Connected Conversations

Google won’t permit me to use the word itunes in an ad I wrote to promote weiksner.com! Now, if google wants to sell exclusive rights to the word itunes, that seems like their decision to make. But does the law really prohibit me from advertising an article that talks about itunes? Isn’t that fair use?

Any lawyers out there, lemme know if I’m crazy or what.

Update: I tried to change to ‘i tunes’ and that didn’t work either, so I changed it to ‘ltunes’ and that passed the automatic legal sniffer test.

1. technology copyright, law

Obama continues to think of innovative ways to fundraise on the Internet. Today, the campaign announced a program for matching donations. They will match me with another donor from across the country who agrees to donate the same amount. It sounds really cool. They are promoting it like NPR: donor matching means that you are doubling your contribution. I am not a fan of that appeal because it doesn’t ring true to me. What I do like is that they are fostering horizontal connections, e.g., among supporters, rather than just the vertical connection between the campaign and each individual donor.

I just gave $25, and here is what happened. I was immediately matched by ‘gerald v’ from woodbridge, ct. I sent him a personal note, asking him if he wanted to compare notes about the election and I opted to share my email address with him. The campaign immediately asked me if I wanted to pledge to match someone else.

I’ll keep you updated if Gerald responds!

2. politics Election 08, lessons learned, Obama

Yahoo has launched a neat site that allows you to compare video responses of the Democratic candidates. Check it out here:

http://debates.news.yahoo.com/

Unlike the one I wrote about yesterday, this one is highly produced. Charlie Rose asks the traditional questions and Bill Maher challenges the candidates with nontraditional ones. You can make video playlists by selecting the issues and candidates you want to see.

I find it ironic that they called a “mashup.” It’s really nothing of the sort. It’s professionally produced programming, not an amateur hodgepodge put together from different sources. I like it, but I still like ExpertVoter.org better.

2. politics democracy, Election 08, follow up, interactive, videos

I started this conversation on e-thepeople about an annoying student who got tasered because he got angry when he was cut off at a forum featuring John Kerry at the University of Florida. Here’s the video of the incident:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bVa6jn4rpE[/youtube]

I think two wrongs don’t make a right: neither the cops nor the student come off very well. But dozens have died by taser, so I think the cops created the graver error. I think I’m in the minority on this one. Typical comment: “[The kid] makes it a habit to be annoying and in fact on his own web site takes glee in showing how much of an ass he is.” And from the top comment on e-thePeople: “[Cops] should have done it sooner.”

But my favorite one is: “”If simply being annoying warranted a taser, step away from ETP’s server when the Moonbats are online!”

2. politics society

While there has been a lot of attention of the recent YouTube/CNN debates, where citizens got to upload videos of themselves asking question, I think youtube may even have a greater impact in a less flashy way: video voter guides. Why? ExpertVoter.org shows 40 second clips from anywhere - interview, debate, web site and they are terrific summaries of the candidates positions.

The site itself is “ghetto”–there aren’t any flashy bells and whistles. As you can see in this screenshot, it’s just a grid of issues and candidates

But the editor has done a good job of picking a single good video to watch in each square. Sure, I’d love to be able to create a quick playlist by candidate or issue. But even as it is, this resource is one you can use. I wonder if there is a way to add rebuttals, citizen comments, etc., too, although you might argue that those elements would only clutter the very concise summary that this service offers.

Go spend some time there now! Why waste 90 minutes to watch an entire debate on TV when you learn what you need in 20 minutes here?

2. politics democracy, Election 08, interactive, videos

Here is a video published by al jazeera and produced by BBC filmmakers that I highly recommend watching. The filmmakers have gotten the views of local US military commanders, local Sunni leaders and displaced Shiites. They have footage from the Anbar province that has been too dangerous for media to enter during this war. There isn’t reliable information from US sources, but I find Al Jazeera’s version quite plausible. Check it out (you may want to skip to the first two minutes of introduction and go right to the documentary itself):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naJQc6vFlFY[/youtube]

And then you can also watch the second part here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsQ6twcWevY

Given the failures of the central government in Iraq, the Bush administration has taken a new tactic: working directly with tribal leaders. To tout the success of this new approach, President Bush himself went to Anbar province in early September and General Petraeus pointed to the decline of violence as evidence that the surge is working. But Sheik Abu Risa, the man who met with Bush and is credited for pulling together the local coalition, was killed yesterday by roadside bomb. What’s going on?

The Bush administration version of the story is that Al Queda is responsible for his death. His death is a blow to our efforts, but it demonstrates why we can’t let the terrorists win.

Al Jazeera has a different version of the story. Indeed, there has been remarkable peace in Anbar, but it has come at quite a cost. The local Sunni tribes have killed or displaced the 15,000 Shiite families that used to live there. According to Al Jazeera, Sheik Abu Risa was just a front man who has rise to power came from his role in dolling out US construction money. He was finally killed by real Sunni sheiks who resented his connection to the US. And Al Jazeera worries that the weapons that the US provides to the former insurgents will only add more fuel to an impending civil war in Iraq.

