Megan, Jadie and I just found out that we have been accepted into the second phase of the Echoing Green Fellowship competition. Echoing Green awards 20 two-year fellowships to entrepreneurs creating new social change organizations. Fellows receive up to $90,000 in seed funding and technical support to turn their innovative ideas into sustainable organizations.

We are really excited to have gotten past the initial application process. About 700 to 1000 apply yearly and 150 to 300 organizations are accepted into the second phase. It couldn't be happening at a better time either, as Jadie and I are in the very long process of converting the freeFormed architecture to Drupal.

Posted by Cat at 01:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After much consideration, I decided this year that instead of buying my daughter yet another truck load of toys, which will eventually end up decorating the floor of my apartment, I was going to invest in something a little more interesting. I had been following the "One Laptop, One Child" program for some time now. For those of you unfamiliar, the mission of this organization and project is to empower the children of developing countries to learn by providing one connected laptop to every school-age child.

The Buy One Give One program allows you to purchase a laptop for a child in your life while donating an identical laptop to a child in a developing nation. The XO laptop runs on Linux, has WiFi, built in social sharing capabilities and has applications that do everything from painting and drawing to musical composition, taking pictures and learning programming. It also has built in video and voice recording capabilities. Designed to withstand harsh weather conditions and the daily use by children, the XO laptop features a sealed, rubberized keyboard that is resilient to water, dust, and dirt. It’s also scaled to accommodate child-sized hands and has a lighter touch than normal keyboards. Since many children in developing nations do not have access to electricity, the XO laptop is designed to be extremely power efficient. The batteries operate for up to 2,000 recharge cycles (four times the lifetime of a typical laptop battery). They are extremely efficient, contain no toxic heavy metals, and can be hand charged via a crank, pedal or pull-cord—or recharged by a directly connected solar panel.

I think the project is amazing and so I decided to buy a laptop for my daughter and lend the little support that I could afford. Plus, I am dying to check this thing out for myself. The joke is that I may end up playing with it more than her. But in either case, I think it is quite a responsible Christmas gift and I hope that others looking for a gift for a child will consider it.

Posted by Cat at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I guess I have been neglecting my poor blog over the last couple of months, not because I haven't had anything to write about, but because I have been tremendously busy. Between developing and designing three web platforms (one which is set for its second release on November 21st and the other two to be released in the next three months), I have barely had time to have a life :)

However, there are some interesting things that have been going on that I would like to comment on. Hopefully, I will get back into the swing of things...freelancing is a bitch!

Posted by Cat at 03:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Angela and I will be presenting Under the Level at Luna Lounge tomorrow and Saturday from 11am to 12:30pm. For more info go to the Conflux website.

Download Walking Tour Map

Posted by Cat at 01:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday I revisited my youth, in some sense anyway, at the Rock The Bells concert at Randall's Island. I was specifically there to see Wu Tang, but there were many other acts, most notably Mos Def and Talib Kweli, Public Enemy with guest DJ Rakim, The Roots, Cypress Hill (who are always fun in concert but not particularly my favorite) and Rage Against the Machine, which seemed to attract 90 percent of the people who came to the festival. I hadn't been to Randall's Island for a show since the Tibet Freedom Concert in 1997, headlined by the Beastie Boys and (in an ironic coincidence) Rage themselves. Wu Tang was awesome, totally on point with every verse, thanks in large part to the incredible energy of Method Man. Although, they seemed slightly irritated that they weren't receiving as much energy from the crowd as they should have. I guess no one warned them that these were not mostly hip hop fans in the audience, but Rage fans. I think it was a shame, though. They deserved a lot more of a response. Mos Def and Talib Kweli also put on an amazing show, as did the Roots, although I thought their set selection could have been better. Flavor Flav was his usual ridiculous self.

But the real surprise of the night was the unbelievably huge crowd that gathered specifically to see Rage. They've had a cult like following since the release of their self-titled album in 1992, but I had no idea that they could still attract such a crowd. I felt like an old fart as I looked around to see many kids who were probably still in diapers when that album was released and who had probably first heard Evil Empire ten years after it was released in 1996. I also felt old when I surrendered my front row standing spots right after Wu was finished. I could already see by the large numbers of wasted muscle bound guys that the front row was not a good idea for Rage. Plus I had bad memories of being slammed in the head by crowd surfers at more then one Rage show in the past. Our hilltop view, which we got to by sneaking under a fence, was just fine thank you, even after a swarm of teenagers saw our spot and decided to come invade it.

All in all, it was a good show. But I must say, it lacked the real old school hip-hop crowd that makes events like this so much better. As much as it was nice to reminisce about being 16 by seeing Rage, and as good as they still are..even though all of their shows since '96 are exactly the same, they could have been left off the bill. I would've rather seen NAS, who apparently was only scheduled for West Coast performances.

