THE IDEA BARRAGE

Find it as you left it

By Ericson deJesus on December 1, 2010 2:07 PM | No TrackBacks

Quite often I find myself with a lot of browser 'tabs' open of stuff I want to read but can't at the moment. It piles up and I never find the time to go through it all. This might be one of those pages for you. But wait, keep reading...

Bookmarking doesn't suffice because in reality I will never open up that bookmarks folder. Ever. Out of sight, out of mind. Either now or never, really. There is always some other thing better up ahead.

[ The next war is for our attention. ]

A couple of months ago I thought about a neat app idea (that could actually make this a bigger problem for me). Throughout my work day I often leave my desk and laptop at work to fetch coffee or lunch. While walking or waiting in line I pull out my phone like a typical infomaniac and looked for something to occupy my attention for just a moment. Something small, like Twitter. Twitter is the new TV, there's always something on, something new.

[ Pedestrian profundity printer ink black bold all-caps on plain letter-size paper taped on a street post: YOU HAVE 1 NEW MESSAGE ]

Perusing Twitter on my phone often leads me to following a link that someone shared. This opens up my phone browser. I snack on it for a bit but often there isn't enough time to consume it all. Besides, the tiny screen isn't ideal for full web pages or anything with lots of text.

So I thought, what if when I returned to my laptop at my desk the same web page I had snacked on would already be open? My desktop browser could constantly just 'mirror' my phone browser - both in URL and scroll position. This way I can pick up and go, leave my desk, come back, and my experience is contiguous.

This morning I looked around to see if this is already done. There is a Google Chrome to Phone extension that lets you send a web page from your desktop to your phone instantly with just a click. But what I'm looking to have is bi-directional and automatic. That's where the magic is.

[ Someone should go build this. ]

And here's another bit. Automatically send all pages that I keep open for x amount of time into my bookmarks - be it of my browser or delicious. This encourages me to at least scan the page, decide if it is worth further attention, and close it if it doesn't meet the mark. A much better practice, wow.

A recovering bastard

By Ericson deJesus on September 7, 2010 2:12 PM | No TrackBacks

"A reason to live, isn't it?" I remember her saying it as I sat staring across the street. This is such a moment to live. I have so much to tell you. I am sitting outside a cafe. It's 8:45 pm and my phone is a brick. On the table are an empty box of matches from Clyde Common, two empty glasses of wine, a single ticket to a 9:45 pm show at the film festival for VENGEANCE.

The old men who frequent the cafe sat at the table next. French in origin I can tell with a friendly parrot named (something) which climbed on my finger and made the appropriate bird sounds. The cold evening slowly descended. "I lost the other ticket" she said as she got up to fetch a jacket from my office next door. I ordered just another glass of wine for us to share but the bartender who runs the night shift happens to be her new roommate and poured us a full carafe instead. "If you don't finish it someone else will."

Dusk is when you can see inside from the outside just as clearly and vice-versa. This is what I love about it. And that I can sit here and smoke your cigarettes while people heading home from work pass us by. "I couldn't get you a seat this time but next time. Go check out the film instead" she said as she ran across the street and jumped into a friends car headed for dinner at Chez Panisse. We had been discussing our project until then, something I pitched to her last fall which she instantly tuned into. We had our first fundraiser last week and this was our first chance to do a follow up talk. Our conversation consisted only of suicide, commitment, and fools. Still through this I'm reminded of the reasons to keep on with the project. When the reasons are unreasonable it isn't good to try and put them into words. The stories around them are sufficient. Many people will never get that. I hope to always get that.

As I lay here on my head, feeling awake but uncertain about it, I allowed my thoughts to travel back many years and slowly creep up to some realizations. That in my detachment I have along the way with careless disregard caused a number of people a great deal of pain. I deeply understood and feared that I am absolutely incapable of emotion beyond the duration of a moment. And that a moment is approximately 19 seconds long.

Trending humanistic headlines

By Ericson deJesus on September 3, 2010 11:20 AM | No TrackBacks

Here's an idea that any budding writer can kickstart easily. The goal would be to provide real-time awareness for people interested in pop culture. I imagine this as a lightweight app or SMS service.

