Death, iPhones and Celebrity

February 5, 2014 by MzD

Death

RIP Philip Seymour Hoffman. At first it seemed the Super Bowl coverage eclipsed your passing, but no more. You will be well remembered at the awards, I trust.
Your death was a tragedy. I read a blog post that said your death affects us depending on our circumstances. So though, of course, I barely knew you, you are of a similar generation, and thus every man’s death diminishes me.

My iPhone 3Gs (yes you read that correctly 3G) is dying a slow prolonged death. First it started with quirky behaviours, and obstinance. It refused to download certain Apps, telling me the OS was too old. Then the alarms would all disappear all at once and I would no longer know what to do with my time. Then it refused to charge. It will still connect to iTunes and so all is backed up. This happened on the same day that PSH died, which is already four days ago, and in terms of iPhone life is surely a ridiculously long time to wait to do something about this death.

I delayed as it came to life on Monday evening and charged to 100%. So Tuesday was a half-day of use. It has not sprung back yet. Hope does spring eternal.

iPhones

At the same time I’m about to beta-test an app I’ve been collaborating on (an art project) and that means I had 3 iPhones (4s) lined up all charging at the same time, showing exactly the same time on the screen. Soon they all merged, like women whose menstrual cycles follow the same schedule and the green bar showed 100% full.

The time was completely in sync as well. Soon everyone will be on the same schedule. Except those few analog hold outs who wear wrist watches, with those long arrow things, I don’t what they’re called. En Guard!

Celebrity

Facebook is 10. Everyone is getting their 15 minutes of fame with those videos. I want to say they are cheesy, but that doesn’t quite encompass the spirit of the thing. Andy Warhol is probably delighted and begging to come back soon embodied as an iPhone 6. Instead of Siri we will hear his delicate timbre dictating where to go and who to hang with.

Decisions

Forced Obsolescence. Obsolescence is a hobby of mine. I did a year long blog (every single day kids) about stuff that was obsolete.

This iPhone 3Gs was obsolete about 2 years ago, but still I held on to it. It worked. Crappy pictures, but I’ve got an obsolete Nikon D5000 for those. Texting was fine. Talking (don’t do much of that). Emails – managed to juggle 5 accounts. Apps – fitness tracking check. financial tracking check. miscellaneous crap to waste time on check.

I also resisted because on our shared business plan, the other phone still has 5 months to go before an upgrade. And here in Canada, it’s only very recently that the switch has gone from 3 to 2 year contracts. Even that seems like too much time.

I like pushing things to their edge. I will repurpose the 3Gs into something. Only the battery is dead.

Old Websites – Are They Obsolete or Not?

November 8, 2013 by MzD

What To Do With Old Websites – Retire or Realign…

A few years ago, a friend of mine announced she might retire as an artist, at the ripe old age of 36. Another friend back East made a similar pronouncement, although he was a few years older than her. Neither have retired, but both took a hiatus. I recently remembered their dramatic statements and started thinking about retirement of a different sort.

For just over 10 years, from 1999-2010 I was very active in the net-art community, producing dozens of art websites. If the lifespan of a website is akin to the doggie years metaphor (1 dog year = 7 human years ), then these sites are seriously out of date. Last year, in 2012 I created a year-long daily photographic blog [The Obsolescence Project], considering things that were out of date, but I (gasp) used a free wordpress.com site and thus didn’t design the site, so I exclude it from these musings.

Currently I have about six public web projects that are still active online (there are more, but they were produced anonymously, which is another story, so they can choose their own blissful retirement). Almost all of the sites rely partially on Flash, some completely. Flash is basically obsolete. While not technically so, especially where compiled code (as opposed to visible html5 code) is desired, and for games, for projects I’m referring to it is done and dusted. Those sites just aren’t viewable on the iPhone, iPad and who knows where else. So I have to make a decision. Do I retire these sites completely – press delete – and leave documentation (screenshots/text) behind, or is there a way to re-align them with today’s contemporary web standards?