Posted by Cat at 02:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In conjunction with seeking a first round of funding, freeFormed.net will begin migration to Amazon Web Services in the next month. After battling with dreamhost, our current hosting service, for a while, we made the decision that Amazon can better serve our needs, particularly considering our expected growth within the next six months as we unleash our new marketing strategies. I have to say that dreamhost has been pretty good recently but this just makes more sense for the company in the long run.

(Although I am excited about the change, I am not personally looking forward to the migration work-wise, but its a necessary step and it is better that it is completed now rather then later)

Posted by Cat at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have been officially offered the position of Web Developer at Industrial Press. The company is a leading publisher of technical and reference books relating to engineering and manufacturing. This is a new position for the company, as they are just beginning to develop their website with many new and innovative ideas in order to make it a destination point for individuals and companies that already utilize the materials they publish. My position will include coordinating the development effort and instituting new ideas both in technology and marketing. I'm quite excited, especially since its part-time and I can still do my other projects!

Posted by Cat at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I am finally almost done with the re-design of my website. I still need to make digital copies of some of my old pictures (as they were all film) and compress my videos etc....but its almost finished so check it out.

Posted by Cat at 04:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night I attended the opening night of Citysol, a clean-energy-powered festival that aims to inspire interest and support for local sustainability initiatives through, music, interactive art installations, games and workshops, and numerous other elements meant to both entertain and educate. The music at Citysol is 100% powered by Solar One's 3.5 kW rooftop photovoltaic array and a 13 kW generator fueled with biodiesel provided by NYC's own Tristate Biodiesel. Artists were also encouraged to pursue independent power methods for their installations and projects. Native Energy Carbon offsets are also being purchased to account for extra energy expenditures.

In addition to the location being absolutely amazing, and the weather being perfect, I was very excited to see the Garden Electric, a project by Megan MacMurray and Angela Pablo working incredibly well. My daughter thought is was great...or maybe she just liked the light switch:

Either way, the combination of cool projects, veggie wraps and brooklyn beer made for a good night. Tomorrow, my friend Craig and I will return to see Les Savy Fav for free on the solar powered stage at around 8pm.

Posted by Cat at 12:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Angela Pablo and I just found out yesterday that our project Under the Level was accepted for inclusion in the 2007 Conflux Festival happening this September 13-16 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. For the festival, we have proposed a walking tour of Bedford Ave. in Williamsburg that follows the different gradations of flood that the neighborhood could receive with rising sea level and if it were to receive a category four storm similar to hurricane Katrina. We are also excited to propose our project to the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans in the coming weeks, in the hopes that Under the Level could interface with a window display that I will be working on with Dan Phiffer that includes audio commentary from New Orleans residents. In addition to revising our call-in system for the project, we also be making upgrades to the Under the Level website and printing out some photographs for inclusion in the Conflux gallery display.

Check back for updates on when the walking tour will actually take place.

Posted by Cat at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Lately I have been seeing a growing number of articles/blog posts from people contemplating and arguing over which site, myspace or facebook, will ultimately take over the social networking world. Much of this discussion recently seems to have been fueled by rumors that yahoo is interested in potentially purchasing myspace for the incredible sum of $12 billion. Personally I think that this would not be a particularly good move for Yahoo, for reasons that have nothing to do with which social networking platform is better. Yahoo apparently tried to buy Facebook and didn't succeed so the point of which site would be a better purchase is not entirely relevant. However, I must say that I have enjoyed reading some of the funnier exchanges that this subject seems to have encouraged, particularly this one on the Center Networks blog. In the article, Allen Stern references another post I recently read on TechCrunch which attempts to refute the point that myspace is on the decline and does so by making various comparisons between myspace and facebook. Stern states that he does understand why the two sites keep getting compared and makes the interesting points that "Facebook is a business-oriented tool, while MySpace is for fun." and "While I believe many users may have a profile on both, I am willing to bet that most users are using one or the other. Growth of one does not mean the other suffers. Both can continue to grow independent of the other." He is promptly attacked by a commenter about the validity of these two thoughts.

First of all, I think it is quite ridiculous to say that the two sites do not have significant similarities, especially with many of the new applications that make Facebook just as customizable as a myspace page (the top friends application according to Facebook is the most popular application on the site right now, as an example). The fact that they may in some cases be used differently by different populations of people is not evidence that they are not competitors. And the fact that Facebook has and may continue to serve a different purpose for some users is mostly evidence that they have a better outlook on what users will want out of social networking in the future, not evidence that they are inherently a different KIND of platform then Myspace. I am not even going to comment on the idea that Facebook is for business, as I am not convinced that any social networking site has achieved that purpose, even LinkedIn which, despite the fact that I have been friend requested a lot on the site recently, doesn't really seem to a damn thing for me professionally. I would love to hear from someone who actually found a job from using LinkedIn recently. But that is besides the point.

