Initially Tim Nuthall and I were going to work on a project together but our schedules were both full and we could not seem to meet. So I began working on a project that I could do myself.

While I wanted something to spread, more importantly I wanted something that mattered to spread. I am naturally skilled at grabbing people’s attention but usually I do this through inane comments or pointless statements that while(sometimes) humorous, rarely hold any real significance. I settled on a niche community I have been slowly becoming a part of over the past few months. The Arduino Development Community. With less than fifty-thousand people worldwide it is truly a niche on the internet. After thinking about it for a while I realized that starting a movement of any type requires that initial small group of hardcore believers. These initial nodes in a social network either already are or strive to become hubs themselves and will put you closer to the critical threshold at a much faster and cheaper rate than even the most expensive advertising campaign.

For a little background knowledge the Arduino is a microcontroller, meaning it can be hooked up to motors, servos and sensors etc. Pictured to the right it is one of the first fully Open Source manufactured products on the market. While I wouldn’t call it a “Consumer” electronic device, it is sold online to a small market of people in the do-it-yourself community by a number of manufacturers. There is a dedicated community built around the device and the other Arduino-compatible devices on the market.

A single location for Arduino Developers to discuss projects and work together means that they won’t have to log into each blog service to post their comment and tools better suited to collaboration can be implemented. Lowering the effort needed to partake in a project may promote not only the site as a quality tool but make the Arduino a more centralized platform for prototype creation. Being as one of the weaknesses of many Open Source software/projects is the lack of a central location to build a community off from.

I began to query the need for such a community online, while there is an official forum for this device and a search for “Arduino projects” will being up hundreds of blog posts I realized there was no real site where one could go to see just Arduino projects and check out other tinkerers and inventors. So I set out to build a network like this. I searched for a service that hosted files as that would be needed for a site like this as well as being able to post projects and the like. The best I found was Collectivex.com. After setting it up I had to find a way to draw people in.

Considering I only had very weak ties as a new and completely unknown Arduino Developer my options were/are limited. The very best I could come up with was posting in forums which I knew would be perceived as spam, an action that most communities but especially hard core users look down upon. So I decided to map out the social network of the established hubs and see where to start from there.

A quick analysis of the social network of tinkerers and do-it-yourself sites showed me that several sites acted as gate-keepers. If you posted a few popular projects there you earned a perhaps unquantifiable kind of credence in the community. Similar to our Attention Economy game there are members who routinely get their projects posted and you see their personal blogs just light up with activity, the rest of us are just riding their coattails with our comments.

This realization is a practical example of the Power Law, pictured to the left. Whereby there are many nodes with few links(left of the chart) and only a few nodes with many links(to the right of the chart)

There was only one way I could come up with to obtain not just “hits” but “activity” on the social network. I don’t want people clicking then moving on. In my research online I discovered an article on the “Power Law of Participation” (Mayfield, 2006) which had some excellent quotes, “Social software brings groups together to discover and create value. The problem is, users only have so much time for social software. The vast majority of users will not have a high level of engagement with a given group, and most tend to be free riders upon community value.”

Considering the group of people I was reaching, techies who spend their time tinkering with inventions on a daily basis, the willingness to engage in the community is much higher. Yet even with this knowledge I now understand that you can’t just put up a site and hope people will flock to it based on its usefulness or where you posted the link.

I had to cause them to think “hey this could be useful, I think that I would like to join and participate.” Considering what I’ve learned about social networks I wanted to overcome the standard high-click rate but low participation levels and the best way to do this was to not ask people to join but rather show them the site in action with my project itself and let them choose to join themselves. Otherwise it would become another failed social network or obtain a reputation of spamming forums for members.

With limited funds to obtain the proper parts and equipment I built the best example of a liquor dispenser design I’d been working on for several months I could with the parts I had available, the end result was this duct taped monstrosity.