3 Case Studies:

Screenshot from Excerpts From An Archive

Excerpts from An Archive, 2001) is partly related to how one searched the web in 2001. Excerpts considers the nature of digital archives, history and fiction. Hand-coded with HTML using tables! At that time I used to get emails from folks asking me for information about their relatives – it was quite touching. The site only uses a wee bit of Flash, so it still hangs together. But it’s not mobile-responsive, it’s looks quite small – in those days you had to be quite conservative with images, dial-up internet might have even still be around, can’t remember.
Screen Shot of Translations/Traductions: L’Historia Mi Absolvera

Translations/Traductions – produced as a result of a residency at La Chambre Blanche in Quebec City, a series of Flash vignettes created from open source archival movies and texts. Texts translated in google, imagery ‘translated’ (vectorized) in Flash. Blend of interactive and non-interactive animations. 2007 launch date. This one is all Flash – hence invisible on many (read Apple) mobile platforms (including the iPad).
Screen shot of Bird

Bird (2004) – A petit homage to Dizzy Gillespie + Charlie Bird Parker. This one is all Flash too. Looking back, I have a fondness for the effort that it took to create. The excerpt from the song repeats and the archival video that has been modified shifts each time. Does nostalgia merit a redesign?

STATUS PLAN

Excerpts from An Archive – This site gets a lot of traction. It has been featured in two books, one grad thesis, and various festivals. It merits a re-design/re-alignment to bring it up to speed. However, some of the little nifty (in 2001 terms) features that were part of it will just have to be lost. This also means a loss (which is already there) of some of the internal logic. C’est la vie.

Translations/Traductions: There are five animations which each are their own story. I still like them.
The non-interactive ones I will look at converting to video. The interactive ones, like the one I featured will, alas, have to stay as is. I don’t see how html5 can handle it all. Of course, I’m open to suggestion. Put up stills for those who can’t see Flash.

Bird: Given this one is all Flash, but non-interactive, it could easily be reborn as a video. The only loss would be the full scalability that the vector format allows. There would a gain too – in that viewers could pause to actually read the text that scrolls by, I didn’t fully recognize the speed then.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The three other still live sites I haven’t mentioned are probably going to shift towards documentation only, as their internal logic involved a process of getting input from the public and that process is done.

My rationale for choosing to resuscitate, to whatever degree, these sites has a lot to do with perceived value. Do I still think these works have any value to me as an artist? With the Archives, given that it is still out there, and receives active traffic, it’s not really a question of should, but of when and how.

For TT and Bird, it’s more of a personal reason – ie: I like them, they stay.

For the rest, if I had more time/energy/_______, I might revamp them. But probably it’s best to document, archive and let them gracefully fade away.

If you have old (or ancient) sites that you are wondering if they should be re-purposed for the “mobile web”, here are three questions to ask to help you decide:

Does the site still receive any traffic?
Does it still speak to the heart of your practice/business?
What technologies does it use and how challenging would it be to migrate them?

If the answer to 1 is zero, it’s probably easiest to delete. It’s done, then it’s no longer clutter. Documentation is always a good idea (copy as text, or take screen shots).
If it’s yes, that’s a good hint to bring it up to speed.

If the answer to 2 is no, then I vote for document and delete. Again, why have stuff out there that is attracting people who are interested in content that is obsolete to you.
If it’s yes, that’s probably the most important reason to import it to a new format.

For number 3, technologies: Depending on the type of content, you’re either in for a fairly easy, smooth transition or in for a rocky ride if the content is video in some archaic format and you no longer have the original files (or the original files are no longer readable!) or if it uses Flash animations etc, then the amount of time it will take to re-format creeps up and up. Then you have to ask yourself if you really have the time / money / interest in this thing they call the mobile web.

p.s. Always document.

Site re-launch

September 4, 2013 by MzD

Avian Site

We re-launched The Center For Avian and Exotic Medicine, a speciality veterinary hospital in New York, NY. New features include: replacing most of the pdf forms with online forms, mobile-ready responsive website, re-organization of content to feature their extensive articles and resources. If you have a bearded dragon that needs treatment and you live in NYC, head on over to the CAEM!

Fonts and WhatNot

November 25, 2012 by MzD

Response to Pecha Kucha on Friday night.

1. I learned typography is not boring. Which I knew of course, but fun to see it presented historically going back thousands of years.

2. The last speaker closed with a slide that said “Create something”. And in his charming youthful, snowboard culture way, said that it didn’t matter if it was good or bad shit, just do it. The slide reminded me of Corita Kent, an artist and a nun, who had this to say on the matter of creating:

“Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make.”

Possibly also written by John Cage, but he’s well enough known, so I rather prefer the idea of the her penmanship being the one. Apparently they knew each other, so who knows, it may have been a collaboration.

Email Send Limits – or Why Spammers Should Be ….

November 9, 2012 by MzD

This week I spent about 8 hours wrestling MailMan to the ground. I got an A in wrestling during my first semester at college, which means I should be good at this, eh?

MailMan is free software for managing electronic mail discussion and e-newsletter lists. I started down the garden path of looking at MailMan for a client was sending out a mass email and bumped into the send mail limit of the hosting provider.

I’m not sure exactly when these limits have been applied or more accurately, strictly enforced, but it seems that they apply pretty much across the board on most web hosts, and even with gmail. The average is about 100 emails per session, or email. We’re talking about number of emails sent from a mail client, if you send from within gmail it’s a higher limit.

MailMan has a lot of features and is pretty decent, all things considered, but as the tech support on the phone told me “it’s not my favourite software”. Mine neither. It feels very dated, like something from the 90s. The 90s were great, but not so elegant.

It seems to me when you are sending through an authenticated account, that you should have a higher limit than 100, but I’m presuming this is the way to keep spammers at bay.

I think I’ve lost a year of my life to dealing with incoming spam, blocking spam, writing SPF records, sifting through junk mail for valid emails, handling comment spam and the like.

There was a bill passed here in Canada, Apparently the fines are intense, up to $10 million dollars for corporations, but if it’s had an affect I don’t think anyone’s noticed.

I wonder how many individuals and/or corporations have been fined for sending out spam here in Canada, and what are the stats like for our neighbours in the South? And, when they have been fined, how much was it for, and was the money received?

Canadians receive 68.5% of spam.

email-spam-phishing-trends-2011-2012-infographic-600 — Source: http://www.emailtray.com/blog/infographic-email-spam-phishing-trends-2011-2012/

The diaspora – by nature complex

October 5, 2012 by MzD

There is a rich, detailed article at MotherBoard “What Happened to the Facebook Killer? It’s Complicated” talking about Diaspora: The Community-run, Distributed Social-network , how the combination of its very low initial budget ($200,000) compared to Go0gle’s billions, the tragic death of one of its founders, and the scale of reach Facebook had reached, amongst many others, as factors that have influenced its failure to take over FB. The project is still very much alive, however I can tell you in one, ok two, points why it won’t reach millions.

1. Too much focus on geekdom. The Big Bang Theory might be a very popular show, but most folks aren’t interested getting their hands dirty. Who wants to install a server?

2. Too much choice. When you go to the diasporaproject.org and click sign-up it directs you to a tsuanami of pod choices to join. They call it an ecosystem of pods.

I would like a social media system that offers full control over privacy and guarantee of respect of individual and collective privacy. I fully respect the impetus behind Diaspora. And I’m disappointed it hasn’t taken over as a viable new model. Especially in the light of FB’s recent privacy transgressions in Europe. (FB recently rolled out a facial recognition system that tags your photos by automatically suggesting names. They have since suspended facial recognition in Europe – where presumably folks have a longer memory of how data in the wrong hands is no laughing matter.)

But who will provide such a utopic system?

The MB article concludes on an optimistic note: “As the Internet shifts to our pockets and everywhere else, it’s right to be skeptical of those who promise to be the next big thing, no matter how big that thing is. What we do know is that the new new thing is always right around the corner. It probably won’t be Diaspora. And it probably won’t resemble Facebook. But it will probably be better. It will need to be, because it’s our choice after all. These things are nothing without us.”

Wearing White After Labour Day

September 4, 2012 by MzD

I have 3 pairs of white pants. One a creamy wide-leg linen pair, one a pair of stretchy arctic white cropped jeans, and the last is a pair of capris. Also a cool white.

It now being the 4th of September, the fashion goddesses decree I must put these items to rest until next year. But wait, the climes are still in the 20s – and sun is in the forecast. Must I obey?

A friend of mine told me this “Origin of the fashion rule: It had to do with laundry and not with fashion. Back, say 100+ years ago … During the summer months, laundry could be hung outside to dry and sunlight would keep the whites sparkling. But once the cottage was closed and people returned to the city, there wasn’t the same amount of sunshine or the same intensity, and in the city there was a lot of coal smoke and dust in the air (because that’s how things were heated in those days) so whites got dingy very quickly and looked dirty. Hence the dictum: don’t wear white after labor day. Browns and blacks didn’t show the dirt so they could be worn a number of times before they had to be cleaned. ”

So where am I going with this?

Basically thinking about how to redo this website – wrestle it into the ground into something that says stylish, but not too conformist, cool but not arctic and so on. White on a website is like how Picasso referred to black “when in doubt — use black” or so they told me in art school.

Soon there may be more white or a lot less. Rules are made to be broken.

Just How Many Twitter Followers Do You Need?

June 15, 2012 by MzD

I was waiting in line at my favourite gluten-free bakery, coincidentally right below our studio, as the owner Arlene was chatting with another customer and mentioned that she would tweet her when a new product was available.

The gal replied “Oh I’m not on twitter that much” but that she does refer friends to the bakery via word of mouth not twitter. Arlene then mentioned she was talking to someone else who basically told her her twitter presence was insignificant, that she needed at least 500 followers before it became useful.

I said, well it’s not necessarily true. As a joke I said she only needed 10 followers.

Yes, of course 500 vs 50 is probably better — I’m not arguing with that. It’s the concept that there is a set number out there that business has to achieve. And, that if you have 500 followers, but over 50% of them are bots, that’s hardly something to write home about.

Also, the whole numbers game and the ideal ratio (you “should” have more followers than following) has always seemed a bit suspect to me. The pump and dump strategies employed by some — they follow you and then unfollow you once you’ve followed them back so they can quickly have a ratio of 2,000 to 10,000. Look at me, I’m popular!

Although I tossed out the number 10 as a joke, what if her ideal client, who also happens to be on twitter, also happens to be a very popular twitterer….maybe she does need only a few followers. What if one of them happened to be @hummingbird604 ( I don’t think he’s a gluten free person, but who knows?) One RT from him and you’re immediately reaching a much wider audience (>10K in his case), so the logic goes. On the other hand, he tweets probably 300(0?) times a day and so that audience might just miss his tweet about your x, y, z.

A better strategy is to not focus so much on the numbers and focus instead on listening to your audience and responding to them as the genuine, authentic business owner you are.

Forget about the numbers. Really.

p.s. Say hello to Arlene on Twitter.

Project Obso – new blog

February 8, 2012 by MzD

I’ve started a 30(+) day blog about obsolescence. Visit The Obsolescence Project>

Black Out Day

January 18, 2012 by MzD

Happy to have participated in the good fight. 8 sites blacked out today – 2 ours (art & this site), the rest clients and partners.

Had fun with some of the pages – below my art site, and one of our favourite clients – Animal General.