“The farm fight begins,” P.J. Hufstutter announced this morning on the Los Angeles Times’ Money & Company blog.

The farm fight has been going on for a few years now (or, depending on your perspective, since before the founding of the republic). But with the Justice Department’s hearings on consolidation in the food and agriculture industries, the fight now has a formal, government-mediated venue.

Sadly, I can’t be at today’s hearing in Ankeny, Iowa, the first of several that are planned. But from what I’ve seen so far, the biggest news to come out of it was the announcement by Attorney General Eric Holder (whose presence quite effectively signaled how serious the DOJ is about taking on Big Food) that Monsanto’s seed patents won’t protect it from possible antitrust enforcement. “The question is how those patents are used,” he said. And “there is room for enforcement” despite the protection patents on life forms give their owners.

Monsanto (MON) is a big target of today’s hearing. It is also the target of antitrust investigations and lawsuits from competitors. It stands accused of using its patents to stifle competition. Christine Varney, head of the DOJ’s antitrust division, said the hearings are meant in part to determine “whether patents potentially could be used to protect monopolies.”

Though Monanto is cast as the villain of the day, no big food or ag company should feel secure. Later hearings will focus on the dairy, livestock, and poultry industries, but it appears that the DOJ isn’t planning to be too discriminating. Varney promised that the DOJ is looking closely at the whole industry. Her division is on an “unrelenting quest to find the correct balance” in the food industry and will “carefully and closely scrutinize every single merger.” 

And Holder said: “We’ve learned the hard way that long periods of reckless deregulation have restricted competition and harmed farmers.”

Interesting what all the major players are doing in this industry:

Nintendo’s success with the Wii, released in November 2006 as the first console to offer motion-sensing technology, has brought the gaming technology to the mainstream.

Microsoft is expected to join the trend in offering a motion-sensing device for the Xbox 360 in time for this year’s holiday shopping season.Unveiled in June 2009 as “Project Natal,” the Xbox system relies on sensors that track players’ body movements to allow them to interactively play sports and other games without having to hold any hardware.

Read more at here.

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Presenters:
Naveen Selvadurai – foursquare
Josh Babetski – MapQuest Inc
Greg Cypes – AIM

Panel:
Services Cockblock: you’re in a location and the service won’t let you

Why is the loop closing faster and how do you close it?

Naveen: Two reasons: Devices are ubiquitous, anyone with any smart phone can get location without having to go through carrier, etc. Anyone can develop an app that takes advantage of this. Second, we are in a culture that is more about sharing than ever. It doesn’t matter how small it is, you just want to tell your friend, immediately.

Greg: Location awareness has transformed over past few years. We used to think of it as tracking which is scary. Location, being tied to a quick message or type of media, is meaningful. It’s become a must-have as part of a social service.

How do you keep things interesting?

Josh: A bit of a wild west, people trying to see where opportunities are. We’ll see similar apps come and go while the space develops.

Greg: Part of this is about game play. Key is making sure game play is done right. Gowalla guys were artists. They had to maneuver on fly to make sure the game stays intersting.

Naveen: Now we are experimenting with ways to keep the conversation alive and as real time as possible. You can bring focus and relevancy, it makes conversation more valuable. using game-like elements to encourage that kind of behavior. We wanted to do things in life that we missed.

From crowd: Location it hot because it is grounding but what about privacy?
Greg: There are sites that take advantage of people setting their locations publicly like justrobme.com. What’s interesting is that we have status updates on AOL but there is enough contextual info that tells people where you are without telling physical location. People do set location as home but it’s not really relevant to the group.

Naveen: Everything I share I share with some knowledge of who is going to see it. I think most of us is like that. Pleaserobme.com is calling attention to these social networks but we’ve had these systems in the past. Will be iterstig to see what this data looks like when we grow up. We’re slowly learning how people use these systems.

Josh: Huge gap between generations.

Naveen: Dunbar number is relevant. 150 is the number of friends you can really have.

Greg: Privacy is a moving target.

Naveen: Quoting Danah Boyd, parents not letting kids wander as freely these days.

Augmented reality?

Greg: It’s an interesting place where we are headed from a product standpoint. What’s interesting is not just where my friends are now but where have they been.

Josh: When will I be able to get my contact lens?

Naveen: Interface have a long way to go before we can be comfortable enough to use them. Not a good way to browse. For the most part people like lists.

