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Craig Newmark on the Web’s Next Big Problem

GigaOM

- 15 hours and 53 minutes ago

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I had the chance to sit down with Craigslist Founder Craig Newmark recently at his favorite breakfast spot in San Francisco, just a block or two from the house where Craigslist was launched 15 years ago this month. We talked about a number of his favorite topics, including the bird feeders he keeps having to replace (because the squirrels he likes to post about on Twitter destroy some 10-15 of them every year), his love of dogs (he doesn’t own one himself, but keeps dog treats with him to feed the various neighborhood pets he runs into during the day, most of whom he knows by name) and — last but not least — what he thinks is the next big problem the web has to solve.

And what is that? The question of who to trust online, according to Newmark. To solve it, he believes that what the web needs is a “distributed trust network” that allows us to manage our online relationships and reputations. I just happened to have a Flip video camera with me, so I convinced him to let me capture a few minutes of him discussing this concept; I’ve embedded the clip below.

Newmark called some form of distributed trust system “the killingest of killer apps” for the web over the next decade (he said he wasn’t sure that was the best way to describe it, but was trying out to see how it sounded). He talked about “reputation and trust ruling the web, just the way it does in real life,” and how he was looking to big players such as Google, Facebook and Amazon as the kinds of entities that would have the scale to handle such a distributed trust or reputation management network. And he said that despite some occasional missteps by both Google and Facebook when it came to privacy (Google Buzz and Facebook Beacon, respectively), he believed that both were acting in good faith and had a policy of “not being evil.”

The Craigslist founder also said that he saw a place for government to be involved in this process — something he hoped he would be able to help with — but that there would need to be a private-public partnership to provide checks and balances. And he hoped that the major players such as Google and Facebook would co-operate to create some kind of universal standard or platform to support such a trust or reputation network, rather than fighting with each other. Newmark said that as a society we needed to “get our act together and make this happen,” adding with a wink that the idea for the distributed trust network was all part of his “hidden agenda to move ahead on the web to try and save the world.”

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Amazon allows Kindle application for Mac computers

Square Now Being Used For Mobile Payments At Political Fundraisers

TechCrunch

- 17 hours and 4 minutes ago

Jack Dorsey’s Square was unveiled last December as an innovative way to let people quickly and easily accept physical credit card payments from their mobile phone.

Since then, Square, which has been in limited beta, has been used in a variety of use cases. E.g. philanthopic organization charity:water recently used Square at the SXSW festival to collect donations.

A local flower cart in San Francisco is using Square to take payments from customers. Denim, a jeans store in New York is using Square to take payments from shoppers. We even used Square at this year’s Crunchies to raise money for the UCSF Foundation.

Here’s how Square works: A small device attaches to the phone via the headset/microphone jack. The device gets the power it needs to send data to the phone from the swipe of the card, and sends the information over the microphone connection. The device is compatible with both the iPhone and Android. It’s similar in some ways to PayPal, but anyone can now accept physical credit card payments, too. With no contracts or monthly fees. People are sent receipts by text and email. If you haven’t seen Square in action, check out this video.

And now, a new use case has popped up for Square: political fundraising.

Square is currently being used in two campaigns. Silicon Valley VC Josh Becker, who is running for state assembly in California’s 21st district, has been using Square at fundraising events. And lawyer Reshma Saujani, who is running for Congress in New York’s 14th district, is using Square at campaign fundraising events, including at an event in San Francisco on Friday.

Square is ideal for taking money at political fundraisers for several reasons.

Currently, if you want to donate money at a fundraising event, you often have to fill out a form and hand over a check or cash at the event. If you don’t have your checkbook or cash handy (which, many of us don’t), credit cards are the only option. You can write down your credit card number and info for fundraisers to charge at a later date, but you have to trust that the fundraiser keeps track of that information and paper.

With Square, there is both a convenience added for both the payee and fundraiser. The donation is instantly processed, and Square will send the receipt via SMS or email to the payee. Of course, political contributions and donations are a little more complicated because of the reporting requirements associated with donations.

For many types of donations, you need to take the donator’s name, occupation, address, and other information. Currently Square doesn’t allow users to input all of this information but Dorsey says that they are releasing Square’s API to allow fundraisers to build additional applications on top of Square, where they could input all of the necessary data. Once this is enabled, Square will allows fundraisers to eliminate paper collection and payments all together.

