Where am I?

By Mack D. Male · February 9, 2009 at 9:15pm

Though I consider myself a netizen, I don’t live online (yet). I remain tethered to the real world, in real physical space. The lines are beginning to blur somewhat however, thanks to the increasing popularity of location-based online services.

A good example of this is Brightkite, a service I’ve written about a couple of times. In a nutshell, Brightkite gives you a way to say “here I am in the real world!” For example, when I get to work in the morning I “check in”. You can see this action in two ways: on my profile (or at any service that sucks in my profile, such as FriendFeed) and on the place itself. Each place inside Brightkite has a unique ID which means every real world location has a corresponding digital representation. That’s powerful!

The problem with Brightkite is that I need to manually check in. This is where Google Latitude comes in. The service was launched on Wednesday:

Latitude is a new feature for Google Maps on your mobile device. Once you’ve opted in to Latitude, you can see the approximate location of your friends and loved ones who have decided to share their location with you.

Ready to share your location? If you have a mobile smartphone, visit google.com/latitude on your phone’s web browser to download the latest version of Google Maps for mobile with Latitude.

It’s annoyingly basic, but it works. I’ve got it running on my BlackBerry so my location is updated in real-time everywhere I go. That means that Google Latitude knows I am in the office before I actually get on the computer to check in on Brightkite.

Obviously it would be better to have Latitude and Brightkite work together. The Brightkite team have said on Twitter that they’ll look into it as soon as Latitude has an API. I hope that happens relatively soon!

Why does all of this matter? Because location is vitally important. Today it might seem geeky to broadcast your location on the web, but in the not-to-distant future, I’m betting it’ll be completely ordinary. Your social graph and location-aware services will be the first beneficiaries of this information, but others will follow. It’s exciting to consider!

In the meantime, feel free to add me on these services. I’m mastermaq@gmail.com on Google Latitude, and mastermaq on Brightkite.

Notes for 2/8/2009

By Mack D. Male · February 8, 2009 at 10:54pm

Here are my weekly notes:

Just got back from celebrating Andrea’s birthday at King Noodle Hot Pot, and I feel like I gained a hundred pounds! Very good though, and she was definitely surprised. Happy Birthday Andrea! Pictures are here.
On Friday, Sharon and I went to Eden Lilly for “a very sexy party” which Sharon wrote about here. Yesterday we went to check out the Royal Bison Craft & Art Fair, which you can read about here.
Despite repeated statements to the contrary, Microsoft will indeed change the behavior of the UAC control panel in Windows 7. All you need to know is that this’ll make Windows 7 more secure.
Very cool from the New York Times: the Article Search API. With it you can search through more than 2.8 million articles from 1981 until present, via 35 searchable fields.
Opera is working on a new Javascript engine called Carakan. I’m glad to see the JS-engine wars heating up!
Facebook has joined the OpenID foundation. That’s pretty cool, and something I didn’t think would happen.
Another interesting (and long overdue) announcement from Facebook – they’ve opened up the status API to other applications.
Should be a couple of Twestival-related articles published this week! If you’re planning on joining us on Thursday, please register online.

Edmonton Notes for 2/7/2009

By Mack D. Male · February 7, 2009 at 11:40pm

Here are some Edmonton-related things I found interesting this week:

ETS made a bit of a splash this week by showcasing the ETS Platinum bus. You can vote here for the three features you most prefer. I chose “Wi-Fi Internet Access”, “Fare Box with Smartcard Technology”, and “Hybrid Technology”.
A new report says the city would need to buy less land than originally expected to complete the proposed LRT line to NAIT, which means construction costs could drop by about $70 million. I’m sure they’ll find a way for the costs to rise again.
The City is looking for nominations for the Good Neighbours recognition program. Last year, 150 neighbours were nominated and 19 were recognized. Nominations close March 31st.
On Wednesday, Qualico announced that the federal government will lease 128,000 square feet of space in the new Epcor Tower. About 70% of the building is now spoken for. Sadly, it’s the first new downtown office tower since Commerce Place opened in 1990. Here are some photos of the construction site.
Edmonton’s oldest company, Lockerbie & Hole, was sold to Toronto’s Aecon Group for $220 million. The company started in 1898 as a one-man plumbing business.
In case you missed them: here is my first State of the Edmonton Twittersphere and here is my recap of Pecha Kucha Night #3.
Edmonton Twestival is coming up on Thursday! I’m really looking forward to it. Register online here.

