Topic: Media
Dr. Moira Gunn talks about journalism and the internet with author and former Former Associated Press correspondent, Tom Rachman. Rachman's debut book, The Imperfectionists, begins as a celebration of the original 24/7 news cycle with focused on the personal lives of various news reporters, executives, copy editors, and a reader.
Jef Raskin started Apple's Macintosh project, and he wants to set the record straight. He decries mistakes in published accounts of the creation of the Macintosh. For example, he cites the "creation myth" that the Mac was built by "college drop-outs and intuitive engineers flying by the seats of their pants." Jef spices his account with anecdotes of square pixels, one-button mice, bit-mapped fonts, and more. A longtime BayCHI member, Jeff passed away a year after this program, the last of his six BayCHI appearances since 1994.
Contrary to digital media, monographs are becoming financially nonviable to produce and maintain. Frances Pinter, Publisher at Bloomsbury Academic, argues that the only way to rescue monographs is to publish them under a Creative Commons license, provide open access, and charge customers for print-on-demand services. Will this be a sustainable business model? Pinter takes a critical position on several alternative strategies and plays devil's advocate on her own proposal.
Digital topographic maps are just one example of the new geospatial information accessible to you (and your software via API's). Mark L. DeMulder reports on The National Map of the United States, a collaborative effort to deliver downloadable data and maps, products and services. The geographic information includes "orthoimagery (aerial photographs), elevation, geographic names, hydrography, boundaries, transportation, structures, and land cover." Other types of information can be superimposed to create new types of maps.
Why did that visitor come to your site? The answer will always surprise you. Avinash Kaushik explains that the "Highest Paid Person's Opinion" (HIPPO) often overrides expert analysis. He argues that qualitative and quantitative research, traditionally separate, are far more effective when combined, as unified web analytics reveal what's important to the individual user. He suggests we stay in perpetual beta, because nothing on the web is ever really final.
You may find Cisco's TV ads touting "the human network" a bit abstract, but the company is serious about understanding how networks can help people collaborate. Hear user experience experts from several Cisco teams discuss their research into how a global workforce can work together, in particular using video to build knowledge in an organization. The panel shares lessons learned in applying current technology to business collaboration and planning for the network of the future.
"Move fast, be bold and take risks" is what Mark Zuckerberg tries to hammer home every day. A series of news-making revelations about Facebook's strategies broke at this talk. Facebook is going to build platforms to offer access to it's 500 million users. CEO Mark Zuckerberg sat down with Tim O'Reilly of O'Reilly Media, and John Batelle of Federated Media Publishing and answered frank and challenging questions. The result was a cascade of new strategic decisions about "all the awesome stuff" that Facebook is launching.
Website performance is second only to security in user expectations, claims Joshua Bixby, president of Strangeloop Networks. He suggests that web page rendering must be kept under two seconds to retain user loyalty. Website acceleration directly impacts a company's business metrics and KPIs. Bixby presents his team's latest findings about the relationship between web performance and business benefits.
As we use social tools on the web, design patterns are emerging. Social design must be organic, not static, emotional, not data-driven. A social experience builds on relationships, not transactions. In 2008, Yahoo!'s Christian Crumlish introduced the idea of social design patterns to BayCHI. In this 2010 program, he shares what he has learned, including principles of social design: Pave the cow paths. Talk like a person. Be open. Learn from games. And respect the ethical dimension.
Twitter's new Director of Geolocation shows how automatically geo-tagging tweets creates self-generating groups that act in the real-world. Twitter geotaggers help responders with fires in Southern California, earthquakes in China, and elections in Iran. At the where2.0 conference in San Jose, Othman Laraki offers Twitter API developers 'frictionless' ways to express and consume this new class of geodata.
