Local Data Mining: Where No Georgia Press Dare Go

Investigative tech reporting in Georgia is non-existent. Other than cheerleading, Chamber-type stuff from the Atlanta Business Chronicle. There are startups incubated at Georgia Tech in the for-profit business of scraping data from social media sites, and then selling it back to organizations and business people, particularly folk in law enforcement. What’s commonly called “enterprise data mining.”

I know this because one company tried to sell me their lovely dashboard thingee. To which I replied, in a business-like manner of course at the meeting, “No thanks, I roll my own.”

Georgia law enforcement stores (years of) data scraped and mined from the general (presumed innocent) public, via such technology as license tag scanning. Lord knows what they then do with such data, and where (NSA?) they then feed that data, and the associated metadata, on to.

The head of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Vernon Keenan, announced that factoid, rather proudly, to a room full of journalists at the Atlanta Press Club this summer. Not a single follow-up story on that matter, at least any I’m aware of. Not one.

Hasn’t the data-mining dilemma revealed by Glenn Greenwald piqued the slightest bit of interest on local angles to the dilemma just a little bit amongst Georgia press leadership? Seems not.

Come on MSM in Georgia. Do better.

A Piece Of One’s Own Action

You know what’s a little scary? This is:

While visiting my bank today (and I’m not going to link to them because I truly don’t want to get my “personal” banker in trouble; he’s a good guy) I was surprised to see just how much our bank(s) know about us. And how much data they’re storing. And likely selling to whomever. Or heck, giving away too, to the Justice Department, just like Facebook, Google, AT&T, etc. And those are just a few of the server farms I “contribute” to.

During our sit-down today, my “personal” banker quietly turned his computer screen towards me, so that I could see everything on the screen too, as we went along with a seemingly innocuous bit of business.

Wow! That bank is keeping all kinds of information on me/us. They know a scary amount of stuff about my life over the time they’ve had me as a customer.

And they had a very nice, er, “content management system” for it all too. It’s all just one click away. For anyone with access to that “content management system.”

Dammit! I want a piece of my own action back.

Google Glass — Can I Get A Witness?

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Don’t get me wrong, I can’t stand gardening. But the first thing that came to mind when I put on Google Glass was my mother’s organic garden.

You won’t catch me outside in broiling 98-degree southern humidity struggling to hack through a dense, painfully stinging row of okra, or pulling nasty, squirming wormy things off dozens of tomato bushes. No siree! But you will catch my mother doing that crazy stuff. For hours on end, day after day, week after week, throughout the south’s high summer months.

That said, if you can get past the oppressive heat and humidity there really is no more verdant and glorious vision of bounty, robust health and natural beauty than a southern organic garden at its summer harvesting peak.

Thus the thought of me strolling, beatifically wired, through rows of an organic garden in full, wearing a pair of Glass with my mother narrating the purvey and provenance of every lush plant and vegetable, set my pan-media-tuned mind into high and sunny gear.

Who wouldn’t want to document and share that kind of rich media in our connected world? To be fresh content-enabled, breezily so, by merely putting on glasses, something I’ve done every day since I was 7-years old anyway.

One of the great things about living near the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech, of course) is participating in some of the innovations and events churned from there. Whether beta testing products in development, networking, attending concerts or lectures, there’s a wealth of experience and knowledge available to the university’s surrounding community, so last night (July 11) I hopped over to nearby startup nurturer, Flashpoint on West Peachtree Street.

There, Randy J. Mitchell, the founder and CEO of Plisten, along with Google and Hypepotamus, hosted a meetup for Google Glass developers and designers. My friend/mentor and sometime colleague, veteran political reporter Tom Baxter, who’s always up for some new media-creation adventures, tagged along too.

Upcoming State of Media Forum In Atlanta

On Sept. 15, 2011 I will be speaking on a panel hosted by the marketing division of the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG). This is titled: The State of the Media: Traditional, New Media, and Analyst Panel.

Registration for that panel discussion/breakfast is here. More deets are not yet available. Hope to see  you there!

And I’ll add more deets about the rest of the panel when TAG adds more to their page on this particular panel. They crank through about 5 panels a day, so it seems, at TAG, so updating each one could take a little time. Be patient.

Internet Access as a Civil Right

Do you think of Internet access as a civil right? That’s the new buzz term being tossed around by Comcast. Seriously.

Comcast has been mandated by the feds to reduce the price of Internet access for low-income households… as a term of the Comcast/NBC mega-merger.

Please… let me know what you think about Internet access as a civil right. My opinion is just that – only my opinion. I want to hear others’.

To find out more about the Comcast Internet Essentials program, and how it will be applied to metro Atlanta, which has its own severe digital divide, please watch the video.

Top Three Demands For What Websites Should Do. Easily.

I’m at the Atlanta Business of WordPress Conference.  Twitter hashtag is: #thebizofwp. Francine Hardaway, neat lady, is the keynoter. She says the Top Three Things People Want From Their Business Website are these:

1. Content Management. “I want to get into my site easily and change it!”
2. “I want people/customers to get to my site from Facebook.”
3. “I want mobile access for my site.”