The idea:

Trending topics on Twitter provides an interesting insight into what's going on in the world in real-time. The scope can be adjusted to as wide as 'Worldwide' and narrowed down to your specific locale, like 'San Francisco'.

The way this is presented is as a simple list of keywords. Clicking on them simply shows a stream of all twitter updates that contain the that keyword. This isn't a very compelling experience. Often the keywords are meaningless to begin with. I took a peek now saw:

#andthenihitmydougie
Angry Birds
Blind
#lessonlearned

Your mission is to take these keywords and in real-time construct meaningful headlines out of each. I keep saying real-time cause this has to be a 24/7 job. You can't ever close shop or else the service is broke. You'll need to find cohorts.

Your headlines should be informative enough for someone to gather a general sense of what pop culture is on about at that time. You could make it entertaining as well. It shouldn't be repetitive - summarize each one in one packet and send it out, done. This should not be about making more media to consume. This should be about making it meaningful. There is a craft to this.

By "headlines" I really just like the idea of visualizing it as newspaper headlines. I imagine the text presented against a newsprint background using newspaper typography. Of course this can't happen through SMS but as a screensaver type app for mobile or desktop (something that allows users to bring it to the foreground), it could be pretty neat.

Try not to do a scrolling ticker.

Use this as an engine to start with (be sure to click the rows).

So hop to it.

Posthumous social media vitality

By Ericson deJesus on September 1, 2010 8:28 PM | No TrackBacks

I call it Horizons cause it makes me laugh each time I tell someone about the idea. Not sure why. It's the same belly laugh I get when I re-watch Strindberg and Helium. This idea is several years old in my head but it hasn't been done as far as how I imagined it.

The idea:

Horizons as a concept is a website which provides services now for all things after death. As we digitize our lives more and more it makes sense to think about what happens to our digital presence and not just our physical presence. The latter already being a crowded space, the former is wide open and full of opportunity for a budding entrepreneur - like you.

Currently, much of the tools and services we use in our virtual existence do not make it very clear what happens when we croak. Will your family have access to your Flickr account, including all photos you've marked private? Will your awesome blog be taken down because of inactivity or stopped payments, or will it be kept up for years - long enough for your great grandchildren to read them? Will Twitter and Facebook continually recommend friending you to friends of people you know? An organization called Digital Death Day seem to be tackling some of these questions.

That's all the practical stuff.

What if through Horizons you can write all your loved ones goodbye emails, you save and update them as time goes, until they are triggered to send by the event of your death? Sure, that's simple enough. Now how about if you can defer this trigger to more meaningful dates, say, anniversaries and holidays? Imagine your kid getting an email from you on his 18th birthday even though you've passed many years back. Imagine your spouse looking forward to your next anniversary when he/she will receive the next love letter you wrote. Imagine how this process could be very useful for those who mourn your loss and could use your help in moving on.

There could be some pretty fun stuff as well. Fun enough to possibly make you look forward to dying.

What if through Horizons you can pre-compose not just emails but other types of online vitality enabling your virtual presence to go on many years after your death? Digitally, there are many possibilities here, scheduled status updates, location check ins, etc., all dispersed in time. To a great extent your habits and likes can be learned by a robot. Along with your help - and subscription to Horizons for a mere $99 a year giving you access to robust Posthumous Vitality (TM) tools - you don't digitally ever have to die.

What if through Horizons a real person can take on your virtual presence and continue it on for you? An actor slash playwright personifying you and keeping your bits warm. All that history and content shouldn't have to go to waste. What if your kids can get paid for selling it to someone in desperate need for a new reputation? See another great product concept I call Reputation Farmer.

Okay what else?

How about an archive section where all your digital assets are guaranteed up time and access even as file formats and protocols change. How about a top page 'gravestone' with the best JPEG of your choosing. How about a Felo-de-se how-to section in case you get too excited about this whole thing :)

Single purpose as opposed to 'smart'

By Ericson deJesus on June 13, 2010 11:21 PM | No TrackBacks

Five years ago around the time Blue Jay Cafe first opened on Divisadero, I walked in and sat down on a counter seat. I took the garage door opener I carried in my motorcycle jacket pocket out and laid it on the table -- a bulky, cheap looking black plastic shell, mostly hollow, with one single large button. The size of the gadget is 2 to 3 times as large as a typical mobile phone. The young kid sitting next to me saw this and said "does that really just do one thing?"

