Chinese Online Social Networks

Hat tip to Bart Lapers, who was part of the Web2Asia team that visited a number of Chinese web companies a couple of weeks ago.

Web2Asia - Online Social Networks In China

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On mystery meat, Tweetshirts and a wearable computing revival

Web developer Steffest (blog, twitter, the guy on the left in ImkeDielen's photobooth pic) got inspired by Dorien when she talked about the news on your t-shirt. Another proof that tinyurl is the Mystery Meat of the twitterverse, because Stef had hoped it would be "a t-shirt with LEDs that would show live feeds through GPRS or something" (and not the knitting project it turned out to be).
That was one month ago. In the meanwhile, he found a slogan and simply started building his TweetShirt and it was ready just in the time for a very succesful demo at Barcamp Ghent.
In short, a TweetShirt is a web connected t-shirt with an embedded display that can be configured through a web interface to diplay a.o. live Twitter feeds, Flickr pictures, custom texts.
Obivously, Stef 1) is a software guy, not a marketing guy, and 2) not able to sell or ship a t-shirt built with discarded mobile phone parts and duct tape. On the other hand it's the closest thing to Wearable Computing I've seen. The idea of wearing computers on the body is certainly not new. But I like it a lot. Can someone help Stef make this project come alive?

Barcamp Ghent: my 24 hours off the grid

Yesterday I attended another inspiring edition of Barcamp Ghent. Thank you IBBT and One Agency for making this happen!
29 November was also No Blog Day, in memory of the victims of the Mumbai terrorist attack. There are two things about this protest action:

1. The role Twitter reporting has played in this attack reminds me of the role blogs played during 9/11, when the mainstream media were unable to feed the hungry-for-news crowd.
2. It's really weird to ask people *not* to blog. There's no way you can measure the effect of your appeal afterwards.

But the No Blog Day inspired me to start a No Gizmo Day on the 29th. Bart De Waele uploaded a video of me explaining (in Dutch) how I planned to replace every electronic gadget in my daily life with something analog. I had some really poetic ideas, like replacing Twitter by origami crane birds (just like Sadako Sasaki's) with messages written on them, but completely forgot about them during Barcamp. I also replaced my Nokia Supernova by a Lomography fish eye camera to make unflattering portraits of the other bloggers but forgot to take off the cap a number of times. But to be honest I felt really miserable, uncomfortable, powerless and nervous without my gadgets. The only high point was when I could force the audience to replace my ipod. Watch the video to see what happened next.

Preparing for BarcampGent2

I've been wondering what to talk about at tomorrow's Barcamp Gent for the last few days. I can hardly pull the pr0n trick. Or simply recycle one of my previous presentations.
So here goes: the title of my presentation will be "Off The Grid" - more about it tomorrow.

Screen Ubiquity, continued

Record High TV Use, Despite Online/Mobile Video Gains | Nielsen Wire: "Men were more likely than women to watch via mobile phone, while women were more likely then men to watch video online.[...] “TV use is at an all-time high, yet people are also using the Internet more often — 31% of which is happening simultaneously,” Susan Whiting, vice chairperson, Nielsen, noted."

Refresh Day speaker slides: "Mind the gap"

Mind the Gap

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Refresh Day 2008

Getting ready for Refresh Day today in Gent, the "first Belgian crossmedia event for marketing and business strategy". Will upload my speaker slides later today.
Other speakers include IAB's Alain Heureux, ONE Agency's Bert Van Wassenhove, Plugmedia's Christel De Maeyer, interaction designer David Ottina, BAM's Dirk De Wit, Vooruit's Karen Vander Plaetse, Famous' Johan Detavernier, Boondoggle's Vincent Jansen, and Roularta's Philippe Belpaire.

De Crem de la Crem in New York

Belgian blogger fired in NY after criticizing Minister of Defense � it’s not about being superman, it’s about being superbly human: "Basically, that’s what Lubbe Bakker saw and heard that particular evening and that’s also how she described it on her blog (it’s in Dutch).
Four days later, she gets fired. Lubbe Bakker writes that a “well-informed source” told her that the spokesman of (Belgian Minister of Defense) De Crem had called her boss at the B Café prior to her dismissal."
Sometimes I think we live in a comic strip, not a country. Our headlines sounds more and more like TinTin episodes.
UPDATE: Nice round-up of the blogstorm at When Everyone Is A Blogger, Nothing You Say Is Off The Record (TechCrunch). Pic below found at Freaky.be.

We are people of the screen

Idea Lab - Becoming Screen Literate - NYTimes.com: "These ever-present screens [on planes, at gas stations, at ATM machines, at supermarket checkout lines, etc] have created an audience for very short moving pictures, as brief as three minutes, while cheap digital creation tools have empowered a new generation of filmmakers, who are rapidly filling up those screens."
Although many people think that the screens of the future will become bigger and bigger (like LCD tv screens do), I think the most ubiquitous screens in 5 years time will be the small ones: the screens of our smartphones and our "smart companions".
One day we'll find out why YouTube movies look better on an iPhone than they do on your computer browser.

