cos

I've got my own Wiffiti screen for my travels. It's running on my laptop, so it's off when I'm actually using it (unless I can figure out a way to keep the network connection alive when I switch users on OS X - anyone know how?), but most of the rest of the time I'll leave it up (in the backseat, at whoever's house I'm staying at, ...)

Text my Wiffiti screen by texting to 87884 with C7 followed by a space at the beginning of your message.

( Update, and a photo with Carolyn... )

Here's one of those "What I've been up to" posts that are so rare on my LJ :)

Since January I've been working part time for a company in Davis Square called LocaModa, helping them develop, roll out, and promote an experiment of theirs called Wiffiti. A Wiffiti screen is a flatscreen bulletin board. To post messages to it, rather than tacking on pieces of paper, you text to it from a cell phone. The screen just sits there displaying the texts people have posted to it - as new ones come in, older ones progressively fade away. Here's what the Wiffiti screen at Someday Cafe in Davis Square looks like right now:

(that's a live link, updated every few minutes to show what's on Someday's screen - click for full size)

LocaModa is a startup, exploring concepts they call "the web outside" - basically, ways to bring networked/online culture to physical places, rather than just people sitting at computers. They've got another product, StreetSurfer, that they actually make money from, so they're experimenting with Wiffiti to see what people will do with it.

I joined them not only because I thought the concept was a lot of fun, but because ( like the way they think )

I just ran across a cute blog post about Wiffiti, titled What's next: Bluetooth brain implants?

[... ] not only does it represent the next step in blogging &emdash; although the cell-to-screen systems are localized, they're connected to the web, where viewers can see what's happening on all of the local installations &emdash; but a further decentralization of communications authority as well; s a safe bet that some people and groups really will use the technology for social causes and organizational purposes.

Actually, the cell-to-screen systems are not localized: Once you've been to a venue and know a screen's code, you can send a message to it from anywhere you have cell service. Or, you could just look at the screen shot on the web site, see the code there, and learn how to text to any screen. Most messages on each screen come from people at the venue, but we do get some from elsewhere - usually people familiar with the venue, who have been there before. That, plus the fact that anyone on the Internet can see images of all the screens, is part of what I think makes it so cool, and have untapped potential. And I have experimented with using it for social/community purposes and political organizing.

Here are some saved screen shots, and I've been saving links to articles and blog posts about Wiffiti at http://del.icio.us/coslinks/wiffiti

The biggest obstacle to interesting things I think of trying with Wiffiti, is that there aren't screens in enough places yet. It's really nice to be able to text to Davis or to Central, and it's fun to text to Good Time when the 48 Hour Film Project has showings there, but most of the time when I'd like to text something location-specific, there isn't a screen at that location.

... and that's part of my job: find places that want Wiffiti screens. I got our first three away-from-Boston locations, though one of those fell through. The other two are up: Filter, a cafe in Wicker Park, Chicago; and Hurricane Cafe, a 24 hour diner in Seattle. This week, two more went live, at Half Fast Subs in Boulder CO, and Tommy Nevin's Pub in Evanston IL (Chicago metro).

Another part is getting people to know these screens are there and start using them, so that we can see what they think of and do with them. Already we've been surprised by marriage proposals and people using Wiffiti to tell people they're running late; we've enjoyed the flirting, the surrealism at Someday, the wordplay everywhere. There' even been some lively meta-debates on occasion.

Help me out? ( Try using Wiffiti )( and suggest new venues? )

Now that Rowan has a house, I can move! The new place is just a block and a half behind the Harvest coop in Central Square, and it's big and pretty.

Big enough, in fact, that I can have all my stuff in one place again! Currently, I have my day to day living stuff here at aerynne's condo in Cambridge, about half the rest in boxes in hawkegirl's garage in Waltham, the overflow of boxes in a PODS storage unit on Bob Antia's property in Lincoln, a few larger items (such as my kitchen table, which will fit in this kitchen!) in Something Something's basement in Somerville, and several bookcases full of books at estheruth's in Malden. eep!

I already had plans for all the weekends in June long before I knew I'd want to move in June, so I'll probably do it on weekdays. I think the main part will take two days:

1. Rent a truck, and get everything from Waltham and Lincoln over, probably in two trips, but maybe it'll be possible to do it all in one three-leg trip.
2. A day or two later, or maybe a week later, move my living space, probably by car. It's only 6 blocks, and I remember from past experience that it only takes about 5 or 6 carloads. Err, or maybe a couple of those have to be vanloads - anyone got a van to lend? It'd suck to try to squeeze a moving truck around these narrow streets and I think it's avoidable for this step.

