Marc Canters Broadband mechanics Blog

This is what I’m showing tomorrow to Chancellor Fingerhut. This is what I did on my summer vacation.

Getting lots of things done. We have a killer book from our Futuristic Young Ideas STEM student summer internship program. The Civic Commons is rocking - running towards an end of Sept ship date.

There are a lot of really basic person->many communication tools which Facebook doesn’t have - let alone how shitty their messages tool is.  Looks like Orkut sees this as a hole - and they’re right.  Now all they (Orkut) need are the 500M people.

Now that Orkut is pitching multiple personae, how long until we need Persona Editors?

Hmmmm - I wonder if I could help invalidate these Paul Allen patent claims from Interval research. I knew a lot of people who worked there - and I specifically recall showing similar interfaces to Brenda Laurel when she visited my MediaBar in 1996.  Hmmmmm - I’d just LOVE to fuck Paul Allen and ALL those interval people!

SCVNGR rocks - I love this stuff

the Activity Streams standard is growing

Congrats to Rohit Khare and Adam Rifkin!

How gardens stitch together communities

Killer Scott Pilgrim/Matrix mashup

Whiplash fatigue,

All the chapters have been reordered - it’s much more comprehensible now!

We’re doing a dress rehearsal tonight at the WOW (Wade Oval Weds) at 7:15

Here’s a reprint of a post I just put up over at Ingenuity net - the network we’ve started here in NEO to connect artists to technologists.  It actually is a message to my Civic Commons cohorts - as we finalize the first release of our Civic Commons platform.

Instead of calling it blogging, think of it as:

- a way to start a conversation

- a way to share your photos and videos

- a way to update your status and let everyone know what you’re doing or where you are

- a way to reblog a link (annotate or comment on the link)

- a way post a review of something

- a funnel thru which all your other web based activities, expression and status are being flowed

Here it is.

I submitted a full Product Requirements Document for our Civic Commons platform on 08/09/10.  Nice start.

Many people are perplexed by the Google-Verizon announcement. Understand that this is about the iPhone - which brings in the majority of Apple’s profits.  Google is truly branching out - beyond search.  Next up - the social network battle with Facebook.  Notice that Microsoft is completely out of this discussion.

This Pew report supports my assertion that the digital divide is not economic - its about apathy, fear and apprehension.

Bill Gates: forget university - the web is the future of education

VMware shows how to do it - and integrates Zimbra into their suite.  See! Digital Lifestyle Aggregation ain’t too hard!

Moving Forward in the Efficient Management and Use of Core facilities - an issue I’m sure is burning on all of your minds

Better Disqus

Dreamit incubator

Between RET3, the FYI summer internship program and the Collaborative Campus projects - things are starting to rock here.

Next up - the Civic Commons.

There will be many social graphs

VRM+CRM 2010 conference at Harvard Aug. 26-27

Open Transit data

Insight into Aldi’s

Wave wave goodbye

Facebook spends $40M buying Friendster’s patents

Facebook’s widgets fail

LucyPhone, Rdio, Jolicloud, Talent Maven,

I attended an inspirational presentation yesterday - which was the culmination of a summer’s work of designers, interns, students and community members in a district they call the Campus District - near downtown Cleveland.

Bordered by the Lake to the north and Woodland to the south, the Campus District is a slice of Cleveland from 22nd to 30th street that encompassed CSU, The Cedar Estates public housing complex, Asiatown and the Tri-C campus.

The Collaborative Campus effort is a joint-venture between St. Vincent’s Hospital, CSU and Tri-C.  Its goal is to come up with a comprehensive urband design that connects the disparate parts of teh community together.  I was skeptical as I entered, and totally jazzed when I left.

Not only are they taking over the old Juvi Hall and have plans to put in an incubator, coworking space and room for companies like Digital City Mechanics, but they also plan on establishing “walks” that connect the community together and a branding ’swagg’ effort.

Banners would line the ‘Green Walk‘, ‘Culture Walk‘ and ‘Green Walk‘ and kiosks and live events would help develop the community feel and brand.  My friend Mackenzie King worked on this project, as did someone named Mari Hulick from the C.I.A.  I’m hoping to get DCM (Digital City Mechanics) involved somehow.

George Nemeth and myself went over to a place called RET3 yesterday.  It’s a computer refurbishing and recycling center - setup by Pat Holland (who also happens to be one of the major landlords on Hessler St) and a father-son team of Ken and Kenny Kovatch.

These 3 guys are donating computers to schools, rec centers, community organizations and other places where the PCs can be put to use!  Needless to say - we’ll be using them for our “digital bureaus!”

I’ve been to centers like this in London, SF and LA - but it was great to see one in Cleveland.  They’re trying to set one up in Akron!  I’m a geek - so seeing piles of equipment really gets me off.

