Ignite NYC on 11/16: Gov 2.0, Body Hacks, and Hi-Tech Craft

The Web 2.0 Expo starts tomorrow, 11/16, in NYC. We're kicking off the conference with an Ignite featuring 14 great speakers. The event is at the New World Stages. I'll be co-hosting with Ignite NYC organizer Tikva Morowati.

As always each speaker gets just five minutes on stage. Their presentation will each be just 20 slides that each auto-advance every 15 seconds. The Speakers include:

* Alison Lewis, http://www.iheartswitch.com/ (high tech craft)
* Brady Forrest, http://radar.oreilly.com/brady/ (Burning Man as tech incubator)
* Casey Pugh, http://www.starwarsuncut.com/
* Hilary Mason, http://www.hilarymason.com
* Jennifer Pahlka, http://www.codeforamerica.org/ (Gov 2.0)
* Jonathan Brill, http://Productlust.com, http://www.multitouchmaven.com
* Judy Shapiro, http://trenchwars.wordpress.com
* Kevin Marks, http://epeus.blogspot.com/
* Leesean Hepnova, http://www.leesean.net
* Lauren Schmidt, http://www.mit.edu/~lschmidt
* Molly Wright Steenson, http://www.girlwonder.com
* Nora Abousteit, http://www.burdastyle.com
* Patrick Davidson, http://Whereikeepmythingsontheinternet.com
* Quinn Norton, http://quinnnorton.com/ (body hacks)
* Ray Beckerman, http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com
* Tony Haille, http://tonyhaile.com

Here is a rough schedule for how the night will go:

7:00 pm - Doors Open for Conference & Expo Plus Pass holders
7:30 pm - Doors Open for Expo Plus Pass holders
7:45 pm - Doors Open for general public attendees (pending capacity)
8:00- 8:15 - Mobile Music Competition
8:15- 9:45PM - Ignite Talks
10PM -- Bar closes

We are going to start the evening off with an Ignite Mobile Music Competition, giving you a chance to win a FREE pass to Web 2.0! We will provide the mini cord, you provide the mobile instrument. Recommended apps include Sonifi, Drumbanger, and Bloom. Please fill out this entry form if you'd like to show off your mobile music making skills!

We will also randomly choose one lucky Twitter user who tweets using http://bit.ly/IgniteWeb20 to win a FREE pass to Web 2.0 Expo NY. You must show up at Ignite to win!

RSVP on Facebook

Ignite Show: Andrew Hyde on The Posting Economy

Andrew Hyde runs Ignite Boulder and works for Techstars. In this week's episode he shares his thoughts at Ignite ATL about the rapid economic shifts that can be caused by user-generated content. Andrew calls this the Posting Economy.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

Navigating the Future: Take Me to Bob

Google has just announced a free turn-by-turn navigation app for Android 2.0 in the US (Radar post). Google Maps Navigation relies on Google's own mapping for routing you. As with many navigation devices you can search Business Listings. However, they are also including data not traditionally available to navigators. In the promo video Google demonstrates that you can ask to be taken to "The King Tut exhibit". GMN will determine that it's in Golden Gate Park and route you. This is "because it is connected to the internet it is using all of the latest information on the internet."

This is huge. To be able to request implicit destinations based off of realtime information is something that has never been available before. What new queries will be available to us because of this? Google has a lot of data. How much of it can be assigned a location? Lots. There are millions of KML files out on the internet. Here are some of the useful queries

"Take me to Bob Smith" - If Bob is your friend on Latitude then Google Maps Navigation can take you to him. If Bob moves then GMN could even re-route you. I wonder if they will enable the chase scenario.

"Drop me off in time for the #48 bus" - Google knows the public transit schedule. So not only can it drop you off at the nearest stop, it could drop you off at the stop that will ensure the shortest multi-modal trip.

"Show me homes under 500K in Capitol Hill" - Via Google Base, Google has real estate information (it has had neighborhood data for quite sometime).

"Take me to my next appointment" - If you use Google Calendar and you accurately fill out the location field then this is a snap.

"Take me to the nearest Winter Coat Sale" - Using Adsense for Google Maps, GMN can easily lead you to local sales.

"Take me to the bar my friends go to the most" - Using Social Graph API and the new, experimental Social Search to tap into Foursquare, GMN can determine where you friends go, aggregate their destinations and lead you to their favorite watering hole.

"Take me to the largest event" - Using a combination of Latitude and its new access to the Twitter Firehose (which will soon include location - Radar post), Google can determine where people are.

"Take me on a tour of the top 10 historical sites here" - Using Wikipedia Google can determine what the sites are and where you should be taken. Alternately, Google could take you on user-generated tour.

"Take me to the most picturesque place near here" - Several years ago Google bought Panoramio, a location-based photo site. Google can determine which place nearby has had the most photos of it taken.

