he gets for saying people not caring about these public hearings is “not antipathy, it’s intentional exclusion” is well-deserved.
The second point for me, and the one that’s actually affected change in my own habits is when he says:
“The media plays an important role in developing our relationship with political change, mainly by ignoring politics and focusing on celebrities and scandals. But even when they do talk about important political issues, they do it in a way that I feel discourages engagement. And I’ll give you an example: the Now magazine from last week — progressive, downtown weekly in Toronto. This is the cover story. It’s an article about a theater performance, and it starts with basic information about where it is, in case you actually want to go and see it after you’ve read the article — where, the time, the website. Same with this — it’s a movie review, an art review, a book review — where the reading is in case you want to go. A restaurant — you might not want to just read about it, maybe you want to go to the restaurant. So they tell you where it is, what the prices are, the address, the phone number, etc.
Then you get to their political articles. Here’s a great article about an important election race that’s happening. It talks about the candidates — written very well — but no information, no follow-up, no websites for the campaigns, no information about when the debates are, where the campaign offices are. Here’s another good article about a new campaign opposing privatization of transit without any contact information for the campaign. The message seems to be that the readers are most likely to want to eat, maybe read a book, maybe see a movie, but not be engaged in their community. And you might think this is a small thing, but I think it’s important because it sets a tone and it reinforces the dangerous idea that politics is a spectator sport.”
Yes. I have written countless scripts at CBC. Every time we have a band or an author on, I include a link to their website in case people want to learn more. But more often than not politicians, government officials, and others do not get the same treatment. This despite the fact that most if not all now have a website that I’ve used to educate myself about who they are and what they do. This is changing. I don’t know how many people will go to the website for a crown corporation or opposition MLA versus your average musician, but at least by including the information, they have that option. And more importantly, they might feel like it’s expected that they’d want to learn more.
I’m excited to see that Tourism Prince George seems to be joining the Foursquare game.
About a year ago, I wrote about how the Regional District of Fraser Fort George should be using Foursquare in conjunction with their Golden Raven branding. At the time, I suggested they focus on taking their Golden Raven slots and working to create a badge.
A year on, my opinions have changed somewhat. A badge would be cool, but shouldn’t be the primary focus. Fortunately, Foursquare has now opened a lot more elements to use rather than badges and mayors, covered in this extensive help section. And there’s still “tips,” which I’d love to see Tourism PG start dropping. They do a great job letting people know what’s up via Twitter, tips are basically like that only they’re unlocked by being near a place. If I check in at such-and-such hotel when I visit Prince George, having Tourism Prince George let me know what’s within walking distance is a great resource.
There are many, many interesting things being done in the geolocation sphere, and many of the most interesting are being done by tourism organizations. I welcome Tourism PG into this space, and look forward to seeing what they do.
[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/#!/TourismPG/status/65878249141575680″]
Check out #tweettheresults for what will probably be the highest concentration of illegal tweets you’ll get to see on twitter ever.
— Brock Warner (@brockwarner) May 3, 2011
I am not going to opine on the election results beyond what I said last night. But, after the fact, I would like to comment on the #TweetTheResults hashtag that was a secondary story for a couple of hours.
Quick back-story. First, on April 21:
“The country’s electoral agency issued a warning to social media users this week, reminding them that Section 329 of the Elections Act applies to transmissions made over the internet.
Penalties for violating the act could include a fine of up to $25,000 or up to five years in prison.” (CBC online)
Then:
“Jay Rosen, a prominent New York City social media commentator and professor at New York University sent out a tweet urging Canadians to protest the rule. Then two Vancouver-based social media experts, Alexandra Samuel and Darren Barefoot, created Tweettheresults.ca, a live Twitter feed that will follow the hashtag #tweettheresults to make a statement about the law and chronicle how many people flout it.” (NationalPost.ca)
And:
“Elections Canada, for its part, has taken pains to note that it’s just enforcing a law over which it has no control. Spokesman John Enright emphasized its investigations are complaints-based only, and the Election Commissioner decides whether cases are worth investigating.” (globeandmail.com)
With that stage set, the media blackout was on. TweetTheResults.ca went offline, but the hashtag #tweettheresults was live. And it was an interesting follow. Yes, there were results, incorrect results, and jokes (for example:)
RT @pbryan: Conservatives ███ █████ in ███ ridings. Liberals ███ █████. NDP █████ ██ ███ ███ seats! #elxn41 #tweettheresults
— Paul Cumin (@paulcumin) May 3, 2011
RT @TheKert Darth Vader is Luke’s Father. #tweettheresults
— Francois Marchand (@FMarchandVS) May 2, 2011
Lib=X+2, NDP=X-1, Con=X-2. Solve for X! #elxn41 #tweettheresults
— Amanda (@whysofar) May 3, 2011
But there was also some debate. I saw more than one person upset about people Tweeting the results for one of two reasons. They were:
To point 1. That’s reality. I don’t see the point of forcing the ban just to give voters the illusion that their vote matters more than it does. If there’s a problem of balance, then that needs to be addressed, not ignored. Covering your ears and singing “la la la la” doesn’t make the facts go away.
To point 2. OK. Though there were quite a lot of people arguing that they’re gonna vote how they’re gonna vote, not everyone is as set in their ways.
But, and this is a blanket to every anti-Tweet the Results argument, welcome to the 21st century. If it happens somewhere, it happens everywhere. In the world of Wikileaks, you really think you’re going to successfully prevent people from sharing election results? It’s one thing if the results aren’t made public, but the idea of letting facts be known to one province and not another is…. archaic. Especially when you can circumvent the rules by emailing the results to someone in the United States and have them Tweet them for you.
Interesting. Americans on Twitter encouraging Canadians to e-mail them early election results and they’ll tweet them. #tweettheresults
— Chris D. (@ChrisDca) May 2, 2011
If you want to prevent scenario 2, it seems pretty obvious: release the results for everyone, everywhere at the same time. People in Ontario can wait until 10 pm to get the same information we have to wait for. They get to choose the leader, they can deal.
Final thoughts, from contrasting sides of the “does BC matter?” coin:
BC to decide minority/majority status. A first? #elxn41
— Jason Morris (@JPols) May 3, 2011
I’m from British Columbia. We don’t participate in elections. We just wait for @petermansbridge to tell us what happened.
— Bruce Wishart (@BruceWishart) May 3, 2011
..has resulted in the first Conservative majority since the 1980s, Jack Layton bringing the NDP to official opposition for the first time in history, the Liberals being outside of both official opposition and government for the first time EVER, the decimation of the Bloc Quebecois, the first Green politician to be elected in North America, and the removal of two party leaders.
Talking heads aren’t always right.
In light of the fact that the royal wedding has attacked me this morning, I’ve dug up this old opinion piece I wrote for my student newspaper in 2008. It has all the flippancy of youth (how I’ve matured in three years!) but my general feelings stay the same. I should add, I’m a big believer in the importance of symbolic heads of state– but I do think we should start thinking about a homegrown one, rather than continuing to depend on the British monarchy. Anyway, here it is:
* * *
True story: I was in a bar in Wuhan, a Chinese city of about eight million. I was talking to a co-worker, a British civil servant-turned-English teacher. And he was livid. What about? Well, Canadians — and our attitude. Our attitude towards the monarchy, to be specific. Namely, the fact that we don’t hate it.
“But doesn’t it piss you off,” he began, confusion and rage glowing in his eyes, “that you have the Queen — a woman from a different country, who’s barely been to Canada — on all your money?”
“No.”
“But — she means nothing! She doesn’t do anything!”
“Yeah . . . ”
“And you’ve got her on there! She’s your head of state! Even we hate her, and she at least lives on our continent!”
“Well, you’ve gotta have something. Don’t really know what else to put there.”
At this point, I think he may have passed out from rage. Either that or we started talking about how weird it is that Americans love guns so much. It doesn’t really matter. The point is that I was remembering this conversation the other day, when suddenly it dawned on me that one day the Queen will die.
And she’ll be replaced . . . by Charles.
And then I started thinking that this drunken British rant may not have been so crazy after all.
Now, it’s nothing against Charles, really. I’m sure he’s an OK guy. I don’t know, actually — I’ve never paid attention. Just like I never paid attention to the Queen. She’s just the lady on our money, the one whom the Governor General supposedly represents, and the person being referred to when we say, “God save the Queen.” If we ever said it, which I don’t. To me, the monarchy has always just sort of — been. Existed. Neither good nor bad, just something I’d grown up with and accepted, like the smell of Prince George’s pulp mills (or supposed smell — having been raised here, I don’t really notice it. But Vancouver? Man, that stinks). The point is, I — and others like me — accept the Queen for that very reason: she just is.
We’ve never known life without her. We’ve never had anyone else on our money. The only changes we’ve seen to the portrait on our coins has been the gradual aging process represented by more wrinkles etched into the backside of pennies and a more regal crown replacing the ornamental wreath of youth.
But she’s getting on in years. I know the Queen Mum lived to something like 157, but even if Elizabeth doubles that I’m guessing she may want to retire from the head-of-state business in the next 20 years or so. And when that happens, everything changes. We’ll have to mint new coins, all the government documents reading “Her Royal Majesty” will have to be replaced with “His Royal Majesty,” and “God Save the Queen,” will become “God Save the King.” I think part of the reason we Canadians accept the Queen so apathetically is the fact that we don’t want to make the effort to find something new.
But if we’re going to be changing anyway, wouldn’t it be a good time to make it something a little more domestic? Back when the Elizabeth became Queen, royalty meant something to (English) Canadians. She still represented something to them. The fact that she was there during the Second World War touched the hearts of earlier generations. But what about now? Does Charles mean any more to us than Rod Stewart or is he, like Stewart, just some old dude that tabloids write about to appeal to the gossipy baby-boomer demographic?
So I think we should have a plan in place for when Lizzie moves on. The office of head of state can be assumed by the Governor General easily enough, but the position changes too often to put their faces on our coins. Americans use old presidents like Washington and Lincoln, but they’re far enough back in history to be relatively uncontroversial. We’ve got MacDonald, but who else are you going to use? Trudeau? Diefenbaker?
No, it needs to be symbols that everyone can agree on. I’d say the Maple Leaf, but the pennies already have it (although maybe we could eliminate the penny at the same time). Another option would be to have six different things — one for each coin. Maybe different representations from across Canada: the West, the Prairies, the North, Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes.
But then people would just get pissed off that Ontario and Quebec get their own. Maybe we should use symbols from each of our remaining NHL teams — but what happens when Ottawa moves south? Or perhaps we could use various figure from aboriginal mythology — then again, the Olympics did that with their mascots and people confused them with Pokémon. National heroes seems like a good idea — people like Terry Fox and Laura Secord. Tommy Douglas seems a fair guess — after all, he was chosen as the greatest Canadian. Of course, it should be noted that Don Cherry made the top 10 of that list, and I sure don’t want him on my quarters.
I don’t think Canada would feel any more foreign to a visitor then it does right now. The three major news stories are an election, hockey, and a royal wedding.
Last week, I wrote this on Facebook:
“On the radio they’re talking to young people who aren’t planning on voting. They’re blaming the political system, parties, etc for not engaging them. Know who else wasn’t courted by the political system throughout history? Poor people, women, Chinese-Canadians, Indo-Canadian, Japanese-Canadians, First Nations, African-Americans. More recent examples? Egyptians. Syrians.
Stop blaming other people for your apathy.”
Putting aside the poor writing (I jump from historic worldwide examples to Canadian to American to contemporary international ones), it generated debate. And having had some time to think about, I’d like to suss out my thoughts on it some more.
It’s important to understand what it is that prompted me to write this. I don’t have the exact quote, but it was essentially a young person saying that they probably wouldn’t vote until politicians started working harder to cater to her interests.
This is a sentiment I’ve heard more than once, and it is, at best, naive. Politicians, particularly the ones with the most power, are doing just fine without catering to you, thank you very much. Rick Mercer said it best:
“It is the conventional wisdom of all political parties that young people will not vote. And the parties? They like it that way. It’s why your tuition keeps going up.”
Exactly. Feeling like you’re not being catered to is no excuse for not trying to make your voice be heard. In fact, not being catered to is the dominant theme of democratic movements around the world. The fact that politicians are paying little more than lip service to issues that matter to youth pales in comparison to historical and international disenfranchisement. In the 1800s, women in Canada were campaigning for the right to vote despite political and social rules against it. Chinese, Indian and Japanese Canadians couldn’t vote until the late 1940s.
