Silicon Valley Watcher - at the intersection of technology and media

Sometimes some people hate change and the most trivial changes can set them off in ways unimagined.

That's a lesson Richard Dawkins, author, scientist, and professional atheist, learned recently when he made some changes to his site RichardDawkins.net. Here is an extract from his letter to his forum members:

Dear forum members,

We wanted you all to know at the earliest opportunity about our new website currently in development. RichardDawkins.net will have a new look and feel, improved security, and much more. Visits to the site have really grown over the past 3 1/2 years, and this update gives us an opportunity to address several issues. Over the years we've become one of the world's leading resources for breaking rational and scientific news from all over the net and creating original content. We are focusing on quality content distribution, and will be bringing more original articles, video and other content as we grow...

The reaction from some of his forum members was spectacular. Overnight, he became the target of "personal vilification on an unprecedented scale."

The name calling was over the top, ranging from the relatively mild "utter twat" to a "suppurating rectum. A suppurating rat's rectum. A suppurating rat's rectum inside a dead skunk that's been shoved up a week-old dead rhino's twat."

And worse... "a sudden urge to ram a fistful of nails down your throat" and more...

Mr Dawkins wondered "what do you have to do to earn vitriol like that? Eat a baby? Gas a trainload of harmless and defenceless people? Rape an altar boy? Tip an old lady out of her wheel chair and kick her in the teeth before running off with her handbag?"

No, it was to write a letter explaining the changes to the forum on his website.

"Surely there has to be something wrong with people who can resort to such over-the-top language, over-reacting so spectacularly to something so trivial. Even some of those with more temperate language are responding to the proposed changes in a way that is little short of hysterical. ... Have we stumbled on some dark, territorial atavism?"

"...what this remarkable bile suggests to me is that there is something rotten in the Internet culture that can vent it."

There certainly is something rotten and good luck trying to root it out.

You can read the entire post here: RichardDawkins.net Forum • View topic - Outrage

(Hat tip Chris Dymond.

I don't pay much attention to games. I used to play games as a kid, and I used to play Halo as an adult. But that was years ago.

Today there are games everywhere, Farmville on Facebook, games at fast food places, games based on watching TV shows. I've managed to avoid all those too.

But I'm probably in the minority. Because games have become one of the most lucrative commercial endeavors, which means lots of people are playing. And game culture is having an effect on our broader culture -- especially the game culture of earning points.

Kevin Kelly points to a fascinating talk by Jesse Schell, a games designer. In "Design outside the box" Mr Schell starts by explaining out how much money is made by very simple games, such as Farmville and Club Penguin.

But its the latter part of his talk that is even more interesting, when he predicts how games will be embedded into our reality. With the use of wireless sensors, a lot of real world game play is possible.

For example:

- people will be rewarded with points by their insurance companies for walking.

- kids will get points for doing well at their music lessons.

- people will use public transport to earn points that are redeemable through tax credits; and so on...

Kevin Kelly notes:

On second viewing I realized that Schell had also outlined a version of an attention economy -- where points are distributed for paying attention -- to ads, or other activities, or other people. Some aspect of his vision seems pretty inevitable.

Foremski's Take: I agree with Kevin Kelly and Jesse Schell that the intrusion of games into our society is inevitable. But It's a scary future.

I can imagine people doing all sorts of weird things because some advertiser pays them points, for say, shouting out their name at noon: "JACK IN THE BOX!" and monitors it via a cell phone, and its GPS location, for extra points in an urban area. And there will be even weirder, crazier stuff going on, as games becoming ever more embedded into our reality.

Foursquare already gives us a tiny glimpse of a world where games are embedded into reality -- its a form of what could be called a 'reverse virtual reality.'

And 'points' are a perfect example of a reverse virtual reality (RVR), they are a virtual currency with real benefits.

The opportunities for abuse, in constructing points based RVR game play, are huge. Yes, people will be encouraged into healthier behaviors but they will also be taken advantage of by their willingness to do things for points.

We won't need to fear subtle mind control by governments, or a Big Brother, people will do and say all manner of things, not because they love their Dear Leader, but because they earn points.

- Monitoring of behavior, and the scoring of points, will be carried out by cheap sensors networked together through the ever spreading wireless communications layer that will soon be ubiquitous, even in remote rural areas.

- Collation and redemption of points will be in online worlds where even more points can be earned, by taking part in immersive experiences that strengthen brand association and loyalty. Scary, very scary.

- And of course, the tax man will take his share. How, I'm not sure, but there will be a way. And since government will benefit, it benefits the government to regulate it and encourage it.

But what if you don't want to participate in the brave new RVR world?

Of course, you won't have to, there's nothing that says that you must, no laws can compel you, in fact, there will be laws that protect you from discrimination through having to have RVR points, in housing, employment, and education.

However, we are social animals, we are very social animals. Monkey see, monkey do. Peer pressure will compel us into RVR game play to an enormous degree. Decrees against RVR game play will find few takers.

And as the real world becomes ever more tied to the virtual world, outcasts from this RVR society, like outcasts have always done, will once again form communes in the woods and remote areas of the world. Will you be one of them?

I'd like to think I'll be one of them, but then I'd have to walk away from all those points I've accumulated over so many years...

Take a look at the video - it's really worth it.

DICE 2010: "Design Outside the Box" Presentation Videos - G4tv.com

Oracle president Charles Philips has been embarrassed by his ex-girlfriend who put up billboards of them together.

The New York Post reported:

The spurned squeeze, YaVaughnie Wilkins, went nuclear after she learned that Charles E. Phillips -- president of tech conglomerate Oracle and a member of Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board -- reconciled with his wife despite his lengthy affair with Wilkins.

Billboards appeared in San Francisco, New York, and Atlanta.

To some long-time Oracle watchers, and ex-Oracle staff, the fact that Oracle execs have an exuberant enthusiasm for the opposite sex isn't surprising.