Public service announcement à la Röyksopp

Ensuring the Future of Food (YT) is an amazing instruction video, apparantly by the Japanese governement.
Found via Data Mining: Text Mining, Visualisation and Social Media.
The attractive isometric visual style reminds me of the work French motion graphics studio H5 did for the famous video for Röyksopp's "Remind Me" (2002). They've done more or less similar things for other music videos like Massive Attack: "Special Cases" (2003), Goldfrapp: "Twist" (2003) and Etienne Daho: "Retour à Toi" (2003).

Random recipe of the day

jamesoff.net � Random Recipe Generator: "Cheese With Cheese Crust
Serves 3
You will need:

• 1 red onions
• 60g cheese

Instructions:

1. pre-heat the oven to 190 C
2. grill the red onions
3. grill the cheese
4. bake for 40 minutes and serve hot

Yum."
Just discovered Cookstr by the way, "a new cooking site dedicated to providing our users with great recipes from the best chefs and cookbook authors." I like the way they put "authors" (in this case: cooks) in the spotlight.

Got my Supernova back

Mystery solved: the Nokia Supernova that Imke Dielen found in her mailbox was mine. The personal files on this phone hinted at the city of Mechelen, a recent trip to New York, a love for all things Apple and a certain long-haired dude, a social circle involving, ehm, Belgian Social Media Influentials, and a tendency to run into trouble with the police.
This was all part of Nokia's recent Somebody Else's Phone awareness campaign by TheseDays, with a little help from Robin Wauters. Thank you, Robin! As soon as I've got a decent data plan, I'm planning on taking up moblogging again over at flickr.com/photos/bnox. Any recommendations?

Auto portraits

Sometimes they say people start to look like their dogs after a while.
Serbian artist Vladimir Nikolic illustrates with his hilarious auto-portraits that the same could go for cars. If you take his idea, you might have car owners pose with their car, mimicking the "expression" of its front. BMW owners would frown, Mini Cooper drivers would look surprised. What would you look like?

Steve Wozniak's watch: stuck in 1978

Apple founder Steve Wozniak's speech at creativity World Forum was called "On founding Apple and the Future of Technology" but to be honest he only talked about "founding Apple". This made his speech (.pdf), which he read from handwritten notes, sound a lot like audio commentary to Pirates of Silicon Valley [IMDB]. And that's a shame, because the Woz is obviously still passionate about creating computer programmes and personal computers, but probably ran out of time where he got to the point where he would share his vision on future technologies. But if you listen to the guy, you learn that Mr Wozniak is indeed a reluctant billionaire who wanted to be an engineer first and a boss last. Also interesting: he created the first Apple computer and its successor in his spare time. Like if creativity, even for an engineer/inventor, is something that thrives best when the mind is at ease.
Reportedly five of the audience questions were about the watch Steve was sporting: it's a binary Nixie made of old parts. Steve Wozniak loves the way the tubes light up when he tilts his wrist [YT].

Martin Heylen: how to avoid a slamming door

Martin Heylen is a passionate and award-winning Belgian journalist and a great storyteller. He is, however, not very eager to climb the stage at conferences even though the time is right: he's just published his first book. At Creativity World Forum last Wednesday, he rather let his work (see some examples of his masterpiece, the much-awarded Back To Siberia) speak for itself and along the road gave some sound advice on how to win confidence with people you have never met before: "Strangely enough there is an international key that opens all doors: courtesy and a big, genuine smile." And passion, of course: "I think I look rather exited myself, and that works."
He was one of the most modest speakers, but also got the loudest applause. The Twitter backchannel speaks for itself.

John Cleese makes me want to buy more tortoise time

"Turtle buries its thoughts, like its eggs, in the sand, and allows the sun to hatch the little ones. Look at the old fable of the tortoise and the hare, and decide for yourself whether or not you would like to align with Turtle." This quote from a Native American Medicine Card is the opening phrase of a book called Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less by one Guy Claxton. The book was highly recommended by John Cleese this week during his keynote (.pdf) at Creativity World Forum. The point, said Cleese, is to nurture your tortoise mind by taking refuge in a time and space boundary. To give an example: Edison got his best ideas in his rocking chair, in those relaxed moments just before he dozed off.
John Cleese, despite being 69, is "still indeed alive, contrary to rumour", and is making video podcasts, twitter updates, and cleeseblogging. In other news, Monty Python launched their own Youtube channel. But they want something in return: "None of your driveling, mindless comments. Instead, we want you to click on the links, buy our movies & TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years."

