Daily Dairy: Den Haag — VIDEO, part 1

The “making of” process for this video is actually much more interesting than the video itself, but, nevertheless, I’ll give you the video first:

Now, the more interesting and painful details for why it’s taking me so long to get these videos out there.

1: The Beginning “Booms”
In taking everyone’s picture, I had envisioned a dramatic sequence at the beginning of my video, once I made it, that would flash between everyone’s faces, then casually introduce the rest of the clip. However, after pouring through a few hundred sound effects on a half dozen websites online, I couldn’t find anything remotely similar to what I was looking for. Deciding to milk the post-production route, I guessed that a batman movie would have what I was looking for, and on my first search hit gold: this batman trailer had the sort of sounds I was looking for. Then, using audacity, I isolated the first “boom” (because, if you notice, the beats to the soundtrack start soon after and it would sound odd to repeat the next few), split it into several tracks so as to preserve the reverb, synced them up to a pattern of increasing tempo, adjusted the timings so that they flowed well, then sped up the whole thing by 25% for added effect, did a bass amplification, added an echo layer, alternated between left and right stereo channels, and voila, sixteen booms for our sixteen-part-troup.

2: Music
Seeing as 90% of us have laptops, and MacBooks at that, almost everyone has a pretty extensive library of their favorite music, either from CDs, iTunes, or unmentionable sources. However, not owning a laptop, on this trip I took my dad’s small netbook, so the music I had on it consisted of … well, the demo music that comes with Windows. Fortunately, I had my iPod Nano, but your beloved Apple has decided that the control of all of your music belongs to them, not you, so they don’t actually let you take music off of your iPod and put it on your computer. Luckily, smart folks in the free world have engineered workarounds, and this article on Engadget describes the process for both Win and Mac folks. Though it was a bit more work than was probably warranted for the one or two songs I would use, sticking it to Steve Jobs always feels good, as does having control of the music you own.

3: Processing and syncing
This is where the lovely magic of my single core, 1.2 GHz processor comes in. As seems tradition in The Netherlands, the UvA facility where we are at is open the bare minimum work hours during weekdays, usually when I’m on school-appointed trips or doing research with Greg. This is reasonable, I suppose, but after 24/7 access to the UW art-of-the-state computing labs at good ol’ Paul Allen CSE, my expectations have become bloated and unreasonable, like Oprah. Without a real computer’s aid, I was forced to use my netbook. And it sucks. Pardon my French, but this hunk of circuitry and lights is le crap. Word processing (e.g. typing this post on WordPress) strains the brainpower of my little device, and if I ever fold it closed when it is not fully powered off, it will become confused and enraged and refuse to awake until I do a hard reboot.

Anyway, in terms of editing a video, this is bad news. I’m not an accomplished veteran of the industry, but I have directed, edited, and produced several dozen movies in my time using Windows Movie Maker, so I can do a bit of interesting editing and make mundane things look a little less mundane. However, using this excuse for a PC, I can’t even line video up with audio, because it’s too hard for it to coordinate display a picture at the same time as playing audio. Don’t even THINK about trying to play video (with audio) at the same time as music, that is a ridiculous, impossible feat.

Fortunately, I had a trick up the sleeve of my T-shirt: if you zoom in far enough, you can see the patterns of the sound waves in the audio, so matching up your pictures and transitions to audio is possible by sight alone.

Notice how I can't actually match up the pictures to the sound waves, because that would be FAR too logical and convenient.

This worked on the first sequence with the “booms,” but, lo and behold, by the time we got to the second scene, “Diggin on James Brown” was a bit too funky for my fail box to handle, and lining my pictures up with the clear blasts of Tower of Power proved a futile effort – everything was totally off-sync.