What do you do in your spare time?

By Mack D. Male · February 6, 2009 at 10:28pm

A post at the Canadian Developer Connection blog last week caught my eye. Joey deVilla posted about something he had read at the Harvard Business blog related to interview questions. In both posts you learn about Captain Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot who safely made an emergency landing in the Hudson river last month. What does “Sully” do in his spare time? Anything and everything related to aviation, apparently. As a result, both posts argue that the most important interview question to ask, is:

“What do you do in your spare time?”

I couldn’t agree more. People who are excellent at their jobs are probably passionate about what they do, and spend more time and energy on things related to their area of expertise/interest than the average person. My experience with software development definitely backs this up. The best developers are usually the ones who go home and work on a hobby project after they’re done with the “day job”. There are exceptions, of course, but as a general rule I think you need to practice your craft outside of work to be good at it.

I’m currently reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, and right near the beginning of the book he argues the same point. Practice makes perfect. He estimates you need to spend 10,000 hours practicing something to truly master it. Gladwell uses The Beatles, Bill Joy, and Bill Gates as examples, and argues that in addition to their hard work it was a series of fortunate events that made it possible for them to spend about 10,000 hours practicing, and that’s what truly made them successful.

Every time I look at a resume, I look for the “extra” stuff. In the case of a developer, I look for programming competitions, contributions to open source projects, anything outside of school and work. It’s amazing how few mention anything like that.

I want to see passion, and by extension, practice!

Pecha Kucha Night: Edmonton #3

By Mack D. Male · February 5, 2009 at 11:02pm

Tonight was Edmonton’s third Pecha Kucha night. Around 300 people attended the event at The Matrix Hotel downtown, and like PKN #2, it was completely sold out. There wasn’t even a waiting-list or at-the-door ticket sales this time! There’s clearly a lot of demand for this event, and I don’t think that’s going to change in the future. Make sure you pay attention if you want to have a chance at getting tickets for PKN #4!

For those of you new to the concept – Pecha Kucha was conceived in 2003 as a place for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. Presenters are given 20 slides with 20 seconds per slide, so each presentation is 6 minutes and 40 seconds long. There are no formal Q&A periods, but everyone is encouraged to chat at the breaks. How to pronounce “Pecha Kucha” is a common question here in Edmonton. Is it “pet-cha-koo-cha” or is it “petch-ach-kah”? Edmonton Next Gen decided it was the former and started with an exercise to get everyone to say it aloud:

Mayor Mandel also said a few words (his attendance meant there were dozens of cameras and a couple video crews present), and then it was on with the presentations.

Tonight’s event didn’t have a theme, but I think perhaps it should have. In comparison with the previous two Pecha Kucha Nights, I found the presentations this evening rather weak. There was far too much self-promotion going on. There’s nothing wrong with talking about your work/projects, but I think focusing on the ideas/concepts is much more interesting. It would have been nice to see more diversity too – tonight was fairly academic. As Sharon remarked to me, the presentations at PKN #2 were more accessible – you didn’t have to be an architect or industrial designer to “get” it. Also: two of the presenters were from Calgary, apparently. Could they really not get two other Edmonton presenters?

The first two, Ben King and Tobias Olivia, felt almost like pitches for their respective organizations. Al-Arqam Amer was third, and gave an interesting talk about how architects should do away with floorplans and 2D representations and should instead make use of photorealistic 3D models. Cezary Gajewski then talked about communicating industrial design. The final presentation before the break was by Ron Wickman, who talked about designing with accessibility in mind.