There you have it. And WordPress sites can do all the above. Easily. So you can too.

Less Snakes, More Interactive Whiteboards In Atlanta Public Schools

Help E. Rivers Elementary have less snakes and more interactive whiteboards! These whiteboards are terrific teaching tools. I’ve had the chance to see how kids react to them and use them in several APS schools, and they really are remarkable.

Teachers love using ’em too. More info about the white board tools are at the link… and how you could help the PTA at E. Rivers in their fundraising drive to get more boards into all E. Rivers Elementary classrooms. Every little bit of donation helps.

And yeah, who wouldn’t want to own a company (Promethean World) where PTAs and school systems everywhere were clamoring to raise money to buy your product? They’re that good.

Watch a video about the interactive whiteboards here.

Search Is Always Hot. Update About Sency City Search – Atlanta.

From the Sency founder, Evan Britton:

“As you know Sency makes it easy for anyone to search the real time web to see what’s being said right now.  We have launched the capability to let users find out what people are saying right now from 13 major US Cities.

In addition to letting the user search for what’s being said inside an actual city for a given keyword, Sency for Cities will also show the 10 most talked about topics right now in a given city.

The 13 cities included in this launch are: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC.

There are many potential uses for Sency for Cities, here are a few of them:

-Sports fans can now see, in real time, what people in their city, and rival cities, are saying about a given team or player.

-When a new movie, commercial, or product launches; businesses can now see how the sentiment from the public differs in each of the major cities.

-When there is an important event or breaking news inside a major city – anyone can see how people inside the city, whom are directly affected, are reacting. This can be compared with what outsiders are saying from cities not directly involved with the breaking news or event.

-The current hot topics for a given city can show what is happening and being most talked about in a city right now. This can introduce new events to users while highlighting the topics that a city is buzzing about right now.

More information can be found at http://sency.com/cities.php

Guest Post – Real Time Web Is Hot

There is a new way to search the web, and boatloads of users who have experienced the real time web have been impressed with the results.

Traditional search engines rank sites based on relevancy. Because of this, the results don’t change a lot. A search today will reveal most of the same sites and information that were there last month.

However, with companies like Twitter and Facebook having millions of users continue to post content and status updates – there is now real time content on the web which updates each second.

Search engines and startups have leveraged this information to offer internet users instant access to what is happening right now.

So, when breaking news happens a real time search will instantly give you the public’s thoughts, opinions, and experiences in relation to the breaking news.

A search on Google news would give you links to articles written by people in the media. A real time search will allow you to sift through all internet users comments and thoughts.

There have been several startups which have launched search engines and tools to try and offer users a good experience in searching and navigating through the real time web.

Here is a list of three startups… along with a quick overview of what makes each of them stand out:

1.)       Topsy (http://topsy.com)  What makes Topsy’s real time search engine stand out is that it is focused on real time links as opposed to real time content.   So, when you perform a search at Topsy, instead of seeing what people are talking about on the real time web, you are going to see what the most popular and prominent links are being shared on the real time web.  You can ever sort to see the most shared links over the past hour, day, week, or month.

2.)       OneRiot (http://oneriot.com/)  Rumors have been swirling all over the web in regards to a partnership Yahoo is discussing with OneRiot.  OneRiot offers users a real time search engine which can be sorted based on web results and video results.  OneRiot also announced in early October that it will be rolling out a platform for advertisers to pay for listings to featured content on their results pages. While most real time web companies have been focused on technology and traffic, OneRiot seems to be an early leader in the monetization of the real time web.

3.)      Sency*  (http://sency.com)  Sency has built a free feed for websites and blogs  (http://sency.com/feed.php).  The feed brings in real time content which updates automatically on the site or blog it is published on.  The site and blog owners are able to select which keyword they want the feed to scroll for.  So, a blog about sports, can for example, have automatically updating real time content anytime someone uses the word baseball or football shows up on the real time web

*This article was written by Evan Britton, founder of Sency.

Atlanta Tech-Media Notes of the Day. August 11, 2009

Atlanta tech-media items of the day. Click here to listen.

Sites where goodies mentioned in audio note can be found are:

• “How to Create Your First iPhone Application” – SmashingMagazine
• “Class of 2009” – ShotPut Ventures

VM provided by ShoutNow.

iPhone Apps For Kids Reviewed By A Kid

My kid has a new blog just for reviewing iPhone apps for kids: Ava Does Apps.

Curating A Revolution: YouTube’s Head of News and Politics on Video From Iran

June 25, 2009, 0700 GMT — Here is a revealing interview from Al Jazeera’s new media guy with YouTube’s head of news and politics, Steve Grove. Grove explains why YouTube has made the decisions they have lately (moreorless violating their own TOS) to keep YouTube as uncensored and as open a platform as possible for media  dissemination during the Iran election aftermath.

Some of these issues regarding YouTube and media from Iran were discussed in my interview from June 22, 2009 with IT security expert, Ariel Silverstone. That is here.