The astute reader would now be wondering, “but Max, your toy-you-pretend-is-a-computer can’t actually play music and pictures at the same time. How would you be able to tell if the audio and video line up?” Well astute reader, you are most correct, and the only way I can tell if things are working or not is to fully publish the movie and save it as a video file. Only then can my computer muster the codec strength to squeeze through a video. How long does this take? Well, about twenty minutes. That’s right, every time I wanted to see how things were shaping up, I had to wait upwards of twenty minutes to even get a preview.

After carefully timing the funk music sequence to compensate for the completely inexplicable second-and-a-half delay, I realized that future editing was pointless, partly because I was running out of RAM, partly because it would take many hours to continue coordinating audio and video via guess-and-check, but mostly because no one would ever care. So, I decided to stick the rest of the pictures and videos intermittently throughout and call it quits for part one. I’ll probably provide some brief narration for part 2 before my computer totally craps the bed. Oh, that reminds me of one last thing:

4: Windows was programmed by monkeys
This is not entirely true, but there are some aspects of it that you come across one in a while that leaves you in utter awe and bewilderment of the complete lack of foresight. For example, when I was blindly dumping the rest of my picture collection into the timeline to fill out the Madurodam movie (part 1), I decided that five seconds was too long for each picture, and I wanted two instead. Going into the options menu, there was a way to change the default setting. Success! However, the options window in which you change this setting was physically too big for my screen. There was no way to access the “save” button at the bottom. Pulling the window to the very top of the screen only partially reveled the “Reset to defaults” button, and there is no way to resize a window like this. None. Apparently, it never occurred to anyone that someone would run this program in anything less than a 1080p plasma monolith, because there just aren’t enough pixels on this netbook (which came installed with Vista) to do what needs to be done. Fortunately, through some guess-and-check tabbing I was able to change the setting, but I’m willing to bet most people (who would be using Windows Movie Maker, the crap free software for broke basement-developers) would not be able to remedy this.

There are not enough pixels.

Anyway, this explanation/rant has gone on far too long, and I fear I have not included enough pictures with my text to hold anyone’s interest. Part 2 will be of crappier quality, and I won’t bother explaining why – it will be a combination of the grievous obstacles here and many more untold hardships. Stay tuned, dear readers.

This week is going to be AWEEEEEESOME

Reasons:

1. Late start Monday
2. Get to eat and talk about projects, which will be really helpful
3. Research Tuesday, which will be entertaining and very useful as well as laid-back
4. Rotterdam Wednesday, should be really fun
5. John and Elisa are blogging, which should be quite entertaining to read
6. Research again Thursday, more progress, refinement, and laid-back-ness
7. Free (probably some research/meetings) day Friday
8. We’re in Amsterdam
9. Projects aren’t ridiculously urgent yet, so the huge pressure isn’t quite being felt
10. I really wish I had a tenth because I was brought up in the decimal system. Help, anyone?

Daily Diary – Den Haag

The time has come. My Daily Diary. Though fear and apprehension grip me to the bones, I shall plug onward, ignoring the close scrutiny that will pass over every character I type, ignoring the humorless critics who will boil off all of my words till only the important remain,hanging like scraps of meat off of yellowing bones. My bones.

Rob rallies the rambunctious rascals

It was an early morning – too early for everyone but Ben. At eight-thirtyish, most were semi-gathered in the courtyard, waiting for one of Rob’s signature debriefings till we would be let loose and herded toward A’dam Centraal. Rob did not disappoint, and with our groggy heads flopping around the ideas of a capital that is not the capital and a rich city around the poor, we set off, taking the waterfront route to our beloved Station.

Wanderers walk the waterfront

The walk was one that I had not taken before, and many echoed this sentiment. Though Amsterdam was already beginning to feel like home, discovering such a “hidden” — though obviously well-used — route reminded me of the importance of exploring and questioning a city such as this. With such an old and intricate urban landscape there are enough secrets for years of exploration, and maintaining that sense of mystery and inquisition that I felt upon arrival would be vital to continue discovering them.

