Author: Scott

I didn’t take any notes during the Will Wright presentation today. He was just speaking way too fast to get anything down. Plus, I really wanted to pay attention to what he was saying. They moved us out of the convention center over to the Hilton ballroom for this presentation due to the large crowds expected. The keynote was basically split into two pieces, “modern games vs. traditional games vs. other media” and a demo of Spore, Will’s newest game. The games vs. media track was pretty interesting. He basically discussed the evolution of gaming starting with storytelling and movies and the paths that a user takes though them (linear vs. non-linear or quasi-linear). It was an interesting look at how games have evolved and become much more complex. This worked into the demo of Spore, which is stretching the boundaries of traditional gaming. I don’t think I’d do it justice if I explained what Spore is, but there is a great video online of one of the original walk-throughs of the game. This game looks incredible! Seeing it demoed live just reassured that. I’m willing to be that my productivity drops 110% when that game comes out because all I will want to do it play it.

Tuesday, March 13th @ 5:00 pm

Bruce Sterling Visionary In Residence, wired.com

From the introduction, it seems this rant is a staple of SXSW. It was kind of long and rambly (but I guess that’s what a rant is). Most of my notes are pretty raw, but this one in particular is going to be that way, because of the nature of this talk – very stream of consciousness. -SF

Everyone w/ristbands have RFID chips in them – but they’re not connecting them to your profile.

Video on the net big this year – stupid medium! TV, the vast wasteland.
Viacomm sued Google for a $billion

broadband eats everything – net neutrality won’t become an issue. the teens use it too much and have no respect for media.

movanich – soft media site

Realized from google that information wants to be free – tons of arcane material for FREE – google + wikipedia = game over for the 80’s

1st world = global market – capitolism
2nd world = all forms of govt. – national, city, state, local all
3rd world = common space peer production, no communism, not state, not market, just common peer production – starting to have effects on society
4th world = disorder, where they don’t have any of this, abandon the map (more obvious in 10 yrs).

social networks are not fragile – very resiliant
in this 3rd world businesses stop being business – fear of craig’s list – craig is not interested in having a business – he’s gutted revenue streams of traditional newspapers.
scaring newspapers, not a business any more – being turned into social-based peer production

Downsides:
many more rip-off artists
fandom is big – fan art is terrible “not good, never will be good”
wikipedia is good, but you’ll never see a painting by commitee.

mashups – big vogue, they think it is super-duper, but it’s just novelty music “like the monster mash” won’t go anywhere,
we need some aesthetic honesty, just because it’s new doesn’t mean it’s good

digital tools are melting media down – building stuff all out of effects, all frames are touched now. anyone who can afford a machine is in a position to do this construction.
media isn’t converging, just becmoing different flavors out of the same mixing machine.
“when you have a laser, everything looks laserable”

electronic art stinks (deviantart.com) – interesting stuff, nothing great – probably due to ease of production
“folk culture” made for hicks – electronic folk culture

2017 nobody will use the word blog – good for some things and not really that potent of a medium – can’t find a blog that will make you cry, or display fine art
this is our means of expression? such an unstable medium because it changes so quickly, the ground is being eaten out from under it before it gets a chance.

spam – 95% of the net is machine generated robbery and giberish
what happens if you’d turned on the tv and then it tried to rob you?

Reed Hundt (former FCC) – disenchanted, in private practice – involved in auction spectrum.
come up with a way to sell spectrum to police emergency and othe users – take from tv (nobody usses any more)
take those wavelinks and put the net on it and saturate tv areas with broadband net. it would be everywhere! no technical reason that it can’t be done.
group of police, fire, emergency is enough to get it going and get the money from congress
could potentially move USA from #22 to the top

Yoki Benkler – what it takes to build the 3rd world:
1. divy up the work (suck em into it) – granular, modular, integratable
granular- will contribute something of merit (even the little bit has to matter and very few of the big ones)
modular- divide into projects and let people know status
integratable- has to turn into one thing that achieves something in the broader aspects of society – has to be useful!
2. self-selecting – ppl chosing to join you
3. in or out mechnism
4. communication – platform where everyone can talk, but not kill each other
5. humanization
6. trust construction – have to learn how to trust each other
7. norm creation – what’s alowed? what is normal?
8. transparency – can’t hide behind the curtain
9. monitoring – a police force is needed – make sure ppl play by the rules – savage out there
10. peer review – know who’s good at it
11. discipline – hard to do good work – especially when not working for any money
12. fairness – make sure this isn’t just a way to exploit users
13. insitutional sustainabilig – no way to know how long this will last – not been around long enough

computers are platforms for self expressions not well behaved appliances
Benkler started a wiki, but nobody is there.

Tuesday, March 13th @ 3:30 pm

Nancy Scola Forward Together

This came into the limelight w/net neutrality but really started with electronic voting machines

Why the political world needs tech people
Al Qaeda “The Base” – the database kept by the “bad guys”
The average congressman doesn’t know what the term Net neutrality means.
The level of understanding on capital hill needs a comic book called “how the net works”

Deleting online predators act of 2006 – had to block social networking sites from libraries to receive fed funding
410 of congress voted FOR this

“I could not imaging going back to your shareholders saying: ok, we really didn’t do anything, but made our competitor look bad.” -Mark Warner

Next debate: media reform, wireless spectrum, copyright, broadband rollout, fracturing of the global network

Define the debate in a way that makes sense to us – DOPA bill, the myspace bill

Keepers of the Medium: The internet has a posse – candidates trying to race towards the social networks

How technologist can get involved in politics
There are campaigns everywhere! You don’t need to move anywhere to help. Plenty of people running.
If you are a problem solver, you will be very valuable in politics
Be willing to someone who has a political identity.