A simple liquid pump powered by a small servo to pump it. This is prototype number one. Sadly the motor I had was not strong enough and even though I ordered a new one with time to spare, about two weeks later with no package I called the company and they were on backorder. This pushed me too close to the end of the semester for the project to succeed, as the gatekeepers do not generally accept utterly nonfunctioning designs.

The idea however was to create a barely functional prototype on purpose. With a carefully crafted set of instructions and blog posts on the device, the idea that “here’s my idea, but I’d like the advice from more experienced users” could be conveyed. Playing on their egos slightly I was hoping to lure them into signing up on the site and “helping” me, while at the same time realizing the usefulness of such an internet service and not exactly acknowledging that I had started the site and was attempting to gain their support for it.

I realize now that perhaps this was too ambitious of a project to undertake with a lack of real funds to make it legitimate as just informing people of the networking site would not be sufficient for a group that disdains any form of spam or advertising. That said I don’t regret taking this route as I wanted a network which had real significance.

While I have summed up why it failed over the semester I am going to continue the project on my own and attempt to “do it right” using the knowledge I’ve gathered so far.

This is how I plan to begin growing this into a legitimate, useful social networking utility.

1. Find a professional, open source social networking script and open up a real website
   1. Why? The more I get to know the Open Source community the more I realize it has to be independent to really be adopted by them and most likely it has to be powered by Open Source software.

1. Complete a functional model of the liquor dispenser.
   1. These factors may reduce the threshold to participation.
   2. Make the liquor dispenser the first project on the site.
      1. Show the site in action to show the usefulness of it.
      2. Ask people who stop in to read the project details to join and help me develop it.
         1. Playing on the desire for developers to share knowledge and teach new members of the DIY community will entice them to join and lend a hand. Once they join they may find the site works for their projects as well.
         2. Send a release to the major hubs online.
            1. Hackaday.com
            2. Makezine(post full project with link back)
            3. Digg.com
            4. Reddit.com
            5. Various other blogs
            6. It’s one thing to create another social network but if you’re the first to create a tool for a particular group in mind much more attention can be garnered in the real attention economy.

While I realize this is all moves I should have made for the project itself, I also realize that it is difficult to begin something of this level with no starting funds. I estimate it is going to cost me $75-100 to obtain hosting and the proper software/themes etc to create a presentable page. Also the time required to tweak the software to my needs will probably range beyond 15-20 hours of solid work if I’m lucky.

Essentially this is a visual representation of what the ideal situation would be. With me in the corner I represent a relatively unconnected node. I carry no weight in the blogosphere and my ability to attract attention to any project is severely limited unless I attach myself to one of the main hubs. It is hoped that with a functional prototype I would have my project posted on roughly the same week on the main hacker blogs. Because of the novelty and relative simplicity of the project itself it is my hope the liquor dispenser would attract a large amount of attention as it has a low threshold of effort to participate.

Based on what I’ve learned in the class I’ve realized that the network system we are looking at here is a Scale Free Network, pictured to the left.

This type of network essentially means that in order for any idea/illness/etc to spread with any efficiency it has to pass through one or more hubs. Preferably the more hubs, the faster the threshold point can be reached.

My hope is that that combining several factors will create an atmosphere which will pull users in who use the same blogs I do to keep track of Arduino projects and move them from the periphery of readership upwards into collaborating and developing projects as a group. The chart accompanying the Power Law of Participation article highlights the problem with participation.

This chart is a great example of one of the problems with participation online. As long as it’s easy you will get many clicks but the more effort a user has to put forth, the fewer and fewer users participate.

Over the summer with the lack of classes and working full time I will use my extra time and financial resources to continue to pursue this project. While it failed due to inexperience on my part for setting up effective websites and being unable to complete the “lure” to hook the masses I’m hoping to overcome these issues and produce an actually effective tool for a small community of developers.

Works Cited

Mayfield, R. (2006, 4 26). Ross Mayfield’s Weblog. Retrieved 4 2009, from http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2006/04/power_law_of_pa.html

I don’t have a name for it yet but essentially it is an automated liquor dispenser, otherwise referred to as a Bar Monkey elsewhere online. The end goal is to be able to mix 8 different liquors/mixers in an automated fashion.

