Christine

Dr. Carlos Brown Provides Raw View Into Iraq War

Former US Navy Commander (and trauma surgeon) Dr. Carlos Brown was deployed to Ramadi, Iraq in 2006, and at the urging of his tech-savvy brother, chronicled his experience on a video blog, Trapper Los MD. It provides a close, raw view behind the scenes of a MASH unit in the war. As a comparison, the typical trauma center input in the US is 15 patients over 24 hours, but in Iraq you may get 50 patients in 15 minutes.

Brown had a hard time deciding what he could put in the blog posts, and then decided that the right filter was that if his kids could see it, then he'd put it into the blog. Even so, some of the photos and video footage presented here at SXSW 2008 are utterly gory - washing out exploded knees after mortar rounds, cutting off feet after stepping onto an IED, etc. He would never have captured this information if his brother hadn't set up the video camera and blog for him before deployment. Visit his site if you're ready for the raw experience, or watch his final video here if you'd like a more sanitized view:

Dr. Brown is still struck by how barbaric the surgery conditions were. Using hammers and chisels to open up a chest cavity; putting in bone screws by hand rather than with a power drill; and so on. No cleanup crew in the surgical area. The surgeons often have to turn the room over themselves. "You do the best you can with what you're given." And tourniquets aren't used much here at home, but they are utterly life-saving in the war zone.

Even simple things like blood and plasma aren't available. Instead, you access the 'walking blood bank' of soldiers on base - announce that you need 40 people to show up with O-negative, and people show up to donate. Interestingly, the soldiers freely donate without knowing if the donation is going to an American soldier or to an Iraqi.

Some other facets of daily MASH life struck me:

• The intensive care unit was a bunch of army cots crammed into what looked like a storage locker.
• Post-operative soldiers are kept in body bags to keep them warm when being transported via air.
• Every evening transport was shot at, so they tried to only transport wounded during the day.

There's also the added pressure of an audience, as surgery tends to happen as the rest of an injured soldier's unit looks on. We're all so fortunate that people are willing to do this in service to our country. Why can't we serve them better?

Side note: Though the chain of command could have shut down Dr. Brown's blog at any time, they never did. Soldiers' access to these types of services has since been shut down for security reasons, so they have no way of freely interacting with their support communities at home. Isn't there an alternative that our government can permit?

Midnight Ride in the Great White Snake at SXSW

Our EFF/Plutopia party posse came across a gorgeous piece of Burning Man-type movable art tonight at SXSW 2008: a giant and sinuously elegant snake cycle. The core multi-cycle structure appears to be constructed of welded bike parts, beach tires, and PVC. Strips of white, corrugated plastic; 2-liter bottles spray-painted white; and riveted tin plates make up the snake body around it, with stitched nylon over the head form. Take a closer look, and get the inside view of Brad Templeton and I pedaling furiously away inside:

I googled a bit, but wasn't able to discover the story and makers behind this project. If someone knows the details, please comment!

Testing Seesmic Embedding

Just a quick post as I try out the embed code from the Seesmic alpha...presuming this works, enjoy seeing what I look like when I'm sick and swaddled in fleece.

Sobering, Joyful Life Lessons: Last Lecture of Prof. Randy Pausch

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." So speaks Carnegie-Mellon computer science professor Randy Pausch, who delivered his final lecture in anticipation of dying next month from pancreatic cancer. "I'm in excellent health right now -- It's the greatest thing of cognitive dissonance that we will ever see...I'm in better shape than most of you." Prof. Pausch, who is the 46-year-old director of the Alice Software Project, co-founder of the Entertainment Technology Center, a husband, and a father of three, has lived life both richly and well.

Art? Maybe. Childlike Wonder? Definitely.

My friend Quentin Stafford-Fraser recently posted this phenomenal YouTube video, showing a performance by 'unusualist' Raymond Crowe at the HelpMan Awards. If you enjoy quirky performance art, you have to watch this, and wait for the singing rabbit. You'll be smiling all afternoon.

Mashups go Mainstream: Online Content Tools Stretch Offline

For the past two years, it's been common practice for Web 2.0 mashups to enable users to mash personal content into customizable templates. Recently, however, there's been a noticeable evolution of this space: 1. integrated marketing campaigns are more and more frequently using online or mobile interaction tools; and 2. online content is reaching offline mainstream media.