Why hasn’t this happened yet?
Politics is messy. no boundaries.
Technolibertarianism
Debate will happen w/or w/out us, will we have a voice in that debate?

It’s a very unpredictable environment – money isn’t good.

Groups: EFF, CDT, IPAC, Savetheinternet.com, League of Technical Voters (TX)

Tuesday, March 13th @ 11:30 am

David Merkoski – Frog Design

Average time tv is on 7hrs 40min/day
Average time tv is watched 4hrs/day

TV is broken – Internet is the major form of mass media
TV viewers = massiv passive
Internet viewers = tragicallly equipped

When watching TV you’re overstimulated, radient light beaming through your eyes to hypnotise you. Watching TV = staring at the sun.

People don’t know what the box does (cable/set top box). The TV user interface = 10ft UI

OpenTV – power 70mill tv’s around the world
Electronic Programming Guide (EPG) – problem is these aren’t scalable – linear based on time

Traditional EPG quickly becomming extinct by the non-linears video networks (web 2.0), not tied to time (youtube, joost etc.)
Traditional TV is getting scared that ppl will start to move to the non-linear model

Mondrian (OpenTV)
Up/Down Left/Right takes you to margin menus -> Up is your channel selection Left is your saved shows, down is chapters for what you are watching, Right is recommendations
Hitting the direction a 2nd time will take you to the very detailed version of those areas.

Info key press brings up info card w/information about what watching – save: saves in media library, filter: recommendations
Back takes you back from anywhere into live TV

Recommendations come from “anticipation algorythm” content that you watch, when you watch it, environment, all stored in a profile

ZUI (zoomable user interface)
Top= time, Left=saved, Down=current, Right=recommended – always in the same area
perspective in the interface, 2d movement. You are oriented like a camera or as your eye sees the world

D-pad on just about every piece of consumer electronics – originally from Nintendo Donkey Kong Game (1975)
Nintendo DS still uses this 4-way D-pad.
Nearly all tv remotes have this 4-way controller, the sense of feeling is what this controll is all about.
You don’t need to take your eyes away to control the TV (cognitave interoperability)
GUI contrasted to ZUI – zui is a type of gui,
WIMP (windows icon menu pointer)

TV has no pointing device (no WIMP)
Icons are extremely abstract (long distances, and not clear) on tv

Supermodality
modality=mobile dialog boxes (click ok to continue) or wizards (clippy)
behavior is based on the mode you are in (word types the letter “m”, desktop selects the first icon)
contrast – modelessness, you can do anything at any time and do whatever you want no matter where you are.
ipod has two modes, browse and play
a goal is to remove as many modes as possible

supermodality – no boundaries, football stadium/bsketball stadium going from one sport to the other
wimp=2d mazes, zui=3d mazes
margins are supermodal, choice made determines next state. you can carry metadata w/you from mode to mode

Tuesday, March 13th @ 10:00 am

Mark Boulton Owner, Mark Boulton Design
Richard Rutter Production Dir, Clearleft Ltd

http://webtypography.net/sxsw2007

What is Typography?
1. art of process of setting and arranging types and printing from them
    -this definition is over 100 yrs old and not very accurate
2. the mechanical notation and arrangement of language

Dashes are usually used incorrectly because the keyboard has hyphen (hyphen, en dash, em dash, minus)

ALA Article on using correct typography on the web
Smartypants typography tool

“Always use the best ampersand available for heads and titles”
use css to change the font for and ampersand – worth paying attention to in headers/titles

Vertical Rhythm
The reader can follow the page better when there is a regular rhythm.
Margins and txt/line spacing is an issue. Don’t let the browser define your spacing, you should care enough to control them.
Need to come up with:
txt size (12px)
rhythm (18px) – line height 18px / 12px = 1.5em
heading (18px)
line height 18px / 18px = 1em

Lists
Getting vertical rhythm to a list
use different typeface or weight or position (hang it into the left margin)
easier to read it w/out the indent

Layout
Books: “Elements of typographic style” “Grid systems” “Chicago Manual of Style”
Plan out the grid ahead of time (ems)

Typefaces
You’re not just limited to Arial!
These are good faces, well designed for this media.
i.e. font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif
Verdana are not similar typefaces – arial is smaller than verdana
Think about what fonts are going into the list.
Remove Arial from the list since it doesn’t really fit with the others
font-family: “frutiger”, Univers, Helvetica Neue, arial, helvetica, sans-serif
Helvetica Neue is specifically been redesigned for digital rendering.

The new Vista fonts are great! Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Constantia, Corbel

Why does typography suck?
It’s our fault. We need to pay attention to this because it is important, the details do matter.
Why does a newspaper have great attention to typography in the print version and then crap typography on the web?