My intention is to by the end of the spring 2009 semester have a device capable of mixing a Long Island Iced Tea(mmmm) in less than 5 seconds with the press of a button.

After literally months of casual research I’ve evaluated every other Bar Monkey I could find.

One of the simpler models I saw is the Barduino powered by the Arduino microcontroller. Using just 2 windshield washer pumps it’s able to mix up a screwdriver on command. The Arduino is also how I plan to control the components in my model.

RIT provided a very nice example of automated liquor dispensing and I believe they take the cake when it comes to the complexity of the project. Their mixer even keeps track of how much of which mixers are left in the system and has an extensive library of drinks you can mix based on what is left in the system.

Barmonkey.net is an excellent rundown of about 5 models of automated drink mixers and v5.0 happens to be my favorite overall design. It is the right mixture of interface, functionality and features. These guys did a great job.

Last night I placed the order for one of these beautiful little devices and am awaiting its arrival.  After it arrives and I get a chance to examine it I will begin constructing a small enclosure for the project out of plexiglass and evaluating the type of servos to order.  I’ll throw up a sketch of my design when I get home tonight.

Thanks for reading!

What we’ve got here is probably a technology with more potential for changing how we interact with computers more than any other innovation since the mouse. Yet all we have seen so far is high-end and fairly useless applications for the average consumer. Such as the Microsoft Surface. While it’s a great idea none of us are going to be shelling out about $10,000 anytime soon. The absurdity of this is captured almost perfectly in a Youtube Parody video.

What bothers me is the limited scope of potential uses for this kind of technology that the industry seems to acknowledge as well as the overall sluggish adoption. Technology has been developed in the that allows for inexpensive Multi-Touch table design. Personally I was able to make an extremely simplistic multi-touch panel(it didn’t display video but the computer reacted to my touch) by using a picture frame, cardboard box and an old web camera. What I began to wonder was why haven’t we seen the practical adoption of Multi-Touch tables?

For the most part every video I’ve posted here has used the photo album as an example of this technology’s usefulness, which is my biggest point of contention right now. There is so much more that could be done with multi-touch screens and software. It’s been about 3 years since we saw the emergence of practical multi-touch interfaces and there has been next to zero commercial interest. I personally believe part of the reason is consumers do not know what is possible and therefore there is no demand in the market.

What I’d like to see is developers look for practical applications of multi-touch hardware and software. Below I have several concepts I’d love to see employed or advanced in the multi-touch arena.

• Custom pseudo-keyboards/interfaces
  • Some of you may have seen the Optimus Maximus, the keyboard where every key is a small color screen. Right now priced around $1600. This type of technology could be easily simulated by multi-touch technology. Even having a physical keyboard frame similar to the nearly flat Mac keyboards but made of clear plastic that you set on the table surface the keyboard itself could be projected through the clear plastic for tactile sensation of a keyboard but retaining the novelty of the Optimus Maximus.
  • The creation of other interfaces using Optical Recognition Markers allowing users to place physical objects on the tables and have them interact with the computer through the objects. Ideally we would see something like this ReacTable game that was created. I believe this is by far one of the most practical application we’ve seen to date.

• Education
  • Collaborative education platforms. A commercial multi-touch surface has already found its way into elementary schools today! Now if we could build a system like this with open source standards, education and computer science students could collaborate together on new innovative software for these systems. It’s a win/win situation.