Let them have twunch

Blogging grows up | Oh, grow up | The Economist: "As for traditional (if that is the word) blog pages, these tend increasingly to belong to conventional media organisations. [...] These “new media” firms are now suffering from the same advertising slowdown as their offline rivals. Gawker, a gossip-blog empire, has already begun laying off bloggers."
The point is not that "blogging is dead" and "twitter is the new black". The point is that exciting new things are still happening thanks to new technologies. Take Twunch for example - a spontaneous lunch by twitter users, started up by @atog, @inferis and @tomklaasen. In 2002, Howard Rheingold mentioned how Smart Mobs would form themselves "through technology-mediated, intelligent emergent behavior". Twunches don't have the press-hyped, arty-farty feel of the early smart mobs. Twunches are spontaneous, fun, down-to-earth, and with a low treshold. They usually take place in Quick hamburger restaurants - and everybody knows where to find those.
As a matter of fact, I think Quick should stop experimenting with paid blog posts and start sponsoring Twunch.

Community gatekeepers: they aren't dead yet!

Will Flagging be Social Media s 8 - Webmonkey: "flagging works when enough users are dedicated to the community. It has long been a successful feature of Craigslist.Flagging works today, but the future may bring much better solutions. It could be technology that is better able to automatically filter." I'm not a big believer in flagging algorhythms. Because if it's automated, the spam robots will find a back door and abuse the scripts. It's true that vendetta flagging or bury brigades can smother a community - but these problems can be more quickly ironed out by the community leaders than when another griever goes berserk in one of your posts.
A lot more interesting point by Webmonkey Adam DuVander is this one: "the coming identity revolution could bring my reputation from site to site". Although I'm not sure if being a trustworthy vendor on eBay necessarily means you get diplomatic immunity at, say, Fark.com. I rather see it the other way round: to create a grey list of internet users with repetitive troll-like behaviour so webmasters can group their efforts to keep out the bozos.

Belgian Social Media Influentials: here's to the crazy ones

Bruno Peeters, also known as the Master Of Lists, has compiled a list of Belgian Social Media Influentials and I'm obviously very happy and proud that I'm number one on that list. I was a bit surprised too, because it's the first time I actually win a bloggers' penis size contest. I'm especially pleased with the high scores I got from my peers, so my thanks goes out to them: Robin Wauters, for practically dragging me onto Twitter last year, Bart De Waele, for defending and sometimes even funding my ideas even if they're wild, Kris Hoet, for nudging me into starting the Brussels Girl Geek Dinners, Luc Van Braekel, who is an example to anyone who started blogging back in 2004 I think, and the list goes on...
And if you think I'm a little crazy sometimes, I've been influenced and shaped by the best - to name but a few: Ben Caudron, Tom De Bruyne, Bart Becks, Peter van Wijnaerde, and of course Gil Plaquet.

But now for the most important thing: how shall I celebrate? Meet me tomorrow at Lotto Arena during Creativity World Forum for twunch. If there's any drinks to buy, I'll buy them for the twunchers. For plan B, I'm thinking of a drink somewhere in Mechelen, in the course of next week. Say, Thu 27 Nov in Den Stille Genieter?

Guest lecture @ KHLim speaker slides: "The Baby Conspiracy"

The baby conspiracy

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Getting ready for Creativity World Forum

More than 1100 people have already registered to the Creativity World Forum on 19 and 20 November in Lotto Arena, Antwerp. And I'm one of them! I'll be there on the 19th (yes, that's the day that starts with John Cleese and ends with Steve Wozniak) and will tag my tweets and blog posts with "CWF08".
I'm particularly curious about the "special networking pda" the organisation will issue to every attendee "to make the networking easier and more worthwhile". The pda will allow visitors to check the conference programme, schedule meetings, spot people and exchange business cards easily. Exchange business cards? Like, some kind of near-location technology that allows you to beam .vcf cards to and fro?
UPDATE: the device appears to be a Spotme Participant Communication Tool. That's the closest thing to a StarTrek tricorder I've ever seen! Watch Overview of Spotme from a participant point of view (YT) to see how this gizmo turns swapping business wards into some kind of fox hunting game.

Cautiously wiped out and jazzing for serendipity.

Just imagine you want to destroy a Tweet, and Twitter gives you the "this feature is temporarily disabled" bird. What can you possible do to avoid getting caught as, random example of course, one of those idiots who fell for the twitterank trap? You might try snowing the original tweet under with dozens of new ones. This generator will help you: The Twitter Status Generator. Just as useful for Facebook statuses - in case you get laughed at for your "is." or "*" status updates.

Do you feel lucky, punk? Well do you?

