I’m back studying at Queen’s University, and last weekend was Homecoming. In recent years, Queen’s Homecoming has become an annual pilgrimage for Southern Ontario’s Net Gen. Thousands of them, from Ottawa to Windsor, descend on Kingston for a 24-hour party that begins with 9 AM pancake keggers and culminates with a booze-fuelled riot that sees hundreds arrested, dozens injured, and three years ago, a car flipped over and lit on fire.

A group of Kingston residents, fed up with students’ intolerable behavior and the inability of police and university administrators to stop it, have turned to transparency as a weapon. On Homecoming, and for the past month, members of SaveOurNeighborhood.ca have been patrolling Kingston’s student neighborhood to take pictures of young people committing debauchery and posting them online for the world to see.

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Bravo to Quebec’s open source software association for suing the provincial government for not tendering software purchases. Turns out the government used a rule that allows them to avoid tenders when there is only one option (in this case, Microsoft). I guess no one told them about the other options, you know, the free ones.

This brings up some interesting questions. Whose responsibility is it to submit a tender bid for open source? Do governments have the responsibility to consider it even without a bid? And can governments really justify spending a lot of money on things they can get for free (even if the free version has an interface that is intimidating to white-haired public servants)?

But more importantly, governments are missing a tremendous opportunity by ignoring open source. Imagine if even a fraction of the millions of dollars most governments spend on proprietary software was spent on open source initiatives. First of all, the software would become far more customized towards what government needs. Second, rather than funneling tax payer money to one company, it would be an investment for every company in the economy. Third, it would create skilled jobs. Fourth, it would help create the critical mass necessary for open source to overtake proprietary software: something that would benefit the entire economy.

As citizens, I say we start demanding that our governments leverage open source software to save money and invest in our economy.

One of the most hotly anticipated political news these days is Obama’s coming announcement of who he has picked as his Vice Presidential Nominee. But while most politicians would deliver such news-cycle-dominating stuff during a carefully choreographed photo-op, Obama has decided to do so by sending a mass text message to supporters.

Great (or annoying, depending on your opinion) marketing gimmick for getting people onto the campaign’s text message list, but even more exciting are the other ways in which that list is being used.

First off, Obama uses it to tell supporters the time and location of rallies close to where the live. For a political campaign, mobilizing supporters is a core competency. But it can be difficult to do, especially when events are spur-of-the-momment. Phones often ring unanswered, emails get snagged by spam and sit unread in mailboxes for days. Text messages are received and read pretty much instantaneously, and irrespective of where the recipient is. They are also more personal than a mass email or recorded telemessage, meaning its more likely people will pay attention to them, and much less resource-intensive than a person-to-person phone call.

Second, Obama texts his supporters policy updates. I know: BORING. That’s what I thought at first. But think about it. If McCain attacks Obama, Obama’s supporters know the rebuttal before they have even heard McCain’s attack. And, they’re going to be spreading that message to people they know. Conservative TV commentators have long been accused of reciting talking points sent to them straight from the Republican Party. Whatever your view of the ethics behind that, you must admit it is an effective way to get out the message. Replace those TV commentators (which generally attract audiences with median ages of over 60) with hundreds of thousands, even millions of ordinary people of every race and every class in every corner of the country, and you have a pretty big bull horn.

Meanwhile, John McCain has yet to use text messaging at all. And I don’t just mean his campaign, I mean him personally as well. LOL I can’t wait till November.

One rainy day earlier this summer, nGenera’s Gov 2.0 Program Director, Dan Herman, locked three summer interns in a room (Ben and Jude, and I) and asked us to think about what life - and government - would be like ten years from now. One of the results was the following short story about a day in the life of a man named Donald, in the year 2018. Hope you enjoy.

7:00 AM. The alarm rang, and Donald pressed the confirm button to silence it. His bedroom monitor switched on and began playing his morning video feeds.

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Last week I spoke with Andrew Mottaz and Blake Johnson, the founders of Portland-based Site9, about their new software as a service offering: ProtoShare. ProtoShare allows web developers to collaboratively create interactive website prototypes, ensuring that everyone is on the same page during the development process. But more importantly, ProtoShare opens the process up to other stakeholder, such as the marketing team, allowing them to follow the project’s progress over time, and provide timely and effective feedback to developers. By improving communication and collaboration within the project team, and between them and their clients, ProtoShare has the potential to revolutionize the process of web design. Rather than write about it myself, I though I’d share the words of Andrew and Blake. With their permission, I have published an edited and abridged transcript of our conversation below.

WILL: To start off, why don’t you give us a bit of background about yourselves, your company, and both the process and motivation behind the development of ProtoShare?

ANDREW: Sure. We started Site9 back in 1998 as a web development company. We were always building tools to make ourselves more efficient, and we saw that a much bigger opportunity for us was to develop those tools into a platform we could sell. Our first product was Launch, which is an end–to-end web development solution. One of the aspects of Launch that customers really responded to was that it gave them the ability to create prototypes of websites: visual and interactive mock-ups that allowed the entire development team and their clients to have a common understanding of what the final product was going to be. And what we started to realize was that by taking that functionality, and enabling a greater level of collaboration within the development team and between developers and their clients—including those without technical experience—we could make something really powerful.

BLAKE: And with the advent of Web 2.0 technology and the whole architecture of collaboration and people working together online, we started thinking, “That’s how we enable collaboration.” You don’t just run your program on a server in someone’s company; you run it on the Internet where people anywhere in the world can participate in the project. You can have a team with people from all over the world working together.

WILL: What’s the advantage of a prototyping tool?

BLAKE: Everybody in web development should be prototyping. You want to move in an inverse pyramid, from abstract to concrete, working your way up. But a lot of people don’t prototype. And those that do, they often use things like Visio or Photoshop. So it’s flat. When you take that to a client—along with your big spec document—and say, “Here’s how it’s going to work. You’re going to go here. You’re going to here. You’re going to have this,” they all say, “Yeah, yeah, whatever.” And then, when the project is close to being done, they say, “I don’t like this.” And then you’ve got all this rework that could have been avoided if there had been more communication earlier on. So the advantage of a prototyping tool like ProtoShare is that it makes prototyping easier for developers, and provides the interactive and collaborative capabilities that get clients to engage with a prototype.

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Sarah Lai Stirland over at Wired’s ThreatLevel has a great post today about a fight that recently occurred amongst Wikipedia editors over whether the entry for John Edwards should include information about his alleged love affair.

The National Enquirer claims that Edwards fathered an illegitimate child with his web video producer, but without any substantive evidence to back it up, it seems that none of the US networks (except truth-crusader Fox News) have covered the story.

The Wikipedia entry on Edwards was locked after a 37,000-word debate concluded that the scandal, and the sources that reported on it, did not meet Wikipedia’s standards of reliability. Yesterday, however, users voted to unlock the article and include a compromise statement that references the scandal, but only in regards to its influence on Edwards’ chances for the vice presidency.

To me this illustrates how Wikipedia and social media have the potential to provide far more reliable and balanced sources of information than traditional media.

An ongoing criticism of Wikipedia is that it is unreliable. You just can’t trust it. Who knows where that information is coming from. Well call me crazy, but this story shows that Wikipedia is applying a higher standard of reliability than the US’s most-watched cable news network (not that that’s saying much).

On the other hand, Wikipedia struggles with the issue of censorship and bias. You just can’t trust Wikipedia because its edited by a bunch of conservatives/liberals/people-I-don’t-agree-with. They aren’t telling the whole story. Of course that argument can be made with the mainstream media as well. But when a major network or newspaper is biased or commits censorship, people complain and/or go somewhere else for their news, they don’t solve the problem. In this case, Wikipedians thoughtfully discussed the issue, reached a compromise, voted democratically, and solved (or at least moved towards a solution for) the problem.

In a media environment that seems increasingly unconcerned with factuality, biased, and obsessed with scandal, Wikipedia seems so … mature!

Last night I left my red knapsack, with my white MacBook inside, in the back of a taxi cab. Needless to say, I’m a little upset. But the thing that is so frustrating about it isn’t the possibility that it might have been stolen (by another passenger, the driver, someone at the taxi cab company), its the possibility that it is, even now, in the hands of some kind soul who wants nothing more than to give it back to me, but has no way of knowing who I am. (I’ve been phoning the cab companies, but I’m not sure what company’s cab I was in.)

Of course, I knew there must be a web 2.0 solution to this problem. So I went surfing around. It turns out that 416-TAXICAB (a company that charges users to connect them to the first available cab company so they don’t have to put up with busy signals) runs the Toronto Taxi Lost-and-Found online notice board. Great idea. But from the looks of it, its only being used by people who have lost things, not those who have found them.

In other areas, however, the internet greatly improving on our traditional methods of lost and found. A few examples:

• When Matt Preprost found a lost camera, he decided to post the photos on the net. Within days he had not only returned the camera to its rightful owner, people from around the world were sending him photos from lost cameras they had found. IFoundYourCamera.net reunites people with their lost photographs, sometimes decades after they were taken.
• TheLostPets.com runs databases for lost dogs (FidoFinder.com) and lost cats (TabbyTracker.com). Those who have lost or found missing pets can post information (including a reward), and search through other entries.
• Pet Harbor allows users to search US and Canadian animal shelters for lost dogs and adoptable dogs, as well as post information about found dogs. This service is used by local governments, including the City of Toronto’s Animal Services Department and Sutter County, California.

Anyone got their own examples (or any info on my laptop!)?

If you’ve ever been to a Blue Jays game, you may have heard of the Ice Cold Beer Guy. For seven seasons, beer vendor Wayne McMahon has been walking the isles of Toronto SkyDome Rogers Centre with a signature call “ICE … COOOOOOLD … BEEEEEEEEEER” that has earned him local fame, Facebook fan sites, and a presence on YouTube.

Last week he was fired by concession company Aramark for not checking the ID of a 22-year-old “mystery shopper.” (The legal drinking age is 19, but apparently he is supposed to check the ID of anyone who looks under 30.)

In response, unhappy fans have joined forces on Facebook to demand that he be rehired. The Official Bring Back Wayne Facebook Group has grown from 2500 members on Wednesday, to 9000 on Friday, to almost 15 000 today. The momentum is just picking up. And now, if you search for Aramark on Facebook, Bring Back Wayne is the number one result.

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FreeGovernment.org, launched on July 4, is one of a growing number of online, direct democracy communities that allow users to vote on bills, draft their own legislation, and engage in debate. While these communities present an opportunity to make government more accessible and responsive to citizens, they have failed to earn any influence over politicians.

To change that, Free Government plans on electing the politicians. The community, which is also a political party, is looking for candidates to run in the 2008 US Congressional election. If elected, these politicians will be contractually obligated to vote according to the results of an online poll of constituents (for their vote to count, users will have to first be confirmed as registered voters).
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Tech companies have long suffered from patent trolls: companies that bulk-buy cheap, unused patents from bankrupt companies, wait until someone becomes successful at doing something similar, and then launch a frivolous infringement suit that gets settled out of court. Well now the big tech companies are teaming up to fight back. Verizon, Google, Cisco, HP, Ericsson, and others have formed Allied Security Trust (AST): a venture that will buy-up patents that members might be interested in using down-the-road.

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