At the head of the poll they state, “Innovation: The health of the economy depends on it. Our schools are meant to encourage it. But innovation isn’t a widget that can be stamped out on the assembly line. It’s the product of a delicate recipe of education, technology and entrepreneurship. We’d like your help exploring where innovation is happening, and where it’s not, but should be.”

When I received an email invite today to respond to the poll, I was initially excited since I assumed (wrongly) that this was open to general public and/or MPR members at large. As it turns out I received the invite since I’m one of a select number of “Public Insight Network” contributors to yet another subsite on MPRNewsQ called “Minnesota Today“.

Minnesota Today is a crowdsourced article input site from a number of people who (hopefully) have insight in to important and interesting we all come across daily while reading online. We submit links to a moderated queue and they’re looked at and posted periodically throughout each day. I’m expecting this connection might enable me to obtain the results of this poll early—or at least be able to publish them quickly here on Minnov8—and I’ll try to let you know what people say as soon as possible.

Though I’m a contributor and fan of MPR, the website has so much going on and is so layered and nuanced, it’s a real challenge to find anything…including my modest contributions at Minnesota Today. In fact, I’ve talked to about a dozen hard-core MPR and Twin Cities Public Television members who had no clue Minnesota Today even existed and for a couple of others who did, had no idea I contributed. Others are taken aback that there are “special” polls like this that are not open to the public at large and I’d have to agree.

Still, this is a good start on an innovative use of the web and crowdsourcing and I applaud MPR for the effort.

MPR: Where is innovation in Minnesota? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

His most recent work comes from his own Zachstronaut, which he describes as a “web rocket-lab” site to showcase his love for the internet and gaming as well as his experiments. The result of that work is his internet game Infiltration.

Infiltration was built in response to blog Boing Boing‘s call for games to be developed that were inspired by “chip music“. (You can vote for Infiltration through today, 7/15). Most likely very familiar to gamer cycles but not far beyond, chip music is inspired by early video game soundtracks. Think Asteroids, Pac Man and a host of Nintendo games. Grab a Casio keyboard and hang on…

Johnson, a fan of this unique musical genre, has spent more than his fair share of time listening to chip music and envisioning the game activity that it might accompany. A User Experience developer at Worrell, he says, “Video games contributed to shaping my entire career in computers.” It was clearly a natural for him to develop a chip music inspired game.

Indie game developer game designs tend to be very simplistic, with an almost nostalgic look and feel. “Part of the design is a nod to the old school music but it’s probably more about the amount of time and money indie game developers have to spend on the games.” He goes on to note, “It took nine people a year to write Pac Man, I wrote this in about 30 hours.”

Johnson also saw an opportunity to advance his passion for open programming. “I wanted to make a game that didn’t need a plugin.” Hence the use of Javascript, allowing the ability to play the game directly from your browser. “Javascript and browser based games offer a very low barrier of entry.” notes Johnson.

The use of coding language like Javascript and HTML5 is on the rise as many see the use of Flash diminishing. “I don’t hate Flash, but it’s obvious it is going the way of the Dodo.” according to Johnson referencing the ownership and closed nature of the language. “I always bet on the openess of  web.” When developing the game and entering the Boing Boing contest (Did I mention you could vote for his game through 7/16.) Zach thought that the use of Javascript would allow him to be more unique and give him an upper hand. But “The use of Javascript was more prevalent than I thought…which is good.” Nearly half the games submitted use it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhvupyRdR5I

The design of the game and the participation in the contest serves Johnson in number of ways. First and foremost, it’s a hobby. It also clearly promotes his programming skills and many projects while allowing him to share his passion for open web design. In addition, while he could have spent much more time on the game he appreciates the short-term goal. “The competition set a deadline. Otherwise I can spend a lot of time on it. I need to make a game I need to get done.”

Where does he see this indie game developer movement going? “There are plenty of applications from entertainment to art to even civil engagement. Imagine someone demonstrating the need for better routing of traffic through a game.” He also notes a very basic result. “If I can make little tidbits of joy for someone, that’s great.”

The Joy of Infiltration Champions Open Game Development is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

A fake Skype call highly unlikely to ever occur

In a time when cybersecurity has become the new battleground among nations and calls for enhanced national defense online are accelerating, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is trumpeting the use of a technology for communications that has an unknown security model and seems at odds with the usual Republican focus on national security.

An article by Jeremy Herb in the StarTribune this morning caught my eye, “Bachmann pushes Congress to embrace Skype.” It outlines the reasons why Rep. Michele Bachmann is calling for the use of the free Skype program on Congressional networks—so she and others can talk directly with their constituents or hold “virtual town halls”—but its use is banned in the House of Representatives.

The article quotes a University of Minnesota computer science professor, Joseph Konstan, who says this about the fundamental reason a peer-to-peer program like Skype is problematic and why it would be banned: ”The reason people worry about using tools like these is they are inherently insecure. The design of Skype is something that hasn’t been carefully scrutinized, and so it may very well be there are bugs in there.”

Sure there could be bugs, but the biggest reason installing Skype on Capitol computer networks is a huge problem is because of that unknown security model of Skype. It is not possible to know much about the security of Skype since their code is proprietary and is not open to peer review or close examination of potential security holes.

As a fan of Skype and someone who has used it daily for several years, I evangelize its use constantly. That said, I wouldn’t want my government to embrace it without some very close scrunity and safeguards and I’m puzzled why Rep. Bachmann would now be banging-the-drum for Congress to adopt Skype. Here’s why doing so isn’t wise.

Lawmakers are questioning the Department of Homeland Security’s readiness for cybersecurity attacks and according to this article in NetworkWorld, “Reported attacks on U.S. agencies increased by 400% from 2006 to 2009, said Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat and committee chairman. “Whether the military or intelligence-gathering operations of foreign nations; domestic or international terrorist groups; lone-wolf, hate-driven individuals; common criminals, or thrill-seeking hackers, those attempting to infiltrate and exploit this country’s computer networks are both numerous and determined,” he said.”