Co-founder Larry Ellison set the pace with a bachelor billionaire lifestyle that made him the envy of many men half-his age. Leadership comes from the top.

One ex-Oracler told me, "One of my friends at Oracle was asked by one of the VPs if she would like to be his 'Tuesday girl.'' Apparently he had a vacancy."

Another ex-staff member told me: "Larry would sometimes date employees. You knew when the relationship was over because they would show up with a brand new Mercedes in the parking lot. That was his parting gift, he was a real gentleman. He owns a Mercedes dealership, or at least he used to. I guess he could get them at dealer cost."

I've no idea if the stories are true because I can't verify them. I'm only reporting them. For entertainment purposes only!

There is a killer right under your nose. Or rather, right under your butt -- your chair.

You might be pleased with that cool looking Aeron chair your buns are nestled in — but it's nothing but a stylish killer.

Recent studies have shown that the amount of time you spend sitting is related to a raised risk of dying. Sit more, die sooner.

An Australian study of 8,800 people over a six year period found that for each hour spent sitting increased the risk of death from heart disease by one-fifth. They were studying TV watching but it's not the TV that can kill you -- that's just a lure for sitting -- which can kill you.

It won't be long before US lawyers begin filing class-action lawsuits against well-heeled chair makers, for not warning innocent sitters that they are risking their lives.

In the near future, you might even be required to sign wavers that you understand the risks before being able to buy a chair, or sit in an office chair.

Exercise doesn't protect...

It seems that exercise doesn't help. Take a look at this Canadian study:

. . .a study published last year that tracked more than 17,000 Canadians for about a dozen years, researchers found people who sat more had a higher death risk, independently of whether or not they exercised.

Sitting might even lead to other diseases...

"After four hours of sitting, the body starts to send harmful signals," Ekblom-Bak said. She explained that genes regulating the amount of glucose and fat in the body start to shut down.

But is it fair to blame the chair?

Yes, because how else would you sit? Without a chair or its equivalent in a stool, or couch, or easy chair — you'd have to squat. People have been squatting since year dot and we're still here. It's the chair that's at fault.

I'm looking at getting a desk at which you can stand and still get your work done.

No one yet has made a desk at which you can squat but dibs on that idea. An office full of 'squatters' might look strange but it'll be a healthy office.

In the meantime, here is some good advice:

"We don't have enough evidence yet to say how much sitting is bad," said Peter Katzmarzyk of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, who led the Canadian study. "But it seems the more you can get up and interrupt this sedentary behavior, the better."

Curation is today's buzzword, you see it everywhere. A couple of years ago only very few people were using it, mostly David Galbraith, founder of Curations - a network of sites: Wists Oobject Cribcandy Popgloss Yokiddo Smashingtelly.

Curation is a valuable service and it helps to organize a set of 'things.'

Prospecting is the next stage. Prospecting means discovering value where there seemed to be none. Digging through tons of dirt to find a rich seam of great stuff.

Prospecting will be increasingly important in 2010 because there will be millions of tons of 'dirt' produced. The noise level in the online media world will grow exponentially. 2010 will be a hockey stick year for dross media.

Prospecting will be increasingly important and I hope to do my share by finding rich viens of great content, great media, and great ideas.

Here is an example: a rich vein of original research from Hewlett-Packard's Social Computing Lab. This is an incredible treasure trove of scientific research - not some social media maven's hunch but repeatable research on the bahvior of very large numbers of people. It's pure gold.

Here's a list:

»Feedback loops of attention in peer production
Fang Wu, Dennis M. Wilkinson and Bernardo Huberman
Why does the distribution of user contributions obey a power law?

»Stochastic Models of User-Contributory Web Sites
Tad Hogg and Kristina Lerman
Fans, the law of web surfing and users' interests combine to promote and rate stories on Digg.

»A Persistence Paradox
Fang Wu and Bernardo Huberman
How persistence does not lead to success

»Effects of feedback and peer pressure on contributions to enterprise social media
Michael J. Brzozowski, Thomas Sandholm, and Tad Hogg
Attention matters in motivating contributions to enterprise social media. But some types of attention matter more.

»Social networks that matter: Twitter under the microscope
Bernardo A. Huberman, Daniel M. Romero and Fang Wu
the social network that matters is not the one you declare.

»Predicting the popularity of online content
Gabor Szabo and Bernardo A. Huberman
popularity, youtube, digg, attention, predicting future downloads.

»Social network collaborative filtering
Rong Zheng, Dennis M. Wilkinson and Foster Provost
User-generated social networking links can be as predictive as algorithmically identified "neighbors" in recommender systems

»Crowdsourcing, Attention and Productivity
Bernardo A. Huberman, Daniel M. Romero and Fang Wu
How to solve the digital commons dilemma.

»How public opinion forms
Fang Wu and Bernardo A. Huberman
How web discourse evolves. To appear in the Proceedings of the Workshop on Internet and Network Economics-2008

»How Do People Respond to Reputation: Ostracize, Price Discriminate or Punish?
Kay-Yut Chen, Scott Golder, Tad Hogg and Cecilia Zenteno
How people use reputation information.

»Popularity, novelty and attention
Fang Wu and Bernardo A. Huberman
Whether to use popularity or novelty to elicit attention

»Novelty and Collective Attention
Fang Wu and Bernardo A. Huberman
How does novelty affect the attention of large groups

»Comparative Advantage and Efficient Advertising in the Attention Economy
Bernardo A. Huberman and Fang Wu
Comparative advantage in the attention economy can be used to maximize the revenues a company gets from advertising.

»The Economics of Attention: Maximizing User Value in Information-Rich Environments
Bernardo A. Huberman and Fang Wu
Deciding what to display.

»Bootstrapping the Long Tail in Peer to Peer Systems
Bernardo A. Huberman and Fang Wu
How to provide any content over the web while avoiding free riding.

