the Mark Pike
Every now and then, there’s 3 seconds of television that are just so perfectly suited to be viewed like a flipbook or cartoon strip. Last night’s Mad Men episode, where Peggy pokes her head up to spy on the commotion in Don Draper’s office, was exactly such a moment.
So I spent my lunch break learning how to create an animated gif.
Click on the picture to see it in motion.
Landon Donovan inspired me to make a “Write the Future” remix. USA USA USA!!!
Pass it on: http://youtu.be/F6uEgZd94tA
Pictured from Left to Right: Mikhail Prokhorov, Michael Bloomberg, Jay-Z
Q: What do a Russian oligarch billionaire, the mayor of New York City, and the best rapper alive have in common?
A: Breakfast.
There needs to be an oil painting of this up at the MoMA, or at least in my living room.
Not pictured is real estate developer Bruce Ratner, who also broke bread and discussed the Nets with Bloomberg. The team’s big move to Brooklyn, the NBA’s shift to accepting a global economy, eminent domain, and the courtship of Lebron James all make me feel like writing an update to my post at Free Darko last year on basketball and architecture.
“ Courts across the country have been unclear about what privacy rights apply to e-mail and texting, which are fast eclipsing postal mail and conventional telephones. The Supreme Court should make clear that the Fourth Amendment’s robust privacy protections apply just as robustly to 21st-century communication. ”
The Supreme Court, Texting and Privacy - NYT
I was particularly interested in the oral arguments for Ontario v. Quon, not just to see how the Court applies search standards to the fact pattern, but also to see how the Court would handle the technology focused discussion.
After the Court heard arguments, there was a lot of press about how Chief Justice Roberts was a disconnected Luddite (“Maybe — maybe everybody else knows this, but what is the difference between the pager and the e-mail?”), but after reading the transcript, I found myself agreeing with this piece in The Weekly Standard that shows Roberts was just clarifying things for the record.
Many privacy advocates have been pushing the Court in Quon to adopt data minimization practices in order to ensure workplace privacy, even for government employees. Reading the transcript, it does not look like the Court will recognize such a right.
Now, with the iPhone lost & found, search & seizure case, it looks like legal interpretations of electronic privacy and reasonable search procedure is in the news again.
It leaves me wondering— in the future, will we always think Justices are old-fashioned and don’t understand technology? If the next generation of Justices grow up in the era of social networking, will they be more likely to recognize privacy rights, or will they just believe that everything should be transparent and public?
This is my whole-hearted endorsement of Zipcar.
For reals, click here and get $25 free driving right now and thank me later.
Since graduating from school, I’ve been living in metropolitan areas where owning a car and trying to park was simply not worth the time, money, and energy. Plus, public transportation options in Washington, DC and San Francisco, CA were so readily available that keeping up with a vehicle just didn’t make sense.
However, each month there seem to be enough random errands, road trips, etc. that having access to a car was still really important. I didn’t want to be the guy that always bums keys from his friends (thanks, guys!), so I looked into other options.
I walked by Zipcar parking spaces all the time in DC so I knew that it might be a convenient option, but I had no idea just how easy the system was until I signed up at the beginning of the year.
In fact, the first time I used Zipcar was on the way back from a vacation when I realized we accidentally booked a return ticket to a different airport than the one where my girlfriend left her car. The cost of a taxi up to BWI from DCA was quoted at more than $80. Renting a Zipcar for 2 hours? Less than $20. We reserved it the same day, didn’t have to deal with the hassle of rental car company paperwork, and the car was sitting there waiting for us to wave the magic membership card on the windshield.
Sure, there are some drawbacks.
Right now you have to return the car from the same spot you rented it from, so you can’t drive one-way home from IKEA with a trunkful of Ektorp sofas and several dozen swedish meatballs. The likely issue with this is that the registration system is not advanced enough to compute “smart reservations” wherein you leave a car somewhere and then another Zipcar user picks it up and takes it back to its permanent parking space (much less a completely distributed network that does not rely on permanent spaces). Bike-sharing programs have dealt with this “free-rider” issue of people using the bikes to only zoom downhill by offering cheap rides and free credits for those who take bikes back to their uphill parking locations.
Another minor frustration is that many Zipcar users are infrequent drivers and therefore get lost much more frequently than regular drivers who are more familiar with the road system. This leads to late returns, which can have a domino effect and really screw up your schedule. For example, I rented a truck for one hour in San Francisco to pick up a new bed-frame. The person who had the truck before me was 30 minutes late, which only left me 30 minutes to complete my errand. Zipcar penalizes you $50 per hour if you’re late, so this prevents a lot of abuse in the system— but it happens.
