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Chris Messina: I, for one, welcome our half-human, half-robot overlords in the cloud

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 01:45:00 GMT

I suppose every now and then you run up against some kind of technological experience and think, “Wow, that’s amazing.”

This doesn’t happen to me all that often. I’m so enmeshed in technology and the web that by the time some technology is deployed deep enough in the wild that I randomly encounter it, it’s already passé — old news — and entirely unsurprising. Rare is the moment when I think, “Wow, this really changes things.”

However, I had one of those experiences today, and it’s particularly compelling for two reasons: the realization of the alignment of so many different contemporary “advances” (technological, cultural and social) and the coincidence of a particular news story which I’ll turn to momentarily.

So what happened?

Well, Brynn and I went to a physical OfficeMax store, determined to buy some kind of corkboard or dry-erase board for our new home office (which we’ve dubbed “The War Room”). Simple enough, and you’d think that a place like OfficeMax would be able to help.

Apparently we were wrong. Between the shoddy made-in-some-third-world-country quality of the products to the clerks whose eyes screamed “I’m going to kill myself with a ballpoint pen in the eye if you ask me a question”, OfficeMax was at once the most depressing and hapless places I have ever shopped. Even worse than KB Toys. Yes, it was that bad.

Ultimately we found what we were looking for, except that every single board was damaged in some way. When we reluctantly asked the clerk if there were any more in storage, he seemed to shrug absentmindedly, as though such damage was par for the course.

Frustrated, I decided to take a picture of our discovery to see what Amazon might later offer us. I didn’t just use my iPhone’s Camera app — no no! — instead I launched the Amazon.com app and used a feature called “Amazon Remembers” — a clever little twist on their Wish List feature that lets you take a photo of something to remember it later.

And then the magic began.

You see, once you take a photo and save it, it’s automatically compressed and uploaded to Amazon. It’s saved for you to retrieve later, but lo, they also ship off a copy to Mechanical Turk, so some busybody on the interwebs can come along and complete what’s known as a HIT (or “Human Intelligence Tasks”) and identify the product that you’ve snapped, sending you a link to the product on Amazon.com. Within minutes.

Of course you can imagine who’s getting my business in this situation.

But let’s think about this for a moment!

What I find so incredible about this experience is how commonplace it feels — how downright banal it seems to me to be able to take a photo of a product, upload it over a cellular network (EDGE no less!), have it be put into a queue where humans are waiting to do something to the photo (at pennies on the dollar, mind you), whose output — in a fraction of the time it might have taken me to perform the same task — will be returned to me in the form of a hyperlinked product that I can add to my cart and have shipped directly to my doorstep — free with Amazon Prime.

The cynical among us might call this the ultimate in instant gratification; others might think of this as merely modern convenience in a globally-connected, cloudy world. Frankly, it’s a bit of both. But I also think of it as the best example of what I’ve called “connected commerce” — with a splash of Web 2.0’s “networks get better the more people use them” adage thrown in for good measure.

So, let’s turn to that piece of news that I mentioned.

As it happened, on our drive over to OfficeMax, I heard a rather disturbing segment on the BBC that announced that Australia and the US have decided to jointly launch a contest to fund the development of autonomous military robots for fighting in tight, urban environments.

As the announcer put it: “the winning design must demonstrate the ability to neutralize the enemy.” Or as Zack de la Rocha said it best: And neutralize them. And neutralize them. And neutralize them.

I mean, we’ve seen this movie before, right? Did these guys not get the memo or something? (Or did they?!)

In any case, here is this personal encounter that I had— exemplified by leveraged social media against the commercial experience — starkly juxtaposed against a much more ominous, darkly situation — where robots fight in place of humans — doing the so-called “dirty work” — in situations where it is presumably becoming increasingly expedient to use non-human agents to neutralize human dissenters! What if such technology were brought to bear in China or Iran? What would the Twitterverse have to say then?

Any way you slice it, it is clear that the technology that we create — and are engaged in creating — remains ambivalent about the fate of humankind.

