It had been while since writers in need of an attention grabbing headline have resurrected the phrase ‘Internet Command Line’. It’s a reference to those terminals of yore where people would type arcane combinations of text and digital miracles would happen. The command line gave way to graphical user interfaces (GUIs) that could be operated by nearly everyone (and their mother) but that hasn’t stopped the digerati from seeking new reincarnations from which they can dazzle lesser mortals with their powers.
Back in the Netscape days the URL line was first mentioned as the ‘Internet Command Line’. The thinking was that as sites went online those sometimes cryptic domain names were the keys to power. The hubbub died down, however, when people realized that it was just easier clicking around a page than trying to remember ‘index.php?action =doSomething&id=215829&session=new&comment=AreYouReallyStillReadingThis’ .
The second anointed command line was the Google search input. While most people continue to find more than enough usefulness for search those at Google continue to add functionality. Type stocks: before a string and it will look for ticker symbols. You also have a currency converter. Or local weather (looks like a nice weekend back home). There is an undiscovered treasure trove of power – you just need to know the correct incantations.
Most recently the emerging Twitter is increasingly been seen as a gateway to easy SMS (like on your cell phone) development – a command line that straddles both the web AND mobile devices. Steve Poland, author of Techquila Shots and contributing writer for TechCrunch has a series of postsabout the possibilities, which subsequently got lots of other ideas flowing:
(I apologize for the long quote, but its quality stuff and if you’re new to Twitter the extra background is needed to comprehend what Steve is driving at):
Twitter, which is a kind of social network around sms/text messages, has a rapidly growing community of users that spend hours each day sending text messages about what they are doing or thinking. To post a message, a user simply texts the message they want to post to “40404.” Anyone who cares to follow the meanderings of another user can do so. All messages from people you follow can be seen on your Twitter page and, optionally, delivered to your mobile device via SMS.
A popular feature with Twitter is a “direct” message that you send to just a single friend. The syntax is simple – you type “d [username] [your message].”
Until now, Twitter’s API hasn’t allowed you to access those direct messages though. With today’s API addition, you can now retrieve Twitter direct messages. What does that mean? A lot, quite frankly.
Users can now send a command (”direct message”) to a username which is just a name for a web service like weather.com. For example, there could be a Twitter username “weather”, which I could send a Twitter message of “d weather 14202″ by text, web, or IM. The Twitter username “weather” could get this command (er, Twitter “direct message”) via the API, run a process on a web server to retrieve the current weather forecast for 14202, and send that as a direct message back to me ( i.e. “d TechCrunch Currently: Partly Cloudy, 50F. Tomorrow’s Forecast: AM Clouds/PM Sun. High: 55 Low: 40″).
Or there could be a username “score”, which you could send “d score Yankees”, to immediately request the score of the Yankees game. Or another example could be “d 411 Starbucks 14202″ to retrieve the phone number of the closest Starbucks to zip code 14202.
Currently, it costs a lot of money to launch a start-up in the SMS/mobile space — you have to license a shortcode monthly ($500-$1000/mo), pay a SMS gateway provider, and then pay anywhere from $0.03 – $0.05 per inbound or outbound text message. It adds up. But now, if a start-up chooses to use Twitter as a command line to their web service, it’s free (until Twitter starts charging for it).
Some pretty impressive stuff which has developers scrambling. Steve does mention that content ‘PULL’ is not quite there yet (content pull is where you request something, content push is when you receive something whether you expected it or not):
Right now, if someone adds me as a friend — I still can’t receive any direct messages they send me, until I add them as my friend too. And even once I were to do that, I wouldn’t receive any direct messages they sent prior to me friending them.
Put that in place, however, and suddenly any startup could quickly (and cheaply) pull together a push/pull service serving up information. Google already offers oodles of its stored caches via SMS – but good luck building a business on the back of that walled garden.
After all that I have some questions – are we finally seeing the dawn of usefulness from all those ‘freebie’ phones a majority of Americans have (other than calling, of course)? And if SMS plays are truly are the new command lines how long until they’re abandoned for GUIs – just like what happened on the desktops a little more than a decade ago? Would all these would be SMS service providers just be better off aiming for the GUI generation on the phone?
If you follow any of the prominent tech or development bloggers chances are you’ve heard of Kathy Sierra and the harassment that lead her to pulling out of ETech. The software usability expert came forth and shared some shocking news on her own blog: that she had been receiving disturbing death threats both in her comments and on other sites. She places much of the blame firmly on the anonymity that the web provides – that the bullying and misogynist hate speech she has endured is an outgrowth of modern communication.
I do not want to be part of a culture–the Blogosphere–where this is considered acceptable. Where the price for being a blogger is kevlar-coated skin and daughters who are tough enough to not have their “widdy biddy sensibilities offended” when they see their own mother Photoshopped into nothing more than an objectified sexual orifice, possibly suffocated as part of some sexual fetish. (And of course all coming on the heels of more explicit threats)
It is awful that people write hateful mysogynistic comments on Kathy Sierra’s blog, in email or about her on other blogs, but she seems to have taken very little evidence of the involvement of prominent bloggers as the foundation for damning a lot of folks who, apparently, rub her and are rubbed by her the wrong way.
This behavior is not a reflection on blogging, on anonymity or the Web, rather it is the same old human tendency to be abusive toward one another written in a new form. Anger as often as compassion is the product of speaking publicly about any issue.
…and a bit later…
Bad behavior doesn’t reflect on the medium or the whole audience (or the people formerly known as the audience). It reflects on the people who behave badly. Individuals show how rude, low and disgustingly inhuman they can be. Unfortunately, Ms. Sierra takes these examples and damns everything about the medium
Unfortunately, I believe any meaningful debate about whether this is the ugly side of human nature or a new artifact of digital tools will be lost as soon as the next viral video pops up. There have always been trolls, griefers, and a-hats who entertain themselves by making life miserable for others. But in this moment while our attention is focused can we definitively say whether the medium is doomed? Or is the human condition?
Posted in tools, video at 7:12 am by Matthew Reinbold
Not directly related to code but the following is a fantastic video non-the-less. It amazes me that in the age of all kinds of whiz-bang special effects and easy-peasy digital editing doing something as simple as carefully choreographed backwards filming (like that is simple) can create such incredible results.
Posted in site news at 10:53 pm by Matthew Reinbold
Well, if you’re reading this you’re seeing the product of a successful server move. The challenge of moving 5+ years of cruft from one end of cyberspace to the other is not something for the faint of heart. However, I’m hopeful that the effort was worth it. Now that the messiness of moving vans along the information superhighway is behind us, lets get back to what we’re all about – commenting on the code that is creating culture.
Would you be more likely to buy something if friends recommended it? What if we lived in a economy where any good or service could be purchased as easily as hyperlinking to a webpage? Fred Wilson is a venture capitalist that I’ve mentioned a few times before on mutednoise; he’s extremely active in technology stocks (although I first came across him because of his frequent music posts). This morning he lays out the concept of SuperDistribution. Is it a vapid terminology christening to win a book deal and land speaking engagements? I don’t think so – he might be onto something:
It’s word of mouth marketing, referral marketing, but with one important difference. The consumer is the retailer.
I’ve wanted to be a superdistributor ever since. When I talk about music, books, politics, Sonos, Blackberry, MacBook, or anything else, I want all of you to be able to click and buy. When I buy something, I want to be able to pass it along to everyone else and get paid for doing that. And I want the people who created the thing I pass along to get paid too.
A lot of people who read and comment on this blog think I am anti content creator, that I want to eliminate property rights. Wrong. The thing I want to eliminate is FRICTION. I want to supercharge commerce. I want to turn everyone on to Arcade FIre. I want to them to sell 100 million Arcade Fire mp3s. And I want to get paid for doing my part.
My friend Steve calls me anti establishment. He’s right. I am done with the old way of selling goods. I don’t want to buy from an institution. I want to buy from my friends. And I want to sell to them.
