Tumblr has let go of the four-person editorial team behind Storyboard, an experimental initiative to highlight users and organizations on the blogging platform, less than one year after the project went live. In a blog post, Tumblr founder and CEO David Karp said “what we’ve accomplished with Storyboard has run its course for now, and our editorial team will be closing up shop and moving on. I want to personally thank them for their great work. And please join us in wishing them well.”

Storyboard was launched last May, with Chris Mohney as its first editor-in-chief and Jessica Bennett as executive editor. Both came with plenty of publishing experience–Mohney was previously the editor of Gawker and Gridskipper and oversaw Blackbook magazine, while Bennett had formerly worked at The Daily Beast. The other two members of the team are editorial producer Sky Dylan-Robbins and editorial director Christopher Price. Storyboard’s initial features included one on the companion Tumblr set up by New York Times’ photo archive, an interview with pianist and Tumblr user Dotan Negrin, and an infographic charting the many “Fuck Yeah” blogs set up on the platform. In an interview with Fast Company just after Storyboard’s launch last year, Mohney said “this is the first thing Tumblr has done that has a significant outward-facing goal.”

Mohney added monetization wasn’t an initial goal of the project and there were few immediate benefits for sponsors on Storyboard: “Tumblr’s revenue plan is to find partners who are interested in doing creative stuff on Tumblr as opposed to just bringing in banner ads. If (advertisers) are doing something great as part of their sponsorship program, they’ll get a lot more recognition out of that than from our editorial recognition.”

It seems like Storyboard’s lofty but less-than-lucrative directive may have fallen by the wayside as six-year-old Tumblr focuses on finally turning its first annual profit after allowing advertisers to pay for more prominent posts on its Web version and mobile app. Inside of using banner ads and keywords–or placement on Storyboard–Twitter’s advertising system gives sponsors the chance to get more views and reblogs. Twitter’s vice president Derek Gottfrid recently told Bloomberg that Tumblr’s mobile users have quadrupled over the past six months, bringing the total closer to the number of Web users and making the advertising initiative more important.

Tumblr has been emailed for comment.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Editor’s note: Jay Kirsch is the President of AOL’s Business, Technology & Entertainment Group, which includes properties such as TechCrunch, Engadget, Autoblog, DailyFinance and Moviefone among others. Follow him on Twitter @jaykirsch. 

The church and state metaphor is referenced almost daily in the business of monetizing journalism. For the most part, when episodes like the CNET debacle happen, the damage to journalistic integrity (the church in the metaphor) is the center of attention. That makes sense since writers make their livings on that reputation and want to take it with them to their next outlets. What is frequently ignored, however, is the damage to the state: properties like TechCrunch, Engadget, Autoblog or CNET.

In the short term, there will always be reasons to cave in and mold editorial to the needs of the business. Winning a specific ad campaign, getting more distribution or helping to support a lawsuit all have measurable, short-term benefits to media companies. But in the long term, you’ve started the process of destroying asset value in a less clear, less measurable way.

I’m not talking about the other overused metaphor, the slippery slope, where you lose readers because ad dollars are buying your opinion. The truth is, only a very small percentage of CNET readers will ever hear about this issue, and most of them won’t care.

The real slippery slope works more like this. First, you lose the trust of your editorial team, which counts on management to give them the resources and freedom to create great content. Then they lose the passion for the product they work on, which is likely the biggest reason they do it. Then they leave and you can’t recruit great writers anymore. Then your audience leaves. Then your advertisers leave. Then you are out of business.

While your personnel exodus is in process, your sales reps are getting beat up by clients who want to know why their product is getting a bad review? Maybe they should sue you and then the bad review would come down? Last month sales may have been pissed about the coverage of their client, but now they are begging to start a sales call without apologizing for the product. Your distribution partners start dropping you because their editorial teams don’t want to work with you. Traffic falls. The link legacy that creates such great SEO starts to fall off, as you are no longer the paper of record. Traffic falls more. And during it all, your shareholders still expect you to grow earnings, so you cut costs — probably from editorial.

When I learned about the CNET story, I sent a note to Tim Stevens at Engadget, as well as Eric Eldon and Alexia Tsotsis at TechCrunch. I told them that I actually laughed when thinking about the hypothetical phone call I’d make to any one of them telling them not to review Company X because AOL was involved in a lawsuit with them.

