Jason Rosado

Another part of our Social Activism Using Mobile Technology homework was to listen to a police scanner for 2 hours and report our results. I chose to listen to the Denver County, Colorado – Police and Fire departments.

Before I listened, I made a point of googling Police Codes to see if it would help me decipher some of the language. I can’t say that I had much luck as the sound quality wasn’t awesome. I imagine some strong part of the initial learning curve is to simply make out what the heck the other person on the end of the walkie-talkie is actual saying.

Anyway, while my ability to decipher was somewhat of a bust, I did manage to hear reports of some pretty juicy (and gruesome) events, such as:

- Car accident – hit debris in the street – 2 blown tires
- Someone keeps calling and threatening to kill them
- Person came home lights on front door open she is in her house, but she would still like police to come by
- Sister and father are arguing, father is drunk. Requires Spanish interpreter
- Possible cold exposure at Liquor Store
- Death threats, took money from her then tried to hit her with his vehicle, followed her to school
- Possible robbery in progress at the Walgreens

These events were not all perpetrated by the same person, so no worries there. But if there is one thing I learned is that Denver is hot right now. I think I’ll stay right here in NYC.

For our class, we had to come up with initial concept documents. The team was broken up into groups. This is our (Team Carmelo) concept document presentation (initial draft):

For homework for our Social Activism Using Mobile Technology class, Nathan asked us the following:

Invent your own spoken, typed or visual image code, along with a reason for its use, that could be communicated through a mobile device using texting, image sharing, bluetooth or any other aspect of the mobile device. Document this code, post it to your blog, and share a sample of it via 41411/ITP2800, on Twitter #itp2800 or another mobile medium of your choice.

I feel like much of my texting is based on my location. I know increasing there are mobile applications that broadcast your physical location, but for the most part, I reject those due to privacy/sanity issues. What I wanted to try to create is a series of short abbreviations that specifically address the communications associated with someone being either on their way, running later, or finding someone somewhere.

Here are some codes below, that I’m hoping to use more with friends and family:

I did also come across this website that features a list of commonly used abbreviations for Texting/IM. So the items below are ones that have an asterisk were featured in this list.

OMW = On My Way *
OMW 15 = On my Way, Be there in 15 Mins
RL 30 = Running Late by 30 minutes
WAYN = Where Are You Now? *
MHR = I am here
MHR, WHR = I am here, where are you?
@HM = At Home
@WK = At Work
@SC = At School
OSC = Open Social Calendar tonight, let me know if anything good
CSC = Closed Social Calendar (aka I’m busy) OR
BZ = Busy *
PCM = Please Call Me *
PTM = Please Text Me
DCTU = Driving, can’t text you

One of the issues with mobile devices displaying content is that the act of sharing is inhibited. The concept of crowding around a small screen to view the content between more than 2 people is somewhat limited.

There are now a couple of devices on the market that seem to address that issue. But still nothing close to what we’re all really waiting for, which is the real-life version of the famous scene from the movie Star Wars, in which the hologram of Princess Leia is projected from the dome of R2D2 for Luke Skywalker to watch and learn. I am sure we’re not too far away from that possibility.

I will be compiling research on the future mobile infrastructure and continually adding to this particular post.

An interesting blog about Mobile Commerce:
Mobile Manifesto | Strategic insight into mobile commerce.

Interesting article in AdAge on Mobile Banking:
Digital: How Mobile Technology Is Changing Banking’s Future.

Mobile Commerce is growing rapidly in Africa:
SMS Money Transfers with Africa’s M-PESA

Here’s an interesting one that also nods to the Evil Empire (cue music):
Starbucks App Uses Your iPhone to Pay for Lattes.

An interesting future design for mobile devices. Rings you wear on your fingers that simulate the simulation of holding a phone to your head:

The following is a quick brainstorm of ideas in support of our Future of Television class.

Inspirations for future interfaces

Science fiction
- Minority Report

- The Matrix
- Starship Troopers
- Blade Runner
- Yellow book commercial

- Children of Men

Touch screens – hand held – light weight laptop/tablets

Flick through video in the same way you can flick through images on an iphone (touch screen)

Navigating through the television watching experience as if you’re flipping the pages of a book

Personalized simple Video editing – ie, like the new iPhone quicktime interface. the ability to create video mashups quickly and easily

What does the future of zero-rendering-time look like???