Meanwhile, we’re seeing straight-up violence happening around the world as people take on political and miliary powers that would, in part, deny them their right to vote. What young people in Canada (a demographic I still belong to, by some measures) are up against is miniscule compared to the massive challenges that have been and are being overcome by many others. I’d like to hear someone make the argument that youth in Canada don’t vote because they don’t feel like politicians listen to them enough put to one of the people who risked their lives to take part in the (yes, faulty, I know) Afghan elections or Egpytian Tahrir Square movement.
I’m not arguing that people should stop pointing out flaws with the system we have. Things like the student flash mobs or this Facebook promotion are young people taking an active approach to making their voice heard. But the key is they are MAKING their voice heard– not waiting for someone else to come around and ask what they can do to make it better. That’s not how it works.
Addendum
While I’m on this rant, I’d also like people (young and old alike) who continue to check out of politics to stop using the excuse that everyone and everything in politics is so bad it doesn’t make a difference who wins. Bull. You want to check out? Fine. But don’t pretend it’s because you know better than everyone else.
People do not check out when things get too bad. They check out when things get good. When things get bad enough, people notice and they start loooking for ways to fix it. You might ignore a small crack in your foundation, but once the basement starts flooding, I guarantee you’re going to do something about it. It’s the same in politics. You ignore the problems because things are stable enough. You willingly and knowingly checking out is you saying things aren’t SO BAD you’re willing to do anything to change it. If things were genuinely bad, you would be looking for some way to make it better. Maybe voting, maybe running for office, maybe rallying for electoral reform. It is easier than pretty much anywhere else in the world at any other point in history to make your voice heard. Check out, fine, but don’t blame someone else if you do. It belittles the work of so many other people.
There’s a field near our house where we like to walk our dogs. Over the winter, we wind up with a fairly narrow path. It’s the one carved out by enough people walking on it that you don’t sink up to your waste in snow. Then, as it starts to melt, the path is packed down enough that it’s the only place that doesn’t turn into puddles.
Over the weekend, we were walking there and I started heading in the usual direction. My partner asked me what I was doing. I looked around and realized that with the snow and water gone, the only thing making me walk that circuitous route was habit.
It’s easy to get sucked into familiar paths.
It was Foursquare Day (really) over the weekend, so I’m going to jot down some quick thoughts on what has fully emerged as the dominant player in geolocation– and why I’m still using it.
It’s not about mayors and badges anymore:
A large part of Foursquare’s early hook was the game aspect. If you checked-in at some place more than anyone else, you took the mayorship. If you checked in at a certain number of places at certain times with certain frequencies, you got badges. That was enough to gain some early traction, but frankly it’s not a fun enough game to get people to continue using it (at least, it’s not enough to get me to use it).
But it was enough to get an early start on adding metadata to more locations than anyone else, which brings us to:
Tags for real-life:
What Foursquare is doing, and doing well, is building tags for real-life locations. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, tags are keywords used to quickly categorize different things. For example, I might tag this post with “metadata” “foursquare” and “geolocation.” Then, when search engines like Google visit this site, they know what it’s about– and when you search for “foursquare”, it might come up in the results. It helps personalize recommendations.
I think the best example of metadata/tags for personal recommendations is on Last.fm. I’ve been listening to “The Asteroids Galaxy Tour” and liking them, so if I want to hear similar artists, I might look at their tags: indie, alternative, female vocalists, pop, soul. Artists who match those tags will be similar to the band, and give me a similar sound.
Taking that to real life, Books and Company on Foursquare has been tagged with “books” “music” “live music” “coffee” and more. It’s metadata applied to a physical place. And this gives Foursquare the ability to give you more nuanced exploration and recommendation tips. In fact, that was a major part of their latest version. Point three:
Exploration
Building up this combination of metadata and users has positioned Foursquare to be a powerful travel tool. It’s still early days, but you can see it getting better all the time. From their blog:
For years we’ve wanted to build a recommendation engine for the real world by turning all the check-ins and tips we’ve seen from you, your friends, and the larger foursquare community into personalized recommendations.
You’ll see our first pass at this in foursquare 3.0′s new “Explore” tab. The idea is pretty simple: tell us what you’re looking for and we’ll help you find something nearby. The suggestions are based on a little bit of everything – the places you’ve been, the places your friends have visited, your loyalty to your favorite places, the categories and types of places you gravitate towards, what’s popular with other users, the day of the week, places with great tips, the time of day, and so on. We’ll even tell you why we think you should visit a certain place (e.g. popular with friends, similar to your favorite spots). You’ll find it’s helpful for general things like “food”, “coffee”, “nightlife” (we built in quick access to these searches) and you’ll be surprised by what you get when searching for really specific things, like “80s music,” “fireplaces,” “pancakes,” “bratwurst,” and “romantic.” The more random you get, the more interesting the results get (though be patient with this first release… sometimes we can’t find every random thing).
And outside of the “Explore” tab, you’ll see some of this thinking starting to surface on the “Me” tab as well. As we started to tinker with our recommendations algorithms, we started to see “expertise” starting to emerge from the data – we’re seeing friends that have been to every karaoke place within 10 miles or tried every burger in Los Angeles. The new “Me” tab surfaces some of this, letting you seek guidance from your friends on the categories and places they explore most.
So, a combination of your history (places you like) plus data from your friends and people similar to you, it gets easier to surface places you might like in other cities. I like Books and Company. Foursquare knows this. So when I visit some new town, it finds places that have been tagged similarly to Books and Company, or places frequented by people with similar preferences to mine. Again, it’s early days, but the more people use it and the more you use it, the better it gets.
Conclusion:
Foursquare is one of those things that started off looking kind of stupid, but is building into an actual useful tool– one that can supplement and possibly even replace the guide book by bringing personalized recommendations no matter where you go. Obviously there’s a long way to go still, but it looks a lot more like something worth trying than it did when it was basically just a game.
Further Reading:
Fred Wilson: Exploresquare
Read Write Web: 2011: The Year the Check-In Died
Marshall Kirkpatrick: Why We Check In
Foursquare Blog: The Vision for #Fsq3 and beyond
I’m a backer of the local musicians. So I thought I’d let you know about an interesting promotion going on with one of the more popular PG groups, Cera. From their Facebook page:
Hi! For the first time ever, our latest EP, swans, is available for streaming online in its entirety! Incidentally, you can also buy the entire thing online at whatever quality you want (even FLAC!) for a dang ol’ tasty price of $5 RIGHT NOW! Head to http://cera.bandcamp.com/ to get on that!
Don’t wanna spend that much? Well, help yourself — and us! 🙂 — out by inviting all of your friends to be a fan of our page! If we get 650 fans, you will only have to pay $4! For 750 fans, $3! If you guys do some truly wicked stuff and we get 950 fans, everybody can have the album for $1! One freakin’ dollar!
Y’know what, we’ll take it one step further, and say that if we get 950 fans, we’ll just straight up give away ten free downloads.
To sum it up:
650 fans: $4
750 fans: $3
950 fans: $1
Lastly, we’re going to be keeping an eye out, and anybody that has statuses that read something like “yo check out this sick band @cera, the more people that like them, the more of a discount you get on their EP!” will be entered into a draw to win some of our next batch of merch. A few lucky people will win some free swag just for pimping us!
It’s not new to write about how awareness and fans have become the new commodity in the music industry, and the recorded music is less a product than a promotion for the live show. Cera’s a band that I think can benefit from this given their live show experience. They’ve got 566 fans as I write this, be interesting to see how well this plays out. Incidentally, one of the band’s members posted an article from New Music Strategies called “Should I Be Worried About Piracy” recently. From it:
1) People who share your music are recommending you to people who respect their taste and opinion;
2) The vast majority of people who have unauthorised copies of your music would not have ordinarily paid for it anyway;
3) Do you really want for people who cannot afford your music to be prevented from ever hearing it?
Good advice.
What if from the time an election was called to the time the ballots were counted, there was a ban on polls? What would change?
Media would have to report on something other than the latest polls, for one. No more finding out which party leader with a +/- 3% margin of error is viewed as ‘most trustworthy’ versus last week’s findings. Maybe more time would be spent focusing on what candidates were actually saying and doing, rather than how 1,001 Canadians felt about what they were saying and doing over the last four days.
Parties wouldn’t know whether what they were doing and saying was resonating with voters. Then they’d have to base what they say and do on something other than how well it targeted niche voting groups. Maybe they’d spend more time saying and doing things based on what they believe is best.
