RasterWeb!

Change and Reputation

I keep hearing about how Facebook and Twitter are changing the way things are done. From drafting a constitution to fixing Summerfest, these “new” sites are making new things possible… sort of.

But really, this is nothing new as far as the web is concerned. A typical web site from 2002 could easily have solicited feedback on how to improve things within a country, or a festival, or your own home town. In fact, some did, but there were some crucial elements missing, including critical mass, and reputation.

Critical mass in that there’s more people online now, being more engaged, thanks to sites like Twitter and Facebook. For the typical non-nerdy type, Facebook is the simple way to be online and connect with friends, and family, and brands. Twitter is pretty similar nowadays, though maybe slight nerdier, and even that is debatable now.

When I talk about reputation, I’m talking about the fact that with Twitter, and Facebook, you very often have a well formulated idea of who someone is. It’s typically built by looking at what the person has to say, and to who, and who has things to say to them. Their reputation. Their identity.

In the olden days (1997-200?) reputation was often tied to your blog, where you did your talking and where people talked back to you. (I’m sure similar things could be said of forums, etc. but I’m not convinced it’s the same thing.) I know there have been anonymous bloggers, but if I look back at the people who were blogging at the same time I started, I knew those people, and I trusted those people. I read their blogs daily, and they read mine, and we commented on each others posts, and we had conversations. It may have been a fixed point in time which created this situation, and perhaps it is an illusion… I don’t know for sure.

But the point is, I think what Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Quora, and other sites have going for them nowadays is this element of trust and reputation they give to the users. These elements (should) allow a conversation to happen without the doubt that can often exist online, where you don’t know if a dog is a dog or a guy pretending to be a dog.

I’m still thinking through this whole idea… but would love some feedback on it.

Tags change, facebook, identity, quora, reputation, twitter

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Make A Sketch

The Make A Sketch features an Arduino-based microcontroller and a Processing application that work together to function like an old Etch A Sketch, letting you draw images using just two knobs. It’s a blend of old-school analog art with the modern digital world.

At least, that’s the fancy copy I wrote to explain it… But really, that’s what it is.

Back in May 2011 I did something we called Processing Month (as inspired by Vormplus) and I started out publishing some simple Processing sketches, and about halfway through May, with Gallery Night looming, I decided to try something a bit more challenging, and the Make A Sketch is the result.

Along the way I ended up drilling acrylic, breaking acrylic, drilling more acrylic, learning about Posterous, writing some Perl code, rewriting some Perl code, destroying an Apple Cinema Display, and finally putting it all together into a complete piece.

I used the RED ONE we have at Z2 to shoot this little video explaining it all… There’s also some time lapse footage from Gallery Night, and a selection of drawings from that night.

Oh, I also ended up building a Project page, and a page for the Make A Sketch, as well as permanent static pages for many of my other projects, such as Time Lapse Bot. These pages will serve as the home for each of my projects, and will point to all the associated blog posts, and other related info.

Tags arduino, art, makeasketch, projects, seeeduino, video

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Top 5 Email Subject Lines of the Week

Post author By Pete Prodoehl
Post date 2011-06-17
2 Comments on Top 5 Email Subject Lines of the Week

Your Music’s Good, But Are Your Band Photos Holding You Back?
Translation: You rock, but you’re ugly. No, really, it’s not my photos holding me back. In fact, I think my photos are better than my music. Maybe my music is holding me back… I prefer to just read the first 3 words of the subject line and then stop there.
Your package is on its way
I always enjoy getting an email with this subject… as long as it’s legit. (You know, lasers, 23″ displays, etc.) If this were a spam email it could take on a whole new meaning… Hey-oooh!
Give Dad the Gift of Great Taste!
My family knows me, and by now they know that I’m pretty set in my ways and they can’t give me great taste.
Jeremy Ampe started DJing at I have bad taste in music.
Jeremy is one of the masterminds behind MKEPunk. I ‘m not sure if he named this turntable.fm room, but it’s a pretty funny name.
I’m thinking of doing something “stupid” and following in your footsteps and seek a few minutes of your time
The best email subject line should do 3 things: compliment you, inform you, and insult you. This one does all three!

Tags email, top5

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The Reeder Value

I tried Reeder on the iPhone last year, and I wasn’t immediately in love with it, it’s alright, but I don’t really do too much feed reading on my phone nowadays. Still it’s nice to have an RSS aggregator on my phone, and it’s the one I liked the best. It was $1.99 at the time (it’s $2.99 now) and I was willing to pay that without thinking much about it. It would probably be a better experience on a newer iPhone (I’ve got the 3G) but then, what wouldn’t be a better experience?

I mentioned that I don’t do too much feed reading on my phone nowadays, and that’s true, but I think a large part of it is that I now do a ton of feed reading on the iPad. In fact, on a lazy Sunday morning I’ve been know to spend a good hour or two catching up on my reading just as someone may have read a newspaper in the olden days when they used to print newspapers.

On the iPad I used MobileRSS for a while and like it well enough, except when they redesigned the entire UI during an upgrade. In reading some of the reviews, I kept seeing mentions that it ripped off the design of Reeder. I ended up trying Reeder on the iPad, and while it took me a little while to get used to it, I started to like it. At $4.99 for the iPad version, I grabbed it right away, and I really do love it now. I’d estimate that feed reading on the iPad accounts for more than 50% of what I use the device for.

I normally use Google Reader in Firefox, with some help from Stylish, to make it a bit prettier, but when the Reeder for Mac beta came out, I gave it a shot, and I liked it. I still didn’t do too much reading on desktop (or laptop) as compared to the iPad, but it was nice to have. The user experience is much better than the browser. That said, I was worried it would come out of beta and require a purchase to keep using it. Well, perhaps I wasn’t worried so much as concerned about the unknown price.

Well, Reeder for Mac is out, and it’s $9.99. Now, I know I’m cheap, but I sort of feel like it just isn’t worth it (at least not for me.) I mean, if I weigh how much I use my Mac for feed reading, versus how much I use my iPad for the task, it just doesn’t measure up. If it was $4.99 on the Mac, I’d probably be tempted to grab it. Of course I’ve already spent about $7 for the iPad and iPhone versions, so maybe that’s another reason I’m not ready to kick down another $10 to have another version of it running on yet another device.

Reeder is a really nice feed reader though, and I love it on the iPad at $4.99, but I’m just not convinced it would be worth $9.99 on the Mac. (Again, I’m basing this on my own reading habits.)

Tags aggregator, ipad, iphone, reeder, rss