They leave a fuel card in the car, so you can always fill up for free and you’re supposed to leave the tank at least 1/4 full (I always leave it 3/4 full!). They even give you a credit of one free hour if you take the car through a car-wash!
The best Zipcar feature, by far, is the mobile phone application.
While you’re on the go, you can search for close-by available Zipcars using an incredible map overlay. There’s over 20 cars within a half-mile of my apartment— everything from Beamers to Tacomas to Priuses. You can rent for as cheap as $7/hr. You can make your reservation via the mobile app on your smartphone and even— this blows my mind— unlock the car using your phone! The keys are always left in the vehicle and you have to swipe in at the beginning of your reservation with your membership card to identify yourself. One time, I accidentally left my wallet with the membership card locked in the car and didn’t think I’d be able to unlock the vehicle. But then I remembered the amazing mobile phone application that sends a signal to outer space and UNLOCKS the vehicle! Awesome.
As the network economy evolves and data-sharing via social apps is widely adopted, I think the co-ownership model will be incredibly convenient for many of us. Right now, you can count me as a happy customer.
If you want to join Zipcar today, check out this referral code that hooks you up with $25 free driving (and I get $25 too!). It’s only $50 per year, and there’s a one-time $25 application fee.
Join Zipcar and get $25 in free driving!
As you can tell, I think it’s totally worth it. I look forward to sharing a car with you soon!
Saving daylight in San Francisco.
The morning began when I subconsciously forgot to “spring forward” the clock in a failed attempt to make my girlfriend miss her cross-country flight home. WH:00 PST
I’m finishing up one of my first weeks at work and thought I’d watch a video a few people have been passing around the office on “Why It’s All a Game.”
It’s a fantastic and lively presentation by Jesse Schell, a game designer and professor at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University. He discusses economic incentives and small psychological tricks that are currently utilized in fantasy games and how we can harness them to similar effect in reality (for example, “Tattoogle AdSense!”).
Earlier this week, CNN posted an article called “The Facebook games that millions love (and hate)” which highlights some of the current crop of games that latch onto somebody’s reality-based social network within the fantasy realm.
A lot of these games seem exceptionally silly, but Schell’s presentation details how we can replicate these meaningless fantasy realms to solve a lot of real world problems. And, in doing so, it makes me feel confident that reviewing policy compliance for fake mafia games is a worthy contribution to society at large.
When I wrote my law school application essays several years ago, I talked about my interest in technology policy and where I wanted to be when I graduated. I just took a another quick look at my application again and it surprised me.
First, I’m lucky the admissions committee let me into school with the cheesy, sophomoric, idealistic essay I sent them.
“… I once read an article in Wired magazine about telecommunications firms that were buying railroad routes and installing fiber optic cable, and how they were using archaic laws from the Wild West to solve new legal issues. This was probably the tipping point, the moment I realized I want a legal background. The parallels in American history became apparent: the San Francisco gold rushes, the dot-com bubble bursts, the Pacific railroads, and the Silicon Valleys. There’s a new high-tech frontier, and I want to be a part of it.”
It’s funny how things work out.
Tomorrow morning I start a new job at Facebook in Palo Alto, CA.
I’ll be joining the staff on the Platform Operations team where I’ll participate in policy discussions and help identify ways developers can make applications that will give users the best possible experience.
I’m really excited about this new opportunity and I look forward to working with so many talented people. The ‘app economy’ is just getting started and it’ll be an amazing learning experience to be in the middle of things.
Oh, just checking out the Traffic Cams, and stumbled across an accident happening on I-64. I guess that answers my question about whether the roads are clear.
“Never Built Virginia offers examples of structures that never were and poses the question, “What if?” In the age of recycling, redevelopment, and reuse, it is appropriate to revisit these frustrated ventures, lost competitions, and unrealized commissions.”
I really enjoyed reading about all the cool buildings in Virginia that never existed, which lead me down the rabbit hole to architect Haigh Jamgochian’s papers.
Howard Hughes, also known as “Dapper Dan The Used Car Man,” reportedly contacted Jamgochian telling him he would like a residence designed for his property along the James River that was “out of this world.” Jamgochian’s response, “How about the moon?” Thus began the germination of the “Moon House” concept.
Here’s a rendering of ‘Tree House’, which would’ve been on Franklin Street in Richmond, Virginia if Jamgochian had his way in 1962.