Maybe voters, undistracted by poll result after poll result, would focus on what politicians are saying and doing, as well. With reports coming out every few days telling us how parties are doing in the polls, it can feel like elections are foregone conclusions. Maybe if voters didn’t have access to polls, more of them would vote. How many people in Riding A are told that candidate X is assured victory based on the latest poll result, and then stay home because they don’t feel like their ballot will make a difference? How many people strategically change their vote based on polls telling them their preferred candidate doesn’t stand a chance?
Maybe we should take a poll.
Why not?
Foursquare:
Hashable:
Any new service wants to show you what they can do. And if a large part of their value comes from being connected with other people, they want to get you connected to as many people as possible right away. On Foursquare they want you to see where your friends are going and what tips they’re leaving. Otherwise you miss out on the social aspect of the site, and are less likely to see its value.
Twitter/Facebook/Google/email groups have come to act as contact passsports online. When I sign up for a new service, I don’t have to start from scratch, I build on what I’ve already got in those services. And it usually works. Odds are that there are at least some people I’m friends with on Facebook that I would want to be friends with on Foursquare. And in a business networking site, there could be value in importing your email contacts.
But there’s a problem when it comes to using the same approach in music sites. And that is: just because I’m interested in what you have to say doesn’t mean I’m interested in what you listen to.
I’m not being a jerk here. I’m sure most people in my life would say the same about me (aside from the being interested in what I have to say part). Musical taste is a highly personal thing, and one that, in my experience, doesn’t corelate to your ability to get along in any other arena. Heck, I’m pretty sure that’s the central point of High Fidelity.
When I choose contacts on Facebook, it’s usually based around “Do I know you?” When it’s who to follow on Twitter, it’s “Am I interested in what you have to say?” And when I add you to my email contacts it’s “Do I need to have an ongoing communication with you?” None of those things mean that I care to listen to your iPod right now. And yet here’s the “find people” screens on Grooveshark, Rdio and Ex.fm:
Grooveshark
Rdio:
Ex.fm:
Again, just because I’m friends with you or am interested in your opinions on technology, that does not mean I have the same musical tastes as you. More often then not, importing contacts from these services will skew them in a direction I don’t want to go. The only exception on here is Ex.fm’s integration with Tumblr, because Tumblr is a great place to follow music bloggers.
Twitter, hypothetically, would be useful except I don’t tend to follow music people on there because why follow 140-character Tweets about music when you can subscribe to the blog? Plus, it goes the other way: just because I like the same music as you doesn’t mean I want to subscribe to your lifestream. This is why I have a small firewall between my music self and myself online: people who want to listen to my music don’t necessarily want my opinions on Canadian politics, and people who are friends with me via Facebook don’t necessarily want to listen to my music.
Last.fm seems to recognize this. While you can add friends from other arenas, their focus (indeed, their entire recommendation engine) is based around “neighbours”– people you don’t know but who are listening to similar music to you. This is far more effective than Rdio’s approach of suggesting I listen to bands I have no interest in because some people I follow on Twitter has.
I’ve been building up a strong database of places to get music recommendations in a couple of places. On the Hype Machine, I’ve explicitly chosen to follow people based on their musical tastes. Most of these are bloggers, some are simply fans. I’ve also chosen to follow artists I like, and “hearted” songs I particularly like. I’d love it if other music services could accesss that data when I sign up and start there. Slowly but surely, Ex.fm is building a database of both websites and listeners I like, and Soundcloud is mostly based around me following musicians or labels.
Then there’s Last.fm. Since everything and its dog can “scrobble” (including they Hype Machine, Ex.fm, Rdio, iTunes, and Grooveshark), it probably has the strongest database of my musical tastes out there. Maybe it wouldn’t be in their best interests to open up that data as something that could be used by services like Rdio, but it would certainly be useful to me as a user. Imagine how much quicker you could get a sense of a new music service’s ability to give you value if it could pull in your listening history rather than starting from scratch. It’s what’s done in social networking– I’d love to see it extend to music.
I’ve never been much of a cook. In high school, my mom was concerned that I wouldn’t have the life skills necessary to feed myself. I argued that as long as I could read a recipe, I’d be fine, and to prove my point I made a pie. It was great, and I seemed to have won that battle. In retrospect, though, it was a fluke. Or at least not indicative of my overall abilities.