The need for enhanced cybersecurity leadership has been pointed out by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). This agency is adamant that the government doesn’t have a prioritized national cybersecurity research and development agenda. In a report released on July 7th (PDF), the concern is that government officials don’t have the ability to track all active and completed cybersecurity programs and much of a process to share key information between government and industry.

Quite simply, it is unknown whether it would be “safe” to load Skype on Capitol computer networks or not and when lawmakers are calling for coordinated and orchestrated approaches to cybersecurity and the GAO says we’re not ready as a nation, Skype red flags like these are highly troubling (from Wikipedia):

• “Skype incorporates some features which tend to hide its traffic, but it is not specifically designed to thwart traffic analysis and therefore does not provide anonymous communication. Some researchers have been able to watermark the traffic so that it is identifiable even after passing through an anonymizing network.” (PDF)

• “Skype uses a proprietary Internet telephony (VoIP) network based on peer-to-peer architecture. The protocol has not been made publicly available by Skype and official applications using the protocol are closed-source.“

• “Skype is a secure communication; encryption cannot be disabled, and is invisible to the user. Skype reportedly uses non-proprietary, widely trusted encryption techniques: RSA for key negotiation and the Advanced Encryption Standard to encrypt conversations. Skype provides an uncontrolled registration system for users with no proof of identity. Instead, a free choice of nicknames permits users to use the system without revealing their identity to other users. It is trivial to set up an account using any name; the displayed caller’s name is no guarantee of authenticity. A third party paper analyzing the security and methodology of Skype was presented at Black Hat Europe 2006. It analyzed Skype and found a number of security issues with the current security model. (see, “Silver Needle in the Skype” PDF).”

Unless this call by Rep. Bachmann is a veiled attempt to ask for the use of an insecure Skype use but is really all about drawing attention to an to-be-alleged cybersecurity leadership issue that can be leveraged in the upcoming elections, perhaps the U.S. Chief Information Officer, Vivek Kundra, can sit down with her over a cup of coffee and educate her on the reasons why cybersecurity is in our national interest and Skype is a bad idea.

Congresswoman Calls for Skype Use? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

But Catherine was frustrated. She saw that the required AmeriCorps reporting was excruciatingly difficult for a program director to create and deliver so, like any good entrepreneur, she set about leveraging her background and abilities as a filmmaker, database design, technologist and advocate to pull together a team, obtain funding and set about writing her own software as a service (SaaS)!

Other State programs caught wind of what she was up to and climbed on board as initial customer/funders. The result of her efforts has evolved in to OnCorps Reports™ which provides web-based reporting and communication tools for National and Community Service programs, including AmeriCorps, VISTA, Senior Corps and Learn & Serve programs. Designed specifically to support service programs, the application framework is easily modified for use by any Non-Profit organizations to manage volunteers or staff, monitor program progress, and utilize financial reporting tools.

When we had coffee this week, I was at first delightfully surprised at how powerful and robust OnCorps Reports was and how it had a very well executed user interface, but at the same time I thought, “What the hell!?! Why isn’t Catherine involved with the minne* crowd, showing at Minnedemo or leading sessions at Minnebar? Connected to the startup community here in Minnesota?” So we spent some time having her walk me through the software and me thinking out loud about how to connect her immediately within our tech community and get her more attention from those of us keenly interested in discovering MN startup success stories.

OnCorps Reports’ mission is to provide state-of-the-art technology tools to help Non-Profit organizations and Community Service programs successfully collect, aggregate and analyze program data. OnCorps Reports™ strives to make it as easy as possible for program staff, participants and beneficiaries to share their success stories with funders, volunteers and the communities they serve, and greatly simplifies State and Federal grant reporting.

The key to the demand for software of this type is the old adage, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure” and it certainly allows program directors and State program management to do exactly that, but the mission-critical piece is ensuring that the lifeblood of AmeriCorps, its volunteers, can enter their served hours in an AmeriCorps program (if they’re even one hour shy of their service requirement it doesn’t count as volunteer service!) as well as recruit their replacement for the next year’s program (a commitment volunteers make when participating in AmeriCorps). The last critical one is mitigating the risk that an AmeriCorps program won’t fall short of its requirements and measured objectives and be in danger of losing its funding.

From what I saw in our brief time together and a casual demo, the hosted software certainly performed as a mature “Service as a Software” (SaaS) application. Designed in association with AmeriCorps State Commissions and program directors, the product suite Catherine and team have delivered is currently the market leader in AmeriCorps reporting systems, serving 20,000 users in 16 states.

A high level view of the OnCorps Reports software

One example of how a program director (or in this case a State Commission staffer) can easily get a scorecard-like view of each AmeriCorps program in their State, and quantify key aspects needed to be measured

So where is OnCorps Reports at today on their path to wildly successful and complete reporting dominance? Since their sales today are pretty much driven by unsolicited client referrals (they simply don’t have enough staff to sell and market to all 50 States and the hundreds of AmeriCorps program directors) they’re clearly trying to determine next steps and find ways to get the word out. That’s why I asked Catherine at our coffee to immediately send me information on OnCorps Reports so I could do this post and help her get more attention for this very worthy and important endeavor.

If you have ideas or have people whom you’d like to connect with Catherine, send an email to: info@oncorpsreports.com and let her know your thoughts or, obviously, leave a comment below.

OnCorps Reports: A MN Success Story is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Best Buy Co. Inc today announced the availability of its new digital video service CinemaNow which will provide customers same-day instant access to new release movies and TV shows.

This month the service will be available on the CinemaNow website, but also with internet connected BluRay players. Netflix has been delivered on these devices (as well as the Roku box, internet connected HDTVs and more) but Best Buy is in a highly unique position with consumer electronic manufacturers.

Add to that their ability to explain to consumers how to use the service, Geek Squad ‘officers’ to set it all up in the home, and the potential to begin to reallocate the sheer square footage devoted to merchandising TVs and movies on DVD/BluRay discs.and you can see why this is of such strategic importance to Best Buy.

The full press release is after the jump.

