The Wiki Reference Dilemma

I am a fan of Wikipedia and I will reference entries in both my postings and in papers that I write. It is not, however, a favorite of many professors who do not recognize its authority given that anyone can provide an entry. Peer review is an important component of legitimizing published information, and more than once I have heard that it does not occur with rigor on the Wikipedia site.

Recently I felt somewhat vindicated in my support of the site as an acceptable reference tool when I visited the Lucy's Legacy exhibit at Seattle's Pacific Seattle Science Center. It focused on Ethiopia's rich cultural heritage and showcased tools art and writing from the five million-year history of the country, sometimes known as the Cradle of Mankind.

More than 100 items in the exhibit illuminate this rich heritage, including fossils, historical manuscripts, paintings, coins, musical instruments, implements of daily use, religious artifacts and more.

Among the exhibits was a wall sized explanation of the language and subject matter of a particular period, looking like something out of a VERY early Starbucks interior. At the bottom of the very scholarly information was listed the sited source, which was Wikipedia. Nice.

Of course now we have to take another step backwards because of anonymous editors who decided that they would list Senators Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd as having passed on. Which they have not.

This is causing a bit of a stir from the founder and users of the site as they discuss new rules by which first time or anonymous users can edit material. Thank you Julie for pointing out this Yahoo article that talks about it. The BBC has their take as well here.

Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, proposed the change, which is being called "Flagged Revisions,. This is causing some heated debate on the users forum, but is showing approval by a 60 to 40 percent margin at this juncture.

I hope it is approved. In the meantime, I guess I will have to keep using the site for quick references but be prepared to back them up with secondary sources until it becomes more acceptable.

Streaming the Inauguration

(Reuters/Getty Images)

It amazes me how far streaming video has come, and yet took so long to get here. Way back when, Free Range Media did a streaming webcast of GM's new roll out of automobiles for their dealers who were located all over the US. Set up and produced out of Raleigh Studios in California, it was one of the first corporate uses in streaming media. Also around that time (1999), Victoria's Secret held an online fashion show that crashed from all the traffic and barely held up better than one of the models outfits.

And today, I watched the inauguration with better clarity and audio than I remember getting on any of my old antenna based TV's. I also recorded it at home on the DVR, but this was LIVE. LIVE and clear and in the moment. Amazing.

I watched it on a co-workers PC that happen to have it up and streaming. But even then I had many choices around the campus.

Here is an email sent out earlier in the day:

Today is indeed history in the making. We will have several locations to view the inauguration today:

Tacoma Room GWP 320 8:00 - 11:00 a.m. (streaming)
Carwein Auditorium 8:00-12:30 (streaming)
William Philip Hall 12:30-5 (streaming)
CP 103 8 a.m.-1:00 p.m. (streaming)
CP 206C 8-11 (cable)
CP 331- 8-11:30 (cable)


Televisions 8:00-5 in the (streaming)
GWP Atrium, (streaming)
WCG Atrium, (streaming)
Mat oUWTpost 8:30-5 (cable)

Later they added even another.

Notice anything about the choices? Three cable outlets for viewing and a whopping seven for streaming video. And that doesn't include the eighth streaming venue added later or the number of desktops tuned in.

No wonder Apple is touting their new device as the Apple TV.

As of 11.45am Eastern, CNN and Facebook released these numbers.

-had served 13.9 million live video streams globally since 6am

-had broken its all time total daily streaming record (from Election Day) of 5.3 million live streams.

Startup.com Still Resonates

It has been about 10 years since the dot.com bubble began its burst. The pop was not audible at that time, but brothers Anthony and Micheal Perkins predicted it (though not as dramatically as it occured) in the 1999 book The Internet Bubble: Inside the Overvalued World of High Tech Stocks. The two analyzed 133 Internet-related businesses and advised investors who held these stocks to sell and as history has noted very few listened. I bought my signed copy at a Silicon Valley diner where V.C.s frequented.

They followed it up with a revisit to their predictions and of those 133 companies, only 10 have gained in value.

It is one thing to read about the eventual dot.com shakeout, and you can get a sense of it with "Burn Rate" by Michael Wolff, but it is quite another to live vicariously through the wild ride up and the steep drop down. You can do so by viewing Startup.com.

Startup.com is a documentary that follows two childhood friends who launch and build a web site solution called govWorks.com. The documentary filmmaker didn't know that those two years: 1999 and 2000, would be so full of drama for a web based company but there you have it. Even though you know what is coming and even see it happening around them, the story is fascinating and compelling as a peek into what it was like during that time. Because you are only shown 1 hour and 33 minutes of footage culled from 400 hours of digital video taken over a two year period, there are some obvious gaps in the storytelling.

But it is worth missing some of the business points, such as the fact the company actually started as Public Data Systems which provided software service to government agencies for tracking and payment. The company's money chase started when it was decided to launch it as a web portal. You still see pieces of history in a narrative form.