How we, as individuals, choose to apply the technology still makes all the difference. The consequences of our decisions resonate. Just like those who originally investigated, researched and developed the technology that made nuclear weapons possible — those of use who make possible robotics, neural networks, smart, geo-positioned social networks and sentient,sensing computing apparati will someday be faced with a similar dilemma: do we continue to doggedly pursue the modern, human-benefitting conveniences that many people increasingly and blindly rely upon? Are they worth seeing through to their logical, amoral conclusions — regardless of outcome on civil society — or do we, at some point, say STOP!, and leave well enough alone?

It should come as no surprise that my presumption is we are past the point of stopping — that Daniel Quinn wasn’t wrong — he just didn’t capture the spirit broadly. The rules change over time. More importantly, we will be forced to cope with what we have wrought — as part of the unconscious effort to realize the full potential of social and commercial technology.

Of course this alarms me greatly, but it’s nothing I didn’t already know.

In the meantime, I’m tickled pink to outfit “The War Room” with a new magnetic, dry-erase whiteboard, shipped in pristine condition and scheduled to arrive no later than Thursday of this week. I can’t even begin to imagine all the great ideas I’ll come up with on the thing.

I, for one, welcome our half-human, half-robot overlords in the cloud

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 01:45:00 GMT

I suppose every now and then you run up against some kind of technological experience and think, “Wow, that's amazing.”

This doesn't happen to me all that often. I'm so enmeshed in technology and the web that by the time some technology is deployed deep enough in the wild that I randomly encounter it, it's already passé — old news — and entirely unsurprising. Rare is the moment when I think, “Wow, this really changes things.”

However, I had one of those experiences today, and it's particularly compelling for two reasons: the realization of the alignment of so many different contemporary “advances” (technological, cultural and social) and the coincidence of a particular news story which I'll turn to momentarily.

So what happened?

Well, Brynn and I went to a physical OfficeMax store, determined to buy some kind of corkboard or dry-erase board for our new home office (which we've dubbed “The War Room”). Simple enough, and you'd think that a place like OfficeMax would be able to help.

Apparently we were wrong. Between the shoddy made-in-some-third-world-country quality of the products to the clerks whose eyes screamed “I'm going to kill myself with a ballpoint pen in the eye if you ask me a question”, OfficeMax was at once the most depressing and hapless places I have ever shopped. Even worse than KB Toys. Yes, it was that bad.

Frustrated, I decided to take a picture of our discovery to see what Amazon might later offer us. I didn't just use my iPhone's Camera app — no no! — instead I launched the Amazon.com app and used a feature called “Amazon Remembers” — a clever little twist on their Wish List feature that lets you take a photo of something to remember it later.

And then the magic began.

You see, once you take a photo and save it, it's automatically compressed and uploaded to Amazon. It's saved for you to retrieve later, but lo, they also ship off a copy to Mechanical Turk, so some busybody on the interwebs can come along and complete what's known as a HIT (or “Human Intelligence Tasks”) and identify the product that you've snapped, sending you a link to the product on Amazon.com. Within minutes.

Of course you can imagine who's getting my business in this situation.

But let's think about this for a moment!

The cynical among us might call this the ultimate in instant gratification; others might think of this as merely modern convenience in a globally-connected, cloudy world. Frankly, it's a bit of both. But I also think of it as the best example of what I've called “connected commerce” — with a splash of Web 2.0's “networks get better the more people use them” adage thrown in for good measure.

So, let's turn to that piece of news that I mentioned.

I mean, we've seen this movie before, right? Did these guys not get the memo or something? (Or did they?!)

Any way you slice it, it is clear that the technology that we create — and are engaged in creating — remains ambivalent about the fate of humankind.

It should come as no surprise that my presumption is we are past the point of stopping — that Daniel Quinn wasn't wrong — he just didn't capture the spirit broadly. The rules change over time. More importantly, we will be forced to cope with what we have wrought — as part of the unconscious effort to realize the full potential of social and commercial technology.

Of course this alarms me greatly, but it's nothing I didn't already know.

In the meantime, I'm tickled pink to outfit “The War Room” with a new magnetic, dry-erase whiteboard, shipped in pristine condition and scheduled to arrive no later than Thursday of this week. I can't even begin to imagine all the great ideas I'll come up with on the thing.

