tingilinde

social networking and green consumers

From CMU's Footprints Project: paper on the use of social networks to motivate people to reduce their ecological footprints (pdf)

abstract:

What role can social networking websites play in supporting large-scale group action and change? We are proposing to explore their use in supporting individual reduction in personal energy consumption. Here we summarize some existing uses of social networking on the web and propose an approach thatintegrates feedback about ecological footprint data into existing social networking sites and Internet portal sites. Integrating such feedback into popular, commonly used sites allows frequent feedback about performance, while enabling the exploration motivational schemes that leverage group membership. We propose to compare different motivational schemes in three ways: Reduction in CO2 emission; lifestyle changes; and ongoing use by users who join the site
(retention).

A difficult task as the public has a poor grasp of the issues involved and is easy prey to conventional advertising and greenwashing. Some of these tactics are probably good.

Folks at Berkeley's Infolab have produced a few interesting concepts. One is a phone that looks at UPC codes, goes to the Net and produces consumer scores. The idea has been around for a long time and some variations have exited (scan a product in a store and compare with Amazon prices). Making a properly weighted and trusted database is a more interesting problem.

moblogging mini fandoms

Mizuko is quoted in this article on moblogging. (she was one of the first people to point out that poor resolution may be a feature)

The concept of moblog fanclubs is just strange.

daisyphone - strange little composition tool

New Scientist has an article on Daisyphone.

I'm sure people like Tom and Richard will yawn at this, but give it a try.

corporate fallout meter

A very cute idea.

It would be interesting to incorporate this into devices that people actually carry (like cellphones) and see if it would influence their buying decisions. One can imagine a variety of databases - you would probably subscribe to them by political or some other belief.

back channel conversations in meetings

In the past few months I've been to several meetings where realtime blogging, chatting and hydra-ing were taking place.

Clearly this sort of channel isn't always a good idea as lots of typing in the audience is distracting. It is a good way to divert yourself (I've been guilty of doing it) when the speaker is really boring. At some level I think you could measure the quality of the talk by measuring the back channel communication - when a fascinating speaker is on the stage the back channel goes dead.

Now the Times mentions it. The Joe Nacchio story is becoming legend and is mentioned in every article on the subject.

helpful computing for the elderly

Intel has been doing some interesting work on having computers help consumers directly with healthcare issues.

Independent of the clue involved in any individual project, this area is extremely important and most of the work I've seen has been naive. As the population ages it will probably become even more important. Hopefully proper research will result in good tools.

adding and removing context from conversations

Playing around with iChat AV has made me think about the context of social conversations that are removed when you use email or chat.

Video links with iChat allow the exchange of the visual subtleties that most of us are adroit at using. The resolution is good enough (at least with cable broadband) that a certain amount of transparency seems to appear after a few minutes of interaction -- the fact that you are talking through time zones and computers seems to go away and you find yourself using more of the visual pieces of communication.

At a lower level one of the main differences between IM chat and email is a sense of presence - you type something and someone on the other end responds. There is a sense of a presence (sometimes I get this when I send an email to someone at an odd hour and they respond within a minute) that clearly influences the conversation. How many times have you found yourself wondering if you are intruding on some other activity on the other side?

I'm sure much has been written on the structure of two way vs pseudo two way and one way conversations. All of the various modes have their place, but there are types of conversation that require a sense of presence as well as audio and visual feedback. Together they stitch together a context for the conversation itself.

Using iChat video makes me think that you could do real story telling over the net and the feedback from the view(ers) would greatly impact your performance.

One wonders how much contextual hinting is required. A nice photo with IM may be a big help. Is there a difference if the photo is obviously current (say if it updates every few seconds or when the sender poses and pushes a button)? How much would such a visual scheme help audio chats?

Apple seems to have raised the bar and made this sort of chat easy enough and good enough that it is a transforming experience. I have been a nay sayer for years noting issues with lip synch, lighting and camera aiming (the eyes of the two users don't exactly meet due to camera position) - then I use iChat AV with an iSight and am sold on the concept in about a week of use. The next few years could be very interesting.

I guess it is time to design a simple lighting scheme for this class of camera.