Among the many awards it received, it won the Directors Guild of America's Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary award, an award for best documentary from MTV and was a Grand Jury nominee at the Sundance Film Festival.

A Visit from Ron Kornfeld

Serial entrepreneur, technology consultant and all around smart guy Ron Kornfeld visited the Entrepreneurship and Technology class today and gave an excellent overview of business planning for technology companies.

It is no longer required text for the class given the date it came out, but Cracking the New E-conomy, which was released in 2000 is still recommended reading. Written during the heady days of the dot.com boom, it may prove to be even more valuable as we head into some difficult economic times, when creating your own business may be the answer to being employed.

Ron was featured in the book, and is mentioned right off the top of Amazon's review of it.

The college-like text covers everything from software costs and international distribution to backing out of a deal and creating a fiscal-year forecast. Ron Kornfeld, founder of Harmonetrix, a Seattle-based business incubator, wrote a section on creating a business plan.

"The biggest challenge, really, with going from an idea to a real company is eliminating delay, is not having false starts," said Kornfeld, whose former company, Normandy Partners, worked with Internet start-ups....." -- Seattle Times, March 8, 2000

I have been an advocate of an update to the book, and went as far as to put a proposal together for the next iteration. At one point there was discussion of putting it online (after an update) on the WTIA's web site.

Ron did it one better and went over the business plan section with us personally. Since I wouldn't do him justice, I will simply link to the business plan template that he provided to the class.

Thanks Ron.

Additionally, here is a link to a CNN article today that talks about entrepreneurs like Dean Kamen, and mentions their value in the current economic climate.

TVW Goes on the (Capital) Record

What cable-only network can be seen in 99% of the cable households in Washington, with a reach of approximately 3.5 million viewers, or 55% of the state's population, and is on 24/7 in most locations. If you paid any attention to the title of the post you would likely guess TVW. They have a blog now too.

Founded in 1993 by Denny Heck, former legislator, House chief clerk, and chief of staff to Gov. Booth Gardner, and veteran government official Stan Marshburn, TVW serves up over 2,000 hours of original programming annually. Though most of its programming is unedited gavel-to-gavel legislative coverage they also produce programs including Inside Olympia, Olympia On-Call, Legislative Review, The Faces and Places of Washington State, The Docket, and Pacific Northwest Technology Tour.

A couple other quick facts. They were one of the first organizations to intern one of our Computer Science students who worked on their programming management software. Their control room allows for the operation of robotic cameras within the chambers to focus in on speakers and cut from one to the other. In fact at one time they had the largest robotic camera facility in the world. TVW maintains 39 robotic cameras in 4 buildings on the Capitol Campus in Olympia.

About that blog: Launched in mid December of 2008, The Capital Record is making an effort to keep us updated on what the state Legislature and the Governor are up to.

It is written by former Grit City blogger for the News Tribune, Niki Sullivan, who has also covered government for our regional paper as well as The Associated Press in Oregon.

Note however that they do not allow for comments. As Niki explains:

If we do our job right, you’ll be a more informed citizen after reading The Capitol Record. That might make you want to share your opinion with someone. But the office of your elected official is the more appropriate place to do that. We’ll help facilitate that direct communication by providing links to the Legislature’s web site, where you can find the contact information for your elected official.

Niki also produces the Legislative Review , which airs nightly at 11, and reruns every morning at 7:45. It is also streamed on the web, which all of TVW programming does. They have tags to search the videos that they serve up as well. You can search on the name of a State Senator and you should be able to jump right to them within the program. I hope that someday they are able to aggregate the videos into a searchable database that carry over the tags and topic information from the legislative sessions. What a resource that would be in tracking your elected officials positions.

They are also providing an RSS feed and Twitter access to the blog, though I hope they also allow for Tacoma tagging so that it is picked up by FeedTacoma.

Joe Turner of the News Tribune's Political Buzz blog gives his take here.

Most Trafficked Blog Posts 2008

It has been another year of posts for me here at Living and Working in a Virtual World. The number I have posted has dropped a bit for this year, down from 117 posts in 2007 to a total of 101 posts for 2008. I have been pretty busy though, including classes at night, the South Sound Technology Conference and several shows not to mention the four kids. I will try to reverse the trend in the coming year.

This blog focuses on the question, "How do internet systems, the world wide web, online social networks, databases and client server technologies serve relationships and the arts?". However, like last year, some of the most popular posts came from totally different subject matter. Total number of visits doubled, which would be a trend I would like to keep on track.

Of course, the earlier posts have the advantage in the most trafficked post contest, but given that two posts were from 2007, I figure any late but popular posts for 2008 have a chance next year.

Aside from the home page, the ranking order of posts is as follows.

1) Some Origami Notes

and

2) Origami Lesson Plan for Kids

Yes, in a site about virtual things, folding paper was the most interesting topic to the public at large and the two top posts were origami related. So much so that I have continued to post on the topic and created its own label to search on. I also attempted a separate blog for origami, but I don't post frequently enough and the last thing I need to do is maintain yet another blog. I've also seen some of my photos, such as the compound origami roses and dahlias show up elsewhere.

3) Tom Tom vs. Mapquest Printout
In an attempt to be humorous, I wrote about my adventure using Mapquest and Tom Tom to get to a meeting in Bremerton. The blog post was picked up by a couple of GPS user group members and the article was linked to from the different news groups. I still see them trickling in.

4) South Sound Technology Conference 2008
Hurray! Interest in the conference drove traffic to the site. I promise that next years conference will have more coverage and advance notice and information. It is already taking shape for next year and could have a couple of very interesting additions.

5) Robot Fish and Carpet Cleaning
This is an interesting one, as it was a popular destination post based some what on the images in the post. Multiple visits from Korea drove the number up, so I am not sure it would have come in as high otherwise. I have subsequently purchased a iRobot Roomba as detailed in two posts prior to this one.

6) An Epic Predictions about Newpapers
The current conditions of the newspaper industry and the local interest in the Tribune drove traffic to this post. Lots of FeedTacoma referrals as well. The Tribune and Mark Briggs have been popular blog post topics in the past as well.

7) Do the Fair Comparison
One of my favorites, this is not only the second post from 2007 on this years countdown, but the same post was also in the top ten last year. There are plenty of posts about "Doing the Puyallup" that come each year, but I believe mine is the only one that provides all the lyrics to the song "Do the Puyallup".

8)Personally Identifiable Information (PII) Guidelines
Proposed by Lew McMurran, VP, Government and External Affairs of the WTIA, it didn't hurt that I made it a class assignment to read and comment on these proposed guidelines.

9)Hotel Murano Featured in CNN Money
A short post simply pointing to another, and yet interest in the hotel and a FeedTacoma link drove folks through.

10)When Bloggers are Neighbors: Guest Blogger Erik Handberg
This was a great post with some good comments that followed. Erik had spoke to my class and then approached me with the idea of a guest blogger. It was a good idea. I don't know why I haven't done it again, as it turned out nicely.

I hope that you all have a great new year. See you in 2009.

The "Great Aussie Firewall" Debate

In Jurassic Park, there is an attempt to keep the dinosaurs from breeding by creating only female of the species. However, the female dinosaurs produce offspring through parthenogenesis, for as Doctor Malcolm states, “Nature finds a way."

So does the Internet. There will be many attempts to control and filter the Web and the Internet, but I doubt that there will ever be a successful project that controls distribution of files and media. It is constantly evolving and there are many different ways in which transactions and transfers can occur.

That doesn't mean that there won't be any attempts.

According to Wikipedia, "Internet censorship in the People's Republic of China is conducted under a wide variety of laws and administrative regulations.... The apparatus of the PRC's Internet repression is considered more extensive and more advanced than in any other country in the world....Amnesty International notes that China “has the largest recorded number of imprisoned journalists and cyber-dissidents in the world.”

Another example includes conversations I had with young men and women who were visiting as part of the "Dubai Future Leaders" program. Among them were a few bloggers who talked a bit about what it was like to blog in the United Arab Emirates. They did not encounter difficulties themselves, but they mentioned that blogger friends from other restrictive countries faced imprisonment for dissenting viewpoints.

But the uproar today and over the last week has been over Australia's plans to implement the "Great Aussie Firewall". In an (I believe) admirable attempt to curtail exploitative web sites and practices such as child pornography and criminally instructive sites advocating drugs and ultra violence, the filter is promising to make Australia one of the strictest Internet regulators among democratic countries.. Admirable or not, it may not be technologically feasible to do so, and therefore a waste of crime fighting funds.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy states, "This is not an argument about free speech," in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "We have laws about the sort of material that is acceptable across all mediums and the Internet is no different. Currently, some material is banned and we are simply seeking to use technology to ensure those bans are working."

Douglas Schweitzer puts the counterpoint nicely on his Computerworld blog,

You can’t fault them for trying to make the Internet a safer place to traverse, but they’ll have to fine-tune their methods. Filtering peer-to-peer networks would seem promising, but blocking key words is still unreliable. ...Democracies are struggling with Internet filters across the globe, but in many countries filtering is voluntary. Until they can improve their method, Australia’s going to have a hard time "selling" this proposed firewall.

Technology is a tool and not as stand alone solution. We have laws and organizations that maintain and uphold them in the real world, and though they are unable to halt criminal activity, they are societies means by which we keep criminal activity in check. Will that be the same in cyberspace? And if we do build out new laws and organizations to maintain and uphold the online laws, how will they stratify.

If an online community is inherently global, will those laws eventually need to be as well?