Here are some images from yesterday:

Here’s our first video

Facebook Stories

The NECOCANDO folks have issued a report showing that Cleveland is dealing with it’s foreclosure issues

1M projects on github

Jack Ricchuito has a great idea for a restaurant

David Weinberger starts to bend reality back on itself as he updates his blog about Inception. I agree with him - it’s an amazing movie worthy of the tradition that was once based upon quality, intrigue and cinematography.  Only film can tell that story.

Meanwhile….. 7 reasons why Geeks love Inception

I’ve been boning up on RFID

Ask.com goes community

Facebook’s open source infrastructure

Non peer reviewed science!  Heaven forbid!

Clear Channel is making money from giving away mobile apps

Message Companion, Facebook Media page, Google OneBox, Pulse,

Our summer internship program has decided to rename itself.

We’re now known as FYI (”Futuristic Young Ideas”) and we’re:

- producing a book, a DVD and a web site (with a store)

- producing live events and learning what it takes to put on and organize events

- not allowing ANY paper products in our program.  Everything is being done on-line with:

- Gmail

- Google docs

- PBworks

- PeopleAggregator

R buttons and the open marketplace - Listenlog - Emancipay - the Train goes the other way

Harry Pekar - a local hometown hero

Revitalizing the Commons

Tornado now available

More on OpenStack

New models for designing games, products and places = plants

Using consumer identities for business interaction

They should have had a contest and give a reward to the 500,000,000th member

To give you an idea of how things work here in Cleveland, the Dental school at Case’s Medical school is adopting nine families to develop a holistic approach to dental health. Over 35% of families in the area NEVER receive ANY dental care, so Case’s Dental school wants to study the affects of comparing proper dental care to those without.  AWESOME!  Big shoutout to Dean Jerry Goldberg and to Assoc Dean/Head of Research Aaron Weinberg!

I’m speaking at the Northeast Ohio Useability Professional’s Assoc next meeting on Aug. 17th

Recording Industry vs. The People: RIAA paid its lawyers more than $16,000,000 in 2008 to recover only $391,000!!!
“all in all, for a 3 year period, they spent around $64,000,000 in legal and investigative expenses to recover around $1,361,000. Shrewd.”

open data doesn’t empower communities

Alan Kay - User Interface: a personal view

Muriel Cooper R.I.P. - inventing interactive - AIGA bio

OpenLayers 3.0, Northeast Ohio Green Map

Patrick Loomis is cranking them out.  When I asked him about his other logo he said: “this one is easier to manage”.

Patrick is now going to learn about taking this logo and creating a patch, biz cards, web site banner artwork, an icon, t-shirt and posters.

On a related note another internship program was put on this summer by the CWRU KSL library. It was called the “Future Connections program at University Circle”.

Perhaps next summer we can get this program talking to our program.

We’ve started a new blog at Case - called CaseStartups.org.  Its part of a ground swell of interest and demands from the student body to start creating new companies, spinoff research projects and JOBS here in Cleveland.

That’s why we’re starting the iDEA Institute - which officially is part of the Case Engineering School - but which will be TOTALLY working with any group of students, faculty or staff - here at Case - and beyond in the surrounding community and NEO region.

In fact we’re already working with GCA (Goldstein, Caldwell and Assoc.) and have helped numerous groups out - in promoting their events.

It will take some time for change to happen - but at least we’re headed in the right direction.

It’s the one year anniversary of me moving here to NEO - and I can’t tell you how happy I am with that decision.  Well in fact I am telling you - right here - right now.  Our Civic Commons dev efforts are growing, the prototype tool we’re building for the iDEA Institute is humming along and I spend every day teaching 16 STEM high school students how to  use on-line technology to create video and events, produce and organize a book and in general - get severely geeky.

Meanwhile…..

Announcing OpenStack - a way to get out of cloud lock-in

They’re having a rally down in Lafayette, LA against any moratorium on off-shore drilling. They’re quoting 75k jobs and 52% of their local economy - at stake.

Turning the Campus District inside out and the SWAG team

I’m sorry my wife couldn’t be there to enjoy the Malpeque at Sarava’s.

Our STEM student high school internship program (formerly know as “YoYOUyouth“) has decided to rename itself.

We’re now: “Futuristic Young Ideas” (FYI):

Here we are outside of the KSL main library at CWRU:

My best buddy Big Dave Jacob’s company got some great press on his software - MatchMaker.

Check it out:

We has a great 4th and I’ve now started teaching and mentoring a group of STEM high school students in how to utilize on-line tech for jobs, producing events, content and helping out local community groups.  Lots of byproduct from this throughout the summer.

Meanwhile…..

The Guardian has made available a plug in that embeds full text articles into Wordpress blogs.  AWESOME!

The Diaspora kids give a report

On-line browser based outlining - has raised it’s head again - and from who? Marc Barrot - of course!

Cisco sustainable city in Portugal

Slovenefest (Slanina story), PushOvr, AllVoices,

This is from Ian Charnas and a team from CWRU: