GlitchNYC

Is it just me, or is there an abnormally large number of great folks in the new web communities that have sprung up in the past few years? Maybe it’s the fact that most of the people I’m working with lately are into the idea of creating or participating in something great, rather than making a boatload of money, but I’ve met more than my fair share of kick-ass people this year.

That said, even among these great people, it’s not often you meet someone who is genuinely cool and also willing to give you their time and enthusiasm with no thoughts of what they’ll get in return.

I’ve been developing a Wordpress widget for Clipmarks that allows you to add clips to the side of your blog. It’s only my second wordpress plugin, so I figured it would be a bit rough around the edges and would benefit from some true beta testing. We invited the incredibly awesome Torley to be our first beta tester Thursday night, and not only did he test it out and give us great feedback, but he’s also blogged about the tool and has done the legwork of installing an updated version of the beta just a day later!

I’ve spent the past year getting involved in communities and meeting amazing people, but it still always astounds me when people are this cool. It makes me really excited for the things that we’re capable of building if we continue to work together!

Long blog-post short: Thanks Torley!

PS - I’d love to test this widget out on a bunch of blogs before we go live with it, and could really use the help, if you’ve got a wordpress blog. Just drop me a comment on this post and I’ll get in touch!

Ahh, I love the smell of DIY hacking in the wee hours of the morning!

Sara and I have been putting together a computer with some rather extreme requirements. The machine needs to be just about unbreakable (read: no spyware, viruses, etc), surf the web, chat on IM, and get email. I figure that Firefox + GMail + Meebo fit the bill for most of those requirements, but there’s a twist…

The machine needs to do all this without a wired or even a steady local wireless internet connection.

In the age of ubiquitous wifi, I figure that catching an open signal from a generous neighbor is pretty likely, but Sara and I have both had trouble getting a strong, steady signal where the computer is going. I needed a way to amplify the signal, so I went off to research land to read up on poor man’s wifi.

I settled on the parabolic “wok spoon” method, which with a little inspiration turned into the “Strainer plus desk lamp” contraption you see above. The USB wifi dongle is mounted in the center of the dish, and the wire runs down from inside the lamp housing. The desk lamp it’s mounted to allows the dish to rotate and angle in any direction, making it perfect for finding an access point and staying trained to it.

Once everything was hot-glued together (god bless the hot glue gun!) I plugged it back in and tested out the results. Netstumbler showed that I was getting a weak reading from a nearby linksys access point that was hanging open. A bit of angling around, and the green graph of netstumbler climbed skywards as we zeroed in on the point. Once it was directly in the sights of the dish, connecting was easy and connection was stable and fast! The reflector dish worked incredibly well, considering it cost us $20 and less than an hour’s work to put together!

We’ll see how it all holds up in actual use, but for now I’m really happy with how it turned out. It looks halfway decent and certainly gets the job done!

BarCampNYC is coming up this weekend, and I wanted to start off the blogging frenzy that will surely ensue with a few tips for getting the most out of the incredible unconference that is BarCamp.

• Come rested
  • This one sounds simple, but it’s important. Barcamp starts at 9 on Saturday and goes till 6 on Sunday. Get some good sleep the night before, because you’ll either be in a session or chatting with folks for nearly 36 hours straight!
• Come packing gadgets
  • Coming to a Barcamp event is like seeing the future of conferences. Everyone’s got a laptop, digital camera, mp3 player, recorder, videocam, etc, and are constantly using them. Bring your toys, they’ll come in very handy!
• Bring cards… Lots of ‘em
  • You’ll never believe the number of great people you’ll meet at BarCamp. Having a serious stack of cards with you is a necessity if you want people to be able to get in touch with you later. Seriously, pack what you think you’ll need and then double it. People have run out of cards at every barcamp I’ve been to. If you’re doing cool stuff that’s not related to your 9-5, consider having some cards made up that reflect you and your projects. You can swing by kinkos and get some made up quick that get the job done in a pinch.
• Introduce yourself
  • This is another no brainer that makes a ton of difference. In a room full of people, it can be hard to know who to talk to. Don’t hesitate to shake someone’s hand and ask what they do. If you’re generally introverted, find one of the organizers and ask them to introduce you to a few folks. You’ll also notice that people tend to clump together. Don’t be afraid to step into the group or sit right down at the table. Another voice is always welcome in the conversation.
• Create content
  • If you’re a blogger, photographer, podcaster, or creative in any other way, come prepared to create! Some of my best BarCamp experiences have come from asking folks if I could interview them for both segments in The Alternative Music Show and Felt Up TV. Snapping great pictures of folks is also a great way to get to know them and to keep the BarCamp spirit going after the event.
• Tag everything
  • If you’re creating content, you probably want people to be able to find it. There will be a page on the wiki for linking to your work, so link your stuff up there, but also be sure to tag everything with BarCamp and BarCampNYC2 (or whatever specific *camp you’re at), as well as the names of people and companies you’re talking with, photographing, etc. Subscribe to the technorati and flickr feed for that tag so you can see what other people are posting too.
• Post from the event
  • Assuming the wifi stays up (a few hundred geeks connecting all at once and schlepping multimedia all over the place puts a strain on even the best networks), getting your stuff up while you’re there is just plain cool. It’s amazing to be in a session and see photos, blog posts, and even video go up within a few minutes of the talk. It’s also a great way to link up with the folks you’re hanging out with, as you can see who’s posting what content and comment on their stuff when it goes live.
• Stay overnight
  • The sessions are great for soaking up the knowledge everyone is sharing at BarCamp, but the real connections are made in the hallways, in front of the schedule wall, and hanging out after the event. If at all possible, stick around for the afterhours stuff and really get to know folks. There’s also lots of great projects that happen after the sessions are done, and even spontaneous hacking sessions where things like new mashup webapps and cool plugins and scripts get created in the wee-hours between day one and day two
• Challenge yourself
  • It can be temping to attend sessions about stuff you know and are interested in and hang out with folks you already know. Challenge yourself on both counts. I’ve forced myself to attend sessions on things like UI and usability and even marketing, topics I would normally skip in favor of things that I’m better at or like more, and I’ve come away far richer for it. Pick at least 3 sessions you don’t think you’re interested in and plunk yourself down in them. You’ll thank yourself.
• Follow up
  • BarCamp happens fast. You’ll meet a flurry of people and attend a gob of amazing sessions. Write notes on peoples cards so you remember who was who, and after the event drop them an email to let them know it was nice to meet them. Add them as a flickr contact. Subscribe to their blog. Keep the BarCamp spirit alive for as long as you can after the event!

Enjoy the event everybody, and I’ll see you there! If you see me, say hello. I’m going be running around making sure the food is in order an following a lot of guidelines above, so chance are you’ll probably never see me without my camera, laptop, or maybe even with a puppet or two! Heck, I might even have one of them interview you!

I’m currently on my way to Podcamp Boston. It’s just past 7AM and I’m already winding past hartsdale, crammed into the only half-a-seat left on the bus when I arrived.

That’s my own fault of course… I cut my commute famously close this morning, leaving at 5:45 for a 6:30 bus. That sort of stunt might fly during rush hour, but by 6, my subway train hadn’t even left the station (we live at the end of the line). I hurtled down corridors and up flights of stairs with the heaviest bag I’ve ever packed.

But it’s worth it.

As we rode out of NYC, the black sky turned to inky blue, and then almost suddenly to grey as a huge red sun appeared at the horizon. I always forget that sunrise is constantly duking it out with sunset for title of “most beautiful thing that happens around you every day, but most of us never notice.”

We get around thirty thousand of these things in our lifetime. How many have you really seen? I can count maybe 5 great sunrises that I’ve been awake and aware to appreciate.

Allow me, if you will, to share my geek glee with you for a moment. Part of the reason I was up late last night, aside from packing nearly every piece of production equipment, puppet, and cool gadget I own into a giant suitcase, was that one of my co-workers was handing off the holy grail of geeky equipment.

We’ve got 2 EVDO wireless access cards (basically, highspeed cell-phone modems) where I work. One is with our President at all times, and the other rides with one of our field workers. I called this incredible individual, and not only did he graciously offer to let me take it for the weekend, he personally drove it out to me in Astoria in the wee hours of the morning, acting like it was no problem at all. He was all smiles and “don’t worry about it” at 1 AM after a long day.

Sometimes when people are class acts, it just kinda shines through in everything they do. I need to get him a bottle of wine or something!

So, that means that, yes, for once I’m actually posting this from the bus, rather than writing and saving it up to post later. That’s nifty and all, but the real beauty is that I won’t be contributing to the inevitable bandwidth clog that podcamp will bring. Barcamp cripples any facilities wireless simply by virtue of the fact that there’s a hundred or so geeks all online at once, but us podcampers will also be adding rich media like audio and video to that mix, and you know it’s going to be a miracle if anyone can get online on the wifi at peak times.

Now I just need to figure out how to share the EVDO bandwith over my wifi in ad-hoc mode… Hmmm.

One of the listeners of Sara’s and my music podcast, The Alternative Music Show, dropped me a very nice email the other day and asked if I wouldn’t mind taking a look at his new blog featuring reviews of comptuer programs.

I checked it out, and his first two reviews are extremely well written and he’s highlighted two of my favorite programs of all time, Trillian and Winamp.

Take a look at his blog and if you like what you see, subscribe to his feed to see what programs he picks for review. I’m looking forward to see what he picks out!