Apperceptions

Carp Caviar 2006 Promo Series: Uno Mas, Part II

Click the pic to view the vid.

A brief musical interlude in our story.  Or is it?  Here is a small little piece that highlights all the fine folks who are participating in this wonderful collaboration.  Of course, I'm way too lazy to edit this much video.  So I programmed it.  First, I used PHP to grab the text and images from Erik's site and then wrote a small composition in Quartz Composer to manipulate the data (as javascript arrays) into the exported movie you see.  A quick trip to the Internet Archive for the lively "Ole!" spanish trance soundtrack, import into iMovie and viola!  :)

Question: What's the widest, collaborative web page in the world?  See if you can find it and you will discover something really wonderful.  How does it relate to Carp Caviar.  Find the Bluesfear Worm and you will know.

Formats available: Quicktime (.mov)

Tags: carp caviar, spinflow, bottoom union, apperceptions, digital dojo

SpinXpress Collaboration - A Screencast From Dave Toole

Click the pic to view the vid.

My good friend Dave Toole put together this cool screencast about how various people used SpinXpress to collaborate around the launch of the Towerpod podcasting site at SxSW.

Formats available: Quicktime (.mov)

Tags: outhink, spinflow, spinxpress

The Winning Spirit of Collaboration

Dave Toole Created this cool collaboration mash-up for the Node 101 presentation at the Metreon during MacWorld. I'm posting this, so leave Dave a comment on the SpinFlow site. Also, check out Dave's cool file sharing tool call SpinXpress. It's free! Exchange files securely and privately by just dragging and dropping files in your own Secure Personal InterNet (SPIN).

Carp Caviar Promo

I'm just such a fan of Carp Caviar, that I had to do a promo for it. Check out Bottom Union for the complete lowdown on Carp Caviar.

Backstage With The Students

Here's a short clip showing the equipment we were using in the video editing booths while the Ex'pression College event was going on.  Here, Fernando, Chris Ritke, Richard Pascual and I try to figure out how to capture from the digital tape into Final Cut Pro.  This was a first time experience for all of us (I had never even held a DV tape before).  Luckily, we had help from Jon Scanlon of Ex'pression.  Thanks Jon! 

Jon got us going, but we ditched FCP and used iMovie instead.  It was easier as none of us knew FCP!

Then we got our next suprise: unsynced audio!

Flash! Eric Rice Announces New Media Co-op

Eric Rice announced a private new-media co-op recently.  Clip the pic to listen to this short (1.5 min) report.

Eric Rice On SpinXpress

Yesterday in the videoblogging video conference, Eric Rice answered some questions about how he uses SpinXpress. Click the pic to view a screen cast video I made of it.

Thanks for the great explanation Eric!

Vlog Europe Press Pool

Several vloggers are converging in Amsterdam for Vlog Europe.

Many will be shooting video of course, but some are so busy they need help with editing. 

So we have set up this collaborative "press pool" using SpinXpress so that people can share and mix video for this great event. Submit your videos, podcasts, interviews, comments etc.  Maybe it's just some of your scrap footage, but someone may find it useful.

A Group for Road Node 101

Jan created a SpinXpress group for the Road Node 101 happening.  I have created this post to allow public access to her group (I asked her permission, because groups are generally private and invitation only in SpinXpress).  A simple script inserted into this blog post will cause the group to be displayed on the post page when view the full version of this page (click the "Continue" link below if needed).

There is also a "SpinFeed" (a rich media feed) that you can use to keep up on new contributions to this collaborative space from tools like Mefeedia.

Digital Urban Development: Rooms For Rich Media

Recently, I have been experimenting with new ways to create collaborative "rooms" for use with the Podcast Hotel event in Portland next week.  The general goal is to create ad-hoc web-pages that provide an environment where people can share media captured at the event and make it easily (and instantly) available for anyone to mash-up or re-mix and upload again for others to play with and comment on.  Of course, being a videoblogger, I want these "rooms" to have rich media feeds that I can use in tools like FireAnt.

It is easy to imagine how an enterprise system for this might be designed.  However, part of the challenge was to build on existing tools and infrastructure in order to design and build something that could be used with any kind of web page, particularly blogs like Blogger, WordPress and TypePad.

