Travis Bradshaw

Lingonberry juice @ IKEA

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 15:55:12 -0600

Lingonberry juice @ IKEA

Switching from Foursquare to Gowalla

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:04:00 -0600

It’s been a lot of fun lately experimenting with location based applications. With awesome platforms like Foursquare and Gowalla, it’s interesting to see what location aware social services are capable of.

The technology and the ideas are new enough that there are pretty significantly different takes on what makes a great location base service, and with my initial survey of the available applications I had decided that Foursquare seemed like the best fit for what I wanted out of a location based service.

What particularly drew me to Foursquare was the idea of “tips”. The premise of digital graffiti that could provide socially useful tips for strangers seemed like a very cool way to spawn emergent social interactions. But in practice, Foursquare doesn’t do a good job delivering. The “tips” functionality seems to be a completely unstructured text without definite purpose. The “mayoral” competitions are very fun, but kind of reinforce a competitive nature that isn’t really what I’m trying to get out of emergent social media. I’m hoping for new augmented social experiences that build community, not competition.

A recent dinner with Nate Dillion opened my understanding of the Gowalla platform immensely. A recent social media conference in Lawrence, KS featured an executive of Gowalla (that is a KU graduate!). It clarified that what makes Gowalla different from Foursquare is a model that doesn’t focus on competition, but instead uses the idea of collecting stamps on a passport. Where I previously misinterpreted the stamps as a form of “virtual items” like a massively multiplayer online game (offline game?), really Gowalla focuses on documenting your real world experiences in an attractive way.

Additionally, Gowalla has been adding really great features, like “trips” (pub crawl, anyone?) and “events” and other abstract “locations” that people attend. Meanwhile, Foursquare still won’t even let me help correct/merge trashy location entries.

Add to those differences a very attractive iPad app and an API that will let my friends and I develop against Gowalla as a service… and that’s pretty much a switch.

So goodbye Foursquare friends. It’s been very fun campaigning for mayor with, er, against you. But I’m looking for friendlier experiences with superior implementations.

Gowalla, here I am.

Google Wave's Project Manager + Twitter = Ultimate Level of Customer Interaction

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 14:20:45 -0600

Travis Bradshaw: @twephanie I NEED a way to unbind esc in Wave. I'm a VIM user and casual Esc presses are losing me hours of work. :( Instant cancel, no undo
Travis Bradshaw: @twephanie esc even breaks the playback. Blip creation and deletion events are in the timeline, but the creation event has no content. :(
Steph Hannon: @tbradshaw Ag! Esc was meant to delete an accidentally created blank blip. Temp fix: it will (soon) do nothing if content in a blip.
Travis Bradshaw: @twephanie Do you have an address I can send flowers?

Some quick images of the “Spaces” configuration in...

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 16:26:30 -0600

Some quick images of the “Spaces” configuration in OSX for revenant. He was curious how many virtual workspaces were supported.

Peanut Butter, Chocolate Torte at Bluestem Bistro

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 11:17:03 -0600

Peanut Butter, Chocolate Torte at Bluestem Bistro

Universal Medical Insurance is Not the Answer

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 13:31:00 -0600

It’s not a hedge against expense, it’s a hedge against risk. Increasing insurance coverage cannot solve for skyrocketing health care costs, and it seems like the majority of the people participating in the conversation misunderstand what insurance is and what insurance does.

Creating a simple insurance plan is trivial. Let’s say that ten of our close family and friends decide to make an “insurance fund” to cover unexpected medical expenses. Each of the ten people deposit $100 a month, adding a total of $1,000 each month. Then, whenever someone has a medical emergency, they can use the entire pot to pay for the emergency. That’s the entire basis for “insurance”. The most important lesson of insurance is to realize that the majority of the insured must pay more than they receive in return.

It’s worth stating again, because the tag has gone out of style and it’s the most important lesson that anyone can learn about insurance: the majority of the insured must pay more than they receive in return. That’s an inarguable, non-negotiable truth of the system. You can’t spend more money than is in the pot.

Now why would anyone pay more than they receive for medical care? And how does this protect my family against the skyrocketing costs of health care in the U.S.? The short answers are “peace of mind” and “it doesn’t”.

The reason that people are willing to overpay for medical care by buying insurance is to buy peace of mind that if the odds work out against you, your life won’t be ruined. The idea is that only 1 in $big_number people have a medical issue that is catastrophic to their fiscal well-being, but anyone could end up being that 1. So lots of people pay into a system that says, “you probably won’t be the one, but thanks to your payments, if you’re the one, you’re covered.” That peace of mind is nice, it helps one sleep at night. Lots of people are willing to overpay for medical care to have that peace of mind.