• Home and Business Applications
  • Dining room multi-touch table. Imagine coming down to dinner with your family and having what appears to be a slightly chunky kitchen table light up as you sit down. Every seat at the table has it’s own taskbar oriented to their position so all the windows are right-side-up. If Dad wants to share a news article with Mom he just “flicks” it across the table to her.
  • The same table could be used later that evening for a game of Clue, Risk or any other game that has been digitized. The use of Optical Recognition Markers could allow for physical cards and pieces to be used on top of the table and would interact with the game itself. If a group is unfamiliar with the rules of a particular game, the table itself could teach them as they played, allowing you to sample new games more often as the learning curve is reduced.
  • Perhaps a slightly larger model could be used at a corporate meeting. Users would have all their documents easily accessible digitally and could just drag and drop the document in question onto icons representing everyone at the table. Just fly in from Cincinnati and only have a hardcopy? Laying it on a table such as this would allow the table to “scan” the document in only a few seconds allowing you to pass it alone to everyone. Schedules could be examined as a group, tasks could be set up and assigned right there, updating everyones personal calenders with new deadlines, perhaps even including the audio from the meeting while the task was being drawn up.

Really there is so much that could be done with this type of innovation. I don’t see why we are dead set on only developing photo applications and smokey widgets. If operating systems could be patched or software could be released to handle multi-touch hardware input and if a firm would work on an inexpensive hardware multi-touch screen like the DIY models that are strewn about youtube we’d see the number of practical multi-touch applications explode. Just picture a beer pong table that can play video and keep score while you play the game. Ah, now you’re interest! There’s a useful/enjoyable application of this technology for almost everyone. We just need a few good minds to stop playing with their photo albums and get to it….

Before I begin listing sources for media I would like to share with readers one of the biggest issues in 21st century media. Digital Rights Management.

“Digital rights management (DRM) is a generic term that refers to access control technologies used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, and copyright holders to limit usage of digital media or devices.” -Wikipedia

What this essentially means to the average person is that if you buy a DRM-Locked song or movie, the company who sold it to you decides what devices you play it on or how long you can play it for. Some forms of DRM force consumers to periodically log online for their device to “check in” with the music store to make sure you still have the rights to play those files. If you don’t, the files may be deleted.

It is analogous to say purchasing a Ford vehicle and discovering you can only use Chevron gas in it.

Some have voiced concern over what this means when a company changes it’s direction or policy and switches off the servers your computer or device checks in with. Such as Google did with their “download to own/rent” program in 2007. I lost about $15 in television shows I legally had purchased. To be fair Google did offer limited refunds in the form of credits to the Google Checkout program but this is one of the downfalls of DRM that will have to be dealt with if companies continue to employ it.

XKCD.com Explaination of DRM.

The online webcomic xkcd known mostly for it’s geek-culture humor has on occasion expressed a serious opinion on legal or business issues surrounding technology has an excellent description of DRM. (The comic is traditionally laden with sarcasm, they are by no means promoting piracy, simply pointing out the holes in DRM policy through sarcasm)

Personally I believe the biggest risk to DRM media collections is the failure or the legal entanglement of the company that verifies the media you own is legitimate. It would only take a court order in a suit between a record label or movie studio and a media distributor to deactivate any copy of a given song, album or movie that consumers have legally purchased until the dispute is resolved.

The reason I bring this issue up to my peers is when we purchase music or movies while we could have obtained them for free we should have the same right to our newly obtained property as if we bought it on CD or DVD.

As there is no laws to prevent music labels and movie studios from employing DRM there are two other recourses to take. Either stop buying music from any label or studio that supports DRM(to be discussed momentarily) or purchase the DRM-Free copies of your music from iTunes or Amazon, the two biggest sellers of optional DRM-Free files.

Now for the fun part of this article. Below you will find a list of online sources for free or cheaper music, movies or TV shows. All 100% legal.

Free Movies and Television

Hulu.com

Hulu is one of my personal favorite websites. Up-to-date with many current television shows and with limited commercial interruptions Hulu has one of the best full length TV collections on the internet. There are many older shows that are hard to find on DVD or in cable syndication. Their movie collection on the other hand is not nearly as extensive but you can still usually find some very decent films on there. New content is added daily.

TV.com

TV.com while hosting its own television and movies also aggregates Hulu content, allowing you access to the Hulu repository of video as well as TV.coms own selection. It was voted one of the top 10 websites that will matter in 2009. In coming months you can expect this site to expand its offerings a great deal.