Another challenge was the the solution could not assume an underlying storage system; blogs like Blogger do not provide storage for media except pictures and those that do (i.e., Typepad) are too limited in bandwidth and storage to support significant uploading and downloading of media files.

I also wanted these collaborative rooms to be simple to add to a web page.  For the moment, this means that it should be no more difficult to use for the author/publisher than inserting a Flickr or Feedburner badge.

I used SpinXpress as the basis of a solution because it is a p2p (person-to-person/peer-to-peer) file sharing tool that allows you to form "groups" (like rooms, or spaces, or networks) where you can store files, bookmarks and comments.  You can also access content in SpinXpress via web services (i.e., HTTP) and, most importantly to a geek like me, you can extend SpinXpress functionality via Java servlets.

So I did that.  I'll leave the technical details to future posts, but basically I created servlets that add XML (XHTML, mRSS, SMIL, XSPF, etc) feeds, forms and handlers that allow one to add a "room" or "group" to a post where people can share files and collaborate.

I will demonstrate this in the very next post.  In the meantime, here is my first SnapZ ProX screencast about SpinXpress.  It just covers the most basic concepts, but should help with the conversation.  Click the pic to view the vid.

Disclaimer: I receive a small sponsorship from Outhink and have equity in the company.

Alex Williams Comes To Ojai

This weekend I finally got to meet Alex Williams.  He came to Ojai to do some podcasting and videoblogging at an investment conference/seminar held here at the Ojai Valley Inn.  Alex asked me to give him a hand with the video.  I took a quick photo with my iPAQ as he was working.  Great fun.  We even got fed (thanks!).

Alex is the guy who got me set up with the video conferences and it was great to finally meet him in person, hang and work together (he's the one with the digital recorder in the pic).  Alex and I are also doing some work together for the Podcast Hotel event in September in Portland.  We are using SpinXpress to create online "rooms" for the hotel using "SpinFeeds".  Cool stuff and I'll share more info on that over the next few weeks.

Napkin & Notebook Sketches

More from the Eric Rice Roadshow in San Francisco. 

While Shawn drew vlog architecture drawings for me, Renegade and Alicia drew pictures of the other vloggers.  Here is one Rene drew of Schlomo.  Click the pic for to view full sized.  Below is one of me from Alicia.

Check out more sketches on my Flickr photostream.

Eric Rice Roadshow: San Francisco

Alicia and I caught up with the Eric Rice Roadshow in San Francisco last week.  Just a week after BlogHer, I got to see Eric, Rene, Shawn, Chris and Schlomo again and we got to meet Eric's cohorts Josh and Tony.

The roadshow was great.  Alicia and Rene drew portraits on napkins, while a small band played upstairs in Schlomo's bar.  Photographers and videoheads were running around snapping pics and vids of the band and everything else (Eric has the coolest equipment by far - great video and audio).

I really liked this setting as it was very small and laid back, giving a chance for newbies like Alicia and I to get to hang, learn and play with others who are interested in creating, sharing and collaborating on different forms of new media.

So, what do vloggers and podcasters and creatives do after a roadshow meetup?  Go out for breakfast at 1am of, of course.  We all went over to a great little dinner over on Church Street (near Market, I think).  Then back outside for a smoke break and some parting last words.

Here's a great little moment (well, about two minutes) where Shawn, Rene and Eric are talking about videoblogging workshops, videobloggers with unusal names (Have you ever noticed that both Eric Rice and Zadi Diaz have first and last names that use the same letters?)  Strange.  I never noticed that before.

I love the excitement in Shawn's voice as he talks about teaching videoblogging related workshops.  So many videobloggers love to participate in meetups, workshops and presentations.  It's great.

Click the pic to view the vid.

Webzine 2005

Webzine 2005 is coming up next month in San Francisco!  I've volunteered to participate in the Videoblogging workshop and panel.  This looks like it is going to be fun and off the wall.  Rene and Schlomo are organizing.  There might be a videoblogger meetup in SF that week too.  Today is the deadline for confirming your interest in helping out with any of the interesting workshops, panels and parties for this great event that is being held at the Swedish American Hall on Market Street.

Hollywood History Lessons

There has been some discussion lately in the Yahoo Videoblogging Group about "attitude" and the political correctness of people's replies to certain questions, particularly questions about sustainability.