Best Buy Provides Customers Same-Day Instant Access to

New Release Movies and TV Shows with Launch of CinemaNow(TM)

Digital Entertainment Platform Debuts on Devices This Month

MINNEAPOLIS, May 18, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Best Buy Co. Inc today announced the availability of its new digital video service CinemaNow which will provide customers same-day instant access to new release movies and TV shows.

The service will initially be accessible through select connected Blu-ray Disc players and HDTVs, and on most PCs via the web at www.cinemanow.com. Beginning this month, the service will be available on all new connected Blu-ray Disc players and home theater systems from LG Electronics. CinemaNow is also expected to launch on an array of other devices from various manufacturers, including Insignia, later this year.

CinemaNow, the result of the previously announced strategic relationship between Sonic Solutions(R) and Best Buy, will be powered by the RoxioNow(TM) technology platform. Best Buy owns the legal rights to the CinemaNow trademark, and will use it going forward to market the service to consumers who will have the ability to buy or rent from an extensive library of premium content, including new release movies and TV shows, with no subscription required.

The platform will also allow customers to seamlessly access their premium content on a wide range of Internet-connected devices from multiple manufacturers. The initial product launch, which is expected to be followed by an improved and updated version later this year, will allow customers to easily browse, search and purchase premium content through a highly-functional, straightforward user interface, and will deliver a high-quality viewing experience through enhanced playback technology.

“With the introduction of CinemaNow, Best Buy continues our commitment to evolve with our customers as their demand for digital entertainment grows,” said Chris Homeister, senior vice president of entertainment for Best Buy. “The convenience, selection and flexibility of the CinemaNow service offers customers more freedom in the way they choose to consume entertainment from Best Buy. This service, which complements our existing suite of digital entertainment brands, will be available to customers in their homes and on-the-go through a broad array of devices and will be brought to life in store with the help of our Blue Shirts and Geek Squad Agents.”

“At LG, we’re committed to enriching in-home entertainment by delivering the ultimate HD viewing experience and limitless content options,” said Peter Reiner, senior vice president, marketing, LG Electronics USA, Inc. “Best Buy, through its compelling CinemaNow service, will provide customers with one of the most interactive entertainment options available making it easy for people to access their favorite content using LG’s NetCast Entertainment Access feature simply from the remote.”

“With a track record for bringing innovative technologies to a broad audience, Best Buy is in a great position to expand the market for on-demand home entertainment,” said Mike Dunn, Fox Home Entertainment worldwide president. “We are thrilled to partner with them and provide a wide selection of entertainment that can be accessed across many popular devices.”

The first update to the CinemaNow service is expected to release on select devices later this year and will include an advanced user interface and expanded video playback features aimed at further improving the video entertainment experience.

About Best Buy Co., Inc.

With operations in the United States, Canada, Europe, China, Mexico and Turkey, Best Buy is a multinational retailer of technology and entertainment products and services with a commitment to growth and innovation. The Best Buy family of brands and partnerships collectively generates more than $49 billion in annual revenue and includes brands such as Best Buy; Best Buy Mobile; Audiovisions; The Carphone Warehouse; Future Shop; Geek Squad, Jiangsu Five Star; Magnolia Audio Video; Napster; Pacific Sales; The Phone House; and Speakeasy. Approximately 180,000 employees apply their talents to help bring the benefits of these brands to life for customers through retail locations, multiple call centers and Web sites, in-home solutions, product delivery and activities in our communities. Community partnership is central to the way we do business at Best Buy. In fiscal 2010, we donated a combined $25.2 million to improve the vitality of the communities where our employees and customers live and work.

For more information about Best Buy, visit www.bby.com.

Best Buy Announces Movies & TV Online is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

No one will be able to read these digital books — at least for now — because of a five-year-old copyright lawsuit against Google. Five million books at the University of Michigan are threatened with the same fate.

Bummer. Read the entire article here.

StarTribune: Digital books put on hold at UofMN is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

The initiative will take approximately two years to complete. The idea behind this is to preserve legacy library works, but it will also provide university students the luxury of having these volumes available online to search, and perhaps even read in their entirety.

According to the CIC projects site, “Google will scan and make searchable public domain works as well as copyrighted materials, in a manner consistent with copyright law.” In the case of the University of Minnesota, over one million works will be digitized from their libraries. All works will be fully searchable, and some will be fully readable.

While this may be inconvenient for students looking to check-out works that are currently in Google’s hands, they will have the ability to find them through inter-library loans. In addition, the books will only be unavailable for a short time. According to Marlo Welshons, Communications Director for University of Minnesota Libraries, “The timeframe for the books being ‘checked out’ by Google for digitization is about the same as the loan period of any other patron.”

This process comes at a low cost to University libraries: Google is footing the bill for book transfers and scanning. The library is only responsible for finding and returning the books to their shelves.

For more information, check out the University of Minnesota’s Google Digitization Project page.

University of Minnesota Participates in Google Books Project is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

This court ruling struck down the Bush Administration FCC’s position over Comcast throttling BitTorrent peer-to-peer traffic over their network. BitTorrent is frequently cited by technologists as a bandwidth-intensive, enormous file size sharing method which strains any internet network.

Is this truly a blow to net neutrality?

Certainly there is concern about any opportunity to increase the control many of these large internet providers enjoy. But in a piece about this ruling on GigaOm entitled, “Comcast vs FCC: In Battle For Net Neutrality, Did the Courts Hand Comcast a Pyrrhic Victory?“, writer Stacy Higginbotham presents this data point from the investment bank Stifel Nicolaus:

Today’s ruling is destabilizing as it could effectively free broadband providers from FCC regulation over broadband, including net neutrality, rules requiring transparency letting customers know what actual speeds they are receiving, the ability to prioritize emergency communications, consumer privacy protections (though these could presumably be imposed to a certain degree by the FTC). But it could lead the FCC to reclassify broadband services as the more heavily regulated “telecommunications service” under the traditional Title II – which the Bells, cable, and wireless companies (e.g., T, VZ, CMCSA) strongly oppose.

So it’s feasible that the FCC will double-down on internet providers with a new suite of regulations which impose stringent standards on a neutral internet while preserving the opportunities for internet providers to succeed.

Comcast’s statement on the ruling:

“We are gratified by the Court’s decision today to vacate the previous FCC’s order. Our primary goal was always to clear our name and reputation. We have always been focused on serving our customers and delivering the quality open-Internet experience consumers want. Comcast remains committed to the FCC’s existing open Internet principles, and we will continue to work constructively with this FCC as it determines how best to increase broadband adoption and preserve an open and vibrant Internet.”

The FCC’s statement (PDF) on the ruling:

“The FCC is firmly committed to promoting an open Internet and to policies that will bring the enormous benefits of broadband to all Americans. It will rest these policies — all of which will be designed to foster innovation and investment while protecting and empowering consumers — on a solid legal foundation.

“Today’s court decision invalidated the prior Commission’s approach to preserving an open Internet. But the Court in no way disagreed with the importance of preserving a free and open Internet; nor did it close the door to other methods for achieving this important end.”

To learn more:

+ Washington Post:  ”Court rules for Comcast over FCC in ‘net neutrality’ case”

+ The Wall Street Journal: “Court Backs Comcast Over FCC on ‘Net Neutrality’”

+ BusinessWeek: “Comcast Wins in Case on FCC Net Neutrality Powers”

+ San Jose Mercury News: “‘Net neutrality’? It’s Comcast’s Net; it can do what it wants”

+ Wired: “Appeals Court Throttles FCC’s Net Neutrality Authority”

Comcast Wins Battle Over the FCC is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

The ultimate recommendation is for universal access to broadband as, “…a minimum of 10 to 20 megabits per second download and 5 Mbps upload” which, in my opinion, might be fine today but will be woefully inadequate within five years and, unfortunately, was missing entirely recommendations on something much more important to the future of broadband in Minnesota: who controls it.

As I progressed through reading the report (PDF) when it was released, an interesting quote jumped out and it about sums up the importance of broadband to the future of Minnesota and came from Kate Rubin, President of the Minnesota High Tech Association (with my emphasis), ”Another key aspect of an innovation ecosystem is ubiquitous and affordable broadband access throughout Minnesota. Broadband is as essential as oxygen to ensure a high quality of life and a globally competitive future for our citizens, businesses, and communities.”

Yep. Broadband is as essential as oxygen, especially for anyone in technology who reads Minnov8! The kicker? The lion’s share of Minnesota citizen’s broadband footprint has “caps” on usage and that metaphorical “oxygen” is mostly controlled by the private sector. While the Task Force invested lots of time in the report detailing everything surrounding broadband BUT private control of this essential and fundamental conduit to the internet, my hope was that the Task Force would directly (and emphatically within the report) drive the point home that the Legislature must confront the question of public/private collaboration, public broadband policy, regulation and laws with something as fundamentally important to our future as access to the internet.

Instead, here was the lukewarm description of government’s leadership role:

Role of Government
Government has, or can have, a variety of roles to play with respect to broadband policy, broadband adoption, and consumer protection. Different levels of government (federal, state, local) have differing levels of jurisdiction and responsibility in the making of public policy regarding broadband.

Government plays an important planning and policy•making role with respect to establishing and achieving broadband goals. While it has regulatory authority too, it must also be recognized that actions the government takes or does not take have direct impacts on such things as time to market, the competitive playing field, and end-users paying for broadband services. In the final analysis, perhaps government’s overarching responsibility is to ensure affordable, ubiquitous access to broadband for all those who want and need such services, while making sure our state and nation remain competitive in the global economy. Further, government has a responsibility to make sure that our critical broadband infrastructure is safe and secure.

What I took from that section was a soft cautionary message to the Legislature in favor of the private sector (“actions the government takes or does not take have direct impacts“) and that perhaps the Legislature should just focus on the “have-nots” and leave the “real” broadband to the big boys in the private sector (“perhaps government’s overarching responsibility is to ensure affordable, ubiquitous access to broadband for all those who want and need such services“).

Without minimizing the extraordinary complexity of making public policy surrounding broadband–and the steep investments made by the private sector in fast broadband while mobile broadband also continues to accelerate–it’s naive for the Task Force to think a strategic deployment of “ubiquitous broadband,” an infrastructure that is “safe and secure” and one with inherent “consumer protections” is going to happen without significant governmental involvement. There should have been an entire section of the report devoted to both sides of the net neutrality debate so the folks in our State Legislature had a grasp of the issues they should be dealing with when crafting broadband public policy, regulations and laws.

As you may already know, the MN Broadband bill passed the House (Update: Senate passage likely this week and then off to Governor Pawlenty for signature). Rather than Minnesota showing “leadership” in this area, instead those of us who know internet access and speed is vital to the future of Minnesota, our nation and, of course, your innovation (regardless if that innovation conflicts with the competitive products offered by the same provider for your internet access) will have to rely on the Federal Communications Commission and their foresight and leadership to ensure internet broadband doesn’t turn in to a tollway.

Today, March 31st, 2010 is officially the last day of the Minnesota Ultra High-Speed Broadband Task Force.  Please click here to read the last Letter from the Chair marking this event and celebrating the teams accomplishments.

You can continue to visit the Minnesota Ultra High-Speed Broadband Task Force’s website to download the report and access other relevant information.

All,

I am not a betting man. Had I been one, I would have placed a pretty big bet on the Task Force succeeding as the odds would have been against me. I mean, seriously, who would have thought that 23 people, with diverse backgrounds and conflicting interests, would have worked so well together? That we would put an agreement on paper and influence others enough to likely pass legislation to codify our recommendations?

Well, we did it. And today, almost two years after its inception, the Ultra High-Speed Broadband Task Force ceases to exist. In what seems like the perfect farewell gift, the Minnesota Legislature will very likely approve a bill capturing our recommendations, and the Governor will sign it into law in the next two weeks.

Is the new law what I would have written had I had a magic wand and lived in the Land of Unlimited Resources? Maybe not.

It is, however, wise, forward-looking legislation that positions Minnesota as a leader in the nation. Now, with the National Broadband Report released, I think our wisdom as a state shines even brighter.