Dorsey says he’s already getting significant interest from politicians and political candidates across the country, but because Square is in limited beta, is being selective about how the service is distributed. Dorsey expects Square to be open to the public sometime in the next few months.

Valued at $40 million even before launch, Square is off to an impressive start. And technology’s most notable investors and leaders seem to think so as well.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, investor Ron Conway, Google’s Marissa Mayer, Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley, Digg creator Kevin Rose, investor Esther Dyson and a host of others have invested in Square. The company also raised funding from Khosla Ventures.

CrunchBase Information SquareInformation provided by CrunchBase

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Le Dr Claus Christiansen nommé à la tête de CCBR-SYNARC

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The 3 Best Things I Saw at SXSW

GigaOM

- 17 hours and 43 minutes ago

The “location wars” between rival mobile check-in services, the unmet expectations of the Twitter keynote and the hordes of newbies crowding out regulars (as they do every year) were some of the leading threads at SXSW this year. And — rightfully so — everyone was talking about them. Meanwhile, from the outside, skeptics pooh-poohed geeks getting drunk on promo budgets while pretending that changing the world had anything to do with why they were there. Also fair. But somewhere in between those two takeaways fall my three highlights from SXSW, which I think showed us the way social technology will work in the near future:

Foursquare tattoos seemed as ubiquitous at SXSW as people staring down at their phones when they walked into a room.

While the competition among location-based services will hopefully result in a winner, loser or combination thereof sooner than later (because honestly, who cares), using either Foursquare or Gowalla in Austin this past week was a really cool experience. Rather than seeing scattered updates from the few friends you have who happen to avidly use social media, at SXSW location-based services were able to take a larger-scale pulse of where people were moving. So as you walked down the hall, the wisdom of crowds would tell you that 300 people were listening to a session in Ballroom D, or that 200 were already drinking over at Six Lounge. Sure, that just pushes hordes towards hordes, but it also reveals a vibrant ecosystem — and felt completely different than using mobile social sites at home.
It was totally awesome to have reliable and quick AT&T phone service and mobile Internet. As I tweeted on my first day in town, “My breakout stars of #sxsw so far: excellent, ubiquitous Wi-Fi and great AT&T service. No joke.” And trying to use my iPhone upon returning to San Francisco has made it all the more obvious how awful we have it by comparison. It’s no fun to be a second-class mobile citizen after you’ve gotten a taste of what could be. I completely support MG at TechCrunch’s take: “Dear AT&T, Whatever You’re Doing At SXSW, Please Do It In San Francisco.”

A snapshot of Austin check-ins from SimpleGeo's Vicarious.ly mashup

You’ve undoubtedly heard horror stories about exposing the backchannel of audience conversation during conference panels and how that detracts and distracts from the core content. But I had a really excellent experience engaging with tweets during the panel I moderated. First of all, the crowd helped direct us to choose a less unwieldy hashtag than the one assigned — #contentme instead of #contentrelevanttome. Then I kept a Twitter search page open to see what people were saying. When the tweetstream was drowned out by fun facts about coincidences on Hunch given by panelist Hugo Liu, the company’s chief scientist (for instance, if you tell Hunch you like to dance, there’s a very high correlation that you’ll also say you like using Macs), it got harder for me to pick out audience questions. So I asked them to direct the questions to me by mentioning @lizgannes in a tweet. When I got too many questions to process, I was able to choose the ones that had been retweeted by other people on Twitter (who may have not even been in the room).

That’s kind of a long story, but the point is that I hadn’t actually planned to do any of it. But because so many people in the room were using Twitter at the same time, we were able to use it to better tweak the panel on the fly in order to address their needs. (Though I did feel afterwards that I should watch a video of the panel; multitasking is damn hard!)

Top photo courtesy of Flickr user schatz.

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SOILWORK To Tour North America With DEATH ANGEL, AUGURY, MUTINY WITHIN, SWASHBUCKLE

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U.S. Postal Service Temporarily Blocks Anti-Gay Bulk Mailing

-Daily. Gay. News.- Towleroad: a premium site for modern gay men.