Riders receive their rights from Rob

After some brief chatting at ever-busy Centraal, it was our turn to leave. (As Rob handed out the 19,70 Euro train tickets, I was again thankful that we had pre-paid for the program – it somewhat lessens the reality of spending handfuls of cash.) The train was fast and mostly smooth, the ride made quicker by dozing yet longer through wakeful anticipation. As many of the group have discovered through biking, it doesn’t take long to get from the packed, gritty metropolis to endless fields of maize, sap, and azure. Schiphol and several other stops behind us, we were in Den Haag.

Dutch dude discontinues dastardly dike's drainage

One tram to Madurodam, the miniature Holland. As we waited for Rob to negotiate our terms of entry, I noticed a man leaning up against a wall of turf. “What is he doing?” I said. When no one answered, I persisted: “Seriously, is he just standing there? What a weirdo!” Of course, this was a statute. But more than that, it was a boy sticking out his finger to plug a leak that had burst in a dike. Greg remembered the story: “he stood there for a long time, days I think, and never let his finger out of that hole. He kept plugging it, and saved them all. I think afterwards he was rewarded for his bravery.” Greg’s memory served him correctly, for in “The Hero of Haarlem,” a story in Hans Brinker, or The Silver Skates (1865) by American author Mary Mapes Dodge, the nameless Dutch boy saves his country by plugging the hole, staying there all night until adults find him (source: Wikipedia).

Miniature models make my mind merry

Once inside, a land of marvels awaited. An airport, skyscrapers, docks, a carnival, and every type of building, new and old, was arranged in districts for one to wander among. Trains puttered along, cars passed slower trucks, airplanes taxied, boats sloshed, roller-coasters zoomed, and monorails took hairpin turns at improbable speed. This wasn’t just a museum – things were moving! It was good that the excursion lasted only an hour, for I don’t know how entertaining everything would have been beyond that, but those fifty-ish minutes were fun. I distinctly remember exclaiming every few minutes, “oh, holy crap, what’s that?” and rushing over to see flood gates opening, window-washers descending a gleaming black tower, or miniatures play bumper-cars at an alarming speed. It stirred the Lego-builder in me that hadn’t been awoke in years.

A behemoth black building

After migrating cafes, the group sat down for a little discussion, based around a question that Rob posed: what do we see here that we wouldn’t see in the U.S.? Beyond being cool, what is it here that is definitely “Dutch”? Many had something unique to share: amazement at the accuracy and detail of the representations; approval at the “junk” that was present, rather than a “sanitized, Disney version” that we might see in the States; and thoughts that the Dutch had one-upped what we would do in the U.S. because of how interactive everything was. Clifford mused that he was most surprised how much of an attraction this was.

A compact complex of clay (concrete)

Following a brief mention by a student, Rob spoke at length about the trend that has arisen in the last century or so of giving importance to all aspects of architecture and design, not just what was previously considered great. A factory and a candy store will be given the same place as an 800 year-old cathedral in this “infrastructural zoo,” and it reflects the fact that high quality planners and architects are now proactive in the design of much more than the church or the city center. I had wondered if it wasn’t also the result of the world’s human population exploding with such great ferocity while the earth itself has stayed the same size: with so many more architects and infrastructure professionals out there, it only makes sense that they would accept work in a wider range of projects.

Godzilla growls, a goofy grin growing

We also spoke a bit at how this is such an attraction for kids. Some offered thoughts on why this may be: a sense of national pride  at what the Dutch have accomplished, an interest in seeing structures they might have only heard of but haven’t traveled to visit, or, conversely, seeing the full scope of buildings that they are familiar with. One thing that I don’t remember being mentioned is that kids might enjoy this place because it’s just cool and fun to feel big. Right as we entered I remember John running by screaming “wheeeee!” and not soon afterwards I got a strong urge to pretend I was Godzilla. The great works of man (and woman) become something you could conquer in a moment if you so desired, sweeping away all of the insignificant people below and asserting your dominance over such a vast land of treasures. That the buildings are actually what you might see in real life helps the feeling, as does the fact that there aren’t any burly security guards walking around as they would in a museum. I somewhat doubt that children really worry much about their Dutch pride and national identity – they want to have fun, and really, so do we.

Politie patrols prevented photographing paintings - presented is Maurishuis's posterior

After making our way near the parliament building with its glorious pond and fountain, Rob urged us to enter into the Mauritshuis (which everyone did), but afterwards we would be on our own. For me, the Mauristhuis was continually surprising. At first, I considered it another dusty art museum that would house works that I knew I should appreciate but never really connected to. My taste for art has been strongly influenced by the modern trends of downtown Seattle’s numerous art galleries, as well as from an artist or two I met during my escapade into art in high school (such as Matt Lu), and I have found that sometimes old galleries such as these just don’t do it for me.

Nice notes

However, after a few minutes, I was compelled to go downstairs and pick up an audio guide (that I usually forgo), and started learning more about the history and ideas of the artists. A few minutes later, I was too interested to forget everything, so I talked to guards until they let me into our storage room to retrieve my notebook. From this, I am able to remember much more:

The Mauritshuis houses many great works from the Dutch Golden Age: art by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Frans Hals; 17th century Flemish painters like Rubens and van Dyck; and 15th and 16th century masters like van der Weyden and Holbein (and many more from all categories, of course). Of these artists and their art, I learned several things:

• 

  a favorite: "Still Life with a Lighted Candle, 1627" by Pieter Claesz

  in the 17th century, the emphasis in art was on creating a perfect representation of the scene. Thus, in a still life, for example, artists would often put specific items into their arrangement to insert “double meanings” into their art. Often this would be humorous, though for some pieces it’s awfully hard to tell these days because we don’t have a clear enough picture of what people would have found funny back then.

• How many painters painted from compiled studies rather than of real life. For example, Vase With Flowers (c. 1670) by Jan Davidsz. de Heem contains many specimens that would never bloom or grow at the same time of year.
  

  "Vase with Flowers, c. 1670" by Jan Davidsz. de Heem

  Also, The Bull (1647) by Paulus Potter contains a very vivid bull, but modern analysts can tell that the teeth are too old for the horns, and the rump is not as muscular as it should be to match the front, so the bull must have been fictional.

• That the portraits of a man and woman should be placed with the man to the left of the woman (when viewed), and the way they looked at each other conveyed specific meanings. Thus, it was a tough decision for Anthony van Dyck to paint portraits of Anna Wake and Peter Stevens in 1628 because he had painted Peter first, before he was married, looking to his right, and so it would not do to have his wife painted on his right, as is traditional, otherwise he would have his back to her!

"The Bull, 1647" by Paulus Potter

I could go on and on, but I suspect a lot of these things are interesting only to a small percentage of people, and even then it is much better when you’re there with the art. But I have a newfound appreciation for the art of the Netherlands of the 14th – 17th century, and for audio guides, for many secrets of paintings reveled themselves that I could have never deduced on my own.

By the time I left it was already 15:30, hours after everyone else had gone, so I decided to wander the city and look for food.

Pinnacle of perfect photography - pouncing on prey

I came across breathtaking pictures of wildlife that had been set up in a large exhibit outside of the parliament pond, celebrating the beauty of nature in Europe. I felt silly taking picture of pictures, but I wanted to remember them because many were so good they could make the cover of National Geographic.

Business burgers bad

Heading into downtown I saw several dreadfully familiar sights (McDonald’s, Burger King, and KFC), so I kept travelling until I saw a less dreadful albeit equally familiar one (Albert Heijn’s). I headed into a large staircase around the city center to eat and watch people interacting on the vast concrete expanse that lay before me. In doing so,I reflected on what I had witnessed (and was still seeing) in Den Haag.

Stale stairway

The city seemed to lack Amsterdam’s vigor and charm. Like Amsterdam, there were many old-looking buildings and several new high-rises visible in the surrounding area, but the atmosphere of the city was different. People didn’t have as many places to go or things to do: a large percentage of the population were old and rather stagnant tourists, and another large percentage were city dwellers who seemed prone to sit and reminisce with a cigarette. (I can’t of course be sure that they were reminiscing, but you get the picture.) There were less bikes, less traffic, less greenery, and less interesting things to see and do. The area I was in, at least, seemed to be an uninterested city center: come if you wish, but the blank stares of the buildings and concrete would not miss you were you to leave. It was not welcoming.

However, there were pockets of hope. As I sat and munched on my bread, cheese, and pasta, I noticed a group of young skateboarding locals chatting and trying out their tricks in a menacing way that only thirteen-year-olds can achieve. But they were friendly, I could tell. They were courteous to those who passed, never made rude comments or gestures, and clearly enjoyed being watched. Once, a Politie drove up on his motorcycle, and purposely swerved very close to where the youngens were, but he made no motion to stop or warn them, and drove off as they continued to kickflip and 50-50 (a few were actually quite good).

Bumpin' b-boy breakdance battle below

Taking a swig of strawberry juice, I looked out across the square: a group of older younguns were throwing down beats and b-boying (breakdancing) in a circle. Granted, after seeing Massive Monkeys, they weren’t anything special, but this act of public adolescent behavior was totally accepted by the Politie and all who passed. The tolerance that I felt in Amsterdam I felt here, too, and the more I looked, the more mellow the interactions I saw seemed.

Rumbling rail-way return

Den Haag may not be the most fun place to spend a long time, but it was certainly interesting to see. Most of all, it gave me the perspective of the Dutch while not being in Amsterdam, which is an important distinction I can now make.

(The conclusion of my day, including a frantic trip to the train station for reasons I will not mention, was not important nor relevant enough to describe here, in my “official” daily diary entry. However, if you stay tuned, it might appear in another medium or location.)

Finally, an important announcement: my netbook does not have the power to do video editing – it struggles with mere text editing, and I know from experience of creating dozens of movies with Windows machines that this would not hold up. However, I am more than happy to use UVA computers to produce a short video that I will post here, I just need some time when they are open (during the week) in order to do so. So, Rob, Clifford, your patience permitting, I will have to hold off on my video blog till I have substantial enough access to good technology. Thank you! I will be busy with it this week.

Heading off

Leaving soon. First stop, Reykjavik, then soon after Schiphol -> Amsterdam. This blog will transition to a more personal account of travels and information. Our research and work on the Urban Screens project will be transitioning to our Wiki; I’ll post a link once the site is up and running. There you’ll also find interesting work other students are doing, both this year and previously.

Also, shout out to Alex Hanson. By some crazy coincidence, we’re actually meeting up and hanging out in Belgium (and beyond) after the Amsterdam program is over. I’m betting on an interesting 10 days.

I should probably sleep: many hours of travel ahead. Photos of new places soon, I promise.

Processing

My math lecturer, Dr. Matthew Conroy, builds small interactive applications that he posts on the course website for us to use. They’re neat and very visually-based, but he writes them using a programming code built on Java called Processing:

• http://processing.org/

From http://www.sabin-jones.com/arselectronica.html - visit (and visit Processing.org) for many cool applications of Processing

I’ve been interested in getting more into writing applications in this format, so I went to talk to him a bit in his office hours. We were chatting about the various applications that Processing has, and he mentioned how it’s really “smart” and great for use in audio-visual interaction as well as graphics and artwork. He said that people will even set up interactive displays where a computer is both projecting an image as well as reading in user responses and calculating interactions.

!!!

I exclaimed how this is exactly the sort of thing I’ll be looking into while in Amsterdam, and he confirmed that he has indeed seen quite a good body of contributions coming from people from Amsterdam, that that area of the world is really on the forefront of applications like this.

Aside from being a really weird, cool, unexpected coincidence, this has the great benefit that were Greg and I to attempt an instillation while in Amsterdam, we have a jumping-off point of what sort of technology to use!

I’ll definitely be looking into Processing and the applications that it has as we finish up finals and enter the summer. This could be neat!

Research Question Refinement

In discussing our research question, Greg has offered a new refinement:

How might digital screens alter how people use and perceive space in Amsterdam’s outdoor, public environments?

We are attempting to incorporate the element of creating our own digital screen (or projection) in Amsterdam into our project. Also, Greg has some interesting thoughts in his blog about how a screen might change the very nature of what we encounter in an environment in his blog. These ideas frame the current scope of our research question: we are interested in how people interact with public digital screens, and we’d like to come up with a way of testing this through our own creation.

However, I’ve noticed that it seems to be really tough to narrow and refine our research question at this point in time because what we are researching depends on what we discover in Amsterdam from our observations. This seems to be a tough block to overcome:

• If we develop an extremely specific research question using our pre-Amsterdam knowledge, we might limit what we are studying to something that is much less interesting or juicy than if we had explored our options (in Amsterdam) before selecting.
• However, if we don’t develop a specific topic to look for before heading to Amsterdam, we might spend too much time on observing and exploring a wide breadth of options, and have difficulty narrowing down our topic sufficiently in time for more rigorous research.

Conclusion? Stay posted for updates :p

To Lisa and Patty,

<an extra midterm response because I thought something was really interesting and wanted to write about it a little bit>

While listening to Lisa and Patty’s presentation on parks, and while hearing Rob’s comments about the use of public spaces in Amsterdam, several comments struck a chord with me:

• The use of public spaces in nonconventional ways
• There are places that the city hasn’t labeled as a “park” yet people use it as such
• The nature of people’s interaction with their environment

These statements exactly describe a discipline that I follow known as Parkour. It’s probably better known for internet videos in which young daredevils “freerun” by doing wild flips and dangerous maneuvers off and around buildings. However, the core philosophy, and the element of Parkour that I attempt to pursue, involves interacting with one’s environment in a way that utilizes the capabilities of the human body and three dimensions of the environment rather than the conventional walking in two. People vault, climb, roll, and maneuver around public spaces in an attempt to get from point A to point B in the most efficient way possible, using space in a very unconventional way and in many cases treating the city as literally an urban playground.

Perhaps the best way to demonstrate this idea is through seeing it in action:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x98jCBnWO8w
• http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=515642196227308929#
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPIw3cv8Zls
• Also, definitely Google/look for videos by
  • David Belle (the founder)
  • Yamakasi (the main original Parkour group)
  • and websites like Urban Freeflow (sold-out commercially but tones of literature and media
  • and American Parkour

Anyway, this isn’t directly related to progressing anyone’s project or furthering research, but I thought it was cool and interesting and wanted to share. Thanks for reading!

To John and Sabra and Derek,

<a midterm response>

I enjoyed reading all of your blogs and hearing your different takes on the similar topic of immigrants living in distinct communities: John on Parisians, Sabra on Seattleites, and Derek on Italians.

I think that you’ve all agreed on what is a packed and deep topic to explore. I won’t advise that you all narrow your focus, because I know that you’ve heard that already and are well aware of the importance of developing a specific, pointed question to research. I would, however, like to do somewhat of the opposite, and provide you with some ideas and thoughts that I had while listening to your presentation, in the hopes that you’ll find some of it interesting and might be inspired to further your explanation in a certain direction. Not necessarily any direction that I present, but … well, you get the idea.

The first thing that I thought of while listening to your presentation was about the fact that Muslim communities exist in certain areas of Amsterdam. I was immediately reminded of Avery and Jenn ‘s presentation in which they talked about how public housing is integrated into communities rather than separated into distinct districts. I’m not sure whether you could say that this is a more sophisticated or better way of implementing public housing, or whether it is simply different and has an equal list of benefits and drawbacks, but regardless, it appears that differences in socio-economic status are handled distinctly differently than ethnic differences. I’m sure that the least of these issues is the areas of society that the government has control over, but it seems like this is one of those “uncommon” questions for exactly that reason (it isn’t a clear one to ask). You might find some interest in discussing this topic with Jenn and Avery.

Also, especially for John, who is interested in issues of immigration across different European cities, it could be fascinating and informative to check out the work on the wikis and blogs of the UW Honors in Berlin program for the past few years. I know that they live in a Turkish community and they take a trip to Istanbul during the program because immigration is one of the major themes of that program. This could be background research, a note of interest, or a further comparison to look into after drawing your own conclusion.

Sabra’s aspect of the presentation, with the pictures she included of the very distinct Chinese buildings in the International District, reminded me of some of the pictures we looked at for the first assignment (assignment 0…). In photos of the houses on the waterfront, we saw that though some variation was apparent in the buildings, the conformed to strict standards as far as the height and general structure. What ways might immigrants to The Netherlands express themselves in the way that immigrants have here, in the architecture, but while existing within the seemingly strict Dutch requirements of conformity? What other fascist of life do immigrants in Amsterdam use to express their heritage?

Overall, though, I’m actually quite excited to see where you three go with this project, and I’ll be looking forward to hearing about the results of your research in a few months! Best of luck.

YouTube stats

I clearly need to keep up with technology trends. I mean, at the very least as a CSE major, this is my duty. Besides it they are wickedly cool.

Sample stats for a YouTube video

I believe that YouTube (Google) just underwent some pretty major revisions, though I haven’t spent much time on there recently. I saw that the rating system had been changed, so out of curiosity I clicked on the drop-down arrow under “views”, and WOW! What followed was an absolute wealth of interesting information (see the screenshot I’ve included here). It tracks views, comments, favorites, and ratings over time, not only looking at raw numbers but also correlating it with embeds in other sites and “milestones” for the video. It even has a map tracking where the video is most frequently viewed, as well as which age groups comprise most of the views.

Of course, you could have gotten that all by going to YouTube. But it is absolutely astonishing – content all dynamically generated, automated, and presented in an absolutely beautiful way. The things on the web these days…

I’d better be careful – after talking about Google Docs and now this, I’m soon going to reach Google “adoration” status. Ugh. Better find some other technological outputs to muse over.

Anyway, the old man beside me in the library is grumbling about the beats from the Common concert reverberating throughout the building, so I might have to cut this short to escape his haggard, whippersnapper-directed aggression.

Collaboration

I’m trying to get in the habit of posting useful relevant things here that could benefit other groups. In this light: groups working on their presentations or projects in any stage should consider some sort of online document collaboration program. These (well, the good ones at least), let you not only give viewing and editing privileges to a specific group of people, but support simultaneous editing. This allows you to share ideas and develop a project dynamically, with each other’s input, at the same time.

For example, Greg and I are using Google Docs, one of the many free, ridiculously useful services that Google provides as part of their sneaky quest to slowly take over the world. They’ve just “totally re-built version of Google documents that adds a lot of new features and makes editing much snappier” (What’s new in Google Docs, http://www.google.com/google-d-s/whatsnew.html), including “chat, [and] character-by-character real time co-editing” (Ibid). I’d used Googe Docs before, and had a fairly good experience, though the problems with simultaneous updating had been annoying and caused me to use the service less frequently. I haven’t had a chance to preview this new iteration with another user yet, but from what they’re advertising it should be pretty nifty.

Also allows for spreadsheets, “presentations” (power points), forms, drawings, and other things.

If you’re looking for alternate sources, I think Office 2010 Beta is incorporating more features like this with their Live service (free download of Office 2010 Beta here, from what I understand it expires in October). Also, though I’m not up-to-date with it, I would not be at all surprised if Open Office included features like this as well (free office alternative).

Summary: Lots of free document collaboration programs are available that could be useful to your research and group work, such as Google Docs. Check it out!