Keith / Francis / Messina / Celik

Celik: Microformats are more than just good class names.

Intro: http://tantek.com/presentations/2006/03/microformats-sxsw/

Francis: Upcoming is the first who used hCalendar.

Messina: How we see the web:

• as an event stream
• as a social space
• as a datastore

As a datastore:

lucene + microformats x APIs = roundtrip attention

Q: How do you filter out inaccurate information?

Messina: Right now we don’t know, but in the future what we’d like to do is allow favorites.

http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard

This is the first time I’ve been pleasantly surprised with my computor since I got here: Windows Safe Mode supports WiFi. Whoo, I guess I’m online after all.

Monday morning, and I’m at a fucking Kinkos. My laptop is having some hardware problems, and I just spent 30 minutes on a support call trying to get it resolved. Because of the problem, though, I’m not going to be able to get my wireless connectivity back until I’m back home in Minneapolis.

So, in other words, this is likely the last post from Austin. At least I’ll be able to take notes in Safe Mode. Crap.

What is ubiquitous computing?

Mark Weiser, 1990: “Invisible, but everywhere around us.” Instead of one processor per user, many processors per user — embedded in everyday life, wirelessly connected. Would call on a new interface set working with machines — gestures, voice recognition.

Multiple user multiple space situation.

Nalta Fukazowa (sp?) — design dissolving in behavior. The act of information processing dissolves into working with everyday objects. Ocotopus card in Hong Kong — RFID enabled, sweep handbag across computer — more of a gesture than anything else.

Always already social

Ubiquitous computing starts to appear on the surface of the body. BodyMedia SenseWear turns on from body heat and monitors how your body is doing.

Also there at scale of a room. Sensacell, commerical flooring tile with embedded processors, capable of specifying presence and position to sub-meter precision.

Present at the scale of the street. Surveilance cameras in Newham borough, London — watches what’s happening, but can recognize faces and individuals.
The colinization of everyday life by technology. Panoptical surveliance.

All of this is incredibly difficult to design and plan for. Much of this is AI hard. It responds to utterances and gestures. When two of us are talkin to each other, you always know who you’re talking to. Same when using a computer. But running from gestures means the computer needs to be able to tell if it’s being talked to or not.
So, when? Look at Octopus in Hong Kong again. Transit pass in 1997, now a touchless purchase system, and becoming an access or key system. 95% of those between 16 and 65 in Hong Kong use it. Very ubiquitous.

In South Koriea, New Songdo, 2004. Built from the ground up to be a ubiquitous city. RFID in trash cans (credit $.5 for recycling), in floor boards (know when someone falls), wireless everywhere.

Mastercard paypass, 2005. RFID chip that allows you to do touchless transactions. Hopes to go the Octopus route.

So, this is not blue sky or speculative. It’s happening now.

Why do we want to do this? Money! Markets in beyond PC, ipod, into the digital home.

It’s also structurally latent in many of our standards. IPV6: Every grain of sand can have it’s own IP address. It really makes it easy to strew this out there. Momentum for it to pull towards it.

Technically Sweet.
Public safety. Reduce the public sphere, restric access, and limit unmonitored activity.

————————————–

Implications:

Misery, especially from a user experience standpoint. People’s toilets crashing, having to reconfigure your shower every morning. it’s bad enough with a phone and the web. Imagine it in every second in everyday life.

An answer to a question nobody has asked. Gov and business drive it, but users don’t really seem to care, and haven’t asked for this. But they’re going to get them anyway.

Literally hard to see. When it’s hard to see what’s going on, where’s the problem? More difficult to find the sources of problems.

Figuratively hard to see. Some teens don’t see this as technology, and then grant it more attention than it deserves.

We will need signs and icons to let people know what’s going on a room. This floor may be measuring your weight.

Stateless interactions. Wardrobe interaction systems. Looks at weather, knows what you’ve worn lately, and plans accordingly. But no URL there, can’t be referred to later. Fuzzy and unbounded.

Embodied.

How do we insure that these systems have values to us?

Incumbent on those who build systems that taken into account the humanity of the user. Systems should be compassionate and respectful of people who use them. Five guidelines:

1. Should default ot harmlessness. Ubiquitous systems must default to a mode that ensures their users’ (physical, psychic and financial) safety. ABS brakes for example. Chip goes out, ABS doesn’t work, but brakes still do. But even that isn’t good enough.
2. Systems must be self-disclosing. Ubiquitous systems must contain provsions for immediate and transparent querying of their ownership , use, capabilities, etc. “Seamlessness” must be an optional mode of presentation, not a mandatory or inescapable one. Instead, look for seamfullness with nice seams, so people can configure them if they want to.
3. Be conservative of face. Ubiq. systems must not unnecessarily embarrass, humiliate or shame thier users. (Bad enough on the web: Flickr friends and family notation - causes awful situations where people are put in positions of opening their social networks to others. Can offend and hurt people you don’t know. No human society can survive the total evaporation of its membrane of protective hypocirsy - some degree of plausible deniability, including above all, imprecision of location is probably necessary.
4. Be conservative of time. Ubiq. systems must not intoduce undue complications into ordinary operations. No drop-down menus for ovens, for example. Does conflict with #1 somewhat.
5. Be deniable. Ubiuitous systems must offer users the ability to opt out, always and every point. People should not be relegated to teh back of the bus because they don’t want to use ubiquitous systems.

Q: Will we start to see RFID blockers and such? Yes. But who knows if the goverment will consider that terrorism or not.

(Look up verichips.)

Kottke: Having micropatrons was like having 1500 bosses. Thought of it as a magazine subscription kind of thing. After a while they started to feel like shareholders. Thinks Armstrong’s site is better for a subscription model. People are more obsessed than with his site.

Armstrong: Outcry when she did Google ads. But never got to the point she would consider a subscription model. Didn’t want people to look at your content as their posessions.

Kottke: Didn’t actually get that much feedback from subscribers.

Armstrong: There seems to be less of the Kottke in the website than before the subscription model.

Kottke: Thinks he was out of the website before that. It’s become less and less about me and more about what I’m interested in.

Armstrong: You said you’ve posted more but haven’t grown traffic. Is that because you took yourself out of it?

K: Probably. Not as much of a cult of personality any more. But Armstrong’s site has grown more personal?

A: “I have definite boundaries in my head.” Advertising hasnt’ changed that though.

K: Any advertising complaints?

A: Not yet.

K: How do you separate Heather the person and dooce the business?

A: There are personal things she has clearly marked in her head that she will not talk about on her site. Everything on the other side of that line is open.

A: What are you going to do now that subscription model is over?

K: Maybe ads.

A: Can you not sustain ads?

K: Not really, for his site.

—–

Skipping out before the questions…

Hellweg / McCord / Horwitz / Bull / Rayasam

Hellweg: The commodification of Flash technology is the most important technological change of the new mellinium. Companies are having troubles figuring out how they’re supposed to be pricing this stuff, though. Look at the Rockr phone from Motorola, etc. Or the $2.50 download for a phone from Apple.

Bull: Smaller products don’t out cheaper and may not make it to product faster. Look at how long it took to get Flash to where we are now. Commoditiization of hardware does not inherently result in a better user experience. Social acceptance and ergonomics are great factors in determining form and scale. This often means we’ll see an evolution of products, not a revolution of products.

Technology will become pervasive, fashion. Your body as a networking conduit.

McCord: Content owners are more concerned about intellectual property than providing great content that people will want to purchase and watch. Results in excessive or impossible DRM.

User interfaces are always a problem — smaller can become unusible.

M3’s premise is that technology has reduced the experience of music. Turned into data management. Takes something away from the art and what the artist wants to convey with the content.

Rayasam: So, why is this happening?

Hellweg: Factories in southeast Asia.

Horwitz: Disagrees. People wanted it. Manufacturing didnt’ drive it.

Bull: Supply chain from manufacturuer to software is getting shorter. Manufacturer is already providing software or basis systems right off the bat.

Starting to see more devices that are in business critical situations. More embededded and ubiquitious than in our ipods.

McCord: Business devices add value but also risk. Starting to see more devices in areas where they could potentially be dangerous if they don’t work properly.

Horwitz: Customers may not want one uber devices, but smaller devices that do their jobs really well.

Also, the gated supply chains prevent innovation by other comapnies. For example, cell phones providers and manufactures do not make it easy for others to be involved in their networks. Not always intentionally, but just matters of manufacturing scale that the smaller companies don’t have.

Rayasam: What are your future scenarios?

Hellweg: Will see more “absent presence” — people who are around others but not involved with them — people listening to mp3 players for example. We’ll have to figure out how to deal with that. Also expects turbocharged, high-capacity phones.

McCord: I think it’s all going to show up in the next five years.
As things get real small, the only way they’re going to work is with special purpose. Most convergent devices to a lot of “pretty good”, but very little “great.” Breakthroughs will happen when all the devices can easily talk to each other, and know that they’re supposed to work together. They don’t all need to be the same thing.

There’s a limit to how small you can make these things before people can’t interact with them any more.