On the topic of user demographic, which ultimately becomes the basis for stating that the two sites are not competitors, I think Facebook's demographic is and will continue to change as a direct result of the new applications and press gleaned from their release. To use my own case as an example, and I have stated this before, prior to the new platform being released, I never really used my Facebook profile. This wasn't because I didn't like Facebook necessarily but more because all of my friends were on Myspace. Those that weren't on Myspace yet had Facebook profiles because they felt that the site was more mature, private etc. are interestingly those who don't really interact within social networking sites regardless of what they are. These people still only sign into Facebook to accept friend requests or view comments. The bottom line is, there are some people who are first adopters of new or interesting things, but most people, when it comes to social software, will go where their friends are. As more people begin to explore Facebook, they will bring their friends with them, and some may even make the switch from Myspace entirely. I have seen many of my friends begin to use Facebook recently because I became excited about the new platform. They still have their Myspace profiles, and I don't think that will change any time soon, but I do think there is a distinct possibility that they may not want to maintain both in the future.

All this being said, I agree that the success of Facebook does not necessarily have anything to do with whether Myspace continues to grow. Myspace will ultimately succeed or fail on their own in the future. Personally, I have found that I was bored with Myspace long before Facebook became more interesting.

Posted by Cat at 01:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tomorrow I fly to Seattle for my cousin's wedding, which is going to be held somewhere off the cost of Seattle (I don't know the name of the Island at the present moment). Kind of excited as I have never been there, although I hear it is cold. I don't need cold right now :(

Posted by Cat at 02:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Hi _____,

It's no problem to remove your profile from our search engine. Just send me your MySpace URL and I will have it removed.

Thanks for contacting us!
cheralyn

Cheralyn Watson, Community Manager, Wink.com
Find me on Wink: http://wink.com/profile/Cheralyn

Interesting, no mention of why my friend was added as member involuntarily. Although at least they are willing to comply.

Posted by Cat at 01:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Members of freeFormed (including myself) will be attending the Facebook Developer's Meetup tomorrow at 7pm. We have agreed on the idea of creating a freeFormed application for Facebook, which we plan to launch within the next month or so. Should be fun.

Posted by Cat at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So they finally did it, Safari is now available for a PC, compatible with XP or Vista. Of course, I had to download it. Despite the hype, I'm not really all that excited. The tool bar is actually very ugly (why doesn't it look the way it does on a Mac?). There must be some way to change it but I don't really have the patience. I briefly checked freeFormed, just to make sure that there weren't any problems. Nothing was broken, which it shouldn't be since we never observed any problems with Safari on a MAC. I won't change from Firefox though. For me its just on more browser to check....great.

Posted by Cat at 11:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I do enjoy a good photo slide show every once and a while (you only need to look at my myspace and facebook to realize that) but I have always been aggravated with having to create slideshows from third party sites that I don't particularly like. With Facebook, you don't have any other option, but every where else it is very frustrating. So I finally took a look at SlideFlickr, one of several sites that allows you to create slide shows directly from flickr using a flickr group, individual user or flickr set (they should have incorporated tags). This is not particularly interesting obviously, but it raised a question for me that I figured I would share, why doesn't flickr allow users to do this in house? I understand that flickr is not photobucket etc, but thats just the point. Many of the images that people share on flickr could be relevant to their personal website or blog, rather then just myspace. Flickr does allow you to create flash badges, but thats hardly the same as a slideshow. You can view sets as a slideshow within the site so I wonder why they have not included this functionality. It seems that generally they are a little sketchy about having users share photos on other sites. You can only get the necessary embed code if you click on the 'all sizes' tab above your photo and they have posted strict rules about not modifying the code so that the photo doesn't link back to flickr. In some ways, this is a smart choice, probably why flickr has not become photobucket. But give us slideshows! Okay, thats all, I feel better.

Posted by Cat at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Perhaps I am more amenable to this kind of stuff on a Monday morning, but I really do think the post "Other people are not broken.." on lifehack.org is quite true.

Posted by Cat at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I returned today from my much needed vacation to Orlando (not exactly my destination of choice, but my daughter loves disney world). It was not particularly relaxing, but it was a lot of fun and it was nice to get out of New York for a bit and have an excuse not to turn on my computer (I still did, of course, but only twice..shhh). i come back with ten recommendations:

1. Unless your child (or you...for some reason known only to yourself) HAVE to go to the Magic Kingdom....STAY AWAY. We went on a Wednesday (supposedly the least crowded day) and waited on a two hour line to meet Ariel (yes..that would be the Little Mermaid). Which leads to me to my second point...

2. Don't wait on line to meet some stupid character. If you don't suggest it to your child...and you carefully avoid the character viewing areas...you can escape this time-waisting nonsense. Its like sitting on Santa's lap at Christmas, chances are your child will either be too young and be scared shit-less or too old and not really want to do it anyway.

3. Bring someone to babysit, at least for one night. Pleasure Island is a nice escape. Eight Clubs for $21, or you can just buy alcohol on the streets of the place, pay no admission fee and smoke while you drink...woohooo. And the parking is free (unlike everywhere else at Disney.

4. Epcot is the only disney park for adults, no matter what the advertisements say. Not a lot of stuff for kids, but the new Nemo ride was my daughter's favorite ride of the whole trip. And you can walk around and buy beer, wine and food from each themed country area. Plus its pretty and we went twice and it was not nearly as crowded as the other parks.

5. MGM is crap, don't even bother.

6. At Disney, USE the child-swap for rides your little one can't get on. Go up twice so that you (who must watch the kid) and those you are with can get on the ride via the fast pass line. You're not supposed to do this, but if you go up yourself and then send someone else, they will not remember you. Why wait on long lines? You're being punished enough for lugging that huge stroller around.

7. GO TO OLD TOWN. Not well known among the tourists, but they have cheap alcohol, nice rides (for kids and adults) and everything is much cheaper with short (basically non-existent) lines. They also have restaurants that you don't need a three month reservation to get into.

8. SeaWorld has free beer all day..'nuff said.

9. Don't buy the rip-off stuff at Disney. You can buy a Mickey Mouse or whatever for much cheaper outside of the park at one of the huge stores near Old Town (the strip their and on International Drive remind me of Vegas).

10. Stay at a hotel with a nice pool if you have kids. They will play there instead of dragging you to the parks every waking moment.

I will probably rest up from my vacation over the weekend before beginning some serious work on two projects in serious need of my attention. The first is an interactive installation I am doing with Jeff Gray, Steven Jackson and Dan Phiffer for display in the Contemporary Art Museum Windows in New Orleans (more on this to come, I've been a little out of the loop this week of course). The second is the development of new marketing strategies for freeFormed, along with three weeks of some serious bug fixing in preparation for an official (meaning widely announced) launch at the end of June.

One tired kid:

Posted by Cat at 02:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today at 5:20pm it was over. Well, over in the sense that I now have more time to work on my thesis paper (shhhh...its not written yet) other projects and of course freeFormed for the rest of my waking life! But at least I have no more worries about actually having to talk about this thing that culminates the last two years of my life. In the wake of this presentation being over, I have so many people to thank for their large and small roles in the making this project what it is today, and I just didn't feel that names on a screen was the appropriate way to do it (plus I am procrastinating writing this gigantic thing..shhhh). So here goes:

First and foremost, I have to thank my thesis partner Jadie Oh. This project would not have happened without her. Not only is she a talented and amazing designer who has made freeformed beautiful and actually MAKE SENSE but she's also an incredibly hard worker who has made a collaborative thesis (something that could easily turn into a disaster between people's differing opinions, stress and lack of sleep) an awesome experience. Two scorpios and we made it happen girl, YES WE DID!!

Second, I have to thank my fellow freeformers, Megan MacMurray, Nanna Halinen and Yonatan Kelib. Megan is the voice of reason and logic in my head. To see her sing Justin Timberlake at 11:30 in the front lobby of ITP you may not understand why, but she is. freeFormed would not be a company without her and her constant inspiring and constructive critique of our process has been invaluable. And all this while stressing out about her BioBronc. She is awesome, thats it. Nanna my partner in crime, my confidant, the one I bitch to at all hours of the day and night about everything and anything. Sometimes you just need an outlet and a really good friend. Thanks for that, I needed it this semester. Thanks for also donating your available time to looking at our progress along the way. Yonatan, the man who took on a project with four women. What were you thinking?? HA! You piss me off, but you know that and I love you for it. We know you've been busy this semester, but thanks for your support. The girls are missing their back massages, its time to rejoin the group!

To Shawn Van Every, the man who returns emails at 3am and has endured more discussions and help sessions concerning freeformed then anyone should ever be subjected to. He might not know it yet, but we consider him our silent sixth member. His Producing Participatory Media class started this project and without some of his code this never would have happened. Thanks for the popper, for asterisk, for New Orleans, for enduring stupid Cat questions about everything from PHP to RSS and for being such a great teacher. You may say its your job, but its more then that to us. We thank you and we owe you!

To Marianne Petit for not just making the New Orleans project happen, but for allowing freeFormed and myself to be a part of it. It changed my life, really. As it should have, as I hope it did for at least one other person. It grounded my project and my self in the real world, which is hard to achieve sometimes at ITP, but its something we all need. Thanks for making me feel like my project could be relevant outside of itself. And thanks for being my advisor.

To Clay Shirky for making me think about groups and group behavior in a new way. The Social Facts class grounded my thinking about freeFormed and it was research that I may not have done otherwise. There aren't that many people whose opinions I truly respect if they are not my friends (I guess thats just the way I am). He is one of those people whose opinions I do. Thanks for sharing all of your knowledge and thoughts, it was a great semester.

To Heather Greer, my thesis instructor, for a class that never made me feel too pressured and for understanding my ideas early on even when I couldn't articulate them properly.

To Steven Jackson for showing me your New Orleans. It was an amazing trip and as much as I wanted to KILL you when you took us on a 3 hour coffee run (among other things) you made that trip mean something else, for all of us. Thank you for that. And thanks for supporting freeformed and being interested pretty much since the project began. The aliens can use freeFormed too, tell them to make their own circle.

