End Of In-Between

Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing has posted a summary of his recent column in Locus Magazine, “Think Like a Dandelion,” in which he discusses the “bio-economics of giving stuff away for free”. Doctorow explains:

Mammals worry about what happens to each and every one of their offspring, but dandelions only care that every crack in every sidewalk has dandelions growing out of it. The former is a good strategy for situations in which reproduction is expensive, but the latter works best when reproduction is practically free — as on the Internet.

He offers two keys to success for creating and distributing content in the digital age:

His points:

1. Your work needs to be easily copied, to anywhere whence it might find its way into the right hands. That means that the nimble text-file, HTML file, and PDF (the preferred triumvirate of formats) should be distributed without formality — no logins, no e-mail address collections, and with a license that allows your fans to reproduce the work on their own in order to share it with more potential fans. Remember, copying is a cost-center — insisting that all copies must be downloaded from your site and only your site is insisting that you — and only you — will bear the cost of making those copies. Sure, having a single, central repository for your works makes it easier to count copies and figure out where they’re going, but remember: dandelions don’t keep track of their seeds…

2. Once your work gets into the right hands, there needs to be an easy way to consummate the relationship. A friend who runs a small press recently wrote to me to ask if I thought he should release his next book as a Creative Commons free download in advance of the publication, in order to drum up some publicity before the book went on sale… I explained that I thought this would be a really bad idea. Internet users have short attention spans. The moment of consummation — the moment when a reader discovers your book online, starts to read it, and thinks, huh, I should buy a copy of this book — is very brief. That’s because “I should buy a copy of this book” is inevitably followed by, “Woah, a youtube of a man putting a lemon in his nose!” and the moment, as they say, is gone.

While we find both points compelling, Doctorow’s overall argument left us a little confused. Doctorow doesn’t explicitly state it, but he seems to be saying that there are two (and only two) discrete ways of distributing content: either completely laissez-faire, in a digital form that can be disseminated like dandelion seeds; or completely controlled, in a non-digital form with no digital analog which could be consumed by capricious web users who would only half-digest the content and forget about it. Doctorow doesn’t offer much recourse for non-digital content creators (specifically publishers), seeming to suggest that the best and only way to distribute one’s creative output to the most number of “right” people is to do it freely, no strings attached. But we wonder what Doctorow’s perspective is on the qualities many people are, and perhaps always will be, willing to pay for - authenticity, quality, experience - things that physical, non-digital content provides. Doctorow asserts that we should all be thinking like dandelions but, isn’t there still a thriving lot of non-digital-content creators that must, and should, still think like mammals?

BoingBoing: Think Like a Dandelion: Advice for Understanding Reproductive Strategies in the Internet Era

Social networking in physical products is an idea that we’re watching; and Schulze & Webb’s Olinda is an interesting example of how it could be implemented in everyday product design. Olinda is a digital radio that displays not only the music the listener is playing, but what his/her friends are listening to, too. Using wifi and Radio Pop, the BBC website that displays ‘now playing’ information, the Olinda registers what the listener’s set of friends are listening to. The site explains:

Each light is a button: you can tune in to listen along with them, discovering new stations via your social network. A friend will always appear at the same light, so you can write or draw on the radio to label it, and the lights are bright so you’ll know a friend has started listening from across the room. Olinda includes a connector on the side to allow for all kinds of extra modules adding functionality to the base radio, and – because the interface is simple – home adaptation too…

[Olinda’s] hardware interface joins the base unit with the friends module. By buying extra modules – or by making their own using the open interface – listeners can adapt their product over time, perhaps adding a remote control or recording.

Modular, open-interface, and social - Olinda is a reflection of the future of product design; we’re excited to see other devices (DVD players, gaming consocontinueles, MP3 players?) continue going in this direction as well.