Persona Editor Google Tech Talk

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:41:00 GMT

I gave a TechTalk at Google last week. This is my going away present to Silicon Valley.

Anyone can watch this recording and design a tool to this spec. Go for it.

Creative Commons attribution share-alike.

TMZ is a platform

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:41:00 GMT

As I've been saying all brands and especially media brands - need to have their own platform.

Kara Swisher has a great interview of Harvey Levin of TMZ talking about breaking the Michael Jackson story.

But at the end Harvey said something that just rings with me “we're a platform”.

So what do I think about platforms?:

- my company ‘Broadband Mechanics' is in the white labeled platform business. The combination of our PeopleAggregator platform and Paolo Valdemarin's publishing system - Pages+ means we can build platforms for anybody cheaper, faster and license it at reasonable rate - around the world.

That means platforms need to have their own CMS/aggregation engine/direct manipulation page layout system as well as a full-featured social networking system (blogging, profile pages, groups, messages, widgets, media gallery, commenting, activity streams, OpenAPIs, Open Stack support, etc.)

- the BBC, NYTimes, Plain Dealer and NPR need to think of themselves as a platform. And American Greetings.

This means that whatever the core assets, features and brand awareness that already exists in your on-line offering, you need to SUPPLEMENT it and in the case of the 4th estate brands - move beyond just news and journalism and figure out new ways to MAKE money. Along the way you build up your own platform of members, giving them all the classic things they get from Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress and Flickr. And THEN you wrap your own unique joie de vivre around it, insert some editorial, provide Open APIs to your most valuable data, figure out ways for OTHERS to make money off of that data and step back and build your OWN unique on-line cred!

- and since we're in an open web world - you don't have to worry about competing with Facebook, Google, Twitter, Seesmic or Flickr - you're gonna work WITH them, suck in and spit out their data and join hands and sing ‘kum-bah-yah' with all of us - right?

Which means you're going to not only support the Open Stack and issue OpenIDs, you're going to respect and support all your brethren's OpenIDs (formerly known as competitors) and do the same for them - as well. And you'll bring in your biggest advertisers and sponsors and get them to throw contests and promos where your users and developers can all make a few shekels. And fame. Remember that tune you're humming……

- finally - having a platform means having your own underlying ID strata - so all you're disparate web sites, web services and on-line anything is glued together and you can offer cross-site promotions, accounts, friends, sharing, commenting, rating and even a points system (formerly known as frequent flyer credits) so even YOU can get into the SWAG and schmattie market.

Remember those former competitors who you now support and who ALSO enable small add-on, widget, gadget developers who support your Open APIs? Well you're ALL gonna keep helping out those small guys - cause in the end - we all win!

Why do I love Lynn-Anne Gries?

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:55:00 GMT

I am so blown away by the welcome I am receiving in the NEO (North East Ohio) area - and today it went even further with this amazing blog post from Lynn-Anne Gries.

Though Lynn-Anne focuses on WHY venture capital is a good thing, I'll ignore the many holes in the VC model and focus on the good news - outside of Silicon Valley, LA, NYC, Boston and D.C. Lynn-Anne's argument holds water. Startups DO need an influx of capital - and venture money is the primary way to do that.

But the problem is that so many of the high profile VC deals, firms and funds are so insular that all they talk about is Twitter, Twitter, Twitter. Their singular focus on finding the next Twitter causes them to ignore the companies ‘down the pyramid', those companies which WON'T go public or be acquired.

Yes I know venture capitalists have to make their profit, but we're talking about the entire economic model of our world here - and it CAN'T just be based upon funding the next Twitter! High growth is good, but so is medium level or slow growth as well. And why can't THOSE companies get funding - as well?

My main argument with VCs is their insider games, crap-shooting logic and singular focus on money. What Lynn-Anne understands is that founding companies, creating new kinds of jobs and raising the public awareness of innovation in NEO is a lot more important than just one IPO or acquisition.

Positive exit strategies are great for the founders, employees and investors - but what we're doing in NEO is helping out the entire region. JumpStart, OneCommunity, NorTech and the Fund for the Economic Future are all organizations put into place to help out NEO. And I want Digital City Mechanics to join that list!

