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Entries in web20 (6)

Saturday
07Nov2009

Engaging NASA's Human Side

DateSaturday, November 7, 2009 at 1:08PM

It's no secret that I've been a space geek/nerd/enthsiast since I was about 13 years old. Since that time I've always admired (envied?) NASA, those who work there, and of course astronauts.  Now in the world of Twitter/Facebook/YouTube and social media how I think of astronauts as people is changing drastically, and I think that's a good thing.

My mental image of how I think about astronauts as people was shaped early on in my love affair with space exploration as a result of a trip I took in the summer of 1994 to Space Camp in Huntsville Alabama.  One of the key components of the program I was participating in was simulated shuttle missions.  During my time I served on one flight in Mission Control as "Capcom" and on the next I asked for something with responsibility and ended up, to my serious surprise, as "Shuttle Commander."  However I learned quickly just how much responsibility the Capcom has (hint: LOTS more than I ever imagined but that's perhaps another post). During my time at space camp I became quick friends with a fellow space geek in my group. I geeked out over things like shuttle abort modes and acronyms and he open my mind to a whole new world of things like Mercury, Gemini and Apollo.  He suggested that I read the book Moon Shot to start catching up my knowledge of the early days of the space program and I did at the earliest connivence. (Btw, J.R. Harris if you're out there hit up the Capcom)

I think it is fair to say that if you look back on the Mercury days and the original 7 you emerge with a romanticized larger than life view of what astronauts are supposed to be. In fact back in those days that is the exact effect that NASA and the government was going for, and I came to idolize guys like Shepherd and Slayton (my to favorites from that era to this day, Shepherd in fact hailing from my native New Hampshire).

This romanticized view worked for the time but this is 2009. NASA and its astronauts, as best I can tell, have embarked on an unprecedented mission of engagement with the public they serve.  I found myself wondering the other day for example as I checked in on one of my Twitter lists, that contains all the Astronauts currently on Twitter, if 13 year old me would believe that I might one day be interacting directly with actual astronauts.  NASA and the astronauts have truly embraced social media, and that might almost be an understatement, we've now had everything from tweeting shuttle commanders, to "tweetups" on the International Space Station.  Even now this new engagement is evolving and soaring to higher heights and much like Moon Shot defined my early impressions of astronauts Twitter and YouTube are shaping my impressions of the current brand of astronaut in an even more positive light.

Let me just highlight a few of the things I've come across recently that 13 year old me probably wouldn't have believed.  The other day I came across a video of future Space Station Commander Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) had posted to TwitVid giving a brief tour of the American crew quarters in Star City Russia. In case that doesn't register for you we are talking about tweeting from one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Cold War.  We also recently got a look inside the "Astro Van", thanks to Astronaut Leland Melvin (@Astro_Flow) who posted another video to Twitter, as the astronauts rode to the pad for their TCDT (or "terminal countdown demonstration test") of astronauts joking around laughing the mood was light, and it was fun to see.  Last but certainly not least Astronaut Mike Massimino has been producing a great series of videos (just one of many) on YouTube giving an inside look at the training of the STS-129 crew, if you are at all interested I highly recommend checking them out.  In addition definitely follow @Astro_Mike on Twitter he's very active and a pretty cool guy.

So what does all this mean?  Well I believe it adds up to unprecedented engagement and access to our space agency.  After all NASA is a public effort and it is great to see them engaging the very public that keeps them flying.  As a space geek it is somewhat mind boggling to me to get tweets from Star City for example a place that is not known for being open and has always fascinated me.  More than anything though what you come away from following the tweets, videos, etc. is that these are just real people they have families, kids that need to do homework have sporting events to get to, they like to joke around, they have good days and they have days that are down right frustrating...like all of us.

What NASA is succeeding in doing, I hope, is showing the world the human side, beyond the rockets, acronyms, and tech talk they are an organization of truly great dedicated...real people. Hopefully seeing this side will make kids realize, "hey I can do this, they're just like me or my dad/mom, and I can be an astronaut too" and that's a good thing when we've heard much talk lately from the President about NASA's mission to inspire.

Here's the bottom line from all of this for me, for a group that spends much of their time circling it astronauts are a very down to Earth group of people.

AuthorJustin | CommentPost a Comment |
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Wednesday
04Nov2009

My approach to @Twitter Lists

DateWednesday, November 4, 2009 at 8:32PM

Many 1's and 0's have been delivered already on the topic of Twitter's latest feature known simply as "lists." Including some of the really great coverage by Mashable. However I will dare to dream that somewhere out there folks might be wondering what I think.  Credit must also go to a blog post by Sean Bonner where he makes a "Prediction about Twitter Lists," that post really opened my eyes with regards to how lists are going to be transformative, as we'll explore now.

First what exactly are Twitter lists? Well any of the above links will probably do a better job explaining them than I but the basic premise is that they allow you to create collections of other Twitter users.  Lists can be public, seen by any other user of Twitter, or private, see only by you.  In addition to creating your own lists (up to 20 I hear) you can also subscribe, or I guess follow is the right term, any other public list.  Okay this is handy and something many have wanted for a long time. However where it gets transformative, as I discovered from Sean's post above, is in the initially overlooked detail that you can put an account on a list without having to follow it.

Here's how that's changed my Twitter behavior. Essentially my new approach to lists can all be boiled down into the idea that I am trying to reserve my timeline for accounts that are actual people. These may not be people I know as in the case of a lot of tech journalists, celebs, etc. but the accounts still generally map to individuals, at least that's where I'm headed.  There are of course exceptions for things I really care about like @NASA and many A Cappella groups, but the bottom line is the bar for which accounts I allow into my timeline is much higher. I've moved accounts like brands (think @JetBlue or @VirginAmerica), news feeds (think Digg feeds, @CNN, local blogs, etc.) these accounts tend to posts frequently and clutter up the timeline resulting in me missing posts from people I actually care about. In addition I also follow lists of for example all the NASA astronauts that tweet or all the SpaceTweeps out there both of which are fun because I can get a lot of content without having to follow an additional 500 people.

Are lists in their current form perfect? Hardly but I firmly believe that they are a gigantic step in a positive direction for the future of Twitter. The next step is for clients like TweetDeck and Tweetie to add support for lists however this will be on easy task. The first road bump is that to pull down the updates to a list via an app requires a hefty price be paid in the form of API calls. API calls are essentially the language these apps use to talk with Twitter. Currently Twitter allows 100 conversations to take place within an hour. This limit has worked well until down but let's say you have 14 or so lists each time you load them that's an API hit. The one client that has implemented lists, Seesmic, only supports manual updates of lists.  I would like to think that at some point Twitter will remove or raise this limit with enough capacity. Hopefully they realize that it does little if anything to fight spam at this point. I have some thoughts on an approach to spam but that might be another post.

The other issue is what exactly is the UI that actually makes lists useful and easy to deal with? Seesmic's is certainly one approach and I feel like it's the one that you might expect and it is reasonable enough. TweetDeck is holding their cards close to the vest promising that they have something up their sleeves in terms of lists but not saying much more.  It is clear to me that the purely column approach breaks down when trying to follow multiple lists. I would like to see some UI work in TweetDeck in terms of how you switch between columns the horizontal scroll that currently exists is a bit sloppy in my opinion. Regardless I am eager to see what TweetDeck comes up with. On the mobile side of things I think Tweetie has an easier time because in my mind the hierarchical nature of the iPhone UI makes sense one panel with a list of the users lists, tapping one loads that list, seems fairly obvious but then again @atebits does have a knack for some pretty creative UI design so another development that will be fun to watch!

 

AuthorJustin | CommentPost a Comment |
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Thursday
19Mar2009

Facebook Freakout. Deep breaths people.

DateThursday, March 19, 2009 at 10:25PM

I'm not usually the first to come to the defense of Facebook but you know I actually do feel bad for them this go around in terms of the latest iteration of the home page scandal. There has been a ton written about the supposed "Twitterification" of Facebook. All because they dared to try update the homepage layout. I remember back when they changed the layout the previous time and the all out collective conniption fit their users threw. As a result I tweeted back when the first screenshots of the most recent layout were released that we should be bracing for a freak out the likes of which the internet has never seen. Sure enough said freak out simmering since the changes went live has begun to roll to its expected boil.

Why feel bad for Facebook though? Well imagine you are a product designer or a developer at Facebook, by most accounts one of the Internet's hottest companies, except you can't innovate anything without the masses complaining every step of the way. I've been on Facebook for I guess a little over a year now and form what I've observed anytime Facebook does well just about ANYTHING it triggers an all out "sky is falling" level of reaction and downright panic from "Facebook users." This must make it pretty hard to innovate and also discouraging to work on something new for so long and then have irate Facebook users attack not only the company but the developers personally.

For the record, I actually like the new layout and this is probably because I spend way more of my time over at Twitter than I do on Facebook. Some interesting points have been raised, with little to back them up admittedly, about the demographics of Facebook vs. Twitter. It's been said that Twitter's demo skews to the say 25 and older crowd where as Facebook's demo screws to a younger high-school/college crowd. If that is the case and we generalize for a minute then the reaction of the Facebook users every time they change something is troubling indeed.

It seems to me that if the collective Facebook masses had their way or were, god forbid, running the Internet at large we would all still be surfing Web .01 in IE 2.0 and dealing with a constant barrage marquee tags, background MIDIs when a page loads, and pop-ups (kids ask your friends born before 1985). With progress and innovation come change. Imagine a world for a minute where there was no Facebook at all, yeah don't like that very much either do you?

If Facebook truly represents the next generation of innovators we're relying on to solve the world's problems let us hope their overreaction and inability to adapt in the face of Facebook home page updates is not indicative of how they approach life in general. Otherwise we're all in a lot of trouble.

Sometimes you have to give change a chance, stop take a deep breath, close your eyes, open them again and just try to understand the reasons behind the changes, learn the valuable life skill of adaptation, resist the temptation to throw a tantrum, and in the end you may just find the the people who worked really hard on those changes aren't as worthless as you might think. Maybe...they are even on to something.

AuthorJustin | CommentPost a Comment |
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Thursday
05Mar2009

My Response: John Stewart on Twitter

DateThursday, March 5, 2009 at 9:00AM

 

So I've broken my blogging silence, and what life and death topic could possibly have caused that you might be wondering. Yup, you guessed it, Twitter!! Yeah yeah hate if you want but I couldn't let John Stewart and the Daily Show's take on Twitter go unanswered.  You can watch the piece for yourself but basically it read like a list of the same tired old anti-Twitter talking points we've been hearing since almost the day the service launched. "Twitter is full of meaningless dribble, is a distraction, blah, blah." 

What is interesting to me is this idea that has sprung up recently around the idea that it is some how wrong for our elected representatives to be Twittering. Frankly I'll never understand that kind of sentiment.  One would think that as a result of our government being one "of the people, by the people, and for the people" we would welcome openly attempts by our elected officials to communicate with us, those who they represent, in more direct ways.  Are some attempts at this ill conceived and comical, certainly, but to suggest that some how representatives are sacrificing the quality of their work because they are Twittering is purely absurd. Anything that opens the lines of communication into our democracy is a good thing, it's that simple.

Moreover I actually take offense at the assertion that some how you can't be on Twitter and paying attention. Typically when I watch these kinds of events I have at least one IM conversation going, two or ore three Twitter searches running, and I'm also monitoring my regular Twitter feed.  I'm sorry if that makes Mr. Stewart's "middle aged" (hey his words) brain hurt but this is the reality of how news is consumed, digested, and discussed in 2009.  A Twitter hashtag like #obama during a State of the Union is today's equivlent of the townsquare. This is infact exactly why the media and governments have begun to take note not because, as Mr. Stewart would imply, they are mindless drones that try anything new but because they have recognized this fact.

To me the segment shows just how little Mr. Stewart understands about Twitter to some how imply that nothing meaningless can be said in 140 characters makes it clear to me that Mr. Stewart hasn't spent much, if any, time actually on the site himself.  It also amazes me how little people understand the concept of a hashtag and the conversations that can occur there in real time.  I've witnessed debates happen, and a real dialogue develop. It is something to behold frankly and I welcome the day when Twitter elevates this functionality to the level it deserves and gets it infront of more users.

Samantha Bee was right about one thing Mr. Stewart is not immune from the effects of the new media and social revolution, increasingly the conversation is moving to forums line Facebook, Twitter and Youtube, and away from forums like Mr. Stewart's.  Mr. Stewart is a comedian and his job is to mock things and people but he normally manages to accomplish said feat without looking completely ignorant and demeaning his core demographic in the process. "Grunter?"  What because we "young people" can't formulate coherent thoughts? Really...hu...interesting I suppose that explains the unprecedented number of young people who became involved in their democracy over the course of the 2008 election.

I'm consistently mocked for my devotion and belief in the power of Twitter.  Most people trot out the same tired talking points that Mr. Stewart himself used.  There is power in Twitter however, it is an equalizer in a world of increasing class disparity.  The ability to "@ reply" anyone from the likes of a U.S. Senator, the President, Kevin Rose, Levar Burton, or Shaq is a powerful force.  The naysayers call me naive like they have all through my life "They don't really read that you know."  True in some cases perhaps not but someone does and the feedback does filter back I am convinced of that.  I was once able to @NASA and get a reply back to a question, now how would I have done that just a few years ago? I would probably have needed to be a credentialed reporter in a press room somewhere.  Say what you will but that is the power of Twitter.

AuthorJustin | CommentPost a Comment |
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Monday
19Jan2009

Tracking the Inauguration on Twitter (HOWTO)

DateMonday, January 19, 2009 at 2:33PM

So I know there are a lot of ways to do this but I figured I would share the one I came up with last night. For those who aren't familiar with the site "search.twitter.com" it allows you to search everything on Twitter. As a result of this functionality a syntax known as hashtags has come into being. Hashtags are a term preceded by the # symbol and make it easy to search for all conversation on a particular topic such as #inaug09 or #debate, etc. For big events what you often get when following the hashtag is the back channel conversation occurring in real, or at least near, real-time as the event is happening. Yesterday for example I was following #inaug09 during the "We are One" concert in D.C. it was definitely interesting and felt a lot like a big chat room. Another useful search operator for Twitter Search is "near:<Location>" so for example I also had a search running on "near:Washington DC within:10km" to see what people who listed their location as Washington DC were talking about but perhaps not tagging with #inaug09. The real trick here is to find away to monitor this chatter in real-time, at least if you're a twitter/information junkie like me. Of course if the inauguration isn't your thing then I'm sure you can think of plenty of other uses for this search capability.

As I mentioned there are a few ways to do this and I noticed the sites "twitterfall.com" and "monitter.com" getting some traction this morning. I'm guessing that both of these sites use the Twitter Search API and what I've noticed about the search API in the past (particularly on various iPhone clients that use it) is that it doesn't seem to support the "near:" syntax via the API only via the actual search.twitter.com. In addition to this when I was playing with moniter.com this morning I couldn't seem to get it to do a hashtag search when including the #. I don't mean to detract from the development effort that clearly went into these sites, your mileage will most definitely vary and I suggest trying them out. If however you'd like a slightly more geeky solution, read onward.

So here's the solution I came up with:

  1. First download the Firefox add-on Greasemonkey which allows userscripting in Firefox.
  2. Once Greasemonkey is installed properly and is enabled (there is a little monkey head icon down on the statusbar of Firefox make sure it is not grayed out) download the userscript "Twitter search auto-refresh"
  3. Now browse to search.twitter.com and type in a search term since we're just a short time away from the Inaugruation of Barack Obama why not try #inaug09 
  4. The search results should automatically refresh when new ones arrive. What you get is in effect a near real-time updating feed of the results as opposed to before where you needed to manually refresh. Why Twitter doesn't make this the default behavior is beyond me.
  5. Now you could stop here but what if you want to see more than one feed side-by-side?
  6. My solution to this was another Firefox add-on I discovered via a Google search known as "Split Browser" which allows you to create as many vertical or horizontal panes within a browser window as you like. I ended up creating a pane for the #inaug09 search and then loading the "near:Washington DC" search in the main browser window.
  7. What you'll end up with is something like the screenshot below. Enjoy!
  8. One last thing you can use Tweetie (and other clients) for the iPhone to track searches when you're on the go. I highly recommend Tweetie it's the best Twitter client for the iPhone, in my opinion.

 

AuthorJustin | CommentPost a Comment |
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