Four short links: 19 June 2009

Cute Math, Fast Slo-Mo, Open Source HVAC, xkcd Hack

1. Inside-Out Multiplication Table -- very cool way to view the patterns of factors. Math is beauty with subscripts.
2. High-Speed Camera -- capture 100 frames at up to 1M frames/second. The sample videos, of a bullet liquefying on impact and a shotgun string boiling past, are stunning. The Makezine high-speed photography kit is the cheap amateur version.
3. Open Source Energy Management for Commercial Buildings -- open source project to enable interoperable applications for integrated Building Automation Systems (BAS). From NovusEdge. I wonder how they're planning to spread their open source and use it to disrupt. (via earth2tech and timoreilly on Twitter)
4. xkcd Knapsack Solution -- for those of you who like literal Python geeking with your comics. Have a great weekend!

Twenty-five hundred years of Government 2.0

This article is the second in a series leading up to the Personal Democracy Forum. The first article was posted on June 16.

There's been a lot of excitement lately about the term "Government 2.0." Strip away the RESTful interfaces and you see that the new practices in government transparency are just intensifications of things democracies have done for a long time: public comment periods, expert consultation, archiving deliberations, and so forth. So let's look back a bit at what democracy has brought to government so far.

Like any telescoped presentation of history, this one reduces the swirling forces that extend and retract their way through the centuries into a couple near-mythological categories. I do this in the service of evaluating the concepts we toss around when discussing government participation.

Government 1.0: empire

Last year, Boston residents and visitors got the chance to see an exhibit of sculptures preserved from the culture that earned a special role in history as the first major power to exert ruthless control over many peoples: the Assyrians. Other dynasties--Egyptian, Chinese, Babylonian, and Akkadian--were around before the Assyrian empire, but the Assyrians were the ones that set a new standard for cruelty. The fearful image assigned to them in biblical texts also assures them a special fascination for Westerners.

Most visitors to the Museum of Fine Arts were thrilled by the artistic quality of the wall reliefs, human figures, and everyday objects. Personally, I was depressed by the unrelenting scenes of war and cruelty.

Assyria refined a strategy of subjecting cities just outside their borders and using the resulting booty to raise soldiers and provisions to attack the next frontier. Any populations whose subjugation was in doubt would be uprooted and forced to move closer to the center of the empire, replaced in their old homelands by more compliant subjects.

When the court entertained local dignitaries or foreigners (the lobbyists of the day), they walked through "lobbies" adorned with the scenes of carnage that ended up last year at the center of the Boston exhibit. The depictions of chariots crushing helpless civilians and soldiers impaled on stakes gave visitors a clear message: submit or end up the same way. Thus the Assyrians promulgated a "shock and awe" doctrine four thousand years before US troops brought their own version to the same geography.

This went on, with interruptions, for 1,300 years, and established a practice that guided other empires for thousands of years to come.

Some empires were more humane, of course. Empires could provide their inhabitants with protection and stability through currencies, constables, and courts (remember Hammurabi's Code). But all these policies remained subject to the whim of the supreme ruler.

And that is the distinguishing trait of Government 1.0: unchecked power centered in one individual. The reason emperors could stay in power was that they exploited their hierarchies to delegate both power and wealth. As long as governors maintained loyalty to the emperor, they could exert broad powers in the regions under their control and use those powers to accumulate great amounts of money. They in turn delegated power to those beneath them, and so on down through the hierarchy.

What could be more successful than this carrot-and-stick methodology combining vast rewards with threats of terror?

Government 2.0: democracy

There must be something persnickety about the character of ancient Athens. They couldn't tolerate strong leaders. Almost anyone who ever pulled off a major military victory, proved to be a persuasive orator, or got a corner on political power eventually found himself executed or exiled. (The Athenians invented the idea of "ostracism"--a fiercely democratic institution in their implementation, ironically.) Socrates was just one of the later examples of the propensity Greeks showed for bringing down anyone who was widely admired.

So this seems to be a natural setting for a system that grants a voice to a wide range of citizens. The decisions they reach may not be the best, but they're decisions that the political body can follow through on, having been reached democratically. The losers (if they weren't powerful enough to scare the winners) can stick around and try again at the next gathering in the agora.

