Team Orange--Internet2 Collaboration Project

TEAM ORANGE Internet2 Collaboration from nickkinling

Time Orange: Erin, Nick and Shih-Yu

Since Erin has said a lot about our project, I will mainly talk about my own reflections here.
Our group project aims at connecting ordinary spaces that are not usually connected. I like this idea because it is kind of creative. We originally planed to connect three ordinary spaces: classroom, elevator, and bathroom together, however it ended up with Nick touring around NYU for us. According to the plan, I would stay in any restroom which has wireless access, Erin would stay in elevator, Nick would record our project and present in classroom, and all these would be done by iChat.

Actually I did go to the women’s restroom between the first and second floor of the education building in order to test the wireless signals, which was a little weak but I think should be adequate for video chatting. I planed to hide where I am at the beginning by framing myself in the edges of the iChat window, and at last surprise the class by showing the place. Or maybe I can interview some ladies coming in and ask them how they think about the project…

Although the final performance came out totally different from our plan, it was still a memorable and interesting one. If we can connect more unexpected spaces in real life to create a new virtual space, we can let people see more and experience more. However I think there are two technical problems: the wireless coverage and the limitation of chatting technologies. So far the wireless coverage in New York is not wide enough I guess. If we can access to wireless everywhere in NY, maybe we can have one site on Brooklyn Bridge and another on Empire State Building.  (Just imagine) For chatting technologies, iChat only allows maximum three way video chatting and skype allows two. ( Is that right? That’s how I remembered) If the technologies enable more than 3 sites connection, that would be more fun!

Speed of sound---relating to I2 performance

This is the original music video by Coldplay
and the next below is another version played by stupidebayguy from Youtube.
These two videos just made me think of I2 performances.
As you can see, the guy played the piano with the original music sound track.
If the same thing happen to I2 technology,
there can be one site which has a band, including the vocal, guitar, bass or something
and the other site with a classical piano.
That would be interesting I guess.

A Call for Manners in World of Nasty Blogs

New York Times

By BRAD STONE

Published: April 9, 2007

Is it too late to bring civility to the Web?

The conversational free-for-all on the Internet known as the blogosphere can be a prickly and unpleasant place. Now, a few high-profile figures in high-tech are proposing a blogger code of conduct to clean up the quality of online discourse.

Last week, Tim O’Reilly, a conference promoter and book publisher who is credited with coining the term Web 2.0, began working with Jimmy Wales, creator of the communal online encyclopedia Wikipedia, to create a set of guidelines to shape online discussion and debate.

Chief among the recommendations is that bloggers consider banning anonymous comments left by visitors to their pages and be able to delete threatening or libelous comments without facing cries of censorship.

A recent outbreak of antagonism among several prominent bloggers “gives us an opportunity to change the level of expectations that people have about what’s acceptable online,” said Mr. O’Reilly, who posted the preliminary recommendations last week on his company blog (radar.oreilly.com). Mr. Wales then put the proposed guidelines on his company’s site (blogging.wikia.com), and is now soliciting comments in the hope of creating consensus around what constitutes civil behavior online.

Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Wales talk about creating several sets of guidelines for conduct and seals of approval represented by logos. For example, anonymous writing might be acceptable in one set; in another, it would be discouraged. Under a third set of guidelines, bloggers would pledge to get a second source for any gossip or breaking news they write about.

Bloggers could then pick a set of principles and post the corresponding badge on their page, to indicate to readers what kind of behavior and dialogue they will engage in and tolerate. The whole system would be voluntary, relying on the community to police itself.

“If it’s a carefully constructed set of principles, it could carry a lot of weight even if not everyone agrees,” Mr. Wales said.

The code of conduct already has some early supporters, including David Weinberger, a well-known blogger (hyperorg.com/blogger) and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. “The aim of the code is not to homogenize the Web, but to make clearer the informal rules that are already in place anyway,” he said.

But as with every other electrically charged topic on the Web, finding common ground will be a serious challenge. Some online writers wonder how anyone could persuade even a fraction of the millions of bloggers to embrace one set of standards. Others say that the code smacks of restrictions on free speech.

