1. Emergency & electronic presence

    In the wake of the attack yesterday in Mumbai, a couple of thoughts picked across the twitterverse pointed me to a note referring to the use of Twitter in emergency conditions (via @timoreilly); people in India are active users of Twitter, Flickr and YouTube – the short note states the use of immediate/real time/near real time application and services during/just after the Mumbai attacks: learn from use of Web 2.0 in Mumbai. It delivers a realtime information of what’s happening. It is not only a ping that let the beloved know that one is fine (electronic presence) but it is also a raw information source for rescue team. Unfortunatelly, it could lead also bad intentionned people to monitor the same pubic channels.

    How about a special kind of 999 where you could send any crucial information to authorities? Many information visualisation have been developped so far that could help authorities stay on top the instant huge flux such use could create.

    Via my domain name provider: the .tel new TLD is a new extension for domain name. You can’t use it to link to a website – it means http://mywebsite.tel is not a web address, it is not WWW based. Instead, the DNS (Domain Name Server) is used to store you contact information and the whois is updated in real time. It means it is a container to host your information and one can imagine storing his/her own geolocation information as well as a new contact telephone, or a new snail mail address, or anything else using custom. The interest is the real time aspect of the thing. It gives you (or your device) a URL – somewhere on the internet where someone can ping you and see your status: online, offline, busy, … alive. (see also: Ambient post on Capacity)

    It is clearly some of the first manifestion of the coming internet of things as previously described and explored by many peoples – see more reference on the wikipedia page: Internet of Things.

    * ping: it is a reference to a UNIX command, a basic network command, that checks your machine can reach another network node from your local host. If your machine is connected to a network, any machine on the network can ping it in order to make sure your machine is part of the network.

    ** TLD Top Level Domain: this is the usually three leters that ends the URL of a website; most common are .com, .net and .org. Telnic is in charge of the administration of .tel domain name; they have a .tel FAQ

    *** Twitter an instant messaging service. It is based on the notion of microblogging – blogging using text-only messages limited to 140 characters. It allows the very fast diffusion and replication of memes across networks of people.



  2. Electronest Aggregated & Electronic Presence

    Today we published 2 new pages on the Electronest website:
    Electronest Aggregated and Electronic Presence.
    Both are resulting from frustration; Electronest Aggregated allow visitors to have a more global perception of our different website (there’s still tons of work to be done to make the experience smoother). Electronic Presence will be used as a ressource page on the concept of Electronic Presence.



  3. Bill Murray


    Just watched the ghostbuster series. Far less exciting than when i was kid but still nice wiht a certain retro charm; i really like the car with that steampunk feel.

    Later I googled for one of the actor, Bill Murray (Peter Venkman) and found out about this behaviour that reminded me of Richad Stallman’s web to email:

    Being very detached from the Hollywood scene, Murray does not have an agent or manager and reportedly only fields offers for scripts and roles using a personal telephone number with a voice mailbox that he checks infrequently. This practice has the downside of sometimes preventing him from taking parts that he had auditioned for and was interested in, such as that of Sulley in Monsters, Inc, Bernard Berkman in The Squid and the Whale, Frank Ginsburg in Little Miss Sunshine and Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

    * Bill Murray – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    ** Richard Stallman’s web to email: it is also linked to the electronic presence concept
    .



  4. Electronic Presence

    Your name is Hugo.
    I’m sitting on my chair in London, it’s 17:59

    You searched for the word defibrillator on Twitter.
    You found me.

    That’s already (kind of) strange enough but that was not enough:
    You subscribed to my updates on Twitter.
    I received an email alerting me about it.
    I check your Twitter page; not much info.
    I check your website links (top right hand corner)
    You manage a ICD user group blog in the Bay Area (SF I supposed)
    I almost cried reading a few posts on your blog: it felt so close of what I experienced not so long ago, all the questions, the doubts… physically and mentally.
    I read more and find this pictures of a tree encapsulated.

    IMG_0569-767620.JPG
    * picture by Hugo Campos – found here

    I always found these natural behaviour beautiful – suddenly it struck my mind and realise why this picture is there, on your blog: the same thing is happening inside my body. I have a an embed object inside too, encapsulated.

    I republished your picture on R-Echos: the tree and its metal protection.
    It is a beautiful metaphor.

    I twited about it and say hello.
    You twited back with a link: a google map where those trees are, Google includes a 360 view in this area (not that common here yet) and suddenly I feel like super close to your reality knowing perfectly you are thousands of kilometers away.

    I had to say it: It’s a strange feeling of closeness.

    *