Monthly Archive for October, 2007

Citizen Logistics

Published
by
guaka
on 2007-10-29
in hospitality exchange, open life and trust metrics
. 0 Comments

Together, Joe Edelman and I were the dynamic duo of the CouchSurfing Collective in New Zealand. Joe came with fantastic ideas, that were unfortunately not realized in Nelson. Fortunately he also improved the infrastructure of CS in such a profound way that his work there is probably the main reason that the website is still up. It was great working with him and we had many magic moments, where we really thought were about to make stuff happen that would change the world in a profound way.

When I saw a glimpse of James’ headline, Swarming people to work, I had a faint hint that some of the most important of Joe’s ideas were being realized by elsewhere. My online situation at the time is not great, so I sent Joe a text without even checking Joi Ito’s post. The next time I came online I was happy to see that Joe accelerated. From CitizenLogistics.com:

Television and computer games provide expertly designed entertainment and fun… but when we have to deal with our real lives, we’re all alone. When will participating in the real world and dealing with real issues be just as adventurous, easy, collaborative, and fun?

Very soon! We’re developing new game-like ways of working, volunteering, having a good time, and finding assistance. Anyone can play, and you get points for making other people’s dreams come true. Our software lets you find cool things to do, build teams, and connect people with jobs and resources, all via text messaging and geolocation in the real world.

My favorite part of the teaser website is about Open Life:

Our technology will transform everyday life by bringing a new opportunities for teamwork, community, and adventure to everyone involved. We offer a real-time, map-based interface for finding and mobilizing available people out in the world via their cell phones. For mobile users, we have a txt-based interface for declaring your availability and finding opportunities near wherever you are. Combining geolocation, text messaging, trust metrics, sophisticated permissions, and a structure for social incentives, we integrate with many other websites and platforms, and offer a web-wide API for aggregating real world availability and trust.

Related reading:

Utubiquity

Published
by
guaka
on 2007-10-29
in guaka
. 3 Comments

I had a dream. I woke up. It’s 22:03.

I think, I was in China in my dream. It’s the same dream I had over
the weekend. People were valking around with little devices. Recording
reality. Broadcasting reality. A blind man was walking around,
seeing. With this device. He had no eyes. We were losing control
though. China, or I think it was rather BigCorps combined, were
taking away our power to record and registrate what was going on. The
blind man was giving up and appeared in whatever was TV and had given
up the idea of seeing.

While dreaming, I thought this was a dream about the future.

But, this is happening now. It’s 2007. New York City wants blocking
normal people from taking pictures and recording videos. It’s 2007,
and apart from the loony artists and eletronic frontiermen, nobody
cares. Do you?

It’s 2007, and our storage capacity is increasing and increasing.
It’ll be hard to find a phone without 8 GB soon. Do you think
security companies are actuallying recycling their storage? Do you
think governments are? They might, might have policies in place, and
might follow them. But not in China for sure. And not in Googolia,
Amazonia, or Yahoo.

But why still care? I know some of you do, but I think it’s better
instead, to march along, no, run in front of them, and be there first!
Right at the frontier. Storing our experiences to the max, giving them
away to anyone who slightly cares. Privacy is a dream from the past.
This is the age of Utubiquity is now. Let’s
free our phones, our dishwashers and
cars, and equip all of them. Let’s make the blind see, not thru gEyes
or iSee, but with OpenEyes. I sure as hell know that whenever silicon
enters my flesh it oughta be free and open.

This should be the age of Communal
Creativity. Done right there’s
nothing to fear. And I turn on the light at 22:24.

The Wiki Party - closer to reality

Published
by
guaka
on 2007-10-15
in hospitality exchange and wiki
. 0 Comments

Last year I did a BoF at Wikimania 2006 about The Wiki Party, the idea to start a political party. Today Anu sent me a link to a Facebook group with this same title. I jokingly told people “when I’m 40 years old I will start this party if no one else did before then”. Fortunately I won’t have to, anymore. Of course, it’s happenning in Finland. Olli Sirén was considering to run a campaign to the Helsinki City Council. From the main page of wikiparty.net:

Wikiparty is bringing new ways to do politics. It´s based on the idea of open politics. This site will be the international basis for this new party. The movement has started in Finland and will spread around the world in one form or another. Democracy is grown weak around the world. Voting percentages are in a steady decline.

Let’s put together a Wikiparty. A party that creates its political opinions in the same way that Wikipedia forms its articles. Let’s try to think ways to systematically create political force. This party could vote for its representatives to different political parliaments. These “agents” of Wikiparty would interpret the ideas of Wikiparty to real voting situations and pass the ideas of the community to the parliament.

This way we could challenge the traditional parties to a debate between weak and strong democracy. This kind of virtual community that aims to a real life political chance, could reach over national borders and grasp problems caused by for example globalization or climate change.

And yesterday I learned about Kaltura, a social-networky video editing tool, kind-of-a crossbred between wiki, and youtube with the promise to release their software under the GNU General Public license.

It’s good to have local friends!

Published
by
guaka
on 2007-10-13
in Italy and hospitality exchange
. 0 Comments

Thanks to Fabrizia, who put an ad in a local weekly, I have a new place. She and Davide have been very helpful.Unfortunately amylin hasn’t come back from New York yet, but that gives me the opportunity to make our place look good. There’s a garden, roses, a garden table, a bath tub and a lot of beds! I think the 72 year old landlady used to rent it to 4 students. Today I moved a lot of stuff there with a free electric pick-up trucklet.

Because I befriended Michele and Maurizio, who both work for the municipal parking organization of Trento, I was able to use the Ecomobile for a bit longer than the usual 2 hours. Last night I was invited for dinner at Michele’s girlfriend’s place, which was great. I mostly spoke Italian, but Michele speaks Russian very well, he’s been to many former Soviet countries on his motorbike (and also to India, Nepal and many more places) and he’s planning to drive through South America next year!

On Thursday I went to a concert of a trio of musicians playing anarchist and anti-fascist songs in a tiny “private club”. Our place is conveniently located between my work (or rather, my free lunch) and the center of Trento. It’s slightly uphill though, from the city center, but somehow I had rides there all the time. And I will have one very soon, since I have a tiny bit more stuff to move, and Paolo will arrive here shortly so we can quickly do some work and then I can meet Michele and his girlfriend again tonight.

On Monday the washing machine will be installed and hopefully the heater will be fixed, it’s leaking a little bit right now.

Right after posting amylin just sent me some cute pictures of her new haircut. amylin with short hair in New York

She’s still quite unsure about it, but I think it looks totally fkn awesome!
amylin with short hair in New York

no more ads on my screen

Published
by
guaka
on 2007-10-11
in guaka
. 4 Comments

Today Paolo was wearing his delogofied Adidas sweater. Maybe that’s why I just finally got rid of all ads on my screen. I feel a bit silly for not having delved into this before, but better late than never. If you want to do the same: the EasyList and EasyElement subscriptions for the Adblock Plus for Firefox even block the ads inside Google Mail.

Google’s issue tracker is not great

Published
by
guaka
on 2007-10-10
in trust metrics
. 2 Comments

We’re using Google Code for our trust metrics project, out of sheer convenience, and because of lack of political correctness. Well, I’ve given up on worrying about privacy a while ago anyway.  I just tried to use the issue tracker that comes with Google Code, but first I got a time-out, there were two identical issues because I refreshed. And on top of that, even though I am administrator of the project, I can not delete it.

So I guess I’m going to install Trac in the near future and forget about Google Code.

Hitchhiking Planet

Published
by
guaka
on 2007-10-07
in hitchhiking
. 1 Comment

Yay, two Planets in one weekend. After having set up Planet Hospitality I decided to also set up Hitchhiking Planet. It still needs some tinkering, and probably a new location, but at least it’s up and running. Check this Hitchwiki page if you want to add your blog (or just contact me directly, that’s fine too).

Civil engagement on social networks

Published
by
guaka
on 2007-10-06
in hospitality exchange
. 0 Comments

Looking for some candidate blogs to add to Planet Hospitality I stumbled upon Spurring civic engagement on Facebook, Myspace and SixDegrees.org.

For the moment, while Facebook’s Causes and Myspace’s Impact seem a welcome change in allowing some use of these networks for more civic purposes, it seems as though they’ve hobbled their tools enough and created a weak-enough attachment that we’re skeptical that a lot of civic good (beyond some fundraising) will take place.  We’ll hope that the next generation of tools is significantly more powerful.

I don’t believe it’s just a matter of adding powerful tools to so-called social networks. MySpace and Facebook are mostly about connecting people in the online world. To do good however, the real world needs to change. And collecting a bunch of money for a good cause might sometimes help. Even though there are some noteworthy exceptions, I’ve read, seen and experienced enough of the NGO World to know that this will never end serious issues like hunger and poverty.

I think it becomes more interesting when the social network is the cause itself.  I was made to believe that this was the case for CouchSurfing, and I worked my ass off, but unfortunately I was seriously misled. Though it won’t be the solution to all the world’s problems, I still think that real social networks have a chance of enacting serious change. My bets are on  BeWelcome,  more decentralized alternatives or even something radically new.

Planet Hospitality

Published
by
guaka
on 2007-10-06
in hospitality exchange
. 2 Comments

A Planet is a website that aggregates a lot of other blogs.  Tonight I set up Planet Hospitality. This specific planet should obviously mostly be about hospitality exchange. Posts can be philosophical, personal, political, scientific, or just funny.

Check the Crash at Mine Wiki if you want your blog to be aggregated on Planet as well. For this it’s best if you start using a category or label hospitality exchange.

Free Burma

Published
by
guaka
on 2007-10-04
in guaka
. 0 Comments


Free Burma!