Mr. Wales and Mr. O’Reilly were inspired to act after a firestorm erupted late last month in the insular community of dedicated technology bloggers. In an online shouting match that was widely reported, Kathy Sierra, a high-tech book author from Boulder County, Colo., and a friend of Mr. O’Reilly, reported getting death threats that stemmed in part from a dispute over whether it was acceptable to delete the impolitic comments left by visitors to someone’s personal Web site.

Distraught over the threats and manipulated photos of her that were posted on other critical sites — including one that depicted her head next to a noose — Ms. Sierra canceled a speaking appearance at a trade show and asked the local police for help in finding the source of the threats. She also said that she was considering giving up blogging altogether.

In an interview, she dismissed the argument that cyberbullying is so common that she should overlook it. “I can’t believe how many people are saying to me, ‘Get a life, this is the Internet,’ ” she said. “If that’s the case, how will we ever recognize a real threat?”

Ms. Sierra said she supported the new efforts to improve civility on the Web. The police investigation into her case is pending.

Menacing behavior is certainly not unique to the Internet. But since the Web offers the option of anonymity with no accountability, online conversations are often more prone to decay into ugliness than those in other media.

Nowadays, those conversations often take place on blogs. At last count, there were 70 million of them, with more than 1.4 million entries being added daily, according to Technorati, a blog-indexing company. For the last decade, these Web journals have offered writers a way to amplify their voices and engage with friends and readers.

But the same factors that make those unfiltered conversations so compelling, and impossible to replicate in the offline world, also allow them to spin out of control.

As many female bloggers can attest, women are often targets. Heather Armstrong, a blogger in Salt Lake City who writes publicly about her family (dooce.com), stopped accepting unmoderated comments on her blog two years ago after she found that conversations among visitors consistently devolved into vitrio.

Since last October, she has also had to deal with an anonymous blogger who maintains a separate site that parodies her writing and has included photos of Ms. Armstrong’s daughter, copied from her site.

Ms. Armstrong tries not to give the site public attention, but concedes that, “At first, it was really difficult to deal with.”

Women are not the only targets of nastiness. For the last four years, Richard Silverstein has advocated for Israeli-Palestinian peace on a blog (richardsilverstein.com) that he maintains from Seattle.

People who disagree with his politics frequently leave harassing comments on his site. But the situation reached a new low last month, when an anonymous opponent started a blog in Mr. Silverstein’s name that included photos of Mr. Silverstein in a pornographic context.

“I’ve been assaulted and harassed online for four years,” he said. “Most of it I can take in stride. But you just never get used to that level of hatred.”

One public bid to improve the quality of dialogue on the Web came more than a year ago when Mena Trott, a co-founder of the blogging software company Six Apart, proposed elevating civility on the Internet in a speech she gave at a French blog conference. At the event, organizers had placed a large screen on the stage showing instant electronic responses to the speeches from audience members and those who were listening in online.

As Ms. Trott spoke about improving online conduct, a heckler filled the screen with personal insults. Ms Trott recalled “losing it” during the speech.

Ms. Trott has scaled back her public writing and now writes a blog for a limited audience of friends and family. “You can’t force people to be civil, but you can force yourself into a situation where anonymous trolls are not in your life as much,” she said.

The preliminary recommendations posted by Mr. Wales and Mr. O’Reilly are based in part on a code developed by BlogHer, a network for women designed to give them blogging tools and to guide readers to their pages.

“Any community that does not make it clear what they are doing, why they are doing it, and who is welcome to join the conversation is at risk of finding it difficult to help guide the conversation later,” said Lisa Stone, who created the guidelines and the BlogHer network in 2006 with Elisa Camahort and Jory Des Jardins.

A subtext of both sets of rules is that bloggers are responsible for everything that appears on their own pages, including comments left by visitors. They say that bloggers should also have the right to delete such comments if they find them profane or abusive.

That may sound obvious, but many Internet veterans believe that blogs are part of a larger public sphere, and that deleting a visitor’s comment amounts to an assault on their right to free speech. It is too early to gauge support for the proposal, but some online commentators are resisting.

Robert Scoble, a popular technology blogger who stopped blogging for a week in solidarity with Kathy Sierra after her ordeal became public, says the proposed rules “make me feel uncomfortable.” He adds, “As a writer, it makes me feel like I live in Iran.”