»The Dynamics of Viral Marketing
Jure Leskovec, Lada A. Adamic and Bernardo A. Huberman
How effective is viral marketing?

»Management Fads, Pedagogies and Soft Technologies
Jonathan Bendor, Bernardo A. Huberman and Fang Wu
What makes fads come and go?

»Social Structure and Opinion Formation
Fang Wu and Bernardo A. Huberman
How do opinions form?

»The Dynamics of Reputations
Bernardo A. Huberman and Fang Wu
How reputations get established, grow and decay.

»Status as a Valued Resource
Bernardo A. Huberman, Christoph Loch and Ayse Onculer
Why do we seek status?

»Competitive Dynamics of Web Sites
Sebastian M. Maurer and Bernardo A. Huberman
Competitive dynamics on the web unfold in surprising ways, leading to a sudden transition to winner-take-all markets.

»The Economics of Surfing
Eytan Adar and Bernardo A. Huberman
Information providers can exploit the differences in surfing behavior exhibited by web users.

Happy prospecting!

Silicon Valley Geeks and Parisian Geeks have a lot in common: lots of passion, great ideas and they speak the lingua franca of "geek."

But there is an important difference, as Beth Blecherman at Techmamas recently found on a visit to LeWeb:

While Silicon Valley geeks put on a clean tee shirt for tech conferences, European geekstake it up a notch. Here is a random geek waiting in line for LeWeb. I told him I was chronicling European Geek Chic. He looked confused but smiled for the camera. To top it off, he and many other Euro-geeks paired the geek uniform of jeans with a nice pair of (non-sneaker) shoes.
Just to keep up with the style, I put on every black and stylish piece of clothing I had. If I had time, I would of shopped from the assortment of beautiful french scarves to take my outfit up a notch.

Please see the full post, where Beth also looks for European girl geeks, which are even rarer than here:

Techmamas: Geek is a Global Language - But Twitter is Not (yet)

In this increasingly social media world you will be increasingly judged on how well you do in it.

Your job will depend on it, your future job will depend upon it, and also, if Microsoft has its way -- how much, or how much less you pay for goods and services will depend on how "social" you are, and how many people you count in your network.

Take a look at this, posted by kdawson on Slashdot:

In the world envisioned by Microsoft's just-published patent application for Social Marketing, monopolists will maximize revenue by charging prices inversely related to the perceived influence an individual has on others. Microsoft gives an example of a pricing model that charges different people $0, $5, $10, $20, or $25 for the identical item based on the influence the purchaser wields. A presentation describing the revenue optimization scheme earned one of the three inventors applause (MS-Research video), and the so-called 'influence and exploit' strategies were also featured at WWW 2008 (PDF). The invention jibes nicely with Bill Gates's pending patents for identifying influencers. Welcome to the brave new world of analytics.

To become an influencer requires building a reasonably large social network, or a small network of large influencers.

Either way, it requires good communications skills, a willingness to share part of yourself, and to spend a lot of time engaged in sharing. In other words, you can't be shy, a wilting violet.

So what happens if you are shy? What happens if you don't have a Twitter account and Twitt incessantly? or spend hours sharing on Facebook or LinkedIn, or blog? You might not have much of a viable future...

If companies such as Microsoft have their way, they will target the influencers with great deals, with information, with whatever is needed to keep them sweet, to keep them engaged with their brand, so that those people can influence their networks of networks.

It'll be a lot cheaper than the scattershot approach of today's marketing. And whatever they lose through discounts and giveaways to the influencers, they can make it back up on the backs of the shy, the people with no networks, the ones that prefer to keep their lives private, the ones that will be paying full retail price.

Will it work? We don't know. But either way, being shy won't work in today's increasingly social media world, (and likely you won't work).

Shyness in the online world seems to be becoming the new digital divide.

- - -

Please see:

There's Social . . . And There's Hyper-Social - What Happens In Social Media If You Are Shy? . . . And The Cuckoo Strategy Of Success

In this social media whirl of a world what happens if you are shy?

A job advertisement from the future . . . - SVW - Feb 2006

The quality of the French startups we have been meeting with all week, has been very good.

It seems as if the French can once again claim back 'entrepreneur' instead of it being sometimes derisively labelled as an oxymoron in the French context.

But it seems to be a fairly recent phenomenon and one that relies on a compelling mix of government programs and tax breaks. While many countries have tried to encourage the formation of startups through various incentives, the French appear to have gotten the mix just right.

It wouldn't surprise me if in the near future, some US startups might choose Paris as a headquarters because of some of the advantages they can gain here, compared with an indifferent US government.

Kemal El Moujahid, CEO and Founder of Paris-based Teacheo, which provides a platform for online tutoring and collaborative tools, is a good example of a top quality French startup, of a type that we've (Traveling Geeks) I've been meeting with over the past three days.

Mr El Moujahid was born in Morocco, studied Information Technology in Paris, and has an MBA from Stanford university. He says that the French government has done a lot over the past few years to encourage entrepreneurs.

"There are a lot of programs that help startups raise funding, find office space, help hire people, and also fund research and development," he says.

About four years ago the French government began a series of programs to encourage innovation.

Here are some of the things it did:

- There is a French tax that is levied on wealthy individuals based on their net wealth, it is separate from tax on income. However, if they invest in a startup, they will receive a 75% tax credit. "That means that an investment of 100,000 euros costs them just 25,000 euros," says Mr El Moujahid. Because there is very little VC activity in France, this has become the main source of funds for startups.

- There are many government and city-run incubators. We visited the Paris Reunion Incubator, which specializes in digital media companies. It has 20,000 square feet of space housing 25 startups, fully wired with lots of shared office support services.

Startups pay just 500 euros per month for a 4-year lease. (I have a video interview with Martin Geurin, the manager (Chef de Projet) of the Reunion Incubator that I will post later.)

- France has the best research tax credit in Europe. Companies receive a 50% tax credit in their first year, and 40% in their second year.

- It is very easy to start a company. There is an 'auto entrepreneur' web site, and an almost one-click process that handles the paperwork and issues tax id numbers, etc.

- There are many government agencies that provide a variety of services to startups, such as HR.

But there are still some archaic obstacles in various sectors that seem to punish online companies, says Mr El Moujahid. For example, there is a 50% tax credit offered to parents that hire a tutor for their children but this does not apply to online tutors.

Also, there are cultural issues that can make it difficult to hire people, says Mr El Moujahid. He explained some of the issues:

- Top graduates tend to want to find a job with a large company rather than a startup. There is considerably less status in working for a startup. This is changing to some degree especially because of the slow economy.

- Hiring can be tough. Some candidates want to be paid considerably more than they would be paid at an equivalent job at a large company because of the risk in working at a startup, and they don't see much value in stock options. "Those candidates eliminate themselves," says Mr El Moujahid.

- Firing people is near impossible. They can sue their employer and always win a favorable judgement. "The best way is to negotiate a departure. You can tell them they have permission to apply for jobs while still working for you." This also works both ways, it is difficult to leave an employer in the lurch and take IP with them to a competitor, he says.

- Being fired from a job can be a good thing for an entrepreneur because they can receive two to three years unemployment at almost full salary and they are allowed to build a business during that time.

- Identifying yourself as an 'entrepreneur' doesn't have a great standing in some circles. But that is changing and the poor economy is creating new entrepreneurs across all age groups as conventional jobs dry up.

Mr El Moujahid says that he misses the 'can-do' attitude of SIlicon Valley. "Every US startup wants to takeover the world and they tend to be much more optimistic than in France. Sometimes that optimism is misplaced, they want to fight Godzilla with a plastic spoon - but the enthusiasm is great. In France, people are less ambitious and they focus on more modest goals."

He adds that sometimes there is distrust of the ambitions of entrepreneurs, a pursuit of money is viewed with suspicion.

Also, there isn't much room for failure. Unlike in the US, where entrepreneurs can fail many times and be concerned better for the lessons learned, French society is much less forgiving.

Is it easier to build a startup in the US?

"This is a question I often discuss with my American and French friends. I'm not sure. There are a lot of government programs and tax credits that make things easier here. But the US offers a larger market, access to capital, and a much more supportive culture for entrepreneurs."

"I think that learning how to build a startup is what's important and that that experience can be applied anywhere. At some point I know I will return to the US and apply what I have learned here."

[I'm in Paris all this week as part of the Traveling Geeks, a collection of journalists, bloggers, and PR people meeting with French startups and also attending LeWeb, France's premier Web 2.0 developer and business conference.]

Most of the cafes in my San Francisco neighborhood have people staring into their laptops, they are like libraries with piped music. Yet for hundreds of years cafes used to be centers of debate and interaction.

Some of the first newspapers grew out of the newsletters associated with cafes.

Today there is little conversation in cafes and when I do chat with friends or business contacts, I feel self-conscious, I feel I'm disturbing the screen focused concentration of other patrons.

It's largely because many cafes are being used as cheap office space. Our modern workforce is rapidly turning into independent "consultants" and contractors performing digital work. But cafes weren't designed for such uses.

If they are to be used as an office space why not have an area set up as a meeting room that could be rented by the hour? Or small booths for meetings? Why not have a fax and a printer available?

These days cafes seem caught in a limbo, they are neither good office spaces or good at fulfilling their traditional neighborhood roles.

But things could be changing. Some cafe owners are discouraging the laptop crowd by turning off the Wi-Fi and blocking power outlets.

Margaret Rosas pointed me to a Santa Cruz cafe whose owner has done just that and caused a local controversy.

Alan Hawrylyshen posted the owner's (Manthri Srinath) reasons for the change:

Our perspective after doing this a quarter-century, is that we operate coffeehouses with a view to creating a space for community to gather. We have only accidentally become a "WiFi cafe", by virtue of the fact that we haven't done anything to dispel the notion that we are. Now that we are doing so, it is understandable that some of our clients are surprised and upset. For this, I apologize.

Internet use results in a disconnect between the user and ones' physical surroundings, similar to watching television. No moral judgement here. I do it too. In a coffeehouse however, this results in rooms full of solitary people with no connection to the space or the people around them and has the unfortunate effect of crowding out any other sort of activity. Which of course is how we come to the misconception that we are a "WiFi cafe".

... we have also come to the realization that the use of our space, "the Commons" if you will, is something of a zero-sum proposition. We can either have rooms full of laptop users or rooms half-full of folks having a cup of coffee with a friend. Not both.

We have chosen to return to our roots as a coffeehouse where folks can come to converse with friends, read books, hold meetings and religious studies, listen to live music and generally have an experience that transcends Explorer or - if you're a bit more savvy - Firefox. We regretfully realize that this means that people who "must" have Internet access will be unable to use our space, at least for now, unless they bring in wireless cards or tethering capability. Of course, on the flip side, it's been nice to see a new clientele who want something different from a coffeehouse.

... I'm sure there are ways for us to solve everyone's connectivity issues, but this really is not our charter. There are many things we could do to make money. Selling umbrellas and offering/charging for WiFi access are two of them. We're in neither business.

We're old-style coffeehouse operators who came to this pass by accident. We were pioneers in offering WiFi when hardly anyone knew what it was, and we will be pioneers in moving beyond it. We're comfortable in that space. It's largely been why we operate the busiest cafes in town.

You can read the full post and discussion here: Geek Friendly Cafe - Santa Cruz Geeks | Google Groups

It's refreshing to see this type of thing. And its good to see a cafe owner bringing back discussion and debate to cafes, although it's ironic that the subject is his cafe. Maybe this will encourage other cafes to follow or even become more specialized.

Some cafes could focus on offering great wifi and office-like facilities. Others would be more traditional. Others more like restaurants and bars.

I can see myself working in one cafe, strolling over to another one for lunch, maybe a late-afternoon meeting with friends at another, then catching an early evening lecture or performance at another cafe.

Each one would be set up for such activities instead of each cafe trying to become a hybrid space that doesn't fully satisfy either type of customer.

Since there are so many cafes these days, creating differentiation would be a prudent survival strategy.

- - -
Please see:

Wallace Baine: Free Wi-Fi and the 'tragedy of the commons" - Santa Cruz Sentinel

This week is Burning Man week, and in many ways, this is Silicon Valley's unofficial alternative festival in that there are tremendous numbers of people from the Bay Area attending.

This is where Silicon Valley blows off steam. Yet Burning Man is far from a relaxing place. It is located in one of the most inhospitable places in the world, a huge dried out lake bed two hours drive outside Reno, Nevada.

Nothing grows here. This could be the surface of Mars. The temperatures at this time of year range from scorching hot, to teeth chattering freezing. Dust storms can leave you chocking on alkali dust and disoriented. And sudden rainstorms will leave you waddling through mud.

Yet out of this hellish place rises Black Rock City, which for about a week, it becomes one of the largest cities in Nevada. It has multi-story buildings, daily newspapers, dozens of radio stations, and an entire infrastructure of people and services.

And then it disappears leaving no trace at all.

It is born out of nothing, yet out of this emptiness sprout amazing art projects, theme camps, and so much more, more things than you can imagine.

Last year about 50,000 people took part. And "took part" is key to understanding Burning Man. Participation is expected of everyone, spectators are discouraged.

In one way it is a blank canvas similar to the Internet. You can build anything at Black Rock City as you can build anything on the Internet. The only bounds are safety, your imagination, and your resources. People will band together to create immensely intricate structures and theme camps.

No sponsors

Importantly, there is no commercial activity at all. You can buy ice and coffee at the central camp and that is all. You have to bring everything you need with you, and you have to bring everything out.

No commercial messages are allowed. There is no such thing as "This theme camp sponsored by Microsoft." The radio stations have no advertisements. People cover up the brand names on moving vans.

Being away from commercial messages for a week is quite an experience -- as soon as you leave you start noticing how many commercial messages we are bombarded with every minute--it's extraordinary how painful it becomes.

In many ways, the Burning Man culture mirrors the proto-communist, Digger-like cultures of the geek software engineering community and its celebration of open-source, sharing, and distrust of leaders.

Critics and naked hippies

The most vocal critics of Burning Man are always those people who have never been there. They are the ones that know all about Burning Man and they will tell you everything you need to know. To them it is just naked hippies taking drugs in the desert.

Sure, there is some nudity, but there's so much more. The amount of creativity that people bring to Burning Man is jaw dropping.

The vast expanse of the playa -- the empty space at the heart of Burning Man, acts as a canvas for spectacular art projects. My favorite part of the Burning Man experience is cycling across the playa and discovering new art.

Good for job hunting

There are a lot of Silicon Valley people that come here. This is a favorite place for Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. [It's one reason that Eric Schmidt got his job at Google, because he had been to Burning Man.]

It's been a few years since my last trip. I've been three times and each time it seemed so fragile as if it could easily be ruined by the next year. Yet it continues to survive and continues to change.

Its culture has spilled out into many regional festivals around the US and the world. And its message of "leave no trace" becomes ever more important as we grow to understand our fragile global environment.

If you get a chance to go please take it. You won't find anything like it anywhere.

- - -
Please see:
Burning Man: A temporary world blooms in the desert

Today's Burning Man: Anarchy? Not so much

Silicon Valley's festival of Dionysus...
- - -

Advert: It's time to get a Kindle and discover why people rave about it!

There is much discussion lately about the need to upgrade our publishing/conversational platforms to bring together all the places where our content is published, and the responses to that content -- one place where it can all be regarded and archived.

One thing is for certain, what we have right now isn't cutting it.

Om Malik wrote a thoughtful piece last week: The Evolution Blogging. After a long preamble he eventually got to his point:

...blogging platforms need to evolve from the hierarchical content-management systems of today to more fluid, free-flowing, more socially relevant and real-time lifestreaming systems.

There's been a fair amount of discussion of online anonymity lately. Paul Carr, a columnist at Telegraph.co.uk wrote that there is no place for anonymous comments on the Internet. ['Rascal! Your name!': Schopenhauer vs the Internet trolls]

I'm in no doubt that if we forced everyone who wanted to respond to a blog post or online article to use their real name, the Internet would be transformed.

Andrew Keen, also writing at Telegraph.co.uk, is also a supporter of banning anonymity and pseudonyms. [Punishing anonymity]

Not for the first (or last) time, I'm in 110% agreement with Carr. Anonymity is indeed killing our online culture and making it, in Carr's words, "a cesspool of trollery and abuse".

I have two kids, Matt, 21, and Sarah, who just turned 15. I often ask them about their online habits and those of their friends.

Matt and his friends aren't all that keen on Facebook, they are spending a lot less time there. Where are they going? It's not clear they are going anywhere else. Also, a lot of them use Youtube as a free streaming music service. Twitter hardly registers at all with this group.

Sarah and friends spend a lot of time on MySpace, which is also where they find new music. Music is one of the key draws for Sarah. Texting is a big deal in this group, much more than making cell phone calls. But texting programs are expensive unless you can get onto an all-you-can-eat plan. T-Mobile is very popular in this group.

I was at an event this evening and I met a journalist who was new to the profession. She had been in IT and now was working for a San Francisco newspaper. She asked if I had any words of advice for a new journalist.