Greeks recognized from the beginning the problems of democracy with which we are so familiar today. They knew that many votes were bought outright, and that others could be pulled in by smooth-tongued sophists. They also knew their democracy rested precariously on the labor of the slaves and other disenfranchised residents. And that a democracy could become an oppressive empire, using behavior against people next door that it would never tolerate within the walls of its own city.

I like this disturbing contradiction. That's why my web site, identi.ca account, and Twitter account are named after Praxagora, a character in an ancient Greek play that shows both the flaws and the immense power of democratic systems. The name Praxagora combines "action" with "public forum."

Right or wrong, a democratically reached decision--which if properly done, comes into focus as an emergent property of the assembled masses rather than being imposed by one party or individual--has an irreproachable authority. Socrates didn't like democracy, but if we are to believe Plato (who also didn't like democracy), Socrates insisted on obeying the popular will, even at the cost of his life.

We shouldn't hang a halo around direct democracy. In fact, the trend in technology-driven government transparency is not Athenian direct democracy--despite its idealization by some activists--but a tighter agency/public partnership. Today's experiments in public participation go far beyond electing representatives. But even the traditional American political culture consists of more than bills and vote counts. For instance, the executive branch tends to consult regularly with the public, a topic I'll take up in the next article in this series.

As we don digital media and communications--those somewhat ungainly garments we try to mold to human forms--in order to improve on twenty-five hundred years of flawed Government 2.0, we can learn some lessons from those millennia:

• No individual can be allowed to gather too much power, but every individual needs to be heard and to be protected from arbitrary persecution.
• Those who are excluded from the benefits of society will eventually rise up to wreck it.
• The majority is often wrong, and any political system can be abused.
• Good decisions take time, and a willingness to subject the decisions to constant re-examination.
• We need to rise above rhetoric and pursue the ultimate (if ultimately elusive) truth.

Like any useful technology, digital media and communications can help us realize a vision. Government 2.0 is a very old vision. A recognition of what has been achieved and what still challenges us can guide the development of the proper technology.

For instance, we can learn from history to bring the technology of participation to every member of the population and give them the opportunity to learn it, to subject the results of electronic deliberation to review by authorities governed by outside checks and balances, to highlight experts' reputations so they can wield more influence, and to give participants on electronic forums a few cycles of decision-making to work out processes that make effective use of the technology.

Deploying Government 2.0 technology will teach us more about that technology, and about ourselves.

Next article (Wednesday, June 24): adaptive legislation can respond to action in the agora.

Personal Democracy Forum: Politics in the Web 2.0 Era

In the past year or so, I've been urging people to work on stuff that matters. The world is faced with serious problems, and we in the technology community have a unique contribution to make, as the tools we've created help us to collaborate and organize at an unprecedented scale outside of industrial-era top-down organizations.

One area where technology and real world concerns meet is in the challenge of remaking democracy in a Web 2.0 world. With the support of the President of the United States himself, the US government is committed to exploring how to use technology to make government more transparent, accountable, and collaborative. How cool is that?

And how important is it that we, the technology community, rise to the challenge? If a couple of years go by, and nothing changes, the opportunity will have been lost; new media and new technology will be relegated to the dustbin of fads that have come and gone in Washington. It's up to us to make it not so, to prove to ourselves that we can indeed use technology to make a difference - in governing, but also in the critical tasks that face us as citizens: creating a more robust economy, improving our educational system, reducing the cost and increasing the effectiveness of health care, achieving energy independence and halting climate change.

I've been organizing two events in Washington to create new bridges between the technology community and the political community, the Government 2.0 Expo Showcase and the Government 2.0 Summit, to be held in Washington D.C. in early September. You'll be hearing more from me about these events in the coming months - they are consuming a lot of my time and energy as I try to understand how to bring the best of what we've learned about the age of networks to the problems of government.

But in the meantime, I want to let you know about an event that is happening in New York at the end of June.

Personal Democracy Forum is a two-day tech + politics brainfest that brings together a thousand political activists, organizers, hackers and hacks, along with many leading elected and government officials, NGO leaders, academic observers and journalists. It's now in its sixth year, taking place June 29-30 in New York City at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

This year's conference is focused on the theme of "We.gov" and all the ways that campaigns, elections, media, advocacy, and governance are becoming more open, participatory and collaborative. I've known the organizers, Micah Sifry and Andrew Rasiej, for several years now, and in addition to their work as technology advisers for the Sunlight Foundation, they are part of a vanguard of individuals who are leading that change.

