The Perils of Long Term Planning
Posted on | February 16, 2010 | No Comments
Its a wonder at some level that the express stops along the IRT were so well planned from the outset and most were located at critical junctures before development could even take place. Second Avenue Sagas mused the other day about how Columbus Circle managed to not be an express stop whereas 72nd street did? Though 59th street seems like a logical express stop now, It was not when the subways were built.
What can we learn from the IRT construction 100 years ago and apply to the new 7 line construction today? Or the decision to not build express tracks on the 2nd Avenue subway? Originally, the plans were for a stop to be constructed at 41st Street and 10th Avenue, but that stop has since been cancelled. Is the MTA missing an opportunity that they will regret in 100 years? Or are putting the chicken before the egg and ignoring the examples of Columbus Circle and the 7 Line to Flushing where the subways helped fuel development rather than serve existing development?
Subways and other mass transit options have been shown to be powerful tools that the city can use to influence development patterns long out into the future. Perhaps subways and express stops can be used to alter development patterns. Whereas express stops have been shown to increase rental values when compared to local subway stops, an express line on Second avenue could evenly distribute higher end residential areas with more affordable real estate in between; rather than simply reducing the price of real estate linearly as you move up Second Avenue away from midtown and downtown? Perhaps New York City is missing an opportunity to define the next century of development along two of its corridors by not attempting to match the vision August Belmont…
“Mr. N.Y. Times, tear down this wall”
Posted on | January 21, 2010 | No Comments
I sympathize with the New York Times. They’re a venerable institution with a long history of being a respected source for news, but I think they’re making a big mistake by moving behind a “paywall” in 2011.
This is a case of an old media company not having the guts to stick to a new model. I have read that the drop off of “advertising revenue” was one such justification for the change. But that seems hollow: everyone lost money this year. There was a recession.
So though on the surface this seems like the justifiable and obvious answer; but is the answer really worth sacrificing the advantage in visitors the New York Times gains by being a respected voice? The New York times brand is strengthened and its reputation is strengthened due to its free nature. Chris Anderson has explored how “reputation” is another kind of currency in his book Free.
Reputation can be used to bring about a new business model: news as a service, rather than news as a commodity. The News is public and is out there- and unless the New York Times paywall comes with a compelling argument for why their news is better than the news I’ll find for free on Cnn.com the traffic will not follow.
The Times is not the Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal is more niche and does take a different approach by covering something very specific in depth and providing it in way people want to see it. The Times is a jack of all trades with opinions, world news, a little bit local- but does nothing that no one else doesn’t do (for free!) .
So News as a Service?
This proposal may sound a bit extreme, but here me out. The New York Times should be a service provider for its news, and it should start by subsidizing E-readers. I’m not kidding. How about offering an incredible deal (or free) Kindle or Nook if you buy a 2 year subscription to have the times downloaded onto your E-reader. Subsidize a new means of reading the news and create a demand for your product. This worked so well for Gilette, why not the New York Times?
The reason why the Times should remain free online is because it will build a demand for the premium product and maintain the reputation as a world leader in all around news, but by providing a value add- something more than just news which will make the Times a leader in the new wave of media.
*I don’t work for the Times, and I know this is completely unsolicited advice for a major Newspaper. But, I think this plan would work.
Augmented Reality as another re-envisioning of the future that never happened
Posted on | January 15, 2010 | No Comments
As children, many people were brought up on the science-fiction of the 1970’s and 1980’s. There seemed to be a bounty of promise in this vision of a 3D virtualized, “everything at your fingers” holographic world. ”Augmented Reality” seems to be another attempt to reconstruct the idyllic science-fiction fantasies of many adult’s childhood and less an attempt to address any real problem.
Second Life and Augmented Reality.
Anecdotally, when I was first getting involved with people interested in delivering innovative media to students I was shocked at how often the word Second Life came up. There was talk of using this as an interactive space to “go where the young people are,” and legions of librarians and self-described “media innovators” went to conferences to see how to use Second Life in their classrooms to engage with students on a digital level. The problem that was overlooked by many enthralled with the promise of this 3D world was that it wasn’t where the young people were.
