futureblog

My name is Ian and Google Living Stories was my idea.

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:01:00 -0500

Let’s start with this. Google never ceases to amaze me. At the same time they can infuriate me faster than anything else in the world.

The scene is a year and a half or so ago and I have been working for The Kansas City Star for about 2 months. I am contemplating submitting yet another entry to the Knight News Challenge. Two years previous to that I had submitted the same idea, a social podcasting application. Now, sitting in the newsroom and having a slightly better grasp on the online news space I think of a new idea.

http://futurehat.com/wecancast/dev/design/view/index.html

What you see there is a single news story. Coverage would be collected from many sources and combined into one single story that could be browsed along a timeline. I even entitled the project “Media Timelines” The way I saw it was that news, as it happened, needed to be collected from all forms of media and combined into one topic oriented “story”. I still see it that way. Sadly the Knight Foundation judges did not.

Flash forward to today when a co-worker at my gig in boulder (non-news related) points me to http://livingstories.googlelabs.com. I flipped. Straight up flipped. This ruins my day if not my week, month and the short remainder of the year. The worst part… it’s obvious that this is google’s domain. There should have been no opportunity for me to be pissed about them “stealing” my idea because they should have done it 5 years ago.

Still, this happens to me on an increasing basis. I’m thinking I just need to stop coming up with ideas and let people tell me what to make. That way I can’t be frustrated when google beats me to it. Effin google.

Hey Google, I've got a Fast Flip for ya.

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 14:08:10 -0400

Way to go Google. Newspapers just don’t get it when it comes to RSS. So why not pander to them and make another “flip through pages” interface? I’ll tell you why… NO ONE WANTS TO READ NEWS ONLINE LIKE THEY READ A PAPER!

You know this google. You do. But in your endless quest for the dollar you choose to pander to the average editor and publisher. People don’t want to read newsPAPERS online… they want to read the NEWS online.

If you, the reader, want news your way then I suggest an entirely different google product: Google Reader let it suggest feeds to you and then go out and find your own to add. You will be flying through rivers of data in no time. Browsing a list and picking only what you want to read. Ahhh news gathering utopia. Isn’t it grand?

Yer doin it wrong.

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:12:22 -0400

Yer doin it wrong.:

Put the content in the screen. Not the screen in the content.

Turn brain on.

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 21:39:09 -0400

yCombinator is now issuing “Requests For Startups”. Which I think is a really great idea in the first place but even better is YCRFS 1: The Future of Journalism

What would a content site look like if you started from how to make money—as print media once did—instead of taking a particular form of journalism as a given and treating how to make money from it as an afterthought?

I need to borrow/buy/steal a thinking cap from someone. I’ve got some good starting thoughts but I need some more brain power… story of my life. So glad to see this come to pass though. Local journalism needs a helping hand and I’m sure there’s enough money behind this RFS to kick it in the ass.

Work. Work. Work.

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 18:22:36 -0400

I took some time today to add some more recent work to http://futurehat.com do take a look if you get a moment. If you approve of this newly added work and decide you need some of your own do please drop me a line.

Sneak peek at an upcoming futurehat site design. It’s safe...

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:45:24 -0400

Sneak peek at an upcoming futurehat site design. It’s safe to say that I’m just catching up to this trend but the colors are fun to play with. I also stole a bunch of icons for this… sue me. It’s still in the “comp” phase. I did make the logo though.

Spacecowboyian

One Day Band

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:17:06 -0400

Check out this week’s episode of “This American Life”. It’s a repeat from 2002 where they go investigate classified ads found in Chicago papers. The best story is about forming a “One Day Band” out of music classifieds. People who had never before met and came from all different musical backgrounds getting together to play “Rocket Man” and it’s really good.

THERAMIN!

Can't catch a break.

Wed, 13 May 2009 13:48:22 -0400

I’ve been incredibly busy lately with all sorts of stuff. I’ll try and get a minute this weekend to update the old bloggy for all 4 religious readers.

Re: Rest in Peace, RSS

Wed, 06 May 2009 09:22:00 -0400

Steve Gillmor, could you be more melodramatic?

“It’s time to get completely off RSS and switch to Twitter. RSS just doesn’t cut it anymore. The River of News has become the East River of news, which means it’s not worth swimming in if you get my drift.”

Now keep in mind that I haven’t looked at my feeds in over two weeks so I understand what he is getting at, I just think he’s going at it the wrong way.

I think the message should be that RSS needs a makeover. More accurately, news sources need to take a look at how they use RSS.