Olinda (Shulze & Webb)

While we’ve seen tool lending libraries before (the Berkeley one a particularly shining example), we like TechShop for offering more than just the supplies needed for becoming your own handyman. The Menlo Park-based one-stop tool lending center and fabrication shop is membership-based, and for $100/month, its members have access to all the tools in inventory (we’re talking serious tools like hot-wire foam cutters and plasma cutters) that they’ve received training on (classes are $30, taught at TechShop). Members can also pay $30/day for unlimited shop time, sharing the workshop space with other members there for the day or working on longterm projects. A range of advanced classes with tool experts are also on offer for $30/class. The extensive list of equipment means newbies can try their hands at a range of tools without making the hefty investment of purchasing them. According to Cool Tools blogger John Todd, one of the biggest benefits of TechShop is its members: “At any one time, there are a half-dozen people working on fantastic and innovative things, either as hobby projects or as budding startups who have found an inexpensive way to bootstrap themselves into prototyping a better mousetrap.” Several additional locations are scheduled to open up throughout the West Coast - we’re hoping they make their way to NYC soon. We’ve got some soldering we’ve been meaning to do!

[via KK Blog]

Last week, we featured an apparent hack of the digital billboards in LA by an artist. This week, Rob Walker points us to a detailed examination in the Post Gazette of the ways billboard firms are twisting the arms of municipalities to get old billboards converted into digital ones:

Beginning June 1, Texas will allow digital billboards along state highways, even within cities, if municipalities want them. Houston, Dallas and Austin have bans on new billboards, but San Antonio’s city council voted in December to allow 15 digital signs as permanent “experiments,” to the dismay of the San Antonio Conservation Society, Scenic San Antonio, the American Institute of Architects and neighborhood groups.

…In Long Beach, Calif., three neighborhood groups are fighting the construction of six digital billboards along local freeways; each sign would be 40 feet high, with a 30-by-20-foot screen. The Long Beach City Council’s budget oversight committee endorsed the billboards in January, but council will hold hearings on the proposal in a few weeks. The budget committee has good reason to favor the billboards: Their owner would split the revenue with the city, bringing in an estimated $1.5 million to $2 million annually, according to the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

Profit-sharing is just one tactic outdoor advertisers are using to get municipalities to warm to digital signs. They’re also using existing billboards as leverage to reduce their number in exchange for permission to erect digital ones. In San Antonio, twice as much square footage must come down for each digital billboard that goes up.

…”We’re there 24-7,” Clear Channel Outdoor chief executive Paul Meyer told the Washington Post last year. “There’s no mute button, no on-off switch, no changing the station.”

Places: With billboards, cities are facing the digital decision

Right now much of our office is taking a break from generating/aggregating/disseminating ideas and inspiration to play with Muxtape - a new site that allows you to simply and quickly make your own digital mixtape (with its very own URL to share with anyone you want). You can create your 12 song “mixtape” by simply uploading any of your MP3s from you computer to the site, which then puts them in a playlist that you can reorganize and edit as you please. The songs can then be streamed by anyone visiting your muxtape site. Check out ours (ok, mine) to get an idea of how it works.

The end of customer service is upon us, portends TIME in their “What’s Next 2008″ special. With automated systems and self-service kiosks growing in popularity at movie theaters, hotels, airports, and restaurants (see uWink), it should come as no surprise that many businesses and venues are opting to take the service personnel entirely out of the equation -or at least the customer-facing part. As TIME explains:

Companies love self-service for the money it saves, and with consumers finally playing along, the need to interact with human beings is quickly disappearing.

Now that companies have gotten you used to the idea, they are poised to go all the way. The British retailer Tesco has opened dozens of its Fresh & Easy grocery stores in the U.S.: all the lanes are self-checkout. By summer, Alaska Airlines will finish building its “Airport of the Future” in Seattle. The ticket counter has been obliterated; only islands of self-check-in kiosks remain. In Britain, NCR, a company that sells self-service systems, is trying out machines that let customers not only buy merchandise on their own but also return it. In Malaysia, IBM has outfitted a chain of sushi restaurants with ordering screens linked to the kitchen; so much for waitresses. And in Pennsylvania, Heritage Valley Health System will soon join the ranks of hospitals using check-in kiosks for emergency-room visits. Simply touch the image of the human body where it hurts.