“I’m feeling lucky” button costs Google $110 million per year « Web - Express yourself worldwide: "Google cofounder Sergey Brin told public radio’s Marketplace that around one percent of all Google searches go through the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button."
UPDATE: old news, originally on Valleywag. But still: why would a money-making machine as Google want to keep this somewhat whimsical/artsy function? Even the Google Holiday Logos have become serious now. Can a big corporation afford to be wacky?
To be honest, I never click on the lucky button. But then again, only 1% of the Google Search Engine visitors does.

"Hi, I'm Jules, from Uncanny Valley"

Pictured: The robot that can pull faces just like a human being | Mail Online: "Kerstin Dautenhahn, a robotics researcher at the University of Herefordshire, believes that people may be disconcerted by humanoid automatons that simply look 'too human'. [...] 'If you expose vulnerable people, like children or elderly people, to something that they might mistake for human, then you would automatically encourage a social relationship."
Although he looks a bit like a young Harvey Keitel, Jules indeed crossed the uncanny valley between "cool" and "creepy" robots. Watch this this animation to see what I mean.

Anyone seen my 3D avatar?

eyeBcom - Home: "eyeBcom is a social community site where you can have your own realistic 3D avatar. A realistic avatar is just like a photo of you but in full 3D. With your avatar you can do lots of fun things and share it with your friends." They already scanned major movie stars such as Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman and during the Next08 event, they also scanned me!
I tried to log in to their site and retrieve my 3D scan but someone else already beat me to it. That's what happens of course when you tweet your scan code to about 600 followers on Twitter :-(

The semantic web: maybe rumors of its death are exaggerated

Yesterday, during the BlogBoat 1.0 I had an interesting discussion with Luc Van Braekel about filter algorythms and how they could automate filtering and gatekeeping. It reminded me of Tim Berners Lee's 1999 dream of a semantic web - an internet age in which computers "become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers." For a while we all thought tags, keywords or labels would do just that. Tag clouds are beautiful to look at (and often abused as candy-coloured navigation interface) but apart from that I think the tags have let us down.
This is why an API like Semantic Hacker's is hopeful. SemanticHacker: "Semantic discovery is a way to find information without knowing explicitly what you're looking for BUT 'you know it when you see it.' Semantic discovery does not punish you for using the wrong keywords." I tried it out and based on the copy, the paper I wrote for BlogBoat could be taxed with the following keywords:

• Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs
• News/Media/Journalism/Organizations
• News/Media/Journalism/Education
• News/Media
• Society/Activism/Anti-Media

I'm a man!

GenderAnalyzer - Determine if a homepage is written by a man or woman: "We think http://www.bnox.be is written by a man."
GenderAnalyzer was written "out of curiosity and fun. It uses Artificial Intelligence to determine if a homepage is written by a man or woman. Behind the scene, a text classifier hosted over at uClassify.com has been trained on 2000 blogs written by men and women. In our lab it seems to works pretty well, we want to see how it performs on the web!"

The BlogBoat. Come Aboard. We're expecting you.

BlogBoat 1.0 - Citizen Journalism: "What are the possible ways forward for mainstream media in working with citizen journalists?"
I'm really looking forward to meeting [American technology writer and author of We The Media] Dan Gillmor during the BlogBoat 1.0 - Citizen Journalism this Sunday. In response to Ann Laenen's Discussion Paper (.pdf) I wrote a 2 page summary of future scenarios for the media vs bloggers landscape and since I'm not a big believer in grassroots journalism I'm very curious what he thinks of it.
Summary of my paper: I don't like it when blogging and citizen journalism are confused. And I don't think mainstream journalism should incorporate citizen journalism. But blogging has, of course, changed the face of journalism and will do so even more in the future. Think of the comments back channel, being findable in search engine results, an online article as work in progress, and how big news brands should work hard to keep their claim to *start* the conversation.
Side note: this doesn't mean that the power and money have shifted from mainstream media to blogging individuals. The online ad money has shifted to Google, and the power is shifting to embedded publishers, but that's a different story.

Meet me for twunch at next08

I'll be visiting Next08 this Saturday at the Heysel. Next08 is (according to their tagline) Belgium's biggest event about Gaming and Consumer Technology. I'm taking my kids with me, so we'll be looking at any new cool Nintendo DS, Wii and Mac games (think: Guitar Hero, Spore, Wii Fit, Laura's *).
If you're going to, meet me at the X-box booth at 12:00 for twunch. Clopin and Wimblog/Youngcrazyfool (and Pietel?) will be there too.

Sunglasses after dark

I really need to add The Cramps to my digital music collection - had to think of their wonderfully ironic Sunglasses after dark [YT] song when I saw the Sunglasses Trend cartoon on the left.
sunglasses after dark
aaah, they're so sharp
and you'll be cool
and the squares will drool...
Personally I just can't be bothered - I've been wearing the same "cool in the eighties" sunglasses for the past ten years.
Found via Smørrebrød für alle.