"Take me on a tour of the site from Around the World in 80 Days" - Google already geoparses many of the books it scans (just see this map). This routing is quite possible.

"Take me to the EPA's protected sites" - Government data is becoming more available. This is just one possible governmental query. You could also ask to go on a tour of TARP fund recipients or Democratic donors.

Obviously not all of them will be enabled, but I bet that within a year some of them will be. What other scenarios can or should they implement?

Online Where 2.0: iPhone Sensors for Developers

Online Conference Happening December 3, 2009

It's difficult to make it to every conference and yet there are always new developments, technologies and issues during the off times. So we are trying something new. a series of Online Conferences that will happen through out the year. We just had a successful one on eBooks for our Tools of Change conference and now we are launching one for Where 2.0. On December 3rd please join me, Brian Jepson and 5 other speakers as we discuss and explore iPhone sensors at the first ever Online Where 2.0 on December 3rd.

Brian and I will introduce the conference and then turn the microphone over to:
Alasdair Allan, the author of our upcoming Learning iPhone Programming book - The iPhone, like a lot of high-end smart phones these days, comes with a number of sensors: camera, accelerometer, GPS, proximity, magnetometer (digital compass). The first half of this session will cover the parameters and functions for each sensor. The second half will be a live coding of an accelerometer-based app.

Alasdair will be followed by four app developers who will each focus on the sensors they used in their respective apps. They will cover their tools, their process and their mistakes.
Andreas Alfare of Mobilizy - Wikitude (iTunes link) is an augmented reality app that allows you to layer virtual content over a real world view. Andreas will explain how they take advantage of the compass and camera in their app.

Ian Peters-Campbell of Loopt -Loopt is a well-know and very popular location-based social networking app. Ian will discuss their use of the GPS, how they compensate for location flakiness and Mapkit.

Martin Roth of RJDJ - RJDJ (iTunes link) uses microphone to create a soundscape. Martin will cover their use of the audio input and onboard audio processing.

Leon Palm of MagicSolver - SudokuMagic (iTunes link)is a Sudoku app that uses the camera to import paper sudoku boards. Leon will discuss the assumptions, tools, and trade-offs made in their computer vision app.

Each session will be half prepared content and half Q&A time. We will be using to Google Moderator to field questions. The cost is $149 and it will run from 9:00AM -12:45PM PST. All attendees will get 25% off for Where 2.0 2010.

Google's Ed Parsons wonders if the Online Where 2.0 might be the future of conferences. As he says "If you can’t bring the people to a conference, bring the conference to the people…" We're trying something new. Let us know what you think.

Google Shrinks Another Market With Free Turn-By-Turn Navigation

Google has announced a free turn-by-turn navigation system for Android 2.0 phones such as the Droid. Google Maps Navigation is only available in the US right now. Google's release of a navigation is huge, but not unexpected blow to Tomtom (owner of former US mapping data partner Tele Atlas (Radar post)), Nokia (owner of mapping data provider NAVTEQ), Garmin and other personal navigation devices (PNDs). That it is free will fundamentally change the industry (and sell a lot of Android 2.0 phones in the process). Assuming that Google Maps Navigation makes it onto the iPhone and Blackberry platforms it will become a race to the bottom for navigation apps in their respective app stores.

Google Maps Navigation has many impressive features aside from being free. As snipped from the main page:

• Search in plain English (watch video). No need to know the address. You can type a business name or even a kind of a business, just like you would on Google.
• Search by voice (watch video). Speak your destination instead of typing (English only): "Navigate to the de Young Museum in San Francisco".
• Traffic view (watch video). An on-screen indicator glows green, yellow, or red based on the current traffic conditions along your route. A single touch toggles a traffic view which shows the traffic ahead of you.
• Search along route (watch video). Search for any kind of business along your route, or turn on popular layers such as gas stations, restaurants, or parking.
• Satellite view (watch video). View your route overlaid on 3D satellite views with Google's high-resolution aerial imagery.
• Street View (watch video). Visualize turns overlaid on Google's Street View imagery. Navigation automatically switches to Street View as you approach your destination.
• Car dock mode (watch video). For certain devices, placing your phone in a car dock activates a special mode that makes it easy to use your device at arm's length.

The satellite view looks very sexy in this screenshot. Another advantage to this app is that Google is also making use of its business listings and (presumably) its web crawl data. In the video above MIchael is able to get directions to "the museum with the King Tut exhibit".

The use of streetview to show what turns will look like and how to find your final destination is also a real advantage. The app will sometimes know which side of the street your destination is.

This comes shortly after Google announced that it was going to be using its own mapping data in the US. This data has been derived from its own streetview trucks, satellite imagery and, increasingly, its users. Google now owns or has created almost every layer of its geostack in the US (it uses third-party satellite imagery). It's expected that they will roll out their own data across the globe. The question is hat will they do with this data? Will they continue to make it available only by their own services or will they actually release the data publicly for commercial and/or non-commercial use? Regardless of Google's ultimate decision it just became a tough day for all navigation companies out there.

