baratunde.com

Melissa Pierce is making a movie called Life In Perpetual Beta, and she decided to interview me! She summarizes the documentary as follows:

Life in Perpetual Beta is a documentary film about the ways in which technology has/is/will change the ways in which we think about ourselves as individuals and a society. It is exploring the cultural shift that technology creates as it enables people to live less planned and more passionate lives.

I met Melissa at SXSW Interactive (aka Geek Christmas) last year. We were waiting in a very long line for food, and we just started talking. She's a super cool, smart and motivated person, and this project sounded very exciting, especially given the structure of my multi-threaded life.

When she was visiting NYC several months ago, we sat down for a few hours to discuss life, technology and the overlap thereof. The clip above is just a snippet, and I urge you to visit the film website and check out some of the other, more amazing, people she's roped in to this project.

tagged

Interview,

Media Appearances,

Technology

Monday

22Feb2010

Me talking at DLD about The Onion's intervention in the real time web

Monday, February 22, 2010 at 10:44 |

The complete video of the panel I joined is in this post.

tagged

DLD,

Munich,

Wednesday

27Jan2010

My DLD talk in Munich about keeping the realtime web real with satire

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 at 11:06 |

DLD10: The Real Time Web And Satire/Comedy

Monday this week I sat on a panel called "Real Time" at the Digital Life Design (DLD) conference in Munich Germany. It was an incredible experience overall and with this panel. Moderated by Jeff Pulver, the panel explored the technology, challenges and cool opportunities presented by a web experience that is much more fast-paced than what we've been used to.

Also joining the panel were Loic Le Meur (of Seesmic) and Raj Narayan (of Glam Media)

Here's the video (35min) of the entire panel. I gave my opening remarks at roughly 16min in.

And here are the slides on slideshare

View more presentations from baratunde.

tagged

Comedy,

Public Appearances,

Technology

Thursday

17Dec2009

Introducing bitly.tv. Say goodbye to productivity. Again

Thursday, December 17, 2009 at 15:29 |

The bitly.tv homepageTechCrunch has the details:

With more than two billion links a month passed through its link shortening service, bit.ly can see what is some of the most buzzed about and shared content on the Web. Today, it is exposing the most popular videos people share through bit.ly on Bitly.TV, which is the second project under bit.ly Labs (the super-short j.mp URL shortener was the first).

With bit.ly being the main way people share links on Twitter, Bitly.TV might as well be called Twitter TV. The videos featured are based on bit.ly’s bitrank algorithm. “The algorithm looks at velocity, popularity and persistence,” says general manager Andrew Cohen. “We’re examining the social distribution history of each video to determine what is trending, and to predict what will go viral.”

I especially love the concept of mathematically measuring velocity, popularity and persistence. It treats the data flowing through the web (well, the bitlyfied web) like a flowing liquid. In fact, I wonder if the principal of fluid dynamics (plus network theory) could be applied to build some super geeky model. Wow, that might have been the nerdiest sentence I've ever typed!

But let's face it. What bitly.tv really is:

the end of productivity again
a great mirror held up to the soul of society reflecting our values right back at us.

Apparently our souls are filled with Lady Gaga videos.

4 References |

tagged

Internet,

Technology,

Video,

bit.ly

Sunday

08Feb2009

Where Do You Find New Music? A Twitter, Facebook And FriendFeed Survey

Sunday, February 8, 2009 at 20:20 |

This is the question I posed to my social networks (twitter, facebook and friendfeed) Saturday evening. I asked folks to be specific. Here are the Top 20 sources I got back as of 7pm ET Sunday February 8, 2009: I got 76 total responses. If one person mentioned three sources, that is three responses. Radio was very, very low on the list as I expected. Several folks mentioned music blogs in general or specific sites. The blogs cited were OkayPlayer, Gorilla vs Bear, Che Sing The Cool and Brooklyn Vegan. Some interesting comments that accompanied a few of the responses (names redacted):

pandora, friends, 101.9 RXP in NYC, and oddly enough if i like a song enough from a commercial to wanna track it down i will
I'm finding new stuff from the DJs at Cafe Wellstone on Second Life - last.fm works, too
When I'm starting a new genre, I find allmusic.com's articles incredibly helpful. Their subdivisions are pure music geekery: you get sample lists of key albums for, say, Chicago blues, jump blues, Delta blues, piano blues, acoustic blues, and on and on...and that's just blues.
OK - I may be 100 years old compared to y'all - but did you notice that only one of us mentioned radio? I am old enough to remember when radio was THE place to hear a new song. Funny...
typically last.fm for music - use to like Pandora but that was before they had to geotard themselves
Last.fm, Friendfeed, and opening bands at concerts. And, sadly, iPhone commercials
iTunes/Genius. Books good, TV bad (except Lost & BSG - WOM)

