For Your Convenience: Bathroom Stall Ashtray

Bathroom stall ashtray
Originally uploaded by sindy

Still in Seattle. Stopped in a casino for the buffet and when visiting the bathroom, found this convenient ashtray next to the toilet.

So, is this to discourage people from dropping their cigarettes in the toilet (and therefore, preventing clogs) or is it so people don’t have to stop smoking just because they’re going to the bathroom?

I would say each answer has an equal shot of being the right one. Who knows, maybe it’s both. No matter what, one thing I know is that it sure is convenient.

The Minimax

The Mini-Max
Originally uploaded by sindy

In Seattle for the weekend. While settling into my hotel room, found the “intimacy kit” provided by the good people at the Hotel Max, complete with the “minimax.” (Actually, my friend found it while nosing around my room.) Apparently, my pleasure is their pleasure.

(Sorry for the blurry image; I’m on cameraphone until I find a USB cable.)

UPDATE 4.19.2008: Uploaded a better photo. Click to zoom in on the details.

Over $4.00

Over $4.00
Originally uploaded by sindy

It’s official: gas prices are over $4.00 per gallon (at least for premium). Taken in the Palo Alto/Mountain View, CA area. President Bush should have been paying more attention to those rumors.

IdeaFarm™, part 3: Return of the Truck

IdeaFarm™
Originally uploaded by sindy

Just when I thought this chapter: was over, the IdeaFarm™ truck reappears! I saw it parked on the corner of Castro St. and El Camino Real. Looks like the website is back up too– and chock full of stuff.

Ginormous Googly Ball

Ginormous Googly Ball
Originally uploaded by sindy

Here’s a random story: I saw these on sale at a local drug store and it made me think of two things: first, I found the use of the word “ginormous” as part of an actual product name amusing– my friends and I were using it often and liberally circa 1999, long before it was included in the dictionary. (Merriam-Webster claims that the word actually dates back to 1948 as British military slang.)

The second, more interesting thing I thought of was that, of course, the “Ginormous Googly Ball” is really a giant version of the 80’s hit, the Koosh Ball. Koosh balls are a little special to me because the son of the inventor of the original Koosh Ball lived in my freshmen dorm. The rumor was that if you were at his house and he was so inclined, his father, Scott Stillinger, would actually take you out to the garage and make you a classic Koosh ball with the original equipment, straight from the inventor’s own hands!

I never really knew his son well and didn’t get the chance to get my very own hand-crafted Koosh ball, but it’s moments and memories like these that make me glad I went to Stanford– there are few universities out there where you can meet such unique people and have such random experiences!

IdeaFarm™

Idea Farm
Originally uploaded by cjanebuy

I see this truck almost everyday, parked in various locations along El Camino as I drive from Palo Alto to Mountain View. (I’ve always wanted to take a picture of it, but have never had the chance to, so, even though I have no idea who you are, thanks cjanebuy for posting a pic onto Flickr.) The combination of the self-lettering, the accusatory nature of the phrase/motto of “THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM IS THAT YOU HAVE BECOME A SELFISH PEOPLE, and the strategy here for marketing their message by parking these trucks all over the area and inviting passersby to “come and eat with us” to find out more has all the trappings of a cult, of some type of weird group of fanatics of something. (Not to mention that all interactions are done “anonymously,” participants using only first names.)

I finally bothered to visit the website– www.ideafarm.com– and while I don’t think it’s a cult like The Family International– but it’s definitely an enigma (they also depict IdeaFarm as “IdeaFarm City,” trademarked, of course, and a federal constitutional protectorate of the US.) It’s very Silicon Valley– the “civil and political project funded by the sale of software products and services,” such as the IdeaFarm ™ Piggyback Distributed Operating System (I, like you probably, have never head of this and have no idea of the pros/cons of this OS).

The mission of the project is to “[P]romote unselfish living by creating a compelling economic incentive to live wholesomely connected to other people, to the Earth, and to one’s Higher Power.” The main way to do this is through a yet-to-be-released “zero spam, zero advertisement, zero thought steering, secure email service.” Participants in this project are divided into two groups– the first, composed of non-members, agrees to a) “sign a public declaration of intent to live unselfishly” and b) participate anonymously in weekly community dinners. If you decide to become an actual member, you move up and become part of the second group who agrees to a) “participate regularly in the weekly community dinners,” b) “loan $8 to the organizer for 64 days, and c) pay 1 cent per day.” In turn, you apparently get “nifty” IdeaFarm software products and services plus richer access to the website.

In any case, reviewing the website and information, a few things to note that might raise red flags for you:

• For an organization with unselfish living at its core, it is still a “private, for profit entity” and the “owner can dispose of revenue as he sees fit.”
• The “owner” or “leader” of the organization is never mentioned or known by his name (not even his first name)– he is only referred to as the “Governing Propietor.” While anonymity is central to their interactions, disclosing the leader’s name (at least first name) seems like an acceptable exception, especially to lend credibility to the whole thing since they claim he is a “libertarian student of political economy, a product of the Ph.D. program in economics at the University of Chicago.”
• A stratified system of participation and membership, largely based on financial contributions– Scientology anyone?* To be fair, they do assert that they are not asking for nor will they accept donations– financial contributions are considered “loans.”
• Discussion of IdeaFarm and the website will only be done via email.
• They’re using a yahoo email address. Weak.

Anyway, so if you see this truck around the Bay Area, now you know a little bit more. Judge for yourself!

* PS to the Scientology folks: please don’t sue me.

Stanford Facebook Class: 10 Million in 10 Weeks

Stanford Facebook Course Final - Stanford World Domination
Originally uploaded by sindy

I’ve been working somewhat with, among others, the instructors (especially BJ Fogg and Dan Ackerman Greenberg) for the Stanford Facebook class CS377W: Creating Engaging Facebook Apps, figuring out how to use Facebook and its application development platform to encourage development of apps to promote student life, aid in teaching and learning, reach out to alumni, and more. (My department, Student Computing, is currently running an app contest to encourage development of just those kinds of apps.) Wednesday night, I attended the class final– a full-blown presentation on the class (including the journey from the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab exploring how to computerize persuasion in 1993 to the development of the class itself), aims of the course, lessons learned, and, most importantly, the apps produced by the class’ 25 student teams.

The class has gotten a lot of hype, especially in the blogosphere, and much of it has been about how students were looking to find the secret to building the next big app and, in turn, making big money from it (check out this WREX-TV, NBC11.com video and try not to be distracted by the dumbed-down and sometimes nonsensical tech imagery for the narration). Much of the class focused on metrics and taking advantage of the viral nature of social networking sites like Facebook– aiming, for each app, a high number of users (especially daily active users) and high engagement (number of page views and time spent with the app). The apps developed, as you can tell from the phrase “10 million in 10 weeks,” were largely successful in achieving these goals with over 10 million installs, over one miliion daily active users, and a handful ranking in Facebook’s top 100 apps (out of over 10,000): Perfect Match, Send Hotness, Hugs, and KissMe (originally based on the Full Moon on the Quad tradition at Stanford). (Sorry if I missed any that reached the top 100.)

However, focusing on getting the largest number of users doesn’t always result in developing the “deepest” or most “socially meaningful” applications– as one commenter put it, even the “Stanford intellectual elite [can be] devoted to producing such monumental drivel.” (Before the Stanford-developed KissMe app, just think of the success of the unbelievably simple Zombies app.) So, instead of focusing on the apps that had the highest number of users, I want to point out two apps that are particularly socially conscious and show how to take advantage of the power of the Facebook network:

• The Giving Tree - the developers of this app partnered with Kiva to piggy-back on the growing awareness of the power of microlending. Facebook users don’t even need to pony up their own money– instead, once 50 people have added one of the selected businesses to their profile, $25 is pushed to the business using money donated from companies.
• Save the Rainforest - here, the developers partnered with The Nature Conservancy to take advantage of some of the time Facebook users are spending on the site everyday. Users play a vocabulary game and for every six correct answers, one square foot of the rainforest will be adopted through The Nature Conservancy’s Adopt an Acre program. As of the class’s final presentation night (December 12, 2007), 5,000 square feet had already been saved!

You, like me, are probably trying to reduce the app clutter on your Facebook profile, but if you’re going to use apps, I think these two are certainly worth it.

And with that, I leave you with a short video of Dave McClure leading the audience in The Wave to get them psyched up for the presentations:

Art Exhibit Sign: Join or Die

Art Exhibit Sign
Originally uploaded by sindy

This is about as much as I can show you of the art exhibit we dropped by during lunch yesterday. A series of oil paintings of an Asian-American woman having sex with various American presidents (and we’re talking like George Washington, not Bill Clinton). As one of my coworkers said, “She can paint, for sure.”

“Join or Die,” by Justine Lai. Read more here.

Schmap!! and Barcelona, part 2

As I mentioned earlier, two of my photos from my Barcelona trip this past summer were short-listed to be included in the fourth edition of the Schmap Barcelona Guide. I just found out that they have been selected for final inclusion! Check them out:

• Via Laietana
• Tramoia

I had a great time there, so I’m glad that my photos can be used to direct and guide others to this great city. Check out the photos, the guide, and if you can do it, the city itself, live and in-person.

Schmap!! and Barcelona

Somewhere along Via Laietana
Originally uploaded by sindy

Despite being one of the most amateur of amateur photographers with my point and shoot digital camera, I just found out that two of my photos from my trip to Barcelona this past summer have been short-listed for the fourth edition of the Schmap Barcelona Guide (to be released later this month). I guess it pays to actually make some of your Flickr photos public and publish them with a Creative Commons license.

Random!

If you’re curious, check out the photos: photo #1 (shown here) taken while walking down Via Laietana and photo #2 taken while lunching at La Tramoia. Or browse through the entire Barcelona photoset.