Something New

I've been meaning to better use the bytemarks.org domain and toward that end have migrated my blog posts from this site over to www.bytemarks.org. The new site is a Wordpress blog which affords more flexibility with templates and widgets. Bare with me as I fill out the site. Also if you have any comments please feel free to let me know what you think.

Saltimbanco

Last night's Saltimbanco show was exhilarating! It's rare that you can catch a show like this in Hawaii. Most Hawaii folks fly to Las Vegas and come back to tell everyone what they missed. My first Cirque du Soleil show was in LV some 10 years ago. Since then there have been numerous themed shows coming from the Cirque team. What I did not realize was the Saltimbanco originated back in 1992 and has toured the world since. Highlights of this show were the surrealistic costumes, upbeat live music and stellar performances. I loved the pair on the swing routine that caught everyone's breath. Two ladies sharing the swing performed some awesome in-motion catches. In typical Cirque du Soleil fashion, it was one physically demanding performance after another. One could not help but feel uplifted and invigorated after the show. For a moment there I felt I was in Las Vegas, excited to see if that positive feeling could translate to the tables. Honolulu would do well to have more Cirque du Soleil shows.

This Used to be Yours...

Recycle wear at Tadpole Studio.

Posted by email from Bytemarks posterous

Experimenting with Posterous.com and it's ability to send posts to many of your social media sites. With Posterous it will accept a post coming from a authorized email and send it out to the sites you select. Other sites like Twitter, Flickr, Blogger, Tumblr, Twitpic or Twitxr will receive a post from any email as long as it goes to your private email address. I've been trying to figure out which way is better. With the Posterous method you don't have to remember all the secret email addresses to send to. All you have to do is remember post@posterous.com. The downside is if you are trying to send a post from a non-registered (with Posterous) email address, it won't get accepted. Another thing to keep track of is which sites you are sending posts to and which have unique posts. If you save a photo on Flickr and send it out later to Posterous then it will reappear on Flickr. I did this because I like the fact that Flickr re-sizes the photos for you and you don't have to do any editing on your desktop. I think it is going to end up as a combination of private emails and posterous. Email list to Twitpic, Flickr and Twitxr, then email direct to posterous.com which then sends it to Blogger, Wordpress, Tumblr and Posterous.

Anyway the photo above is from our friends at Tadpole Studio. Architects by day, underground artists by night, they held a recycle wear event to breath new life in your old t-shirts. You can bring your old Ts and they will print "This used to be..." on them. I brought a bunch of old, but never been worn, Ts from an old company of mine. I appropriately printed on them, "This used to be Yours." I might even wear it around to see if anyone catches the joke.

Archinoetics

I recently visited Archinoetics in downtown Honolulu to get a first hand view of what they do. Lianne Kitajima was kind enough to give me the nickel tour on a very impromptu request. As a tech geek, Archinoetics is a company I would want to work at. They have their hands in the right mix of hardware and software applied to projects that are mankind friendly. This photo of Brain Painting is an example of translating brain wave patterns into a color palette. They've worked closely with artist Peggy Chun, who suffers from Lou Gehrig's Disease, enabling her to express herself through a brain-computer interface. Archinoetics is also involved with NOAA's B-WET program in the development of Project Niu. A sensor laden device, equipped with camera, telemetry, temperature sensing and communications capability, is tracked by students as it floats in the currents of the Pacific ocean. These are only two projects amongst the many that are being worked on at Archinoetics. You can hear more as we chat with Traci Downs, COO of the company during today's episode of Bytemarks Cafe on KIPO 89.3FM at 5-6pm.

Second Life

The minute I start claiming I have a great job it is going to end so I won't say it. So as it turns out I am rather routinely looking into Second Life and its application in health services. Last week I got to attend an online conference conducted by Learning Times about the virtual library with introductions to Info Island and Squirrel Island in Second Life. Admittedly, I've been interested in Second Life for quite some time but never had the time to spend in-world. RL is time consuming as it is so to spend the time developing an alternative reality in SL was somehow hard to justify, until now. So far what I've learned is that the average age of a SLer is somewhere around mid-30s. Higher than what I imagined. The cool factor is serious being challenged by the presence of the John McCain info site. Traditional institutions like education and health care are venturing into SL which is a good thing for people like me. And the off the shelf consumer PC is finally able to handle the rendering demands of SL. My Mac Mini seems to fly through the animations. I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do but at least now I feel it is justifiable. More later as tomorrow I spend time exploring EduIsland.

KIPO Power Increase

On Saturday, Sept. 20th Hawaii Public Radio fired up its new transmitter effectively boosting the power level of KIPO 89.3FM to a whooping 29,000 watts. This power increase has been something in the works since 2005 when the station applied for a power increase with the FCC. Three years later, a new transmitter is installed at Puu Ohia up on Tantalus. On Saturday, the station was getting calls as far away as Kona on the Big Island saying that they could now catch the station signal. My story is less dramatic. I work only a couple blocks down the street and until the power increase was able to only get the signal mixed in with a lot of noise. Now it comes in loud and clear. The photo is of Michael Titterton announcing the cutover live over the air. There was what seemed like an extremely long period of static as the transmitter at Palehua was switch over. Once completed everyone gave a sigh of relief. Bytemarks Cafe, as the new kids on the block benefited from the years of work to get to this point. We're 8 weeks into our show and already beaming across the state. Life is good!

Blip.FM

With the apparent demise of Muxtape, people are rediscovering Blip.FM or in my case discovering it for the first time. Where Muxtape allowed you to upload your mp3s and share it with others, Blip.FM takes it much further. In Blip.FM you can add favorite DJs and as they add music to their playlist it will show up on your Blip homepage. Also with Blip.FM you can select a song to play by answering the question "What are you listening to?" and Blip.FM will go out and find, based on what others have made available, a match. You can't download music from Blip.FM but I am sure someone has written a hack to do the job. Perhaps as a way to appease the RIAA, Blip.FM provides a "Buy This MP3" button that pushes you to Amazon.com. It'll be interesting to see whether or not the RIAA will put the clamp down on Blip.FM like they did with Muxtape. I suppose it will depend on where all these MP3 uploads are being stored and whether the RIAA sees Blip.FM cutting into the royalties of copyrights holders. I hope Blip.FM survives the analysis, but in the meantime enjoy it while you can.

Free wifi @ Harbor Court

The City and County of Honolulu in a public private partnership with CB Richard Ellis (CBRE) and Kokua Wireless are activating free wifi hotspots around downtown Honolulu. Mayor Mufi Hannemann made the announcement on Sept. 4 in the lobby area of Harbor Court. KITV was on hand to shot video but also posted this entry on their website which lists the CBRE properties equipped with wifi. There are a couple place near where I work so will test out the ease of use with my iPod Touch. Aryn Nakaoka and his team at Kokua Wireless have a handy utility on their website that not only shows the locations but shows how many people are using the access point and what appears to be bandwidth usage. Interestingly, the C&C of Honolulu has been doing these wifi hotspot throughout O`ahu for several years starting with sites in Chinatown and then in the city parks. It appears the C&C has teamed up with multiple providers over the years perhaps giving each provider to an equal opportunity to build and maintain the hotspots. After posting the photos from Mayor Hannemanns announcement, I got a comment post from Scott Belford bringing to light one of the challenges facing these providers. Since each of ISP partners provide their own hardware and maintenance of the access points it becomes evident that infrastructure in controlled environments will fare much better than those in exposed conditions. It would be reasonable to assume that wifi access points in commercial buildings like CBRE will be better maintained as compared to those located out in the parks. The fallacy of the C&C's plan is that they do not consider what it takes to provide ongoing support and maintenance of this infrastructure once it is installed and leaves it to the provider. In the case of the small grassroots non-profit (HOSEF) without any external funding, systems will fall to disrepair. Perhaps the C&C should consider putting the park wifi access infrastructure under their maintenance budget. Is that unreasonable?

Roz Savage

Early Monday morning I started seeing Twitter posts from @rozsavage announcing her arrival to Honolulu. She was coming ashore after more than 3-months at sea rowing across the Pacific from California to Hawaii. This is an astonishing feat. Having been in various size vessels in the channels around our Hawaiian islands, from zodiacs to fishing boats, I can vouch for the unpredictability of the ocean. Like the Junk Boat crew who arrived just a week earlier, Roz Savage was delivering a message. The oceans are pollute with plastics and we have to do something about it. Our modern society produces so much plastic it is taken for granted. Whenever we toss out a plastic container, where does it go? If not a landfill, out into our ocean. I've been to a bay on Kaho`olawe appropriately called Opala Bay. It is completely crammed with discarded flotsam, from body boards, nets, slippers, containers to buoys, bikes, styrofoam, you name it. So with camera in hand I headed down to the Waikiki Yacht Club to join the media frenzy welcoming Roz to Hawaii. You can catch my 3-minute Qik.com video of her arrival and some Flickr photos of Roz and her tech laden row boat.

Chi.mp

There's a new web identity aggregator in town and it is called Chi.mp. What makes these guys extra special are their strong Hawaii and Pacific Island connections. Gib Bintliff, Chairman and President graduated from Iolani in 1978. Back then he was known as Jonathan. I know this because I got the Annual. In fact I am now going to have to get him to sign my Annual like I did with Guy Kawasaki. But I digress. The Chi.mp folks had a meetup this past week at P.F. Changs in Honolulu to introduce themselves and the product to some of the local geek community. The idea of identity aggregation has been floating around for a while. Mike Gunderloy wrote an introductory article to the subject in Web Worker Daily back in 2007. Since then FriendFeed seems to have gained the most momentum. Now along comes Chi.mp. The novelty here is that with Chi.mp they give you (at no cost) your domain name of choice to aggregate the various identities you've created on the web. For example I've registered Bytemarks.mp and have aggregated my Twitter and Flickr accounts on Bytemarks.mp, i.e. what gets displayed on Twitter and Flickr gets feed to Bytemarks.mp. Right now Chi.mp is in alpha meaning it is still in the early stage of their release schedule. Not everything is working yet. Currently they only aggregate three services, Twitter, Flickr and Facebook. For me at least, the Twitter feed is not working and the Flickr feed isn't updating with current photos. I also noticed that when you add a friend and then your friend adds you, you will end up with two appearances of your friend in your friend list. I am sure these are all being worked on and Chi.mp will be an interesting service to follow. There is also an interesting story behind the .mp and Saipan connection but I will have to save that for an upcoming guest appearance on Bytemarks Cafe.

Qik Video

This week has been one of those crazy weeks with something happening almost every day, tweetup with @sukhjit, another in-studio dry run for Bytemarks Care, Manoa Geeks, North shore twitter lesson and a Hawaii Public Radio year-end dinner. It's times like these that make the short form posts more appealing. For example, posting a tweet to Twitter, photos to Flickr, sending a Twitpic from your phone, sending an Utterz audio file and now my new communications tool, Qik.com videos. Qik's been around for awhile but it was only recently that I got my hands on a Samsung Blackjack II phone, one of the phones supported by Qik. In essence it is a one button approach to recording a video and posting it to Qik. Doing impromptu videos with visiting Internet celebrities like @sukhjit from Seesmic or local tech geeks like @ikitajima and @jamiehatch are a snap. You can find a sampling of the Bytemarks videos on Qik. One problem that I have not completely mastered. Depending on where you are located and the availability of a 3G connection the video might be shorten due to aborted transmission. So it's not ubiquitous but you get the idea. I hope to bring you more Qik videos in the coming days.

Off to Iraq

This past Saturday's zazen (sitting meditation) and kado was both ordinary and extraordinary. I saw a fellow zen person, who I will call Ted (to protect his identity), getting ready to leave the dojo. Being relatively new to the place, he thought there was a regular zazen class in the main dojo. Since we are in a modified schedule I told him there wasn't a class today but that we were doing our own sit in an adjacent room and invited him to attend. The routine is straightforward, zazen for about 30 minutes and then do kado, flower arrangement. We did our sit and proceeded with the kado class. Ted decided to hang around. He didn't do any flower arrangement but we did talk about his interest in zen and meditation. As it turns out in the next month he will be deployed to Iraq. I have met a few people who've been deployed to Iraq but Ted was the first I had met as a result of zen. This deployment was his third, each one being 13 to 15 months. He must not have been more than 25 years old. I looked at him with quiet astonishment. To think of being put in harms way not just one time but three times for durations of more than a year is unimaginable. To quell my fears I commented that I hope he is not on the front lines, honestly not knowing if Iraq even has front lines. Perhaps just being there is being in the front line. Ted said his work is usually at camp and conceded you never know when a mortar shell might be lobbed into you. Through all his military training and field experience he has also incorporated zazen as way to prepare for battle. He spoke of learning more about mindfulness and meditation and that people and events have pointed him in this direction. My kado arrangement, as shown in the photo, was ordinary. There is always work I can do to improve its balance and ki'ai (energy). What was extraordinary was the confluence of events that brought us together for the shared experience. I left Saturday morning feeling alive. I said goodbye to Ted and hoped to see him again before his deployment and reminded myself of mindfulness and life in every breath.