Young people who grew up in the digital age have always had technology in their lives did not grow up dreaming about Tron-like 3D worlds or fantasize about the day that their security GUI would look like something from Jurassic Park. I’m positing that the reason why young people were not in Second Life was because they didn’t see the utility in it for enabling them to communicate more quickly and efficiently. The Milennials want functionality, not style.
Where Augmented Reality Comes into Play
Among these library types and older media innovators, the Second Life enthusiasm seems to have fizzled and has been replaced by another attempt to re-creating the science fiction dreams of the 1980s. Augmented Reality applications and writing today is awash with literature about how digital overlays will transform significantly the way that we interact with one another within the next decade (Recall similar language used to describe the use of 3D worlds?).
A look at the trends that have caught on have been decidedly low-tech ideas. Twitter is a hot tool among the Milennial generation as well as other young people. Quick loading, low overhead instant gratification. Facebook is a primarily all-text platform which appealed to young college students in the Mid-2000s while MySpace with all of its technological razzle-dazzle is hemorrhaging users. I don’t think this is a coincidence: for a generation who has always lived in the age of the Internet, instant gratification and speed is what the winning tools have had in common and what many failures have not. Fifteen years into web page design, we know well how users use webpages:
People are impatient on the Internet. Instantly gratify them, or they’re out. - Jakob Nielsen
I think it’s naivety to believe that users of phones will be willing to give more time to find information while interacting in the real world than while passively sitting in front of a computer. Fifteen years into web use, what evidence do we have that a slower loading and more difficult to use version of something that exists in a simpler format will be preferred?
For people who’ve lived with Search Engines their entire lives, what could be easier than just typing in a word, or an address, and combining that with GPS be able to pull up what is around you? How is that easier (or faster) than holding up your phone and waiting for an image to register and map things in 3-dimensional space? It seems that Augmented Reality is delivering on a vision promised to an older generation that promised computers acting as a direct intermediary in real space; whereas, the younger generation is more attuned to a representational and symbolic world- where information is delivered quickly and efficiently. If so then I ask, what is Augmented Reality the solution to?
Many things are “cool” but only those that are “useful” are adopted. I know that technologists should ignore a new technology only to their own peril; that is not what I am proposing here. I am suggesting only that before AR moves forward in any meaningful way we need to identify who AR is attempting to serve?; how it improves upon what is currently out there?; and additionally, how can AR add value to everyday life while making sense within the normal face to face interactive process?
The MTA; another way out?
Posted on | January 11, 2010 | 1 Comment
These images are taken from Benajmin over at Second Avenue Sagas, and I’m borrowing them as a great historical image about the power of transit construction, to summarize the point he very elegantly makes, but the story of New York’s development pattern is highly 
related to subway construction. Flushing is shown in the top image when the 7 was just built, and the bottom image shows the same site only 20 years later.
But despite the economic benefits of subway construction which include increased property values near Rail Stations (see Dr. Hess’s work in Buffalo, NY, or more a New York City oriented answer, check Craigslist and look at the rentals section). Additionally, subway transit is not elastic to cost, as many riders do not have another option for getting to work, but transit is elastic to frequency of service. So here’s an idea on how to make more money for the MTA.
Increase service. Develop additional light rail. It sounds radical, but perhaps its time for a new way of looking at the MTA fiscal crisis?
The need for a new kind of copyright
Posted on | November 19, 2009 | No Comments
I have embraced with “open arms” Creative Commons’ effort to provide open and customizable copyrights. It has become quite clear that the “one size fits all” copyright of old no longer works for everyone. There’s another kind of “copy right” that I think is missing in modern law and that is the idea of an academic copyright.
With the advent of commercial ventures which use student work in ways that students may not have outrightly consented to, the time has come for a change. Previously the argument has been that these internet services are an extension of the implied right to evaluate and share which a student grants to a professor or evaluator when writing a paper. I ask, why doesn’t a student have the right to grant that ability to share and evaluate, but outrightly forbid the use of their intellectual property by any group aiming to make money off of it? Certain Creative Common licenses permit the free sharing of work except in the cases of commercial ventures, so why can’t students do the same thing with their work?