But how does that protect your family against the skyrocketing costs of health care in the U.S.? It absolutely doesn’t! The response to increased health care costs are increased insurance premiums! That’s because higher health care costs do not change the odds, the risk, of becoming ill. They only change the expense of the event when it happens. Therefore, to cover that expense at the same risk, insurance premiums go up to match the new costs.

But, one immediately considers, insurance doesn’t just cover emergencies; health insurance is useful for a wide range of everyday practices, from preventative care to minor check ups. Really, that’s just a side effect. When insurance companies arranged for everyone to pay into the pot to protect themselves from the risk of catastrophe, they found that the pot was much bigger than the payouts. While I’m sure at first it was just a big profit-party, competition soon increased and there were many insurance companies to choose from. To lure customers in to a particular insurance pool, they offered “benefits” to membership that covered much more than just emergency care.

After considering insurance from this perspective, it should be easy to see why all of the controversial aspects of insurance are a fact of life. People with pre-existing conditions have a difficult time getting insurance because they already lost the risk game. They can’t contribute to the insurance pool, they will only drain it. (And accordingly, these pre-existing condition customers can all get together in their own insurance pool, but it’s going to be very very expensive because the majority must overpay for health care for insurance to work.) Really, people with pre-existing conditions don’t need health insurance (protection from risk), they need more money for medical bills.

The difficult thing to see, is that all of this health insurance is a big part of why health care costs are rising! All the little benefits that insurance plans have a distorting effect on our fiscal sensibility. That’s because we spend our money on insurance premiums, and then we spend other people’s money on the actual health care. And, of course, we’re all much less frugal and intelligent with spending other people’s money. It ruins the elasticity of demand for medical care, it encourages unnecessary medical spending, and it increases the health care costs across the board.

So whenever you hear someone say, “Everyone needs health insurance because health care is so expensive these days,” little alarm bells should go off in your head, because you know that insurance can’t help with high costs and that health insurance requires the majority to overpay for health care. ”Everyone needs health insurance because health care is so expensive these days,” makes as much sense as, “Health care is so expensive these days that everyone should pay extra to make sure they don’t have to pay less.”

This entire focus on health insurance is a sham. It’s a trick to capture the political capital of Americans that don’t understand insurance. Whether you’re a liberal or a conservative or any other persuasion, you shouldn’t be allowing “insurance” to be the focus of the debate. Our health care costs are too high. Insurance cannot bring down costs (and in fact, makes them worse). Anyone that has a plan for you to consider to improve the state of health care in our nation should be addressing health care costs, not health care insurance. Public or private, universal medical insurance is not the answer.

The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard is certainly worth watching....

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:20:11 -0600

The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard is certainly worth watching. It’s entertaining, well produced, and brings up a number of important point worth starting a conversation over with your friends and family.

However, the video is not without it’s downsides. It’s packed with politically loaded, factually incorrect statements. For every statement about human welfare and market manipulation that had me nodding my head, another naive or ignorant statement made me wince. (For instance, in a segment about planned obsolescence, she stupidly describes the CPU as the only part of a computer that improves each year, ignoring all of the other components in the system that improve each year as well. That’s uneducated misinformation of the same exact kind she rails against from corporations.)

But, on the whole, I think that the video is valuable. Misinformation aside, it’s certainly true that the materials economy is amok and worth scrutiny.

A comedy edit of the skateboarding footage taken when my...

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:55:42 -0600

A comedy edit of the skateboarding footage taken when my brothers came to visit.

During the short session, I mostly focused my first-time camera work on capturing tricks (and trick attempts) by Michael. However, “Matt Matt”—who can also skateboard—always seemed to find a way into the frame. Lindsay and I thought this was entertaining, and so I put together this highlight reel.

The still at the end shows (left to right) myself, my wife Lindsay, Matt, and Michael after the session. Mom took this photo just before they left.

Longer cut of footage taken during a skateboarding session at...

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 19:53:12 -0600

Longer cut of footage taken during a skateboarding session at Cico Park with my little brother Michael Landrum. This edit contains pretty much the entire session.

First cut of some footage taken during a skateboarding session...

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 17:54:00 -0600

First cut of some footage taken during a skateboarding session at Cico Park with my little brother Michael Landrum. This quick edit shows off the tricks that Michael hit during the session.

Sports Illustrated on the iPad

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:50:22 -0600

Sports Illustrated on the iPad

This is the future of magazines, and I think they are about to...

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:35:23 -0600

This is the future of magazines, and I think they are about to become more relevant than ever before.