I still carry the same garage door opener. The other device I typically carry in my pocket today is a smart phone. I also take that out of my pocket when I sit down in a restaurant. Looking at both devices next to each other I wonder about the huge gap in technology between them. And if this is why Radio Shack is still in business.

Three years ago The Onion ran this article which I still find really funny today: Even CEO Can't Figure Out How RadioShack Still In Business

Several weeks ago I stopped in at the local Radio Shack. I was looking into getting some LED strips. They didn't have exactly what I needed, but close. It was a sad scene. I like that they carry all these odd items that you wouldn't want to wait to order online and ship. But they also carry a lot of crap, as if that tiny section of Walgreens where you find the toaster, batteries, and answering machines expanded to an entire store. I must say though the customer service was good. I even gave them my email.

Smoking in the dark

By Ericson deJesus on May 21, 2010 1:06 PM | No TrackBacks

When I walked in I sensed the smell of milk. Odd. I kept the lights off and allowed my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I maneuvered across to the other end of the apartment, faintly remembering what might obstruct my way. I reached the curtain I had hung over the sliding balcony door and tucked it aside. I slid the door open to let the evening in. It's warm ...relatively. These aren't thoughts which were somehow magically translated, transcribed in these sparks of light currently beaming into your eyes. These are words being written right now. Tap tap tap, the sound you'd hear the keys make if you were here already. But you aren't here yet. Soon you will be. Soon as I let you in.

I chose to keep the lights off for a reason. And when I decide to think about why, I usually figure it out. But I am choosing to not question myself right now. Often there is no reason to question it. Often there is no one to explain to. But now you are obviously here. I should mention to you while you are here that you have been transported. You exist right now as I type, a presence where your body isn't yet. But soon it will. Like a sign requires you as an element before it can itself be a sign. In that sense you justify the situation I am in at this moment. Much later as your eyes scrub across this barcode of text I print on your screen. As you read, you are now existing in a time that has passed. Here along with me in this room. Hello, I should acknowledge your presence. I should say, the music in our background is Robyn belting a tune. It is dark. I have had some drinks. We are on the third floor looking west. The weather outside is the weather inside. Thank you for visiting. Thank you for being here right now.

Now that you are here I should tell you a story. Hmm, I can't promise a complete story, I should warn. I say this cause I am merely starting a conversation with you, if you can call it that. I am starting a story but I don't know yet if it will complete. I have no idea yet of an arc or an end. I am only beginning to tell you about this evening. A story I have never told before. I don't know if it will be interesting to you. Or how long it will go for. You have the advantage over me on that. You can glance down the page and see how l did by the length. I myself right now can not know. Perhaps if this was a true conversation you can tell me. Respond to me. But no. However, I should mention to you that I also have an advantage. I can travel in time as well. I can go back after I finish the story and edit this paragraph. I can change the sparks to where I am very aware of how the story I am about to tell you went, if it was interesting enough for you to keep on reading, if it is a story with an arc and an ending. But no, I didn't go back and edit this. Let's just go with it shall we?

A woman sat next to me at the local wine bar down the street. There were many open bar stool sand she chose the one directly to my right. After a while I heard a smile of some sort and then felt a poking on my shoulder. I looked over and she introduced herself. Everything else I can tell you after this is not worth reading. Her painful insecurity beamed through in every arrogant, self-righteous, platitude she'd rehearsed. Her unprompted ego oozed with weakness that attacked at mid sentences, hungry and deaf.

(deleted text here)

Infomania in the Great American Boulangerie

By Ericson deJesus on March 12, 2010 8:51 PM | No TrackBacks

Black as a dead brick. I tried pressing all its buttons (and combinations of) to see if anything would light up. Nothing. For some reason my phone as it rested on the cafe table had decided to shut down. It was unusual. I was just on it doing a number of things several minutes ago. The battery was not nearly empty. Looking... nor had the battery come loose. Hrm. Nothing.

