sweetcode is cool. I am sick. Thus, few words surround this pointer. I barely managed a half-clever title. Cool for sysadmins and programmers, that is; not sure anyone else would care.
Population: One
If South Korean elections can be swung by smart mobs, what’s that say about US politics? Mind you, the voter turnout was a mere 70%, which is the lowest ever for a South Korean presidental election. Conventional wisdom says that Roh Moo-hyun benefited from text messaging because it helped him get out the vote, but the low turnout seems to contraindicate that. Possibly the turnout would have been slimmer if not for the smart mobs? Hard to say.
Anyhow, here’s the prescription for whichever US party wants to use cell phones effectively. First, don’t telemarket. That’s intrusive. You want to use the communication channels in non-intrusive ways. Second, collect contact info. When you run a get out the vote rally, find out if your voters like SMS, AIM, or email for mobile communication, and get the info you need to send messages via the preferred method. Third, don’t overuse it. Election day, you betcha, send a message asking if they’ve voted yet (and when they reply, mark down the answer; it’s all automatable). Do it again before the polls close, for those who didn’t say “yeah, I voted.” Maybe a few messages here and there in the week before to keep buzz going.
Use messaging more heavily for the activists. Definitely use it on election day. If your poll monitors don’t have some way to take a picture and transmit it back to HQ instantly, you’re missing a big bet — you want to be able to get the word out as quickly as possible if something happens.
Betcha none of this happens by 2004.
I’m standing at a bus stop in Harvard Square, realizing that I’m better off posting via Web than by email. Whoops; maybe not, since I can’t set categories this way. Oooops. Ah well.
The first day review of the Hiptop: pretty good, it’ got a very thoughtful design. For example, the @ sign is unshifted, which makes a ton of sense since it’s used so much. There’s decent autocapitalization. The keylock automatically tturns off if you flip the screen open, cause you’ll never do that unless you want to use it.
The core interface is good enough for now. There are some warts; you can’t do an address book lookup while writing an email message, for example, which is dumb since you can store email addresses in the address book. On the other hand, you can launch email from within the address book. The only really annoying quirk is that the email client loses track of attachments if you save a draft message. oh, and it sorely needs cut and paste, or at least a way to delete text from an email message so you don’t wind up quoting the whole damn message each time.
The unit is nicely integrated with the T-Mobile web site. You can import Outlook or Palm address lists via the Web. Nice stuff there.
The physical unit is barely big enough for me to type on, but not big enough to be clumsy on my belt. The case that comes with it kind of sucks; I’m on the lookout for a better one.
Let’s see. Oh, yeah, the camera. Check out Hiptop Nation for an idea of the quality. It’s bad, but the concept is exciting. Realtime pcitures from the mass event of your choice, good or bad? Heady stuff.
Overall I rather like it so far. And everyone in my office wanted to play with it, which has to say something.
[Edit: interesting lack of line breaks. My fault (I set up my bookmark wrong), not the hiptop’s.]
Gephardt’s in, which is somehow deeply unexciting news. Ah, bah; it’s good to have a traditionally Democratic candidate in the field. In theory, I’d like to see candidates in both sets of primaries from all over the political maps. I must try and be less cynical.
Course, that means I’d rather see Bernie Sanders than Howard Dean as the candidate from Vermont.
Eric Raymond’s just published another internal memo from Microsoft. (Hint: the fisking doesn’t improve your credibility, Eric.) I recommend skipping over the snide commentary, because it’s actually neither that clever or that interesting. Read it for what it says about Microsoft’s belief about where it stands vis a vis nation states, and perhaps reread this post of mine in which I discuss the role of NGOs in the new world order.
Josh Marshall has been writing a lot of good stuff on North Korea lately. I have some comments on this post. In it, he discusses the administration’s claim that North Korea is already a nuclear power, and thus it’s not a huge concern if they get more nukes.
One might well argue that the administration is correct in this. If North Korea has had nukes for several years and hasn’t used them, then maybe there isn’t so much urgency after all. The sense of urgency around North Korea’s nuclear program is predicated on the idea that if North Korea has nukes, something bad will happen. If North Korea has had nukes and nothing bad’s happened, what’s a few more?
Of course, if the administration uses such logic, it makes a hash of the Bush national security doctrine. I think that’s the real hole in what Powell had to say, but since Bush has already positioned Powell as the maverick who’s not always in line with him, it’s deniable.
I think in the long term, America’s going to have to learn how to survive in a world in which nuclear weapons have proliferated, so in some ways I’m heartened to see Bush treating this as a minor issue. Alas, I don’t really believe that’s a policy statement as much as it is the result of his focus being elsewhere.
I’ve been peering at this Scripting News post about cell phones all day, trying to figure out what struck me as weird about it. I finally figured it out. Check this quote:
“So why not make them just a teensy bit bigger and put a real qwerty keyboard on the darn thing and let me type into it like a human being.”
That seemed totally reasonable to me the first zillion times I read it. I just went out and got a Sidekick, cause I wanted a keyboard on my cell phone. But wait — “like a human being.” He wants a keyboard-based interface, cause he wants to use the cell phone for more than just the classic telephonic voice based interface. “Like a human being.”
Humans aren’t stuck with just talking. To be human is to have access to a keyboard!
So it’s weird, but he’s also right. We are the tool using ape. Keyboards are a very nice symbol that says “digital tool here.”
Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston looks like a fascinating book, judging from this interview. I’d never heard the Jackie Robinson story, but being a serious Celtics fan, the issues surrounding race and Boston sports have interested me for a while. He seems to have at least a little to say about basketball, although his surprise at the color barriers broken by the Celtics makes me wonder about his general research. Tagged for later consideration.
The other night, my TiVo caught a Sportscentury on Bill Russell; a lot of the program was dedicated to the racism he faced. There was a tremendously poignant moment, during the Bob Cousy interview, when Cousy almost broke down in tears; hiding his face in his hands, Cousy said, “I could have done more.”
In keeping with my theme for the day (terseness. will talk more later), here’s a quick link to a Bruce Sterling interview. It’s happening right now. Like, real time. Maybe it is to talk about it in this thread, which is hijacked from Boing Boing. Transfictionalism now!
Happy Tolkien’s eleventy-first birthday! At 9 PM, raise your glass and toast “The Professor.” (Via MetaFilter.)