Drawing the Line; A Collection Complete

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:36:02 -0600

Today marks the completion of my comprehensive collection of Rock Band content. Until today, I have been purchasing every single song released for the Rock Band platform, from Country to Death Metal, deep album cuts to pop hits, Manson to Spongebob.

The experience has been wonderful. For the majority of two years, our band Big Endian (and before that, Little Endian) has celebrated Rock Band Tuesday, where we’d play the new content weekly to much fanfare and critical evaluation. But times change and so must our habits.

It’s been quite some time since Big Endian has played together. Online play just hasn’t been compelling enough to “keep the band together” remotely, and most of my Rock Band Tuesday purchases have been single player experiences lately. As such, the marginal value of the weekly expense has been deteriorating. I’ve been looking for a reason (excuse?) to end my weekly purchases in a satisfactory way that provides some closure for the experience.

Today it arrived, with the launch of the new Rock Band Network store. In an absolutely brilliant move, Harmonix has opened the Rock Band platform to a potentially unlimited supply of content creators and even on the first day of launch, over 100 songs are available! This is awesome, but it does have an element of bell tolling.

Rock Band has matured past the “traditional” downloadable content model for games. Instead of a relative trickle of content that marginally improves the game each week, now the Rock Band platform resembles more of a traditional music store or even iTunes. And, of course, even the most ardent lover of music doesn’t try to buy everything that’s available on iTunes. An era has ended, and a new one has begun.

I don’t mean to imply that I have no interest in buying more music for Rock Band. On the contrary, there are many songs on the Rock Band Network that look absolutely amazing. But I’ll no longer be collecting all of it, instead I’ll just be cherry picking songs as my interest demands. (I might buy less, after all, I do have hundreds of songs already, it’s not like I’m having trouble finding things to play.)

And so today I draw the line. I have a complete collection of the first era of Rock Band downloadable content. From the very first day of release, until the very first day that the Rock Band Network brought content creation to the masses, I’ve got them all, and I’m very satisfied.

I Want to Opt-Out of Postal Service

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:46:00 -0600

I wish that there was some way that I could just completely opt-out of postal service. It’s a source of constant frustration that while ninety percent of everything received by postal service is junk, there are still organizations that consider “delivered in writing by U.S. post” to be the most definitive way to relay important information.

Times have changed and postal service is a “noisy” burden. It’s certainly the absolutely least reliable way to relay timely or important information to me. This is especially true for fiscal institutions. A postal message spends days or weeks in transit, which means it’s already completely stale/old information by the time it arrives. If it is a call to action, the opportunity has likely passed before the message is even delivered. If it is a call to prevent action (like a lowered limit or an overdraft) it is much too late to prevent any meaningful action.

Of course, when it’s delivered that doesn’t mean that the postal message was actually received. No one waits for postal mail with baited breath anymore. It may reside in the post box for a day or two before someone remembers to check it. When checked, an important message will likely reside in a large stack of advertisements and spam.

And those advertisements and spam now deliberately mimic important messages to increase their chances of being opened. If I had $10 for every phony loan consolidation postal message I’ve received that has impersonated the U.S. government or other major financial entity, I would have easily paid off our student loans by now. (Now appears to be the season of “impersonate a tax document, like a W-2” with the tear off borders instead of an envelope.)

So now the “important” message (that is probably too old to actually be important anymore) is in a stack with deceptive and unsolicited spam to be opened whenever the resident has time to clean their desk/counter/ad-hoc-mail-depot. This is like trying to sell financial services at a flea market. Being surrounded by a wretched hive of scum and villainy is no way to convey even legitimacy, much less importance.

There are two possibilities as to why major institutions like financial institutions are still relying on postal delivery for important notices. The first is that they are so completely out of touch with the progress of society and technology that they just haven’t noticed that the only modern, valuable use that a postal mail box has is “magazine and holiday card dispenser.” However, it seems unlikely that they could avoid noticing the sharp decline in physical check orders in younger demographics, increased ATM usage, and ubiquitous internet banking, all while simultaneously leveraging modern exchange markets and launching things like E*Trade, and avoid the obvious conclusion that postal mail has expired.

The second is that the postal messages are in no way intended to actually be useful to the customer or recipient. They are sent entirely as a cover-your-ass effort by fiscal institutions so that they can provide enough legal notice of their actions to put the burden on the customer for their actions.

And that’s why I’d rather just opt-out of postal service. We’ve (unfortunately) moved past the age where major institutions, like banks and fiscal institutions, are responsible and ethical organizations that act in the customer’s best interest and merely need to document their efforts to prove legality in complaints. These organizations are more likely to take advantage of customers (or completely disregard their interests) in order to cover up their own incompetent fiscal maneuverings. Sending “dead on arrival” messages by postal service is just a cop-out maneuver to try and shift blame. Postal messages are an unreliable communication mechanism that gets too much legal sway by the physical virtue of existing “in writing”.

