I, Lamont

What's with the CIC references?

2012-01-09T00:08:00.003-05:00

People following my @ilamont and @invantory Twitter feeds may have noticed frequent references and updates relating to the CIC. It stands for "Cambridge Innovation Center," an office building in Kendall Square that is hugely important to the local startup scene and to our startup as well.

More than 200 companies and individuals (including my business partner) rent office space in the CIC. Even for the cheapest co-working space (currently $250/month), wi-fi, coffee, and access to conference rooms and printers are included in the no-lease rental price. Most of the companies are tech startups that are developing businesses around software, hardware, and devices, although there are also investors and supporting firms (such as lawyers) in the building. We are in the CIC on a regular basis for meetings and events.

Besides being large, the community at the CIC is also very supportive. I've contacted numerous startup founders in the CIC to ask questions, and have never been turned down for a meeting. Some founders even make a point of helping others, either through free events or "entrepreneur's office hours". One example that stands out is a CEO of a small digital marketing firm who held such a session for me at 7 o'clock in the evening, which meant that she wouldn't be getting home until quite late. Such is the life of startup people, but I was touched nonetheless -- she didn't have to do this, but she did anyway, because she wanted to help other founders.

If you're interesting in learning more, I've written about the Cambridge Innovation Center and can share my opinion about the environment there. However, for specifics or more in-depth reviews of the CIC, it's necessary to contact old hands or the CIC operating company itself.

Roomba vs. vacuum cleaners: The robot wins!

2012-01-03T22:24:00.003-05:00

Every once in a while an invention comes along that changes the way people live their lives. Computers, mobile phones, television, washing machines and cars are but a few examples. I'd like to add to the list robot vacuum cleaners ... specifically, the iRobot Roomba Model 530 that we got last month. It has changed the way we do housework, and has really freed up a lot of time for us to do other things.

A lack of time was the reason we got the robot. I have been cranking away on starting a new company producing a classifieds app and simply don't have the bandwidth to vacuum the house every week, and neither do other family members. I had heard about the Roomba for years but never considered buying one, owing to the expense and the fact that one of us usually had enough time to vacuum every week using a 15-year-old Sharp upright model. But when we both began new careers, the problem suddenly presented itself. Around the same time, I saw a brief side-by-side review of three robotic vacuum cleaners by America's Test Kitchen, and noted that the prices were coming down. I did some additional online research, and decided on the Roomba 530

We put it to work right away. The results were impressive -- it cleaned up our bedroom, even getting underneath dressers and night tables, in less than 30 minutes. It got into corners and redid each spot multiple times, resulting in lots of debris in the dirt and dust traps. Next was the bathroom and hallway, and then the kids' rooms, and finally the downstairs area, including the kitchen. We have mostly hardwood floors throughout the house, which really suits the Roomba, although we've noticed it takes care of medium-sized rugs as well.

The greatest thing about the Roomba is it's pretty much fire-and-forget. You spend a minute or two prepping the rooms to be cleaned (moving toys out of the way, putting up loose electrical cords, shutting doors where you don't want the robot to go) press the button on the top, and let the robot do its thing. It seems to be moving randomly, but there is a method to its cleaning path, driven by trigonometry and some sophisticated algorithms. It's actually a great feeling being able to work in one part of the house while hearing the Roomba whirring away. Yesterday we even went out shopping and left the Roomba to clean the whole downstairs. When we came back the floor was clean and the robot had automatically returned to its charging station.

Are there drawbacks? Sure. One thing that some people will hate is having to clean the robot. Unlike a standard vacuum, which only requires changing bags or shaking out a dirt trap every now and then, the Roomba requires regular maintenance that contains about a half-dozen distinct tasks. You have to manually empty the dirt and dust traps (typically after a large room or the entire floor) and periodically unscrew the brush and rollers to remove tangled hair and dust. It doesn't take long, but it's dirty (with pets it would be even worse). It is also absolutely necessary to keep all of the parts moving.

There are some other minor irritants as well. It can get stuck on high barriers or under furniture that has hanging springs or rods, like our sofa bed. Cords and strings can mess it up. One time it brought down a heavy plug that I had placed on a table. It landed on top of the robot and shut it down, but there was no permanent damage (the robot is actually pretty sturdy). Another time I had to shut it down just before the end of a long string of yarn got swiped into its brushes. You can buy electronic barriers to keep it out of certain areas, but I've found the range on those are only about 10 feet, which means it can get around them if you're trying to block off part of a big room. As an alternative, I sometimes lay chairs on their sides to stop the robot from passing certain areas.

But overall, the Roomba is a remarkable invention. It's a huge timesaver. I estimate it saves us about 5-10 hours of labor per month. The cost is comparable with many upright models -- less than $300 when we bought ours. And while the maintenance is a minor pain, it's worth it.

What people are selling on Craigslist

2011-12-12T22:50:00.000-05:00

I've started a new series of posts on the Invantory blog about what people are selling on Craigslist. The first post, "Craigslist Boston: What are people selling?" lists the top 20 categories for Craigslist Boston and generally give a good summary of what people are selling elsewhere in the state.

Not surprisingly, cars make it to the top of the list, and furniture, too, as well as computers, electronics, and cell phones. With the exception of phones, I've been using Craigslist (and before that, newspaper classifieds and the Want Ads) to buy and sell items in the other categories for many years.

In fact, one of the triggers for Invantory was my frustrating Craigslist experience selling an old Mac mini my parents gave me earlier this year. I wasn't the only one who had experienced similar hassles -- my partner, Sam Chow, was also familiar with Craigslist problems, after moving overseas and needing to sell all the stuff in his apartment.

Anyway, check out the blog post. I will be sharing more information in the months to come about how people use online classifieds, and then we plan to launch our own mobile classifieds service and build a solid Mass Craigslist alternative. Stay tuned!

Outer Limits, Moody Street: A 20th-century shop thrives in the digital age

2011-12-05T05:11:00.041-05:00

Comic book stores are one of those 20th century retail holdouts that will continue to hold on to their tight little niche. I realized this as I was browsing the aisles of Outer Limits, located on the bustling old-school shopping district along Moody Street in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Economists and e-commerce experts may be skeptical. How is it possible, they might ask, that a store that specializes in analog media and obscure toys, carries tens of thousands of dollars worth of inventory, and is generally regarded as a lifestyle business has any hope in the plugged-in, digital age?

My answer: It's not just that Outer Limits has an amazing collection of sci-fi toys, pop-culture memorabilia, Mad books, Dungeons & Dragons manuals, 45 RPM records, and (of course) several thousand comic books.

It's also because the collection is browsable and tactile in a way that eBay and Amazon are not.

It's because Outer Limits leverages these online channels to support customers outside of eastern Massachusetts -- and does so with near-perfect customer satisfaction rates.

It's because the owner, Steve, can answer questions about practically any obscure comic book author/artist, and has samples or collections of many of them.

It's because the store has a wide range of customers, mostly males from about age 5 to 50, but some women, and many foreign visitors.

And it's because customers can find things that they probably wouldn't even know to look for on most e-commerce sites. To wit:

Angry Birds stuffed toy? Check!

Darth Vader bobblehead? Check!

Model Clone Wars troop carrier? Check!

Newly published collection of Spy vs. Spy escapades? Check!

Die-cast Aston-Martin car from an old 007 movie? Check!

Collections of seemingly every well-known American comic book character, from Archie to the X-Men? Check!

Complete Neal Adams collection, from the 1960s to the 1990s? Check!

Large plastic Godzilla action figure? Check!

Large plastic Mecha-Godzilla action figure? Check!

I am not the only fan. I was in the shop recently and it was packed with kids, teens, and adults. Everyone was finding something that interested them. And as long as there is a supply of unique items that tug at people's sense of nostalgia, pop culture, and fun, Outer Limits will continue to hold on to its special niche.

The shop is located on 437 Moody Street in Waltham, Massachusetts (two doors down from the popular Patel Brothers Indian supermarket).

Startup blog mistakes no entrepreneur should make

2011-11-24T14:48:00.030-05:00

I am the author of a startup blog -- the Invantory blog, which we launched last month. But I've also been looking at a lot of other companies' startup blogs as we researched startup accelerator programs like Y Combinator and TechStars. One thing I noticed during my review of some of the companies that had participated in the programs in the past was a moderate number of company blogs that have been neglected or outright abandoned.

Company blogs are a very well-known and important channel for informing users, recruiting customers, and sharing expertise, so I was surprised to see this trend. Blogs that haven't been updated in months or even years without any explanation prompt some users (and customers) to wonder if something's wrong, and outdated information that hasn't been corrected with newer posts can be a source of misunderstandings. These issues can have a negative effect on the business.

As I looked into why this was happening, it was clear that there were several causes. One unsurprising reason was many startups are too busy to regularly update the blog. Others had folded, but for whatever reason left the blog up and running. A few decided that blogging wasn't a good fit for them, or didn't deliver much value.

Whatever the reason, the fact that startup blogs are not updated is a major mistake for the companies that operate them. Fortunately, there are a number of solutions, and many of them are relatively easy to implement. I've outlined a list on the Invantory blog -- be sure to read and share it.

Choosing customers: What our startup learned

2011-10-19T09:44:00.000-04:00

I'm in the process of starting a software company. My co-founder and I are targeting the online classifieds marketplace, but for a few months were considering how our technology might serve the struggling newspaper industry. Yesterday, I posted a very long account on the official Invantory blog that discusses why we changed our minds. It's located here:

Why our online classifieds startup decided not to pursue the newspaper industry

One reader emailed me after seeing the post and asked what was the biggest lesson I had learned from this experience. My response:

"The biggest lesson in terms of targeting the newspaper industry was how bad the technology picture really is. When we hear about the problems that are bringing down these great companies, there's a lot of talk about demographics, advertising, consolidation, business models, staffing levels, alternate information channels, etc. But I think technology infrastructure is one of the most misunderstood and underappreciated elements that have contributed to the slide. The blog post I sent you talks a little bit about this (lack of standards, integration woes, technology vendors), but there is a great business case or Wired article waiting to be written ..."

If you want to follow the progress of Invantory as we attempt to provide an alternative to Boston Craigslist, please regularly check the company blog (links above) or follow us on Twitter at @invantory.

Prospect Hill, Waltham: Before the leaves turn ...

2011-10-09T14:47:00.002-04:00

Scenes from a mid-autumn walk in Waltham, Massachusetts. It's been a strange fall, with lots of moisture in September and temperatures in the 80s in mid-October. Usually by this time, the leaves are turning but not this year. Still, it's quite beautiful ...

Overcoming the technical cofounder problem

2011-10-04T23:11:00.000-04:00

An acquaintance recently contacted me about an idea for a Web startup, using social media to bringing together people interested in humanitarian causes, art, positive change, etc. She knew I have been heavily involved in digital media/online communities and asked for my advice. The problem she had, and it's a problem that I think is quite widespread, is she doesn't have the required coding skills. I responded with the following message:

Regarding your idea for a social media site (or network?) it sounds pretty interesting, and there are definitely niches out there that are not being well served by Facebook, Linkedin Groups, or existing Web forums.

That being said, I would be very careful about what area you target, as there are many existing services that address some of the areas that you named below -- Jumo, http://www.humanitarianforum.org/, some specific art-oriented communities, etc. Convincing users to join your site when there are already compelling services out there with large user communities is more difficult than targeting an unserved or underserved population.

In addition, in my experience creating user communities and blogs in the past, I have found that very tight niches ("South Florida Artists for Peace") are much easier to gain traction than broad communities ("Worldwide Artists for Positive Change and Humanitarian Causes").

As for the nuts and bolts of creating the community, the good news is that there are many existing software platforms out there that make it much easier to get started, and good coders will know how to use them.

The bad news is that good coders can be hard to find -- there is definitely a shortage of engineering talent, and you will be competing against larger companies and funded startups for them.

But there is a silver lining: There are many software developers who are currently working as employees who are interested in co-founding a company. The question then arises of how to find one who likes your idea, recognizes the skills/connections you are bringing to the table, can brainstorm/collaborate on how to move the project forward, and finds the opportunity worth pursuing.

In my opinion, the co-founder has to be someone you can meet in person on a regular basis -- that's how trust gets built, and ideas can move forward much more quickly than by sending emails or relying on Skype. You can work your local networks, or start attending local entrepreneurial meetups (preferably technology-oriented events). If there are none in your area, try organizing one and bring in one or two speakers that startup founders would want to hear from (for instance, a local lawyer talking about LLC vs S-Corp formation, or someone who has founded a successful startup in the past).

Plan B would involve outsourcing all of the coding using Guru.com, Elance, or remote developers recommended to you by someone else. The problem with this approach, besides the cost, is working out the software specifications and deliverables can be very frustrating if you've never done it before. It's possible to find developers who can help walk you through the process, but even still the chance for misunderstandings and "scope creep" is very high -- another reason to find a technical co-founder.

I didn't get into the details of some of the software components that could be used to make such a site, but when I heard the idea I immediately thought of open-source content-management systems such as Joomla and Drupal, and authentication tools such as Facebook Connect and Twitter's xAuth/OAuth that would let people use their existing social media identities to authenticate/register and easily distribute the site's content and discussions elsewhere.

Rules for photography in public: The ACLU view

2011-09-22T00:11:00.002-04:00

The ACLU has a great page that explains what's allowed and what's not when it comes to taking photos and video in public places. It's an issue that's very important to anyone living in a free and open society, but is especially important now, considering nearly every mobile phone sold today has a digital camera buit in, and most of them can also take video (even my low-tech Nokia handset that came for free with my AT&T prepaid plan can shoot video, albeit at 128x96). The result is anyone with such a phone can photography anything or video any event that they happen to witness, whether it's mundane or extraordinary. Not everyone appreciates being photographed/videoed, however, and there is always a worry about getting in some sort of trouble for taking photographs. What are our rights?

The ACLU page lays it out very clearly. In terms of photography:

When in public spaces where you are lawfully present you have the right to photograph anything that is in plain view. That includes pictures of federal buildings, transportation facilities, and police. Such photography is a form of public oversight over the government and is important in a free society.

When you are on private property, the property owner may set rules about the taking of photographs. If you disobey the property owner's rules, they can order you off their property (and have you arrested for trespassing if you do not comply).

Police officers may not generally confiscate or demand to view your photographs or video without a warrant. If you are arrested, the contents of your phone may be scrutinized by the police, although their constitutional power to do so remains unsettled. In addition, it is possible that courts may approve the seizure of a camera in some circumstances if police have a reasonable, good-faith belief that it contains evidence of a crime by someone other than the police themselves (it is unsettled whether they still need a warrant to view them).

Police may not delete your photographs or video under any circumstances.

And:

If you are stopped or detained for taking photographs:

Always remain polite and never physically resist a police officer.

If stopped for photography, the right question to ask is, "am I free to go?"
If the officer says no, then you are being detained, something that under the law an officer cannot do without reasonable suspicion that you have or are about to commit a crime or are in the process of doing so. Until you ask to leave, your being stopped is considered voluntary under the law and is legal.
If you are detained, politely ask what crime you are suspected of committing, and remind the officer that taking photographs is your right under the First Amendment and does not constitute reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.

The underlined emphasis is mine. I was not aware of these issues until I read this page, and the phrase "Am I free to go?" is one worth remembering. Note also that not all officials (including police) understand the law when it comes to taking pictures in public places.

It's also worth remembering that public spaces include streets, parks, and many other exterior spaces. Further, these rights don't only apply to photographing police, but also anyone who happens to be in them. While someone may demand that you "put that camera down" or "stop taking pictures of me" and you are in a public space, you are legally within your rights to keep shooting -- although the polite thing to do may be different.

When it comes to shooting video, however, wiretapping laws have clouded the picture, and have been abused by police in Massachusetts and other states. Stories of people videoing an arrest on the street or even from their own property only to be arrested themselves have become disturbingly commonplace, and has a chilling effect on public behavior. There are signs the courts are coming around, but in the meantime reading the ACLU's take is helpful for understanding what's at stake:

With regards to videotaping, there is an important legal distinction between a visual photographic record (fully protected) and the audio portion of a videotape, which some states have tried to regulate under state wiretapping laws.

Such laws are generally intended to accomplish the important privacy-protecting goal of prohibiting audio "bugging" of private conversations. However, in nearly all cases audio recording the police is legal.

In states that allow recording with the consent of just one party to the conversation, you can tape your own interactions with officers without violating wiretap statutes (since you are one of the parties).

In situations where you are an observer but not a part of the conversation, or in states where all parties to a conversation must consent to taping, the legality of taping will depend on whether the state's prohibition on taping applies only when there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. But that is the case in nearly all states, and no state court has held that police officers performing their job in public have a reasonable expectation. The state of Illinois makes the recording illegal regardless of whether there is an expectation of privacy, but the ACLU of Illinois is challenging that statute in court as a violation of the First Amendment.

As for the question of whether it's OK to photograph or video the TSA, the answer is yes you can, as long as you are not interfering with the screening process or taking photos of their baggage scanner screens. Read the ACLU page for more information.

You may also be interested in some other blogging I've done, including:

Image: Protests in San Francisco, August 2011. Photo by flickr user tedeytan, posting here under the terms of the creative commons license used: Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0).

North Country: St. Lawrence County

2011-08-31T23:39:00.000-04:00

"North Country" is the upper tier of counties in New York state bordering Canada and including the northern part of the Adirondack Park. It's a very rural place, and very special. All the pictures below were taken in St. Lawrence County, ranging from abandoned farms in the town of Hammond to a Civil War re-enactment in Massena. Most of the water pictures were taken around Morristown, looking over to Brockville, Ontario, on the Canadian side of the river. I hope you can appreciate the great beauty here, and not just in the sunsets. I have a few additional notes at the bottom of the post, after the photos:

I've been coming here on a regular basis for most of my life, and have many relatives who live or summer in St. Lawrence county. Change is slow. Sometimes it mirrors what is happening elsewhere in America -- seemingly everyone has gotten a mobile phone, "for sale" signs are commonplace, and Wal-mart and national franchises dominate the retail landscape on the outskirts of Ogdensburg, Massena, and a few other small cities. But sometimes the change is unpredictable. In the 1990s, Amish started buying cheap farms in the North Country, and now they are ubiquitous. The influx has somewhat offset the downward trend in the locally born population, and have helped to reinvigorate the farming economy in St. Lawrence county.

Images: I am licensing the photos of St. Lawrence County under Creative Commons 3.0 CC-BY, which basically means you are free to copy them, place them on your own website, use them for commercial purposes, and adapt them, as long as you attribute them to Ian Lamont and link back to this post on ilamont.com.

The graphic of the North Country counties was uploaded to Wikipedia by Jondude11. I am reproducing it here under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, as described here.

Visualizing your professional LinkedIn networks

2011-08-28T22:22:00.002-04:00

This is cool. LinkedIn has developed a visualization for members' professional networks. I spotted an example on a blog that I was browsing, and was curious to see what turned up for me. I was kind of surprised by the results:

What's going on here? In a nutshell, my map reflects two major networks I am a part of: My MIT Sloan Fellows class (blue) and IDG Enterprise (orange).

The Sloan Fellows group of about 100 people are so connected with each other (i.e., nearly everyone is connected with everyone else in the group) that the lines between them form a nearly solid mass of blue. A few people on the outside of the blue mass are MIT students from other programs (e.g., the two-year Sloan MBA) who have a few connections with others in my class.

The orange network consists of former colleagues at IDG Enterprise -- mostly editors and technical staff but also some business executives. There are also many lines between them, but not nearly to the same degree as the Sloan Fellow network. That's because the IDGers are more likely to be connected to people in their own publications (Network World, Computerworld, The Industry Standard, etc.) and/or to people having similar roles (editors with editors, developers with developers, etc.). As I worked at three IDG publications and in many cross-functional teams from 1999 to 2010, I am pretty well connected across these groups.

There are some interesting small groups near the center of my galaxy. They aren't necessarily close to me; rather, it appears smaller networks (light orange, green, and magenta) or single connections (gray lines) are shown nearer to the center of the visualization. The colored networks include a group of a half-dozen people (green) I met at the State of Play conference in 2007 and connected with on LinkedIn immediately afterwards. I haven't had much contact with any of them since then.

Another group (magenta) consists of high school pals who I have had regular contact with over the years, but are barely noticeable on the map, owing to the fact there are only four of them. Actually, there should be five magenta dots, but one of the guys who is connected with me is not connected with any of the others, and therefore shows up as a single grey dot -- even though he happens to be one of my closest friends.

Not reflected at all is my extensive network in Taiwan, which I developed over a six-year period in the 1990s when I lived in Taipei. If it were visualized, it would have about 20-30 people with slightly less density than my IDG network. Why isn't it there? Two reasons that come to mind are the network predates LinkedIn by many years, and many of the people who I know from that period of life are Taiwanese and are therefore less likely to be LinkedIn users (social network usage in Taiwan evolved much differently than it did in the U.S. and other countries). While I have still connected with about a half-dozen people from my time in Taiwan, they show up as gray dots because I knew them from different settings (social, music, different jobs, etc.) and they are not connected with each other.

Nevertheless, it's an interesting visualization and makes me wonder if I need to develop other professional networks in new ways. You can try it out by visiting InMaps, which will require you to authenticate through your LinkedIn account.

How to become a good writer

2011-08-14T10:21:00.000-04:00

I have a one-word piece of advice for anyone who wants to learn how to write:

Blog.

Don't worry about which software to use, how to customize your template, or how to promote your thoughts. Just find a service that lets you start writing right away, and then start writing about what interests you or inspires you.

If you feel intimidated by formatting or structure, a trick that works well is pretend you are writing an email to a friend, explaining to that friend something that he or she may not understand very well. Real friends or strangers may start to read your posts. How do they respond to your presentation of facts, observations, and arguments? Use the feedback to tweak your approach.

Your organization and "voice" may seem awkward at first, but regular practice -- every day, if you can manage -- will help you develop your skills. After 100 hours you'll notice a big improvement. After 1000 hours, you will be well on your way to being a master.

Educational iPhone game development: Our experience with Egg Drop

2011-07-13T12:31:00.005-04:00

It's an exciting feeling to be a part of a team that creates something special. It's even more exciting when you see early users not only getting a kick out of the product, but asking to use it again and again.

That was our experience with Egg Drop on the iPhone, an educational game and our student team's final project for 11.127/252/CMS.590, Computer Games and Simulations for Education and Exploration (see also my post on an earlier student project from the same class, "A curriculum for learning computer programming in WoW"). Our assignment, which built on nearly three months of instruction, theory, readings, and other projects, was to design and produce a digital game that is playable for 15-20 minutes. "You should identify clear learning goals and map them onto game dynamics," we were told. To actually develop the game, it took about 24 days from the initial ideation sessions to the final presentation at class demo day.

There is a lot of flexibility in the term "digital game," and the half-dozen student teams in the class pursued all kinds of ideas. On demo day, we saw Terminus, a text-based adventure to teach terminal commands ("Zork meets terminal," was one way of describing it). Another student team created a PC game called Rocketmouse that taught children the fundamentals of gravity.

The class had a lot of Course 6 undergraduates, including some who had written games in the past. But the instructors (Eric Klopfer and Jason Haas) made an effort to balance out the teams with experienced programmers and people who couldn't program, but were able to handle other tasks.

Our team didn't go into the project thinking that we would make a mobile game. The ideation process started with the class brainstorming on potential learning topics; those ideas were put on a whiteboard and then people could choose which team they wanted to join. Inspired by a recent engineering documentary about the construction of a helipad on top of a wind-blown skyscraper, I suggested doing some sort of construction-based game that would teach basic architectural concepts. At the time, I was thinking of something on a PC or the Web, which would allow for a more sophisticated interface.

Alec, a Course VI classmate with whom I had worked on a “digital gates” board game earlier in the semester, was interested, along with a few other undergraduates. We discussed how to improve the concept. One of the first suggestions was to do it as an iPad game. The idea was to use a touch-screen interface to build a skyscraper, and then testing the strength of the construction with various environmental forces such as wind, earthquakes, and other disasters. Alec came up with a clever twist: How about turning the game into a variation of Angry Birds? Instead of being the birds trying to get at the pigs, the player would be the pig, trying to protect the egg from being knocked down, by building a strong-enough structure.

The “Reverse Angry Birds” proposal (also known as “Reverse Upset Avians”, or RUA) was put on a whiteboard with about a dozen other ideas. It got some votes from the class, and was chosen as a finalist project. Five people joined the team in all, and we started to refine the idea and discuss the practicalities of implementing them.

One decision that we had to make right away concerned the platform. While the iPad sounded promising, there was a problem: Aside from me, no one had an iPad, which would make life difficult for our developers when it came time to test the app. The iPhone seemed like a better idea, because:

Three of us had iPhones or an iPod touch
Three of us had Macs, which meant we could work in Xcode, Apple’s developer tool for the iOS SDK
Alec had experience developing games and developing on the iPhone platform, and was also familiar with a 2D game engine for the iPhone called cocos2D.

The team agreed that the iPhone/Xcode path was the way to go. Clearly, myself and the one other person who were not Course VI would be unable to build a game, but there was room for us to do “code-like” activities, ranging from building artwork and sound files to creating levels in XML. I was capable of doing those tasks (and had some prior experience with level design in our 6.898/Linked Data final project), and could do user testing/QA (I had two young subjects who were willing to pitch in, as described below).

In the proposal document submitted to our instructors, we described the game as follows:

Egg Drop is a physics-based game designed for the iOS platform that attempts to teach basic intuition of physics and stable structures.

Because it is an iOS game, the only way to play Egg Drop (barring a release on the Apple app store) is to download and compile the source. The source of the game is hosted publicly on Github and can be found at:

https://github.com/alect/Digital-Egg-Drop

Learning Goals:

Gain a rudimentary understanding of physics, construction and other principles involved in building structures

Learn strategies for building stable structures that can survive the elements.

Learn to use resources in an optimal way to meet construction goals.

Develop the hypothesize -> experiment -> redesign strategy of designing, which is a useful skill in many wider disciplines than construction. The flow of the game should lead the player to use this strategy inherently, and hopefully bring the strategy with them from the game.

Our plan was approved, and we got started on RUA. MIT has built up a culture around experimentation and prototyping and we all got to work pretty quickly. Alec was the lead developer, and took on tasks relating to integrating the physics engines, building the objects and resource manager, and creating a sound engine. He built a working prototype within a few days and uploaded it to github, which let those of us with Macs download it and try it out in Xcode’s iPhone simulator.

Another Course Sixer, Sarah, hadn’t used Xcode or Objective C before, but got up to speed very quickly. She was responsible for much of the final design as well as an in-game tutorial, which really helped make the game more appealing (you can see the tutorial in the gameplay video at the bottom of this post). She also created the system to import levels in XML format, which made it easy for me to do some age-appropriate level design and implementation on my own for our user testing -- before the XML engine was built, in order to alter levels during testing I had to change values in arrays and arguments in ResourceManager.mm. These changes were difficult to share with the rest of the team and prone to error, so Sarah’s work was very helpful. A third Course Six concentrator, Stephen, didn’t have a Mac (a requirement for Xcode) but worked on artwork, sound files, and documentation. The other member of the team worked on level design.