Mr. O’Reilly said the guidelines were not about censorship. “That is one of the mistakes a lot of people make — believing that uncensored speech is the most free, when in fact, managed civil dialogue is actually the freer speech,” he said. “Free speech is enhanced by civility.”

Make music with windows sound files

Make music with windows sound files

Click "play" on this website you will hear music composed by windows' original sound files.

body, space & technology journal review

I read the article" Digital Dance Theatre: The Marriage of Computers, Choreography and Techno/Human Reactivity ", written by Kathryn Farley ,in the body, space and technology journal. http://people.brunel.ac.uk/bst/vol0301/index.html Farley appeared as an observer in the Live-Interactive workshop operated by Troika Ranch in 2002 and later wrote down her investigation of the unique tehno/homan reactivity in this paper.

Being an entrant of this field, I almost had no idea about Troika Ranch artists' performaces at the beginning. After visiting their website, I discovered that they are a company located in Brooklyn,NY, and have innovative ideas, for example, dancers can control multi-media devices (image or audio) by their body motions. The interactivities between human bodies and media attribute to the softwares, midiDancer and Isadora, created by Mark Coniglio, who's also one of the funders and media artists of the company.

In the article, Farley brings up an issue about the technology part of digital dance:
" Central to Troika Ranch’s mission of integrating digital media into live performance is the
conviction that technology must serve the dance’s narrative structure and composition. In order
to facilitate a story or unify a sequence of events, technology needs to be both useful (i.e. easily
accessible) and purposeful (artistically). Throughout the workshop, Coniglio and Stoppiello
reiterated the mantra: know technology before need. In other words, technological instruments
must be mastered before they can be implemented in a live-performance setting. "
I think what she said exposes the fact that digital dance theater is in an experimental stage and relies heavily on technology equipments, maybe much more than any other genres of performances. Therefore, knowing about technology becomes crucial to artists and ideas can not be created without the notion of multi-media application. However, this is also the part I
hardly can understand and long to see in person.

Debtors search for discipline via blogs

Debtors search for discipline via blogs

by John Leland
Published: Feb, 18, 2007
From: New York Times


When a woman who calls herself Tricia discovered last week that she owed $22,302 on her credit cards, she could not wait to spread the news. Tricia, 29, does not talk to her family or friends about her finances, and says she is ashamed of her personal debt.

Yet from the laundry room of her home in northern Michigan, Tricia does something that would have been unthinkable — and impossible — a generation ago: she goes online and posts intimate details of her financial life, including her net worth (now negative $38,691), the balance and finance charges on her credit cards, and the amount of debt she has paid down since starting a blog about her debt last year ($15,312).

Her journal, bloggingawaydebt .com, is one of dozens that have sprung up in recent years taking advantage of Internet anonymity to reveal to strangers fiscal intimacies the authors might not tell their closest friends.

Like other debt bloggers, Tricia believes the exposure gives her the discipline to reduce her debt. “I think about this blog every time I’m in the store and something that I don’t need catches my eye,” she told readers last week. “Look what you all have done to me!”

A decade after the Internet became a public stage for revelations from the bedroom, it is now peering into the really private stuff: personal finance.

The blogs open a homey and sometimes shockingly candid window on the day-to-day finances of American households in a time of rising debt, failing mortgages and financial uncertainty. In 2006, the average American household carried about $7,200 in revolving debt (mostly on credit cards) and $21,000 in total debt.

A blog called “Poorer Than You” (kgazette.blogspot.com) describes the financial doings of a 20-year-old film-school dropout. (Typical post: “Yesterday we ate lunch at Subway for a total of $8.00, and went grocery shopping ... with a list! And didn’t buy anything that wasn’t on it!”) On saveleighann.blogspot.com, Leigh Ann Fraley, 37, provides daily accounts of her escape from $19,947 in credit card debt.

“I teach people how to get out of debt for a living, but I couldn’t do it myself until I started the blog,” said Ms. Fraley, who conducts seminars in personal finance for a bank in Northern California. “I started to write everything down, like, ‘I saved 20 cents today by parking at a meter that still had time on it.’ I tell things I wouldn’t tell my family.” When she got out of debt in December, she said, “The blog was the first people I told.”

A Boston couple who call themselves the King and Queen of Debt started their his-and-hers blog, “We’re in Debt” (wereindebt.com), last March as a way to talk to each other about their debt. They owed $34,155.70 on their credit cards at the time, and an additional $120,000, mostly in student loans.