Instead of discussing it here further, I offer this interesting documentary audio recording (mp3) that I found in the Internet Archive about "New Music in Los Angeles".  I think it is an interesting story about culture clash between refugee creatives from Europe and "Hollywood types" in the mid-1930's.

Food for thought and good for you.  I think we can learn much about culture clashes within videoblogging from this.  Remember, "those who fail to study the past are doomed to repeat it", or so they say.

E-Band Remix Remixed Again

And the re-mixes just keep on coming...

Watch movie 1.9 min 6.7 MB (Original post, via blip.tv)

First Impressions

Mortaine (Stephanie Bryant) has asked for some first impressions.  Here's mine.  Click the pic to view the vid.  As with all my content, you are free to re-mix it (a-nc-sa for those hip to creative commons).

Digital Urban Development

When I was a young mathematician, I worked with a person who always wrote his own textbook - his way - I must admit that they were far superior to others in numerous ways (no pun intended).  This was because he was a leader in that area of mathematical research.

Later, as we both got into personal computers and programming, his teaching and textbooks began to cover ground that many had already trodden.  Again, it was necessary to do it "his way".  Here, the benefits were less obvious.  Often, these books added a certain small mathematical twist that was interesting to a few; but I often wondered about why there was a need to write yet another book on Pascal.

One day, my mentor announced to me that he was going to write a "C" book.  I was abhorred.  I loved my K&R (still do - Kernigahan and Ritchie for those who do not know).  There is no other introductory book on the C programming language that stacks up to it.  Those who did not care for it were invariably light-weight's when it came to programming.  It's a book that I can still enjoy and benefit from re-reading today, even though I no longer program in C (or C++ for that matter). 

I told my friend and teacher this and asked him to carefully study and master K&R before adding yet another C programming book to the countless others that do not even come close to igniting the passion for this archaic language, and always relevant style and words of wisdom, that many of us had. 

This "little book" is to C programming, what Strunk and White is to writing style.

Today, I am tasked with building new communities.  But I see countless ones already and many that need help in various ways.

So why build yet another? 

Why not take all of the resources and content planned for new community development and offer it to OurMedia, as an example.  How much could an extra paid programmer or two help?  Or a graphic designer? 

We can all help guest moderate more - they are always asking.  We can participate more. 

Why develop the infrastructure for proprietary web services, when they could be integrated into others automatically?

Why build so many new communities?  Why not join others and help make them richer?

49Media.com Podcast

I'm too stoked.  Chris Ritke was kind enough to ask me for an interview for his podcasts.  I had too much fun and it's now on the 49Media.com.

Please visit 49Media for the complete post.  Here is a link to the mp3 file.

"Chris speaks with Markus Sandy about Spinflow.org, video blogging, vlogifying people and organizations, Podcast Hotel, Spincasting, videoblogging street teams, Blogher & a Spinflow sponsored west coast vlogger meetup, SpinXpress and more."

Chris was also so kind as to put the podcast on the Internet Archive.  Thanks Chris.

New Project - New Blog

I am excited to be working with my friend Rachel Toole.  She is home from NYU for the summer and we are collaborating to document the process of implementing SpinFlow principles at Outhink, Inc.

Yes, Outhink.  Everyone can derive value from more SpinFlow training and discipline.  Like Tai-Chi or a martial art, SpinFlow requires study and practice.  There are no colored belts, but clearly there are masters and there are people who have a passion to create and wish to spin and flow media with ease.

So how are we doing it?  First we are establishing modern networking lines of communication between us and, to that end, we have created a pair of blogs (mine's a vlog, hers will be soon also; others may follow).

Much of our discussions and activities will revolve around using SpinXpress, ANT and vlogs.  You can find all the details and my first video related to this on my new vlog.  Rachel is free to do whatever she likes with her blog and I think it's already very interesting.

You are invited to observe and participate through the comments, we are very interested in your feedback and value quality interaction.

Rachel's Summer Spin blog.    My Spin Summer 2005 vlog.

RIP

The final cut: his investors backed out.  You really must read his account of it all.

Link: 59Bloggers -- The Movie.

Echo Chamber Project

Interesting site.  A Window into Collaborative Investigative Filmmaking

Link: Echo Chamber Project.