Max For Live: Making Musicians Into Programmers

Ableton's Live is one of the top music creation and performance platforms out there. It is a complete music suite with instruments, sound management and a performance interface. It is used by DJs, bands, and hobbyists. At a cost of several hundred dollars Live is within reach of most tech-savvy musicians. It is one of the must-have tools for almost anyone who is making electronic music these days. One of the reasons it is so popular is that it has a relatively simple user interface that hides complexity from the user and lets them focus on sounding good. If you've ever seen a DJ using software that looked like a multi-color spreadsheet that was probably Ableton.

This fall Ableton is releasing Max For Live, an API of sorts. It's an API that is accessible only through another piece of music software, Max/MSP. Cycling74's Max/MSP is a visual programming environment that can be used for signal processing, audio and, with the Jitter add-on, video. Max is powerful, just as powerful as Ableton, but it doesn't hide it's complexity. Max has hundreds of quirky objects (just check the online database MaxObjects) that can be used to build patches (like the one shown to the left). With a single object you can add quite simply take input from a camera , a Wiimote, an Arduino or an OSC Controller. Like Processing or openFrameworks, Max/MSP is an interactivity platform that is designed to be accessible to artists.

Max For Live is going to introduce a new generation of musicians to (visual) programming. And I don't think that they'll stop at playing around with the Ableton Live controls. They'll build their own hardware (like Moldover's Octomasher or as shown in his controllerism video). They'll learn to use Arduino's to track sensor inputs. A new generation of tools can be created with Max For Live and I think it's safe to predict a lot of Max For Live based installations.

Ableton was founded ten years ago by the current CEO (Gerhard Behles) and CTO (Bernd Roggendorf), whom I met while I was in Berlin with the Geeks on a Plane. They saw that music production was going to move from specialized hardware to be solely done on the computer. They optimized for the 90% scenario and they see Max For Live as their long-tail offering (Personally, I think that their 90% scenario encompasses a huge swath of music needs from creation to production to performance to media management so that 10% is very niche indeed).

Now that their primary product has an API, Ableton is trying to figure out how they will move to the web. As Gerhard the CEO said, "I know that my company must move to the web, but I am an old-guy and need to get a web person to figure out what to do. I need someone who can do it". They are hoping to hire a web genius that can handle that part of the business. In the coming months they'll be adding integration to SoundCloud for easy uploading of samples, the ability to share sets over the web (streaming through Ableton's servers) and to collaborate with other specific individuals online (Ableton has found that most of their users don't really want to collaborate with just anyone. The user Y wants user X's specific bass line. So share publicly, collaborate privately).

Unfortunately, there aren't many resources for learning Max or Live. They both include tutorials, but I can tell you from firsthand experience that it's a lot take in on your own. Luckily, there are a lot of enthusiast created video tutorials out there. If you're interested in learning more about Max For Live I recommend checking out max4live.info. They've been posting a number of great tutorials/demos like the one posted after the jump.

(continue reading)

Ignite Show: Kathy Sierra on Feeling Better is Better

If you want to be successful with your customers, you need to make them feel succesful. It's all about them achieving awesome. This week, Kathy Sierra explains some of the secrets for creating passionate customers. This is an area that Kathy knows well. She has classes on the topic around the world and her writings have been read by many.

Kathy is the co-creator O'Reilly's Head First series and, as you'll learn in her talk, she loves horses.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. It was filmed at Google I/O 2009 at the Moscone Center.

Subscribe to this podcast series via iTunes. Or, visit the O'Reilly Media area at iTunes to find other podcasts from O'Reilly.

Random Hacks of Kindness: Disaster Relief Codejam

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and the World Bank are getting together to support disaster relief projects. The first Codejam will be Nov 12-14 i the Bay Area. You can sign-up now. The list of proposed projects is online.

What is Random Hacks of Kindness?
It is an initiative that brings together disaster relief experts and software engineers to work on identifying key challenges to disaster relief, and developing solutions to these critical issues. This Codejam is the first of a series of Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) events that will bring the best and brightest together for a "give camp" to solve real world-problems related to Crisis/Disaster Relief.

Objectives:
This event is the first step in building a global community dedicated to solving disaster relief challenges through technology.
At the RHoK Codejam, programmers will partner with subject matter experts to tackle “real world "problems. These challenges have begun to be defined (see preparation), and will continue to be refined during the event.
The software created at this first event will continue to be developed at subsequent RHoK events, and openly shared with the international community. Our hope is that this software will address some of the serious challenges facing the disaster response community, and evolve in response to their needs.

Background:
In May 2009, the first ever Crisis Camp barcamp was held in Washington, DC. During one of the opening sessions an industry panel including representatives from Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! agreed that some matters supersede competitive concerns. We agreed to cooperate to mobilize our developer communities to create interoperable solutions/code that will have real impact in the field. We have partnered with NASA and The World Bank to make this happen.

Organizers:
Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and The World Bank are founding sponsors
NASA-Ames is a co-sponsor

Preparation:
We want our hacks to make an impact. To that end we need the problem definitions as tight as possible before we begin coding on the 12th. The following is a link (see here) to the preliminary project definitions. Please contribute by adding new ideas and/or refining ones that are already there.

Snow Leopard Is Location-Aware

Shortly after installing Snow Leopard I saw the first evidence of the new location services built into the operating system. I got the new version of Clarke, a Fire Eagle updater. After the install a window appeared that asked me if I wanted to share my location with an application. Finally!

So how is Apple doing it? The same they do on the iPhone. Apple is determining your location via Skyhook Wireless' wifi location service. It shares it via Core Location. Coca With Love has a great write-up on how to use the new features along with a sample app Where Is My Mac.

Apple is doing a good job of letting people know what sharing your location means. If you click on the help page (that purple question mark in the dialogue box) you get:

Some applications, such as System Preferences, use information about your current location to provide you with certain services and features. Your location is approximated using data from nearby Wi-Fi networks.
Information about your location is collected in a manner that doesn’t personally identify you. The information is not combined with other information about you, and is used only by the applications you authorize to obtain it. This feature is not available in all areas.
To authorize an application to use your location information, click OK. If you don’t want to authorize the use of location information, click Don’t Allow.

Unfortunately, Snow Leopard dos not give the user the ability to remove access to my location. Once i give an application permission there is no way that I can remove it. This needs to be a system setting. However, it is a step ahead of Windows 7's upcoming location features. At least the user is warned. Once you turn on location in Windows 7 any application can access that information at any time with no warning.

Currently Snow Leopard is only using it to determine your timezone. You can imagine in the future further integration with services like MobileMe (Find My iPhone gets a sibling Find My Mac). In time there will be updates to the Mac line with hardware GPSs. Just as location has become oxygen for iPhone developers (according to Skyhook's research there are over 3,000 location-aware apps in the App Store) it will start to be added to many Mac apps -- I suspect Evernote, Omnifocus and the Twitter client du jour will be among the first to match their iPhone clients.

Get That Vaccine, It's Going to Be a Bad Flu Year

Map: International Co-circulation of 2009 H1N1 and Seasonal Influenza (As of October 9, 2009; posted October 9, 2009, 3:00 PM ET)

All signs point to a bad flu year and it's going to be primarily from H1N1 (swine flu). H1N1 now accounts for over 50% of the fu cases around the world. The CDC map above shows the spread of the virus across the world.

Google Flu Trends tracks flu-related search queries (Radar post). It is also showing a dramatic increase this year for the US (data):

Google just expanded Flu Trends to include 16 countries and 37 languages.

If the maps and trend lines aren't scary enough here's the CDC's update:

Visits to doctors for influenza-like illness (ILI) continued to increase in the United States, and overall, are higher than levels expected for this time of the year.
Total influenza hospitalization rates for laboratory-confirmed influenza are higher than expected for this time of year for adults and children. And for children 5-17 and adults 18-49 years of age, hospitalization rates from April – October 2009 exceed average flu season rates (for October through April).
The proportion of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza (P&I) based on the 122 Cities Report has increased and now exceeds what is normally expected at this time of year. In addition, 19 flu-related pediatric deaths were reported this week; 16 of these deaths were confirmed 2009 H1N1 and 3 were unsubtyped influenza A and likely to be 2009 H1N1. A total of 76 laboratory confirmed 2009 H1N1 pediatric deaths have been reported to CDC since April.
Thirty-seven states are reporting widespread influenza activity at this time. They are: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming. Any reports of widespread influenza activity in September and October are very unusual.
Almost all of the influenza viruses identified so far are 2009 H1N1 influenza A viruses. These viruses remain similar to the virus chosen for the 2009 H1N1 vaccine, and remain susceptible to the antiviral drugs oseltamivir and zanamivir with rare exception.

You can also track the Flu (and many other diseases) at Health Map which uses news feeds, government data and user reports as data inputs. You can observe and report flu outbreaks to Health Map via their iPhone app. Rhiza Labs Flu Tracker has a variety of flu-related visualizations including H1N1 cases by county and cumulative number of cases.

There are two vaccines that are circulating in the US. The "regular" vaccine has already landed. The H1N1 vaccine is available to healthcare workers, but does not seem to be widely available yet (at least not in the Seattle region). For more information on the vaccine check the CDC's info page.

(Hat tip to Ramez Naam for the CDC map)

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