Comments - The RSS spec allows for a comments element that can contain a link to the feed of the conversation. This could be pulled in by a feed reader. Then, using openID or any other open login on the source’s end, comments could be posted to the source from the reader.
Style - The spec and readers need to account for style that can be added into an article. It may be as easy as including a css file with each feed and item or it may even include a layer of xslt to style the elements for each device. Whatever tech is used to make it happen, print media news sources want to be able to carry over their layout skills in a format that can be delivered.
Some old media news sources need to own up to the fact that their RSS feeds suck. They need to put a dedicated person on managing their feeds within every section of their site to ensure a proper and accurate push of timely information. That info then needs to be regurgitated in twitter and on facebook. This means leveraging your feeds against the APIs of these networks. twitterfeed doesn’t cut it. Updating once every thirty minutes is not “breaking news”. Update early and often. This means that the publishing system you use must generate up to the minute feeds, which can be hard if you are generating a static version of your site to keep server load down.

For all I know the tech changes could be in the works. It’s more likely that these things will come from extensions of Atom rather than a new version of RSS.

I know for sure that there is lots of talk in our newsroom about how to use twitter and how we can better organize our feeds for timely output to the many devices that they have to cover. It’s obvious that these conversations should have been had long ago but big ships turn slowly.

This post by Gillmor is obviously just link bait. He’s getting what he wanted, lots of comments and people like me linking back to this geeky soap opera of a post. However, new devices are always on the horizon. People will start thinking of a new xml syndication format that allows a great layout person at a newspaper to keep delivering the great imagery and important info graphics right along side story that they have been delivering for the past several decades.

In my opinion art is one of the things that keeps newspapers alive and viable. Most bloggers don’t have art/layout departments and neither do TV stations. Someone has to provide graphics for the bloggers to link to. Info graphics is a whole other can of worms, though it is obviously related.

I’m starting to stray so I’ll end with this. In 3 years I will read my news on a device I carry in my pocket. All of that news will be delivered to me based on choices I have made. Any of that news from major sources will be packaged and designed much like it is in the newspaper today. I will read comments and make my own directly from the application I use to read that news. I will also be able to add to the story by publishing my own images and video directly into that stream of comments which can be filtered to the top by the community and editors.

Also, someone else is going to have to make all this happen. I’m already freakin swamped.

We freakin did it! StashMate is GO!

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:22:00 -0400

StashMate.com is live! After a weekend of very little to no sleep our amazing team of startup enthusiasts cranked out a working application that is pretty damned handy if I do say so myself.

The experience:

Friday night - 80 people (biz development, project managers, designers and developers) enter the Enterprise Center of Johnson County and pitches begin. A record (?) 47 one minute pitches are given and then voted upon by a show of hands. 8 are chosen to go on. You can see all of them here and look through other blogs on that site to see video updates and demos from the weekend.

After the 8 were chosen, teams form by people simply grouping together around the leaders. You go to the product that you felt strongest about and where you are most needed. Our leader, Jaime, is a contract Rails developer from right down the street in KC and already has some of the product built. I am first in, then we pick up, Rob, an amazing project manager from Des Moines, Cara a great UI designer from here in KC and Curtis a biz dev guy from KC. We got our room first and went to work plotting out the idea.

By the end of Friday night (we quit too early) we had a pretty good idea of our business model and potential features.

Saturday - We came in on Sat. and our PM Rob was already there with most of what we talked about the night before outlined on boards on the wall with sticky notes for process flow and such.. as I said.. he was a hoss. Almost immediately we began more discussion and once we were squared away on the plan we went to work. The dev got his code on while the UI designer and I did our bidness. Curtis recruited Mark to join us who I gather is also interested in business development and they along with Rob set to work on our presentation.

Everyone else left Jaime and I around 10pm except Rob stayed till 2am.. mainly just for support.. again.. a super hoss.. he even bought us sweet rolls from wendy’s at like 1:30. But I digress.

Sunday - Jaime and I worked through the night and our team was surprised to find us there in the same clothes at 9am on sunday. We kept on a working while they put together the presentation materials. I was done by 2pm. I almost passed out a few times by my brain wouldn’t let go. I went home to crash and Jaime kept working.

We all met back up at the Kauffman foundation at 6:30 for the presentations. They were all so amazing, you will see when you look at the final list. I was floored by the talent that was there and the products that were produced. Some could have used a good dose more design work, but 54 hours really isn’t a whole lot of time.

So that’s all. In short, it was amazing. If you DON’T go the next time they bring it to town you will kick yourself. Or I will kick you. So if you don’t want to get kicked.. SHOW UP!

Now, as for what is owned by who and is it real and all that..

Yes it is real.. you can sign up right now confirm your email and start using it. It is owned equally by those that created it. We are already working on ideas for the “beta” release and it will be AWESOME.

Next stop, business development. We are looking to co-brand with moving companies and storage facilities. Have them sell our product to their clients with their brand. Even if we can get some local small time storage places online it will help prove our business model to VC. After that.. insurance companies.. then the world.