The game evolved from our original vision of creating a variation of Angry Birds. Creating the gameplay and artwork for the pigs and birds would have been extremely difficult and time-consuming (we only had a few weeks before demo day on May 10). We settled for a slimmed-down version of the game in which the goal was to build a structure that would protect a single egg from an onslaught of natural disasters at the end of each round. For instance, the kid-friendly level #3 used the following XML as inputs:

On the screen of the iPhone simulator, this translated to an egg resting on the plain at the start of the game (posx and posy describe its starting position). The player could place, in order, two vertical wooden planks, a horizontal straw block, and a horizontal brick, before the disaster (a meteor falling from the sky, directly on top of the egg) occurred. The only way to survive: Placing the two vertical wooden planks next to the egg and the horizontal brick resting on top of the plank, over the egg. Any other combination resulted in the egg breaking and “game over” for the player.

As the game evolved, we dropped “Reverse Upset Avians” and started calling it EggDrop. It was an instant hit with my kids, even before we had meteors and earthquakes. The simple physics of placing planks around the egg was entertaining enough in sandbox mode (see screenshots, below). But when better artwork, different building materials, nails and other elements were added, it was addictive. My younger child in particular would ask to play it when he came from school, and after I came home from a long international trip, one of the first things he asked to do was play the game on the iPhone simulator.

One interesting element of game design that came up with the Egg Drop project was the target audience. I thought we should really be clear who we were targeting at the outset. Segmentation and “Total Addressable Market” exercises are part and parcel of the Sloan way in classes such as New Enterprises. But we ended up taking a much more flexible approach, as described in our proposal:

“One advantage of iOS and other touch devices is that they support a very wide age range. We hope the game will be playable by children as young as five or six while still being entertaining to adults. Young children will most likely reap the most benefit from the educational concepts the game presents. In addition, we found that we could cater levels to fit different age ranges, making the game customizable for all learning levels.”

While age customization was possible, for the purposes of testing we only had two versions: One for us and college-aged friends, and a simpler version for younger elementary school students. I worked extensively on the kid version, and developed new age-appropriate levels based on regular user testing. Here are a few excerpts from my user testing diary, which was submitted as part of our final project:

4/30/11

The kids had a fun time with a modified version of alect-Digital-Egg-Drop-3357c7c (I added about 30 extra block and nail objects, so they could play longer). They definitely get the nailing aspect of the construction, and used it to protect their egg almost immediately.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

5/4/11

Tested alect-Digital-Egg-Drop-9f0fc79 on my son. This was the first time he had seen the disasters, which he really enjoyed (especially the earthquake, which sometimes sends blocks flying).

I was also surprised to see that he right away figured out the solution to the wind disaster (nailing something to the floor) which vexed me when I saw it the first time.

He also used extensive experimentation to try to solve all of the problems he observed. For instance, for the earthquake, he tried positioning the blocks close to and further away from the egg, nailing different size blocks to the floor, etc. He gave up after 4-5 unsuccessful tries, at which point I showed him how to do it. Then he played to the end (two tall planks).

He noticed and liked the new egg [artwork].

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

5/6/11

Played build alect-Digital-Egg-Drop-d3eb420, which has some memory issues that Alec addressed. However, we noticed a bug after the second level that prevented us from going to the third level -- the level up button didn't respond on the emulator.

The gameplay is fun, and as a proof of concept it is good, but I wonder if the learning couldn't be more robust. Maybe if we had more time ...

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

5/9/11

Building out levels in XML. I am using Google Docs spreadsheet to track the progressive difficulty of the challenges, and using my own judgement and gameplay to see how they work.

The advantage of using oneself for testing is I can quickly rearrange the blocks or disasters, reinsert them into ResourceManager.mm, and play the new version on the emulator.

I am going to try to introduce it to my son tomorrow morning ... I unfortunately won't see him for the rest of the day.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

5/10/11

My son hadn't seen the new designs, so he was very happy to see the artwork. He also liked the meteor, cushion blocks, and the idea of the termites. He got up to speed pretty quickly on the simple progressive levels I set up for him. On the quake level, which requires surrounding the egg with cushions and nailing them together in a certain way, he couldn't solve it, and took an interesting area of experimentation that I hadn't considered -- reinforcing the cushions with wood braces.

The other thing that I am conscious of is the game really has to be customized to age/ability. What appealed to him as a 6-year-old wouldn't appeal to older players.

One thing that’s worth mentioning about the testing is I didn’t need to pressure my kids to help out. Both of them love games. My son has probably tried a few dozen age-appropriate titles on my iPod touch, and regularly returns to the ones that are most entertaining. It was clear that Egg Drop fell into the same league as favorite games such as Angry Birds, Cro-Mag, Fruit Ninja, and the Simpsons game. He simply couldn’t get enough of Egg Drop, even during the early builds when the game was still rough around the edges. Here’s a video of him trying out an early version, about one week into the development process:

Beyond the experience of working on iOS game design, there were several other takeaways from the project. One was being able to participate in a rapid prototyping process integrated with user testing. This combination is held up as an ideal at MIT and elsewhere, but getting the right team and the right testers in place can be difficult. Before coming to MIT, I worked in Web media for years. Even on those rare occasions when my employers had adequate engineering resources in place to develop new products, testing was usually handled in-house and at a very late stage. Sometimes this was because testing was not considered a crucial part of the product development process, but at other times it was difficult to find actual users or the product had to be kept under wraps out of fear of premature leaks or tipping off the competition.

For Egg Drop, not only was the team technologically top-heavy (three out of five were programmers), but we had access to real users in our target audience, which let us observe gameplay, hangups, and other aspects of the user experience. This feedback loop led to better gameplay and helped us eliminate speed bumps and outright bugs at a relatively early stage.

A second takeaway related to gameplay theory. While the Egg Drop project was focused on real gameplay issues and the practicalities of developing a game for a mobile device, I did find myself looking back to some of the research that we had studied in class earlier in the semester, in particular the readings from James Paul Gee. He articulated a lot of modern thinking about models, video games, and learning in his 2008 paper, Learning and Games (e.g., “Video games offer people experiences in a virtual world ... and they use learning, problem solving, and mastery for engagement and pleasure”). His “situated learning matrix” for understanding how context-based learning in games can be applied to the world at large was described in terms of first-person shooters in 3D worlds. But one can see how a modeling experience in a 2D world like Egg Drop (such as my son’s experimentation with reinforcing braces that I observed in the user testing diary) might also be internalized, generalized, and applied to other situations, even if protecting eggs from meteors never figures into his daily life. This ties back to our proposal to "develop the hypothesize -> experiment -> redesign strategy of designing, which is a useful skill in many wider disciplines than construction."

Gee introduced another interesting concept in What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. The concept of “Semiotic Domains,” as it applies to video games, basically says that players will find it easier to transition to new scenarios that have similarities to old scenarios they have already encountered. In terms of gameplay, this not only helps explain the continued popularity of RPGs, "shooters," and other genres, but also how specific features work for some gamers and not for others. For instance, my son was already familiar with the iPod touch and physics-based games such as Ragdoll Blaster and Angry Birds, which made it easy for him to get into Egg Drop. However, he was perplexed by the preview of the next object in the upper right corner of the screen. This convention dates from 80s-era games like Tetris, which he had never tried. He therefore applied his own gaming experiences to Egg Drop, and attempted to drag the preview pieces onto the playing area (this can be seen in the video of game testing, above). In a commercial development project, such an observation among many early testers might be a cue to re-evaluate that feature.

A third takeaway from the Egg Drop concerned the design of the game, not only as it relates to gameplay, but also the artwork used in the game. While the cocos2D physics were slick, the graphic elements were very simple (I should know -- I made the bricks and a few other elements using Preview in OS X). But to our young testers, it didn’t matter. The game art was enough to convey the concept, and the gameplay was addictive.

Fourth takeaway: As our instructors mentioned at one point late in the semester, sandbox mode can really work for younger players. I saw proof with my testers on the first few builds, before Alec had integrated the disasters and win states for levels. In the proto-Egg Drop, it was possible to drop a practically unlimited number of horizontal planks around the egg, but there were no disasters or special materials to work with. It didn’t matter. The kids simply liked the physics of the game, which allowed them to fill up the screen and sometimes model strange situations, such as a mountain of planks for the egg to roll down. I have many screenshots from early versions that show the playing area filled with planks:

Now the reality check: The analysis and observations above are based upon an extremely small userbase playing with test versions of the game. The ultimate excitement for Egg Drop would be refining it and releasing it to the wild, to see how a much larger population of players reacts. Of course, “refining it” would involve not only working on some of the issues identified earlier (level design, artwork, etc.) but also considering the original educational vision of the game -- teaching concepts related to construction and physics. We were not able to do enough basic research around how kids might best learn such concepts, which is unfortunate, because I believe the game is a marvelous vehicle for learning. But this also leads to the question of how to balance desired learning outcomes with gameplay. More experimentation would be required.