Josh: Another interesting feature is this idea of constant check in and trying to combine together. There are not a lot of unique identification system. What are some of the problems and solutions? End of year place check in will be a ubiquitous feature. What are some of the things that will stitch things together across systems?

Greg: Not as simple as latitude and longitude.

Josh: Our flight was in foursquare. What happens when it moves? Or a taco truck that drives around town? It creates additional challenges.

Naveen: I think what’s going to win is an open approach. Place data shouldn’t be owned by anyone. The best thing is it have to be a combination between lat/long matching and a single identifier. That can’t be owned.

What about serendipity?

Naveen: There needs to be a combination of algorithms and people-entered data. There is a human element we can’t ignore.

Greg: At the end of the day you vote with your feet and your phone.

Presenters:
-Rachel Lovinger, Razorfish
-Karen McGrane, Bond Art + Science

Panel:
McGrane: We spend all of our effort into the framework for a great user experience but when it comes to the content itself there is a huge gap, and it means that the infrastructure is for naught because there is nothing that delivers actual value. Second, we treat content as an afterthought. We need to stop ignoring content!

Lovinger: Text is not the only thing that is content. Images or audio or video might better tell a story. Also comments and UGC may tell the story. Plus error messages and information content and data/meta-data. This is all content.

How do you understand your content better?
McGrane: You can’t just move content from one site to the next? You must inventory it and audit it. You start with 1) product strategy, 2) then design strategy (how will users interact, what will it look like, tech platform) then 3) content strategy (what do we want to say and how, etc?)

Lovinger: Content analysis should be done during discovery to get a handle on what you are dealing with. There are two main parts: facts about content (what is it, how is it organized, what types, how much) and then quality of content (is it appropriate for audience, is it meeting business needs, is it communicating well?). Content analysis is not a one stop deal, it’s iterative. Not so much linear, rather insights refining throughout design process.

McGrane: Content Inventory. What this means is what content do you have. Go through the site and document it. What content should you evaluate? Make strategic decisions about what content to looks at, consider the user paths. Decide what types of categories you want to create. It is useful to understand the story the site is trying to tell, get a sense of the range of pages that need to be designed, determine range of content types the site will support, decide what content to eliminate or migrate

Lovinger: Next look at Content Organization. To evaluate whether people can find stuff they’re looking for, make decisions about a new navigation structure and content model, decide if content needs to be migrated to a new section, find gaps in content.

Next look at Content Model. Formats, structure/purpose, content assets, and how will this impact the page design and the CMS?

Other things to consider: SEO, Accessability, Functional Requirements

McGrane: Assess the Quality Framework could include: do we have all of the content that we need to have, is content current, is it clear and relevant, is the tone and style correct, does it meet business needs?

Speakers:
-Kyle Outlaw, Razorfish
-Barbara Ballard
-Scott Jenson, Google
-Tom Limongello, Crisp Wireless

Panel Comments:

What is UX?
Barbara: We like to think of UX as the entire process, discovery, sharing, the whole system, that helps us remember that things like SMS exists and works on your moms phone

Is it easier to iterate on mobile web or an app?
Tom: In short term everyone is focusing on apps because that’s what we can do, but long-term the web is going to be where we are going … it’s about the user. To a certain extent we are focusing on technologies and that’s not what’s important. The user is important. If you were to do anything right now go straight to mobile web because it’s easy. It’s about when the web catches up. When and for what? If you’re just doing a blogger site use the mobile web.

What tools would you recommend…
Barbara: There are a lot of tools out there for testing. After you’re done developing your thing hand it to someone who doesn’t like you much and is not a tech expert and get feedback. Make sure you give it to them to test on their phone. I’m excited when clients spend money on the usability tests me recommend because we always find something.

Scott: We use a quasi agile approach and we test as early and often as possible. With mobile you really do want to add testing in context, seeing the user in the real world. Also, testing with social networks. Very few clients want to build for all mobile platforms, they’ll pick one or two and then the web. Harder to develop on paper anymore. Waterfall is difficult, agile works better.

Barbara: We’ve had success with paper prototyping. Additional features…light sensors, gestures, cameras, screen working together (ESPN has been doing work in this space, what should your phone doing while you’re watching Sports Center?)

Scott: The mobile web is not a tiny web screen. These phones are going to become much more interesting, much bigger much more ubiquitous. We have a paradigm shift coming and change is hard so people look at standard. People don’t think outside of what they see. It’s changing so quickly that its understandable to use standards but we need to take more risks.

Kyle: It was hard to get clients interested in mobile prior to iPhone. Clients when straight to “iPhone app.”