So I decided to cut my cafe reading time short in order to do the next logical thing - plug my phone into the wall and see if it sparks up. I had only gotten past the third chapter in a fairly thick book loaned to me. I remember thinking how it was just that particular point in a book where it first takes grasp of you. Three chapters of setting up the temperatures of color in your head, then whoa, hey there, a fuzzy had felt its way into you. And you got your first spoon full of (something) from the author. Yum. Then it happened. I reached to check my phone and it was playing dead. Sigh.

Yes I decided to close the book and favor my infomania instead. The cafe wasn't very interesting tonight. Some familiar faces around, but mostly a strange crowd. It's a Friday night. I know cause someone at work commented on how the week is finally over. It has been "a bustling week". The sudden changes in weather has a way of stretching it further in hindsight. And now it's over. It's over in the sense that I can sit and read a book at a cafe. But who am I kidding, this won't last.

I got up. I didn't even bus the table like I usually do. Instead, I looked at my empty bowl of soup, the remaining peasant bread, some unfinished coffee (now cold), and thought to myself: I have sat in this cafe more times than anywhere else in the past few years. And each and every time I have bussed my own table. But I knew that this time I wasn't going to. I was two feet from the door, no one was looking, and my phone is a cold dead brick.

[ Reminded: I use to have a phone with suicidal tendencies. Beep. Whenever the battery ran low, it would beep every few seconds or so to let me know. In doing so it used up even more battery with every. Beep. Thus accelerating and ensuring its imminent death. How tragically cute. Beep. ]

Return to the simple?

By Aubrey on March 10, 2010 10:21 PM | No TrackBacks

I had the strange good fortune to get my paws on one of Sony Ericcson's new phones, the "Pureness" last week. In addition to igniting some pretty serious reactions in all different directions form my more design-minded friends just from an industrial design perspective, I have to say it's been a little study in the value of simplicity for me.

It's MONOCHROME. I mean, the screen is frickin SEE THOUGH, but it's monochrome none the less. It's T-9, it's on edge for god's sake, it doesn't internet enough to matter, it doesn't even google map. It's just a phone. Which is honestly kind of fantastic. It rings, I answer. It's a cool looking, little tiny, phone.

T-9-ing again has caused me to reconsider the hidden advantages of basic and simple constraint. I can T-9 without looking, my brain remembers how to do it after years and years away. I'm not motivated to say or do too much with it, just keep it simple, say it simple. I write more on the laptop when I'm near it. I have a new little chunk of my life back.

When I first saw this thing I thought, "wait, why are they releasing a thousand-dollar phone from the 90's?" but here I am google voicing over to it so it doesn't matter what its number is T-9-ing just as fast as I can enter android text.... What's old is what's new?

On beginnings and endings

By Ericson deJesus on February 13, 2010 4:04 PM | No TrackBacks

The way I grew up watching movies at the cinema was kind of odd. At what time I arrived and entered the theater didn't matter to me. I would walk in and sit in the back. I started the movie wherever I happened to. Then stayed past the ending until it started over again and reached the part I had already seen. How the story begins and ends is not in the control of the filmmaker. It is left to chance as affected by any of the innumerable forces that led up to my off-schedule arrival. This has been my relationship with movies for as long as I can remember. And as such, it has never made a difference to me whether I knew about the story's twist or ending beforehand.

Are there feature film examples where the narrative does not rely on a beginning and ending -- the viewer may enter at any particular point? Or is it by definition that a narrative must have a start and end to tell a story? Even so, can an end lead into a start of a story seamlessly? Or do none of these questions really make any sense?

(Photo: Making crude flyers on recycled legal-sized sheets of paper.)

Why TEN?

By Ericson deJesus on February 7, 2010 5:00 AM | No TrackBacks

As with most great ideas the concept of TEN first revealed itself over a cocktail beverage at a bar while yelling across the table to a couple of friends. But let's not talk about my issues. TEN is a film festival that I personally would like to go and see -- and not just because of my involvement in it which requires me to attend. A team of filmmaker-types assembled around TEN to put it on, not because I know little of film making (again let's not focus on my issues) but because it is amazingly wonderful to see big ideas take their very first steps. To be there, present as it began. And to have its introduction be challenged by the constraints of time and resources, forcing it into even more creativity. How can this event possibly be anything but a spectacle? I hope to see you there.