Wednesday, July 8

NY Tech Meetup #64 - June 2009

ExitStrategy
  • How to handle exiting and transferring on the NY subway via an iPhone app
  • Shows how to use the subway lines and which exit of the train to get out at.
  • Sister and himself – 10 weeks and figured out how to get out of the doors and such.
  • On the iPhone, iTouch, Blackberry, Android and the Amazon Kindle
Q/A:
Thought about crowdsourcing – needed higher quality data and could not crowdsource the effort

Jared Richardson, Gliider
Gliider is a research tool purpose built for the travel space
Looks like clipmarks or the new cut-and-paste functionality for the iPhone 3GS – supports collecting information and categorizes the content for storage. Looks like it is an interface for structuring data into the system (for reuse) and then uses the intent of travel to help both the user to keep the info they need for their trip – and allows it to be shared.
Can export the trip information and the details of it into a PDF for carrying or printing out.
Q/A:
  • Technology used: no answer – need the tech guy
  • What about intellectual property issues? Have thought about it – and have protected themselves
Avi Flombaum, Designer Pages
  • How designers and architects are sharing products online as well as a web-based project management suite.
  • In a room, every single product is accounted for – no space is left unknown
  • $400B a year is spent on architectural products. No real collaborative technology in place outside of sharing URLs in emails or printouts and photocopies. Designer Pages seems to have extended the Yahoo and google Groups/mailing list/Facebooks Groups functionality for a unique customer base.
  • Supports clips (bookmarks with tags) into the project. Sponsorship via result-based advertising – had to build their own technology. Not keyword dependent, focusing on verticals.
  • Only accessible by trained professionals – suppliers tend to only want to speak to professionals
  • Currently looking into Engineering into expanding the product offering (what about software design?)
urtak
  • Trying to change how opinion information is gathered. Polling is not the appropriate approach – “polling does nto work since it will only inform what the pollster only already knows”
  • Ask a question to urtak – you can ask a question to the general pool. And the information is relationable.
Jeff and Jeff from Vocab Sushi
Bite-sized learning – combining real-world contextual questions, real-time training and contextual learning (instead of memorization) – computer-based training, has soy sauce bottles as your progress bar. Removes the SAT word cards and bring it to a different level.

Ben from Spongecell
Changing how people interact with banner ads – making widget ads – accepting a feed to interact with the Flash component – layers the buttons into Flash banners. Stays within the IAB standards. Interactions come from the rollover – does not require a click
The service is tracking any time the mouse enters into the Ad.

Ryan Charles from Zagat
Mobile product (Zigg-ghat) – NRU (near you) – available for google Android phones.
Restaurants that are close to you – offers an augmented reality view where you could use the radar interface or the scouting interface.

Speaker: Ali Emamisharing his experience from the Iran Election
Discussing the election – supposedly the government would count 10% of the votes in front of the news media
  • Why did 160% to 200% of the vote in various towns show up to vote?
  • How come so many villages that no longer exist also voted?
  • How did the votes that were counted in "full-view" of the media come out unfolded when, in order to put the votes into the ballot box, you needed to fold them?
Doing the revolution the “new way” – cellphones, youtube, facebook and twitter.
Cellphones for image capturing device, youtube for independent news, facebook for community organizing, twitter for notifications
Bad news: Nokia sold wiretapping equipment to Iran Telecoms
  • Technology: as a technologist, have to think about ways to solve the issue of wiretapping/filtration and interception
  • Wiretapping, filtrations, interception should be illegal and considered a human rights violation
Speaker: Douglas Rushkoff – Life Inc.
Most important thing to get – the economy in which we are living is a closed source operating system – as much as Microsoft. We behave as if it was a product of the natural world. Social sciences like economics – as if science is applied. We spend our time looking at the economy as if it is a natural system rather than a game.
Shows a dollar and says this represents money – and this kind of money is biased to a particular kind of action. The Internet “broke” the economy. This is the second leg of the dot com bust. Made a faux mortgage to hide the second crash of the Internet
People can create value – how this operating system came to dominate the world – and how close we are to offering an economic Linux system. Our OS was built up in the last part of the Middle Ages (1000 to 1300) – people were getting very, very wealthy.
Currency was biased toward transacting – versus hoarding – based on the abundance in the fields. In all of the different areas, there was growth. Could not save money for the future – so they reinvested their money into generational projects
Did not favor those who do not create value. Wealth was being redistributed – and the rich did not like this. Charted corporation – had to have a select relationship – work for a corporation
Centralized currency – had to borrow from the king.
The beauty of the Internet in the gift economy – first time in many, many years – it was about creating value.
Fortune 500 are stories on debt – activities that are dictated by the debt structure – nothing to do with value creation.
Problem with the dot com economy – we do not need their money. We live in an economy where money wants to make money. We want the opportunity to make value, not money.

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