To everyone who went down to New Orleans with me and produced such amazing projects out of it or did such amazing work. I really felt like part of a team. It was a great time.

To the students of Xavier University, especially Mary Hill and Ashley Thomas. Thank you for showing us your city. Perhaps you thought you could learn a lot from us. I think in reality, we also learned so much from you.

To Linda Jackson, one of the most amazing women I met in a long time. Her work in the face of such complete disaster should be an inspiration to us all.

To my friends outside of ITP and my family, who have seen little of me in the last five months and who have still given me nothing but there support. My parents, Natasha, Anthony, Craig, Robert, Annette and Ed in particular..thanks. And to my daughter, you keep me going and remembering that behind every project there are much more important things. I love you all.

Posted by Cat at 12:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In exactly three and a half hours I will be presenting my thesis project freeFormed.net. This morning I set my alarm a little later then usual to get some much needed rest and I woke up to find my daughter already awake. She had put some finding nemo stickers on my laptop. I guess it was her way of saying good luck.

Posted by Cat at 01:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Tomorrow, or rather today in a few hours, freeFormed.net will be out in full force supporting the Sea of People protest rally. Come join us! Take pictures and video with your mobile phone and upload them to freeformed.net's new Sea of People circle by sending them via MMS to mobile@freeformed.net with the word 'sea' (no quotes) in the body of your message.

For more information visit the Sea of People website.

Posted by Cat at 04:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

freeFormed.org has submitted freeFormed.net for consideration for the NetSquared Conference 2007. The basis of the conference is to connect socially relevant new web technologies with funding sources to support their goals. In addition to attending the conference, freeFormed could also receive up to $100,000 in funding, which we would utilize to support and improve the freeformed.net site.

Netquared’s mission statement:

“Our mission is to spur responsible adoption of social web tools by social benefit organizations.There’s a whole new generation of online tools available – tools that make it easier than ever before to collaborate, share information and mobilize support. These tools include blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, podcasting, and more. Some people describe them as “Web 2.0″; we call them the social web, because their power comes from the relationships they enable.”

The voting process will begin today and extend through April 14th. To vote, you must register for the netsquared site. You can go and view voting information here. Once you register for the site, you can find freeformed by searching by project name or from this url.

You can find out more about the conference here.

So, if you support freeformed’s goals, go vote! There are a lot of other amazing projects to look at as well. So please, support social activism on the web!!!

Posted by Cat at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Jadie and I (and the whole freeformed crew) got a huge scare today when our site went down last night at 1:45 am. Dreamhost's support team did not contact us back for over twelve hours and we were stuck with very strange internal server errors after making no changes on the site. Finally we were contacted and told that it was runaway processes from a wordpress plugin that were causing the problem. Since we are not using wordpress on the freeformed.net site, we were both angry and mystified as to what to do next. I had a hunch it was a database server error. So jadie and I backed up all of our code and then deleted the entire freeformed site. We initially put up an html script, which was perfectly fine. But the minute we tried a php script with a sql statement, the site hung again and we got the same errors. We contacted dreamhost, telling them we had deleted all of our processes and their was no way it was anything but a database error (which is what I had originally suggested in my first email to them). We were very nervous, as it seemed that the database had some how gotten corrupted. It wasn't reachable from anywhere, not even php myadmin. Thanks to a conscientious dreamhost employee who restarted the database server the site is back up. And so far we haven't noticed any corruption.

Jadie and i were ready to fly to dreamhost headquarters. It is incredibly frustrating to not have control over your server. Especially when receiving support responses that make no sense. So what did we learn....back up your database, take a deep breath, don't panic immediately and figure out the problem yourself (as much as you can) so that your hosting company can't write it off.

It sure was a stressful day.

Posted by Cat at 12:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Jadie and I presented freeFormed at the Electronic Social Club Mixer at Hunter College organized by their Integrated Media Department this past Thursday. It was a pretty good experience, although I had to run directly to present in urban computing, which was not all that fun. We received a few new users thanks to the presentation on the freeformed.net site so it was definitely worth it.

Posted by Cat at 02:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I finally figured out the easiest way to structure my website so that i will actually maintain it (which thus far has not happened). I am using a wordpress install with the K2 theme format. Many of the pages are still under construction but you can get the general idea by going here.. I don't know enough about wordpress yet to make it perfect. And despite initial thoughts, I don't think I will migrate this blog to the wordpress format. But after working within wordpress while I was in New Orleans, I realized that it is a really good way to maintain a web site with very little effort, which is exactly what I need. Now if only I could have the wonderful version that Shawn created for the ny2no project, I would be all set.

So to reiterate, this blog is not going anywhere, the wordpress stuff will just be a way for me to archive and organize. I would've done it within the moveable type structure, but that just proved to be way to difficult.