Why is this on my mind? I don't listen to music on the radio anymore, except for whatever is blasting out of a car driving past me. Of course, my friends play a big role, and for a while, my Salon.com subscription came with regular mp3 packs that were awesome, but they've stopped doing that. I also would get the occasional promo playlist from iTunes for members of the Apple Facebook group/fan page. I've found some of my best music via TV shows. The O.C. introduced me to Imogen Heap, and Gossip Girl brought me MGMT. My posting this question was part of a larger interest I have in how the explosion of media choice, social media tools and distributed network technology affect us. I used to think these thoughts for a living and still love to philosophize about our networked future. On Friday, I was interviewed by a NY Times reporter for a story about people who've canceled their cable in favor of an all-online video diet. That's another big blog post, but I'll give you a hint: Boxee made it possible. Back to music for now though. So I've been thinking on all this and realize that our technology has dismantled the former aggregation model for music. We used to have record labels, radio stations, music reviews and sage wisdom from record store clerks (and our friends) to help us make sense of the world by limiting, vetting, categorizing or explaining the wide world of music. Now, we have new points of aggregation: our iPods/iTunes and various other online services. We've dismantled the old world, but the new one is still under construction. Massive choice with incomplete filters makes for a confusing market. For example, iTunes is my primary music interface. However, it is closed to the world of trusted curators and music advisors in my life. I'd love to have an iTunes experience that is filtered or influenced by OkayPlayer, the music my wife likes and Pandora's music genome engine. But I can't do that. I've got to go through different interfaces to access these curators though the technical ability to do what I want is (nearly?) possible. I'm done rambling for now. More thoughts on the future of media in the future. Meanwhile, you can get full access to my raw unscientific music source survey data via this Google Spreadsheet. As I was about to post this, someone on FriendFeed pointed me to Adam Lasnik's Google Spreadsheet which provides a directory of online music services. If you're on FriendFeed, you can join the discussion (sadly, twitter and Facebook make it impossible to point people to a specific conversational thread).

10 Comments |

tagged

Future Of Media,

Last.fm,

Media,

Music,

Pandora,

Technology,

online music,

radio in

General

Saturday

13Dec2008

The Sound Of My Dying Macbook Pro

Saturday, December 13, 2008 at 19:08 |

I just tend to wear out technology tools very quickly. I certainly push them harder than most users. I also get unlucky when it comes to lemons. The first Macbook I got was the 13" black one. It suffered from "random shutdown syndrome" which is a bug so absurd, that its official name is "random shutdown syndrome!" This is what my current Macbook Pro sounds like after I boot it. I'm not sure what the cause is, but the solution is to get rid of this damn thing. I got notice today that my new Macbook Pro has shipped. I maxed on all the specs because I just need the power. Farewell to my noisy friend whom I backup daily.

21 Comments |

tagged

Apple,

Lemon,

Mac,

Macbook Pro,

Technology,

drop.io in

General

Friday

20Jun2008

BREAKING: Now I'm Leaving Yahoo And I Don't Even Work There

Friday, June 20, 2008 at 14:42 |

Wow! What a week for Yahoo!! So many people are leaving. The founder of delicious is the latest to announce, but rats have been fleeing this ship all week long. Now there's an intense reorganization afoot. Before any more announcements, speculation or rumor, I feel obligated to announce that I too will be leaving Yahoo! No, I'm not a Yahoo! executive. No, I've never worked for the company. However, that doesn't mean I can't see the writing on the wall. I'm out. I will continue to not be an executive at this company in crisis. This has not been an easy decision for me. I consulted with my friends and family, though, and it's clear. It's time for me to move on.

8 Comments |

tagged

Satire,

Yahoo in

Thursday

19Jun2008

Me And My Kindle In Silicon Alley Insider

Thursday, June 19, 2008 at 14:05 |

Earlier this week, I was taking the A train home, reading my Kindle, when a man sat next to me saying, "Well I'll be damned" or something very much like that.

It was his first sighting of the e-book reader "in the wild," and he wanted to ask me about it. Having just received the device a week ago Friday, I didn't have extensive experience, but I love what I've seen so far: easy access to books, the built in dictionary and Wikipedia access, the awesome readability especially versus the iPhone.

The man on the train was Dan Frommer with Silicon Alley Insider, and here's his blog post and photo.

Baratunde & His Kindle In Silicon Alley Insider

What have I been up to on my Kindle?

The first book I finished was by fellow writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. He's written an impressive memoir called "The Beautiful Struggle" which chronicles his life and relationship with his father. I'm actually mentioned in the book since our lives overlapped for a few years in the mid-90s. Ta-Nehisi is an incredibly gifted writer, and he's captured the essence of a period in history with intelligence, grace and humor. I highly recommend it. You can keep up with him at his blog -- required reading for anyone interested in race in America and politics.

After finishing Ta-Nehisi's book, I've moved on to "The Man In The High Castle" by Philip K. Dick.

I also subscribe to a few periodicals including DailyKos, Huffington Post, The Onion, NY Times, Salon, TreeHugger and more.

Greatest Kindle features:

Highlighting and clipping pages and sections of books. I marked up Ta-Nehisi's book a lot, and now can go back and refer to those sections easily
Built in Wikipedia access. This just changes the game for me. Ta-Nehisi is insanely well-read, and despite our similar upbringings, there were many references I didn't get or had only a vague recollection of. Rather than moving on in ignorance, I could follow up on a topic instantly. This made the book reading experience much deeper and more informative than it might have been.
Wireless access to Amazon. It's just great to be able to scan the story, sample and buy a book. Getting content is easy. So easy. The auto-delivery of periodicals and blogs is nice as well. I always have the latest goods on my subway ride.
The size. This thing is very small and very lightweight. Lots of people have hated on the design, but I think it's clear that people who love reading books designed this thing. I used to load books on my Palm Pilot then Treo now iPhone, and in all those cases, I felt like I was reading a book on a mobile device. With the Kindle, I just feel like I'm reading a book.

What could use some improvement

More books and magazines! Amazon is working on it, but there are many titles I want that are not in the store, especially my peak oil favorites and Vanity Fair.
Custom blog delivery. There's a ridiculously small number of blogs (346) you can subscribe to with the Kindle. I'd love to specify an RSS feed and have it converted to a custom, Kindle-ready format. There are just two or three blogs I really want to do this with, but mostly The Oil Drum. That site has become mandatory daily reading for me over the past year.
Getting my clips and highlights off the device. I'd like to be able to email, export or otherwise get my book highlights off the device easily. Right now, I can seem them and I guess type them manually into a computer, but we've got a communications path (wireless) between the Kindle and the outside world. If someone knows how to do this, holla!

5 Comments |