Justin's Geek Out Links

Idea: What are some alternatives to the current reverse-chronological structure of web sites? I thought I might use the March 2003 South by SouthWest Interactive conference to find out.

I asked to have some time in the schedule to give the audience a chance to present web sites. Five minutes to explain the site, followed by some rapid-fire feedback from the audience. First impressions. Interface ideas. Housekeeping tips! Think of it as peer review for a short-attention span peer group. It's not enough time to develop deep critique, but it should be a good way to scan different approaches to sharing information online.

[Workspace] The initial notes were taken by Nancy White, who runs an index of online community resources. She used a SocialText wiki to build it. I added some additional background information for some.
On Monday at http://www.sxsw.com Interactive, Justin Hall held a "Geek Out" where people were invited to show and/or talk about an online project and get feedback from the audience. These are the notes from our session. Pictures are in the works.

Chip Rosenthal

  • Austin Bloggers
  • http://www.austinbloggers.org
  • aggregates blog entries about Austin
  • great service
  • one category now, but it will evolve with community
  • how to publicize

    Trei Brundrett

  • Handwire
  • http://www.handwire.com/
  • http://www.hannum.com/
  • Question about use of Flash for the architect's website
  • flash and html blend?

    Aaron Thibault

  • IC2 Institute - ELT Labs
  • http://www.ic2.org
  • http://www.eltlabs.org
  • new lab at the University in Austin bridging commercial games and academics
  • using games for training? games in education
  • example of a get-off-welfare-work-training flash app

    Paul Bausch

  • http://www.sxswblog.com
  • extend the conference experience
  • be where you aren't physically
  • key idea: share notes from conferences. One page to track panel by panel, all the notes from different audience bloggers. Yes!

    Sam Westerfeld

  • "www.notquiteyet.com"
  • 13 year old Austinite Lan Party lad wants to curb cheating at LAN parties through development of a Counter-Strike/Half Life mod
  • slightly shy

    Robin McShafry

  • http://mary-margaret.com
  • http://dev.mary-margaret.com
  • Seeking feedback on her game industry recruiter site
  • Bright yellow is a turn off
  • Add testemonials
  • Blog on front page
  • later Robin said, "I got $10,000 worth of consulting in ten minutes!"

    Thomas Korte

  • http://www.news.google.com
  • Google employee looking for feedback on Google News beta.
  • what is the line/distinction between "official" news sites and blogs and amateur sites? Doesn't know.
  • what is the impact of this on the perception of who is journalist and what is press
  • can you add foreign language content? yes
  • google tool bar -- add google news search
  • at bottom "enhance help" -- they do read this
  • may have an impact on how people view the world from other perspectives via cluster algorhythms
  • Look at the order of the media outlet lists in clusters - does that impact how people view the news
  • downside of page rank for news is it works against scoops, which by-nature don't have links

    Nick Finck

  • http://www.digital-web.com
  • promoting his web techniques magazine
  • it's all about web design, information architecture, usability, accessibility - anything about building a web page
  • the art is contributed art
  • community contributes the article
  • want to get more people involved, want to know about people's projects
  • what sets this site apart? Content and articles. Not a lot of other UI going on. Difference from webmonkey - more than html. More advanced. Not for beginners.
  • Not willing to take critique on a 1998 web site - about to relaunch. Audience confused.

    Adina Levin

  • http://www.socialtext.com
  • social software
  • distributed "Happenings"
  • a way for a group of people can collaborate on the web
  • So Adina alone does not control the content, Nancy can add too
  • allows group collaboration
  • examples; programming, planning a potluck, collaborative writing, collecting links, data
  • Audience gives wiki examples from their experience

    Nancy White

  • http://www.fullcirc.com/community/communitymanual.htm
  • looking for success stories - what works, what doesn't
  • academics and practitioners - not much interaction
  • interested in role of visuals, audio and multi modes of communication for effective intercultural online interaction
  • has online dialog space

    Wes Felter

  • <rtsp://felter.org/SXSW.sdp>
  • video feed live from the conference
  • with a laptop and video camera, now anyone can webcast
  • webcasting a conference can be a radical act
  • need server hosting
  • some people working on cool P2P so you won't need a server

    Dave Galbraith

  • <http://www.davidgalbraith.org/
  • adding one tag to people's weblogs - "one line bio"
  • people are moving away from reading one news outlet and start reading individual journalists based on what they write
  • RSS syndication makes this easy
  • adoption of a single tag one line bio of the author
  • know a bit about the people you are reading. Simple powerful thing.
  • aggregate what you read based on people, that's what weblogs are about. Filter based on this one line tag
  • what about spoofing personalities?
  • namespace with a number of tags but only a single tag is added to RSS at the item level
  • something about FOAF? (Friend of a Friend)

    Simon Perry

  • people reveal a lot of information about themselves in blogs
  • the difficult thing is when marketeers become involved. Worried about information people are making available about themselves.
  • marketingrubout.txt - find things available about yourself available to marketings and decide what you want available or not
  • blend of tools because it takes a long time to create laws
  • this makes it time consuming for the advertiser

    Helena Bulaja

  • http://www.bulaja.com/fairytales/
  • collaboratively-made online croation folk tales
  • attending both interactive and film pages
  • feel there needs to be free content and community
  • film panel advises don't give it all away free, don't work for free,
  • but have collaborated
  • use internet community to collaborate to work for her for a very low amount of money for hard work to make complex stories interactive
  • people did not answer or started laughing. Crazy offer. So they accepted it. From all over world
  • cyberstudio
  • for CD ROM or DVD of most favorite Croatian folk tales. Would be popular there. Could cover some expenses. Never thought to put on internet. But decided to share with other people. Lot of people watch, give comments
  • If we don't put it all for free, just can't continue work as animation professionals.
  • would any of you pay for this online? Even a dollar to read a cartoon?

    Chris Mlodnicki (check spelling)

  • see who comes in on search, then send them to a custom page
  • google gets one, altavista gets one
  • http://netsam.com/
  • antispambot
  • sends info if a spambot hits the site. Sends note to see if really a spammer or not. If they are spambots they are given a list of emails that go to antispam sites
  • encourage people to do this with their servers
  • set up a list of bot names on server
  • write a paper
  • Mark Pilgrin http://www.diveintomark.com

    Wrap Up

  • post your additional ideas here or on the http://www.SXSWBlog.com site
  • Nancy will send photos to Justin at Justin@bud.com (or was that org? Nancy needs a new brain)

    • justin's links by justin hall: contact