Call for Collaboration - Why Sponsor?

Relating to the last post, I have put out a call for collaboration to the Yahoo! Videoblogging Group.  Hopefully some of those good people will get interested in this. 

You don't have to be a member to collaborate, everyone is welcome to submit a vid. 

Even you Michael.  Click the pic to view the vid.

What's It Worth?

This is a first draft of an ongoing topic that I would like to discuss.  I intend to update this document over time as I get your feedback and additional experience.

As I talk to more people about sponsoring creative professionals to just do what they are already doing, I am often asked to justify the expense.  There's money involved (not much actually) and so of course there is always another question or challenge to "just giving it away". 

I figure that this will be an on-going exercise as I don't ever want to stop working in this way.  In fact I want to do it more. 

I also figure I will have to repeat this many times and for many people; so I might as well blog it, get your feedback and then hand out the link to this page when future justification requests come in.

So here goes.  I hate this really, but I need to take the time from what I'm doing to get this out now.

No Hart Feelings

I would not want to be John Hart today.  He is experiencing the darker side of group collaboration.  It has been quite something to watch.  Basically, it went down like this as far as I can tell from quickly going over all the relevant emails and blogs (please let me know if I got it wrong in any way - times may be a little off due to timezone issues in messages):

Blogumentary = Chuck Olsen

Wow!  I just found something amazing!  I found a complete duplicate of my "zzzzzzzz-list" of bloggers that I used to read but no longer find relevant.

Even more amazing is the fact that the list is also the list of bloggers who appear in a so-called documentary called "59 bloggers".

What's most amazing is that the "former Hollywood executive", John Hart, who seems to be behind the "59 bloggers", has attempted to usurp the name "Blogumentary" which was first coined by Chuck Olsen of Secret Vlog Injection long before Hart showed up on the blogging scene. 

What's worse is that Hart has responded rudely to Chuck's polite requests to try and work the matter out.

Luckily the "59 bloggers" documentary may never see the light of day as it appears that funding is lacking for this project.  This guy's so desperate that he has apparently threatened legal action against Chuck.  Hopefully potential sponsors will realize the potential backlash of bad publicity that will no doubt ensue.

This is not true collaboration and I have no intention of supporting or viewing "59 bloggers".

I do look forward to Chuck's truly collaborative and honest "Blogumentary".

Please email John Hart at john.writer@gmail.com and urge him to show a little respect and to consider interviewing a more interesting set of people. 

Aside: Even Lessig is on the "zzzzzzz-list" these days.  I must admit that his name came up for consideration as a keynote speaker recently and everyone involved agreed that he seemed to be going on about the same old things these days  Pass.  We get it Larry, you're preaching to the choir.  Perhaps he's trying to get the chior to sing?  I dunno.  Check out my "Promises, Promises" playlist on WebJay for my favorite Larry Lessig mash-up.

Have you ever noticed how often it says "comments will be re-enabled soon" over at Creative Commons?  Weird.

Twofer with Toolfarm

Wow!  Good things comes in pairs? Threes? Someone just sent me a link to Toolfarm, a site for creative professional tools, mainly pug-ins for Adobe and Avid products it seems.  They have a post about SpinXpress!  Too cool.  Getting the word out.  I had heard that Robert at Outhink was talking with them.

I am new to Toolfarm and appreciate their notice of our peer-to-peer, secure, private, invitation-only collaboration and file sharing application for Mac's and PC's.  They're site is similar to some of the better developer plug-in sites that I am more familiar with.

As I get more into video editing, I'm sure I'll be checking them out more.  Right now, I am starting to look at JahShaka, an open source video editing platform and tool that supports a wide variety of plug-inz (note the z, in this case).  As I learn more about this, I'll learn and report how the open-source approach meshes with commercial sites like Toolfar.  Often, the two work together as I have seen with the Eclipse development  platform.

Have you ever done business with Toolfarm? What was your experience like? Would you recommend them?

Collaborative Video

I posted an article on "Collaborative Video" at spinflow.org, please check it out; I'd really appreciate your feedback (or pushback!  I like that word.)

It covers a wide rage of group efforts centered around video in general and videoblogging in particular.

Here is clip from yesterday's videoblogging video conference in which Nathan Peters is discussing music and video collaboration.