We need to be asking ourselves: how big is the refugee problem in Iraq? what is causing it? How can it be fixed? Is the surge a dangerous band-aid or the new solution touted by the Bush administration? I have to say that this report makes me even more skeptical about the success of the surge.

2. politics foreign policy, Iraq, videos

Today, Facebook made an amazing announcement: it will be giving away $10 million as small grants to individuals and start ups in order to fund the development of application for their site. Facebook is a social networking site that started life for college students only but has been continuously opening up. A few months ago they allowed third-party developers to create applications that could interact with the profiles and networks created by the users of facebook.

I’ll be sure to write more about facebook in the future, especially because I am going to take this cool course at Stanford this coming semester on how to develop facebook applications. But now it turns out that there could be money involved in the course as well! What a great way for facebook to use their enviable position to their advantage.

1. technology academia

I just noticed that the video of the third base coach in my last post came from a local TV station, WMUR. Can you believe a TV station adding its best content and promoting it on youtube, a serious rival? I can understand the calculus: (1) hosting videos is expensive; (2) youtube is both cool and widely used and (3) we are just some poor local affiliate. But what does that say about the future of TV?

1. technology videos

Football fans know that the Patriots got busted stealing signals from the Jets the other week. My initial reaction was: why just fine the Patriots rather than a meaningful penalty, like forfeiting the game? But I think Ed Felten, a computer professor at Princeton, asks an even better question, “why don’t NFL teams encrypt their signals better?” (As aside, this blog is amazing in that every response is worth reading too.)

Of course, there are challenges: the game clock keeps ticking, players are traded to rival teams and signals have to be transmitted in open view of cameras and the public. And the players involved are not brain surgeons!

The most prevalent solutions currently used involve secrecy and timing. Think of the third base coach: he makes lots of irrelevant signals, and then at some point he gives an indicator signal and then the next few ones are the real signals. Part of the security comes from the fact the opposition doesn’t know what a real signal is (e.g., is the left foot forward or the right hand scratching the ear?) This is a simple encryption scheme that can easily be deciphered with enough observations. Here’s a short youtube interview of minor league third=base coach:

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=bLBT7HZP8vE[/youtube]

In football, Ed suggests a better solution: a “one-time use pad.” For example, defensive players can have a grid with the various defenses on it. The coach just sends two signals, one for the row and one for the column. It doesn’t matter if the opponents know what the system is or the signals, so long as the pads are secret. And the pads can be disposed or replaced several times in a game. All of the crypyographic work can be done by computers and experts on the sidelines.

So when will sports teams start hiring cryptographers? First, they could protect their own teams signals. Second they could probably crack the opponents systems as well until they hire their own experts!

1. technology, 3. et cetera sports, videos

What is a mashup? Consider the trip to Greece that my wife Maria and I put together this past summer. We stayed in 4 different cities, took 5 flights on 4 different airlines, rented cars in multiple cities and took a ferry. We planned everything ourselves with web research, online booking and emails. We had transportation, maps, restaurant bookings, sightseeing and activities information. Lots of related information (e.g., stuff in the same city) and lots of similarities in each piece of information (e.g., confirmation codes, names, times, phone numbers), but nothing completely standardized. So, the spreadsheet organized by dates across the top and function (e.g., transportation, hotel, etc.) down the side. It worked, and we pulled it off! (Although Maria might argue that driving in Santorini was a BIG mistake.)

Well, the travel mashup site called TripIt are entering the fray to make this kind of planning activity much easier. After registering, you just forward all your confirmation emails to plans@tripit.com and they automatically compile your itinerary for you. You can see an example of my upcoming trip to Brussels here. It adds local weather, maps and directions for you. 60 degrees and a good chance of rain - ugh!

(I plan to write several more posts about various mashup sites, and hopefully a more analytical piece that gives some insight into what’s going on here. But for your sake, gentle reader, and mine, I think I’ll start off with a few of these more descriptive posts first.)

My experience was reasonably good. The airline confirmation emails worked fine. I didn’t have an email confirmation from my hotel, and I don’t think that they can automatically process most hotels anyway, so I had to add that information myself. I got some weird mapping results. First, it gave me driving directions from London to Belgium. One click and I deleted that bit of extraneous information, although I wouldn’t have guessed its only four hours to drive! Second, it gave me driving directions fom some airport in France that shares the code ‘BRU’ with brussels. It was a bit of hassle to figure out an alternative airport code that would trick google maps into giving me the directions I really wanted. (Thank you, wikipedia for the answer.) It was also clunky to add the new directions to the itinerary.

There are features that I didn’t use for this trip, but might come in handy. For example, they promote the idea of including web clips. That might have come in handy for my greece trip, if I wanted to add things like ferry schedules, sight seeing info, etc. They also automatically link to SeatGuru that has recommendations about plane seats that could be useful if I had an choice of seat to begin with. (The flights I’m on are oversold.)

