blogging the burn

nym · Post by **nym** » Sun Aug 01, 2004 9:07 pm

Thingster ( http://thingster.org/ ) is going to be at Black Rock City this year.

Thingster is a massive meta machine aimed at allowing people to blog, publish events, and share photos. In addition, anything you publish can have a latitude and longitude. With the maps we're developing of Burning Man you'll be able to see what's going on around you, and also signal to everyone on the playa information about yourself and your experiences. You will be able to upload your photos from the event in real time, and show exactly where you took it on the playa with your GPS.

This is designed to be deployed as an in-playa service. We will publish the information afterwards back to thingster.org, and likewise, anything you publish now on thingster.org will be available at the burn. If you wish to start creating profiles and scheduling events, it's not a problem.

Thingster is open source, so if you want to help improve it your efforts will be welcomed. Also the roam-net project (http://roam.igargoyle.com/) is going to be using thingster to broadcast geo-webcam feeds during the event.

If you have any questions, feel free to reply or email me directly at tomlong@gmail.com. I'll try to help as much as possible!

-Nym
http://thingster.org/

Badger · Post by **Badger** » Sun Aug 01, 2004 9:14 pm

This is boredering on commerce/advertising.

Admin notified.

giantmonster · Post by **giantmonster** » Sun Aug 01, 2004 9:19 pm

yeah - even if it's free it's shady.
me no likey.
plus - if you're going to burningman with the excitement of being able to log into a computer and write blog postings online then you are really missing the point.

nym · Post by **nym** » Sun Aug 01, 2004 9:30 pm

it's non-profit and open source... how is that borderline advertising? do you see any profit?

thingster is the effort of two guys trying to improve communication and event planning on the playa. if you're not interested in communication on the playa, fine, but please appreciate the fact that we've put a lot of effort into bringing something positive to burning man this year.

technopatra · Post by **technopatra** » Sun Aug 01, 2004 10:10 pm

I believe it was the marketing speak and official branding that lead folks to believe this might be commercial in nature. Had you provided some of the details included in the about page I think the reaction might've been more postitive. Look around and you will see that the eplaya is a highly personal environment that does not react well to slick advertising.

However, folks, I suggest you read about Thingster before passing judgement. This service appears to be part of a much bigger project re: geolocation, community, and our effects on and responsibilities to our environments.

Statements that caught my eye:

" Thingster is an open-source weblogging service for locative media. It is being developed by Anselm Hook, Tom Longson and Brad Degraf in association with Locative - a multi-disciplinary group of theorists, artists and engineers exploring the implications of attaching information to place."

" The reward or 'exit strategy' for a project like Thingster is social and environmental. The hope is to enrich neighborhoods such that it becomes easy to discover local services at a lower cost and to create additional environmental awareness."

"In the future this service is intended to act as a full-blown turnkey standalone community server with a strong emphasis on location and volatile and transient events. "

"Grass-roots cartography - as it continues to evolve - has the potential to let individuals understand their surroundings in depth; to see the web of social, economic and environmental issues that tie their community together."

I encourage you to read the about page, then come back here to have a better-informed discussion. There is much to chew on!

Nym, my head's a-whirling about your project. Unfortunately I've little time/bandwidth to get into it before the event. I do hope you will stick around and be available for conversation later in the year.

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Sun Aug 01, 2004 10:17 pm

Fancy words Blah blah blah blah blah.

My site does the same and is internet 2 ready and does live video/audio streaming in IPV6 (internet 2). plus you can make a website within the site, has a chat.........blah blah blah blah.

nym · Post by **nym** » Sun Aug 01, 2004 10:21 pm

Thanks technopatra for reading up on us. I'm sorry for sounding corporate or slick, I know things like people writing "SEX.COM" in the sky have made participants more waary of evildoers.

This is our first year out at Burning Man with thingster, but we were at BM last year with the technomadic trailer - http://roam.igargoyle.com/trailer/, and will be continuing this project to help map the playa alongside the great guys behind PlayaInfo.

giantmonster · Post by **giantmonster** » Sun Aug 01, 2004 10:27 pm

this will sound harsh but i'm being honest: you're deluding yourself and your logic is illogical. you're rational for the project sounds like a marketing spin. you may be too involved with the thingster project to see it differently.
also - any way you look at it - you are promoting your business. that is advertising.
anything like what you are doing encourages more observation, voyeurism, and spectating and less real human interaction (as in not using a computer but actually conversing in person). to log in to a computer to check out what's going on at burning man while you're at burning man is absurd. what i love about burning man is how it draws people out of their shells and normal daily existence. it encourages you to open up and interact with those around you to see & learn what's going on. an online blogging board at burning man would just give people something to retreat into and separate themselves from the greater community.

nym · Post by **nym** » Sun Aug 01, 2004 10:29 pm

Playastation looks pretty neat! Similar to http://slipperycat.com/ (also available at BRC) with your music. Are you a Plone developer, or just an adopter?

Thingster has been built from scratch, and while similar in goal to Playastation and PlayaInfo, it's a bit more complex because it does cool things like geotagging, reviews, and feeds.

I'm all for competition, I think we'll make some really cool stuff in the process, but at the same time we're working towards interoperability as well. We should collaborate!

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Sun Aug 01, 2004 10:33 pm

nym wrote:Thanks technopatra for reading up on us. I'm sorry for sounding corporate or slick, I know things like people writing "SEX.COM" in the sky have made participants more waary of evildoers.

This is our first year out at Burning Man with thingster, but we were at BM last year with the technomadic trailer - http://roam.igargoyle.com/trailer/, and will be continuing this project to help map the playa alongside the great guys behind PlayaInfo.

r u guys only mac based?

nym · Post by **nym** » Sun Aug 01, 2004 10:41 pm

giantmonster wrote:you are promoting your business. that is advertising.

Promoting a free, non-profit service is not the same as promoting a business. Thingster is not a business, it is non-profit, and there is absolutely no advertising on the site.

We put our hard earned dollars into providing a fast service, with a fast server, with lot of space for you to upload, on a fast internet connection, and ask nothing in return. Thingster is not a business.

nym · Post by **nym** » Sun Aug 01, 2004 10:47 pm

Roam-net is not mac based, but when I originally created that page, we had mostly macs due to the donations we were recieving. Now we're more PC based, running windows and Red Hat Linux (now called Fedora).

Any and all donations are appreciated, as long as they're not commodor 64's.

kiddo · Post by **kiddo** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 12:57 am

No offense my friends, but myself, I see BRC as a "be here now" experience and I don't think anyone should wast this valuable time on a computer.

Bob · Post by **Bob** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 1:12 am

The "SEX.COM" skywriter trailed off before finishing the money shot, as I recall.

Confusion re:

should be understandable. The website and logo look commercial, or something aspiring to be, with mention made of how thingster "can be deployed for businesses and individuals". Anything that might indicate a Burning-Man-specific project, theme camp, art installation, an actual part of Playa Info in Center Camp, something on an art car, or whatnot is pretty well buried.

Good luck clarifying things. The numerical URLs are weird, btw, and after viewing the "about" page once, the link for it on the index page redirected to the "register" page.

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 1:22 am

kiddo wrote:No offense my friends, but myself, I see BRC as a "be here now" experience and I don't think anyone should wast this valuable time on a computer.

It's the use of computing I feel people haven’t quite grasped yet. I like to use my computing experience as none the aware. For example, instead of using/bringing a tape recorder I use the computer/laptop/PDA/cell. Instead of using a video camera I do the same. I don’t see having to have to sit at a computer all the time nor thinking about using a computer should be what one needs to do especially if all is setup right where life and computing is seamless.

The least amount of clicks makes life more efficient.

(did that make any sense? )

Bob · Post by **Bob** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 11:33 am

The real "be here now" people show up with no food, no water, no clothes, and no ticket. Oddly, they do show up with a car of some sort... out of gas.

Anyhow, I don't see why, with an uplink available, posting to the eplaya wouldn't be pretty much the same as what's being described here.

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 12:01 pm

Bob wrote: Anyhow, I don't see why, with an uplink available, posting to the eplaya wouldn't be pretty much the same as what's being described here.

True.........but then again unless you have a website that you can share your pic/sound/video experience with other fellow eplayans and lurkers that may not be going this year, eplaya sometimes cant cut the mustard in those areas. Your gonna need a Thingster, Blog, or something like my site to work with eplaya for a truely interactive virtual experience.

diggum · Post by **diggum** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 1:32 pm

kiddo wrote:No offense my friends, but myself, I see BRC as a "be here now" experience and I don't think anyone should wast this valuable time on a computer.

you don't think YOU should waste the valuable time on a computer. There are plenty of reasons others may want to spend part of their valuable time on a computer. A computer is controlling massive lasers. A computer is pumping data to massive LED arrays generating gorgeous displays in time to music or physical interactions. A computer is helping two people from different sides of the country find where the other is camping. In all cases, someone is wasting their valuable experience time on a computer in hopes that your non-computer experience is heightened.

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 1:42 pm

The other thing I found funny about Kiddo's statement is, Burningman has the most Geeks on the planet that attend the event. Some (myself included.) will have some pissed off people with them if they are not occasionally next to a computer even if they are gone for an hour.

(Plus long distance phone calls are cheapest on a computer.)

Bob · Post by **Bob** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 2:26 pm

Poking around a little on the OP's website, I couldn't find an example page (geoblog or whatever), of what might be more attractive or useful for Burning Man people than just posting to a list or BBS, linking off to a personal site for pics, and using standard text/html.

Overly detailed spatial references are a little irrelevent, IMO, when your experience encompasses the whole BRC area and not just your own campsite.

AFAIK, there's already at least one mapping ap out there that was customized for the event, but the editing front end involved something like batch processed data files and a pretty crude DOS-like interface.

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Mon Aug 02, 2004 3:01 pm

Bob wrote: AFAIK, there's already at least one mapping ap out there that was customized for the event, but the editing front end involved something like batch processed data files and a pretty crude DOS-like interface.

I dont understand what you mean.

nym · Post by **nym** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 11:27 am

Bob wrote:Overly detailed spatial references are a little irrelevent, IMO, when your experience encompasses the whole BRC area and not just your own campsite.

AFAIK, there's already at least one mapping ap out there that was customized for the event, but the editing front end involved something like batch processed data files and a pretty crude DOS-like interface.

Spatial references are important because not everything is in a camp. You might take a photo next to the man, or off in the distance of a small art project that someone's plopped on the playa. In any case, it makes a lot of sense to be able to include a latitude and longitude, although that's optional.

There is another group that's doing an amazing job mapping the playa, and it's called PlayaInfo. They're very well organized, and are part of the BMorg. I don't know about the project your're referring to, but many geeks have been exporing art and technology out at Burning Man.

The people who criticize computers at Burning Man aren't really getting it. Burning Man isn't about one thing or another. Burning Man isn't about telling others what kinds of things they're allowed to create. I personally want to to use computers at BRC in order to document my experiences and to make some really cool maps of the event.

The thingster project is just designed to use the collective knowledge of people at the event to help people at the event. You may only write about one event to thingster, but with event displays, people can learn about your party or performance with just a passing glance.

GPS Meetups at 5:00PM on Tuesday and Friday at THE BRANE (7:00/Earth). Look for the "GPS" flag.

Bob A · Post by **Bob A** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 10:56 pm

Sounds like burningman might be a great proving ground for new tech like this before it is sold to business.

Bob A

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 11:05 pm

Bob A wrote:Sounds like burningman might be a great proving ground for new tech like this before it is sold to business.

Bob A

What's new tech about that?

DVD Burner · Post by **DVD Burner** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 11:06 pm

I wish I could bullshit big buisness as well as some as I've just seen.

Bob A · Post by **Bob A** » Wed Aug 04, 2004 11:32 pm

DVD Burner wrote:
Bob A wrote:Sounds like burningman might be a great proving ground for new tech like this before it is sold to business.

Bob A
What's new tech about that?

Most new programs that businesses buy or governments are not as much a matter of new tech as bringing a bunch of different techs together in a new and "useful" / "Easy" way. Some times it succeeds sometimes people don't see the savings and need of the new adaptation. People do seem interested in this system commercially as their own quote states

Recently there have been a couple of offers to leverage this research for commercial tools. These projects will be announced as they become public.

nym · Post by **nym** » Thu Aug 05, 2004 9:19 am

Bob A wrote:Sounds like burningman might be a great proving ground for new tech like this before it is sold to business.

Bob A

Well, thingster is mentioned as being a tool for "businesses and individuals" because it's A) Free B) Powerful and C) Free.

Unlike much open source software out there, Thingster is BSD, which means both people and corporations are free to copy, modify, and redistribute Thingster.

It's pretty cool to build something and release it into the wild, instead of keeping it secretive and sueing people left and right for infringement. What happens happens, I can only hope that people benefit from the work that Anselm Hook and I have put into Thingster.

michaeldiamond · Post by **michaeldiamond** » Sun Aug 08, 2004 11:24 pm

I really like the idea of mapping events, happenings and pictures for other people to access. I always end up seeing all the things I missed after the burn as pictures trickle up onto the web. It would be great to have a tool that allows people to upload their pictures to the playanet realtime, err.. playa time. This would give everyone a chance at seeing things they want to see while those things are still there to be seen. It brings a new level of inter activity to the inter net.

gatonegro3 · Post by **gatonegro3** » Sat Oct 09, 2004 4:59 pm

I just want to celebrate this phrase someone brought about:

Burning Man isn't about one thing or another. Burning Man isn't about telling others what kinds of things they're allowed to create

And add one of mine:
"I suspect of what I think if it involves accusing someone else"
note first person.

geekster · Post by **geekster** » Sat Oct 09, 2004 7:24 pm

nym wrote:Spatial references are important because not everything is in a camp. You might take a photo next to the man, or off in the distance of a small art project that someone's plopped on the playa.

Oh, so what you are saying is that we need a digital camera that encodes the position into the last line of pixels with the option to display the position much like some cameras display the date/time and superimpose that on the image. Then even if the option isnt selected to display the position directly on the pic, it can be decoded from the information in that last line of pixels.