Joost.com

Joost is another excellent source for online video that does not put you at risk for finding yourself at the receiving end of a copyright infringement lawsuit. While many of the films seem to be duplicated between Hulu and Joost, there are some television shows that are exclusive to Joost.

Free Music

Spiral Frog

Spiral Frog seems to be the top contender in the free-legal-music download arena, though plagued by problems with downloading early on and limitations on what devices can play the files(iPods and Zunes are out of luck) if you’re lucky you can download many of the top 40 songs and popular artists.

Ruckus

Ruckus has been reviewed many times online. It offers free ad-supported music to any student with a valid .edu email address. As with Spiral Frog Ruckus has a limited selection of Mp3 players the files work with but if you are just interested in streaming music to your computer this is an excellent choice.

Paid Music and Video Options

Netflix

Everyone knows of Netflix for delivering DVDs to your door via postal service but a lesser known feature is the ability to watch over 12,000 movies and television shows off from their website starting with their $8.99 plan. This offer became even more appealing as Netflix announced last November that their content could be streamed through any Xbox360 with an active internet connection. Meaning you can watch any of those 12,000 movies and shows on your television through your Xbox360.

eMusic

eMusic is to iTunes what the different but oddly “cool” kid in highschool was. With music offered as .Mp3 files it will play on any computer or music player. The downside is that currently the music has been limited to independent labels and artists. Starting at $9.99 a month for 40 songs the actual cost is very reasonable. With the recent news that major retailers of music are dropping DRM on music from the major labels we may see eMusic finally able to ink deals with the larger music industry players, effectively putting it on a level playing field with iTunes.

As new and interesting sources come to my attention I will be posting them via my blog at http://lifetwopointoh.wordpress.com

Some of you may know what electronic paper is but for those of you who don’t here’s the lowdown. Imagine having a computer screen as thin as paper itself that can be folded, rolled up or treated as any regular sheet of printer paper. The only exception being it could display changing text or video, ala Harry Potters Daily Prophet. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? Well the primitive version of this technology is already on the market today!

Electronic-Readers such as the Sony Reader or Amazons’ Kindle display books, newspapers, blogs and other electronic documents on a screen that resembles paper almost perfectly, using a patented technology called e-ink. This past year numerous other vendors have also introduced a much wider variety of e-readers to the market with a variety of other e-ink type technologies. 2009 promises to be “The year of the e-book” as a much larger variety of these devices are slated for release with much lower prices including the first full color e-readers.

Why is this so important? Why does it interest me so much? I believe this might be the biggest technological advance for the print medium since movable type. The ability to carry around 30-50 books in a device weighing less than a pound is such a leap forward and holds so many promises for it’s use.

After two years of carefully watching the development of the technology I was confident within the decade we’d see books that looked and felt like traditional books but the text and pictures could be “reloaded” to be any book or paged document you wished it to become. Then Esquire magazine released a special edition displaying an electronic ink cover. Though primitive and in my opinion mildly tacky it was the first periodical to implement the technology. Now I’ve had to revise my prediction from ten years to perhaps no more than five before we see the above mentioned technology. You can see a copy of the E-ink Esquire issue in the window of The Oswegonian offices in the Campus Center.

The possibilities are almost endless. Imagine being able to carry one textbook around with you and “load” each book you need for every class once you sit down in that class. With the addition of touchscreen for every page and the ability to play video on the paper you could create an “Active-Textbook” in which are audio lectures, video clips and interactive “widgets” similar to online flash games and such all built into the book itself.

This development also makes for the possibility of less expensive textbooks. If you merely download the book files to book-reading device there is no printing or shipping to add to the price of the book. The environmental benefits of one book capable of being any book or newspaper or magazine I would imagine will add up quickly over the life of the device.

All things considered the future of Electronic Paper is an exciting one and I am looking forward to seeing future advances in this area as they develop. In the next article I will be showing you places to get free or almost free movies/music/media in general in a completely legal and ethical way that won’t get you in trouble with the dreaded RIAA.