The ability to quickly apply different Filters. 3D filters

Breaking about the screen into smaller modules (like boxee), letting those run all at the same time (Direct TV)

Video Scraping
A simple scan button for internet video (like your car radio). Some type of application that reviews all the links that have movies in it, grabs the movies, and inputs them into a queue for viewing.

Building a console interface above the moving images, that allows for the simple execution of payment transactions with fingerprint biometrics

An interface where almost everything in the image is a hyperlink to something else pause the image and hover over the hot spots

Changing the dynamic of scheduling, even within the movie or the television show like Memento…

let a person organize the chapters of a movie quickly to their own liking. making content that supports that concept that can be easily blended together in no matter what order

Opening sourcing video content to multiple parties to determine the best camera angles to tell the story, making a dancing movie in this manner

360 degree video capture and what kind of content would be created as a result of it. — what it could do for sports?

The television experience – a group watching experience in a large room filled with white walls and projections against those walls, every where you look

The future club experience where every wall in the room has a built in projected image interface, like the holodeck on Star Trek and every participant
in the room plays the role of the dj

We have video and storytelling abilities in our group, let’s write a story about the future of television – animate it, make an animatic or a moving comic book
like the spider woman motion comic

This link is interesting because:

1) It’s a drinking game for the iPhone
2) It uses jquery’s jswipe library that mimics the swipe navigation, etc. of an actual iPhone app, yet it’s a mobile web site…

It’s better viewed on your iPhone (in Safari) than on your normal PC.

Another portion of our homework due Tuesday, September 22, was to submit a one page write up on a cause we’d like to align ourselves with and apply the mobile technology tools we will be learning to assist that particular cause. My write-up is here and it’s about Givkwik, the startup venture I have discussed here a few times.

For the purposes of the class, I’d like to offer my colleagues the idea that we can add the profiles of the causes/charities/non for profits into the Givkwik network as part of the initial launch. If anyone is interest in working on this project, in some way, shape or form, please contact me via email: jason.rosado at givkwik.com

I just finished reading the novel Little Brother by Cory Doctorow as assigned by Nathan Freitas, our professor for Social Activism Using Mobile Technology.

I was equal parts disturbed, terrified and enlightened by this novel. Essentially, a current day (near-futuristic) update on George Orwell’s 1984, “Little Brother” tells the story of Marcus Yallow, who like so many American citizens and Foreign Nationals in the after-math of 9/11 got swept up in the the American Government’s over-reactive responses to terrorist acts upon our soil.

The actual date/time setting of the novel is unclear, but its clearly in a not-too-distant future in San Francisco. Marcus aka W1n5t0n (“Winston”) aka M1k3y (“Mikey”) is a high school student actively engaged in role player games, DIY hacks and gaming “the system.” It’s when he gets caught in the wrong place in the wrong time after a terrorist bombing of the San Francisco Bay Bridge and the BART tunnel connecting San Francisco with Oakland, is where the drama begins.

The story highlights several hacks and concepts actually used in reality. I could see the spirit of Nathan, our professor, in the words of Doctorow. Mr. Freitas has been known to leverage technology to support progressive activism globally. In a bizarro world, perhaps some of us in our class, might end up on some awful Government “list…” (just kidding). Marcus Yallow’s story is one that all of us who even speak modestly against our some times totalitarian-feeling democracy get a little paranoid about – the worse case scenarios when civil rights, the Constitution and The Bill of Rights get thrown out the window in the pursuit of counter-terrorism and freedom.

Some of the accounts of the fictitious terrorist act in the story brought back bad personal memories of the days after 9/11 here in New York City. I certainly hope we never see those days again. The Obama Administration is only slowly peeling back the onion of the Bush Regime, and seeks to keep intact many of the infringements upon our daily privacy (NSA wire-tapping, etc).

The concept of “truth” resonates throughout the book. In a situation such as Marcus’, it is a constant struggle to defend his own view of what occurred, and to clarify what he had been doing and why, in order to not get swept up into the broadest definition of the term “terrorist.” It is also a somewhat obvious attempt to elucidate on the concept that “one’s man’s terrorist, is another man’s freedom fighter.”

“Little Brother” is a good quick read, and will keep you engaged throughout the story.

For our Social Activism using Mobile Technology Class, we were asked to secretly capture some video. Here is a short capture of fellow ITP students discussing social plans while on break (and during fire alarm) at the Stern Business Plan Competition Entrepreneurs Boot Camp…

Surreptitious Video from Jason Rosado on Vimeo.