I want to opt out!

The iPad is for a different niche!

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:13:00 -0600

I’ve been very excited for the Apple event today, floating blissfully somewhere between the hype and the anti-hype. For me, the iPad has delivered nicely to a set of use-cases that contains the majority of Lindsay’s daily computing and a good portion of mine.

Of course, many of my fellow geeks are lamenting the release with “it’s not good for anything” just as often as they are praising the release. It seems like it’s the exact same phenomena for any subculture that merits itself on knowledge. Just like music aficionados will exclaim how they liked a band before they made it big, and now they suck, technologists often seem to have distain for a new technology that has mass appeal.

There are really two reasons that a knowledgeable geek isn’t excited about the iPad:

They are geek snobs and just can’t like popular things and/or they respond to hype with a natural skeptical antibody that turns them past skeptical into cynical.
They aren’t pushing the “niche” boundaries of where they use computing in their lives.

There’s no real response to #1, that’s just a personality thing, but #2 is very real. It’s important to identify the niche that the iPad is meant for. It is not the same niche as your iPhone or laptop. It’s a type of computing that I’ll temporarily dub, for lack of a better term, “semi-portable computing”. It’s something that both the iPhone and the laptop are weak at. Here are some use-cases that fit into this “semi-portable computing” category, and how the iPad can deliver better than either your iPhone or laptop.

Reading in Bed - As old as the pattern of “winding down” and reading in bed is, more and more the majority of reading content is found and consumed online. As a result, many of us are taking our laptops or iPhone to bed in order to read some content or play a bit of games before bed.
- The iPhone works admirably well, but doesn’t allow a very relaxed posture while winding down in bed. You need to keep the device pretty close to your face to read for moderately long periods. It’s absolutely no accident that the presenters on stage at the Apple event sat on comfortable furniture on every opportunity when using the iPad.
- A laptop brings too much to the bed. For reading and very light night-time gaming, one rarely/never needs a keyboard, so half of the laptop is just in the way. Additionally, the power consumption and heat production of a laptop can make bedtime computing uncomfortable, sometimes even requiring a bedside charging cable draped over part of the bed. (Lindsay’s bedside floor is always a cable spaghetti at our home.) The iPad is compact and has a long battery life, no night-time charging or heat problems.
Kitchen Computing - As products like Personal Trainer: Cooking and numerous lifestyle category apps for grocery lists can attest, the computer is becoming an important part of kitchen life. From (very basic) inventory management, to recipe use, even to cooking show viewing, computing in the kitchen is a natural fit.
- The same portability that makes the iPhone great in so many situations is a liability in the kitchen. It’s a too-small utensil to be lost in the mix, or it’s a too-small screen to be used while working. The optimum use case for kitchen computing is “on the counter near me while I’m working”, but the iPhone is only truly effective in the hand.
- Just like the bedroom, a laptop brings too much to the counter top. When counter top space can be at a premium, a laptop can take and entire workspace away. Keyboards are also problematic, because they are so difficult to clean. It’s no problem to get a little food or fluid on something in the kitchen, because everything in the kitchen is easy to clean. A laptop brings a large, fragile item to the kitchen where the burden is notable. Lindsay will often wrap the keyboard of her MacBook with cellophane to avoid getting it too dirty. A iPad would stand, docked, taking less than a third of the space and could even handle some smudged up screen-work to be cleaned easily later.
Couch Computing - Internet media use and interactive gaming has skyrocketed in recent years to a comparable percentage of leisure time that television once was the sole occupier. But, importantly, the total television watching time hasn’t decreased proportionally. What does that mean? It means now, more than ever, people are consuming multiple forms of media at the same time. The computer is being used on the couch, as an interactive complement to passive television viewing.
- The iPhone serves the “quick lookup” niche well enough, with a quick visit to Wikipedia or IMDB making a nice complement to television viewing. However, an instant messaging or facebook session that lasts for the entire duration of a television show becomes uncomfortable and/or unwieldy. Once again, the iPad brings a comfortable computing interface that maximizes the utility of computing in this setting.
- Laptops again, are just too much for couch computing. The heat and power consumption almost always means an uncomfortable lap and a power adapter tethering the device to the wall. “Passing” a laptop over to another viewer to check out a complementary source is often more trouble than it’s worth. The iPad is a quick pass around the room, no wires or bulk attached.
Travel Computing - While drivers still need their focus, entertainment during travel is becoming a larger part of the base expectation of typical users.
- The iPhone can make a dent, providing music and video to travelers, but the form factor still can be inconvenient for sitting and watching content. The iPad is a comfortable form factor that makes interactive and passive use trivial in a car or plan. The optional 3G makes it especially attractive for interactive use in the car.
- But due to the annoyances of battery consumption, laptops have largely been passed over for more passive entertainment like movies and television that are inexpensive to build into cars and planes. Plus, take away internet access and most laptops are paperweights anyway, one has to really prepare for any notable time without internet.