I guessed the conversation would have gone something like this:

“Tim, hi, it’s Jay. So, I need you to take down the review of that smartphone. It seems AOL is in a lawsuit with them and, well, it wouldn’t look so good if we said it was the greatest thing in the world.”

“Ha, that’s a good one Jay [several seconds of laughter]. No, seriously, what’d you call for?”

Tim Stevens is far more polite than Eric or Alexia, so I don’t even want to speculate how either of them would have responded. But the end result would be the same; the review would remain on the site. To Michael Arrington’s point, if I really pushed the issue and actually took down the review myself (or had an engineer do it since I don’t know how to use the CMS), the same content would have been on every social network in the world in minutes.

The church/state metaphor works. It also proves the futility of what CBS management was trying to do. Religions almost always survive the downfall of the states with which they coexist. Journalists, more now than ever before, will always be able to have a voice, even if the business they are part of, its state, gets taken down. Don’t worry as much about the church, it will keep rolling along. But once the state gets toppled, it is down permanently.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Gawker Media, which already has a presence in eight countries, is expanding its international reach even further. Nick Denton, the founder of the company and blog network, announced yesterday that it has entered a strategic partnership with Times Internet, the digital arm of India’s Times Group. Times Internet will manage the Indian versions of Gizmodo and Lifehacker, both of which will offer a combination of original articles and content from their parent sites. I asked Times Internet CEO Satyan Gajwani (pictured above) about how editorial control will be divided between his company and Gawker Media, what the Indian versions of both Web sites will offer, and how they will be monetized.

How much editorial control will Times Internet have over the the local versions of Gizmodo and Lifehacker? How much original content will your local editorial team produce?

We will work closely with Gawker Media to define the editorial team, and to define the editorial voice of the Indian sites. In the end, they will be run by an Indian operation which we will manage, but it’s in our interest as much as theirs to align its editorial guidelines and spirit with the global site, which we intend to do.

We haven’t finalized on an exact split, but we are investing into developing original content specifically for these sites, while leveraging and incorporating the content produced globally.

What will original articles focus on? 

Mostly they’ll focus on similar content but more relevant for Indians. So for Gizmodo, it would likely be around local technology stories, like the low-cost Aakash tablet being developed in India, or smartphone models being released in India, or the local IT policies being set by the Indian government and their implication for Internet users in India. For Lifehacker, it may be around tips on how to navigate Indian bureaucracies, or the best things to pack for a train journey in India. Actually, since the announcement, we’ve been getting interesting ideas that have been shared from regular users. Here are a few of them (from Twitter):

Nitansh Rastogi ‏@nitanshr
Would surely love to have Indianised version of http://lifehacker.com/5973864/the-best-time-to-buy-anything-during-the-year … after this partnership! @Timesinternet

PhaniRaj Kuchibhotla ‏@phanirajkvs
I expect India specific lifehacker to be full of posts like “How to cross road safely in Hyderabad” – http://goo.gl/66yG7 

तस्सवुर शेख ‏@tassavur
Looking at how @Gizmodo functions, it wont be a bad idea for them to hire Rakhi Sawant now that they are coming to India.

(And maybe one day if we bring Gawker to India, we’ll get to do exposes on stories like this haha) http://gawker.com/5973941/man-buys-solid-gold-shirt-to-dazzle-the-ladies

How do you think the demands and tastes of Indian readers will differ from Gawker Media’s US audience? 

We’ve got a pretty good handle on what Indians care about. Fortunately, both of these sites already have a strong loyal following in India, so for us, we want to do more of what’s already working, but locally relevant. That being said, we know that Indians have a lot of interest (for Lifehacker especially) on ways to get more value/bang-to-buck out of regular-day things. And for Gizmodo, we know that the mobile cell phone market is really big in India, particularly for lower-end Android phones, so we might do some more deep diving into that area.

Can you tell me about monetization and what the main sources of revenue for both sites will be? 

It will be mostly advertising, and we’ll extend sponsorship-type models to advertisers in India. The audiences are decently large already, but more than that, it’s a very savvy, early-adopter, technology enthusiast, young audience. And there’s a set of advertisers in India who are interested.

How did the deal between Gawker Media and Times Internet develop? What were the key issues your two companies considered? 