Horwitz: it’s not just going to be about cost. But you also need great experience. Components can keep getting smarter, but devices don’t have to get smarter. As that happens, you can see more happen in them. Add in more functionality. World in pocket, either physically or virtually. Google and Yahoo pushing people to think about how people connect and interview with the world.

Bull: I agree with everyone. See progression of pervasive computing, mesh computing, devices that are able to detect themselves and others. More innovative technology instead of revolutionary.

Merholz/ Fogg / Sternberg / Dietzen

Apps need: Feasibility - Viability - Desirability

Fogg: yackpack: “Simple audio messaging for groups”. Looks kind of like voicemail for the web, with added functionaity. Includes send-to-all and threaded audio features. Finally, public audio forums as well.

Sternberg: Meebo: Cross-platform instant messaging. Launched very light and feature early, and let customers drive the development.

Dietzen: Zimbra: Enterprise Email and Collaboration. Moves email to the next level — Links up email to other systems, both open and proprietary. Supports calendaring, phone and other functionality

Turning out to be a kind of blah panel.

Under the right conditions, large groups can be very intelligent, often more so than the smartest expert in the room.

What do intelligent crowds look like? Look at the racetrack. A crowd at a racetrack can give a near perfect forecast of the future. Crowd is a mix of experts, novices and cranks. Similar is the stock market. Over time it is very difficult for even the best money managers to outperform the stock market. (Or look at newsfutures.com.)

(Lots of stuff here that it would be good to see graphs and examples.)

Aggregation can happen in many different ways.

Diverse crowds are far more likely to be intelligent than non-diverse crowds.

I know most of this already. Time to skip to another panel…

Fried: Obscurity is a good thing. If you can fail in obscurity, you’ll learn a lot more that way without being berrated by the public. Removes the fear of failure.

Less comes for free with a side business — people should be embracing. Conventional wisdom is you need to outdo competitors. “They have five features, so we need six.” Instead deliver products that are small, clear and simple.

Functional specs are political documents about covering your ass, not about creating a good product. Illusions of agreement — everyone interprets it differently.

Three types of less:

Less time is good. The more time you have, the more time you waste on things like overplanning and overthinking. Abstract work isn’t real work (functional specs), etc. More time encourages procrastination. Don’t worry so much about planning, stay small and get at work.

Less money is good. The only thing money really buys these days are salaries. Spending your own money makes you use it more wisely.

Less software. Build less software, build less well. There’s endless time to add later, but you can’t remove after you add. Less software is more manageable. Less things you have, the less that go wrong. Too many people focus on solving complex problems when the simple ones haven’t been solved: (Don’t build software that’s clever and tries to capitalize sentences, etc.)

Embrace constraints: “We need more people to finish the product.” Maybe the product has too many features. Easier to improve products when there’s less to change.

Use products or software as you build them. You’ll learn that you have things you don’t need, and need things you don’t have.

The companies that take VC money always seem to need more of it, but those who don’t take it always seem to have enough.

Don’t plan too far in advance, as you don’t know what’s going to happen. If you have to grow, you don’t have to get big.

Curiosity is much more important than bullet lists of skills on job descriptions. What people did in the past doesn’t matter.

Coudal: It’s easy to get lost in thinking what you’re doing is the only thing you can do.

Fried: When you make a change to a product, you’ll get a lot of noise from people. Do not react to squaking to change something back. It may go away as users get used to changes. Explain convictions, and don’t freak out when people get upset. Build the interface first and then start to use it as you build. You can look and agree on real stuff, but you can’t agree on abstract (functional) ideas.

Adding features to functional specs is easy, but not easy to implement in real life.

Coudal: If we get an RFP that’s more than two pages, we won’t do it. If they spent that much time on it, imagine how big of a pain they’re going to be when we get them as a customer.

Making it up as you go along is a good thing, and the whole deal for Fried’s and Coudal’s companies.

Fried: Write stories instead of functional specs. Write a story about how something should work, and then have someone design it. Usually works better than spec.

Fix budget and timeframe, and that’s version #1 of the product. Prevents scope creep. makes you focus on the most important things.

Beta tags are kind of ridiculous.

We make mistakes when we compare the past with the possible. (Bush Sr. looked bad against Clinton, but Bush Sr. looks good compared wth Bush Jr. Or a Big Mac may not be appetizing, but it is when you’re on a plane with no other food.)

Good presentation, but not much to take away from with notes. Or to practically apply to day-to-day life, for that matter.

I’m sure I’ll be more concious of bad decisions all the time now, though. After I make them.