- 22 hours and 26 minutes ago

The U.S. Postal Service temporarily blocked the mailing of a bulk newsletter from anti-gay group Family Research Institute advocating against the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, saying the content was "obscene" and "incited force-able resistance against the government," KKTV reports:

"Local postal officials sent the newsletter to Washington for review. Wednesday morning, the United States Postal Service Pricing and Classifications board overruled the local interpretation that the newsletter violated guidelines for a non-profit bulk mailing rate. FRI will now be allowed to mail out their newsletter at a non-profit rate, which is 3 cents less than the standard mailing rate."

Read the content of the mailing (I think it's obscene too, but not for any reasons that would get it banned from mailing), AFTER THE JUMP...

****CONTENT OF MAILING FROM ANTI-GAY FAMILY RESEARCH INSTITUTE****

Dear Supporter,

Well, a Democrat is President, and gays-in-the-military is up again for debate! This month’s newsletter deals with this issue, as do the excerpts of the following Feb. 8 letter from a Captain to Admiral Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

“This letter is in response to your shocking statement last week that you advocate homosexuals openly serving in the military services. I seriously question the wisdom of your position... I am a retired Navy Captain... and... in my more than 31 years of active duty, I commanded two ships, served as Executive Officer on two ships, commanded Coastal Squadron ONE (Swift Boats) in Vietnam, and was Chief Staff Officer on an Amphibious Squadron.... I received a Juris Doctorate from the Hastings College of Law. Like you, I encountered homosexuals throughout my Navy career and in civilian life. Unlike you, I do not find they are more deserving than non-homosexuals or that they constitute a viable or necessary body of troops for the defense of our country.

“My experience is Naval... the best analogy to a ship at sea is a prison.... During my enlisted service, homosexuals seemed to be a clumsy lot. They had a tendency to repeatedly fall headfirst down an engine room ladder. Some were even known to trip on deck and “fall” overboard. The crew had a way of policing themselves to eliminate homosexual advances.... It has been my experience that if sexual favors are available aboard ship, some enterprising sailor, petty officer, or officer will find a way to take advantage of the offer. There is usually a senior/junior relationship in such exchanges and the senior partner will reward the junior with preferential treatment, such as duty assignments, watches, leave, liberty, and advancement. Such preferential treatment can’t be hidden from other crewmembers and tends to destroy the chain of command, discipline and morale. If a Chief Petty Officer, for example, is having sexual relations with a non-rated sailor, it will have an adverse impact on those petty officers between the two in the chain of command.... That sexual misconduct in the Navy exists to this day is obvious. I recall that a lesbian ring was discovered on the USS NORTON SOUND back in the late 60’s or early 70’s. At about the same time my wife, now a retired Navy Commander,... was aware of many cases of homosexuality involving the WAVES assigned to the Barracks. I also recall that one of the cruisers returning from the First Gulf War reported 40% of the female crewmembers were pregnant after a six-month deployment.

“In all my years of service, I never encountered a Commanding Officer who â€˜asked’ a subordinate if he was a homosexual.... In regard to heterosexual behavior, the UCMJ also proscribes common law marriage under the heading of Unlawful Cohabitation (with or without evidence of sexual intercourse). It sanctions adultery and prostitution (for both the prostitute and the patron). In the case of an officer, merely “consorting with a notorious prostitute” constitutes an offense, again even without evidence of sexual intercourse. The problem is that common law marriage is legal in 11 states and the District of Columbia. I don’t believe that adultery is a criminal offense in any state today. And in my home state of Nevada, even prostitution is legal. I don’t recall you asking Congress to legalize heterosexual sodomy, adultery, prostitution, or common law marriage. There are many punitive articles in the UCMJ that have no relationship to the satisfactory performance of military duties, yet you single out homosexuals for preferred treatment. Again, I must ask â€˜why?’

“The argument I hear most often expounded by the homophiles is that the â€˜Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy deprives the military of outstanding young men and women who want nothing more than to defend their country and that they have the ability to operate a radar, or a gas turbine, or a gun as well as a heterosexual. That can’t be true.... But, even if it were true, are homosexuals really worth the administrative problems they would create by their mere existence? The Navy, today, does not willingly accept GED holders... Minor criminal records are a bar to enlistment. Visible tattoos and piercings are not permitted. Are these aberrations more damning than sodomy? Is it your contention that cohabitors, adulterers, prostitutes, young men and women with tattoos, those with only GEDs, or the obese cannot serve as well as homosexuals? If so, what is your empirical evidence to support such an argument? If we get to pick and choose which laws we uphold, which laws are next on the line to ignore? Carnal Knowledge? I would think a service man or woman who has sex with a minor (Carnal Knowledge) could perform military duties as well, if not better, than a homosexual. At least we don’t have children in combat, or in the military at large, for them to accost....