These are the example use-cases that I picture the iPad excelling at. There are many, many people that are stretching the use of their laptop or their iPhone into these niches with mixed success. To a significant extent, the iPod Touch is an experiment in just these directions, and a successful one.

So when I hear someone mention how the iPad won’t fit in a pocket or isn’t as powerful as a laptop, the first answer I think of is “it doesn’t have to be!” This isn’t a replacement for an iPhone or a heavy laptop user, this is a device that serves all of the gaps in a connected lifestyle that the existing products poorly serve.

I could never give up my laptop for a device like this, my laptop is a desktop that moves easily and the features unique to a “real” laptop are something I use every single day. But, on the other hand, when look at the use case of my wife, this thing looks like a serious contender. With a bluetooth keyboard and perhaps an external monitor for light laptop-centric work, this is a really compelling option. And for potentially half the price of a new laptop!

So as the anti-hype blows around everywhere now that the iPad is public, it’s interesting to me to see how many geeks are warm to the idea but can’t find a use. It means that computing isn’t as pervasive in their lives as I would have guessed. Well, or they are a geek snob.

Freedom of Speech is Less Important Than Fixing Congress

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:16:00 -0600

The big news right now is that the Supreme Court has ruled in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Committee, striking down provisions of the McCain-Feingold act limiting the participation of corporations and unions in political speech.

The majority opinion (a 57 page affair) can be summarized as, “It’s unlawful for the government to block political speech from associations of people. It may regulate, but it may not silence.” Which truly is a reasonable, ethical, and ideologically sound position. The big news isn’t the sensible decision, but the enormous ramifications this ~~could~~ will have on elections in the U.S. There’s no question that this decision will lead to an enormous magnification of problems our nation faces with a corrupt legislative branch. Congresspersons will practically need to be sponsored like NASCAR drivers to successfully run for office in a marketplace of ideas that names like Coca-Cola and Walmart can participate in.

There’s certainly a point in my life that I would have cheered this decision has a win for freedom of speech. Campaign finance reforms, like the one that Change Congress proposes, always have a necessary catch that states “qualifying candidates may receive additional funds from the citizenry.” That catch is always devastating for third party candidates, the kinds of candidates that might be able to accomplish real change, because the Democrats and Republicans write the terms of “qualification” such that only they can qualify.

The typical resort for third party candidates is to gather “patrons” that would give enormous sums of money and underwrite a significant portion of their campaign. It’s one of the few viable alternatives when you don’t have a nationwide fundraising apparatus. (Which is what the Democratic Party and Republican Party really are, if you think otherwise you’re kidding yourself.) Limits on election contributions prevent this type of fundraising.

Ethically, there is no question that election contributions are “speech” and restrictions on speech are generally undesirable.

For those three reasons, as someone coming from a third party political background, I previously would have supported any action to remove restrictions to election contributions. Even when the Change Congress movement first started, I was hesitant to support it due to the “Citizen Funded Elections” legislation that forms the backbone of the movement. I loved the ideas, the presentations, and the wisdom from Lessig, but I couldn’t convince myself that additional regulation on free speech would solve.

But time passes, opinions mature, and I’ve changed my mind. I still believe that regulating election contributions is a restriction of free speech, but now I understand why it is necessary.

Corporations and unions are just associations of people! It’s unethical to suppress free speech just because people have joined together to make themselves heard. Corporations and unions are just economic representatives, just like legislators are government representatives.

That was certainly my opinion and it’s completely wrong. It’s easy as a person that values economic freedom to see corporations in the idyllic light that capitalism shines on them: associations of people to accomplish greater things than can be accomplished alone. But that light is deceptive, and that is not what a corporation is. A corporation is a mechanism for limiting liability.

