Showcasing Minnesota Technology Innovation
We discuss a range of topics but the “Gang Mentality” segment covers what some are viewing as a “tech bubble” that is bound to burst. Listen and see if you agree or disagree.
Hosts: Steve Borsch, Tim Elliott and Graeme Thickins (Phil Wilson is off this week)
Music: Nony Zero & their song “Surfin’ the Blast Wave” via the podsafe Music Alley.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 45:35 — 26.5MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS | More
Discussed during the show:
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Links about “the bubble”:
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By now you’ve undoubtedly seen much from last week’s Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. As internet/web/mobile people, it’s always incredibly enlightening to see Mary Meeker from Morgan Stanley deliver her Web 2.0 Summit “State of the Internet” talk (slides as PDF here or embedded–simply click “more” under the video).
It’s always great to see her in action (view below) as well as to see all the videos from the Web 2.0 Summit playlist from O’Reilly & Associates.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yL9yrttESI
Take a look at the presentation embedded as a slide show–>… [Read More…]
The Table Project is a non-profit, pre-launch, remarkably innovative social networking service for churches of any denomination being delivered right here in Minnesota. The project’s mission is to, “…help churches “Live Church Together” through community-building software.” They do this by going beyond traditional social media through their platform called “The Table,” one which enables churches to custom tailor a solution for their congregation.
Recently I sat down with the executive director of The Table Project, Ken Finsaas, to learn more about the project, their mission and get some more background. I have to admit that I was more than a bit skeptical about YASN (Yet Another Social Network) being developed when I was introduced to Ken by a guy I know who specializes in placing senior leadership in tech organizations (Kevin Spanbauer, a Senior Partner at VTL Search in Eden Prairie).
My skepticism came from the fact that there are so many other social networking, group collaboration and other similar platforms already in existence. Since Ken has a senior leadership background in I.T. systems, consulting, and outcome-based project delivery, it wasn’t until meeting him and understanding more about their approach—and mostly because Ken later provided me with login credentials so I could poke around inside The Table and actually experience what they’re delivering—that I completely changed my mind and realized that YASN for churches was not only needed, but perfectly positioned for the next phase of growth and meaningful connections by church-going youth.
(Click for larger image)
An non-profit organization called YouthWorks is the parent organization spearheading The Table Project. YouthWorks’ purpose is to, “…provide life-changing, Christ-centered youth mission opportunities. This is our reason for being. We create extraordinarily fun and significant mission adventures, targeted to the needs and capabilities of youth, ages 12-19.” That organization sprung forth due to a recognition that outside-the-U.S. mission trips were incredibly costly and beyond the reach of most youth and their families. Besides the positive impact on youth who engage in these mission trips, YouthWorks saw a great need right here on U.S. soil for youth to help communities and individuals in a myriad of ways.
Experiencing the acceleration in the always-on, always-connected, increasingly-mobile, and socially connected young people that comprise the core demographic YouthWorks serves, The Table Project was begun to empower churches to deliver a platform to connect their members together, while simultaneously extending their respective ministries in to the online and social realm, and to be where young people are increasingly congregating, connecting and socializing….and that’s online.
So is it likely that YASN for churches will work?
l-r: Co-host Erik Eskola; McKenna Ewen; Julio Ojeda-Zapata; Co-host Cathy Wurzer; Shayla Thiel-Stern (none of whom probably yet see the irony that this Almanac 'new media' segment won't later be shareable)
This past Friday night on Twin Cities Public Television’s (TPT) “Almanac” program, frequent contributor to Minnov8, Julio Ojeda-Zapata, made his first appearance on the show to talk about new media and I thought he knocked it out of the park. He was joined by two other delightful and very knowledgeable panelists, Shayla Thiel-Stern of the University of Minnesota (where she is an assistant professor of journalism and mass communications) and McKenna Ewen from the StarTribune where his focus is on new media work.
Co-host Cathy Wurzer began the segment by saying, “About once a month we gather a group of people to chat up media…old and new” and then went on to introduce the three panel members and jump in to the meat of the conversation. Julio did a fantastic job on the segment (fun video Julio!) and I was eager to create a post this morning here on Minnov8 and embed the Almanac segment, but it wasn’t until I sat down to write that I discovered that TPT is still living in an old media world:
TPT does not enable or allow video to be embedded in a blog!
“Wait a second,” I thought. “You mean that if I want to embed the “new media” segment with Julio in it I have to click on this link to load a new page and pop up a window just like an “old media, we gotta protect our content” company!?!” Sadly, the answer is “Yes“ and the irony is obviously lost on TPT.
Here is what you need to do, TPT…. [Read More…]
Today, Minnetonka-based Inveni LLC is telling the world its newly launched discovery engine “will drive social recommendations in the Web’s next wave.” The company’s free consumer service will also enable better targeted advertising. The Inveni discovery engine, says the firm, will change how consumers both make and receive recommendations on the Web. As of today, the service is publicly available, after more than a year in development and several months of private beta testing. The company is making its debut at the TechCrunch Disrupt event in San Francisco, and also demonstrating its technology later today at the midVenturesLAUNCH startup conference in Chicago.
“The next wave of the Web will be about personalization. 
We’re focusing on using personalization to meaningfully improve discovery and decision making,” said Aaron Weber, CEO and cofounder. “The Inveni discovery engine leaps ahead of other online recommendation services. What we’ve developed is unlike anything previously available. Inveni consolidates ratings you put anywhere online – Netflix, IMDB, and more – provides tools to make and receive recommendations wherever you are, and helps you make better, more informed buying decisions.” The service has received positive feedback from users during the private beta over the past several months, said Weber.
Inveni provides its highly personalized product recommendations based on a consumer’s universal taste profile. To create a personalized taste profile, Inveni empowers users to aggregate product and service ratings they’ve made across the Internet to quickly build deep, rich profiles of their tastes. 
Beginning with the media categories of movies and TV, users can share their taste profile information with friends and other services online. Inveni also facilitates product recommendations between friends (word of mouth), based on their tastes.
“We use this taste profile data, along with our unique crowd-refined recommendation engine, to provide highly targeted advertising, while simultaneously providing consumers with a compelling personalized service for discovery and sharing,” said Robert Bodor, CTO and cofounder, “We aim to become the premier provider of highly targeted consumer data for advertising online. We do that by turning the current consumer data model upside down, putting the user in control of their information. We are entirely opt-in, and are raising the bar on consumer privacy protection.”
The company produced a fun, two-minute video to describe its value proposition to consumers, which you can view here. … [Read More…]
Every day I scan hundreds of blog posts, articles and tweets having to do with technology. Included in that scanning is a 4-5 times per day viewing of Techmeme, the technology ‘conversation tracker’ that connects key articles and posts with those who’ve linked to it, enabling you and I to see what the hot stories are at the moment and at-a-glance.
What’s become clear over the last several years is one key shift: the rate of technological change is accelerating. Almost daily there is some key feature announced, a new product or service, or some new insight, which almost instantly makes its way across the internet and raises the consciousness and awareness levels of those of us paying attention.
The scientist Ray Kurzweil is arguably the #1 thought leader in the area of accelerating change after the publication of his 2005 book “The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology” and the creation of his subsequent Singularity Conference.
The premise in Kurzweil’s book is the coming technological singularity and how we will be able to augment our bodies and minds with technology. He describes the singularity as resulting from a combination of three important technologies of the 21st century: genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (including artificial intelligence).
Having attempted to read the book three times until finally succeeding on my fourth try, it’s tough to refute Kurzweil’s arguments that we’re living not only in a time of accelerating change, but that that change is exponential. That said, there have been several prominent thinkers and scientists who criticize his speculation and approaches.
What does accelerating or exponential change mean to you? Here is Ray Kurzweil telling you about the singularity in less than 7 minutes:
When you consider the technology shifts and changes your great-grandparents, grandparents, parents (and even you) have experienced already, I can only imagine the things we’ll see over the next several decades. Hang on to your hats…it’s gonna be a heckuva ride!
Minnesota Public Radio has a subsite called MPRNewsQ with an online poll for ‘select’ Minnesotans: Where is the innovation in your field?
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.
The mind of Zach Johnson is an interesting place. While much of it remains unexplored it’s filled with plenty of ideas, projects and fun. We last talked with Zach about Scribbls, a great site where doodles can give birth to hilarious results that he and his Watermelon Sauce partner Paul Armstrong developed.
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.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhvupyRdR5I&feature=player_embedded
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.”
UPDATE 7/18/10: If this doesn’t prove the point of this article…nothing does. Security expert Bruce Schneier posts, “Skype’s Cryptography Reverse-Engineered” and if this proves to be true, it would be trivial for rogue nations or eavesdroppers to listen-in on Congressional Skype conversations!
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. … [Read More…]
While running strategic alliances at Lawson Software back in 2005, I met a woman named Catherine Settanni who was actively involved in digital literacy and a true advocate for ensuring that as many people as possible had access to the internet. Her leadership in the AmeriCorps Community Techology Empowerment Project (C-CAN) and its focused community outreach effort (the Digital Access Project) led her to a deep involvement in the Wireless Minneapolis effort to saturate the city with Wifi, bringing about one aspect to the internet access the other programs were intent on delivering.
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. … [Read More…]