While the Task Force’s report was almost 150 pages long, our key recommendations were narrowly defined: we wanted universal access to Ultra High-Speed Broadband in Minnesota, we defined Broadband as a minimum of 10 to 20 megabits per second download and 5 Mbps upload, and we wanted the state to set a comparative goal within the U.S. and the world. Furthermore, we felt that there had to be some sort of ongoing institution to ensure that the objectives were pursued. It’s all in the bill.

With this, my last letter as Chair, I would like to recognize the talent and the hard work of each and every Task Force member, the supporting staff and friends across the state who freely gave us their work, ideas, advice and enthusiasm to create the report and pass the law (well, getting closer anyway – should be next week!). It has been my privilege to meet and work with each of you.

Together, we have contributed to making Minnesota a better place to live and work. And, a leader among the States in our great country.

I should have placed that bet.

Warmest regards,

Rick King

Your ex-chair

Did The Ultra High-Speed Broadband Taskforce Blow It? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Kris Layon with keynoter Doc Searls from the 2009 MinneWebCon Photo credit: Peter Fleck (@pfhyper) from his Flickr account

What most of don’t get to do before making a decision to attend an event that costs money is to understand the vision, depth and texture that lies behind a conference. Knowing this helps to determine the level of the sessions, their quality and whether it’s worth your investment of both time and money.

MinneWebCon, the full-day, three-track, conference for Web professionals, is directed by Kristofer Layon and I had a chance to talk with Kris today about the upcoming event, some background behind it, who it’s targeted towards and other sorts of deeper meaning stuff most of us don’t have a chance to discover in advance.

After hearing this podcast and visiting the MinneWebCon website, I’m confident you’ll immediately signup for this conference. Hope to see you there!

Direct Links:

+ MinneWebCon website w/keynote speakers
+ Schedule and Session Details
+ MinneWebCon social media: Twitter; Facebook

MinneWebCon: An interview with its director, Kris Layon is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

In case you missed it, I joined fellow Minnov8er Tim Elliott’s Team, dubbed Full Court Press as a bond to the WordPress platform we used, for the 3rd annual Nerdery sponsored event. This unique gathering pairs 10 person teams of web site professionals with deserving non-profit organizations. Those non-profits, some who have no web presence, receive brand new websites valued at well over $25,000 at the end of the 24 hour period. (Check out the Minnov8 podcast that originated from the Challenge.)

You couldn’t help but be taken by the dedication of these web pros. It’s not easy to spend a relatively short period of time with a “client”, then accelerate the design and creation of a website that accomplishes the goals of the non-profit…much less spending part of it in a sleep deprived state.

This being the third year of the event the folks at The Nerdery do a great job providing what teams need including entertainment and food. The carnival-like atmosphere is definitely not what you would expect from a bunch of web site developers. From human pyramids and massages to oxygen bars and ice cream the 24 hour period was anything but sedate.

The winner of the Challenge was Team Placeholder and they produced an incredible site for Dakota Wicohan, an organization working to preserve the Dakota language. However, all of the teams built great sites and all of the non-profits benefited from this 24 hours of design and production. All of the challenge participants deserve to be applauded for their commitment, ingenuity, patience, and generosity. Remember, these teams accepted only gratitude as their reward. Bravo!

Here’s a brief light-hearted recap of our 24+ hours that started at 7:30am on Saturday and ended just after 10:00am on Sunday…

Arrive and set up (“We didn’t bring enough stuff.”)…Coffee, pastry and bananas, yum…Observe other teams in the room. (These guys brought a lot of stuff, including really big monitors. Note case of monitor envy.)…Arrange tables for work-flow. Choose a “w” shape to reflect dedication to WordPress…Meet rest of team…Rearrange tables for real workflow. (You saw that coming.)…Snacks and coffee…DesignWise Medical draws Team Full Court Press. Brad and Janine appear to be great…Coffee…Get acquainted, planning and design meeting….DesignWise Medical is great…Note team spreadsheet indicates plenty of Red Bull and coffee consumption (Do we have a problem?)…Coding….Found the ice cream…Team meeting…Coding…Spicy lunch…Browse raffle prizes-iPad, 30″ monitor (more monitor envy), Threadless gift certificates, robot, bacon gift set, light saber and Ton-Ton sleeping bag?…Geek-meter pegged…Grab raffle tickets inside a giant blower…coding…Power past design disagreement…Tim Elliott displays strong penchant for Arnold Palmers (Iced-tea and lemonade)…Coding…Snack time and coffee…Team meeting…Burritos for dinner. Spicy again…Coding…Note funky smell…Minnov8 Podcast-Ask indecipherable question…Coding…Team Meeting…Visit to oxygen bar…Coding…Midnight pizza for 2nd dinner…Is that my colon screaming?…Coding…Team meeting…(Insert unexplained gap in time here.)…Bagel for breakfast…Final touches on site…Present to judges…Prepare for group presentation “just in case”…Watch finalist presentations (we aren’t one)…See raffle prizes awarded (didn’t win one)…Watch winner announcement…Clean up…Walk back to car (glad we didn’t bring a lot of stuff)…nap time!

Special thanks to all of Team Full Court Press: Tim Elliott, Mitchell Hislop, Carl Bliss, Patrick Lewis, Josh Leuze, Crystal Colby, Bharadwaj Parthasarathy, Toby Cryns, Ben Wallace as well as our chosen charity DesignWise Medical’s Brad Slaker and Janine Johnson. Look for their new site soon.

24 Hours, a New Site and Real Fun. is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Tim Elliott started a team for the Overnight Website Challenge called “Full Court Press” and the team members are comprised of folks in the Minneapolis/St. Paul WordPress Users Group. He and Phil Wilson hosted an on-site podcast this week by having a conversation with Mark, one of the Nerdery founders of the Challenge as well as with Brad Slaker, head of the non-profit DesignWise Medical, Inc. whose site Full Court Press is building out.

When it comes to websites and technology that can improve outreach and increase donations, many nonprofits are lagging far behind. Thus was born The Nerdery Overnight Website Challenge.