Posted by Cat at 03:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night I returned from my one week trip to New Orleans. As aforementioned, I traveled down there as part of a grant obtained by ITP to work with Xavier University and community groups in the area. Our goal was two-fold. First, we wanted to be able, through workshops taught at the Xavier Art Department in their new digital lab, to teach as many Xavier students as possible about video and audio capture, editing, compression and upload. Our other goal was to teach the students about blogging and set-up websites for the various community groups that were working with students from the university so that their goals, projects and information could be available in an online forum. In preparation for the trip, Shawn Van Every created a multi-user wordpress platform that would make it very easy for members of these various organizations to create their own blog, podcast their video and audio material and update information regarding their projects and progress. A good portion of time was spent teaching about the platform and blogging in general and attempting to document and organize previous documentation of the various projects the groups had already conducted or were conducting during the week we were there. This multi-user platform can be found here.

Personally, I worked closely with two of the community groups, The Porch and the Lower 9th Ward Homeowner's association. The Porch is a group working within the Seventh Ward, a neighborhood significantly destroyed by the storm. Through community projects and theater workshops they are attempting to facilitate re-development of their neighborhood and help the children within the neighborhood to deal with the effects and aftermath of the storm. Megan MacMurray and I attended one of their theater workshops where they use a particular kind of theater to encourage the children to deal with their experiences through story telling and expressive movement.

The Lower 9th Ward Homeowner's Association is an organization founded by local 9th Ward resident Linda Jackson, who also co-founded NENA, the Neighborhood Empowerment Network Association. Linda lost her home and dry cleaning/laundry business in the storm. Her primary goal with the Homeowner's Association is to prevent the residents of the Lower 9th Ward, the hardest hit neighborhood in New Orleans, from losing their land to investors and to facilitate the return of senior citizens and other residents to the Lower 9th Ward by constructing temporary residences and paying off the property taxes for residents who want to return home but don't have the means to prevent their land from being seized. Megan MacMurray and I are currently attempting to install a donate button within the Homeowner's Association blog so that visitors to the site can donate money to the cause through paypal. We are also researching the best ways to get the message out about the association's goals and needs through communication with several well known organizations and video blogs.

I also participated in teaching during my stay, mostly focused on the power of mobile media and technology but I also explained and taught about the blogging platform. I also worked with Xavier student Ashley Thomas on the Voices of New Orleans circle. We discussed how the circle could be of use and Ashley came up with several pertinent areas of discussion that she felt could encourage conversation. The three that are now present within the circle are the Road Home project, crime and discussion from teenagers. Ashley also re-recorded the introduction to the production and is going to pass cards around her neighborhood. Ashley also works at a local New Orleans radio station which has a relationship with the mayor. Once the circle is populated she hopes to present the project to the mayor so that he can listen to the concerns within the community.

The trip to New Orleans was an amazing and emotionally draining experience. I had not expected to be so affected by the city, both positively and negatively. The condition of the city in general and the Lower 9th Ward in particular is reprehensible. And the lack of adequate assistance, funding and nationwide attention is criminal. It is both an artifact of a corrupt and inept city government and lack of a responsible federal response. The saddest part is, and I had no expected to feel this way, New Orleans is truly and completely the epitome of a real American city. The soul that is present, even today as half the city still stands in ruins, is palpable. It is place that feels more untouched by commercialism then almost any large city I have ever been to. And yet the very undercurrent of deep rooted cultural experience which makes New Orleans an essential historical aspect of this country are in trouble. The city is barely functioning and its people, which make it the place that it is, are either dispersed with little hope of being able to return, or just barely getting by. It is unacceptable to me that in a country where we have enough money to rage meaningless wars thousands of miles away, we don not have the means or the sense of responsibility to help our own people. This is not simply concerning the response after the storm, or lack thereof, but the current level of interest in reviving the city and assisting those who do not have the means to help themselves. Words cannot even explain the sense of urgency, sadness and struggle that I saw when I was there. Yet despite this, the people I met, like Linda Jackson, most of whom are homeless, living in trailers outside their broken homes or just barely able to get by, are determined to do everything they can. They are fighting, working long hours and exhausted. In my opinion, it is the responsibility of every decent human being in this country to recognize what has happened and what continues to happen in New Orleans. And I firmly believe that it is also all of our responsibility to help if we can.

I don't know what the solution is to this complex and difficult situation. My personal goal is to get as much attention for the situation as possible; to reopen the national conversation, to get people with influence angry and to continue to maintain the relationships that I personally developed within the city. I plan to return to New Orleans after graduation to assist in whatever way possible. This is my blog within the ny2no platform that I am currently constructing to more accurately depict my experience while in New Orleans. More updates to come as they become available.

Posted by Cat at 01:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

freeFormed has been invited to present at the electronic social club mixer:

Thursday, March 22.2007
7 - 10p
Hunter College
695 Park Avenue
Black Box / Hunter North Room 543

The electronic social club mixer is formed around a common interest, activity or location. We bring together MFA students from across New York City to meet and showcase their graduate art work, and to form a common network around the theme of creating social dialogue through art and media.

Given the recent trip to New Orleans, from which we three members of freeformed just returned last night, I think we will present freeformed within its current working context, which is a social and media exchange between New York City and New Orleans, as well as presenting the various features and aspects of the project as a whole. Fellow ITP students Dan Phiffer and Mushon Zer-Aviv will be presenting their project Shift Space as well. More on this to come.

Posted by Cat at 12:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For the last three days I have been in New Orleans with 12 other students and two faculty members from ITP. We are down here thanks to a grant that ITP secured to work with Xavier University. At first I don't think any of us knew exactly what to expect. We had met the Xavier students and had researched some of the community groups that we were going to be meeting with, but I don't think any of us had a concept of what it was going to be like to actually be in New Orleans. I don't have time to fully explain what has happened so far, as we have been working non-stop since arriving here. However, I can say that this experience has been unlike any I have ever had. Yesterday, the longest and most difficult day so far, we went to the Lower 9th Ward, a neighborhood virtually destroyed by hurricane Katrina.

This neighborhood borders the Industrial Canal, the site of one of the breached levees. It is eighteen months later and the neighborhood is still painfully broken.

Site of the levee breach:

I am completely horrified at the lack of compassion and assistance afforded to these people who have lost everything, not simply their homes, but their community as a whole. It is heartbreaking and indescribable what it is like to stand on the street where the levees broke and look around at the weed and debris ridden fields that was once home to a community that boasted 80% home ownership. Especially knowing that many of them who want to come back are unable to because of financial obstacles and lack of any form of government assistance. And its not just in this neighborhood. I drove through mid-city a couple days ago, a reasonably middle class neighborhood it seemed, where the water line was still visible more then three quarters up the side of every house on Tulane Ave. But what has been especially hard to see is the markings on the houses that the various rescue teams used to let others know that a house had been searched. These markings are readily visible in almost every neighborhood.

Again, I do not have time at this moment to fully describe what we are trying to accomplish with this large scale project. However, I can say that I am dedicated to helping out in any way I can for as long as I have to. What has been done to many of the citizens of New Orleans is disgusting and reprehensible. And the worst part is, we have all forgotten. I hope that any who reads this will visit the New York to New Orleans blog and and visit the site daily for updates. Megan MacMurray and I are working on a specific site to help the Lower 9th Ward Homeowner's Association, which is trying to raise money to pay the taxes on the land of former residents so that investors, like Donald Trump, will not buy it up and prevent the former residents from ever returning. With the help of Caleb, we are teaching Xavier student Mary Hill how to use the wordpress blogging software so that she can assist the association with updates and changes. IT IS THEIR LAND!!!! Soon we will have a donate button that will allow people who visit their blog to give money with their credit card. My donation will be the first. Hopefully, many more will follow.

More on all of this to come....

Posted by Cat at 03:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Cat at 01:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I have become very obsessed recently with StumbleUpon, a firefox add-on that allows you to find websites that match your interests and are well review by other StumbleUpon users. It also allows you to add comments and search comments for whatever website you are on. I know there are other add-ons and plug-ins that allow you to find sites and communicate socially through your browser, but I think I really like this because it is easy, quick, not confusing and it seems to consistently find things that are either interesting or that I would not have searched for myself. If it works for you just beware.... its addicting.

Posted by Cat at 04:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Blogs are so nice for documentation. So, I have a new one...specifically for thesis. Check it out.

Posted by Cat at 03:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Unfortunately, I have unintentionally neglected my poor blog over the last month. But, as of today, that will change. The new semester (the last semester) of ITP is upon me. I'm not sure whether to be thankful, nervous, upset or what....In any case, it will be a rough five months. Currently, I am registered for four classes, Thesis with Heather Greer, Ajax, Social Facts with Clay Shirky and Cellphone Java Development with Dan O'Sullivan. I am waitlisted for three classes but the only one I really want is Urban Computing being taught by Adam Greenfield, author of Everyware (I book I thoroughly enjoyed reading last semester for my mobile applications class. His visit to the class was probably the best part of the entire semester). I am seven on the waitlist and hoping that I will find some way to get myself in. We'll see.

In similar news, I also think I have decided on my thesis. More on this to come....

Posted by Cat at 09:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For Christmas, I bought myself the Nikon D80 (with some surprising help from my parents who I think felt bad about my laptop situation). I have been shooting ALOT, more then I have in the last two years (which is really nice). So far, I like it. Its VERY lightweight, which after shooting with a Mamiya 645 for the last few years is a welcome change. The flash is a bit harsh but thats to be expected and its no worse then any other on camera flash I've used. I haven't explored all of the features yet so I will have to write a more thorough review at a later time, but I can say that it is very different then shooting with film. I think the largest change is I have had to stop myself from thinking about the film itself when shooting (i.e. ASA, pushing, pulling, etc.), its a little weird.

I haven't had a chance to upload all the pictures I have taken because I actually just received my new laptop in the mail, payed for mostly by my insurance company. I decided to purchase the Inspiron E1505, the new version of my old laptop. The screen is slightly larger and its slightly faster with a better video card, which apparently also makes it Vista compatible. The last two days have been a marathon of installing programs and configuring the new baby. Now I just have to update my iTunes with all of the music that I lost. Hopefully, some friendly peeps will donate some music to my cause.

Posted by Cat at 04:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My daughter, who is four, says some pretty amazing things. Sometimes they are funny such as what she said to me in the car the other day, "Daddy lets me drink soda mommy because daddy is a liar." And sometimes they are cute, "Mommy can you teach me how to drive tomorrow." And sometimes they make you think. I bought her one of those fake laptops for christmas, she constantly wants to play with mine so I figured that even though it wasn't the real thing she would enjoy it (ironic how she has a laptop now and I don't). At first she seemed to really like it but then came the question, "Mommy I need to send an email to Sophia. Can you show me how to send an email with my computer?" Sophia is her best friend in school, who I am sure she has missed since she only goes back to school tomorrow. I had to explain to her that her computer couldn't send email and that Sophia (being four of course) probably didn't have an email address. Of course she asked why not, so I gave the routine answer that every parent gives to that type of question, "She's too young."

Amazing.

Posted by Cat at 01:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was quite excited to see textually cover the Witness Mobile Video Hub Pilot, one of my projects in the show this year (Yonatan Kelib, Jadie Oh, Nanna Halinen and Megan MacMurray also worked on this project). And a little less excited to see this review of Aura on smart mobs, Nanna Halinen and my project. Reviews were also posted on networked_performance and unmediated.org. At least its publicity...or something.

Posted by Cat at 12:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today, i was going to post my final paper for my Theoretical Perspectives on Interactivity class. My paper was basically about my need to feel in a world of binary communication. In a rather ironic twist, perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy, last night my laptop was stolen out of my car parked in a neighborhood I park in at least once a week, never having a problem. The interesting thing is, according to the owners of a business where my car was parked, it seems that, although the car was parked there all night, the actual theft occurred sometime between 11:00 am and noon. Well, that sure made me feel. Thankfully, I routinely back up my school work. And, thanks to flickr, delicious and gmail, most of my media, bookmarks and correspondence of importance are archived elsewhere. In fact, the only thing I really lost data-wise was some iTunes music, although most of it was originally on CD anyway. So, other then trying to fathom how I am going to afford to buy another laptop, I'm mostly okay. I realized however, that my desire to be online is not. In an amazing twist of fate, I am writing this on my friend Natasha's laptop, a girl that before a couple years ago didn't even have email. Life is very strange.

Here is the paper.

Posted by Cat at 12:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today was the first day of the ITP Winter show, tomorrow it will be on from 5pm to 9pm. It brings me one step closer to actually getting some sleep, although not really that much closer to finishing work, that never happens. Despite some problems with dreamhost's completely unreliable servers, Nanna Halinen and my project Aura worked pretty well. Our speech recognition module appeared to have some difficulty understanding words when the noise level reached an extreme level, particularily from the kids crowded around Chris Paretti's SpeedDial. Absolutely ingenius project, my daughter loved it, but a little hard to compete with. Unfortunately, I didn't have much time to concentrate my efforts around my other project the Witness Human Rights Video Hub. But Yonatan seemed to have that pretty much under control. Other projects in the show I particularily liked (in the limited time I was able to walk around) were botanicalls by Robert Faludi, Kate Hartman, Kati London, Rebecca Bray, Imaginary Sketch Book by Jadie (Jung) Oh, the MegaPhone 3000 by Chris Kairalla and Jury Hahn, the Musical Fun Chair by Lara Muzicant, Myra Einstein, Lisa Kovener, Adina Schwartz, Solar Bikini by Andrew Schneider and Body Paintings by Jeffrey LeBlanc. I also have to give a shot out to Megan MacMurray and Angela Pablo and their project the Garden Electric and Alex Bisceglie and Jane Oh and their project MoPres. Although I didn't get to see either one working (or in the Garden Electric's case working perfectly) I thought they were two of the most interesting concepts in the show.

In all the craziness of trying to get your project to work, to actually be able to present it in a way that does it justice is almost as imprtant as the project actually working. One thing I did realize after reading a review of the show that mentions our Aura project, is that Nanna and I need to be a lot more specific in articulating the reasons behind why we created this in the way that we did, using mobile phones and VOIP. After hearing several thoughts on further directions that we should go with the project durring our final presentation in the Redial: Interactive Telephony class, it has become evident that many people seem to be interpreting it as being about certain things that we ourselves are not necessarily trying to represent. I think we need to be more clear that this project has everything to do with the mobile phone and voice. Emotion-based location landscapes have been created a thousand times before in many forms through many other interesting techniques, such as the We Feel Fine project, which I was alerted to tonight. This and this happen to be tw