Just one of the many topics dicussed.

Tales of Spinflow

My good friend and schoolmate Dave Toole has started a series of posts about our adventures last week in LA and Santa Barbara.  He's spinning some good stories and I have a feeling he's going to start videoblogging too.

A leader in the semi-conductor and software industries, Dave has sponsored much of my work for several years, making it possible for me to pursue our shared passions.  Today he is helping people like Ryanne Hodson and Michael Verdi pursue their passions.

Lately we have started to get involved in entertainment related projects, which is a whole lot of fun and part of why we went to E3 (sort of, read Dave's article and find out what I mean) and UCSB last week.

Please check out his blog and encourage him to vlog (he knows about freevlog and just needs to get time to edit his vids).

collab.nl

I was telling some videoblogging group member friends about another collaborative environment: collab.nl.  If you've never been to this flash based environment, do check it out.

This is a rough video of a collab.nl session I caught off the fly.  I was visiting, saw this fabulous woman with the blue hair smoking a cig and knew I had to grab the video cam.

After a few moments (this starts slow, but hang in there), the music being broadcast from one (or more?) of the people starts the place dancing to a hot techno beat. 

Sorry if it's a little slow and choppy, but it was caught in the moment and I think I'll come back and make another "tutorial" style video on another occasion.  This one was one of those "grabs" you are lucky to get from time to time.  I cranked the music to give it the volume it deserves.  It was captured too so came out a bit backgroundish and so I tried to help it out.  Hope that works.

Click the pic to view the vid.  I think it's really cool that Frank Sinatra stays online now.

New Outhink Biz Cards for E3 - Part II

Ok, so whenever people drag me out of paradise (generally to smooze - i can also count with my hoofs), the question comes up about my title.

At Apperceive, I don't have to worry about this.  Other places, people generally like to refer to me as some some kind of architect.

But my life is changing.  A certain passion for expression has returned and I find I can no longer tolerate spending my time on anything except art.

So two titles...

I declare myself to be an "Application Artist".  Mainly, I intend to create art from applications.  Right now I am working on a piece that combines images, audio and video from various web services.  Technology as medium.

I also take it to mean that any applications I create must also hold to a higher aestetic value than what is accepted today.

The second title simply indicates that I have embraced the notion of spinflow and intend to help others become spinflow masters. 

This is primarily about movement in the way we work and collaborate.  While I recognise that there is a certain attachment here to Outhink and it's marketing, this is something that I truly believe in and think is important aside from any other connotations.

Removing barriers to creativity is not the domain of any one organization.  I propose to attempt elevate this through discipline, practice, example and discussion to the level of an art.

Think of spinflow like a martial art that allows you to move effortlessly within the creative process and allow you to "kick ass", in the words and sense of Kathy Sierra's  Creating Passionate Users weblog.

Ok, enuf talk.  Please keep watching, I hope to show you somethings special...

Click the pic to view the photo(s).

Ad Hoc Online Videoblogging Conference

Today a truly amazing demonstration of video technology took place right in my home/office.  I was checking over the email from the Yahoo videoblogging email list and saw a note that an ad hoc video conference was starting in a few minutes. 

Basically, Alex Williams of Corante and Erik Lagerway of www.ineeen.com were testing a Flash-based video conferencing tool for use with the Corante publications.  Also present were Steve Garfield, Chuckumentary, Nathan, joshua, josh leo, Jan, Eric Rice and myself.  Steve's mom Mildred and his wife Carol also stopped in.  The unforgettable Chris Koehn kept us all up on the lastest DIY boom tricks and prices (in Canadian pesos).  He also enlightened us a bit as to why he vlogs and the kind of effort he puts into it.

Everyone had a great sense of humor, but Chuck, Steve, Eric and Joshua are down right comedians (entertainers, if you prefer).

Many topics were discussed, but of course it was mainly all about video blogging.  Some discussion of where to hold the next Vloggercon2006 took place.  Josh Leo was kind enough to discuss how he made his recent split screen music perfomance video.  Eric Rice amazed everyone with both his technology and his ability to participate and juggle a house full of family and kids.

It was suggested that a video meet like this be held weekly at this time (7pm EST).