After the break Amber Rooke from The Works Art & Design Festival gave the oddest presentation I’ve seen to-date. She spoke about the festival, but I don’t think anyone was listening to her. Instead, they were focused on the mostly naked man posing on stage. Everyone in the audience was given a pad of paper and a pencil, and were asked to draw his various poses. Amber concluded by saying “6000 drawings were made in six minutes, imagine what we can do in 13 days.” I think the shock-value worked against her though.

Romy Young was up next to share his thoughts on photography – again, way too much “I” in his presentation. Milena Radzikowska followed with a presentation about a GIS-related project she’s leading with Mount Royal and Alberta Parks. Robert Lederer showed a bunch of random designs during his six minutes. The second last presenter was Thomas Gaudin, an industrial design student from the U of A. I thought this presentation was one of the best. He talked about Modernism and Postmodernism, and suggested combining them to result in something called Interface Architecture. He also said that South Edmonton Common is a worst case example of design, much to the delight of many in the crowd. The final presenter was Ryan Stark from the City of Edmonton, who talked about EXPO.

Once again there was a DJ, food, and a cash bar. I thought the seating took a step backward this time – we were spoiled by stadium-style seating at the TransAlta Arts Barns at PKN #2. Everyone seemed to be having a good time though, and the quality of the presentations notwithstanding, I think the event went really well. It’s great to see such a large group of passionate Edmontonians come together. I look forward to PKN #4!

You can see more of my photos here, and you can subscribe to the Edmonton Next Gen mailing list here.

State of the Edmonton Twittersphere – January 2009

By Mack D. Male · February 3, 2009 at 11:00am

I love Twitter, Edmonton, and pretty graphs. In this post, I combine all three! Welcome to the first State of the Edmonton Twittersphere, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Edmonton.

As some of you know, I’ve been working on a new side project for a couple months now called ShareEdmonton. I’ll post more details on that later, but for now all you need to know is that tracking Twitter usage in Edmonton is a big part of the project. As a result, I’ve gathered lots and lots of data over the last month, and I thought I’d dig into a little.

All of the data I am sharing in this post was collected from Twitter Search. It’s a fairly broad set of updates – anything posted by Edmontonians, or about Edmonton. The data set is incomplete (I’m sure I didn’t capture all tweets, and I improved the algorithm for the second half of the month), and is subject to certain restrictions. For instance, unless someone puts “Edmonton” or something similar (lat/long, Sherwood Park, etc) in the Location field of their profile, I have no way of reliably knowing whether or not they are a local user. That said, I feel that the data set I do have is very representative of Twitter usage in the Edmonton area. Going forward, I’ll try to keep the methodology consistent.

Enough preamble – on to the statistics! For January 2009:

# of users: 1948
# of tweets: 52697

# of local users: 851 (43.69%)
# of tweets by local users: 48091 (91.26%)

# of tweets containing #yeg: 1315 (2.50%)
# of tweets that were replies: 18837 (35.75%)
# of tweets containing links: 11033 (20.94%)
# of tweets that were retweets: 265 (0.50%)

And some other interesting statistics for the month:

Ten most active users (most tweets first): fcedmonton, angelzilla, britl, zoocasaedmonton, mastermaq, justNICKI, Pat_Lorna, iNews880, foomanizer, bgrier
If you ignore the three “bots”, then alainsaffel, GuitarKat, and fusedlogic also make the list.
Those thirteen users account for just over 21% of all tweets in the data set.
Nearly 45% of all tweets were posted between 10 AM and 4 PM.
The number of tweets posted per day generally increased throughout the month (though this is at least partially due to improvements to my code over the month). Monday, January 26th had the most tweets posted (2592).
Local users posted 18042 replies. Of those, 7406 (41.05%) were to other local users.
Most aren’t frequent posters: 293 local users posted 31 times or more this month.