Burning Man Goes Green: Call for Pavilion Participation

Last year's Burning Man community spoke loudly about starting efforts to make the event more eco-friendly. How can we reduce the playa's carbon footprint? How can we recycle or reuse  building materials, food supplies, bottles and cans, or other discards?  Should there be requirements imposed upon art cars? And so on.

Michael Arrington's Four Keys to the Future of Media

Michael Arrington visited Toronto today for mesh, Canada's web conference, and shared his perspective on the future of media. Through the free-flowing dialogue, these four keys stood out as essential in media's evolution from traditional to social:

Four Recommendations Paradigms to Watch

What's the best logic model to use for a recommendations engine? Builders of popular music recommendations services shared the pros and cons of their own - and each other's - approaches to matching people to the music that they'll love. These four paradigms for recommendations engines came out of the conversation. Most recommendation services will fall into one of these models, but the 'best approach' would undoubtedly vary based upon the subject matter.ight expect, MusicIP licenses its technology for pushbutton playlists on many consumer devices.

Joost Moves the Needle for Internet TV

Joost is a free, full-screen television application that you download to your PC. The programming guide and on-demand controls behave much the same as does a cable set-top box. An embedded web browser can be brought up for more detail on a particular program.

Dan Rather Calls on Journalists to Get Spine Transplants

Icon journalist Dan Rather was welcomed by a standing ovation at today's SXSW Interactive. (Flickr photo originally uploaded by beeez.) Once folks settled down, blogger Jane Hamsher posed some key framing questions. Rather used the opportunity to share his concerns about the recent demise of investigative journalism. Given his colorful storytelling, I've decided to 'paraquote' (some paraphrasing, some quoting) here rather than boiling things down:

How to Make Money Like a Porn Star

For the sake of argument, let's assume that you are able to create content that people want to consume. How do you monetize it? The adult content industry continues to lead the way in monetizing content, adopting new technologies, and testing distribution models. At SXSW Interactive, porn publishers gathered to share best business practices with the next generation of mainstream media. (Disclosure note: Panelist links undoubtedly go directly to adult content - but I'm not sure, since I was too chicken to click through myself!)

Web 2.0 Goal-Setting at The New York Times

How does a established news institution transform itself into a sleek Web 2.0 business? Martin Nisenholtz, SVP of Digital for the New York Times Company, is having a great deal of fun discovering what it takes to get people to pay for content:

Develop circulation, not traffic

To start with, Nisenholtz has drawn a line between Web metrics and online circulation metrics. For example, millions of people will visit NYTimes.com to just read one article, or will quickly blink over a page in response to a search result or a blog link. This highly ephemeral Web traffic can add up to 2.5 million unique visitors per day. Online circulation, however, is measured at 570,000 TimesSelect subscribers.

Keeping this distinction in mind, Nisenholtz has set these goals across all digital properties:

• Attract more users, period.
• Keep users coming back, and staying longer. Increase not only the average number of visits per reader, but also the average number of page views per visit.  
• Convert casual visitors into serious readers. Even if only a fraction of the site's 20 million casual visitors each month joined the pool of 1.5 million loyal readers, it would make a significant impact on the business model.
  

The rising importance of 'circulation' numbers has driven a major shift in online advertising. Unlike a typical Web company, the Times and other news publishers don't have restrictions on the number of ad impressions per visitor. While most Web advertisers restrict the number of paid daily ad impressions to 3 or 4 per visitor, Times advertisers actually seek higher frequencies.

Transform the established culture

I visited Martin in the New York Times offices last week, and it felt like being backstage at Phantom. The New York Times has always been the real newspaper, and its impressive archive dates back to 1851. Like a tourist, I greedily enjoyed the view whenever the elevator paused to open its doors, and wondered what dastardly plans had been exposed by the innocuous-looking journalists passing by. Behind this bustling news scene, however, the organization is changing. Cross-platform sales training has become the norm, as the digital business scales. The sales team is challenged to get digital salespeople working with the advertising department, while the print staff must educate itself to become more Web-savvy.

Cultural transformation also takes place via acquisition and investment. The Times organization acquired About.com 18 months ago, and local search is being rolled out and tested in the Boston area via Boston.com. They've also made investments into Web 2.0 companies such as indeed, Federated Media Publishing, and daylife. (Disclosure note: Omidyar Network is an investor in Federated Media.)