In the meantime, here’s a video of the gameplay and design, based on the final build in mid-May:

If you are interested in finding out more about the class, take a look at the course website. You may also be interested in reading about another mobile educational game development project I worked on in Linked Data (6.898) last year. More posts and videos relating to my MIT experience are listed below:

Buttons won't solve the fundamental flaws of Wikipedia's editing policy

2011-07-04T16:13:00.003-04:00

Wikipedia is rolling out a new tool called "WikiLove Buttons." The experiment, as explained by Howie Fung, Erik Moeller, and other top editors, is a weak response to a rather significant problem: Ordinary people ("new editors") don't like being shut out of articles, and when their edits are removed (or even savagely put down by experienced editors) they are less likely to want to contribute again. This undermines the crowdsourcing mission upon which Wikipedia was founded, and erodes quality. Unfortunately for Wikimedia, Inc. and its hundreds of millions of users, this roundabout way of showing appreciation for newbie edits by using a love button won't solve the problem of condescending uber-editors putting down perfectly good edits based on misguided policies, poor/incomplete understanding of topic issues, or inflated ego.

Ordinarily I wouldn't bother writing about this, but what prompted me to was the ReadWriteWeb review of the love button by Marshall Kirkpatrick. I generally like Kirkpatrick's writing but I really dislike when Wikipedia is unquestionably held up as a reliable source of information -- especially by people who speak with authority. While it can be considered a starting place for basic facts, it's hardly a reliable or complete source of information, as I described in my comment left at the bottom of the RWW article:

Disagree with the statement that Wikipedia is an "undeniably good source of information on almost any topic." For some topics, yes. But many others are flawed.

For instance, articles about famous living people are often sanitized by their handlers or supporters. Non-Western topics on English-language Wikipedia are shallow and/or unable to cite primary and secondary sources in other languages. Wikipedia editors do not view blogs as reliable sources, even if the authors are experts in said topic. And attempting to correct mistakes or add information to certain articles often brings up an array of badges, warnings, and restrictions that make it practically impossible for "the crowd" to edit.

As for the new feature, the love icons seem to be designed in a way that they make browsing and contributing more difficult. This may make things better for "top nerds at Wikipedia" but I doubt it will lead to a better product or experience for the rest of us.

GI Bill benefits exploited by for-profit and online colleges

2011-06-29T01:34:00.012-04:00

(Update: Someone writing from the University of Phoenix's corporate parent attempted to post an anonymous comment. Scroll to the end for details) I knew that the multibillion dollar for-profit college industry had some ethical failings (see "ACICS accreditation and for-profit education: What's at stake"), but this takes the cake. According to Frontline's "Educating Sergeant Pantzke" (scroll down to see the video), the ways in which for-profit and mostly online colleges such as Westwood, University of Phoenix, Kaplan University, Gibbs College, DeVry University, Ashford University, and Art Institutes are exploiting military vets are absolutely shameful -- and motivated by a desire to scoop up billions in generous GI Bill benefits for veterans. The vets have served their country, and want to use the educational benefit to get a solid education and a good job following their service. However, the online degrees provide questionable educational value and Frontline found that hiring managers look down on them. In other words, it's a scam -- and taxpayers are paying for it. A few low points in the report:

An Army vet who attended Gibbs College (owned by Career Education Corporation) to study computer animation was promised that the college had connections had connections with the biggest Hollywood studios, including Pixar. The student claims Gibbs never provided proper computer animation training. He blew his GI Bill benefit (which you can apparently only spend on one institution) and took out tens of thousands of dollars in private student loans before realizing his education was useless. His conclusion: "Honestly, I'll regret going to college for the rest of my life."

Another combat veteran, Sergeant Pantzke (pictured) wanted to study photography and was sucked in by the Art Institute's pitch. He was accepted as soon as he filled out the school's online form to inquire about the online bachelor's program. Despite having PTSD, he was promised full support to help him with his studies, which he never received (according to Daniel Golden, an investigative journalist who interviewed him for Bloomberg, "He had preserved a string of e-mails between himself and officials at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, and included in those e-mails were several in which he had asked for help. He had asked for face-to-face tutoring; he had asked for simplified homework assignments. And they had told him that they wouldn't make those accommodations for him"). The school took $70,000 of his GI Bill money, then flunked him.
At these rates, soldiers are paying more for their education than a single year's tuition at Harvard Business School. Why are the for-profit, mostly online colleges schools so expensive? According to BusinessWeek, "American Military University, [University of] Phoenix, and closely held Grantham charge $250 a credit, or $750 a course, which allows them to receive the maximum reimbursed by U.S. taxpayers without service members having to pay any out-of-pocket tuition." By comparison, "Publicly funded community colleges offer classes on military bases for as little as $50 a credit."
Golden also recounted the tale of an ~~unnamed~~ for-profit college (turns out it's Ashford University) that sent a female recruiter to the Wounded Warriors barracks in Camp Lejeune in North Carolina to sign up brain-injured Marines.
Ashford University (remember them?) has 9,000 current or ex-military students, and uses vets for recruiting. Two former recruiters spoke on-screen to Frontline and said they can help establish a rapport with prospective students and convince them to enroll.
Westwood College recruiters lie about job prospects to potential students: On one recording of a phone conversation provided to Frontline, the recruiter told a prospect "Right out of the box you have the ability to make between $72 and $82 thousand dollars."
How much do University of Phoenix and other graduates of for-profit colleges really make? The answer, according to survey data from PayScale cited by Frontline, is military graduates earn 12-15% less at for-profit colleges compared to military graduates of public state schools. The salary levels shown on screen look to be in the $30,000 to $45,000 range.
Ted Daywalt of VetJobs was even more blunt about the prospects for graduates of for-profit schools, and said online degrees have a poor reputation in industry. The Navy vet said he talked with 30 HR managers and asked if they were presented with two job candidate with similar work backgrounds, but one graduated from an online school, and one from a well-known "brick and mortar school," which would they choose? All of the HR managers would choose the brick and mortar school, he said.
The for-profits have done a skillful job of gaming online search results and Web pages that curious vets might look at. For instance, GIBill.com only directs students to for-profit colleges. I looked them up on the site -- the choices are American Military University (owned by American Public Education, Inc.), Strayer University (owned by Strayer Education, Inc.), Ultimate Medical Academy Online, Grantham University, Virginia College (owned by Education Corporation of America), Walden University (owned by Laureate Education), Kaplan University (operated by Iowa College Acquisition Corporation, which is owned by Kaplan Inc., which is in turn owned by the Washington Post), DeVry University (owned by DeVry Inc.), University of Phoenix (owned by Apollo Group), Ashford University (owned by Bridgeport Education), Capella University (owned by Capella Education Co.), Westwood College (owned by Alta Colleges), Art Institutes (owned by Education Management Corporation), and Full Sail University.
According to the Veterans Administration, graduation rates at private for-profits stand at 28%, half the rate for public colleges.
Even if students realize their mistake and try to leave the online and for-profit programs for a public brick-and-mortar school, they won't be able to start their GI benefits at a new school. Even worse, the credits don't always transfer, either because there is no comparable coursework at the state school or community college, or the for-profit school is nationally accredited (see my post on regional accreditation vs national accreditation).

There's more in the Frontline documentary, which you can watch below. It's only about 20 minutes long. I also urge you to watch Frontline's "College Inc." and read some of the other blog posts I've written about the University of Phoenix, online math classes, and distance education, which are listed below the video (scroll down to the bottom of the page).

Watch the full episode. See more FRONTLINE.

Update: Someone attempted to leave a comment on the site stating the Frontline report is "misleading" and claiming that certain for-profit colleges "like University of Phoenix" are different, specifically when it comes to transferring credits. However, there are some notable examples of schools that do not accept UoP transfer credits ("CIT does not accept courses from the University of Phoenix", "the University of Phoenix is not an accredited institution"). The author was anonymous, but when I checked out my web logs, what did I see? It turned out that the comment was left by someone from UoP's corporate parent, Apollo Group (see screenshot below, which shows the origin of the comment).

I don't mind if executives from for-profit schools leave comments on my blog, but they must clearly identify their association -- or the comment will be rejected and I will expose the incident. It's happened before, as this bizarre attempt at astroturfing or ridiculing UoP students (apparently by another UoP employee) shows.

For further reading about online education and for-profit colleges, I would suggest the following posts:

WorldTV

2011-06-27T01:12:00.005-04:00

One of the more interesting class projects I took part in during my last semester at MIT was the final deliverable for MAS 571 ("Social TV: Creating New Connected Media Experiences"). The project was called WorldTV, and with my team (Jungmoo Park, MBA '11, and Giacomo Summa, MSMS '11), we created a pretty slick video demonstration of the proposed software UI. The video was shown at the MAS 571 demo day at the Media Lab (you can watch it below) and we wrote an accompanying concept paper that we are in the process of preparing for an IEEE CCNC workshop. In the following post, I'll describe not only what WorldTV is, but its genus and some of the reaction we've received so far.

WorldTV is a television app and accompanying mobile app for browsing user-generated video from one's social circle, as well as event video produced by strangers that tie into one's news and cultural interests. Instead of using traditional browsing methods -- scrolling through channels or searching for videos -- the proposed service uses a 3D globe as a navigational tool. WorldTV is aimed at people with global networks, which might include people with friends, relatives, and colleagues from other countries; people who spend a fair amount of time travelling; or people who are interested in news or culture in other countries.