Beginning the morning of March 20, 2010 and concluding the next day, The Nerdery Overnight Website Challenge will again provide a fun forum to highlight creative ways for nonprofits to strategically use web technology to accomplish their missions.

Hosts: Tim Elliott and Phil Wilson (Steve Borsch is off today and Graeme Thickins is on his way to DEMO & will liveblog here)

Music by Dexter Freebish and their song, “Everybody Knows Somebody” from the SXSW Music Showcase.

Update: Apologies to Brad Slaker (sounds like laker) of DesignWise Medical for the name mispronunciation by an already punchy Phil Wilson.

Minnov8 Gang 71: At the Overnight Website Challenge is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

A screenshot of WCCO's The Wire zoomed in on the timeline

People in Twin Cities social media circles got a sneak peek at WCCO’s The Wire last October and its promise looked intriguing. We here at Minnov8 were particularly pleased to see John Daenzer and crew be so bold and embracing risk as it pertains to delivering news in an increasingly changing (and fragmented) media landscape. From what we can see, it looks like the experiment is off to a very strong start.

Here’s how it works: A WCCO reporter or staffer kicks off a story in the timeline. As the story unfolds, updates are done but where it gets interesting is this: We, formerly known as the audience but geared to be highly participative in today’s online world, are able to submit relevant perspective, information, and media we capture digitally and report on the story! In essence, you can connect the dots in your own way and quickly gain additional information and other people’s perspectives on a news story (and how I wished this had been available during the Minneapolis bridge collapse since so many people had multiple angles and photos of what was occurring).

WCCO's 'The Wire' FAQ page with a video fully explaining this new way of delivering the news

After my adventure attending the WCCO hosted Bloginar in October, Minnov8′s Phil Wilson reported on The Wire with this post, “WCCO Walks The Wire.” In it he interviewed Daenzer about the effort and there is a short screencast. At the bloginar, and in subsequent discussions, Daenzer has been quite clear that they see themselves as engaging the community for input and not trying to be the “ultimate brokers of all news”. If the way that WCCO leaders, reporters and staff have leapt into the social media space and how they’re using it daily is any indication of their sincerity with engagement of the community, The Wire is going to be a resounding success.

The Wire is a platform that recognizes we all have multiple sources for news and information. It also is one that is setup to recognize that fewer of us are willing to be a passive recipient of the news, especially when we have pertinent and relevant pieces of information that really should be part of the discourse if one is to get a holistic view of a story.

With more of us online finding tidbits of information, on the scene with cameras shooting video or photos of an incident or event, The Wire embraces those of us willing to submit our contributions and someone inside WCCO adds us to the timeline if we have relevant information or facts to add to it. With The Wire we are no longer the people known as the audience, we are potentially participants in the story.

The Wire comments on Twitter (hashtag: #wccowire) have been varied thus far, from David Erickson participating with a story, to questions about the interface, to the expected and typical engagement by John Daenzer himself. The Wire has only been out for a few hours and is in “beta” status so the only way to get the ultimate “read” on its usefulness is to have people use it. As more people do use it, I’m certain we’ll see comments that are more praising, and more filled with vitriol, than these few I plucked from a Twitter search:

No question we social media early adopters will kick the tires on The Wire and give it a good shot and, if what you’re seeing above and in the Twitter search for the #wccowire hashtag, Daenzer and crew will have no shortage of ideas, suggestions, criticisms and rants to take advantage of in its beta phase and continue to quickly evolve this platform. Whether The Wire can migrate to the mainstream is another story and we’ll keep an eye on its adoption curve.

By the way, as one of the first news stations in Minnesota with a website (www.Channel4000.com done by Internet Broadcasting Systems), WCCO is no stranger to innovation or taking risks. With that willingness, WCCO’s commitment to the community (and engagement with the community), smart people like John Daenzer and crew driving these sorts of initiatives, I have no doubt we’ll see a Minnesota-led platform for the next generation of news and The Wire is a magnificent beginning.

WCCO Launches ‘The Wire’. Connect Your Own Dots is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

You may not know it but the clock is clicking down to Google’s deadline, March 26th, for nominations of cities interested in being their laboratory for an “ultra high-speed fiber network”. In fact, that clock can be found at the top of the page at GoogleTwinPorts.com, just one of the assets in Duluth’s well choreographed campaign to become a high-fiber community.

According to Google, the city chosen will be built out with a fiber network that will deliver “Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today, over 1 gigabit per second” at a “competitive price”. And it will provide that network to anywhere from 50,000 to 500,000 people in the chosen community. It’s all part of their plan “to experiment with new ways to help make Internet access better, and faster for everyone”.

Oh sure, there have been more than a few cities that have made very public pushes to be chosen for this slice of web-surfing nirvana, but none have done it with quite as much panache as our own Duluth.

They have dedicated a website, Facebook page, Twitter page, and YouTube Channel to the cause. There’s a Fiber Business Idea award being offered, web badges, a coloring contest, a pledge to sign, Google Fest on March 20^th and there’s even a movie in the offing. (No details on the plot…hopefully a romantic comedy…there aren’t enough of those, ya know.)

Then there’s the celebrities…Hey Topeka, Kansas we’ll see your Mayor renaming the city to Google, KS for a month and raise you a State Senator.

The most recent addition of voices to the campaign is Minnesota State Senator Al Franken.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2i_piWVXuc

The fact is that Mr. Franken, back in his days working with Tom Davis, was the “Duluth Answer Man” in a series of commercials for the city. Here’s a little known fact: Franken filmed these commercials just two years ago. Boy those Senate bids can age a guy. (OK, not a fact. He actually filmed them in the 80’s). In the video he even credits Google with freeing him from his duties as the Answer Man so that he could join the Senate.

Details of when Google will announce which city will be the recipient of all this fiber are still a bit sketchy. Their website only goes as far as saying “We plan to announce a target community or target communities this year.” When would the network be up and running once a community…no…once Duluth is chosen? Google gives no time frame.

Needless to say, though vague,  the Google initiative is an exciting one. Hopefully, like the FCC Broadband Plan, it will yield a low cost way to bring a bigger pipe to all of the US…not just one city. Our collective digital future, with all its applications, opportunities and business ventures, really depends on it.

In the meantime, a city on the shores of Lake Superior can dream, as well as showcase it’s innovative community…and have a lot fun doing it.

Google’s High-Fiber City: Why Not Duluth? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Within this plan, the FCC has the unenviable task of encapsulating the complexities of the markets, technologies, other country’s use of broadband as a competitive advantage, possible use-cases for broadband (e.g., telemedicine, distance learning), demand for rural use (a market segment seen as horrifically expensive to build-out with wired broadband) and determine the possibilities for broadband in total, whether wired or wireless. Ensuring the public good, and that the internet remains a conduit for innovation and entreprenurialism, is a vital part of their mission.

In conferences I’ve been to, discussions I’ve had with broadband experts, and interviews I’ve held with internet-centric startups and entrepreneurs, all are adamant that nothing is more important to internet innovation and entrepreneurialism than ubiquitous and fast broadband (except for startup funding, of course).

But moving from a Plan to Congressional action in the way of law is another matter entirely.

If you think the healthcare debate has been heated and lobbying by the insurance industry vitriolic, just wait until the FCC Broadband Plan is released and the telecom and cable companies accelerate efforts to influence Congress and you and I. (I’m certain we’ll hear lots of talking points like “the government is socializing broadband”, “government takeover of the internet” and cries that spending on broadband infrastructure isn’t warranted since “we have the best broadband in the world”).

BusinessWeek expects a long haul on the Broadband Plan turning in to law:

“…the FCC may face resistance from lawmakers unwilling to approve additional funding and from parts of the communications industry, such as satellite providers, largely left out of the plan. “If it were easy, [this reform] would have been done a long time ago,” Blair Levin, the Federal Communications Commission official who’s spearheading the National Broadband Plan.”

“Besides asking broadcasters to give up some airwaves, the plan will also propose a nationwide wireless broadband network for use by public safety agencies and urge an overhaul of a federal program that supplies funding for telecommunications carriers which provide phone service in rural areas, FCC officials have said in recent weeks. The plan is also expected to push for the broader adoption of electronic health records and so-called smart grid technologies designed to help consumers and utilities better monitor energy use.”

In his own words, let FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski tell you why broadband matters as he’s grilled by the Fast Money folks on CNBC, a group typically focused on short-term quarterly profits and opportunities for incumbent companies vs. having a strategic eye on America’s global competitiveness, the public good, or the sorts of infrastructure that creates openings for innovators or entrepreneurs. It will give you a taste of the stakes in this game and why the battles have only just begun:

Why the FCC Broadband Plan Matters is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Mary Beth Schubert, VP of Corporate Affairs, Comcast

This morning’s post, “Comcast’s Oscars Fail in MN” was one that’s received a fair amount of traffic today and in it I promised I’d update you, so here you go.

Moments ago I got off the phone with Mary Beth Schubert, Vice President of Corporate Affairs for Comcast in Minnesota. While pleased to receive an apology and that my squeaky wheel was getting greased, essentially there’s no identified cause and I came away from the call not knowing anymore than I did before receiving it.

“The particular incident that you mentioned I can confirm and that it was in isolated spots in Minneapolis and the southwestern suburbs and was intermittent. We cover 111 different cities — and you’d mentioned Chicago or something — but it was isolated to small areas of the Twin Cities,” said Ms. Schubert. She then mentioned feedback she’d received from Comcast engineering staff and that, “It appears the problem was first identified at approximately 8:15pm (CST). We immediately began researching the cause of the interference and it appears that it cleared itself about 11:15pm late last evening. We continue to look in to the cause of it.”

The anecdotes I, and others on Twitter, had about this stuttering and video pixelation going on for at least two days wasn’t formally acknowledged and not addressed. “Again, we have recognized, our engineering area, that the interference was identified approximately 8:15pm on Sunday and gone late that evening.”

Perhaps it was record viewing of this year’s 82nd Annual Academy Awards, too many people tangling up the series of tubes by sending their internets, or some internal infrastructure fail as Comcast does away with analog signals over cable so the tubes don’t get filled up (you know, like with trucks), I received no hard data on why the Oscar telecast was a disaster for so many of us and what they’re doing to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Ms. Schubert was very gracious and listened patiently to my additional concerns — and I do appreciate her reaching out — but I think Comcast needs a blog to talk to customers, some transparency, and especially system updates that tell us what’s going on and what they’re doing to fix technical issues since it’s highly likely we’ll see more of them. Perhaps, since they’re literally across the river from the upcoming light rail depot in downtown St. Paul, they’ll be able to easily catch the Cluetrain.

Comcast’s Oscar Fail Followup “We Dunno” is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Though the problem seemed to begin on Friday with our Comcast cable TV service, we didn’t much care until the family sat down to watch the 82nd Academy Awards and the video stuttering and audio dropouts were so horrifically bad that it was almost unwatchable.

Rebooting the device during a commercial break was a mistake since it took forever to come back up and didn’t fix the problem, so I grabbed my iPhone and did a search on Twitter for the word “comcast” to see if it could possibly be a network issue rather than our cable DVR failing.

I was stunned to see that there were dozens of people tweeting about the “stuttering” and “pixelation” of video and audio and it appeared that most of the problem was in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul and the surrounding metro area (see SheilaBird; KeinKernMusic; DFRevert; CSWebGrl).

But in further investigation this morning, I’ve discovered that many of the people tweeting were in Illinois (e.g., JoshMeans) so this might’ve been a regional problem. During the Oscar telecast I reached out to Frank Eliason via Twitter (@ComcastCares and he’s Comcast’s “Twitter man” according to BusinessWeek) and he was, with his typical Johnny-on-the-spot follow up, checking into the issues but nothing has come of it yet. I’ve reached out to him this morning to ask for a statement about what went wrong, what Comcast did and is doing about it, and Eliason responded by asking for a private, Twitter direct message (DM) with my email address in it, so we’ll see what Comcast says about the issue and I’ll update this post if-and-when I receive something.