I suspect that core Times content will always follow an authoritative model, where information is both edited and vetted for accuracy, and there are twice as many editors as reporters. At About.com, however, each editor supports an entire classroom of guides. The publisher's next challenge is a big one: How can it leverage user-generated content? How can it become more distributed and less edited? If the Times can figure out how to edit both the 100th and the 10,000th guide profitably - or how to achieve consistent quality without editing - then the business will be well-placed to become an established institution online as well as in print.

Best VC Holiday Card: Blueprint Ventures

I picked this up from Matt Marshall's post over at VentureBeat - apparently, Blueprint Ventures had their web site taken over by Russian pornographers this week. As it happens, the home page of their site was hosting a very popular Christmas video. It's ridiculously funny if you are in VC, and so it gets my vote as the Best 2006 Holiday Card. Enjoy!

Digital Music Startups Pit Traditional Publishers vs. Independent Creators

At the first day of DEMMX, Antony Bruno of Billboard gamely herded a gaggle of digital music startups. Amidst the many conversation threads, one theme stood out: despite their renegade personas, these guys don't agree on who benefits most from the next generation of music distribution.

Fox, Bravo, and Tribune Agree: Years of Investment Ahead for Mobile Content

Mobile media has begun to appear within the broader media strategies of established content providers. While this work has been innovative, it was clear from expert discussion at today's Mobile Marketing Forum that years of investment lie ahead before mobile media's promise can be delivered upon. Here's a quick look at how name brands are investing to develop mobile as a content platform:

What's Interesting About Participatory Content

While at Startup Camp yesterday, I was stopped for a hallway interview with ZDNet's James Hilliard. One of the concepts that survived the cutting room floor was a quick overview of my interest in participatory content and information, including both the content value chain and its supporting infrastructures. Since this has been the subject of much recent discussion (and I'm busy around the topic given the current investments that I manage), I thought it worth posting the link: just visit David Berlind's blog post to see the brief video interview, which accompanies David's "report from the field."

Technology at Burning Man, Part II (With Fire!)

(Reposted from VentureBeat) A second, more risk-taking demographic at Burning Man took technology to the next level - fire. Hackers created brilliant shows in the desert night, combining elements such as Linux-based processors or infrared controllers with propane solenoids and flamethrowers. Here are my four favorite creations.

Geeks Make Their Mark at Burning Man

(Reposted from VentureBeat) Some of the best art at this year's Burning Man came from extremely cool, creative applications of basic engineering. Circuit boards, hydraulic motors, solar panels, and motion sensors powered my three favorite pieces of non-fiery art:

Want to be a "Vlogger in Residence?"

The artist in residence...the writer in residence...the vlogger in residence? My old pal Freeman Murray has an interesting new creative proposition. Freeman is purchasing an eco-friendly residence in San Mateo, and creating a Video Blogger in Residency program. The basic idea:

R&D Technologies for Data Visualization

Researchers Maneesh Agrawala and Fernanda Viegas walked through some amazing technologies that they've been cooking up in their labs for data visualization. As a data junkie, I was totally mesmerized. The Wikipedia analysis was an particularly fascinating visual interpretation of living content. (Disclosure note: Omidyar Network is an investor in Wikia, a related entity.)

Five Do's and Don'ts for the New News Media

Going through my FOO notes, I noticed that many conversations sparked ideas that were relevant  to participatory media. Here's a quirky list of do's and don'ts that reveal some of the best practices being used by others in the New News Media:

Burning Man Gets its Own Mashup

Beatmaps, an event listings mashup, just posted a neat Burning Man mashup. This tool combines Google satellite maps with Burning Man's schedule of events, a user-generated tagcloud, etc. Registered beatmaps users can add themselves, their camp/artwork/events, etc. and tag everything as they like. (Compare this to the official burning man calendar.) Ideally, this mashup is also sucking in data from existing sources, but it's hard to tell from the limited info at the beatmaps site, which is in beta.

Flaming Art at the Crucible

The Crucible exploded this weekend with the annual Fire Arts Festival - twisting, 200' tall tornados of flame; booming fire cannons; sinuous fire dancers; and fiery metal sculpture. One of my favorites was the giant metal t-rex with flaming fangs.

Tools and Tech for Interactive Video Blogging

The broadcast-only aspect of video blogging has been a hurdle to virality and scale. Some smart folks at Vloggercon took note, and worked up both test hacks and structural concepts that enable interactive videoblogging.