The concept had great appeal to the entire team, not only because of our backgrounds (Giacomo is from Italy, Jungmoo is from Korea, and I spent most of the 1990s living overseas) but also because all of us have observed the exponential growth of user-generated video and realize its power and appeal to ordinary people. In 2006, I wrote about the potential of geotagged, time-stamped online photos to give insights into local events. I expanded the idea to include tweets and user-generated video in a proposal for my Linked Data Ventures class called PPP (PixPeoplePlaces). When I began the Social TV class, I took the PPP concept even further with user-generated video, emphasizing the social aspect of plotting event video on a local map (this was the basis of my first assignment for Social TV -- you can see the poster here).

I envisioned all of these ideas as Web apps displayed on a computer monitor. For one of the early poster sessions for the Social TV class, Giacomo independently came up with a different approach. He asked, why not use a full-sized television screen to display a map of the entire earth with hot spots that reflected breaking hard news events that might be captured by amateur shooters? (This happened as anti-authoritarian demonstrations were breaking out across the Middle East in early 2011). Instead of being a "Lean Forward" experience (something that requires user input or interaction, such as a video game) this would be a "Lean Back" experience, in which the viewer could sit on the couch and take in the video. Giacomo also considered how video could be differentiated on the global map with different sized or colored markers, and how "likes", social networks, or newspaper articles could determine what appeared on the screen. He called it "WorldTV".

There was clearly some overlap between our ideas, and we decided to team up for the final project. We expanded the concept to include not only video from breaking news in other countries, but also cultural events (festivals, parades) and entertainment (sports, performances, etc.). The social filter would not only display streaming/recent videos from one's social circle, but could also reflect the collective interests of the social circle.

An additional requirement for the final project was a business model. I had already been thinking about using phone and laptop cameras as a way for ordinary people to access amateur expertise all over the globe, for a price. Examples of amateur expertise might be a power user demonstrating how to use a new gadget, advice on registering a company in a certain state by an experienced business owner, practicing foreign language conversation with a native speaker, etc. I dubbed the scheme Real Time Requests. (RTR). A live auction and reputation system would determine prices paid by people seeking expertise, and match them up with sellers. We decided to fold it into the proposal. The idea was then debuted at another MAS 571 poster session in April:

Jungmoo, who had a background as a professional television reporter for a Korean broadcaster, was intrigued by our poster session presentation and joined the team. Our next task was to take the concept and make a demo to show at demo day at the MIT Media Lab in the last week of class in May. For the final deliverable, we didn't have the skills to produce a working prototype. However, we did have the skills to produce a software mockup and accompanying video demo.

The team got to work. I created a simple WorldTV television UI using HTML and CSS, built the maps with Google Earth, and mocked up a mobile UX on an iPhone "remote". Giacomo wrote the script and starred in the video. Jungmoo took the raw video and graphics and used his professional editing skills to create a really slick video demo, which is shown below:

We presented the video and an accompanying slideshow on the business model last month at the Media Lab. Our Media Lab instructors, Marie-José Montpetit and Henry Holtzman, invited a group of industry pros from major cable and national broadcasters (including NBC and WGBH) to watch all six student presentations. After seeing our team present, one of the NBC visitors was interested in the idea of "shared experiences." Giacomo explained that user-generated video around sporting events and concerts could populate the global view, depending on how one's filters were set up. This prompted another executive, who I believed was from HBO, to question the legality of using amateur concert video. I responded that copyright law was decades behind the technological and social reality, but she was skeptical. I then said that there would always be artists who want to exercise strong control over this content, but there were also many artists who recognized the value of fan content to generate additional interest or loyalty, and in my opinion, the latter group would have a competitive advantage. But as I thought about it later, it was clear that addressing the entertainment industry's copyright concerns would be a huge issue, regardless of how outdated the laws are.

Our team also heard from Henry, who thought the Real Time Requests business model was really a separate concept that did not match WorldTV. We agreed. Jungmoo and Giacomo had actually raised the same concern in our planning discussions, but I felt we needed a business model that did not involve standard subscriptions. Henry noted that a subscription might actually work for some people.

So what's next for WorldTV? All members of the team have graduated, and none of the industry visitors seemed interested in taking it further. We hope, however, that if our paper is accepted to the IEEE CCNC '12 conference, it might get some traction. In the draft that we are now preparing, I outlined the "Future Work" required to make WorldTV a reality:

The next steps for WorldTV would be to create a working prototype using Google Earth, YouTube and Facebook APIs, the Android or iPhone SDKs, and other existing software and hardware components. Besides using the prototype to evaluate functionality and performance, ordinary users in the target audience (people having global networks) could also test the system with an eye toward determining which features and use cases hold the most promise. When the product is ready for wider distribution, identifying suitable “TV App” platforms and partnerships could take place. In the long run, creating a scalable architecture with its own API and opening up WorldTV to outside developers (much like Facebook and Twitter have done) would help unleash the greatest potential of the platform. This would require significant investments, but in the long run would help realize innovations for the next age of television.

If the paper is published, I will share a link on this space. In addition, if anyone is interested in learning more or helping to develop the idea, my contact information can be found here.

More posts about my MIT experience:

Why new data visualizations fail to catch on

2011-06-08T11:22:00.002-04:00

Eric Hill, a buddy of mine from my old Industry Standard days, sent me a link to a RWW article about a cool new iPad application from Bloom Studio that comes up with an interesting way of visualizing a digital music collection. The app is called Planetary, and here's what it looks like:

Planetary (voiceover) from Bloom Studio, Inc. on Vimeo.

I was impressed with what they've done, but I am afraid it won't go far in the marketplace. At one time I had so much hope for data visualizations changing the way we browse and understand information -- in fact, Eric and I spent a lot of time discussing how Industry Standard site content (news and prediction market data) could be presented in new and potentially useful ways. But in the past several years, after checking out dozens of new interfaces and data visualization schemes, I've come to the conclusion that most will never catch on.

It's not the fault of the designers, but rather the limitations of audiences. For many consumers, simple formats (e.g., longitudinal line graphs, like the inset image of the US$/Euro exchange rate over the past three months) and plain ol' headlines are all they need. I think part of the problem is grokking a new visualization requires new mental models. In my opinion, most people simply aren't willing to expend the effort, especially considering the huge amounts of information out there and limited time that people have to consume it. I've seen so many interesting, creative visualizations out there but most never make it in the marketplace. Planetary is cool, but is a solar system/galactic metaphor for browsing music inherently better than an alphabetically ordered list of artists/albums/songs?

See also:

Want to buy an iPad in Malaysia?

2011-05-19T10:40:00.002-04:00

Good luck. Local supplies are hard to come by, judging by the display in this pseudo-Apple Store in the mall below the Petronas Twin Towers.

A curriculum in computer programming, reviewed

2011-05-01T10:42:00.009-04:00

You may remember the class exercise for CMS.863J (Computer Games and Simulations for Investigation and Education, taught by Eric Klopfer and Jason Haas) in which our student team created a curriculum for teaching basic computer science concepts and programming skills in World of Warcraft. In late April, an NYU class completed their review of the curriculum and let us know where it was strong, and where it was lacking. Here’s what they had to say:

So our class just finished reviewing several of your curricula to be used within the World of Warcraft environment. We like your concept of teaching computer programming through a process similar to learning gameplay. Your rationale is definitely solid.

You also chose and defined very specific learning objectives. From the perspective of a fellow programmer, these are basic concepts in computer programming that computer science learners would need to know.

Several times in your curriculum, you do a nice job at incorporating built-in functions into the lesson plan, which in turn facilitates better gameplay for the student. This could be a major draw for already experienced WoW players who are looking for ways to improve. What about someone who has less experience/interest in the game?

This brings up a possible limitation with your curriculum: whom do you expect to take your class? You mentioned that young people in general are interested in video games, but it is a specific player that is interested in WoW. Although a learning environment like the one you designed has obvious appeal to those already interested in WoW, those who are not interested in this game might have no motivation to improve their gameplay and therefore learn built-in functions or other commands. It would help if you were more specific when identifying your learner. Then once your learner is defined, do they have the necessary motivation or prior knowledge to complete this curriculum? If not, what kinds of support can you provide to make this learning task intrinsically motivating?

Now from the perspective of an educator, although you have clearly outlined specific learning tasks, your plan on implementing these tasks into a formal learning environment is rather vague. As of now, instructions for your teacher include “ask the students to do…” which is left as is for a lesson plan is not very dynamic. Perhaps you could incorporate actual quests/goals of the game to the lesson objectives. For example, it’s great that you teach certain programming objectives that indirectly teach the player certain built-in functions (e.g. item info, total worth of items in your bag, etc). Wouldn’t it be more motivating if you chose a quest in which knowing what you have in your bag or the price of copper, etc. and being able to pull that information up quickly serves as an obvious advantage in gameplay.

One suggestion is playing on the social aspect of the WoW. It’s unfortunate that the printed scripts only are visible to the individual player. Wouldn’t it be cool if a script your published resulted in actual interchange between players? Or just have another player react to your printed commands? Obviously you are most likely limited by the API or programming language in what a learner can actually change in the WoW environment, but what we want to emphasize is more exercises that result in direct feedback from the printed commands.

After seeing these comments, I totally agree that we missed an opportunity to create a dynamic learning experience with better instructions for teachers and in-world exercises for students. However, regarding the comment about learners who may not have interest in the game, I felt that the boundaries of the assignment were limiting. We were told to create a curriculum around concepts that had to be taught in a classroom environment, using WoW specifically. The fact that some students may have no interest in playing wasn’t something that we had much flexibility to work around, any more than a high school science teacher has flexibility to work around the requirements of using test tubes and Bunsen burners to teach bored students the fundamentals of chemistry. Ideally, a teacher will be able to use the required tools in a way that generates interest and good learning outcomes.

In summary, I think a game like WoW is better than traditional textbooks for engaging students. Besides the fact that almost all college-aged students are familiar with video games, the ability of WoW to allow social interaction, team activities, rewards for better play, and an environment for experimentation makes it a tool that is well-suited for teaching computer programming and other topics. I agree, however, that the curriculum we designed needs better exercises to engage unmotivated students and make the overall learning outcomes better for students and teachers alike.

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Spark Capital investor on Twitter: "Depending on what day it is, they’re profitable"

2011-04-25T00:38:00.018-04:00

On April 13, Todd Dagres of Spark Capital came to speak at our New Enterprises class. Todd is a former instructor of the class, and an established venture capitalist -- his VC bio lists Akamai and a host of investments in other networking companies dating back to the 1990s. He is also one of the much-lauded early investors in Twitter, and after his presentation, he fielded questions from the class. I raised my hand, and popped two questions that I thought were relevant to the discussion about building a profitable enterprise (our assignment that week was a go-to-market strategy for our own business ideas): I asked Todd how the Twitter team sold him on the costs and the revenue potential, and whether or not the company was profitable.

Todd responded:

“The second question I can’t answer. I can say that ... let’s put it this way: Depending on what day it is, they’re profitable. So they’re generating lots of revenue (see, that’s the revenue right there). And depending on how much comes in that day, they can be profitable. So they are monetizing, put it that way.

As far as, did they have a plan? Absolutely. They had a plan that said, 'we're going to grow subscribers, we're going to monetize subscribers.' So they had a plausible plan. By the time we invested, they had decent momentum. They had under ... (trails off)

When we invested, by the way, you’ve got to understand. It’s not like it is now. Back then when we invested, Facebook was a fraction of what it is now. Zuckerberg had yet to be on the cover of a magazine, and Twitter, had, probably when we invested, 600,000 subscribers. Which if you look at it , 600,000 subscribers, that’s a lot. 'Why did you wait until they had 600,000 subscribers?' Back then, it wasn’t as obvious as it is now that you can monetize the subscribers.

When we made the Twitter investment, there were articles in the press that outnumbered the other articles in the press, relative to social networking. And basically what the articles said on the negative side, is 'social networking advertising CPMs suck.' And I even saw one table that said, 'here is the CPM hierarchy.' And down at the bottom, along with the nastiest stuff you can imagine, was social networking advertising CPMs. And the reason given was, 'you have no idea what people care about on social networks. But if they go to a car site, ho ho ho!’

So cars, financial services, things like that had the highest, high tech blogs and magazines and things like that had the highest CPMs, and way down at the bottom was social networking because no one could understand why advertisers would advertise against social networking, ‘you never know what you are going to get.’ Someone talks about what they did last night, 'who cares, who would ever care about that?' But as we know now, Facebook knows a lot about you, and they can target ads against you, better than probably Google can. All of a sudden, social networking CPMs have gone way up, and it’s pretty obvious. ... (trails off)"

I wasn't able to ask a follow-up question, but there are problems with some of the arguments he used to defend Twitter and its revenue potential:

Facebook may know a lot about its users, but Twitter does not. Real names and other demographic data are not required for registration. Many people on Twitter deliberately obscure their identities.
Facebook CPMs may be higher, but not by much, and surely not approaching the levels that I see Federated Media charging vendors to post display advertising in its network of online publishers (food blogs currently command $5-$12 CPMs, and Business Insider gets >$20 for display advertising). In my own small advertising tests using Facebook's self-serve advertising platforms, I paid for $0.14 CPMs in February 2010 and $0.20 CPMs in April 2011.
If it wasn't obvious back in 2006 or 2007 that it was possible to monetize Twitter's subscribers, why invest in the company?
Regarding the claim that "depending on how much comes in that day, they can be profitable": Such a defense would never be accepted by the current instructors for New Enterprises (Bill Aulet and Howard Anderson) for our class projects. It's also the sort of thinking that got lots of people in trouble in the late 1990s. Private market trading has valued Twitter at close to $8 billion, not based on real earnings or a plausible business model, but rather the premise that the people behind Twitter will somehow figure out a way to make it work. They haven't so far.

The unsaid argument for investing in Twitter was never mentioned by Todd, and indeed is seldom mentioned in the classes we have on building innovative businesses: A VC's primary responsibility -- or, should I say, fiduciary duty -- is to produce returns for their funds. If the exit is tied to actual revenue or profitability of their portfolio companies, that's great. But if not, who cares, as long as the exit is for a comfortable multiple of the initial investment?

As we have seen many times throughout history with everything from tulip bulbs to dot-coms selling bags of dog food, if enough people think that a popular product or service will be The Next Big Thing, a bevy of dreamers, flippers, and suckers will surely come a-running. Of course, the problem with the sale of unprofitable companies at logic-defying valuations is someone will end up getting burned. While the party is still going, however, no one wants to hear the sour notes. In Twitter's case, its status as a game-changing platform creates value on a different dimension for partners in the ecosystem. But this value does not easily translate to revenue, which once again takes us back to the question of Twitter's long-term value to investors.

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Infinite Corridor Walkthrough

2011-04-23T21:15:00.007-04:00

You may have heard of it before: MIT's Infinite Corridor, which runs more than 800 feet from 77 Mass. Ave, through four or five buildings in the classic campus, before emptying into a large courtyard that overlooks the giant earth sciences building designed by I.M. Pei in the early 60s (It's also possible to continue east indoors through a connector to another long hallway that leads to the chemistry department and Ames Street, but that extension is not as fun as the Infinite Corridor).

The corridor has been used for physics experiments and to observe other phenomena (for example, MIThenge) but I find it to be a great place to see a cross-section of daily life at the institute, from student activities to working laboratories. For instance, walking eastward down the corridor through the war memorial room in building 10, I recently happened across some sort of gaming club that built steampunkish robots and dressed up as Japanese video game characters. Last week, on the way to the Stata Center for the Jason Pontin/Bill Joy talk, I noticed flashing signs over a room just off the eastern end of the corridor warning of laser testing inside. These are just a few examples of the things that always seem to be happening in and around the lengthy corridor.

The video I ended up shooting below shows a walker's view of the Infinite Corridor last Thursday afternoon, from 77 Mass Ave. to building 8 and a view of the earth science building. Total time: Just over 3 minutes:

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A curriculum for learning computer programming in WoW

2011-03-27T22:31:00.008-04:00

(Updated: See note at bottom of post) What can you learn from the MMORPG World of Warcraft? A lot, it turns out. This is one of my conclusions from taking CMS.863J -- Computer Games and Simulations for Investigation and Education, taught by Eric Klopfer and Jason Haas. It's one of the classes offered this semester by MIT's Comparative Media Studies department, and is also cross-listed under Course 11 (MIT's Urban Studies department). Aside from myself and one other graduate student, all of the other people taking the class undergraduates, many in Course 6.

As indicated by the name of the class, the curriculum centers around computer games and educational theory relating to games and learning. However, like every other media and entrepreneurship-focused class I have taken at MIT, there is also a heavy focus on creating and building (Mens Et Manus is the institute's motto). In February, after getting up to level 13 in World of Warcraft and conducting quests with classmates in-world, we split into teams with the mission of building a sample curriculum around a specific topic area, using WoW as the learning environment.

You may find it strange that a game like WoW can be used to study real-world topics, but there is actually a fairly long history of players using the virtual worlds to study or understand various phenomena. Edward Castronova's oft-cited 2001 paper on virtual world economies opened up a floodgate of research and academic discussion relating to massively multiplayer online games. Specific to World of Warcraft, the game has been used to study epidemiology, as well as topics related to learning. In 2008, a paper by Constance Steinkuehler and Sean Duncan in the Journal of Science Education and Technology studied scientific reasoning in thousands of WoW forum posts. They found that 86% of the posts contained "social knowledge construction," or "the collective development of understanding, often through joint problems solving and argumentation."

As expected, many of these posts consisted of discussions around certain classes of characters, spells, weapons, etc. However, 10% of the total posts studied used model-based reasoning, including mathematical models to explain some phenomenon. An example cited in the paper showed one player who apparently reverse-engineered damage algorithms in WoW to compare the abilities of priests vs. mages:

By intuition, you should notice a problem... but I’ll give you the numbers anyways

For Mindflay, SW:P, and presumpably VT [3 priest spells]: Damage = (base_spell_damage + modifier * damage_ gear) * darkness * weaving * shadowform * misery

For Frostbolt [mage spell] Average Damage = (base_spell_damage + (modifier + empowered frost) * damage_gear) * (1 * (1 - critrate - winter's chill - empowered frost) + (1.5 + ice shards) * (critrate + winter’s chill + empowered frost)) * piercing ice mindflay = (426 + 0.45 * dam) * 1.1 * 1.15 * 1.15 * 1.05

650.7 + 0.687 * dam

frostbolt = (530 + (0.814 + 0.10)*dam) * ((1 - crit - 0.10 - 0.05) + (1.5 + 0.5) * (crit + 0.10 + 0.05)) * 1.06

(530 + 0.914 * dam) * ((0.85 - crit) + 2 * (crit + 0.15)) * 1.06

0.968 * (dam + 579.7) * (crit + 1.15)
Please notice the 0.687 versus the 0.968. That's the scaling factor.

