BASEMENT.ORG
Posted by Richard Ziade on November 28, 2007, 05:01PMThe Internet User's Bill Of Rights (First Draft)
Way back when, I'd written a brief post about Google's laser-guided missiles. In short, I'd argued that, as Google's services become more pervasive, the more of our behavior they could monitor and mine for more targeted advertising. The more they watch, the more accurately they can target us. This all isn't necessarily a bad thing...except that hardly anyone knows how or where Google is watching them.
Enter Facebook. Of late, Facebook has been taking some slack for the Facebook Beacon. It effectively allows third parties to pass along to Facebook something about your activity on their sites. After, say a Fandango purchase, Fandango pings Facebook back with what you've just done. If you subsequently visit Facebook, you'll find your action for all to see ("all" being anyone that can see your feed).
So now, not only are all our actions being monitored (thanks Google for kicking that one off) our activity is being shared among third parties without our knowledge (thanks Facebook).
All of this isn't inherently bad on its face. The problem lies in how all this stuff is happening behind our backs. We need to draft some sort of Bill of Rights for web users that services like Google or Facebook can opt into. Something like:
- [Service] shall, clearly and in plain English, explain to users precisely which of the user's activity they will be monitoring.
- [Service] shall, clearly and in plain English, notify users if anything about their activity is shared with other services.
- [Service] shall provide all users with a simple and clearly visible way to opt out of having any facet of our activity monitored or shared with third parties.
- [Service] shall provide all users with a simple and clearly accessible way to purge all data about their activity. If a user's activity data is purged, [service] shall guarantee that all purged data is destroyed and unrecoverable.
- Should any terms of use change subsequent to joining [service], all users should be notified in a clear manner imediately.
The above is by no means exhaustive but it at least starts the conversation around what we're unwittingly giving up for all this power and convenience.
In many ways, the Internet is viewed as an extension of existing media ("New Media"). Such a framing fails to recognize how much of a departure the Web really is. Radio and television are passive. I'm not even sure my cable company knows what I record on my DVR box. The Web is a whole other animal. We need some sort of checking mechanism so various services can speak to, market, differentiate and recognize that we understand that there is a cost for all this cool free stuff.
Just as we feel slightly more comfortable when we see a Better Business Bureau seal or a Verisign logo, I'd like to see these services displaying (or paying the price for not displaying) a similar insignia: "We Adhere To..."
Today, these conversations around privacy bubble up and you'll hear the usual "hmmm...that's creepy" comments. I don't think that's really going to address much. It's good business for the likes of Google and Facebook to let the chatter die down and just get on with life as usual. What's needed is a framework and a standard for them to adhere to.
Entire Blogosphere Stunned By Blogger's Special Weekend Post
Hilarious. I'm totally guilty of skipping weekends on basement.org.
Posted by Richard Ziade on November 27, 2007, 10:30AMLearn Some Mad Skillz With Sclipo
Sclipo is an online repository of tutorials, howto's and all sorts of knowledge. Learn Taichi...or guitar (not Guitar Hero, but actual guitar) from Mark Knopfler.
Free Vector Paper
Give your art and illustrations that offline, real paper look & feel with Bittbox's free vector paper illustrations.
Posted by Richard Ziade on November 26, 2007, 02:04PMThe 2007 International Architecture Awards Winners
The Chicago Athenaeum (Museum of Architecture and Design) has put up its winners for best architectures of 2007. There is some interesting, occasionally inspiring work in the list.
Posted by Richard Ziade on November 23, 2007, 09:19AMOld Video Game Source Code Art
Ben Fry dumps out the source code from old Atari 2600 games to create cool, oddly recognizable art. Ben slyly draws the data portions of the code as colored boxes, thus revealing the crude graphics embedded within.
Posted by Richard Ziade on November 21, 2007, 11:25AMAmazon's Kindle And The Death (And Attempted Resurrection) Of The Physical Integrity Of Objects We Care About
(Best basement.org post title ever? Maybe.)
Amazon released the Kindle a couple of days ago. It's an eBook reader with "revolutionary electronic paper" that let's you purchase, download and read books (up to 200 or so) on this handy little device. It doesn't require a computer and costs $400.00.