Come hear keynotes from speakers including: White House CIO Vivek Kundra; Deputy CTO for Open Government Beth Noveck; State Department Senior Adviser for Innovation Alec Ross; New York Times columnist Frank Rich; Craigslist founder Craig Newmark; Fivethirtyeight.com blogger Nate Silver; Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey; Obama '08 new media director Joe Rospars; Edwards '08 campaign strategist Joe Trippi, writers Clay Shirky, danah boyd and Doug Rushkoff, and anthropologists of the future Mike Wesch and Mark Pesce, among many others.

In addition to covering lots of the brass tacks of doing politics in a networked age (online targeting, using mobile platforms, spreading viral video, raising money, harnessing volunteers effectively), the agenda also tackles a lot of cutting-edge topics, including:

• Twitter as a platform for organizing and fundraising (with speakers like Amanda Rose of Twestival and Abby Kirigin of the startup TipJoy)
• Imagining White House 2.0 (with Jim Gilliam of WhiteHouse2.org, Ellen Miller of Sunlight, Fabrice Florin of Newstrust and Mark Elliott of Collabforge)
• The Rise of Health Care 2.0: Participatory Medicine (with Esther Dyson and James Heywood of PatientsLikeMe)
• Building the Social Economy (with Doug Rushkoff and Tara Hunt)
• Redesigning .Gov for Transparency and Participation (with Clay Johnson and Ali Felski of Sunlight among others)

O'Reilly Radar readers can save $100 off the conference registration by using this coupon code: "Oreimedi100"

Facebook Adds Million of Users in Asia

Since my previous post on Facebook users by country, the company has grown rapidly in Asia. Over the last 12 weeks, Facebook grew 90% in Asia going from 11.4 to 21.7 million active users. With a Market Penetration of only 0.6% in Asia, Facebook has barely scratched the surface in the region.

The company also gained 11.3M users in Europe (up 19%) and 14.7M users in North America (up 21%) over the last 12 weeks. On a year-over-year basis, Facebook grew 194% (adding close to 150 million active users worldwide) from Jun/2008 to Jun/2009.

For more details, you can view regional numbers below:

Sarah Milstein on Iranian Protests and Twitter

Interview with Sarah Milstein

In this 10 minute interview with Sarah Milstein, co-author the Twitter Book, she discusses how Twitter is being used by Iranian protesters and how Twitter has accidentally created a system not easily overwhelmed or controlled by authorities. She also talks about the continued evolution of Twitter over the past few months. I ask her to contrast the reaction to Twitter during the Swine Flu with the reaction to Twitter during the recent events in Iran, and it is clear from her answers that as Twitter becomes more familiar to the general public the significance and meaning of the platform are constantly evolving. Milstein comments on whether Twitter is becoming more "serious", and responds to the continued stream of stories by journalists who feel the need to pass judgment on this still-emerging communications platform. Milstein also discusses this week's 140 characters conference in New York.

On the Iranian protests, Milstein is very deliberate to say that the powerful aspect of Twitter during the Iranian protests is that Iranians within the country were able to use it to communicate with one another and with those outside of the country. Toward the end of the interview, I ask Milstein to comment on inadvertent transparency in the context of a previous post by Brady Forest. The Iranian protests story this week was as much about facilitating communications as it was about making sure that protesters were not communicating unintended information to the Iranian government.

(continue reading)

Four short links: 18 June 2009

Weaker Copyright Good, YQL.gov, GeoSPARQL, Happiness

1. Harvard Study Finds Weaker Copyright Protection Has Benefited Society (Michael Geist) -- Given the increase in artistic production along with the greater public access conclude that "weaker copyright protection, it seems, has benefited society." This is consistent with the authors' view that weaker copyright is "uambiguously desirable if it does not lessen the incentives of artists and entertainment companies to produce new works." (read the original paper)
2. Using Public Data for Good With the Power of YQL -- The first part is a new batch of YQL tables providing data on the U.S. government, earthquake data, and the non-profit micro-lender Kiva. The second part is an incredibly easy way to render YQL queries on websites. After all, what good is data that no one can see?
3. GeoSPARQL -- RDF meets geo goodness. SELECT ?s ?p ?o WHERE { ?s gn:name "Dallas" . ?s ?p ?o } (via the geowanking mailing list)
4. How To Be Happy in Business -- this Venn diagram makes me happy. (via Ned Batchedler)

Geolocating Your iPhone Users via the Browser

Hallelujah! Geolocation is available in the iPhone's browser. I was thrilled to finally have this app ask to use my location. This is only true for the new 3.0 version of the browser (oddly, geolocation is *not* available in the Mac version of Safari 4). Adding the ability to geolocate users via the browser opens up a whole new range of web apps.

If you're eager to start catering to the legion of iPhone users ready to tell you where they are, Adam DuVander (the fellow behind the Portland Wifi Finder among other things) has written up an excellent post on how to access their location. The iPhone is using the W3C Geo-Location spec. If you are running the latest version of the iPhone OS you can try it out at https://bit.ly/w3cgeo

The code itself is very simple as Adam's sample demonstrates:

navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(foundLocation, noLocation);

function foundLocation(position)
{
var lat = position.coords.latitude;
var long = position.coords.longitude;
alert('Found location: ' + lat + ', ' + long);
}
function noLocation()
{
alert('Could not find location');
}

(you can get more information on the behavior in Adam's post)

Apple was smart about the user experience and kept the user in control. I was prompted to give Safari permission to access my location (I should only be asked this question one more time). I was then prompted to share my location with the website (in this case Adam's test). I expect many sites to quickly update their mobile sites to include location (Google already identifies your location if you are using the Android browser so I hope they update the iPhone version of their homepage shortly).

The Next Wave of iPhone Apps

This is the biggest week of the year for iPhone users, as Apple released iPhone OS 3.0 on Wednesday and will be launching the new iPhone 3GS on Friday.

The iPhone OS 3.0 Software Update provides a significant number of enhancements to the operating system including spotlight search, cut, copy, & paste, voice memos, support for landscape keyboard usage in Mail, Messages, Notes, and Safari, MMS and tethering for carriers that support these features (AT&T; late summer for MMS, tethering TBD), and dozens of other improvements. The update is free for iPhone, and $9.95 for iPod touch. Just plug your device into iTunes and you will be prompted to upgrade. If you're upgrading a second generation iPod touch, iPhone OS 3.0 will activate the Bluetooth chip that has been dormant since last September.

The new iPhone 3GS includes a faster processor, longer battery life, video support, an improved camera (3-megapixel), voice control, a digital compass, and conveniently in the same form factor as the iPhone 3G so that you won't have to buy a new case. Models will be available at $199 (16GB) and $299 (32GB) if you qualify for the discounted hardware upgrade pricing. AT&T; announced on Wednesday that the hardware discount will be extended to iPhone 3G buyers from last July, August, and September. If you stood in line for an iPhone 3G last summer, you won't have to wait a full year to buy the iPhone 3GS at the lower price.

In addition to the iPhone OS 3.0 Software Update and the new iPhone 3GS, there is a third and equally exciting aspect to this week - the rollout of the next wave of iPhone apps, based on the new iPhone SDK provided to developers in March for iPhone OS 3.0. This SDK provides iPhone developers with some major new features for use in apps including Push Notification Service (PNS), in app purchasing, peer to peer connectivity over Bluetooth, in app maps, turn by turn navigation, accessories support, iPod library access, audio recording, streaming video, in app email, support for cut, copy, & paste, undo, and much more.