“My wife and I have good communication skills in every avenue of life except finances,” said the King of Debt, insisting on anonymity because, he said, “We don’t want our parents to find out and kill us.”

Starting the blog, he said, “was a way to communicate.”

Tricia started her blog after reading the online account of another woman, thedebtdefier.blogspot.com, who said she had paid off her credit card debt of $19,794.23 in a little more than a year.

Like other bloggers interviewed for this article, Tricia said she and her husband had arrived at their debt gradually, not by big financial crises but by regularly spending more money than they made, using credit that was offered freely by credit card companies.

“It was nothing over the top,” said a Georgia blogger who calls himself N.C.N., for No Credit Needed, describing how his credit card balance reached $11,510.22.

“Just pretty much what everyone I know does and continues to do,” N.C.N. said. “Every month I’d say, ‘We’re going to pay off this credit card completely.’ Then I’d say, ‘O.K., just this month we’ll let it slide.’ Then you wake up and you have $5,000 on your credit card.” He says on his blogs (ncnblog.com and ncnnetwork.com) that he has no debt now and no credit cards. Like other blogs, his sites run advertisements for debt-reduction services, and N.C.N. says he makes a small profit.

Tricia said her credit problems began in her freshman year at Michigan Technological University, when she opened a Visa account in return for the campus signup premium, a large candy bar. Since then, she said, she has rarely made more than minimum payments. As credit card companies offered her more cards and deeper credit lines, she said she kept her balance close to the maximum, eventually topping $37,000. Even as her credit card debt surpassed her annual income, she assumed that someday she would make more money and pay it off.

She said she never discussed her debt with family or friends. “You don’t want them to know,” she said. “Our parents hope for the best for us, and it’s hard to let them know we’re struggling. And with friends, you don’t want them to think less of you. And when you go out with friends you don’t want to say, ‘Oh, I can’t do that, I don’t have the money.’ ”

Keeping the blog, she said, has made her conscious of her spending. Though most of her readers are strangers, she worries about letting them down.

“I know that if I use my credit card, I’ll have to go on there and say I used it. I’ll have to fess up. I’ve been wanting one of those L.C.D. TVs for quite a while now, but every time I see them, I think about having to come on the blog and say I bought it. Because we don’t need it, we have a TV, but it’s still a temptation that’s there. And I’m sure if I wasn’t blogging we’d already have it.”

For the engaged couple who say they are behind a blog called “Make Love, Not Debt” (makelovenotdebt.com; net worth: negative $70,787.94), the feedback from readers has not always been gentle. “People have very strong feelings about debt,” said the blog’s female half, who calls herself Her. “People were appalled by my spending, like buying a $500 pair of shoes.”

“Just having the amount of debt we have is offensive to a lot of people,” said Him, the blog’s other half. “People will levy personal attacks for mistakes we acknowledge. We don’t think that’s quite necessary.”

When they discussed wanting a $25,000 wedding, one reader scolded them: “Grow up, a wedding isn’t about how much debt you put yourself or your parents into. If you are worried about that, in my opinion, you are not ready for marriage.”

Tricia said the comments she had gotten had been overwhelmingly supportive. But she acknowledges that the fear of censure can be useful as well.

“I feel embarrassed about it,” she said of her debt. “I try not to, though. I try to put a spin on it when I start to get too down. I think to myself if we didn’t get in this mess and get out of it, we would’ve just kept going the way we were. But now we have health insurance, we’re saving for retirement. We could’ve just been living on the edge, but not underneath.”

Class notes

Please Research the following on-line journal:
Body, Space & Technology
http://people.brunel.ac.uk/bst/home.html
Select one article that is of importance to you. Write a paragraph on how this relates to the topic/ Internet2 Collaboration.

Please also explore this multi-media conference:
http://interaktionslabor.de/


Blogs
You should explore the Syllabus for ideas and content for your Blog entries as well as conduct searches on the Internet for ideas and materials. You should average 3-4 Blog entries per week. Barbara Rose Haum raises important theoretical and philosophical issues that affect I2 collaborations. How might these apply to our projects?

reate a two minute movie
Create a two minute movie using the theme of Cassandra or Aeneas, or a related idea. Make a DVD and post the movie on your website.