There are inherent risks to doing business in a society, and anyone doing business on their own has to consider more than just the fiscal and economic repercussions of their actions. The social repercussions can be significant motivating factor in an individual’s business decisions. Even on a small scale, pollution makes your neighbors hate you, unsafe practices can ostracize you from your social circles, bad-deals destroy your reputation. The corporation is a way to allow owners to invest in a company without any of the social risks of participating in society. If a company that you own a share of pollutes the environment while operating far away from your home, your neighbors won’t associate that action with you. If a company you own shares in participates in unsafe practices or fraud, you won’t be ostracized from your friends. In fact, a company can perform socially irresponsible actions, make a fiscal and economic profit, and then just dissolve and let all the shareholders keep the profits before the social ramifications of those actions return. In the most literal sense, corporations are sociopaths.

Because of the legal construction of the corporation, it is absolutely necessary to regulate the behavior of corporations in ways that are unethical for individuals. If we the people have chosen to allow an association of people to act without the social repercussions inherent and necessary to maintain a peaceful society, then we the people must be willing to extend regulation to force corporations to internalize social harms into their decision making. It is not only ethical to do so, it is unethical not to do so.

Freedom of speech is a critical part of a functioning society, and political speech is the most important, most essential type of speech to democracy. How can you limit election contributions and claim to have free elections?

One thing is for certain, freedom of speech is absolutely a critical part of a free society and political speech is arguably the most important form. (The Supreme Court has supported this position consistently.) But this argument misses an important difference between “political speech” and “election contributions”, and the difference hinges on this quote from Frédéric Bastiat:

We must remember that law is force[.]

Speaking persuasively to convince your fellow citizens on political topics is fundamentally different from making law. Law is force. As such, paying a politician to take office is paying for force. It shares some important similarities to paying for other services, like hiring a gardener or even like hiring a contract killer. No one would argue that “political speech is absolute, hiring an assassin to remove someone from office should be protected!” But at the same time, you can contribute to an election in order to have a person (well, a group of people) imprisoned or to redistribute wealth in your own direction. Hell, that’s what “pork” is.

So it’s critical that we draw a line somewhere. While anyone should have the unlimited ability to buy and display a Public Service Announcement about an issue or topic that’s important to them, it is a different thing to contribute to an election or to lobby congress. One type of political speech persuades people, the other type of political speech buys laws. Persuading your fellow citizens is not the same as persuading your lawmakers.

Those concepts combined are why I came to agree with the entire platform of Change Congress. We need Citizen Funded Elections because they sharply limit the influence that large, often literally sociopathic, groups have on the laws of our nation. Freedom of speech, especially political speech, doesn’t matter if laws are for sale. This systematic corruption is already the status quo; the recent ruling in Citizens United v. FEC will make it worse. But, importantly, this ruling does not diminish the effectiveness of the Citizen Funded Elections solution, it just makes it all that much more critical.

It Doesn't Matter Who's President When Congress is a Failure

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 18:19:00 -0600

Today, thanks to the Change Congress mailing list I watched an amazing video by Lawrence Lessig as he explains why progressives and conservatives alike should be outraged by what has happened in the first year of the Obama administration. I thought the video was great—no great surprise there, Lessig is a brilliant speaker—and shared it via the Twitter.

My good friend, Danial Porter, replied to my share with:

I’m torn. See, I agree that congress blocks progress, but this go ‘round, I’m pretty happy about the progress that’s being blocked.

This is an opinion that makes sense, and that I personally shared several years ago when I was still politically active. I had rationalized that Clinton had a pretty good administration, because he was pretty solid with foreign policy and in most of the domestic issues his solutions— that I hated—were blocked. A president that could do little harm sounded pretty good to me.

But I don’t share that opinion anymore. It’s a misconception to think that “blocked progress” implies that congress isn’t doing anything. Congress is still warping and violating the “spirit” of legislation as it passes through the system, it just isn’t doing any of those things that the American people symbolically voted for by electing Obama. Instead, congress serves themselves, necessarily, by focusing up to 70% of their time in office on fundraising to secure their position and livelihood.

The reason that the Change Congress movement is so critical, is that it addresses a prerequisite problem to the most important political issue to you. It doesn’t even matter what your most important beliefs or opinions are, if the systematic corruption in congress can’t be stopped, then your most important issue can’t be address properly and no great man or woman—left, right, center, forwards, or backwards—can make a difference. Obama is failing, but it should be no comfort to conservatives, because your hero is doomed to the same failure.

Dr. Lessig lays out this dependency on fundraising in another brilliant presentation found on the Who We Are page of the Change Congress website. It takes almost twenty minutes to watch, but will likely be the most politically responsible thing you do this year. Understanding this issue is more important than voting.

This isn’t a partisan statement that Lessig is making. The entire Change Congress effort from Lessig is the result of a brilliant constitutional scholar going through the real “school of hard knocks”. He spent decades of his life working for American culture and the American people by attempting to correct asinine copyright laws. He failed. But in failing he recognized a problem that needs corrected first before his passion for a culturally beneficial copyright law can be realized.