If you have an iPhone OS 3.0 upgraded device and you're interested in trying out this next wave of iPhone apps, I have included a representative list of iPhone OS 3.0 apps below. If you know of any others, please post them as comments with associated links. I expect the list will grow rapidly over the next few weeks. NOTE: All of the app links below will launch iTunes, or if you're viewing this blog entry from your iPhone OS device, the links will launch the App Store app.

iPhone OS 3.0 Applications:

• AP Mobile by The Associated Press: Push Notification Service (PNS)
• Tap Tap Revenge by Tapulous: Push Notification Service (PNS)
• Star Defense by ngmoco: Push Notification Service (PNS)
• MLB.com At Bat 2009 by MLB.com: Live video streaming
• Sonifi by Sonik Architects: Peer to peer connectivity over Bluetooth
• Leaf Trombone: World Stage by Smule: Peer to peer connectivity over Bluetooth
• Bomberman Touch 2 - Volcano Party by Hudson: Peer to peer connectivity over Bluetooth
• Flick Fishing by Freeverse: Peer to peer connectivity over Bluetooth, in app purchase
• Enigmo by Pangea Software: In app purchase
• Light Riders by DS Media Labs: iPod library access
• My Brute by Bulkypix: iPod library access
• Things by Cultured Code: In-app email, cuy, copy, & paste, undo support
• Gokivo + Yahoo! Local Search by Networks In Motion: Turn-by-turn navigation, in app purchase
• Recipes by Whole Foods Market: In app maps and email, support for copying text. [Disclosure: My company, Small Society, developed this app in partnership with Whole Foods Market.]
• AroundMe by Tweakersoft: In app maps

Want a Map of Tehran? Use Open Street Map or Google

All eyes are on Tehran right now. As the center of the Iranian election protests the city has become increasingly important to websites this week. To keep their site up-to-date with this latest crisis area Flickr switched out the Yahoo road Map with Open Street Map. When I heard about this I wondered how other major mapping sites faired.

So I examined the road and satellite maps of Yahoo, Mapquest, Google, and Bing (formerly Live Maps). Looking at the images below it becomes very clear that user-generated maps win in hard to reach places. Both Open Street Map (above) and Google (below) rely on user-contributions. Open Street Map relies almost entirely on user uploaded GPS tracks for its mapping data across the world. After the jump i've included the satellite maps from each service (except for Mapquest who did not have them). They were

Google is using data acquired from their just-under-a-year-old Mapmaker program (Radar post). With Mapmaker users can add roads, POIs, regions and features. It's a very powerful tool that has greatly expanded Google coverage. Google has been slow and deliberate in using Mapmaker data on their main site. In fact it was just a couple of weeks ago that Iran's mapmaker data "graduated" to the main site. There are now 64 countries on Google that have been updated with Mapmaker data.

This isn't the first time Flickr has done this (Radar post). They've also used Open Street Map for Beijing, Black Rock City (2008), Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Adelaide, Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, Melbourne, Baghdad, Kabul, Kinshasa, Mogadishu, Harare, Nairobi, Accra, Cairo, and Algiers.

So what's holding back Microsoft, Yahoo and Mapquest? Unknown, but hopefully they'll realize that their top-down approach isn't working.

Compare the Maps for yourself:
Note: I have included data layers where they were available (Google and Microsoft).

Google Maps:

(The markers include Wikipedia articles, photos, video, webcams, POIs, and public transit stations)

(The markers include Photosynths, user collections, photos and Wikipedia articles)

Yahoo Maps:

Mapquest Maps:

(This took a while to find, I had to find the International Maps page and click-thru a couple more pages to get the map)

(continue reading)

Four short links: 17 June 2009

Word Mining, Open Ideas, Power Meter BotNet, and Realtime Web Traffic Tracking

1. NY Times Mines Its Data To Identify Words That Readers Find Abstruse -- the feature that lets you highlight a word on a NY Times web page and get more information about it is something that irritates me. I'm fascinated by the analysis of their data: boggling that sumptuary is less perplexing than solipsistic. Louche (#3 on the list) has been my favourite word for two years, by the way, since I heard Dylan Moran toss it out in that uniquely facile way the Irish have with words. I think Irish citizens get this incredible competence with the English language for free, along with staggering house prices and beer you can walk on.
2. Open Ideas -- Alex Payne's blog of Concepts in the public domain, awaiting collaboration and appropriation.
3. Buggy 'smart meters' open door to power-grid botnet (The Register) -- Paul Graham said that we've found what we get when we cross a television with a computer: a computer. Similarly, intelligent power meters are computers, computers that apparently haven't been well-secured. To prove his point, Davis and his IOActive colleagues designed a worm that self-propagates across a large number of one manufacturer's smart meter. Once infected, the device is under the control of the malware developers in much the way infected PCs are under the spell of bot herders. Attackers can then send instructions that cause its software to turn power on or off and reveal power usage or sensitive system configuration settings.
4. Chartbeat -- the sexiest web analytics ever. It gives realtime count of users, whether they're reading or writing (based on whether focus is in a form element), where they're from, mentions on Twitter, and more and more and more. This is a different form of analytics than Google Analytics, which tells you trends and historical access. Love this for the pure sex appeal of a heads-up dashboard that can tell you exactly how many people are on your site and exactly what they're doing. (via Artur)