Keep your eyes peeled. StashMate is on the rise!!

Download - Cinch from spacecowboyian on Sunday, April 26, 2009 9:25 PM

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 22:47:20 -0400

Download - Cinch from spacecowboyian on Sunday, April 26, 2009 9:25 PM

Download - Cinch from spacecowboyian on Friday, April 24, 2009 11:57 PM

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 01:45:22 -0400

Download - Cinch from spacecowboyian on Friday, April 24, 2009 11:57 PM

New site, first cards and anticipation.

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:02:00 -0400

Well the new futurehat.com has launched in its roughest form. Over the next month or so I will hopefully be adding more work examples and more information about the real goals of the company. Also I plan to update the blog very soon.

Along with the new site I have ordered a small run of business cards. I have had nothing for so long and it seems like now I know enough folks that having some would be awful handy.

All of this is not directly related to, but is definitely effected by, the upcoming Kansas City Startup Weekend. I’ll be there Friday night with my one minute pitch in hand but also fully prepared to work on whatever other good ideas that may make the cut. I’m looking forward to being out of my comfort zone but totally within my element.

I’m also pumped about handing out many of those new cards… here’s to hoping they make it in time.

Spacecowboyian.

Let me... give you a tip.

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 23:07:00 -0400

It’s a play on words. You’ll get it. Right. Now.

I got a promo code from the developers of Gratuitous to give the app a shot. At least one of the Uproar team is a KC fella so the odds were already in their favor. I’d never redeemed a promo code for an app before but after some googling I felt sufficiently dumb and downloaded the app.

Gratouitous is a simple, one-screen tip calculator with check splitting for the iphone/ipod touch.

The upsides:

Rounding up. I’m always doing that and in constant fear that I will slip up on my math.

Email the bill. Great for keeping track of business lunches if you are like me and use your personal bank account to pay for business.

Splitting the bill is always appreciated though usually when I eat out with folks nowadays the restaurant will split it out by meal for you.

This app looks good and does everything it needs to do in one screen. Great use of space.

The downside:

It loads about a half second slower than one would expect for a one page app but that was the ONLY issue I found with this awesome app.

The price:

$1.99

Maybe a dollar too high. But you do get email functionality which most other tip apps don’t appear to have.

All in all I like Gratouitous but likely I would never have purchased it if I hadn’t been given a code. Because I just don’t eat out enough.

Where the Wild Things Are desktops.

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 12:13:26 -0400

It should be abundantly clear by now that I am obsessed with this trailer and I can’t wait till October for this movie. Needless to say my obsession drove me to pull a bunch of screen caps from it and create some desktop backgrounds. You can download all 10 of them in one big zip file.

shamPOW!

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:29:58 -0400

Well my once and future hero Vince Shlomi (a.k.a. Vince Offer) has really gone and beaten the perverbial hooker.. wait.. no.. he just flat out beat a real hooker.

As for the image.. wrong? Yes. But.. right? Absolutely.

Washed

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 21:53:00 -0500

30 rock tonight sent me in search of the slang dictionary site that Liz was using to search for “washed”. I didn’t pay attention to how the word was used on the show so when I finally realized the site she was using doesn’t exist.. at least in the first 10 google results.. I checked out the meaning:

3. Washed

Right after you smoke chewy blunts with a panda, then you pass out on his chest.

“Hey mr. panda im washed as fuck”

The first two results were similar, but not as funny. This must be from something… likely something that I will never watch or hear. If it’s not, then kudos to you KRKD.

The last s2000

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:02:00 -0500

Tis a sad day. Per the press pack released by Honda for the Geneva auto show, this is the last year for production of the s2000.

Sad day indeed.

Site update

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 13:45:40 -0500

So based on my last post, I figured that the 3-6 people who look at futurehat.com per week would like a way to share my drivel. Because it’s obviously worth sharing…

Anyway, while I was at it I also implemented a comment counter from disqus. That’s right, you can actually comment on my incredibly important writings. I knew you would all be excited.

Looking at the code that runs this page again has made me realize that it is in need of a serious update. I’m going to make it my goal to have a new futurehat site up and running by my birthday on 4/16. For a birthday present I’m asking my loving wife if she will give me up for about 10 hours per week until then so I can get it done… and an iphone.. I’m also asking for an iphone.

The facebook bump

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:30:33 -0500

Visits from facebook.com:

Jan: 9134 vs. Feb: 19133 = 110% increase in Feb.

These are numbers for kansascity.com. Last month I added the addthis.com button to all of our articles and in the month of Feb articles were shared a total of 2141 times. 55% of which were shared on facebook.

The facebook holds mighty power. Use it wisely and it will treat you very well. Use it incorrectly and people such as myself will laugh at you… but it will still likely treat you well.