“Have you considered the likelihood that some of the homosexuals will request sex change procedures... Do you also advocate same-sex marriage or â€˜partnerships?’ Will the homosexual’s partner be entitled to dependents’ benefits, including health care, BAQ, military base access, and commissary and exchange privileges? Will they be entitled to military housing? Would they be entitled to sex change procedures at government expense? “While serving as Executive Officer on USS CATAMOUNT (LSD-17) in 1967, one of the Radarmen was arrested by local police. While inventorying his personal effects a photograph of the sailor performing fellatio on another male was discovered. The police turned the photo over to the Shore Patrol, who forwarded it to me. During an investigation it was determined that five of the ship’s Radarmen were involved in a male prostitution ring. They declared that while in Radarman Class â€˜A’ School at Treasure Island, their instructors convinced them that they could augment their military pay by providing homosexual services to gays in San Francisco. They took advantage of the opportunity presented and continued such activity in San Diego. CATAMOUNT sailed absent several Radarmen and the Class â€˜A’ School lost several instructors. Are these otherwise competent Radarmen the type of sailors you want on your ships? I hope not!

Lawrence R. Jefferis, Captain, U. S. Navy (Ret.), Las Vegas, NV 89117

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California’s Smart Meter Battle: Google vs. Utilities

GigaOM

- 1 days and 13 hours ago

There’s a battle looming in California over smart meters and energy prices. Google says the state should require its big utilities to give near real-time pricing information to every smart meter-enabled customer by the end of next year. California’s big three utilities â€” Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric â€” have raised plenty of objections to that deadline, and the California Public Utilities Commission is holding a workshop in San Francisco on Friday to talk about it.

The debate, which could influence smart grid policies across the country, underscores an important difference between the two things Google wants utilities to provide â€”Â energy “usage” data versus “pricing information.” Electricity usage is a real thing that can be measured in real time with magnets and wires, either by a smart meter or lots of other devices. Electricity prices, on the other hand, are contrived, during or after the fact, by a convoluted market that has to keep demand and supply perfectly balanced at all times. Delivering pricing data in real time will be challenging for smart meter networks as they’re currently being deployed. So in other words, for utilities, delivering power comes first, figuring out who pays for it (and how much) comes later.

Most utility customers pay steady, regulated rates, and don’t get to see these complex price fluctuations â€” at least, not yet. But even getting slightly more complex tiered or time-of-use prices to customers through their smart meters could be problematic for current utility networks, given that most smart meter deployments today aren’t set up to handle that. As Lee Krevat, director of smart grid initiatives at San Diego Gas & Electric, put it in an interview this week, “We didn’t put in an Internet to each meter, or broadband to each meter â€” and â€˜real time’ really implies broadband to give near real time pricing data.”

Most smart meter networks, including those being deployed by California’s big utilities, are lower-bandwidth and designed to be read every 15 minutes or hourly, not in real time. While there are ways to get faster or more current price information to homeowners, Krevat doesn’t see such a network being the best, or most cost-effective, way, to do it.

After all, “The rates exist on our Web site. The rate schedule doesn’t change very often,” he said. “Do you want to spend your bandwidth transmitting something that could be figured out at a customer end point based on their consumption data?”

Or, to put it another way, would utility customers support paying for the ability to see pricing data? The customers are the ones who pay for utilities’ smart meter system upgrades through increased rates. That certainly differentiates the utilities’ incentives from Google, which wants usage and pricing data opened to third party systems like its PowerMeter home energy management platform. Google promises PowerMeter will be free, but building a system that can provide it with data may still cost customers in one way or another.

SDG&E is working with Google’s PowerMeter and has about 125 customers testing it out â€” but right now they’re using day-old energy usage information, and currently PowerMeter doesn’t deliver any real-time pricing information. Eventually, California’s three big utilities plan to turn on their smart meters’ home area network (HAN) connections, but they’re doing a lot of testing first. Krevat said that’s an important first step in designing a system that’s both cheap and effective â€” “Understanding the model for how the customer wants to use it is the first step,” he said. “Then you can decide the technical solution.”