The power of technology being fed by money and driven by a 25+ year visionary means that we can generate jobs and revenues out of thin air. By the sheer will of the people participating in our project the HAVES of NEO will help out the HAVE NOTS and we'll all credit the software as enabling it to happen.

Then that software will be available in download form and the virus spreads. And it can't be stopped.

As long as we can get partners involved and work with local government and foundations - we can put out some amazing stuff - good things will happen.

The fact that one of these key players in NEO is a VC firm and can invest cash - makes the whole idea even BETTER! This is where Lynn-Anne and JumpStart come in.

But we're also starting a non-profit and VC money won't do us any good. We need government and foundation money to fuel our workforce development engine. So finding inside connects is paramount to our challenge.

I've never met Lynn-Anne before, but I TOTALLY owe her a virtual kiss and hug.

So here goes “MWAH!”

In her post “How do I love thee venture capital: let me count the ways”- Lynn-Ann Gries takes the side of venture capitalist against those who warn against taking VC money.

Lynn-Anne argues for the practical sides of venture capital, not really bringing up the negative side of things - like having to get rid of founders or making stupid decisions which tube companies. Its a hard game to play and Lynn-Anne coats a sugar veneer of optimism in a world where 99.98% of the time the answer is no.

To make things worse lots of value and wealth was recently lost. The foundations (in general) have all lost about 40% of their net worth. It's a hella time to be asking foundations for money. But the good news is that the one group that IS spending (the Feds) happen to be the same people we'll be approaching for cash. So things even out.

So lets look at my project. Simply by being so audacious, I stand out from the rest. By being formerly famous, I attract attention. By being a trained Opera singer - I'm gonna make myself heard. And by focusing on some real problems, like workforce development - there are 100 opportunities that can fall out of this to make failure not an option. Spinoffs in medical digitizing, multimedia production or Digital City Cafes are already being discussed. I myself really want to build a ‘the history of the computer industry' digital cafe!

That's what increases the odds of success in this business - the people. The idea. The possibility that the software could change someone's life. And if - yes - you can make some money along the way - that's great. But do we REALLY think that the most important thing about software is making money?

I don't think so.

Software is about changing people's lives. It's the new R&R!

Lynn-Anne's post would be considered parochial at Friday Real-time Stream conf and August Capital TechCrunch shindig. They're ONLY interested in big topics and they would NEVER invest in anything that was focused on local issues or attempt to do business with government and foundations.

But you know what? I'd MUCH rather be hanging with folks like Lynn-Anne than David Hornik, Ann Winblad, Michael Arrington or Jason Calacanis.

At least Lynn-Anne is honest, truthful and easy to read. Where I come from (after 21 years) I miss that attribute in people. Certainly in venture capitalists. I've been kicked around, ripped off, repulsed, misunderstood, run away from (out of fear and loathing) and ignored so many times by Silicon Valley and Blue Chip VCs that I gotta admit - I'm looking forward to working with JumpStart.

When I talked about ‘zigging while others zag' - folks like Lynn-Anne hear “I'm not afraid to be different.” But if Lynn-Anne had known me in the 80's or when I was pouring my own money into my own ideas (in the 90's) than she'd know that I've been saying the same thing - for years. Only this time folks are starting to listen.

Credit some of that to Facebook, OpenID or Wikipedia. Ideas that are too far out ahead of the curve eventually happen - it's just a matter of who and when. Google, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr were all destined to happen.

So this is not about me being different, but about me being first and right.

A huge reason MacroMind was a success was because we were first. Twitter was also first. And YouTube. And Skype.

I'm a pure idealist who's time has come. I've been working on digital cities for 18 years and NEO is where it's all gonna come together!

Here are some juicy excerpts from Lynn-Anne's excellent post…..

…. but will not be accomplished overnight nor by just wishing it so. It will take a city of people with the same vision and motivation all pulling in the same direction, so I hope he has the stick-to-itiveness to deal with the day-to-day blocking and tackling that it takes to change a culture.

Amen sister. Once you meet me you'll see the fire in my eyes, the velocity rate of my body leaping out of my seat and hopefully you'll give me a shot at some of this culture change!