I'm aiming for June 14, 15, 16 (Wed-Fri). Anyone want to help? Are those dates good? I have the 18th-21st unscheduled too.

I love going back to city hall to collect signatures I've turned in. There's that satisfying sense of accomplishment, seeing most of them certified with red checks, and the total number - particularly when, as in 2004, I could see when my public policy question qualified for the ballot in a few districts just by looking at the sheets I'd just collected. Today wasn't like that, as I only collected about a hundred from Somerville and Medford towards the 5,000 John Bonifaz needs to get on the ballot; statewide, our volunteers collected over 10,000, so mine are a very small piece of it. But I also love the way it demystifies the election machinery, shows the human element, and makes it all seem connected.

Today in Somerville,

There are still some other papers here for Bonifaz that haven't been picked up.

Oh, who turned them in?

Hold on, let me look...
Patrick Keaney... Oh, I know him
... and Lesley Phillips. I know her too. I'll mention it to them.
Thank you!

I flip through the nomination papers I turned in, looking at the red checkmarks next to nearly every name, signifying that they were certified. There's a red N next to one of them: "not a voter"

*blink* Carolyn Croissant isn't registered???

Not at that address, she isn't

[It's definitely the right address] This is the right address, and I know she voted.

What's the address again? [I read it to them]
We have her at [other address] Yeah, that's where she used to live. She moved last year.

[Briefly, I consider whether she might not have updated her registration, but then I remember a conversation in which we lamented that she couldn't vote for Rebekah Gewirtz because she'd moved from ward 6 to ward 7]

Yeah, we show she moved, from [new street] to [old street]

No, you have it backwards. She moved from [old street] to [new street]. I helped her move!

Huh... we show her changed to [old street]... in April. Maybe it's from the city census.

[She asks another elections employee to look up some papers]

Yes, here it is, the change is from the city census. Maybe we misread it.

Maybe it got sent with her old address pre-printed, and forwarded in the mail, and you saw the printed address?

Yes, I bet that's it. We'll look for her registration card and fix it.

Two years ago, the civil liberties ballot question I initiated here in MA got 197 certified signatures in one of the districts we tried to get on the ballot, out of 200 required. The volunteers there knew some of the people who had signed and not been certified, and brought three of them to Pittsfield city hall to identify themselves and vouch for their signatures, and we got on the ballot in that district.

P.S. ablock, your signature didn't get certified because the way you write a "9" looks like a "7" and they looked for your name at the wrong address :)

LiveJournal recently added a feature I've wanted for years (and mentioned in suggestions a few times). In case you haven't noticed: the "add/modify friend" page now has a full color picker. You can choose any of 3-byte RGB value for foreground and background for any friend. This was available through some LJ clients for a long time, but now it's available through the web interface.

I'm sticking to web-safe colors, but that's still a lot more than the meager 46 they had on the web interface before. I'm wasting this rainy afternoon away picking new, more fitting colors, for my LJ friends :)

[Edit: For example, I just made sunspiral the same color as his hair! Whee!]

I just got the Google Maps version of "You can't get theah from heah!"

I'm planning a road trip for this summer, and using Google Maps to help me figure out distances on unfamiliar variants of cross country routes, and what stops make sense between one place and another. I just tried to get a route from Tempe, Arizona (new home of listgirl) to Hillsdale, NY (approximate site of Falcon Ridge Folk Festival).

This was Google's answer:


"We could not calculate driving directions between Tempe, AZ and Hillsdale, NY."

I'm trying out a new sort of online writing community site, gather.com. What with the recent debates over on beah's LJ about what is and is not a "blog", I feel like noting that Gather is not a blog site (mostly), because its focus isn't the standard blog view of someone's posts in reverse chronological order.

What it seems to be is a place where you publish things (posts? articles? entries?) that other people can find in a variety of ways, comment on, and vote on. The main ways of finding posts seem to be through tags, the automated lists of most recommended and most viewed posts, and Gather's "editor's picks". There are at least a few other community features, including "connecting" (similar to friending on social networking sites such as Friendster and Tribe), and "Gather Points" which through commenting, having people vote for your posts, inviting people to Gather, and so on.

Points seem to be redeemable for... stuff of some sort. Probably not money, but maybe. Which ties in with some of what yaoobruni just wrote on his more respectable blog, about Web 2.0 and the web serf. Especially the parts about money mattering, users being excited even by small rewards, and the "company store" :-)

So, you can find my stuff at cos.gather.com - yes, I admit, one of the reasons I signed up was to grab "cos" while I still could.