And finally, the top ten users in Edmonton (as of January 31st):

By # of followers: Pat_Lorna, mastermaq, LesM, cleversimon, melanienathan, saralees, babyrumps, revtrev, MobileMommy, jenandtonica
By # of friends: Pat_Lorna, LesM, mastermaq, saralees, babyrumps, mindfullof, revtrev, MobileMommy, halosecretarial, edmontontweetup
By # of statuses: mastermaq, hfx_ben, angelzilla, jenandtonica, ink_slinger, justNICKI, fcedmonton, britl, twot, bgrier

In the future, I hope to look at trending topics for the month to get a better idea of just what Edmontonians were talking about. Numbers are one thing, content is quite another.

I’m surprised to see that 851 local users updated this month (all but 110 updated more than once). I would have guessed there were about that many local users in total, not active! So that’s good. It’ll be interesting to see how that number grows over the next few months.

I hope you enjoyed this quick, completely unscientific look at the Edmonton Twittersphere! If you have any suggestions on other things I could include in future posts (or potentially as an update to this one) please let me know.

See you at Edmonton Twestival on February 12th!

Twitter and the future of journalism

By Mack D. Male · February 2, 2009 at 11:05pm

On Friday, David Schlesinger from Reuters posted an entry to his blog discussing Twitter and the future of journalism. David had been tweeting from the World Economic Forum, and found that his updates beat the Reuters newswire. No big surprise, but it prompted a bunch of questions:

Is it journalism?

Is it dangerous?

Is it embarrassing that my tweets even beat the Reuters newswire?

Am I destroying Reuters standards by encouraging tweeting or blogging?

David’s answers are: Yes, Potentially, No, and No. I love that someone in the “mainstream” media is able to answer these questions honestly and openly!

His entire post is filled with wonderful quotes, such as:

I have no idea what journalism will look like in five years except that it will be different than it is now. That’s a great thing, I believe.

Fantastic outlook on things, in my opinion. Twitter is changing journalism and news media for the better. Ignore it at your own peril. I can’t say it any better than David himself:

If I don’t beat the Reuters wire with a live tweet because I deliberately hold back, someone else will. If I don’t beat the Reuters wire because I’m slow or inattentive, someone else will.

There’s something to be said for holding back, providing context, and thoughtfully articulating a story or idea. But when you’re talking about breaking and spreading the news, speed is the name of the game, and nothing at the moment does it faster or more effectively than Twitter.

Another way to look at it is chunking. Give me bite-sized chunks as the news happens, and when I have time later, I’ll explore the topic in more detail. Twitter is perfect for chunking news.

Take a couple minutes and read the entire post. I’m looking forward to reading it again in a year – I suspect it won’t seem so unique and refreshing by then!

Notes for 2/1/2009

By Mack D. Male · February 1, 2009 at 11:11pm

Here are my weekly notes:

Didn’t watch all of the Super Bowl today, but caught most of the second half. Quite entertaining! Now I’ll have to go watch all the commercials online. One thing I already watched was the Transformers 2 teaser! It’s gonna rock!
Also: It should be called Handegg.
On Friday, BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) announced a 20-year deal with Wi-Fi Rail Inc., to outfit 104 miles of track and 43 stations with wireless Internet access by 2011. It won’t be free to use, but it’s not too expensive – yearly access will cost $300 when fully complete.
I think this is cool: TripIt has an API! Now I want a WordPress widget.
CoverItLive is a service that helps you live-blog an event. On Wednesday, it was announced that they raised $1.2 million. One to keep an eye on, I think.
Long Zheng posted about a potential security issue with the way Microsoft has implemented UAC in Windows 7. I agree with Long, I think it’s something they should change, even if it is by design as they claim.
On Tuesday, Liz at Three Bright Stars gave me a “Lemonade Award” for my post about Free WiFi. Thanks Liz, much appreciated!
I’ve run into rate-limiting issues with Twitter’s API this weekend. I requested whitelisting on Tuesday, but still haven’t heard back. Kind of annoying.