In the end though, I think that Expedia doesn’t have too much to worry about. I love the way they keep track of your frequent flier miles and itineraries. And they don’t have to resort to processing emails or “screenscraping” web sites to gather the right information. Perhaps the $5 surcharge isn’t so bad after all.

Next, TripIt has to integrate with TripAdvisor and other sites that have comments by travelers. Perhaps someone would have warned us not to rent the car in Santorini! Now, that would have been helpful.

(By the way, the picture of the sunset at the top of Weiksner.com is from our hotel in Santorini.)

1. technology lessons learned, mashup

Another silly video from YouTube. Worth watching if you are a fan of the lip-syncing genre or if you want a small taste of what “everyone” is watching. Notably, I found it on a friend’s profile page who happens also to run Yahoo’s homepage, instant messenger and email businesses.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2rZxCrb7iU[/youtube]

Uncategorized comedy, videos

Google has just launched an Australian election project, and I think it demonstrates some of the power that I mentioned in my post last week on political video mashups and open politics. It exposes both the strengths and weaknesses of google’s generic approach to information discovery. Here is a screenshot of a portion of the page:

The strength is that they integrate many of the services housed within google: search, news, blogs, satellite images, youtube and more. Within a few clicks, you can search your MPs web site for policy positions, see videos about them and examine interactive electoral maps.

The weakness is that they’ve implemented this site with the minimum amount of political knowledge necessary. The main content is just searches of politician’s names within local newspapers; for anyone living in Australia you probably won’t get anything that you wouldn’t normally get from your local paper. You have to pick your political jurisdiction from a list because it doesn’t have a look up by address feature. And it doesn’t have much customization in the way that it presents the information (e.g., comparing candidates side-by-side.)

The biggest weakeness is that there is very little actual unique content at the local level, like videos about candidates. But the very existence of google’s portal may help promote interest in creating that very content. Whenever google tries something, you’ve got to think it has a chance to work!

Well, I think there’s still a good chance that this will not transform Australian politics. However, I do believe that it is a nice way to experiment before the ‘08 elections here in the US with less downside exposure.

I plan to follow these developments closely, and I’ll keep abreast of anything interesting that I find or think of!

1. technology, 2. politics follow up

Yesterday, I started a conversation on e-thepeople.org about Obama’s new plan for Iraq. I wanted to summarize the interesting feedback that I’ve gotten from these discussions.

First, I raised the question: how does Obama plan to fix the oil sharing problem? No one responded, but I think Chris Dodd has the best proposal on this subject yet, whereby the oil revenue would be split among the federal government of Iraq, regional governments and directly to Iraqis.

Second, bocamp22 asked whether partitioning proposed by Biden should be part of the solution. CatsAngel responded by questioned how Shiites and Sunnies could really be separated and Kent Wicker worried that partitioning could lead to ethnic cleansing. Personally, I am not a fan of partitioning and I think it can’t possibly solve anything if the oil issue isn’t resolved first.

Third, several members asserted their belief that military withdrawal would threaten our security. My personal belief is that the state of Iraq poses no threat, but that the terrorist activity within Iraq may pose a threat. I think the innovation of Obama’s plan is that he offers an alternative to a military presence — namely, humanitarian aid and diplomacy — to mitigate this risk.

Fourth, several members questioned whether humanitarian aid and diplomacy would work. Chickmd called diplomacy with Iraqi’s neighbors an “error in judgment” because these neighbors are our enemies. I agree that this is a risk, so I’d like to how Obama wants to go about this delicate task. As for humanitarian aid, Chickmd believes that Obama like “all other democrats he does not care how he wasts other peoples tax dollars.” He wants out now and to cut our losses completely, but when I pressed him, he preferred Bush’s plan to Obama’s if he were forced between those two unsavory choices.

But the highest rated comment by d_jinx says that Obama’s strategy is risky and uncertain, but better than not trying anything different: “Gotta get started because what we what we’re doing now ain’t encouraging.”

Amen to that, brother!

2. politics Election 08, follow up, foreign policy, Iraq, Obama

In a post last week (Chutzpah!), I wrote about the travails of Chris Knight. Chris ran for a seat on his local school board and lost. More notably, he made a funny campaign ad that was appropriate by VH1 for one of its shows. When Chris uploaded the ad on youtube, Viacom threatened him for copyright infringement despite having aired his entire creative work without permission! And youtube threatened to ban him from the site, as is its policy for any alleged infringing work.

So, he fought back with the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. And as this blog post reports, he won the battle and youtube sent him a very apologic note, wouldn’t you say?

Dear Kwerky,

In accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we’ve completed
processing your counter-notification dated x/xx/xx regarding your video

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

This content has been restored and your account will not be penalized.

Sincerely,

Harry
The YouTube Team

Yeah! at least he won this ridiculous case.

1. technology, 2. politics copyright, follow up, law