Physical objects that carry and represent content as we know them are dying. The book. The CD (or album if you like). The DVD (or Betamax tape if you like). They're all going away. In some ways, that's a good thing. Last Christmas, I strolled into a Best Buy in Brooklyn and snickered at all that floor space dedicated to CD's. I thought it was ridiculous and wasteful. An outdated model that retailers were still hanging onto for dear life.
Still, the grumpy old man in me feels like we're letting something significant slip away.
"Can We Please Get Five Minutes Alone?"
I've actually touched on this point in the past. There is something deeply intimate about the relationship between author and reader that is indelibly bound to that physical object. 150 books on a Kindle doesn't exactly recapture that intimacy. Finding a book; grabbing it; committing to it and then deciding to share that intimacy with the author is part of the book reading experience. Books, unlike newspapers, magazines or blogs, reach depths that make them unique and oftentimes deeply personal for the reader. Grabbing a book off the digital shelf on a Kindle is undoubtedly convenient but that sense of privacy - of being alone with the author - is gone.
Today, it's all getting mixed together in one big, generic carrying device. The result is the genericization (that can't possibly be a word) of digital packaging. When you're listening to Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, you're "using" iTunes. When you're reading The Power Broker, you're using a Kindle. The content, crowded into a single, generic bin, is secondary. It's taken a backseat to the intentionally neutral delivery mechanism. The creative work's physical manifestation is gone.
"We Used To Have A Bookshelf Right Over There, But We Replaced It With A Dell Optiplex Server."
We keep too much stuff around as it is these days. All sorts of junk that means nothing (or very little) to us. We produce more than we can consume and as such we're a disposable society. It just turns out we don't really want to dispose of anything. So we collect Tupperware (I think I'm supposed to capitalize that) and that juicer and those old Collector's Edition Star Wars Episode III posters and...the list goes on and on.
Books and other creative works are different. They're capable of representing something more than just a Made-For-TV doo-hickey you impulsively bought. A book can grip you; leave an impression on you; matter to you unlike just about anything. A great album can have that effect as well.
"Happy Birthday Honey. Here's Your $75 Best Buy Gift Card."
One of the best expressions of how much a creative work matters to us is our desire and enthusiasm to share it with others. Did you ever buy someone an album or book that you've already experienced? It's an exciting feeling to share a connection about something with others.
Today, we buy points or credits or gift cards that get you points or credits. There's nothing physical to share anymore. Nothing to unwrap on holidays or birthdays. It's all virtual. How do we replace memories like this?
"Here's Our Latest Product. It Features Glimpses Of Reality!"
What's funny about the march towards the digitization of creative content is that when designers and software developers go the extra mile to recreate physical reality, we're blown away by it. Coverflow is a great example of this. Does anyone actually use coverflow? All this energy was put into recreating flipping through a bunch of CD's. Amazon has invested an enormous amount to make sure we can look inside the books we're thinking of buying.
It's all an attempt to marry the conveniences of technology with the things that really matter to us about the physical world. These efforts (and I'm guessing there will continue to be more of them) are trying to recapture the unique experience of having something in our hands that we care about.
"Where we goin' buddy? The meter's runnin'."
As I look up at this post, I can't help but feel like this old Coney Island cab driver I'd run into once. He rambled on about how $.25 could get you a root beer and a Nathan's hot dog "so huge you couldn't even finish it." He was angry about how things had changed and nostalgic about how things were.
Despite this being a technology blog, I can't help but feel like that old cab driver. Scrolling through your book collection on a Kindle is definitely more convenient than perusing books (with that odd sideways head tilt) on a bookshelf. Still, I can't help but feel something's missing there.
Someone needs to convince the old cab driver in me that it's really not that big of a deal. Be careful though, he's getting grumpier by the day.
Posted by Richard Ziade on November 20, 2007, 09:32AMPanic At The Feed Reader
You've gotta love this. Nick Bradbury, the man behind venerable FeedDemon feed reader, has added a curiously interesting feature: the Panic Button. In short, it essentially relieves RSS addicts of that overwhelming feeling of never being able to catch up to all those old feeds. I like it:
Still, it doesn't completely quell that nagging feeling of missing - forever - that Great Blog Post that you should have never missed. Or does it?