I suspect that this sort of “fail” is going to become more frequent, rather than less so, since more of us are maximizing the use of our wired and wireless internet connections and the cable companies are accelerating the services they’re trying to shove down an internet broadband pipe that — while admittedly fat and robust with seemingly high capacity — is still a finite resource.

Comcast’s MN Oscars Fail is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

One of the key players there is Jonathan Zittrain, a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, a co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society and a guy who served as its first executive director from 1997-2000. He’s also the author of “The Future of the Internet—and How to Stop It“.

I came across a 1.5 hour talk called “Minds for Sale” on the commercial side of cloud computing that was posted a few days ago and I’ve been listening to it in starts-n-stops whenever I had some time. It’s worth your time to listen to it closely if you are at all involved in commercial cloud computing, a startup in the web hosted space, or are a strategist or business leader in any thought leading capacity for your organization. In it you’ll hear “…why cloud computing is not just for computing anymore and how a new range of projects is making the application of human brainpower as purchasable and fungible as additional server rackspace.”

Listen by hovering over the speaker icon or download the mp3: Minds for Sale

Jonathan Zittrain on Minds for Sale is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

It’s a survey of nearly 900 Internet stakeholders which reveals fascinating new perspectives on the way the Internet is affecting human intelligence and the ways that information is being shared and rendered.

The web-based survey gathered opinions from prominent scientists, business leaders, consultants, writers and technology developers. It is the fourth in a series of Internet expert studies conducted by the Imagining the Internet Center at Elon University and the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. In this report, Pew covers experts’ thoughts on the following issues:

• Will Google make us stupid?
• Will the internet enhance or detract from reading, writing, and rendering of knowledge?
• Is the next wave of innovation in technology, gadgets, and applications pretty clear now, or will the most interesting developments between now and 2020 come “out of the blue”?
• Will the end-to-end principle of the internet still prevail in 10 years, or will there be more control of access to information?
• Will it be possible to be anonymous online or not by the end of the decade?

“Three out of four experts said our use of the Internet enhances and augments human intelligence, and two-thirds said use of the Internet has improved reading, writing and rendering of knowledge,” said Janna Anderson, study co-author and director of the Imagining the Internet Center. “There are still many people, however, who are critics of the impact of Google, Wikipedia and other online tools.”

Yeah…like my former boss (now 69 years old) who insists that the internet is just a fad and that we’re destroying civilization with it. Or a former teacher I know who still believes that all relevant information we need must be stuffed in to our brains vs. looking it up via Google.

Pew Internet’s “Future of the Internet IV” is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.

Fear not, oh noble marketer. The folks at Uptown (Minneapolis) marketing firm Hello Viking have spawned Curation Station to provide you with a bucket to help you bail the endless deluge of web content into smaller pools. (Minnov8 colleague Tim Elliot gave me a peek at the private beta.)

As you might know, collecting the flood of online information isn’t the problem. News readers, RSS feeds, email newsletters, blog subscriptions, and bookmarking services all help you see every drop of data coming from your favorite online tributaries. The issue has always been separating the clean water from the black or grey water. (Those who have ever spent anytime emptying the water tanks of an RV know what I mean.)

According to it’s creators, “Social media have forever changed the way that brands connect with customers. In a non-stop trail of Tweets, blogs, Facebook pages, YouTube videos and Flickr sites, customers discuss products and services.” They say, “Curation Station was created by marketers for marketers to harness these conversations and share participants’ best insights and experiences.”

Through a very simple dashboard, any number of feeds can be added.  “Users can start by adding RSS and OPML feeds or alerts from external websites such as Google News. They also use integrated Twitter, Flickr and YouTube search tools. But inputs to Curation Station can be from any online source – web pages, news articles, blog posts, videos, photos” – via their bookmarklet tool.

Once inside the Curation Station dashboard a simple click of an item can channel it to a “playlist” or back to the online ocean from whence it came. Once you’ve vetted the content it can be distributed through a custom widget that’s designed by you in a live WYSIWYG tool. This widget can be plunked down in a website or blog. You can display one curated playlist or many, it’s up to you. This makes you the tamer of floods and sharer of all that is relevant…at least as you see it.

This isn’t the first time a Minnesota company has attacked this aggregation with curation. Garrick Van Buren continues to address it with his Cullect application, now on hiatus. The big dogs are no stranger to trying to tame this beast either. Google has, through it’s popular reader, and Yahoo has through their Pipes offering. I myself continue to bang my head against a wall trying to get Pipes to produce a virtual curated stream that really delivers what I need.

What I like so much about Curation Station is it’s ability to let me apply a trusted human opinion, my own, to all of my feeds. The simple one click curation of a bunch of feeds might take a few minutes, a few times each day, but the result really is more of a reflection of the curator. The handy custom widget output is also very appealing and a slick way to deliver your curated masterpiece.

What I don’t like is  the cost of this really slick system of flood control. After a walk-through of Curation Station I was all, “This kicks butt, sign me up!” When I found out that the cost started at $500 per month, I was all, “Maybe I need to take another crack at that Pipes feed.”

It’s apparent that the price structure for Curation Station is more tailored to the large marketing firms and businesses, certainly ones larger than mine. These firms are perhaps more financially able to dedicate resources as well as being in more of a position to monetize the result of this curation.

Perhaps in the not too distant future Curation Station can deliver a more cost effective solution for the more thrifty class of web whisperers. Also, one has to give these folks credit for rising above the business of “free” that has so crippled the ‘business’ social media.

One last thing, though I’ve opted for the water analogy here, the Curation Station folks are positioning the application by comparing it to a radio station. “Just like DJ’s curate music, Curation Station allows marketers and brands to easily organize social content into different playlists.” As a longtime ‘radio guy’ I’ll give you playlists (and the handy alliteration for the Casey Kasem like headline)…but that’s about as far as the radio analogy goes as I can see.

Curation Station…Sweeping the Nation? is a post from: Minnov8 and published under a Creative Commons license.