I cold-called Nick and Gaby nearly 2 years ago, and we’ve kept the relationship going since then. We’ve both been very conservative and taken our time to structure out the deal intelligently, because we both want it to succeed. For both of us, the major issues we needed to address were editorial and commercial, and so we spent the time to understand the dynamics for both of us to make it work.

How many readers do you estimate Times Internet will be able to bring to Gizmodo and Lifehacker at their launch? 

Well that’s the exciting part. Offline, we’re the largest media company in India, and we have the strongest reach to the urban, English-speaking audience, which is a good overlap with International media like this. That’s especially relevant in India, where still today, the offline and online worlds are pretty disconnected from each other. So we’re excited about bringing this content outside of the digital space. And online, we’ve got about 30 million unique visitors every month, and we want to expose Gawker’s brands and content to them as well. So it’s hard to estimate, but we’re comfortable expecting at least a 100% growth in India, if not much more, pretty early on.

Can you tell me more about your existing audience in India and why they’d be interested in Gizmodo and Lifehacker? 

We have a large network of sites. Our largest two consumer-oriented sites are Times of India, Economic Times, and Indiatimes. Times of India is the largest general news site, so technology’s a crucial piece for them. Economic Times is the largest business news site, so more industry oriented or high-end consumer tech news is relevant for them. And Indiatimes is really youth-lifestyle oriented, so Gizmodo’s flavor of quirky tech news can fit well there. And across all of them, all Indians love ways to be more productive and more value-efficient, so Lifehacker fits everywhere.

Why were you interested in working with Gawker Media? Why do you think the time is right to launch Gizmodo and Lifehacker in India? 

Honestly, I’ve been reading Gizmodo and Lifehacker for the last 6 years, so it started as a personal passion project. But I think today there’s a growing consumer base in India interested in great, international digital content that’s being produced, and so we think there’s a nice fit for us to be able to grow these brands and expose their content and editorial voice in India. The internet userbase in India is at least over 100 million users, and a major proportion are English speaking, so the market size isn’t small.

This is the first relationship of this sort for us, so we’re going to work on the dynamics and learn from it, for sure. But at the end of the day, both Gawker and we are pretty clear that to succeed, we have to think about getting the brand and the content right, so we will likely work closely to define and continue to refine the editorial personas of these sites.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Facebook’s new Poke app seems in many ways like a departure for the company.

While most of Facebook’s products are meant to preserve memories and save interactions, communications in Poke disappear after a few seconds. Facebook emphasizes functionality over flair and tends to put a lot of structure to how and what users share, but Poke lets users doodle over their photos with different colors and send virtual pokes to their friends. Most of all, Poke is playful while the rest of Facebook is very much a utility. If you haven’t tried Poke, you can get a quick sense of this by listening to the app’s silly notification sound — reportedly recorded by Mark Zuckerberg himself.

Although some aspects of Poke might seem out of character for the Facebook most of us know now, it’s actually a fitting addition to the platform with roots in Facebook’s past.

People who work at Facebook often talk about building products to reflect how people behave and communicate in person. Messenger lets users know when the recipient has viewed a message or when a user is typing because in face-to-face conversations, there are cues that let people know they’re being heard or that someone isn’t finished talking. Timeline strives to depict your life story, starting at birth and including milestones along the way. The new Poke app, though seemingly inane at first, actually adds a new layer of reality to Facebook. It represents those moments that only otherwise happen in person. People can make a funny face or put on a goofy voice without worrying that the rest of the world might see it, or even that a friend will see it more than once.

While Facebook pages represent millions of public figures, businesses, products and entities in the world, Places maps the locations around us, and Open Graph defines the actions we take, Poke gets to be the fun we have in the moment. And that element of fun is something that had started to fall by the wayside in recent years.

Facebook has always had a fairly plain aesthetic and practical approach to features, but as it evolved from student social network to global platform, this approach became even more critical to its success. Facebook stripped away its college-specific character and eliminated some of the more juvenile aspects of the site. “Flyers” became “social ads” and “Sponsored Stories.” The virtual gift shop was closed. The “looking for random play” and “whatever I can get” options were removed from the profile. Random movie quotes like “I don’t even know what a quail looks like” and “Too close for missiles, I’m switching to guns” no longer appear below search results. We don’t even write on “walls” anymore. We have Timelines and life events.