After students in our class had gotten the hang of WoW, there were discussions around how the game could be used to study trigonometry and group psychology. Our team, consisting of Andrew Hsiao and Michele Pratusevich (both course sixers) and myself, opted to use WoW as a platform for high school students to learn basic computer programming concepts, using a simple scripting language called Lua that can be run from within the WoW chatbox. Here's the curriculum that we developed:

Teaching Computer Science Through WoW Scripts

Michele and Andrew were the true domain experts here, and designed all four of the CS class exercises and most of the assessment. I concentrated on the introduction, theory section, and managed to create one of the assessment scripts (the simple currency exchange/variables exercise).

I personally believe the curriculum we designed is a very effective and engaging method for introducing basic computer science concepts to high school students. Once they've established a WoW player account and learned some of the basic game functionality, it's so easy to experiment with the code, and try new functions from the WoW API. Our instructor said the curricula that the student group developed will be passed to testers at NYU, but I don't know if we'll get any feedback on how our CS curriculum fared. If you are a teacher and try it, or are a solo learner who wants to study basic computer science concepts while playing WoW, please feel free to give it a spin and let me know how it works.

My next assignment for CMS.863J, with a different group: Creating a board game to teach fundamental electrical engineering concepts. You can see our test board here, and I'll try to post more information about the project as development progresses in April.

Update: An NYU class has reviewed our curriculum. Their comments can be seen on the post, "A curriculum for programming, reviewed"

Other posts about my MIT Sloan Fellows experience:

Image: World of Warcraft screenshot. Matt McCullough, flickr, cc-sa-by

Solutions for the academic/mass media divide

2011-03-19T11:16:00.001-04:00

"Why don't journalists link to primary sources?" The question was posed on Hacker News, and was based on a Guardian article lamenting sloppy reporting in the Daily Mail and Telegraph.

It prompted me to write the following response in the Hacker News thread:

If you asked most reporters whether they used primary sources, they would say yes, and point to the interviews that they conduct.

But if you were to point out that primary sources also includes published research, almost to a man or woman they would say A) they don't have the time to read it B) they don't have access to the journals or C) they are not aware the research exists. A few might concede D) even if they had access, they wouldn't be able to understand the research, which points to the fact that most journalists didn't major in science/technology in college and academic writing can be difficult to penetrate.

Of the above factors, I think C presents an opportunity for academics and startup publishers. On the academic side, it's pretty clear that the traditional method of reaching out to reporters via press releases and personal contacts is becoming less viable as newsrooms cut staff and the remaining writers have less time to network/talk with sources (travel budgets to attend conferences are very restricted these days) and write up stories based on those encounters.

Some researchers have seized upon blogging as a great way to not only reach their peers, but also a wider audience, and of course, other media (including journalists, specialist blogs, etc.). Group blogs written by researchers and experts are another great way to highlight new research and discuss ideas, too. Terra Nova ( http://terranova.blogs.com/ ) is one example focused on virtual worlds; I am sure the audience here knows of many others.

But the problem with individual and group blogs is they are still largely unknown outside of a relatively small group of people. In order to make a mass audience connection, there needs to be a way for these ideas to be presented in newspapers and television reports (which is how many people still learn about the world around them), or on media websites.

An arrangement to republish blog content or for the blog authors to prepare easy-to-understand summary reports for a mass media audience are possibilities, but the processes and incentives need to be worked out -- preferably in a way that takes the load off of editors, who don't have the time to find the right bloggers and deal with the freelance contracts and payment issues. One startup idea would be to create a "marketplace" to match publishers who are seeking an informed report about a specific scientific topic (for instance, how a boiled water reactor works). Another avenue for a startup would be to set up a "science wire service" which prepares timely, relevant coverage (including blogs, video, and features) about new research and developments every day. Media companies could subscribe to the service and editors could browse the service and use as much as they like, just as they do with Reuters, Bloomberg, AP, etc.

As for the specific issue of not including links, this partly relates to the awareness and access issues mentioned above, but also to the fact that content management systems used at many newspapers and magazines are optimized for print publishing, not online publishing. Inserting links typically has to be done *after* the article has been written, often by different editors or producers who know how to use Wordpress/Drupal/homegrown tools. I think there's a startup opportunity here as well, but unfortunately it also requires a rethinking of newsroom processes and control.

The debate reminded me of my "Source Blocks" idea from 2008. It never caught on, for the simple reason that most writers (including me) are too lazy to manually include them. But that could be an opportunity for another new media product ...

The challenges of creating a mobile educational app based on Linked Data

2011-03-16T01:27:00.004-04:00

Earlier this month, my iPod touch flashed a warning message that the provisioning profile on the test application our team (Sloan Fellow Mads, Course 6 undergraduate Yod, and myself) had designed for 6.898 in the fall was about to expire. Before it did, I decided to make a quick video showing the basic design and functionality of our educational app for the iPhone and other iOS devices:

Video: Knowton demonstrated:

While the app was ostensibly designed to teach young children geography facts, the purpose of building it was to show how Linked Data could be used to make an educational application on a mobile device. Mads' original concept was to have an open-ended exploratory app that would let children freely jump from one object to an associated fact. For instance, the child might be interested in a monkey, be able to see a picture and read some information about it, including the facts that it lives in a tree and likes to eat bananas. At that point, the child could either choose to learn about trees or fruit.

This idea is eminently suited to Linked Data, which is essentially a distributed, global-scale database built around Semantic Web standards such as RDF, turtle/N3 and SPARQL, shared definitions, and links between repositories. There is an enourmous collection of Semantic Web-based data already available, ranging from Wikipedia information to creative commons-licensed photos.

I suggested narrowing the focus to geography, as presenting facts about animals and their habitats could be tied to a specific learning outcome. I also designed a rudimentary user interface and flow (see wireframe below), which was eventually adopted for the exploration part of the app. Yod designed the basic game flow and built several code repositories, including the mobile app (using the iPhone SDK) and a Web app that let editors (us) submit information such as photos and descriptions. Mads devised a business plan.

In a perfect Semantic Web world, it wouldn't be necessary to have the Web app for editors, as SPARQL queries on consistently structured graphs could build the data store, with only a minimum of cleanup and selection (such as choosing the most suitable photos). But we quickly discovered that DBPedia, a popular source of country-level information for local fauna and landmarks, was incomplete. Freebase filled in many of the information gaps, but there were so many differences from country to country that the only practical way to tackle the task of preparing the data for the mobile app was by using the Web interface that Yod created. For geography and many animal photos, we used a source that one of the guest lecturers in class had mentioned, Ookaboo, which contained creative commons and public domain photos. Others were sourced from Flickrwrapper using a feature in Yod's Web application.

But for good "people" photos that could not be easily accessed in Flickrwrapper using basic search strings, I had to resort to finding creative commons-licensed (CC-SA) on Flickr itself and copy and paste URLs into the Web app. Even if we had been able to use Linked Data without the manual workarounds, there is no way we would have been able to run live queries from the mobile app -- not only are mobile network connections unreliable, but we discovered that many of the sites have high latency and/or frequent downtime (DBPedia especially!). As an alternative, Yod built a database that loaded onto the app and was instantly accessible by users.

On demo day on December 7, all of the 6.898 teams gathered in a CSAIL conference room at the Stata Center. Tim Berners-Lee and a group of outside judges watched our demos and listened to our business pitches. TBL's quick assessment of the projects is in the video at the bottom of this post, but we approached him afterwards to ask him about the curation problem. He suggested some AI alternatives. For instance, if Linked Data sources identified "China" as alternately being a country or a person, he said the app could choose the most suitable definition based on the number of returned sites in competing Google searches.

TBL asked about photos in Flickrwrapper. Could Flickr ratings be used to choose better-quality photos? Yod said no. TBL suggested that some geocoded logic could be used to get the best Big Ben photo. "Make sure it's 300 meters west at a certain time during the day," he said, and then joked: "But how can you be sure that it's not a photo with Aunt Jenny in the frame?" He speculated that an algorithm could help choose photos based on contrast or some other value.

Video: Tim Berners-Lee reviews the 6.898/Linked Data Ventures class projects (Knowton comments at 2:50)

Other posts about my MIT Sloan Fellows experience:

A robot for healthcare

2011-03-09T22:02:00.000-05:00

Demonstrated today in our Media Ventures class: Autom. The speaker is Cory Kidd, formerly of the Media Lab, now an entrepreneur based in Hong Kong, where software talent is cheaper and local government incentives are available (including free rent) to set up his business.

Other posts about my MIT Sloan Fellows experience: