I started re-subscribing to Engadget (I don’t know why I stopped) and got caught up in the news for the Nintendo DS. A TV Tuner and a Web Browser, oh my! Upon seeing the article, I realized that Nintendo did go ahead and correct that industrial (yucko!) product design by releasing a more ergonomic case (who knows when America will see it, if we see it).

That got me looking for a press release on the new design, which somehow led me to this article on converting the Nintendo DS into a PDA.
There are always those nuts willing to rip apart technology and reuse it for their own purposes. I should know, as I went to a school where a guy carried a wireless Ma’ Bell rotary. Why doesn’t a video game company make that more accessible to the rest of the world? Embrace user customization! Publish documentation! This train of thought has been experimented with the “create your own character” in Madden, or the build your own dungeon of Warcraft, but I’m talking about the no holes barred, source code release. Id ultimately did this with Quake, and look at all the crazy mods out there.
Not profitable, you say? It could be, if utilized correctly. Manufacturers can develop, build, and sell the product, and then publish documentation on how to hack it. That alone would encourage a user base to build upon itself, and when innovations arise, Manufacturers can publish (and sell) a new build.

It’s optimistic, I know. But wouldn’t it be cool program your own iPod OS with the security that you’re getting documentation from the source?

pizza

Originally uploaded by mandalatv.

A picture of my friends Robin and Chris at John’s Pizza in Midtown Manhattan after attending a Late Show taping. It’d have to be someone from hundreds of miles away (Robin) to get me to travel across the pond to finally see Letterman. I took this unflattering picture to see how my new phone would handle low lighting.

I feel like I went from zero to 160 technology-wise. All of the mobile development at ITP made me feel a bit long in the tooth, being that I’d never sent a text message until last month and had a very plain-jane phone. That changed today as I received my Nokia Series 60 6682 Smart Phone. The phone comes with an Opera Browser, a 1.3 megapixel camera, and Bluetooth.

I’m planning on experimenting with some Flash Lite 2.0 development and hope to add a feature on Beyond Second that allows for photo e-mail submissions. I’m proud to say that I posted this through Flickr+WordPress (cool feature!) and just registered with Dodgeball.com today. My phone number? I stuck with a 717 area code (Central PAers, there’s hope of me moving back yet!).

I took some time off of my Harry Potter marathon to read Rushkoff‘s latest book, Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out. I found it a little slow to start, probably because I’m familiar with the material after spending two semesters in Rushkoff’s classes (or because it wasn’t set at Hogwart’s).

Fortunately, the later chapters of the book flew by, and I hope this book dispells that all-too-common phrase used by advertisers and marketers (Oh, how sick I am of requests for another Subservient Chicken!). Apparently, more of them need to read this book, as it points out how looking at the competition almost always makes for unoriginal ideas, not to mention that those new ideas are now confined by the inspiration’s limitations.

Rushkoff also focuses on how play is more important than killing off the competition. I suppose this chapter was particularly funny to me because I know of two companies in Harrisburg that exemplify these different philosophies–one based on play and another on defeating the competition. While I’m still working on the perfect business formulat, I know that back home the players are still winning this game.

Web site traffic statistics–it’s a fun thing to watch. I suppose it’s my poor equivalent to watering plants in a garden or surveying a pet ant farm. My site’s traffic has been steadily increasing (as have spammers), though perhaps not directly in relation to this blog–traffic remained steady when I stopped posting (I was in Nevada, and the casinos charged outrageously for WiFi, what can I say?).

What I find amusing is not the quantity of visitors, but just how people get to this site.

On any given day, there’s usually a bunch of PIC microchip code phrases (attracted by my ITP site), Flash bitmap class commands (landing users to my Flash DriveBy), and searches for “interactive telecommunications program” (I show up at #5 on Google, coincidentally). There’s also comments on “kissables commercial” and “borders gift mixer.”

Where does my name rank on total search strings, you ask? Usually around #5 or #7. So what’s the top ranking? It’s usually “Yoda Breakdancing.” Apparently, a post I made prior to the Star Wars DVD release had a link to a DVD Easter egg of the green guy kickin’ it to The Roots. Lucasfilm probably found the video online and had it pulled immediately (it’s still on video.google.com). Now I’m stuck with roughly 20+ users daily who search for that video.

The other surprising find is “Jackie Blue Harrisburg,” which refers to a bar/restaurant I blogged about. I was getting roughly 20 to 30 people daily looking for the Jackie Blue Web site (I was ranked #1 for the phrase by search engines), so I e-mailed the owner and encouraged him to optimize his homepage. It could still use some work, but thankfully Sara Bozich took the ranking away from me.

The moral of the story: If you’re looking for dancing Jedis or Central PA Midtown bars, my site might not be the right place. The visits make for some interesting stats, though

It seems like everyone has a blog these days. Heck, even Tim Berners-Lee, father of the WWW, finally got one. So how do I one-up that? Well, I can’t, but I now have two blogs.

Since CodeTree is an ongoing project, I created a blog specifically for content updates. This way, I’m not boring people who might actually read this one, plus, I thought it’d be cool to get user feedback on the project’s updates.

Why can’t all SNL skits be this good?
http://www.youtube.com/watch.php?v=zLElfJ9YCh0

Contrary to the argument floating around the ITP list, I haven’t found a better cupcake than those of the Magnolia Bakery. Of course, a long line of women outside the door doesn’t hurt.

Grad school. Check.

It still didn’t really set in until Sunday, when I actually got more than three hours of sleep. Of course, now comes the housecleaning. CodeTree is only getting bigger and bigger–much larger than Beyond Second in the same amount of time. I’m getting a good amount of feedback, and plan on adding a bunch of features. Plus I’m hoping that Dave and I can reuse some of the code for Beyond Second when we redesign it next year.

I just put up a video recording of my thesis presentation here along with all of the documentation. Thanks to Mo for catching it on an iSight on such short notice.

Speaking of which, has anyone else ever watched them self give a presentation on video? I sure do fidget a lot. I seem to fumble over the words at first, but then find some flow. Critiques at the end came from Doug Rushkoff, Dan Shiffman, Clay Shirky, and Alex Reinart.

I promised my mother I’d attend my first college graduation for her (skipped HACC and was jetlagged from Rome during Penn State’s). Too bad I didn’t know it would end up being at Shea Stadium since Washington Square Park is being renovated. Why not Yankee Stadium? Why not Central Park, like I voted?

My sister-in-law had me sit through her graduating class of roughly 1,000 students…I’m looking forward to inviting her to mine, only I believe NYU’s has roughly 29,000 more names to be called.

This paper for Clay Shirky’s Social Facts class was written while I was in the thick of finals at ITP, and looking back it seems more anecdotal of my experiences with Beyond Second and CodeTree.

Do architects program the members of a social network, or does the network program the architect? Is the author the true creator of social software, or does that title belong to the user base? These are questions I ask myself as I have just launched CodeTree, my latest endeavor into the social networking world. Whichever the case, I realize that I will be continuing this dance with this new social software from a unique perspective—that of the architect, and that, regardless of my original inspiration, the project will find a theme to call its own…Read More.

Anonymous flyers, mysterious posters, and secret campaigns–maybe it’s because we’re in a think tank, or perhaps it’s the tactics we’ve studied in this class on persuasion, but I was a little surprised that our group’s best efforts at disseminating the practice of origami came from outright announcement and not through some back-door marketing campaign. Read More…