ARhrrrr! : Augmented Reality Zombie and Helicopter Game

Augmented Reality is going to be coming to a phone near you very shortly. All it takes is a decent processor, a camera, a compass and a GPS -- all of which are becoming increasingly common on smart phones (Android phones and the iPhone 3GS qualify). It's going to be used primarily for games and geo-oriented apps. ARhrrr! is an awesome looking example of the former. In this game you hold your augmented reality enabled device above the "board". When you look at the board through your device you see buildings appear and ZOMBIES (left image).

In this game you are a helicopter (middle image) trying to save civilians. You can shoot zombies -- the zombies can also attack you with organs. Or you can use Skittles as bombs (orange and green plumes in the right image). The video below gives a great explanation of the game:

The game was created by Georgia Tech Augmented Environments Lab (also known for their virtual iPhone puppy) and the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD-Atlanta). As they describe it:

By merging graphics with props in the physical world, handheld Augmented Reality games pull the player through the small screen and into a larger merged play-space. Our primary motivation for this AR game was to explore fast-action first-person augmented reality, where the camera controls and movement that would typically require a mouse and keyboard are handled directly by simply moving the device. Advanced tracking technology allows the player to quickly zoom in and out and view the world at steep angles, making this a highly interactive and engaging game. Finally, we wanted to test tangible input mechanics, such as placing and shooting Skittles to trigger in-game events.

ARhrrr! t was designed for the Nvidia Tegra, which unfortunately doesn't seem to be widely available. I can't help but be reminded of Will Carter's Mobzombie game which uses AR to chase the player with virtual zombies. Luckily for all of us Mobzombies is coming to the iPhone (follow @mobzomies for progress) so you can get your virtual zombie fix.

[via Bruce Sterling]

Interesting Questions Raised by Iranian Twitter Activism

Development (4:10 PM CST): The State Department has been in contact with Twitter to make sure that the service remained available for protestors in Iran. (reuters)

Last Friday, Twitter started to digest the Iranian election results, and the tool became a powerful vehicle for protest and coordination for student protestors within Iran and interested parties outside the country. American Twitterers used the power of the medium to push our own media machine to increase coverage of the story via #CNNFail and #iranelection, and several dedicated observers did some important work to create proxies allowing the Iranian opposition to circumvent network restrictions. While it is amazing to see individuals using technologies such as Twitter to sidestep repressive government censorship, Twitter has also made it easier for observers, a world away, to become active participants in an unfamiliar political system at times taking vigilante action against the server infrastructure of a nation-state.

(continue reading)

Recent Posts

• Four short links: 16 June 2009 | by Nat Torkington on June 16, 2009
• Walking the Censorship Tightrope with Google's Marissa Mayer | by James Turner on June 16, 2009
• Personal Democracy Forum ramp-up: from vulnerability and overload to rage, mistrust, and fear | by Andy Oram on June 16, 2009
• Hands-On with the iPhone 3.0 OS; Search is the Winner | by Brady Forrest on June 15, 2009
• Jeff Bezos at Wired Disruptive by Design conference | by Tim O'Reilly on June 15, 2009
• The Four Pillars of an Open Civic System | by John Geraci on June 15, 2009
• Four short links: 15 June 2009 | by Nat Torkington on June 15, 2009
• XKCD on the Future Self | by Brady Forrest on June 12, 2009
• Four short links: 12 June 2009 | by Nat Torkington on June 12, 2009
• Mechanical Turk Best Practices | by Ben Lorica on June 11, 2009
• Search for Developers | by Brady Forrest on June 11, 2009
• Four short links: 11 June 2009 | by Nat Torkington on June 11, 2009