We're gonna need to throw some parties, but parties out in those vacant lots - with a wagon train of abandoned RVs circling us as we listen to Marvin Gaye, Muddy Waters and Bob Marley. We're gonna need to build some mockups and demos - so people can see what the hell it is I'm talking about. We're gonna need to inspire some students, programmers and entrepreneurs to take advantage of this 'software infrastructure' we're gonna build for them.

‘Cause with every participating vendor, platform or content source - we become stronger.

….these type of businesses can rarely get where they need to be, as fast as they need to be, without an infusion of capital from someone else.

Again Amen. I love your simple, clean message - without money you can't make money. Thats how capitalism works. Now the trick is - “how much goes into equity of the for-profit versus how much is the funding for the non-profit?”

So, while we’re often accused of “pushing” our companies toward raising venture capital, we’re really just focused on encouraging our entrepreneurs to pursue high growth business models that lead them to a logical exit (sale of company, IPO or recap).

I wonder if I should tell Lynn-Anne about our bylaws and voting shares? I hope that once she meets me any notion of ‘pushing me around' will be dispensed. Why else do you think I keep my girth at over 300 lbs. I'm the Hulk Hogan of software dudes. I physically CAN'T be pushed around…..

And OH BTW - my megalomania doesn't stop at high growth. I don't do anything that can't grow to at least $1B+

So I hope Lynn-Anne appreciates my comments in the spirit of TOTAL honesty, transparency and a new beginning. I'm moving my family, walking away from 21 years in California and this is about as real as it gets. I won't go over or point out the differences between NEO and Silicon Valley VCs - but let's just say that I'm a catalyst for change and Silicon Valley doesn't want change. They like business as usual.

So I hope that Lynn-Anne sees me as a catalyst for NEO. It may be about changing the culture, but it's also about inspiring, leading and giving away as much as possible so that OTHERS can prosper as well. Its the new way of doing things, the open way.

I am an outsider, who moves much quicker than folks in NEO and I'm impatient. So I'm bound to ruffle feathers, be mis-understood, piss people off and in other ways - scare them. I sure hope I do, cause if not than I'm not doing my job. Change takes ripping your heart out and starting over. That's what I'm doing.

I'm gonna hit the ground runing, teach a class (which I wrote a book for), start both a non-profit and for-profit and start recruiting bodies immediately while securing funding. A key part of our model is partnerships so I'm already talking to Optiem, JumpStart, OneCommunity, the Lakewood Observer, the Beachland, ArtsCollinwood, the City of East Cleveland and we're a portfolio company of the Youngstown Business Incubator.

I did all that in three trips to NEO. Imagine what I can accomplish once I move there?

On the negative side - if I can't raise funds in NEO what am I gonna do?

Go elsewhere.

It's obvious and everyone there knows that. So they're all welcoming me with open arms and pitching in to a) first help get us some funding, b) making introductions and connections, c) offering to volunteer and help and d) providing me viral energy which is going to go logarithmic once results start appearing.

===================

Lynn works for a venture capital, startup resource center called JumpStart. They've got their hands in almost every fire in NEO and their boss Ray Leach is one of those guys who just oooozes confidence and who orchestrates the NEO investment community like a fine conductor. I've also met an EIR who works at JumpStart as an EIR named Mark Smith. Mark totally groks the challenges and mountain we have to climb and he brings to JumpStart sophistication and experience.

As I continue my introductions to NEO and get the lay of the land, I'm amazed at how many people (who clearly don't understand what I'm talking about) nod their head and say: “well whatever dude, just as long as you do it HERE!”

“And BTW - WHY are you doing it here?”

I've never met so many people so down on where they live. I guess it's the survivor's mentality, given that so many people LEAVE NEO, through brain drain. This constant reminder of the diaspora that has devastated NEO reminds me of why I'm there. When I was going to Oberlin the 70's the layoffs began. This recent downturn has just made matters worse for NEO, while all the rest of the country at least has a chance of coming back - but what does NEO have?

The Cleveland Clinic and the Cleveland Symphony, the R&R Hall of Fame, amazing museums, 1,000's of rich foundations, local government who are waking up to what's needed, a distributed power base of medium sized cities, which united map directly into the kind of ‘distributed architecture' I want to build. An academic community which understands the potential of on-line knowledge. And the right insider's to get me into the right people, which then translates into getting things done.