What are the top devices for mobile in the next few years?
iPhone
Android, Nexus One but UX needs work
iPad
Nokia 900, Memo
Intel
Sony Playstation phone…?
Integration of the browser
Bluetooth watches, cheaper devices

Barbara: Design for interuptibility

Please note: This blog entry is being written in real time. I have tried to be an accurate as possible. For an audio version of the panel please visit http://www.sxsw.com.

I flew down yesterday from Seattle. I met five people in the terminal, a few faces who I knew but people I never officially met.About 90 percent of the people on the flight were SXSW attendees. Everyone either knew each other, was a FOAF, or had worked at the same company at some point. It was honestly an amazing trip filled with great conversations and buzz. In fact, the flight attendant asked me if we all worked for the same company (can the Internet be considered a company?

Last night I had dinner with a bunch of my former Razorfish colleagues and it was great to see everyone. I met some new folks from Filter and Cole + Weber as well. Hope to run into some old friends today and meet some more new people as well.

Here’s my schedule today. I’ll be live blogging these sessions.

2:00: The UX of Mobile

3:30: Understanding Content, The Stuff We Design For

5:00: Time + Social + Location, What’s Next in Mobile Experiences

Oh and schwag bag pictures follow…

Here’s chef Peter Gordon in Britain’s The Independent; “Our love affair with home-grown ingredients is killing innovation in our restaurants.”

He’s speaking mainly from a British perspective and, though he doesn’t make the distinction, he seems to be arguing only with the fundamentalists among the “eat local” movement. But it’s a good read.

Whether or not there is a “growing tide of culinary xenophobia” in Britain (or, for that matter, in the United States), and whether or not there is “a secret gastronomic club to which so many chefs aspire,” (membership in which might be jeopardized by using “foreign” ingredients), it’s surely the case that choices are limited when the rules of local eating are applied.

Whether or not that’s a good thing—for health, for the environment, for the palate, for local economies—depends mostly upon the particular ingredient in question. But again, only fundamentalists rule out all nonlocal ingredients. The trouble is that, in food politics as in religion, fundamentalism is often more powerful than it deserves to be.

… nontraditional foreign direct investment, which requires more advanced skills and training from a country’s workers, can help improve a country’s development prospects and diversify its economy. Examples of this include investment in software development centers, biotechnology or global services.

Learn more about what Dr. Nelson has to say on this subject here.

Follow Nelson on Twitter here.

Citing a single unidentified source “close to the process,” the New York Post reported today that activist investor Nelson Peltz is considering making a competing bid for CKE Restaurants, the owner of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s.

A couple of weeks ago, the private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners agreed to buy CKE for $928 million, including debt. Competing bidders have until April 6 to make offers. But Pacific Coast Business Times notes that any offer “would have to be a sweet one to make up for a big breakup fee if the deal with THL is called off.”

“According to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission,” the newspaper reported, “CKE is on the hook for a $15.5 million termination fee to THL and up to $5 million of the Boston firm’s costs if it doesn’t complete the deal with THL.” Trian Fund Management, through which Peltz operates, controls the Wendy’s/Arby’s Group.

The Post’s mystery source said something odd: “It might be offensive to some of Wendy’s customers to combine the brands.” The context for this statement was Carl’s Jr., which the Post described as CKE’s “edgier brand aimed at single guys between 18 and 25.” I’m trying to imagine a Wendy’s customer becoming offended because the chain’s owner also owns a company whose previous owner tended to run obnoxious advertisements. I don’t see that happening, at least not to a degree that it would become a problem for Peltz.

Trian owns nearly 4 percent of CKE. The Post, quoting the same source, says “several” private equity firms are considering making offers. 

Raymond Sokolov will no longer write restaurant reviews for the Wall Street Journal, as he had been doing as a freelancer since 2006. He told Pete Wells of The New York Times’ Diner’s Journal that his editors told him it will no longer run restaurant reviews and that they wanted him to write about “food trends” instead.

Not so, says the Journal. “We are not abandoning restaurant reviews and are still committed broadly to food coverage,” a spokeswoman told Wells. That’s probably true, given that, as Wells notes, the Journal “is about to begin a new section focused on New York, and has interviewed other restaurant critics in connection with that project.”

Sokolov told Wells that he and the Journal “certainly parted amicably.” Perhaps, but they also parted telling two very different stories about what happened, and what the Journal plans to do with its coverage of restaurants and “food trends.”