Posted by Richard Ziade on November 19, 2007, 09:56AMPreview HTML In All Mail Clients
This is pretty frickin' huge if you do any sort of emailing in your web apps. Campaign Monitor has a great little testing tool that shows you previews in all the major email clients. Very handy.
Hack Your Creative Brain
Scott Berkun has an excellent little blog post entitled Creative Thinking Hacks. He gives some handy little tips for getting those creative juices flowing.
Posted by Richard Ziade on November 15, 2007, 03:00PMFree Vector-Based Logo Templates
Logotemplater is bringing some logo template love to the masses. They're nice starting points for logos. There's not much there just yet but what's there looks polished. They'll hopefully keep adding.
Destroy The Web 2.0 Look
Elliot Jay Stocks has a great slide presentation up that talks about destroying the Web 2.0 look. It's a quick flip thru and sums things up very nicely. Well worth your 3 (or 5) minutes.
Posted by Richard Ziade on November 13, 2007, 09:50AMListen & Share New Music With Songza
I like this. Dead simple. Just search for music and you're one click away from listening (or sharing with others). I'm also digging the tangerine red theme. Check it: Songza.
Posted by Richard Ziade on November 12, 2007, 10:27AMWhen The Awesome Converges With The Everyday
This past weekend, I caught a documentary called Frank Lloyd Wright's Buffalo (it's airing on PBS currently). It's about the the relationship between Frank Lloyd Wright and his friend and client Darwin Martin. It chronicles Wright's struggles and eventual ascent as a prominent architect.
As Wright's design sensibility matures, a tension is revealed. Wright viewed his work as art. Every excruciating detail was accounted for. It was a clear vision that could not be compromised in Wright's eyes. The budget for the Martin House spiraled out of control as Wright replaced his client's requests with his own grand vision. Practicality gave way to an ambition to attain something uniquely austere. Darwin Martin's wife, who was nearly blind, complained over its impracticality, most notably the lack of sunlight allowed into the home.
Most creative art, whether paintings, theater or music,is created for passive observation. We, the intended audience of art, rarely interact with the creative work. We listen to music; watch a movie; observe a painting; etc. Architecture, on the other hand, is highly interactive. We often live within, and live with the creative work.
In many ways, architecture is the precursor to interaction design. It's one of the few early art forms that contends with that tension of creative expressiveness and basic practicality. Wright had a personal vision that blew away conventions of the day. His work was derided as impractical and heralded as groundbreaking all at once. What fueled Wright's tangent away from conventional design was not just a simple desire to be different. He sought to create a memorable work that evoked emotion. He wanted its inhabitants and the occasional visitor to feel something about the place. Utility took a backseat.
We can learn a lot about respecting this tension as designers - and feeding both ends of it. It isn't easy to create something both beautiful, emotionally-evoking and at the same time useful, intuitive and practical.
During the program, one of the commentators summed up this tension perfectly (I'm paraphrasing):
Posted by Richard Ziade on November 8, 2007, 09:36AMWhat Wright sought was to somehow reach a place where the awesome converges with the everyday.
Create Stylish Videos With Your Pics And Music With Animoto
Animoto is a cool free services that can pull in your pics (from various services, including Flickr), add some music and whip up a nice, stylish little video montage thiny. Nice.
Posted by Richard Ziade on November 7, 2007, 04:47PMIntroducing...Nothing!
Anyone else notice something unusual around the last handful of big, splashy press releases in the techno-blogo-digerati-sphere?
About a week ago, Open Social debuted. It's a way to embed mini widget-style applications in other web destinations. It's not anything tangible. It's just a way to do it that they're getting out there. So, for anyone else in the world outside of technology, they pretty much released nothing.
Today, Facebook announced their new "advertising solution." It's a way to become friends with that jacket you can't afford. But more relevant to this blog post, it's yet another way to do something. It's actually not really anything either. It's this new advertising...framework. But again, to the rest of the world, it's actually nothing, except now a Prada sweater can ask you to become its friend.
And finally, we have the new Google Phone...or Android...or Open Handset Software Alliance. Here, it's most painful. It's a new phone. A Google phone! Except its not really anything real or tangible at all. It's a software suite for mobile phones and devices. But there's nothing to pick up and hold and play with.