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Iran and the Internet: A Conversation With Ariel Silverstone

Atlanta, GA. June 22, 2009: WaySouth Media discusses Iran and the internet with IT security expert, Ariel Silverstone. Silverstone explains how the internet functions in Iran… and elsewhere within government and citizenry.

Silverstone also discusses pending United States internet-related legislation, communication tools and privacy issues, global engineering initiatives, YouTube, Twitter, media, and the future of the internet-related communications. Silverstone’s blog is here.

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Twittering Through The Big One

Imagine this scenario… there’s a “real” pandemic and you’re charged with acquiring 5000 laptops for your company so the entire company can work from home – given that the country’s been moreorless quarantined by now. Your people aren’t coming into your company’s physical spaces, your offices or warehouses, sprawled all over the place in 10 different cities.

But wait. Office Depot, and everywhere else for that matter, sold-out of laptops a week ago. Who you gonna call? You’d call Agility Recovery Solutions. They’ve got your laptops. And your servers, your monitors, your workspaces, your cabling, your satellite dishes… all by the truck load. And of course the generators you’ll need to run all that stuff on too. Heck, knowing the good folk at Agility they’ve probably got your coffee hot and ready to go, and already know whether your people take cream or sugar.

But if you are a business continuity manager worth your salary you’d have already established a relationship with Agility Recovery Solutions as part of your disaster relief/business continuity plan, right? Right!

At their Atlanta facility open house on May 13, 2009, Agility’s Operations Manager, Chandler Smith, told me that he had taken a rather panicky call from someone looking for 5000 laptops during the recent swine flu, er, “media outbreak.” The scenario of needing lots of  temporary gear is not slightest bit far-fetched when people and businesses feel threatened, or are in an actual crisis or disaster-related situation.

Also at the Agility open house yesterday, I spoke with Jeff Jacobson of Oodalink. For my geek pleasure, Jeff demo’d a communications center that fit in a TSA-approved carry-on case. This was a portable, satellite-based, broadband wireless network in a box – complete with battery power. Available from Agility too.

The satellite/GPS component in the kit is from Inmarsat, and you can watch a cool video about connecting one of those puppies up here. Easy as pie. Even I could do it… with a couple of years of training. 😉 And by that time, maybe Oodalink will be making the kit in a nice shade of pink too, for a very reasonable price. But I diverge…

A disease-based pandemic may not necessarily impact terestial broadband infrastructure; however, a Katrina-scenario sure can. And who wants to have to stop Twittering in a crisis? Not me!

Media Connection #2 – A Conversation With Sanjay Parekh

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AT&T Upgrades To U-Verse Via My Yard

AT&T digs up my backyard to upgrade network to new U-Verse, their cable alternative. They can take the TV crap, just give me a faster DSL speed, which AT&T says they are also upgrading.

Meanwhile, they are digging inches from a gas line and a drain pipe is lying alone somewhere like a severed body part. They’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do.

WiFi Cat Introduced by Atlanta Entrepreneur, Scott Burkett

The WiFi Cat is out of the bag!

Cool Stuff From The DIY Media Front

Jeff Jarvis, bless his annoying heart, points his readers and ‘sumers to a wonderful video today… shot entirely by a still camera, but one that happens to also shoot HD video. You can get into one of these Canon 5D MkII’s for about a grand. Let me repeat… A GRAND.

Here’s what a pro did with it, just after buying one off the shelf and charging that puppy up:

Canon EOS5DmkII, One night in Beijing. from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

Granted, the shooter here is a pro (a shooter for The Guardian in China), but he demos a product that is perfect for the pro’sumer level. And one that can help a newly-mined multimedia-ist take their journalism endeavors right on to the next level.

Remember folks, don’t get discouraged – just get using. The more you use any kind of gear, the more comfortable you will get with it all. One of these days, I’m even gonna take my Panasonic DVX100 off of automatic settings. I know that happy day is coming!

CNN Broke Twitter?

I bet @ricksanchezcnn finally broke Twitter for good. The fragile thing wasn’t meant for heavy MSM lifting. Between Sanchez on CNN at 3pm and the anti-Motrin ad moms today, the damn thing may never recover. Call some lawyers quick!

Mapping Our Beloved South. We’re Left-Behinds Now.

Here’s a map of how the NYTimes perceived the South as being out of touch, and presumably left behind, from the rest of the nation… in terms of how we voted (markedly differently) on Nov. 4th. And here is the rather condescending analysis from the Damn Yankees too!

The map I want to see is the one displaying broadband access across the United States… overlayed with the how-we-Crackers-voted map. Then we might get a better picture of just how seriously left-behind we really are, in terms of politics now married with technology… and all the implications there.

From the NYTimes today:

Southern counties that voted more heavily Republican this year than in 2004 tended to be poorer, less educated and whiter, a statistical analysis by The New York Times shows. Mr. Obama won in only 44 counties in the Appalachian belt, a stretch of 410 counties that runs from New York to Mississippi. Many of those counties, rural and isolated, have been less exposed to the diversity, educational achievement and economic progress experienced by more prosperous areas.

Could Merle Black of Emory get together with some computation and journalism geeks at Georgia Tech please!