I said welcome. But be careful it doesn't get under your skin because if it does, it will become a problem. It'll be very difficult to leave.

In many ways,  being bitten by journalism is similar to being smitten. It's similar to falling for the wrong person.

On Sand Hill Slave, Slave Girl gets her mid-year performance review . . .

In my case, partners always catch me for the review when I’m in the middle of something that has my complete and undivided attention.

Partner: I have time for that review now.

SlaveGirl: Okay, can you give me a few minutes? I’m wrapping something up...

Partner: Well, I’ve only got a few minutes-

Sensing his tone, I immediately close out my YouTube window and scamper into his office.

Continues . . .

Sand Hill Slave: Even Though I Walk Through the Valley in the Shadow of Tech, I will fear no VC...

On my ZDNet column I recently wrote about a Silicon Valley and French based startup that had contacted me on a Friday to introduce me to its new service. I noticed that there was a problem with the javascript for its widget.

They were very glad that I had spotted the bug and promised to get back to me toot suite. They did. They said their French developer team had gone home and they wouldn't be able to fix the problem until Monday.

[Please see: Where are the French code warriors when it's "Le Weekend?"]

They did fix it on Monday. But is the French way of keeping work and non-work balance right?

This startup is launching its service and its developer team is MIA - it could have been a simple fix that took just minutes instead of nearly 3 days. Potential customers/users these days won't take a second bite at the cherry -- why risk the launch? Why not insist the team be 24/7 on this important occasion?!

I'm all about the work and non-work balance thing . . . but times have changed and it is now all grouped into Life whether we like it that way or not.

But it must be said that France, despite its 37 hour week and its stalwart support of "Le Weekend" has not yet sank and vanished below the waves. So, is the US or French work place attitude the right one?

Here are some responses to my original post (I love the last one.):

[This is an excellent comment that I'm republishing as a guest post. It is in response to Twitter and Facebook In Corporations: IT Professionals Are Often The Most Reactionary To Change]

By Gary Wilson

Set the users free! Let them do their stuff and take accountability for it. When it all goes bottoms up and the branch or department go offline, then they will wise up.

Last night I asked on Facebook: "What's up with people that love to hate Twitter, Facebook but not even on it? You've got to be in it to know it/hate it."

It got some interesting replies on my public page: Facebook | Tom Foremski

Lately, I've been writing about the new laws in South Korea that impose requirements on web sites to verify the real names of users. It was an issue that hadn't been reported much by the US media until just this week. And there is lots more Korean legislation in the pipeline that is jaw dropping in its ambitions to use the Internet and mobile phone technologies to monitor Korean citizens.

For example, the government is trying to pass a bill that would give Korea's spy agency real-time monitoring of all Internet and mobile communications, and real-time access to every cell phone's GPS location data.

The government says measures like these are needed for a variety of reasons. Critics of the measures see a government hitting back in retaliation because of several embarrasing online incidents. Such as the bungled prosecution of a blogger over his economic predictions.

The Korean people have a strong culture of fighting injustice and the excesses of government. It's a culture that readily takes to the streets in demonstrations and protests. And not surprisingly, this is reflected in its online communities, where there is a sophisticated society of Internet users using their online skills to organize resistance to government policies.

To fight back, and to try to dampen the spirit of its digital opposition, the government has passed laws such as the one that requires web sites to verify the real name of any Korean citizen, before allowing them to upload files or leave comments. And it is seeking even greater powers of regulation.

These are interesting developments because they could very well be providing us with a sneak preview into our future. South Korea is several years ahead of the US in terms of how much time its population spends online and its relatively long history of access to high speed Internet services.

The Koreans are dealing with many issues that result from living in a society that lives far more in an online world than we do. It will take the US several years to catch up.  

Hopefully, the Koreans can figure out how to deal with Big Brother governments and other societal issues, before we get to the same stage.

. . .

Please see:

The Korea Times: Is Korea Turning Into Internet Police State?

"According to the draft, the National Intelligence Service (NIS), the country's spy agency, gets expanded surveillance power that allows real-time interception of mobile phone and Internet communication, compared to current law that limits monitoring to fixed-line telephone calls.

All communication operators, including telephony carriers and Internet companies, will be required to operate surveillance equipment and save call recordings and log-on records of their users.

The bill also enables law enforcement authorities to collect and monitor location-based information, or Global Positioning System (GPS) records, of civilians. Considering that GPS capabilities are increasingly included in the latest mobile phones and portable Internet devices, a fast-growing number of people would be susceptible to investigators tracking their real-time movements..."

The Hankyoreh: "[Analysis] Google chooses its credibility over profit in South Korea

"Some analysts have suggested that it would be too burdensome for Google to challenge South Korea’s Internet policies because the government had promised 1.2 billion won (911,200 dollars) in research and development support, and the possibility of more through online advertising business."

Korean Presidential Office Bypasses Real Name Law - Posts Videos On Foreign YouTube

"Google managed to avoid this law by disabling uploads and comments on its Korean version of YouTube, while at the same time telling people that they could continue anonymous uploads and commentary by accessing other countries' YouTube sites.

It seems that this is the preferred method for the Presidential office of South Korea, the Cheong Wa Dae.

The Korean newspaper The Hankyoreh reports that the Presidential office, of South Korea, the Cheong Wa Dae, has been using this loophole to post PR videos of President Lee Myung-bak."

Google Tests The Limits Of Governments - Bars Korean Users From Uploading Videos And Leaving Comments

"Rachel Whetstone, vice president of Global Communications & Public Affairs at Google, offered in a statement posted on Google Korea's Website the reason why the company has refused to comply to the real-name system. In a statement titled, "Freedom of Expression on the Internet," Whetstone said, "Google thinks the freedom of expression is most important value to uphold on the internet." Whetstone continued to say, "We concluded in the end that it is impossible to provide benefits to internet users while observing this country's law because the law does not fall in line with Google's principles.""

Updated: Google Says It Is Still Examining Korea's Real-Name Verification Law

"Google wouldn't have much to lose if it stood up to the Korean government. It's YouTube business isn't profitable, so no shareholders would be hurt. It could argue that its servers aren't housed in South Korea and therefore it doesn't have to comply with the local law.It would be a bold statement and it would focus world attention on the South Korean government and its efforts to curb its citizens from using the Internet to criticize politicians. A bold stand from Google might even discourage other governments from following with similar laws."

[Hat tip Korean reporter Koo bonkwon, who works for The Hankeoreh.]

South Korea is one of the most "online" societies in the world. So it is very interesting to see how the population and the government are dealing with the issues that the Internet brings, such as the power of bloggers, and the power of anonymous commentary because these things are waiting for us in our future.

The government has attempted to deal with some very embarrassing online incidents by forcing Korean web sites to verify the real name of anyone that uploads files or leaves comments.

Google managed to avoid this law by disabling uploads and comments on its Korean version of YouTube, while at the same time telling people that they could continue anonymous uploads and commentary by accessing other countries' YouTube sites.

It seems that this is the preferred method for the Presidential office of South Korea, the Cheong Wa Dae.

The Korean newspaper The Hankyoreh reports that the Presidential office, of South Korea, the Cheong Wa Dae, has been using this loophole to post PR videos of President Lee Myung-bak.

While YouTube has restricted South Korean users from uploading video clips and posting comments on its Korean-version of its Web site since April 9, the Cheong Wa Dae (the presidential office in South Korea or Blue House) keeps posting public relations (PR) videos of President Lee Myung-bak on the site by registering its ID as a foreign user from another country. Internet users criticize the Cheong Wa Dae of undermining the intention of its real-name system.

Cheong Wa Dae bypasses YouTube Korea's upload limitations

- - -

Please see:

Google Tests The Limits Of Governments - Bars Korean Users From Uploading Videos And Leaving Comments

YouTube User Needs Real-Name

I covered the opening of the Apple's San Francisco retail store in February, 2004. It was Apple's seventh store and its first flagship store, the first to feature a very modern design.

The building was a minimalist cube and inside were two floors of stunning decor and a centerpiece glass staircase. We were told Steve Jobs was involved in every aspect of the design, down to choosing the seats in the upstairs theater.

It was impressive, but what was more striking to me was its location: Across the street sat a huge Virgin Megastore, 6 floors of music and movies.

Megastore. It sounded so 1980s. Two floors versus six floors. It was an apt metaphor for the changing landscape in commerce.

I walked past the San Francisco Virgin Megastore yesterday and it was festooned with colorful banners. It's closing. A mega sale at the megastore. I pulled out my iPhone and snapped a picture.

- - -

Please see:

It's official: All U.S. Virgin Megastores closing down : Ben Patterson : Yahoo! Tech

It was a rainy Sunday evening but the 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco was full of people that had come out to support a project to house and digitize the the archives of Timothy Leary -- a Harvard lecturer in psychology turned counter-culture hero.

Mr Leary is best known for his enthusiasm for LSD, a drug that influenced the 1960s and much of his life. "Turn on, tune in, drop out" is his most famous maxim.

The phrase came to him in the shower one day after Marshall McLuhan suggested to Leary that he come up with "something snappy" to promote the benefits of LSD.

Joi Ito, venture capitalist and CEO of Creative Commons, was one of the speakers. Wikipedia reports:

Ito was one of Timothy Leary's so-called "God Sons" - a close non-traditional family-like relationship said to have been conceived by Leary for a few of his friends.

Some other guests Sunday evening:

Ralph Metzner (Colleague of Tim's at Harvard and co-author of "The Psychedelic Experience"), Joi Ito (Tim's Godson, CEO Creative Commons), Denis Berry (Futique Trust Trustee), RU Sirius (Collaborator, Author), John Perry Barlow (Friend of Tim, EFF Co-Founder, Grateful Dead Lyricist), Michael Horowitz (Tim's Personal Archivist), Lisa Ferguson (Grew up at Millbrook, Director of "Children of the Revolution"), Zach Leary (Tim's Stepson, Leary.com), Joey Cavella (Leary.com, Retinalogic), Chris Graves (Leary.com, Retinalogic) . . .

Brewster Kahle will also be on hand to give a little tour of the Internet Archive's recently launched Timothy Leary Video Collection: http://www.archive.org/details/Tim_Leary_Archive

The goal was to raise money to build a museum to house about 400 boxes of his archives, and enlist volunteers to help Lisa Rein digitize those materials. The event premiered the film "The Terrestials."

"The Terrestrials," Directed by filmmaker Rene Daalder, is a feature-length scifi documentary that follows 6 students of UC Santa Cruz as they digitize Tim's video archives.

Here is a brief video of the event:

Here is a CNET story by Daniel Terdiman about the Leary archives.

Timothy Leary's archives: Bridge from '60s to '90s | Geek Gestalt - CNET News

Timothy Leary Archives

Lunarr, in Portland, Oregon has launched an interesting site called Lunarr elements. It is based on the Japanese concept of 一期一会 “ichi-go ichi-e” or "one chance, one meeting." It is the central concept on which the Japanese tea ceremony is based, the idea that you interact with others as if it is the last time you will see them.

Lunarr elements displays inspirational images or quotes. The viewer is asked to quickly vote if they like it, or to "cast" it to others, or simply continue exploring the database of elements. The goal is not to think about it too much, to decide in a split second.

Users can upload their own images and quotes, and also follow other users. I recommend you try it, it's a great way to spend a few minutes and take a refreshing break from your daily tasks. And it might help provide a creative spark for whatever project you are working on.

Here is an example of an element.