…The less cheery way to look at it is that we’re doing the work of employees without being paid. “The company is more productive, but we’re shifting work to consumers. So from a macro perspective, are we more productive or less?” asks Mary Jo Bitner of the Center for Services Leadership at Arizona State University. And by adding all these new tasks to our daily routine, are we overstressing ourselves and reducing our quality of life?

TIME: The End of Customer Service

Last night came a somewhat exciting announcement by YouTube: the online video mecca has released a set of new open APIs along with other features that position itself as “an open, general purpose, video services platform, available for use by just about any third-party website, desktop application, or consumer device.” Website developers can now upload videos directly to YouTube, as well as allow their visitors to rate, comment, and post video responses directly from their site (no need to be redirected to YouTube.com). The expansion of its APIs also means developers can create video-players that are free of YouTube’s stylization and formatting (in essence, allowing them to create their own, personalized YouTubes).

And for a bit of a meta-trip, check out co-founder Steve Chen discussing the new features… in a YouTube video:

We’re excited to have Greg Verdino, Chief Strategy Officer at crayon, mediating our Collaborative Coworking panel at PSFK Conference New York. In a conversation with Robert Kalin of Etsy and Andrew Hoppin of NASA, Greg will offer his insight on the importance of collaboration in both the creative process and in terms of business strategy. We asked Greg to talk a little about himself and where he finds inspiration.

First, who are you and what do you do?

I am Chief Strategy Officer at crayon, a strategic advisory group that has helped clients like American Airlines, Audi, Coca-Cola, Starwood, ooVoo and others make effective use of conversational marketing approaches and social media channels. I blog about marketing, media and technology at http://gregverdino.com and otherwise spend far too much time playing with social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Second Life and pretty much anything that offers me a beta invite. Before crayon, I toiled away at a series of ad agencies, new media start-ups and technology companies. I never made my Dot Bomb millions but at least I’ve lived to tell my war stories.

You’ll be moderating our Collaborative Co-Working panel - can you sum up your views on how collaborative work is changing how companies engage with their customers, staff, partners, and the community?

My views on collaborative work – and the model for the workplace of the future in general – are best illustrated through personal experience. crayon is a remote and virtual company. We’re ‘headquartered’ in Second Life but in the real world we all work out of our homes or wherever else life takes us, using a variety of web-based collaboration tools to connect internally, with clients and with partners. Beyond that, we have built our company around a small core of key individuals and turn to an extensive network of outside specialists, partners and freelancers to bring our work to life. Our philosophy is that we want to work with the best people, regardless of where they’re located, no matter if they’re full time employees, freelancers or other likeminded companies.

Five websites that provide you with inspiration:

Am I supposed to say PSFK? Well, definitely PSFK, but here are five more in no particular order:
www.threebillion.com

www.smithmag.net

www.woostercollective.com

www.trendwatching.com

www.mediastorm.org

Plus anything else that presents a diversity of perspectives and/or is fueled by consumer creativity. And, of course, by next week my list will be entirely different.

Thanks, Greg!

Local Harvest is a website that aggregates information about local farmers, farm markets, food co-ops and restaurants using locally grown and produced items. It connects buyers to small farms and provides a forum for farmers to share tips and techniques.

Thoughts on supporting local from the site:

These large-scale, agribusiness-oriented food systems are bound to fail on the long term, sunk by their own unsustainability. But why wait until we’re forced by circumstance to abandon our destructive patterns of consumption? We can start now by buying locally grown food whenever possible. By doing so you’ll be helping preserve the environment, and you’ll be strengthening your community by investing your food dollar close to home. Only 18 cents of every dollar, when buying at a large supermarket, go to the grower. 82 cents go to various unnecessary middlemen. Cut them out of the picture and buy your food directly from your local farmer.

Local Harvest