For the most part what held us back was simple logistics of project management. For example while developing a business plan in a management course last semester we had six people with six jump drives and six email accounts shooting documents and updated versions of said documents back and forth day and night. Then there were communication issues when someone couldn’t make a meeting or we changed the time or location of it. If one person with a designated task didn’t show up an entire portion of the project had to be placed on hold. I’m pretty confident everyone reading this has experienced much of, if not all of these issues when working in groups.

A few weeks into the project I got tired of these and other impending problems and went searching for a solution. I came up with Central Desktop. A form of corporate “Intranet” which allows simple but tedious tasks to be accomplished in a more efficient manner by using a simple web-based format.

This is one of numerous project management sites popping up on the net today. Sites like Central Desktop, Google Docs, BaseCamp or Wiggio(my personal favorite) allow users to share a calender, files and links with each other over the internet through an easily accessed but secure website.

While in retrospect the complexity of Central Desktop was perhaps a degree or two higher than what we needed and that did cause mild confusion, the concept behind the site was solid and I liked it.

This semester I am a teachers assistant for the same management course I discovered Central Desktop in. Several weeks before the semester started I decided to do a little research on alternatives to Central Desktop. I was seeking something slightly less complicated and just smidgen on the free side.

Below is a short list of the most useful sites I found. If you know of another similar tool please share it with us in the comments!

• Google Docs
  • Google Documents is probably the simplest on the list. A short video on their homepage sums up the project. If all you need is a place for your group(or even yourself) to create/edit/store documents this is an excellent choice. I personally use it while on a campus computer so I can access the files when I’m on my own system later. Databases, spreadsheets, word documents and powerpoint files can be created, shared and manipulated by anyone with a google account.

• BaseCamp
  • BaseCamp appears to be geared more towards professionals and the free version does not include the ability to store files but if you only require task tracking, a central calender and the use of a whiteboard-like feature this should do the job quite nicely.
• Wiggio
  • Wiggio is currently being used by members of the management course I am a TA for and so far the results have been promising. While being able to store files in one location, share a calender and leave comments for each other on the group page it also has a few features above and beyond all free alternatives I have found as of today.
    • The ability to set up a chat room or conference call meeting, complete with chat room archiving for easy reference later.
    • You can send out a text to any one individual or to all members of the group through the site, say if you’re running late to a meeting or have other urgent news for the group.

After emailing the staff about my experiences I learned that the next few months they are making some exciting new additions. The current plans are as follows:

• Folders
  • With folders you can organize a large number of files easier.
• Calender synching with a variety of planners including Google Calender, Outlook Etc.
  • Ever have to sit down and find a time to meet? This will import your electronic schedule and help a group sort out the best times to meet.
• Video Conferencing
  • Have a commuter in your group or is someone just unable to make it to a meeting? They can still take part in the meeting by using a mic and webcamera.
• Drag and Drop File Handling
  • If you have numerous files to upload you will be able just to drag them from wherever they exist on your computer into a folder on Wiggio and you’re done.

The reason I prefer Wiggio and recommend it over the other options is the entire site was designed with students in mind, taking advantage of how our generation communicates and organizes information. Wiggio strikes a balance between complicated features like text alerts and a simple layout which unlike the new Facebook does not require a users manual to understand. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to make their projects run smoother.

Adopting technologies like these is going to allow our generation shift its energy from the tedious logistical micromanaging and focus on higher quality end results while reducing the stress involved.

My name is Sam Kiesinger.  I am a Business Administration student attending SUNY at Oswego in the middle of nowhere NYS.  My interests include everything from graphic design, environmental science and interjecting myself into random strangers conversations just to gauge the level of discomfort I cause.

I decided to finally start a serious blog that addresses one of my favorite topics, technology.  A few areas of extreme interest for me are the novel applications of existing technologies in our daily lives and the use of technology in education.

Basically I will be filling this blog with links of interest and my comments on the topics they discuss.

So yes, this is the awkward ending to an awkward introductory post…