At the risk of sounding like an Apple fanboy, we never hear Apple trumpet the announcement of some ephemeral idea or collection of ideas. They just put stuff out. In fact, when they announce stuff, you can often buy it the same day they announce it.
Another lesson learned is HTML. It was a game-changing invention on a technical level. Yet what HTML really needed was something real to light it up for the world. Mosaic and Netscape completed the invention. Until someone completes these inventions, they aren't real for 99% of the world.
...except for Facebook. People are befriending their favorite sodas and boxer shorts as we speak.
From Viral Marketing To STD's
Ok, let's line up the evidence:
- I walk into a Starbucks and the song playing in the shop is instantly availabe on my iPhone or iPod Touch. Starbucks is now in my
pantsphone. - Google is watching over my shoulder as I search and as I read my email. Weird, creepy "Mid-Life Crisis?" ads are known to show up alongside emails.
- I'm on Facebook. I'm not really active. I have an account but I rarely log on. Yet, I'm getting poked, probed, super-poked, jabbed, tazered via email and through other means. Every time I log on, I'm asked to answer a series of questions triggered by someone's "friend request" (what a weird transaction) that I hardly know.
And now, Facebook has decided that the line between advertising and talking (and poking and probing) has blurred. I am not just the consumer anymore. Glassy-eyed staring into my new 50" LCD TV. I am the carrier. I am the means by which the marketing message travels.
And it's not just a message anymore. It's an action. It's a new verb - like Super-poking. Except now the actions are products...or our "friends" are products...or something. I'm not really sure. It's all really, really creepy.
My biggest fear is the lack of notice. Just give me notice of what I'm in for. It's a crime to knowingly carry a sexually transmitted disease and have unprotected sex with someone without their knowledge. Unless you look really closely, it's really hard to tell that Google is tracking your search patterns.
Sit me down and give me options and explain the implications of what I do. Then let me decide. Today, we're just strolling into bed, not aware of the consequences. We've submitted ourselves.
Nick Carr summed it up nicely: "Infect me. I'm yours."
Posted by Richard Ziade on November 6, 2007, 10:24AM8 Reasons To Work At Arc90
Yeh I know, I was complaining about lists just last week, and now I've come up with a list of my own. But this list is different I swear. First off, it's short. Real short. And second, it's awesome. It's a really amazing list.
We're looking for some talent to join the ranks at Arc90. We're looking for web-centric design and development talent of all sorts. Specifically, if you're a strong web guy (or gal) and enjoy building applications with rapid development platforms like PHP and Coldfusion. If you appreciate (or violently defend) standards-based technologies like XHTML, CSS. If the smooth-as-silk interface experience of dynamic Web applications powered by AJAX and the likes of JQuery makes you giddy, then read on! Here are a fistful of reasons you'll want to work at Arc90:
We don't care much about experience or 4 (or 5 or 6) page resumes. We're looking for smart, curious people that are passionate about technology. 
We lack a dress code. We let the social dynamics (read: insults and outcasting) drive how people dress. 
We're not religious about particular technologies. We just want to build beautifully designed, compelling experiences that deliver real value. Technology is our bitch. It's just a means to an end. 
We lack core hours. "What the hell are you still doing here?!" and "You should probably go home and shower." are commonly heard. 
We're in New York City. The greatest city in the world. Where else can you find over 20,000 pizzerias ranging in price from $10 to $1,000? 
We allot part of your time to do non-client work. Go ahead, hack together that idea you've been psyched about. It may even end up on the Arc90 lab! 
We have a Wii room (yes a room dedicated to the Nintendo Wii). 
We already have awesome people working at Arc90 that are open to sharing and brainstorming approaches and ideas. It's a dynamic, highly collaborative environment that doesn't wall people off from one another.
If the above strikes a chord and you're looking to mix things up a bit and advance, or if you have some questions about us, be sure to drop me a line (I'm one of the partners at Arc90, so I've got some serious pull).
Take The Blog Readability Test
What level of education is required to understand your blog? Take the blog readability test. Basement.org? Junior High School. That awkward time in your life where hormones and XBox rule everything.
Posted by Richard Ziade on November 1, 2007, 09:48AMDo The Green Thing
"Green Thing is a community that makes it easy and enjoyable to be a bit greener. Every month you’ll get a different Green Thing to do. All you have to do is do it."