I tried to grab some video myself, but failed to capture the audio.  Click on the pics to see some screen snaps.

Addendum: Alex Williams has posted the entire conference online.  There is great access to each part of the conversation.  Fantastic software demo.  I have tagged this post with the keyword "vlogcast".

Green Thing

I just found out about the Green Thing and need to send off an email to Renegade to ask for a piece to use in making something fun with the new Sanyo Xacti C5 that we just ordered the other day on eBay.

Here's the greenthing Technorati tag.  Click on it to see more green things.

Speed Jamming

I just re-mixed a nice little post of Mitch Ratcliffe's for SpinFlow on collaboration and "Speed Jamming".  Please check it out.

Collaboration Stories

Here's a short story (3 minutes) about true collaboration, Kathy Sierra and SpinFlow.  Click the pic to view.

Obviously I am way too close to the camera in this one (I thought I'd try something different - you should see the failed swimming pool experiments from earlier in the day!), but this is how I learn - by doing.

Also, it's like 1am after a looooong day and I was about to call it a night, but I had just taken the freevlog pledge and so I thought I should shoot another vid as promised.

Workshop Memories

Something triggered an old memory and I felt I should vlog it.  Sorry if it's a bit long (6 minutes) and I know I have to get all this down better, but the important thing is to get the vids out there. 

Hopefully this has better compression. I followed Michael Verdi's great compression tutorial notes and it looks like I got at least 20% smaller files. 

The start up still seems a bit slow to me - bear with me please as I figure this out and try to keep up with all the pros.

Anyway, here is a little story about the early days of teaching desktop publishing on the first Macintosh's.  Click the pic and enjoy!

Speed Jamming: Award Winning Movie In 48 Hours

Sean Fitzroy and Vikki Merriman exemplify the spirit behind what Outhink CEO Dave Toole calls "Speed Jamming"...

Speed Jamming can be defined as "using secure personal internets (SPINs) to assemble creative professional teams, rapidly collaborate and then move on to new projects anywhere, anytime".

In this fascinating presentation from the Mac OS X Conference (put on October 25-28, 2004 by O'Reilly Media), the two award winners discuss various aspects of "speed jamming" as it applies to making an award winning movie for the 2003 Boston 48 Hour Film Project competition using Apple hardware and software.

So many of the workflow issues that they faced in 2003, are now as easy as "drag & drop" with products like SpinXpress (released for the Mac in Summer 2004).

Here is a summary of their talk:

The presentation will begin with a viewing of Pie in the Sky, an 8-minute long mockumentary short about a dot-com that tries to start an automated online pizza delivery service. The filmmakers will discuss the media management and work flow techniques that enabled collaboration between multiple editors and compositors, a composer, and a sound recordist that needed to quickly manipulate and exchange and work with large audio and video files.

Learn about the technologies that enabled the filmmakers to log and capture on the set, collaboratively edit the film and create animations on three networked laptops, record music directly into Final Cut Pro in real time, and even create a "mobile unit" so that the film could be output to tape in the car on the way to the drop-off point. The Mac OS X voice "Bruce" even has a supporting role!

Link: IT Conversations: Merriman and Fitzroy - Real-Time Filmmaking on OS X.

Shinkuro Experiment Continues

I've been hoping to get some more time to share my continuing Shinkuro Experiments.  I made a new friend today and more people have joined the "Shinkuro Experiments" group, although it is not clear to me how they found me (I think they read one of these blog posts).  Sky (the newest friend - Shinkuro terminology - we say member in SpinXpress) claims to know Joi Ito and is interested in collaborating on music projects. Cool.

I've been taking some rough notes and I hope to share those later in the week.  I hope that these notes will be useful to others and will not ruffle too many feathers.  Some may find it discomforting that a developer for one collaboration product might write about and compare it to a "competitor".  While I plan to be very candid in my observations, it is not so much my intention to dwell on little "bugs".  However, I may mention some (in my product, as well as others) so that people will be able to work around them and to help developers find and correct them (or me if I'm being a dope).

I am interested in the bigger issues that are common to collaborative tools.  For example, it seems clear that one of the central issues yet to be addressed by any secure personal internet is that of finding groups or spaces.  Same for people and resources.  Once we have a large number of groups, each containing a number of resources (files, urls, people, etc.), how do we locate them?  Also, when we first start using a product like Shinkuro or SpinXpress, how do we connect with others?  These are the main things I want to look at in future posts.