It’s no wonder young people are turning to other networks and mobile apps besides Facebook. Not only is Facebook what their parents and teachers use, but it’s a little stale. Compare Twitter with all its parody accounts to Facebook, which allows users one account and requires that they use their real name. Compare the infinite customization of Tumblr with Facebook’s rigid profile that allows little personalization beyond the cover photo and profile picture. Or consider the difference between Instagram’s retro filters like Toaster and Kelvin, and Facebook’s photo sharing app — called Camera rather than “Snap” as it once was during development — which uses neutral filter names that explain what each looks like: Cool, Bright, Golden, Emerald, etc.

That’s why when it was first reported that Facebook was building a Snapchat competitor, it was unclear how the company would make a version that fit into its brand identity. The company managed to succeed thanks to the nonsense “poke” feature, which originated in 2004.

Zuckerberg once called poke “a feature that has no specific purpose,” which is likely why it got buried over the years. Now, with everything else on the platform so deliberate, it’s refreshing to see Facebook re-embrace the poke and update it for the mobile app generation.

Although today’s high schoolers and college students aren’t likely to get the reference, Poke has an Easter egg that says “I’ll find something to put here” when users scroll all the way up or down on their inbox. It’s a line that Zuckerberg had in the footer of the site years ago and is the perfect nod to the lighthearted early days of Facebook. Maybe it’s even a sign of more to come.

Vintage Facebook screenshot via Mashable

Article courtesy of Inside Facebook

Rights groups were put in an awkward position yesterday after California passed an anti-human trafficking ballot proposition that deters anonymous speech from convicted sex offenders. Specifically, the law forces sex offenders to notify law enforcement everytime they adopt a new online identity, which could allow websites to selectively restrict their comments.

“Stopping human trafficking is a worthy goal, but this portion of Prop 35 won’t get us there,” said American Civil Liberties Union attorney, Michael Risher. “When the government starts gathering online profiles for one class of people, we all need to worry about the precedent it sets,” further explained Hanni Fakhoury, a lawyer for digital rights advocacy group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Both groups are jointly filing a suit to strike down the Internet-related provision in Proposition 35.

Prop 35 won a landslide victory, with a whopping 81 percent approval rating, including a stellar endorsement from the San Francisco Chronicle, which praised the Internet provision. “The other appealing aspect of Prop. 35 is that it would require all sex offenders to disclose their e-mail and social-networking accounts. Once this information reaches the sex-offender registry, it’s only a matter of time until a tech entrepreneur comes up with an app that would allow Californians to automatically block online entreaties from convicted sex offenders,” wrote the editorial board.

Human trafficking and sexual offenders have been a perpetual headache for rights groups, since the crimes are so heinous and are often facilitated by privacy, they often warrant new forays into preserving security at the cost of liberty. And while Prop 35 had its critics, having to defend pedophiles is not a fun task for civil liberty advocates.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Once upon a time, in a land 3,000 miles away, Alexia wrote a post titled Arianna Wants To Put A Nap Room In TechCrunch HQ. Lol. It was in reference to NapQuest, a relatively awesome initiative at Aol/Huffington Post that includes a small room with a massage chair, a shelf full of books, complete with a full-fledged dentist-style reclining chair and a sleep sound machine.

Along with some other awesome perks of working in this office (like free drinks, a gym, and keg-laden Thirsty Thursdays), NapQuest is only one of the reasons why I personally feel so blessed to work at Aol while still having the benefit of editorial independence, something we talk a lot about at TechCrunch.

So I have decided to practice my editorial independence by breaking the biggest story of the year: Alexia, who has publicly stated that tech bloggers don’t need sleep (and that naps are a joke), was just caught occupying one of Aol’s 5th floor NapQuest pods.

True story.

Now, I’ve never actually used the NapQuest, partially because I’m not a fan of naps, and partially because it feels awkward to sleep at your place of work. But I know some TC staffers have enjoyed it in the past, and I see nothing wrong with those who do. But, Alexia probably hurt Arianna’s feelings with that post:

Silicon Valley absolutely, positively doesn’t need a nap room because in theory we don’t sleep, let alone nap (and if we do need to nap — like in an emergency — we take that shiz home, far far away from hungry competitors!).

Especially considering the fact that the boss upstairs (she actually has an office downstairs, but you understand) was only trying to make a better work environment for her employees.

So, this is for you Arianna. NapQuest is a good thing. It lets workaholics like Alexia take a moment away from their desk to regroup before burning the midnight oil, as I’m sure Alexia will do tonight, just as she did last night, and the night before.

That is all.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

I have a confession to make: despite having reviewed a few e-readers, and having written dozens of articles about them, I’ve never really used one. I mean, I’ve used them enough to know a good one from a bad one, to understand the features, and to do a proper evaluation — but I’ve never made one part of my life, the way one makes a mobile phone or laptop part of one’s life. In that way I haven’t really used an e-reader. Until just recently.

As a book lover, I view e-readers as interlopers; as a practical person, I acknowledge them as inevitable. But in both cases, I have come to view them as a deeply unsatisfying reading experience. They fall short of paper in meaningful ways, and objecting to them should not be considered technophobic.

The future of e-books is bright, but as far as I’m concerned, right now we’re still in the dark age — though that isn’t to say the stone age.

The core experience of the new Kindle, Nook, and Kobo (pictured) is practically the same. Sure, there are aesthetic differences and the selection is different, but when you’re doing what the devices are intended to do — reading a book, page by page — they are nearly identical.

Now I expect the PR departments have already started composing a new email with their talking points about how their device is the best, but let’s be realistic. These guys are using almost exactly the same parts (the most important bit, the screen, is the same in all three) and if you took the logos off the devices, few people would be able to tell you which is which or express a strong preference.

I don’t say this to denigrate the devices. This generation of e-readers is the most user-friendly and practical by far. But aside from the change to a touchscreen, e-readers have barely advanced from the day they were first introduced. So when I say I prefer paper, that’s not sentimentality. Paper really is just better.

No, I’m not putting you on or trying to play the devil’s advocate. But I’m willing to make a few concessions first. Obviously e-readers are better in a few ways: the wireless in the Kindle which allows you to get books almost wherever you are, for instance. And you can certainly keep more books on one device than you can keep in your carry-on. But that’s pretty much where the benefits end, isn’t it?

The screens aren’t actually that good. You can admit it, it’s okay. Even the newest ones. They’re rather grey, and the text doesn’t really look that good, does it? They’re a bit small, too. Don’t you feel it’s a bit limiting? You can’t replace a newspaper with this thing, and images look pretty bad. That blinking thing when it refreshes itself is annoying, finding a particular chapter or passage can be a pain, and lending or borrowing books isn’t as straightforward as it could be.

Am I just being an entitled consumer? A bit, yes. But there’s a good reason for my (mild and proportionate) frustration. The makers of e-readers have made a conscious choice over the last two years or so: provide the same product at a lower price, not a better product at the same price. It’s not that I have a problem with this. I wrote two years ago (http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/24/dirt-cheap-and-no-features-to-speak-of-will-the-kobo-e-reader-sell-by-the-million/) that this was the end game for the current players. That’s only an issue if, like me, the initial devices held no interest. For many, the race to the bottom was a good thing, making the basic e-reading experience possible for an extremely low price (and getting lower year by year). This is already having serious effects on the publishing and education ecosystems.

But what you see is also the inevitable result of companies relying on a dwindling pool of OEMs capable of manufacturing parts in the millions. The leading devices all use the same third-generation E-Ink display; few people would notice differences between the way they handle text, or care either way. As I mentioned, there are differences in the interface outside of books, and in how you search and buy, that sort of thing, but the purpose of these devices is to display e-books, and they all do it without appreciable differences.

Now, when their products are the same, companies compete on bullshit. We saw this in the 90s when every Compaq, HP, Dell, and Gateway PC was using the same pieces, and we see it today with TV makers who all have the same fundamental features and have to invent new numbers to increment at every CES. Markets at this stage are ripe to be broken into, as Apple is fond of doing. This point is when it often steps into the picture. I don’t mean to imply Apple will enter the e-reader wars (in fact, the iPad is their entry in a way), but someone is going to have to change the game. Selling a commodity, which is what e-readers have become, is a dangerous business in tech, because commodities tend to devalue rather quickly.

What needs to happen? A superior product, that’s all. E-readers can’t remain dumb, paperback-sized, text display gadgets forever. If they’re going to replace books, and paper, they need to learn a few more tricks.

It’ll take some time; no one wants to obsolete their own product, and these readers are setting up what is potentially a very profitable ecosystem. But at the same time, if they don’t do it, someone else might. Leave your lunch out too long and someone might just eat it for you. So you better believe that the big guys are planning real replacements for the e-reader of today, and are on the lookout for any sign that they might get beaten to the punch.

What will the new features be? Well, for example, Bridgestone has produced a screen that appears to beat E-Ink at every level. And half the electronic companies out there are hard at work on flexible OLED or bistable displays. Sony is testing the waters with a foldable tablet, and Readius has been flogging their flexible device for a while now. E Ink, conscious that they’ll have to make serious advances in order to keep their position as head bistable display honcho, is making screens that can be crumpled or attached to cloth. Color e-paper is shipping right now, though it’s not particularly good. Don’t expect the e-readers of tomorrow to be the same static window on text that they are today.

The screen quality, too, is going to have to improve. In both resolution and contrast, e-readers need to approach print on paper, or they will forever be understood as being a sub-par option, grey and indistinct. More comfortable to read on than LCDs, sure, but for how long? The advantage of the reflective display will eventually be outweighed by other factors if they don’t start moving.

And we’ll want to write on them, too. The Noteslate device, unfortunately totally fictional (but apparently now in the works), awakened a sleeping giant of gadget envy on the net. Who wouldn’t want one of those things? Yet none of the major e-reading devices are even attempting it.

What else? Social and collaborative features, no doubt, like those just beginning to be promoted; more portability and ruggedness; features to enable reading by the blind, like quality real-time text-to-speech and tactile displays; richer formatting and rendering; self-illuminating screens or text; adjustable page tint; to say all, anything you can imagine might improve the reading experience, and probably a few things you haven’t imagined yet.

These fantasy devices don’t have to beat paper at everything — after all, they’ll never beat it on battery life — it’s just a little disappointing in how few ways they better their venerable competitor. And note that the e-reader should be considered distinct from the tablet (which, though more versatile, shares many shortcomings) as a device aimed specifically at consuming and storing text, and mostly black and white text at that. I suspect that factor will remain important for years to come.

Now, it’s not as if e-reader makers have been standing still all this time. Their devices are lighter, brighter, and faster, and making the screens touchable was a good move. But the problem is that after all these improvements, e-readers’ advantages over books still aren’t very significant. If you read one or two books at a time, and not big ones, the advantage is almost nil. E-readers should be way better than books! The possibility is there; the technology is there; the demand is there. There are dozens of things we would like to be able to do with our literature, our journals, our newspapers, that are inconvenient or impossible with existing form factors (paper, tablet, PC, or other). E-readers have a world to expand into, yet they are exploring it at a snail’s pace.

Why whine about this? Think back on the last ten years. How many tablets and MIDs do you spy with your little Internet eye? Dozens, most of them failures or niche products. Because, really, they simply weren’t good enough. E-readers have caught on to some extent, more so than the early tablets and MIDs certainly, but I would suggest that this is because of a pent-up demand for a device like this and not because of any particular fitness on its part. At the moment, they’re still quite crude, really — and we only tolerate their crudeness because right now convenience is valued over utility.

No one would blame you for not buying a Palm Pilot or Newton or early MID back in the day, because although they did have a purpose, they were, even at the time, clearly not mature products. E-readers aren’t mature either; don’t be fooled by the homogeneity of today’s options. They’re like that because of the decision they made, to drop prices instead of change the product. Just because they look alike and act alike doesn’t mean they are mature, the way PCs became mature in the late 90s.

These early devices ape semi-convincingly the experience of reading a book. Is that the end game? No. Should you expect something better? Yes. Should that stop you from buying one right now? Maybe.

For me, buying the most advanced e-reader today involves too many compromises in quality. The ways in which I read and interact with my books are simply incompatible with e-readers as they exist today. So I don’t buy, though in five years their successors will have me reaching for my wallet. It’s like seeing Microsoft showing off a tablet in the early 2000s. Did I want a tablet? Sure, ever since I first saw one — probably in Star Trek. But I didn’t try to buy that one, because it’s okay to say that something isn’t good enough for you. That’s the prerogative of the consumer. I don’t want a Kindle – I want what the Kindle will become, just as I wanted what the Treo and Newton would become. There’s no shame, and maybe even a little dignity, in waiting.

I love books. I love reading. And I love technology. But I can’t bring myself to even like today’s e-readers, except as promising indicators of things to come. For now, between paper and plastic, there’s no contest.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

The Occupy movement, or rallying cry, or whatever you want to call it, is by its nature decentralized. By refusing to come together under one banner other than the word “Occupy,” they’ve both diluted their message and allowed it to spread more quickly. You don’t need an Occupy license to occupy a bank’s lobby in Kansas City, but at the same time there’s a natural question of whether one occupation is related to another.

Political considerations aside, the point is that Occupy might benefit from a recognizable face. On this front, some faction of the movement has decided to do a little branding, but in keeping with the democratic, bottom-up nature of the organization (or rather disorganization), they’ve opted to run a contest and let the “official” logo be selected by popular vote. It’s a great application of web technology to an interesting problem, and will probably prove to be a memorable case study in an increasingly common phenomenon: the necessity of branding an emergent movement or pattern on the internet.

It’s something that has already been faced by, for example, Anonymous. Like Occupy, Anonymous is necessarily decentralized and in a way leaderless — but there are obviously leaders and centers, like @anonops and a few other “official” sources. But then there’s the Guy Fawkes mask and the empty suit, both certainly symbols of Anonymous by common consent, though whether they emerged naturally or were simply in the right place at the right time (and whether there’s any difference between those two) isn’t clear.

Or think about the SOPA/PIPA protests. While everyone seemed to figure out a good way to express the concept of censorship on their site or avatar, the lack of a single unifying phrase, graphic, or general “brand” (loosely speaking) was conspicuous, considering the extraordinary cross-cultural and cross-community agreement on the issue.

Which brings us to Occupy. The logos being submitted are the usual mix of free fonts, corporate-looking nonsense, and the occasional good idea. For the record, I like the one at top left, and these:

But I’m suspicious of the whole concept. The problem to me is not Occupy-specific. It’s simply that emergent phenomena don’t respond well to efforts to define them. The reason no single visual metaphor appeared for SOPA was because there was no naturally propagating icon around which people could gather. There was no burning monk, no Kent State photograph, no graphic or sketch or person that naturally expressed and associated itself with the movement. The closest thing was the censor bar or redacted text, which was sort of good enough but didn’t adequately encompass the ideas behind the opposition.

With Occupy as well, I think that efforts to create an identity for it will fail, because identity only emerges from collective action. It happens naturally or it doesn’t happen at all. I think this will be demonstrated more frequently over the next few years as activism, social change, and more everyday things as well become memetic and emergent. A logo will be picked for @occupy and for use on “official” communiques, whatever that might mean to them. But what Occupy and Anonymous and STOP SOPA and all the rest need isn’t a logo, it’s a symbol. Those aren’t quite as easy to come by.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Hundreds of websites (TechCrunch included) have gone dark or visibly changed their appearance as a protest against the Stop Online Privacy Act and its Senate doppelganger, the PROTECT IP Act. It’s a powerful statement and many are saying that it is already producing effects: Senators are changing positions, awareness is rising, and the opposition is becoming a dinner-table topic.

But is this activism?

I’m not asking whether it’s a good thing (it certainly is) or whether it is effective in guiding policy (it certainly might be), but whether it is right to call it activism.

It’s not just a question of semantics; the distinction is material. Activism is like-minded individuals working to support or oppose a cause. What we are seeing today, in large companies and organizations acting together to sway an outcome, might better be termed collective bargaining.

It just seems a bit strange that after months of outrage by individuals, what seems to cause notice is action by larger units: Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, and the like. Although we as individuals may have contributed to their decisions, ultimately the choice was theirs. And while we are all thankful to these organizations for doing what they feel is appropriate to signal their disapproval, it’s significant that we individuals are largely without means of effectively banding together online.

I wrote before that “people, not things, are the tools of revolution.” I know this to be true. But things, and means, are also important. Do we have the means to affect our country’s policies and decisions via the internet?

One thing that this whole SOPA thing (and COICA before it, and others before that, and surely more to come) shows is the complete disconnect between the informed, online community and the legislative and governing bodies. The incredible increase in our capability to propagate and discuss issues and events has not been matched by a corresponding receptive capability on the part of our representatives and officials. This must change.

The state of feedback between the governed and the governors is deplorable. Very little of the innovation driving internet companies is being applied to this problem, and as we have seen, it is a very serious problem.

There is much to be said about the whole Washington ecosystem of lobbyists, career politicians, favors, vendettas, and all that. What is relevant to us right now, however, is not the vagaries of a representative democracy, but creating a reliable, official, and secure means for citizens to make their opinions felt by those in office. We may discuss and blog and comment and promote all we want and our senators might be none the wiser. We need something other than votes and campaign contributions that will make these people hear what their constituents are saying. The internet has very little that can be called activism.

We can consider today, with its blackouts and wide visibility, a success. But it doesn’t seem to me that we can call it activism when so much of it has to do with powers outside our own making choices that just happen to coincide with ours. The internet is a powerful tool for communication and advocacy, but right now it is divorced from the decision-making process. The best we have is things like White House petitions and automatic email systems for contacting your senators. The level of engagement is wholly inadequate. As citizens we should expect more, and as evangelists of technology we should be making the tools to take the next step.

[Hat tip to this article at GigaOm, which set me thinking)

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

2011 saw many interesting developments in the virtualization of goods. The growth of app stores continued unabated, aided by huge sales of iOS devices and Android handsets, and media of all kinds continued the move to a totally non-physical state for the end user: Netflix, Spotify, and other services make the idea of storing your things, whether on your hard drive or in stacks by the TV, seem very… 2010. Widespread adoption of non-physical media is sparking new industries and setting fire to old ones.

But we also are seeing increasing frustration with the limitation of our digital acts to affecting digital things, and vice versa. The cutting edge of technology seems to be confined to the borders of our screens. People don’t freak out about the Nest or the Little Printer because they’re really such revolutionary devices – they aren’t. People are excited because these things portend the fulfillment of the promise technology has unwittingly made: that it will change the way we live, not just the way we consume.

Because as much as the media we consume entertains and to an extent defines us, it is only one facet of how we live, yet the delivery mechanisms of these media have borne the great majority of visible improvements in the internet and mobile revolution. What has been left behind? The way we create things, move and adjust things in “real life,” the way we interact with each other outside of our devices, the way we cook and sleep and run. Some small advances have been made here (things like Nike+ cross over, and the popularization of photo and location sharing apps to some extent), but how far have, say, refrigerators, or beds, come in the last ten years – compared with the way we experience music, or keep in touch with our friends?

This order of things was inevitable: naturally, there are some things that will be more easily and fundamentally changed by the addition of mobiles and broadband, media delivery among them. You wouldn’t expect baby carriages to be leading the charge of connected devices. Yet why shouldn’t your perambulator record the distance it travels, track the weight of the child, network with other nearby prams to determine parental hot spots? Such things sound frivolous, but frivolity makes up the majority of our application of tech, and the more we use it, the more indispensable it becomes. A digital compass on your phone, for instance. A novelty at first, but after a few years, a standard part of the modern tech-user’s toolkit.

For many, it smacks of excess, of tacky Skymall Frankendevices for the lazy and easily distracted. But it’s just the next step in the dance we’ve all been doing since we got our first modems. Breathing the principle of interconnectedness into things for which the benefits of doing so are not obvious is creating a new class of devices, and we crave them because our experience of technology is so limited.

This isn’t to say that tweeting microwaves are to deliver us from an evil prison of consumption-oriented technology. It’s just that the future is, and always has been, banal. The leading edge of tech is an exciting place, but the trailing edge cuts a wider swath. The Jetsons had flying cars, sure, but they also had space-age plant pots and dog collars.

The next year will have more of the same stuff, of course: bigger TVs, cooler tablets and phones, and increasing capacity for everything, everywhere. But it also will showcase the quieter, more wide-reaching changes that come when these new capabilities begin to infiltrate the vast empire of banality. And in a few years, when your oven messages you to say the roast has reached 160 degrees, or the shower recognizes your face and adjusts the temperature accordingly, you will wonder how you ever lived without it. And this miracle oven will be more relevant to many millions of people than, say, the empowerment of the oppressed and destitute to communicate freely or access the knowledge of the ages. No, it’s not pretty; it’s progress. And we’ll be seeing a lot of it.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch