Most interesting presenters at MIT’s Beyond Broadcast:

Mike Lanza of click.tv, pioneering interactive flash capability where users can add text/comments/multimedia WITHIN another’s video online.

Jennifer Harris of the Center for Digital Democracy, who was not afraid to argue with Chuck DeFeo about what democratic participation is really about, and who also spoke to the need for talking about access as a primary issue (yay!) before you can talk about participation — because, even in Web 2.0, it’s not “many to many” user-generated content or citizen journalism if a large percentage of citizens don’t even have sufficient access to participate online. She also spoke about the presidential election, and what new media outreach really means for candidates if it’s not completely transparent.

Tad Hirsch of MIT’s Media Lab diversified the group with an international & activist perspective, as well as some very sensible thoughts on participation and access and some examples of progressive telephony projects. Well done, Tad.

The afternoon session on the future of web video was interesting and innovative, in the same way that being a character in a political cartoon might be interesting and innovative. The room was full of a cadre of well-qualified media makers representing a diversity of backgrounds: academics, TV, radio and web producers, bloggers, marketing reps, international rights advocates, me. Then there was the obviously-brilliant-but-incomprehensible-crazy-lady obsessed with the future of copyright, and the obviously-brilliant-but-completely-weird-lady obsessed with censorship who sat in the front row, nodding her head and knitting. I bet you $20 they both went to Smith.

Anyway.

After some mildly painful discussion on “We need to make a We-Tube!” without addressing who the “we” is, exactly (academics? citizens with resources, education, and access? Americans?) we broke into subgroups. My group was dubbed “You’re dreaming”, because we speculated about the future of web video and its potential is for participation and interactivity, including the creation of a visual wiki; embedded, editable dynamic text; mobile video capabilities; massive portable archives; and live video streaming online from any type of handheld device.

My pal Mohan was distressed that we weren’t discussing concrete issues: financing companies, bandwidth restrictions, compliance with standards upgrades, business plans. Others were coming at it from a more technical angle (technology can do anything!) and a more realistic angle (we’re human; technology can never do everything), especially as related to documenting life.

Overall, it was a good conference with tons of interesting people, but less lectures and more interactivity would have made it better, though the live posting of questions during presentations was neat. Working groups should have been tasked with coming up with proposals for addressing issues in media — I think that would have been a constructive/creative exercise.

Here’s BB’s list of recommended reading for the 13 other people who read this blog and might be interested.

Enough of that. I’m retiring from attending conferences until at least, um, April.

starts tomorrow, at MIT. Tune in for full coverage. I’m storming the castle w/my female compatriots, including a media activist digital storyteller and a jaded-yet-successful future media mogul. Watch for us; we’ll be the ones in suits and sneakers.

Also entitled, “A silvery ray of hope amidst the bleak abyss of misalignment”

So. After giving up all expectations of progress, or of getting these things off, my weakened soul was lifted yesterday with the promise of improvement. It went like this:

First, I noticed on the computer that the start date in my file had been corrected. (Hurrah for accuracy!) Then, Doc asked how the teeth were doing.

“Terrible!” I said. “My bite is worse than ever, the upper right molar is too low and my top teeth are slowly floating away from one another.” Like salt-drenched ships on an ebbing tide. Ahem.

He made me open my mouth, stared into it for several minutes, and groaned. Then he issued commands to his minions:

“R., replace that wire with a steel number two, put a pair of threes on the upper nines and run a chain from the bottom seven to the top twleve while I get the latex thread…” Basically, they went into crisis mode, forcing my teeth — via a latex chain spanning all the front teeth and a thin bit of latex thread woven around them, invisibly — into place. He also finagled some contraption to pull down a molar that’s too high up.

When everything was said and done, I felt like a large boxer had just beat up my gums, but I didn’t complain — because please, I just want everything to look nice and finish fast. And, although I’m forced to wear incredibly painful thick thick latex bands from my molars to my canines, yanking both sides of my mouth over to the left (which is about as attractive as wearing a dead animal on your head), I gotta say within 24 hours, all the gaps in the front had closed, and my bite became 85% corrected.

Which shows, in the lower manifestation of a higher idea, the wonders of modern orthodontics. Or the wonders of my unprecedented progress. I still think it’ll be at least six more months, though.

The tiger says it all.

E-link, out of Cambridge (near my old house in Huron) is one of the companies releasing electronic paper, and other “flexible plastic electronics”.

Unlike silicon components, polymer-based semiconductors can be fabricated on flexible substrates. The announcements are likely to lead to an explosion of small portable devices with uncharacteristically large displays that fold up or roll up into the device.

This stuff is supposed to look and feel more like paper, be readable from any angle, and its first release will come this April in Japan. Yikes!

In other news, New Yorkers might soon see a law banning iPods while crossing the street, which I think is totally awesome and will allow people to not only make more eye contact with one another, but maybe even have a conversation. At the very least, people will be able to actually hear the brakes of an oncoming vehicle, allowing them to, ostensibly, get the heck out of the way.

The bill was drafted by Senator Carl Kruger:

Mr Kruger seems determined, noting that in recent months three people were killed in his district in Brooklyn in road accidents while listening on their headphones. “They are walking into speeding cars. They are walking into buses. They are walking into one another,” Mr Kruger said.

(What a great quote!)

In viral video news, YouTube is getting smarter and partnering with Vodafone to allow mobile video downloads. Duh, it’s about time. Too bad YouTube still owns the market on this.

Amazon Unbox, which allows for direct-to-TV downloads, is being launched soon in conjunction with Tivo:

Customers who already own and use the TiVo will be able to purchase and rent movies from Unbox directly from their TiVo units using the service, called Amazon Unbox on TiVo. The service is already being beta-tested among a select group of TiVo customers, but according to TiVo it will be available “soon” to all 1.5 million broadband-ready TiVo subscribers.

This will compete with AppleTV, Steve Job’s latest foray into the world of interactive television. The difference: the Unbox allows for direct downloads to your TV; AppleTV requires downloads to go through a PC first.

Mohan, this post is for you! They’re finally catching on!

P.S.: I still hate corporate media-owned TV, streaming or not.

Paid $200, asking $100. Used a handful of times. Great condition, was just way too heavy for me and my shoulder. Pass it on.

My patience has deteriorated, as has the alignment of my smile, as has any shred of hope that this will be over soon.

My doc had some computer problems many months ago, which affected his patients’ digital files. I noticed on the computer one day that my treatment start date was 6 months too late; I mentioned this, he said he’d fix it, but he never did. So this time I come in, and I’m asking when when when will this bite be aligned, when will these gaps be closed, when will we be done with this?

And he says, “What are you talking about? It’s only been 16 months! You’re right on schedule! You’ve only got two more months to go!” Now, loyal readers all know that it’s been nearly TWO YEARS, and I told him so, and I told him his computer is wrong and he STILL needs to fix my file and bla bla and I’m coming back more frequently from now on and wah wah wah. I think I embarassed him in front of other patients, because he slumped away with an, “I’ll look into it.” Ya.

So this makes me mad, because it negates the six months of oral surgery I endured — the four extractions, the exposure surgery on my FIC (formerly impacted canine), the endless latex band-wearing, etc etc. It also removes his responsibility. I should have been done months ago! Three, to be exact! I refuse to have these damn things on by the time I hit 29, which is soon!

My rant is over. The new, sweet but incompetent assistant clumsily changed my ties this month, bent a wire instead of cutting it, and put the latex bands on incorrectly…but she meant well. I’m just so done with this.

For DD’s birthday, I’m designing him a website. He already bought the URL (borrowed my screen name), we’ve got it hosted; now I’ve got to set up a CMS in drupal and integrate the flash photo gallery add-on, which is the hard part, since I can’t code. Anyway, stay tuned. He’s very anxious to have it up and running, so maybe after this weekend we’ll be done.

BB has started volunteering with RFB&D, recording 2 hours of reading textbooks or novels or whatever for the blind. She says it’s great, and I think they need lots more volunteers, so do it!

Laura Washington’s article for In These Times magazine gave a valuable overview of last month’s Free Press National Conference for Media Reform, highlighting the cause of net neutrality and civil rights. Says Bill Moyers on 50 years of corporate media control:

“Something is wrong with this system. This is the moment freedom begins,” he went on, “the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story, and it’s time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.”

The Rev. Jesse Jackson was there too:

Jackson’s inclusion was one of many concerted efforts the Free Press made to capture the black struggle under the banner. The media reform movement had been running at a diversity deficit, and had been rightly attacked as a bastion of displaced white male elites in search of a platform.

I think it’s great there’s finally some emphasis on demography in this media war — because, like so many other areas of the business world, the media moguls and corporate media CEOs and IT guys and high-ranking academics represent, in large part, the profile of skinny, insecure white guys (that’s me editorializing). Where are the women, the communities of color, the older or younger population? According to Washington, at this year’s meeting, there was improved (racial) representation, which is a milestone. Let’s just hope it grows.