Congress must be servants of The People, as the constitution intended, not of special interests. What’s better for The People is not what’s best for special interests. That’s what makes them special. If special interests were what was best for the public, then they would be called public interests, not special ones. In a congress where campaign funding is the prerequisite for all political power and political success, and nearly all campaign funding comes from special interests, congressmen and congresswomen must serve the special interests first, or they will stop being congresspersons. This is the system that Lessig has identified as the failure in American democracy, and he’s right.

Conservatives have no reason to be pleased with the ineffectiveness of Obama as the 44th President of the United States. His failure isn’t one of character, he’s a brilliant constitutional law scholar that has advocated honesty and transparency at every turn. His failure isn’t one of agenda, he was elected on an agenda that brought a super-majority of his party members to office in congress with him. His failure isn’t one of initiative, he’s brought to the congress each of his campaign promises and called congress to action. You don’t have to agree with a political agenda to recognize potential in an administration. If a brilliant, charismatic, internationally favored, honest president serving at the same time as a super-majority of his own party can’t change anything, there’s no reason to expect any other administration can.

Of course, that shouldn’t be a surprise. Our founding fathers intended the legislative branch to be the great representative of The People. The President would do the work, but without enough power to be a king or despot. The Supreme Court would check the work and the law to insure the rights of The People and The States were maintained, but never enforce or create law themselves. But the Congress would define the work. As extension of The People and The States, the Congress would be the greatest influence on the government in these United States as representatives of The People, recognized as the power from which all just government originates.

Congress has failed that vision. It is not representative of The People, it is representative of influential minorities that can support congressional fundraising in exchange for consideration of special interests. Individual congresspeople don’t have a choice, to ignore special interests is to ignore fundraising and that means leaving office.

We do not progress. Each congress, each presidential term, we—at best—slow the apparent decline of our Republic.

And that’s why my good friend Danial’s response of “but this go ‘round, I’m pretty happy about the progress that’s being blocked” is insufficient. Every presidential administration, approximately 50% plus or minus 7% say the exact same thing.

But I guess as they say, “when in Rome.”

A Google Wave Use-Case: Real-Time Collaborative "Thing" + Conversation

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 16:00:00 -0600

Steph Hannon, the project manager for Google Wave, recently tweeted:

Tweet me the feature or use case you think we should focus on for Wave in 2010! Need some ideas? http://bit.ly/6LMXRr

Executive Summary

The unsupported use-case that I’m starting to see the most is the Wave collaboration situation where the wave participants are working on a “thing” embedded in the wave and chatting at the same time. This is an extension of the existing wonderfully executed use-case of “working on a thing collaboratively just like in email”, but changed in two ways: (1) the thing they are working on is actually embedded into—or is just part of—the wave, (2) the collaboration is real-time or very close to real time.

With those changes, it becomes difficult to keep the all of the “action” in the view pane.

Frequency

In collaborative works, the frequency of this use-case increases in direct proportion to the number of direct manipulation gadgets and the crowding out effect of wave vs instant messaging and other chat. That is to say, the more people use sweet embedded gadgets to do their work, and the more people use wave to communicate during that process instead of instant messaging, the more often this use-case happens. Considering the target use of Wave, this use-case may become a prerequisite to some growth projections (but likely isn’t yet).

Preconditions

The preconditions for this use-case are (1) the existence of a “stationary” collaborative object and (2) real-time collaboration. A “stationary” collaborative object could be a “document” blip but most likely will be a rich gadget that provides a direct manipulation interface. (Like some of the cool business process gadgets demonstrated already.)

Postconditions

The users have made a thing.

User Story (Unhappy)

The development team has decided to meet in a wave to work on designing their new thing. The entire agile team of six developers is present and after a bit of wave-chat it becomes clear that illustrations are in order. The project manager tosses a whiteboard gadget into the wave and doodling commences. Soon, conversation and doodling becomes disjointed, as team members are unable to keep the discussion and the whiteboard on the screen at the same time.

But persevering, the team nails down a collaborative understanding of the vision of the thing. Saving the whiteboard for later replay, the project manager then embeds the wicked-cool-whizz-bang design gadget. With this gadget, the team can take the understanding gained from the conversation and whiteboard and actually start to design the implementation of their thing.

Unlike the quick whiteboard process, this wicked-cool-whizz-bang gadget is going to usher in a collaborative process that lasts several meetings and quite a few hours. The conversation, additional whiteboard doodles, and the design gadget evolve over time, but become more disjointed as the physical space requirements increase. No one can actually watch the modifications to the design gadget, the whiteboard, and the conversation all the same time. Even playback is “jumpy”, as six collaborators are editing the wave in different places in the, now quite long, wave. At this point, the measure of productivity is the wave is limited to the user proficiency in managing the wave interface rather than the domain knowledge in question.

