The annoyances of FourSquare

It is not my cup of tea at the moment but as many things change in life, this blog entry should be considered for what it is - a brain fart particular to my state of mind, overall consciousness and vision of the world at this exact time of posting.

'location based social networking'

I noticed Google's Latitude some years ago and even though it was touted by many as a new way to interact with friends, I stopped using it about 1 week after I installed it on my mobile.  Basically, Google Latitude used the gps functionality in my mobile to show my whereabouts in (almost) real time.  Being the technology junkie as I am, I tried it out first and thought about it later. Upon thinking about it, I decided to drop the app as I didn't want the 'world' to know where I was at all times.

Foursquare is a 'new and improved' Google Latitude - literally - and I know I'm cutting corners here.  Google Latitude is the evolved version of the 'Dodgeball' graduation thesis project of Dennis Crowley, who is surprisingly a co-founder of Foursquare.  Foursquare enables you to connect with your friends using either a computer or a smartphone.  The smartphone app will also update your location in real time using your gps data.   What makes Foursquare different is the way that the users can interact with the locations each time you 'check in'.  Anyone can tag a location like a bar, a restaurant, a parking lot, a house, ... which makes it a potential place to 'check in' if you (or rather your smartphone) is in the neighborhood.  Owners of commercial venues use this tagging to provide special treats, pricing, incentives... to anyone that 'checks in' as you being at that place will show up on your personal profile web page - possibly triggering some of your friends to join you and hence add to the commercial benefit of the venue.

Me on Foursquare (indeed a short paragraph)

Ok, I expected Foursquare to be more social and entertaining in general so I created an account to check it out.  Being used to Facebook, I didn't find anything new on the 'connecting with friends' part and as with Google Latitude, I still didn't want everyone I know my whereabouts at all times.  You see, the problem lies not in the technology but with the user: given my lack of free time I will not always properly tag new 'friends' as either close friends, work related, bosses, and so on ... so I always risk revealing my location to that one person that I don't want to know about it.

Next to that, why on earth would anyone be interested in me being a the bakery or the gas station anyway?  So I cancelled the account hoping to continue my happy life ...

Happy life?

My experience so far is divided in annoyance-related feelings and 'people are idiots' feelings (thank you Larry Winget for the term 'ditto-head').   First of all - and this is likely to only be the tip of the iceberg - people don't censor their information.  Just because you can send me unsolicited messages about stuff I'm absolutely not interested about does not give you the right to annoy me with them.

I don't care about the bar or cafe you are in at 16h00, nor that you arrived a such and such customer's office during working hours.  And I definitely don't want a listing of the waypoints on the motorway while you are taking a 100km drive.  Either get a life or learn about the technology you're using!  Those waypoints are defined by a moron with nothing else to do than clutter your experience with garbage.  Look at your profile page and for God's sake, don't let your Foursquare app decide for you!  Thinking and deciding for yourself is not all that difficult.

Most people I know are 'concerned' about their privacy when filling in online forms ... hasn't anyone considered that putting your location for grabs is a severe breach of privacy?  You being at a bar is a genuine good argument for a burglar ... especially if he can see when you are heading home.  Buying jewelry for your wife while being connected on Foursquare?  She'll have to fake the surprise smile from now on.  Aiming for a new job?  Don't go to the interview while your boss sees you 'checking in' with the competition.

I covered some aspects on this in my blog "why localized social media is not as harmless as it seems"

Connecting People?  Don't think so ...

People are connecting on too many social networks because they can, because the networks lure us with promises of friendships and 'getting to know interesting people', because as I see it, a lot of people prefer connecting with their laptop instead of connecting with other people.  I don't mean this as a personal attack, it is just an observation.  This is where Larry's 'ditto-heads' definition applies: people that shut down their brain and copy behavior of others.

Social network users don't take the time to actually read and learn about the functionality.  They assume that it is working the way they expect.  This is where the idiot factor comes in. For instance, you could use Facebook for connecting your friends, LinkedIn for your co-workers, colleagues, customers and even your boss, you may use Twitter for whatever need you have to put your brain farts out there.  Unfortunately, these networks are getting interconnected and users get lost in the types of people that can read which of your messages:  This means that any message gets distributed to all the networks depending on exactly those privacy settings you didn't take time to read about.  Your boss on LinkedIn will see the 'I'm drunk' picture that your friend posted on your Facebook wall, your Facebook family will read your Tweets about how you really think about marriage, family...

I am only connected on Facebook and LinkedIn.  I'm retiring other accounts for being obsolete or too cumbersome.  Even though I have some 300 friends, I do see half of them every 2 weeks as these are people I dance with.  Those I don't see for 6 months get 'unfriended' which is a weird thing as upon being 'unfriended', they try to get in touch to understand why they were 'retired'.  Hmmm ... as if human interaction wasn't complicated already, here comes the digital break-up, sobbing, ranting...

Call me!

New 'visionaries' are building new ways for people to interact ... how about the old way? How about just talking to each other?  The telephone was invented some 135 years ago, why not give it a try?  Most people use their smartphone to send text messages ?!  Seems that they don't really get what the initial and core functionality of the device is all about.  Even so, given the state of spelling of those messages, I guess the phone is indeed the smarter one.

 

Guerilla Gardening

I just came across the term 'guerilla gardening' when checking some blogs on landscaping and urbanism and it immediately stuck in my mind.  The combination of both words generated the most intriguing thoughts and images in my head so I had to stop doing what I planned and find out more.

History:

The earliest record of the term "guerilla gardening" being used was by Liz Christy and her Green Guerilla Group in 1973 in the Bowery Houston area of New York.  They transformed a derelict private lot into a garden.  The space is still cared for by volunteers but now enjoys the protection of the city's parks department.

Two celebrated guerilla gardeners, active prior to the coining of the term, were Gerrard Winstanley of the Diggers in Surrey, England (1649) and John "Appleseed" Chapman in Ohio, USA (1801).

Guerilla gardening takes place in many parts of the world (over 30 countries are documented) and evidence can be found online in numerous guerilla gardening social networking groups and in the community pages of

GuerillaGardening.org

This web site holds the most amazing stories of people that take it upon themselves to embellish their urban environment by adding nature to the cement.  I have seen truly amazing pictures of transformations where men and women of all ages decide to e.g. plant some tulips in areas where the sidewalk missed some tiles, remodel the existing flowerbeds because the local parks department couldn't be bothered to take out the weeds,...

This web site is owned by the alpha guerilla gardener Richard Reynolds.  As a typical Brit, Richard loves gardening and when he moved from Devon to the concrete area of London in 2004, he got tired of seeing the raised flowerbed at his front door neglected and overgrown.
He missed gardening so much that one night he got up, dug up the flowerbed himself and planted cuttings his mum gave him.

Since 2004 he's collected more than 4000 members to his beautification movement.  Most of these sneak around under the cover of night, shirking the laws and regulations regarding cultivating public lands.  Some of them - including Richard and team - almost got arrested, yet usually let off with a warning.  After all, who wants to be the cop that ensures public safety and welfare by getting the gardeners of the street, one rogue gardener at a time.

The main and only downside is the law.  Cultivating public lands does not seem so bad but when you consider that these pet projects can grow out of control ... some guidance should be available.  Maybe one of the projects withers and dies, leaving a weed-infested mess or on a more ridiculous scale, how about a nice field of corn in the middle of your favorite park?

Final thoughts:

I wonder however what a 30 year old man is doing out all hours of the night gardening?  And although this has caught on in the states (see video), there might be some reasons to keep on doing it under cover of the night:

• Anyone referring to themselves as "guerilla" breaking the law under cover of the night would possibly find themselves tending to the gardens of Guantanamo Bay.
• Immigrants have the landscaping market cornered but if you are doing it for free in the cool night as opposed to the scorching heat of the sun, you might spend the rest of your days ever suspicious that there is a thirty year old pickup laden with rakes in your rear view mirror.

 

Design for sustainability - indoor lighting using sun and water

This is in fact very simple but definitely extremely ingenious: an automatic on/off interior solar lamp invented by Mr Alfredo Moser, an auto mecanic in Brasil.

In 2002, during a long electrical shortage, at Uberaba, São Paulo, Brasil, Mr Alfredo Moser discovered a way to gather sun light in the house through plastic bottles hanging from the roof.

He noticed that a clear two-liter bottle reflected the sun light very brightly when filled with water.  As an auto mecanic, he had to keep his auto shop lit during the day and while there is sufficient sun light, the cost of rooflights and glazing is very high compared to the average Brazilian income. Given that Brazil has an abundance of sun light, he decided to experiment with a solution that enables him to keep on working during the electric outage and potentially save on his electric bills later on.

His construction: take a 2 liter water bottle, fill it with clear water and 2 caps of chloride to keep bacteria from clouding the water.  Cover the bottle-cap with a photo-roll capsule to protect it from UV and fit the bottle in a hole in your roof.

As a result the sun greatly brightened his workspace through the refracting water in the plastic bottle.  The bottle is just refracting sun light very effectively and produces an equivalent light power compared to a 50/60W lamp. In a rainy day, even without much light and direct sun, one still have some light.

In a country with high level of poverty resulting in tiny living spaces cramped together, there are many rooms that don't even have windows.  Mr Alfredo's solution has already helped many families add light into their homes.  Some of these water lamps have been in place for over two years in many rooms. They have never needed to be replaced. They are maintenance free and the cement sealer holds them in place for a long time.

To turn them off, just cover them with e.g. a plastic bucket or wait till the sun sets :-)

Scientist have visited Mr Alfredo Moser and are looking into ways to take this concept to maximize its potential

These kind of ideas that are simple but highly efficient are quintessential in finding a solution to our energy problems. More importantly there needs to be a platform for tinkerers and inventors to share ideas and collaborate. Large companies and fancy startups do bring allot to the table - however, in most cases it’s the average Joe working in his garage or on his computer that finds an amazing solution.

Design for sustainability - old magazines wall

The Swedish architecture firm Elding Oscarson has created some unique partition walls for a graphics company's new office layout.

They used stacks of old magazines in a recycle-extravaganza which not only creates a very warm effect but also provides a striking linear pattern which I personally like.  The sound muffling characteristics of the material will likely generate a softer atmosphere in the adjacent rooms.

I would love to see more of these types of lovely and meaningful installations in corporate environments.  Having suited-up for about a decade, I can testify to the huge amounts of glossy magazines full of prettiness that are scattered throughout the offices and lobbies.

 

Design for sustainability - the memory drawers

Tejo Remy designed this chest of drawers in 1991 based on some pondering on how the human mind stores memories. He called it "you can't lay down your memory" and designed an extremely functional piece of furniture with - maybe unknowingly - quite an environmental impact. The drawers are all old and used but they are fit into a new housing. The housings are arranged in a stable but somewhat chaotic setup held together with a jute strap.

I believe that the metaphor of the system of the cognitive mind works pretty well. Basically the drawers we arrange our memories in have different ages, feel differently and are likely to vary in shape, size and color the same way as memories of a love affair will likely be kept in a nicer drawer than the recordings of an accident, a divorce or a lay-off.  We all build our lives based on what we find around us and how we deal with these findings, and the chest is setup in just the same way: the drawers are second hand and diverse/unpredictable but fit into a new housing to fit their new purpose. This makes every piece of this chest unique.  You can order them at www.droog.com.

No two pieces will be the same but I can imagine that the content of each drawers will be revealing some of the owner's feelings while the drawers will hint to possible mysteries hidden in them.

I cannot but wonder what job description they hired the drawer-picker with ...

Tejo Remy works as a product, interior and public space designer together with Rene Veenhuizen in Utrecht, the Netherlands. Considering everything as material, Remy incorporates existing information, circumstances, or found goods into new situations, often bringing in more social contact or, telling the story of a particular place. Remy transforms the familiar, yet the feeling remains.
His commissioners and exhibitors include Museum of Art and Design in New York, Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum in New York, MoMA in New York, Stedelijk Musuem in Amsterdam, Museum Boymans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, ACME Gallery in Los Angeles and the Netherlands Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment.

More on Tejo Remy can be found at www.remyveenhuizen.nl