Do any of you use Gather?

Over the past several months I almost completely overhauled my OkCupid profile. I partly rewrote the intro in the late fall, over the winter I wrote a new and much longer books/movies/music/food section, last month I mostly rewrote "message me if", I gradually updated "what I'm doing with my life", and today I added a new, long, answer to "I spend a lot of time thinking about". Now it's one of the longest profiles I've seen on OkCupid. So if you're curious about me, there's a lot of new reading to possibly entertain you :)

1st non-sequitur: Know any New York people who might want a part time job as a Wiffiti text jockey?
2nd non-sequitur: Boston area people, come see Molly Zenobia's house concert on Friday night!!

I've had this idea for a better way to allow adding new questions on OkCupid bubbling around in my head for a while. Now, in a fit of procrastination, I just posted it on okcupid. If you use OkCupid, go take a look. If you don't like it, or have a way to improve it, comment. If you do like it, email comments@okcupid.com and suggest they implement it (and comment anyway :).

(Edit: I mean, comment directly on my post, over there)

I haven't posted anything today that I don't believe is real in this world. But I haven't ignored Rabbit Hole Day. If you're one of my regular readers, you may already noticed that my LJ went down the rabbit hole today. What did I do?

(comments temporarily screened - a prize for whoever guesses before I unscreen?)

(unscreened: five winners, interestingly, all female. now what's the prize? hmmm)

Two years ago, I posted Tales in Bureaucracy and Tales in Bureacracy II - If you weren't reading me back then, you might want to read those first. Those stories got me thinking, what is it about bureaucracy that makes it both so frustrating and funny at the same time? What are the things that bureaucracies have in common, that lead to these kinds of stories?

I came up with two broad themes:

1. Overly strict adherence to procedures

Standard procedures are one of the strengths of bureaucracy, and one of the reasons we have it. People who have expertise develop procedures for others to follow, and a large organization can learn what goes wrong over time and evolve the rules. The procedures that results can, in some sense, have more knowledge built in over time than any one person following them could have. It takes human judgement to know when the rules shouldn't apply, but human judgement can itself be faulty, so people are reluctant to use it.

When I was in high school, I often spent my evenings hanging out at the Coolidge Corner Theater, where several of my friends worked. Lots of free, weird movies, and more time with my friends when they were idle between bursts of busy. I remember one manager, Derek, who was rather... less loose than the rest, though still a nice guy.

One evening, a couple walked in to check the movie schedule, at a time when both theaters were in the middle of showings - which the theaters were filled with people, but there was nobody in the lobby or by the entrance doors, other than a couple of employees and me. The couple got the information they wanted, and began to walk out. As they were opening the doors, Derek noticed they were about to exit through the "enter" doors - and beckoned them back and and asked them to go around a short barrier and over to the "exit" doors. Which were directly next to the "enter" doors, and let out onto exactly the same space.

As they passed through the exit, the woman turned back and said to Derek, "you have the mind of a true bureaucrat."

2. Authority rests with people too far removed from the front lines

I suppose this is one way organizations have of preventing people from using their judgement, just in case they mis-use it.

One summer in college, there was a convenience store I passed most every day between campus and the apartment I was subletting. I would often stop and get a Ben & Jerry's "Bluberry Cheesecake" frozen yogurt. Until they stopped stocking it. I'd check, and there would be none, and I'd go home dissatisfied.

After a few weeks of this, one afternoon I was walking home when I saw a Ben & Jerry's truck outside the store. Ahah! I went in, and there was the Ben & Jerry's guy, stocking the shelves. I asked him if he had any Blueberry Cheesecake, and why hadn't it been there for weeks, and he said that yes, he had it, but the store had stopped authorizing them to stock any "frozen yogurt product". He couldn't unload any of it unless the store asked him to. So I went to the guy at the counter, and asked him to request the Ben & Jerry's guy stock some Blueberry Cheesecake. Sorry, he said, he wasn't authorized to allow them to stock anything management hadn't requested. "Could you ask him to unload just one, and then I'll buy it right now?" Nope, he couldn't do that.

The Ben & Jerry's guy heard this exchange, and beckoned me over to tell me his secret plan. When he was done stocking the shelves, I met him at the back of his truck to complete the clandestine ice cream deal.

Got any stories of your own to illustrate these two themes? Or some new themes to suggest?

Not the plate I'd want on my car...

... I wonder if the owner noticed?

[ Spotted on North Harvard @ Soldiers Field Road, January 7, 2006 ]