Ted Reguly, SDG&E’s smart meter program director, said customers mainly want some kind of current bill calculation, as well as some kind of pre-set alert when that monthly tally gets too high. Someday people will want to hook up smart appliances and other in-home energy controls to the smart meter via the HAN. But as SDG&E noted in its comments to the CPUC filed in March, “the Smart Meter system as currently designed requires more than HAN to provide customer access to near real time information on prices.”

Beyond these issues, it will be important to clarify what Google means by “pricing information,” Reguly said. Does Google mean the flat rates homeowners are scheduled to pay, or the actual prices that they end up paying after the bill is finalized? “You might think the cost of electricity is X, but it’s really Y because of bill settlement two or three days later,” he said â€” and getting the more accurate figures to customers in real time would require utilities to completely overhaul the batch processing-based back-office billing systems they now use.

Andy Tang, PG&E’s smart grid chief, said during a recent energy symposium in Berkeley, Calif. that asking utilities to replace their batch-based systems with real-time systems was “impossible” in such a short timeframe, at least not at costs that regulators would be willing to pass on to customers. Tang also expressed some frustration with Google’s push for deadlines for delivering real-time pricing, given that the federal government is still working on standards for all the smart grid systems to make this possible, he said. As PG&E wrote in its comments to the CPUC, “No amount of cajoling or wishing by one vendor or another that it happen by an arbitrary date can change the need for development of such uniform standards.”

Emerging Standards

Just how those standards will emerge remains to be seen. ZigBee, the wireless technology that’s taken a lead in smart meter-HAN connectivity, is working on a second iteration of its Smart Energy Profile specification for energy data that will include some pricing information, Reguly said. For commercial and industrial customers, open demand response technologies like Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s OpenADR or EnerNOC’s PowerTalk, are expected to embed price signals as part of an automated system to turn down devices to help utilities reduce peak loads.

Perhaps broadband could be the solution. The National Institute of Standards and Technology, the federal entity setting smart grid standards, has asked the smart grid industry to comment on whether some or all of the customer’s smart grid connections should come through broadband connections independent of the smart meter. There’s a long list of companies looking at selling energy monitoring gear directly to consumers, either as stand-alone products or bundled with home broadband offerings or security systems. Google is working with utilities and smart meter maker Itron, but is also partnering with in-home energy devices from Energy Inc. and AlertMe with its PowerMeter.

All three California utilities have asked CPUC to avoid any hard deadlines in favor of looser policy guidance. But the issue COULD comE to every state. The Federal Communications Commission’s new U.S. National Broadband Plan includes some strong words for state utility regulators to encourage utilities to deliver real time pricing data to consumers. To wit:

“States should require electric utilities to provide consumers access to, and control of, their own digital energy information, including real-time information from smart meters and historical consumption, price and bill data over the Internet. If states fail to develop reasonable policies over the next 18 months, Congress should consider national legislation to cover consumer privacy and the accessibility of energy data.”

Just how the CPUC decides to take up Google’s deadline â€” as well as how it comes to define pricing data in the process â€” will be closely watched topics in the smart grid industry. Stay tuned for more details later this week.

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Mashable’s Weekly Guide to Social Media Job Opportunities

Mashable!

- 1 days and 14 hours ago

If you’re seeking a job in social media, we’d like to help out. For starters, Mashable’s Job Lists section gathers together all our resource lists, how-tos and expert guides to help you get hired. In particular, you might want to see our articles on How to Leverage Social Media for Career Success and How to Find a Job on Twitter.

But we’d like to help in a more direct way, too. Mashable’s job boards are a place for socially-savvy companies to find people like you. This week and every week, Mashable features its coveted job board listings for a variety of positions in the web, social media space, and beyond. Have a look at what’s good and new on our job boards:

Mashable Job Board ListingsSenior SEO Strategist at Infuse Creative in Santa Monica, CA

The Senior SEO Strategist and Provider develops and provides effective Search Engine Optimization strategies for client websites, with the goal of generating increased targeted Web traffic and higher lead generation.