Tonight I got to enjoy a benefit of living in a reasonably metro-area, and an excellent art museum & school nearby to hear Craig Newmark, the developer/inventor of craigslist. He had a discussion with one of the deputy editors of Wired Magazine.

Craig is definitely a geek, but also a geek who has gained some interesting experience with web society. To start-off, Craigslist currently has 190 sites in 35 countries, 10 million viewers per month looking at over 3 billion pages. All this with only 21 employees. For me, that was the biggest suprise of the night. With the amount of moderation, infrastructure, support, development, accounting, managing, selling (real estate, job, and apartment postings are paid), for 10 million users per month, this seems rather amazing.

Overall, the discussion was around how Craigslist, while not radical in its own right, has been steadily at the forefront and plodding along with the forefront of web culture and a connected society. The moderator brought up the points that Craigslist has been accused for the: death of newspapers, end of proper scientific study, and even the demise of pimps. It is an excellent example of user-created content made for other users creates an entire culture. It came at a time when the technology was becoming widespread and people wanted a new method of disseminating information, thoughts, and odd items for sale nearby. Craigslist was also the inspiration behind what I think was the first Web 2.0 mashup, HousingMaps (which retains as stark a UI as Craigslist itself).

Traditional media and culture is complaining that this “free for all” is ruining their revenue streams while also bringing down quality. Yet, people continue to seek and use this truly level forum rather than the Top-Down, one-way direction of traditional media. As Craig pointed out, for example, online/electronic forums can “deal with” information that is out there by correcting it, removing it, moderating it or otherwise, whereas traditional media will not be able to react, retract, or correct the original (and possibly inappropriate) classified ad or news article.

Lastly, there was discussion of the various “wars” that are waged on online forums like Craigslist. The current big war is the hot-bed discussion between pet-breeders and people who want their animal companions au naturál. There are also continual problems of dis-information ala certain public officials.

You know you’ve done well as a Website when you warrant your own Wikipedia article.

In the grand automotive state of Michigan, 15 year olds are permitted to start driving on limited permits with their parents. While practice is good, especially with parents, this still seems young to be operating a large, heavily powered piece of machinery. The results of which are not always good.

This photo is one such result of a 15 year old driving with her father in Ann Arbor. She hit a curb, then the car and flipped the SUV. It’s rather humours that the BMW SUV flipped so easily, with little apparent damage to the car it hit.

Especially humorous is that the gas-guzzling SUV ended up on the lawn of a Phud (Ph.D.) student of Natural Resources (read: hippy Environmental Engineer).

I had the good fortune to randomly meetup with the head of MySociety.org, Tom Steinberg. The group is developing web sites and technologies for promoting social interaction and welfare. While people have been aiming towards that lofty goal for a long time, MySociety has been doing great things and has some real results. Besides providing very modern and slick interfaces, their no-nonsense design offers a small barrier to entry for users. This allows more and more people to participate through their online communities.

PledgeBank is a community-based site where anyone can make a pledge to perform some task, given enough support from other people. The basic premise is that more people would do good deeds if they knew they had support and help of other people. PledgeBank allows these ‘amateur philanthropists’ to congregate, share ideas and make pledges to better the world (or at least all dye their hair - it’s freeform). However, to date their successes have been primarily in the UK, due to media coverage and spinoff from their other successful sites like WriteToThem.com and TheyWorkForYou.com: Is your MP working for you in the UK’s Parliament?

TEDBlog has come across PledgeBank and is very gung-ho about it’s adoption to the US. So much so, that they are offering a $1000 bounty for the most eyepopping pledge. The US could definitely use this type of social support and interaction to promote volunteerism, activism, and general sense of community.

Americans tend to be very self-absorbed, and individualistic. This isn’t a bad thing, but sometimes it does our karma’s good to bond with other humans. Here is our chance to come together, every once in awhile, as a community.

So I was trying to download an audiobook from the NetLibrary. Now, I already have to suck up a lot and use Internet Explorer on Windows to even use the service. Even then I couldn’t get it to work.

Here is the official support response:

OCLC NetLibrary eAudiobooks are DRM protected. Your computer’s date/time clock settings must match the actual time zone, be set for the correct time of day, and must be as exact as possible. If the settings are off, DRM won’t allow the download.

Follow these steps to resolve the problem:
1. Close any Internet Explorer windows that are open.
2. Go to the Control Panel (click Start, Settings, and Control Panel) and click on the Date/Time icon to change the clock.
3. Confirm that the date is set for the correct day of the week.
4. Confirm that the clock is set to the correct hour and minute (don’t worry about seconds).
5. Also, confirm that it accurately reflects AM or PM depending on the time of day.
6. Lastly, check the time zone setting and verify it is correctly set to your time zone.

That’s great. So, I can’t get a book because my desktop doesn’t match the server’s time. Obviously a good example of how DRM helps everyone. But, hey, I don’t have to worry about the seconds. That’s really user-centric designed. They’re so thoughtful.

Of course, the error message:

The linked you clicked is no longer valid

was very helpful at the time as well. The instructions themselves bounce between full-explanation (how to change the clock), to skipping details (what if I don’t know what this DRM demon was and why he’s holding onto my bits!)

Dataplace is huge clearinghouse of demographics & mapping information gleaned from the US Tiger Census. For example, you can get the census of any region/city, including a slick use of sparklines, as well as a map of the location demographics spread.

An incredible feature is the ability to build up your own thematic maps by overlaying various layers of information at your own choosing. For example, you can build a map, of say, overlay the “Percentage Housing Units that are Overcrowded” with the “Aggregated Family Income”.

Like any good project nowadays, they have a Dataplace developer’s blog.
Dataplace forums.