That's who George Nemeth is. He's the guy who's been getting me into the right people. Thank you George. George works at Optiem and we're gonna do some coolio things together. Cause Broadband Mechanics continues! I'm thinking radical new kinds of platforms, which drag newspapers kicking and screaming into the present.

PeopleAggregator is now four years old and our project with the U.S. Army ROTC is taking off. Oooops - sorry I'm not supposed to tell you about that - yet. But our source code is available to all and we're adding more and more functionality - everyday.

The Underground Railroad, local foods, world class bio-tech, NEO a region rich in history - from the invention of synthetic rubber and polymers, to burning rivers, the Western Reserve and a transportation hub which led to steel mills and auto factories. Cleveland is considered the western most eastern city, while I always thought of it as the place to go see Salvador Dali paintings, hear Pere Ubu at the Agora and eat Chinese food (there was NO Chinese food at Oberlin - so we had to drive into Cleveland to find it.)

My rose colored glasses of Cleveland ignore the changes that have happened over the past 35 years. I still see a mid-western town with all sorts of problems, lots of different kinds of people and cold winters. I wasn't here as everything went to shit. I wasn't led on by ‘the flats', University Circle, the empty promises and many vanquished dreams.

All I see in NEO is vast opportunities, incredible people and upside. There's fiber everywhere, there are all these HAVES who want to help out the HAVE NOTS. There are urban gardens and greenhouses popping up all over the place. Lots of strong tradition and community. And lots of empty lots and abandoned homes.

Why not Cleveland and NEO? That's what I say!

It is a petrie dish to all of our country's problems, which is exactly why we want to build the pilot of our project there - to show the world what's possible utilizing social media to create a virtuous circle of volunteerism, internships, training and live events. We'll produce interactive on-line multimedia, and mentor and train folks in the job skills necessary to produce this content along the way. We'll also create new kinds of shared servers which will make up an open ‘digital city' platform software infrastructure. But most of all - we'll get people to feel comfortable using computers.

‘Cause once they can feel comfortable they can ‘learn by doing‘.

And then they'll be equipped for ANY job in the future!

getting ready to drive across the U.S. - blogging ‘09

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:21:00 GMT

I've actually NEVER driven across the U.S. I can stop off in Salt lake City and see Phil Windley, and we can camp out, look at teh stars and sing “Oh give me a home….” if we want, or jump off of 90 and make the scene on Taylor St. in Chitown for Italian Beef and Italian Ice. And we can stop off in Grand Haven, MI - hang with the mother-in-law at her summer cottage 100 steps off the beach and then land in Cleveland in time meetings, schmoozing and welcome events. Then onto D.C. for the Open Government & Innovation conference.

Meanwhile…..

OpenID is getting more real - everyday.

Facebook has gone widgety

And so it begins…. the death of Windows. Eventually.

Yes indeed - distributed social networking will happen - despite Ning.

They're ‘entertaining' in Cleveland

Congrats to Pete Cashmore - for passing TechCrunch!

At least they didn't cut Sean Parker out of the script

WebObjects R.I.P.

Congrats to David Ulevitch and OpenDNS

Here's the evidence that patents HURT innovation!

Glubble

Why I'm moving to Ohio

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 22:38:00 GMT

Chris O'Brien coined a great post in the San Jose Merc on why I'm headed to Ohio.

Chris is one of those rare reporters who actually listens, understands and reports truthfully what he heard. I sure wish all my encounters with reporters and bloggers were as rewarding.

Anyway - Chris hits it on the head - I'm focusing on innovating in the area of workforce development, we're going to use our PeopleAggregator platform and live video Helpto get peopel comfortable using computers and learning the job skills they'll need - in the future.

We're going to build LOTS of great interactive multimedia content in the process - and teach folks the job skills necessary to do that - along the way.

Oh yah - we'll also help build out a software infrastructure that will enable a NEO wide alliance of cities, municipalities and neighborhoods to have their OWN platforms, dashboards, etc. - and mesh us all together.

Another thing Chris got right - NEO doesn't have the slightest idea what's headed their way.