The part about ’selling to my friends’ is a little strong – we see this behavior already with services like LinkedIn: people connecting to others not because of the strong relationships present but because of the initial perceived ‘value’ a large number of connections has (i.e. “John Doe is connected with 3000 other people! Golly, he must be the popular kid”). Right know that value is only in reputation but when friends become nothing more than wallets to appeal to insincerity will go through the roof…
…or am I making too big of deal of how relationships work anyway? Do we band together with those for whom its mutually beneficial? Or does friendship entail admiration without expectations of a return?
Almost buried beneath the news of Viacom and its GooTube shakedown was a small piece by Drew Clark on Om Malik’s Broadband Blog. In it he raises some very alarming concerns about what Google said at a Tech Policy Summit at the end of February (the McLaughlin quoted is Google Senior Policy Counsel Andrew McLaughlin):
More significant is what McLaughlin said next. Peter Pitsch, Intel’s director of communications policy, asked: “I inferred from what you said about [net neutrality] that you would not object to [carriers] making a particular offering, as long as that offering were made available on a non-discriminatory basis?�
“That is my view,� replied McLaughlin. He described a “strong� view of neutrality in which carriers are forbidden from charging companies for quality-of-service (QoS) guarantees “because that breaks the free and open model� of the Internet. “There is a more pragmatic view that it is OK [to charge] as long as it is done in a non-discriminatory way.�
“The first view, the strong view of net neutrality, has some very powerful arguments, but the reason we wouldn’t go for it� is purely pragmatic, McLaughlin said. Bell companies are going down the road of paid QoS, so it would be better to find a non-discrimination rule that worked.
“The danger of paid QoS is that it becomes the normality default, and the best efforts Internet is left to atrophy,� he continued. That would be a disaster for all of us. Competition, through different network alternatives, is going to ameliorate that danger.�
McLaughlin’s statements have caused a fair bit of angst within Google, and also within several of the so-called “Group of Six� companies that coalesced last year to take on the Bells. (The others were Amazon, eBay, InterActive Corp., Microsoft and Yahoo!)
It would be understandable, from a business sense, why Google would be interested in paying for privileged access to carrier networks – they have the money to do so. But what will happen to every mom & pop Internet shop that was hoping Google would defend them? What happens to those who don’t have the funds to cut deals?
If you only read the feed (RSS) version of mutednoise you may not have seen the little Google Reader widget that is embedded on the right hand side of the page. It keeps a list of all the stories that I tag with ‘mutednoise’ throughout the day that I may not have time to comment on at the moment. As yesterday developed it filled up with news about Viacom suing YouTube (through parent Google) for a billion dollars. From Mike Arrington’s TechCrunch coverage (who is quoting the actual lawsuit):
There is no question that YouTube and Google are continuing to take the fruit of our efforts without permission and destroying enormous value in the process. This is value that rightfully belongs to the writers, directors and talent who create it and companies like Viacom that have invested to make possible this innovation and creativity.
After a great deal of unproductive negotiation, and remedial efforts by ourselves and other copyright holders, YouTube continues in its unlawful business model. Therefore, we must turn to the courts to prevent Google and YouTube from continuing to steal value from artists and to obtain compensation for the significant damage they have caused.
Lessig (talking about the breakdown of the safe harbor clause in the DMCA)
Om Malik (who correctly points out that Viacom is playing catch up and knows it)
Fred Wilson (who wants to see someone put in their place for waving the legal stick so liberally)
…and that was just within the first few hours…
What none of these pieces mention is how this is affecting the next generation of policy makers and technology creators. Anyone in their teens to twenties are growing up in a world were these kinds of corporate bombshells aren’t obscure news buried somewhere in the Wall Street Journal. They view these as attacks on services they know and love. And since these services (Napster [the original version], Kazaa, Limewire, thePirateBay, YouTube, etc.) are participatory – meaning that the content found is largely user driven – it is very easy to personalize these legal attacks as not only being against the service but the users themselves. And the users are pissed (volume is a bit loud and the argument is flawed but the sentiment is real):
And on and on and on. We’ve never had a generation watch as the products and services that it really loves are repeatedly drug into court. It is changing the perception that these people have about the corporate world. If things work out they’ll go on to change policy at the government level to better reflect the reality as they see it. More likely, however, is an entire generation that comes to see civil disobedience as a practical necessity in the face of “greedy corporations”. I’m not sure that is a good thing.
It didn’t make sense to me until I had linked to a few friends. Once I began seeing other active people’s daily lists of accomplishments and activities did I see the real value of Twitter – a personal motivator. Working by oneself can be extremely satisfying but it can be hard to be disciplined – the only one keeping you from knocking off early or sneaking in a few rounds of Pirates Online is oneself. By not only seeing what others are doing but reporting back what you’re up to it creates a kind of active community – a friendly competition of productivity. Its similar to when I used to jog in college. Getting up early in the morning and running a few miles is extremely hard when you are the only one doing it. However, toss in a few friends who agree to run together and you find yourself making an extra effort – nobody wants to be seen as the ‘lazy’ one of the group.
If you’d like to add me as a friend my Twitter user name is ‘libel_vox’. Has anyone else picked up Twitter yet? How are you using it?
There is some compelling video floating on the Interwebs showing off Sony’s new PS3 hub, or ‘Playstation Home’. It is a virtual environment that the company is hoping offers a compelling experience when compared to Microsoft’s Xbox Live service. They’re hoping to create a better (and dumber) virtual world experience, as a post on PSFK asserts.
Sure, home does look pretty impressive. But the reason Second Life looks like an ugly step child in comparison is because they have to support a tremendous amount of user generated content. Sony Home, because there is nothing there that is created by the users, means that they can avoid consuming bandwidth with most of the graphical objects; they’re already sitting on the user’s machine – much like an MMOG. And without an objective, as a game has, Second Life is only interesting as far as it lets people create. What Sony seems to have done is take all the tedium and pointlessness of a virtual world without the ability to create and married it with some eye candy.
There has been a tremendous amount of hype surrounding Twitter. Twitter is a site that allows people to submit quick quips as to what their doing in a variety of ways (via SMS message, IM, and web). The idea is to create an ongoing log of activity however amazing or mundane. As Liz Lawley states on Corante, these kind of minutia is useful (for some):
This isn’t about conveying complex theory—it’s about letting the people in your distributed network of family and friends have some sense of where you are and what you’re doing. And we crave this, I think. When I travel, the first thing I ask the kids on the phone when I call home is “what are you doing?� Not because I really care that much about the show on TV, or the homework they’re working on, but because I care about the rhythms and activities of their days. No, most people don’t care that I’m sitting in the airport at DCA, or watching a TV show with my husband. But the people who miss being able to share in day-to-day activity with me—family and close friends—do care.
I was hoping to use Twitter and an ultra flexible time tracking tool. Given the variety of options for pushing data to be archived I started detailing my day. For time reporting, however, Twitter falls short. There’s no way of summing time for like-events together. The times displayed are vague and only relate to now without showing duration (’you were grocery shopping about an hour ago’). While the family angle Liz mentions is plausible using Twitter as an organizational tool leaves me scratching my head.
That’s when I came across Toggl. Toggl (with no ‘e’) is a slick little app where you type a project name and hit a record button to track time. I’m still exploring the functionality – right now there seems to no separation between tasks and projects and it would be great to be able to have Twitter’s variety of inputs (text message a task name to start and SMS the words ’stop’ to stop time tracking, for example).
Has anyone else played with these online tools? What were your thoughts? And what do you use to track your time?
If you only read the feed (RSS) version of mutednoise you may not have seen the little Google Reader widget that is embedded on the right hand side of the page. It keeps a list of all the stories that I tag with ‘mutednoise’ throughout the day that I may not have time to comment on at the moment. As yesterday developed it filled up with news about Viacom suing YouTube (through parent Google) for a billion dollars. From