Shouldn’t content owners have a say in how their work is used commercially by other companies?
Data Security + National Security = Headaches
Posted on | November 3, 2009 | No Comments
The New York Times recently published an article about a new requirement which will mandate that passengers booking airline tickets must have an exact match between their ID and their boarding pass name.
When web programmers create a form to accept data they have to do the thinking for the computer. For example, we often assume that everyone will have a first name and last name, and possible even a middle name. This is fine when no one is harmed by not having the proper fields for their special name. The 1% whose names may not conform are not sufficiently harmed when they sign up for an epicurious account. Ideal? No. Acceptable, probably.
However, when we come into circumstances where exclusion will be a violation of a person’s basic rights, our jobs as programmers become much more difficult. A name like L. Lawrence Nutson (from the article) or Sainbayar (who alike some Mongolians only has one name) present a problem because they do not conform to the “norm.”
The reason web applications do not accept certain characters such as apostrophes, hyphens or other characters is due to the fact they can be used in code that can compromise the system. Simply put, it’s a matter of customer security. These characters are stripped so that it is impossible for a hacker to hack your form via incorrect data.
So here we have a situation where national security practices run against general best application security practices.
Now clearly, the impetus is on programmers to come up with better ways of accepting name entry, reconfiguring databases to accept all permutations while still maintaining a secure form. Perhaps the days of having two (or even 3) input boxes for your name are going the way of the Quagga an freeform name boxes that accept far more characters, perhaps sacrificing additional database space or that extra nanosecond of processing time that often leads to short name fields, and allowing everyone to order airline tickets no matter what their name looks like.
What I’ve been doing the last week
Posted on | October 12, 2009 | 1 Comment
Al-Iman Mosque, Steinway St.
I’ve also spent some time getting to know my neighborhood a little better. I recently discovered a book at work about Queens and the people that have lived their lives here- I was especially attracted to the chapters about people in Little Egypt in the neighborhood where I live. It’s always seemed such a peaceful neighborhood with a diversity of people from all walks of life and nationalities. I was unaware of the violence that had occurred in the wake of the September 11th attacks and how it had affected business owners and residents. I talked more about it in the ASHP Now and Then Blog here, and am now wondering if perhaps Little Egypt and the Steinway BID would make for an interesting thesis project.
And finally, it is with great satisfaction I am able to say that we launched the new ASHP website at work. It was quite a challenge pulling all of the pieces together. I am very happy with the way I was able to use wordpress as a CMS to facilitate easier management of the websites by staff and still being able to faithfully implement the design that was created by the design team. It was a great feeling being able to have launched a website of this scale as the only programmer involved on the project. If there was anything I would have done different a second time around, I would have implemented more thorough server side handling of redirects and error pages for the nearly a thousand .html pages that were a part of their old site; however, overall, I think the site is a great accomplishment for myself and the organization. More information on other projects I’ve worked on is available on my Portfolio page.
The High Line
Posted on | September 25, 2009 | No Comments
Firstly, I want to say that the High Line is beautiful on the surface. It’s a fantastic looking re-use experiment than stands out in the meatpacking district.
However, that’s where the accolades end. It floors me that despite so many neighborhoods in New York City failing to meet the NYC2030 plan requirements of 1.5 acres per thousand people that a neighborhood as park rich as this one can somehow lay claim to the most expensive to maintain park in the entire city. (one block away lies the Hudson River Park)
The news has started coming to the forefront that the park was also constructed using Amazon rain forest trees. Rain forest preservation issues aside, its hardly a sustainable practice to rely on wood from overseas.
Now clearly some things are going right: the park is seeking to create a BID to help offset the massive cost of maintaining the park. I support strongly the rights of families and businesses within the vicinity of the High Line to support an amenity that gives them value. Where I think the City should draw the line is in the 1 million in support that they will give the park annually, and “The High Line has twice as many parks enforcement patrol officers as all of the Bronx“.
Though gorgeous, it seems that the High Line Park is an unfortunate example of the second class status of other neighborhoods where park space is more badly needed.
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