[I got this note from Adrian Chan recently and I asked his permission to share it on SVW. I'm a big proponent of "turning offline," it is the only antidote to ADD and it helps me think and get some work done. I spend large blocks of time every day not checking email, facebook, twitter, sms, voicemail, etc.

Ad hoc greetings to you all, and a happy new year!

I want to apologize for missing out on communication for the past couple wks. I did something I havent done since the new millenium -- I was off the computer for 2 wks. Well, with a couple teeny tiny exceptions to download email and use google maps. I turned off my phone, hauled out a couple dozen books of philosophy and theory, and sat down for a good old-fashioned reading vacation at home.

I can tell you, it was interesting. It took a day to forget about twitter. Two days to forget about facebook. Three days to forget about Cnn.com. At three days one's ability to read without distraction really picks up, and by the end of the first wk I could sit without moving for several hours, and read 50 plus pages easily without so much as getting up to stretch.

Constant and daily use of tools like twitter definitely has consequences for the mind! I'm communication sensitive, meaning that as soon as I see a message, I begin to answer or respond or comment on it, in my mind, and so being offline was a real treat. Eliminating the phone seals the experience -- it's strange how aware one is of the possibility that somebody may call, and even turning off the phone didn't get rid of that entirely. But I'm not joking that by the end of the 2 wks I was pretty ambivalent about turning everything back on again... We're not aware of what social media do until we take them away.

On that note, I'm back now and looking forward to a productive -- and hopefully inspiring -- year with you all!

cheers,adrian

Is it TV sweeps week? Usually taunting the Apple community is a surefire way to to get a traffic spike as the faithful rush to defend their choice of computer. (Fair disclosure: I use a Mac and have had one since they first came out :-)

Here is a very funny episode of The Simpsons: "Mypods and Boomsticks," courtesy of Hulu (my apologies to my non-US readers - you would need a US proxy to view the episode.)

It is difficult to escape our day-to-day lives but it is important that we do. I love spending time in environments where people just know me as Tom rather than in my professional roles.

The geek-life is fun but it's not enough. Understanding the culture of our times is important to every business, to every startup--but you won't get it unless you go out and get it. No TechCrunch, no Giga, no Twitter, know tech-nothing--just getting out into a wider culture is important.

Here is one way to do that...

Here is an event, the 11 day Hornucopia music festival in San Francisco, a celebration of any music with horns-- that deserves support--especially the upcoming Saturday show with the Jazz Mafia Summit at the Rickshaw Stop in Hayes Valley.

Allison Lovejoy from Lovejoy Lowdown has the details . . . She interviews Sol Crawford, one of the more interesting of San Francisco's young music promoters. He is a co-partner at Amnesia, which has earned a stellar reputation as one of the best live performance rooms in the Mission district.

Click To Play

http://blip.tv/file/1218918

The Hornucopia Festival is also a non-profit effort to benefit community organizations through a free music workshop, an educational presentation on the provocative history of brass and horn music, and as a fundraiser for two worthy causes: delivering new instruments into the hands of beleaguered youth second line bands in New Orleans and raising money for a humanitarian circus that presents free shows and workshops to refugee children in Kosovo.

http://www.hornucopiafestival.org/

This is the type of job advert we will soon be seeing:

"Wanted: Chief Marketing Officer for a Web 2.0 startup based in San Francisco. Candidate must have a blog with a PageRank of at least 5 and/or at least 800 followers on Twitter and/or 1500 friends on FaceBook or LinkedIn. Competitive salary, benefits and stock options."

You can fill in the job title for various professions and fiddle with the numbers of friends/pagerank etc, but the message is clear: self-publishing through a blog, Twit-stream, or FriendFeed is going to be good for your career. And it is going to be great for getting that next job.

And you can't fake this stuff, at least, not for long. And you have to do it and keep doing it, which isn't for everyone.

Think about two equally educated candidates with similar experience but one candidate doesn't have the same social or professional footprint in the mediasphere as the other. Which one gets the job?

This is how software engineers get their jobs. This is how many other professionals will get their next jobs too.

Let me know if it's worked for you.

We visit Cybozu Labs, created by Cybozu, a very successful Japanese software company founded by Toru Takasuka, from Lunarr. Cybozu Labs tries to offer a US-like environment to incubate new ventures.

This work environment is far different from that in other Japanese companies, which one person described as "jail" with very little space per person because of the high costs of office space. This is part of Cybozu Lab's efforts to attract top talent away from the large companies.

We see presentations from Yuichi Kawasaki, from Hatena; Shimizu Ryou from Ubiquitous Entertainment; Tom Sonoda from Utagoe; and Ken Suzuki from Sargasso. We also have a discussion about the differences between markets in Japan and in the US.

One of them asks how do you take a product out of the geek community and into the consumer markets? I said that this is a problem in the US too, there are a myriad web 2 applications popular in the geek communities but are completely unknown in consumer markets. Education needs to happen buy that's a slow process.

We walk down a narrow alley and squeeze into a narrow room to meet with Mr Banganji and Mr Shimachi from a "garage" based Web 2.0 startup called Rinen. Their place seems more like a closet than a garage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TauchMpPAQ8

We hear about several projects they are working on. We also hear about their challenges, especially in finding VCs willing to invest in early stage companies.

One of their projects is called OpenTrace, a wiki-like database to calculate the carbon footprint of everything. This value could then be represented on the packaging of anything and help consumers make better decisions.

[I'm on my first trip to Japan as a guest of Lunarr - a Portland based tech start-up founded by two Japanese entrepreneurs Toru Takasuka and Hideshi Hamaguchi. On the trip with me is Marshall Kirkpatrick from Read Write Web, Bob Walsh from 47Hats, and Kristen Nicole from Mashable.]

[I'm a little behind on my Tokyo Diary because of celebrating my daughter's graduation from middle school and her 14th birthday. But here is a taste of what is still in store...]

Meetings with some of Japan's savviest young entrepreneurs . . .