I’m not bad, just not especially skilled. But that’s changing. After slacking in the dinner-making department for years, I’m finally trying to contribute 50%+ of the meals a week. As I try more and more complex recipes, I’ve determined the secret to making cooking enjoyable and easy: prepare the ingredients in advance.
This is probably obvious to a lot of people. But it wasn’t to me. I would follow the recipe step-by-step, only doing things like measuring out the liquids or chopping the vegetables when the time for their use arrived. This made things stressful and chaotic as I desperately tried to complete whatever I was doing before the water boiled or the sauce burnt or whatever time-limit I was up against arrived. I was usually not successful.
Now, I go through the list of ingredients, prepare everything, and group them together based on when they are to be added to the recipe. Not only is this easier, it speeds things up, and makes me feel like I actually know what I’m doing because, after all, I have everything arranged like I’m a pro chef. So if you were like me, let me tell you the secret to cooking: don’t rush. Take the time to prepare everything ahead of time, and it will all turn out.
There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.
We received a brochure listing all the locations and times that Girl Guides would be selling their cookies. Not wanting to have anyone miss out, I made this map. I don’t know much about map-making, and I feel like someone else could do more, like code it by time or even make it searchable somehow. Anyways, here it is.
Ad nauseam
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May 4 2011 | ∞
Over the weekend, David-Noel shared a link which led to this:
Ljung is the CEO of Soundcloud, a service that I have been following with some interest. While it’s a great way to discover music, what’s even more interesting to me is their quest to add audio to our grab-bag of ways to share things. Based on what I see here and elsewhere, they want to be the audio version of what Twitter is to text, YouTube is to video and Flickr or perhaps Instagram is to pictures. In other words, they want to put the ability to share sounds with the world into our pockets via smartphones. It’s an interesting quest, but one thing that’s bothered me this whole time is the question of why hasn’t this happened before?
Prince George Noises by AndrewCellsOut
In web-years, none of the above are that new. Some form of sharing video, pictures, and statuses has existed since the rise of smartphones, and pretty much ever since the social media shift began some years ago. But the idea of sharing sound– not music, just sounds– is something Soundcloud is basically pioneering. Why?
I think it’s because there is no pre-smartphone device aimed at mass audio collection. I’ve been playing with video cameras since elementary school. Pocket cameras were everywhere in high school, and pocket video wasn’t far behind. This was just before cellphones started taking off, and close to a decade prior to the iPhone. People have a single-function reference point for what cameras and video cameras should look like before everything was folded into smartphones. This understanding is the basic language used in every smartphone camera and camera app, both audio and video. Pure audio: not so much.
How often did you see someone carrying around a portable tape recorder? I know they existed, but who used them? Especially en masse. Why record the audio of a birthday party when you could snap some photos or combine the audio-visual experience by bringing out the camcorder? Pure audio has largely been irrelevant in the daily sharing of our lives, both before and since the internet.
I think another challenge is that while you can see the image you are taking as you are taking it, there on the screen before you snap the picture, you can’t easily “hear” things as they will be recorded as you are recording them. One of the biggest learning curves in my training as a professional sound gatherer has been learning to interpret those green, yellow and red lines and adjusting the audio accordingly on the fly. Unless you have the ability to listen to what’s being recorded AS IT’S BEING RECORDED, you’re just kind of guessing. Check YouTube to see how many horribly distorted sound there is on your average concert video. If it’s video, at least you have a visual context. If it’s pure audio, it’s nothing but white noise and distortion– useless.
Shad at Coldsnap 2011 – Yaa I Get It by AndrewCellsOut
I’m not going to say that being a pro audio gatherer is more difficult than being a pro photographer or videographer, but I do think their is a steeper learning curve for people who just want to dabble— that is, being an amateur sound-gatherer is more difficult than being a point-and-click photographer.
I’m also not saying I don’t admire Soundcloud’s vision. From what I’ve seen they’re very smart people and I’d love to see the world become more “sound literate.” As someone who works in radio, I obviously think there’s a huge value to pure sound. But I think they are starting from a more difficult position than it might appear.
Random notes:
Filed under: Best Of, ideas, social media | Discussion