Possible Happy Path Implementations

Split windows allow multiple real-time views of the same wave. When a “static” element of collaboration appears (like a whiteboard), users are encourage to make a horizontal split window and dedicate the top window to the whiteboard.
“Sticky Blips” hold both a location in the hierarchical document structure, but are also “floated” by the renderer to remain on screen and slide with the view pane as it is scrolled.
“Wave containers” allow multiple “waves/branches/documents/need-new-word” to share the same metadata like members and the same playback history tree. The project manager then creates a wave container with conversation, whiteboard, and whizzbang branches that can be opened in separate panes by participants. Importantly, playback renders the coevolution of all three documents.

Conclusion

A mechanism to allow multiple “branches” of a collaborative wave to be viewed simultaneously would greatly increase the usability and productivity of collaborative environments in wave. Wave is a convergence technology that brings many capabilities together, it’s important for collaborative groups to have an easy way to use many of those capabilities at the same time.

You're stocking your grocery store wrong!

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:58:55 -0600

There’s been something about searching for items at the grocery store that’s been bothering me, lately, and it took me several months to figure out exactly what’s changed. I haven’t had any specific catastrophic experiences or anything, but it’s just been harder to find some items at the grocery store, lately.

But in the last couple weeks, the answer has completely solidified. It seems that in the interest of attractive, well-faced product aisles, it has become standard practice to incorrectly stock items to fill the “gaps” created by missing product. While I do agree that “full” aisles of food are much more attractive and welcoming, it’s adding up to a lot of wasted time for my wife and I when we go shopping.

Our “user story” for grocery shopping is pretty simple. We pick out some recipes to have during the week and build a list, then we shop for that list and toss in quite a bit of impulse buying while we’re there. The impulse buys could be anything that sounds neat, new, or convenient. (Pretty aisles certainly help there.) But our recipes are largely pulled from “healthy” cookbooks with pre-calculated nutritional values that need specific products. This is where this “overstocking” problem starts to waste time.

One starts the product search in phase one, “Where is it?” Typically, we find the likely aisle and visually sweep the labels for the desired product. We give it quite a few seconds to pop up, maybe up to a minute or two. If there’s another probable location for the food, maybe we’ll go check another aisle, and perhaps even return to previously visited aisles to see if somehow we missed it. After spending a minute or two, we start to get the indication that the product isn’t there. Then we hit phase two, “Does this store even carry this product?” The standard procedure here is to look at the gaps in the aisle and read the shelf labels to see if it’s typically carried but just temporarily out.

I had been assuming that maybe our preferred grocer (Hy-Vee, here in Manhattan) just didn’t carry some of the products that we wanted and we’d just have to make periodic trips to Dillion’s to pick them up. But then when we had products show up intermittently, I started to pay closer attention. Sure enough, the “gaps” on the aisle are routinely filled with similar products overstocked past their assigned shelf space.

Knowing this, now the only way to confirm if a product is actually out is to tediously interpret the shelf-label short hand for every similar product. Often, I find myself searching for mis-stocking patterns as hints that missing products are being hidden.

It’s frustrating that this sort of deceptive stocking generally adds about ten minutes to any given trip to the grocer. And for such a superficial reason, it’s putting the casual appearance of the store above it’s usability.

Sadly, I’ve seen the same practice now at Dillion’s, now that I know to look for it. (In fact, until I had confirmed the practice at Dillion’s, I thought maybe it was just some lame Hy-Vee thing and was ready to switch back to using Dillion’s exclusively.)

To make matters worse, I think that this mis-stocking is also occasionally duping the ordering managers and resulting in products (like the No Fat Sour Cream we like) that sell out quick and then remain sold out for longer periods than other products. (Dillion’s dairy manager seems to be much more on top of things.)

Anyway, it’s a minor slice of daily life, but I wanted to document the phenomena as it took quite a bit of time before I noticed what was going on. If I think about it, I’ll snap some pictures of the practice in action. I’m also curious if anyone else is noticing this stocking practice, especially at grocery stores outside of Manhattan. Have you noticed it at your preferred grocery store?

I broke the LCD on my iPhone. The glass is still perfectly...

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 00:15:17 -0600

Sad panda.

Even on black, it looks bad.

I broke the LCD on my iPhone. The glass is still perfectly intact, but the dead pixels tell the story of some direct impact I never witnessed. :(