In the meantime, join in on the fun.  Get a copy of one of these products (Shinkuro, SpinXpress, etc.), create a group and invite me to it.  I'm app.etitio.us!shinkuro.com (for Shinkuro) and markus@outhink.com (for SpinXpress).  If you use another tool that you think I should try out, please let me know and I will.

Shinkuro Mac

OK, more on Shinkuro; I downloaded the Mac OS X version.  The install was a little rougher than the Windows version, but not bad (ANT has a GREAT OS X install, btw).  On the other hand, I really like the UI on the Mac over the one on Win2K.

Shinkuru

Joi Ito recommended looking at Shinkuru. As you may know, I work with Outhink, Inc. on their SpinXpress product and services.  As applications, SpinXpress and Shinkuro share a number of common features, but they also have a number of interesting differences (more on that in a later post).  Joi says:

Do The Right Thing

Seth's Blog points to a wonderful post by Joe Taylor about slow cooking that I wish lots of people I know would read.  I can hear Ossie Davis as Da Mayor telling Mookie "Doctor, always try to do the right thing!" 

So often, I see companies adding poorly thought out features to a product in order to chase some newly recognized opportunity that will supposedly catapult the product to a wild success overnight.  Oops, now I hear Zappa.

I'm reading Malcolm Gladwell's new book "Blink".  One of the main points that the book advocates is "decisions made very quickly can be every bit as good as decisions made cautiously and deliberately".  This is interesting in light of the most recent C-SPAN Library of Congress discussion with David Levy, where there seemed to be a consensus amongst the discussion panel that there was a need today for time for greater reflection in the ever increasing pace of the modern world. 

These days, we want to (have to?) move at Internet speeds, but often this just results in half-baked ideas thrown against the wall to see what sticks.  Many development strategies suggest continuously making small improvements.   Like any good cook, we need to be able to plan ahead, deal with sudden flare-ups and, all the while, keep slowly stirring the sauce until everything is ready to be served to our guests.

David Levy on C-SPAN

David Levy, a UW Information School professor and the author of  "Scrolling Forward" will be speaking live on C-SPAN today from the LOC at 3:30 PST.  Here is description from the C-SPAN site:

Monday, February 14 at 6:30pm ET - David M. Levy, professor at the Information School of the University of Washington Levy is the author of "Scrolling Forward: Making Sense of Documents in the Digital Age," and he will discuss the shift of the experience of reading from the fixed page to movable electrons and the effect that has had on language.

You can email in questions. Here are some links to bone up for the event.  Ramana Rao's Information Flow blog has an interesting review (see quote below).  He was a fellow researcher at Xerox PARC.  An article index entry can be found here and the Seattle Times has an in-depth review here.

Starting from a simple definition of documents as "talking things," Levy explains how they act as our social delegates, in particular, speaking for us in social settings. This broad perspective offers insights into how documents participate in the functioning of culture, and consequently, what might or might not happen across technology shifts.

Sounds interesting. More on this after the broadcast ...

Community Management Systems

How do you build a community?  Can one start with an existing open-source content management system (CMS) and extend it to meet the community's additional needs?  What features are important to start with?

I'm starting to take another serious dive into content management systems.  There are lots out there, lots of features and lots of platforms and architectures.

It would be interesting to know what some of the popular sites are using.  I note that Webjay is a heavly modified version of Geeklog.  Of course, I already mentioned that Microsoft has open-sourced the Channel 9 wiki. The AlwaysOn Network is PHP based.

While I am not wedded to any particular architecture or platform, I want to be able to integrate easily with SpinXpress, which is a mainly a Java/SWT app based on the Jetty web server.  SpinXpress and the SPIN directory server, use HypersonicSQL for metadata storage.  I've been seeing a lot of job ads lately that mention Hibernate and an inital review of this object2db mapping api looks very powerful.  Needless to say, many people are using MySQL these days.  Apache and Tomcat based solutions are plentiful.

I know I have not mentioned what the community is for and what it's features will be.   At this point, I am only interested in basic and typical community and content management features so as to determine the a good one to build upon.  What's your experience?