Twitter Revolution // Frustration
Friend Marc Ambinder discusses the value of Twitter in providing analysis of ongoing events in Iran. (BTW the right moniker is protest, not an insurgency, thus not a revolution.)
It must be said though, and not to bang on this drum too much, but Twitter’s feed is not an effective way of understanding what’s happening on the ground. It was useful seven months ago (much smaller audience), yes, but not anymore. Data overflow has rendered the presentation stack ineffective. At the minimum, a real crisis-Twitter would process data (not just provide a raw feed). Taken to its full potential, however, this kind of information flow can transform the world. (MUCH richer presentation stack required.)
Twitter’s Future
Twitter, is by all accounts, the best source of information on ongoing crisis. It needs to stop there.
In November of last year, when I was pulling a gargoyle (Snow Crash) and providing real time analysis of events unfolding in Mumbai, user levels were such that it was still manageable for readers to rely on the flow + hash tags.
However, the tripling of traffic (partly due to that coverage) has made the presentation layer obtuse and burdensome (essentially useless). The signal to noise ratio is extremely low. The right play is for Twitter to save the dollars its wasting on the presentation layer and just shut it down. Instead, it should just provide its firehose data flow (driven by distributed tweet inputs) for processers and front end developers.
Urban Journal
Also, Urban Journal is a cool new groupblog from the guys at metblogs. It focuses on survival in an urban environment in times of acute uncertainty. They’re building a community around the topic.
USNI + War and Health
Friend Chris Albon, the authority for the intersection of War and Health, is now blogging at the US Naval Institute. Excellent move on their part.
Ideas on Zotero
Needs to have a way to continually update my archive of snapshots. (Nightly RSS check/screen scrape would be great). Also the an option to pull down the entire site, not just what’s visible, could be useful once in a while.
Also, pulling in screenshots from vendor demos + notes from email correspondence is very easy and useful. In-product screencasts could be great. Also, reaching herec, could be nice to have a workflow that tracks emails and copies them into the appropriate library/archive.
(Probably too specific, but I’m 4 cups of joe into my n’th demo of the day.)