Well except for Lev Gonick, George Nemeth, Ed Morrison, Hunter Morrison, Jim Cossler, Kent Smith, Anthony Houston, Mayor Eric Brewer, Jim O'Bryan, Ron Copfer, Angela Seifer, Cara Keithly, Tom Williams, Jorge Delgado, Karen Baker, Bob Chalfant, Susan Sharp, Frank Rivey, Bill Calahan, Cindy of the Beachland, Charley Daane, Peter Whitehouse, Nick Berente, Jon Cline, Mark Smith (and Patty), Joe Cimperman, Ben Blanquera, David Akers, Rep. Mike Foley and Anne Hill.

They know - cause they've met me. And I'll be teaching a class at CWRU - called “How to build a Digital City” starting Aug. 25th.

It's EECS 396 if you're around. T-Thurs afternoon

Here's the textbook for the class = http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/748967

and a pdf of it = http://www.box.net/shared/y40efkliqk

I'll also be starting a new company called “Digital City Mechanics” and starting to tout the meme of ‘digital cities' - for all!

Think shared servers.

Simon Willison: Evidence of OpenID at Amazon

Sun, 05 Jul 2009 19:25:00 GMT

Evidence of OpenID at Amazon. It looks like Amazon are using OpenID for SSO between their different properties—I clicked a link to sign in to AWS and the URL had OpenID query string parameters.

OpenID.net: Sears and KMart Adopt OpenID to Simplify Customer Registration and Login While Enhancing the Shopping Experience

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 02:16:00 GMT

Yesterday, Sears Holding Company (SHC) announced it has adopted OpenID technology, enabling website visitors to easily register and login at the MySears and MyKmart communities using existing accounts at Google, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Windows Live, and Yahoo!. This is exciting news for for online retailers and follows shortly after the OpenID Foundation hosted the first Retail Advisory Summit this past April in New York.

MySears and MyKmart community sites are online destinations that give consumers a variety of ways to share in-depth information about products, helping make their purchase decisions easier. Visitors to these websites have the opportunity to write product reviews, post comments on the reviews of others, participate in discussion boards and post ideas for the community to vote on. Customers also have access to special offers and coupons in return for their participation in the community.

Read what Sears and Viewpoints (a technology partner) had to say in their press releases:

“We’re constantly looking for ways to stay innovative in our online initiatives by identifying and implementing technologies that help our users navigate our communities with ease,” says Rob Harles, Sears’ vice president of community. “Our adoption of the OpenID technology helps simplify our customers’ online experience and ultimately helps us meet our goal of ensuring our customers have the most efficient shopping experience possible.”

“As the social web becomes a bigger part of our everyday interactions and the boundaries separating the myriad of social networks blur, portable online identities will become critically important,” commented Matt Moog, Founder and CEO of Viewpoints Networks, a SHC technology platform partner.

By building on top of OpenID and related technologies, Viewpoints allows its clients’ websites to offer a more intuitive and customized user experience that uses existing profile data a consumer brings to their site from various OpenID Providers. Viewpoints and Sears have taken advantage of much of the ongoing user experience and usability work that is one of the two main focuses of the OpenID Foundation this year. Viewpoint and JanRain continue to show that by implementing OpenID in an innovative manner, companies such as Sears will increase registration and login rates while also enabling instant engagement with the consumer.

Sears and Kmart’s adoption of OpenID demonstrates its fundamental business value; it makes things easier for web users. In this case, OpenID makes the online shopping experience richer and simpler for customers. While much has been made of the impact of the social web, the action taken today by Sears and Kmart shows how relevant OpenID is becoming to mainstream retailers. This adoption is another example of the groundswell of interest found across a wide spectrum of today’s online user experiences.

This announcement represents a major step forward in OpenID adoption by a top ten retailer outside of the technology industry. Deployments like these continue to build on the ongoing usability and user profile management work being championed and facilitated by the OpenID Foundation and its membership. Sears and Kmart have provided a great example of how OpenID can dramatically facilitate quicker, easier, and richer online engagement.

Tried to post my eBay listing on Facebook, but…..

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 20:42:00 GMT

So I'm selling my 1982 Checker Marathon taxi and I tried to use this feature on ebay to cross-list it in Facebook.

However I got…………..