Author Archives: olia

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There is no Export Function ⁋ by olia

+ 2012-12-06


On the 4th of December 2012, Jason Scott, founder of Archive Team that restlessly rescues the files we uploaded all around the Internet, gave a wonderful lecture in Stuttgart. “Where are the Files?” tells the story of Jason’s personal obsession with copying and describes approachers and algorithms Archive Team uses to save the web. In some days the video version will be available at the Merz Akademie’s website.

In the end of his talk Jason confronted the audience with the three questions one should find answers to before signing up to an online service:

  1. What it can do that I can’t do myself?
  2. What are they doing with my stuff?
  3. Where is the “export” function?

The last issue is extremely interesting. Jason suggests that we shouldn’t deal with services which only offer upload options without providing reasonable ways to export your own data back to you. True! His next remark — that on the technical side implementing an “export button” is not much more work than to program an import one — also makes sense …

… but only if we assume that users want to download exactly the same what they have uploaded. That would mean if you uploaded 10 videos to youtube and then you clicked an export button and download them back to your hard disk. Or If you want just to take all your tweets, or photos, or songs back from where they were stored.

However, in my opinion, what users of Facebook, for example, would want to export is not the same as what they uploaded. They uploaded data, but want to get back the narration. To export a story is an effort on completely different scale, conceptually and programming wise.

Additionally, the story that you thought you were telling (“Timeline is your collection of the photos, stories, and experiences that tell your story“), is in fact told, designed, scripted, staged by the service. You can hit an export button till you die, it will not become yours.

So, back to the first question “What [a service] can do that I can’t do myself?”. To answer it you should probably know if you are able to narrate with your data yourself.

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Petabytes, they are like Kilobytes, just louder. @textfiles ⁋ by olia

+ 2012-10-26


Some time ago Jason Scott posted an extremely beautiful 20 sec video “My Petabyte Roommate”. How comes it has only 300 views, I don’t know. I watch it 5 times every day since three weeks and can’t stop admiring the fact that computers that store web history appear like starry backgrounds of the earliest web pages.

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“surfing with a purpose” ⁋ by olia

2012-10-01

CA: Yeah, so you’re surfing with a purpose, kind of. You have a hunch now that maybe people in the Pentagon neighborhood are using Felix, and you’re kind of also cataloging other information, but you’re mainly looking. Maybe it’s like these things are being presented to you, the information is being presented to you and you are just trying to identify what’s important.

(Cory Arcangel interviewed us for strictly-formal.org)

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“Find Me There” ⁋ by olia

2012-09-16

Every day, since March, after Philipp Budka’s presentation, I browse through profiles on MyKnet, Canada’s Aboriginal social network and can say that amount of people moving to Facebook is growing. At the same time, people with Facebook profiles continue to update their MyKnet profiles. Some times there are only reminders that the person has moved, some times proper illustrated reports about their life.

Some black screens:





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Web Designers vs History of Web Design @abookapart ⁋ by olia

2012-08-22

I like the idea of A Book Apart to make “brief books for people who make websites”, and I order their books for my interface design students to provide them with text written by designers who are a) not making websites in Photoshop b) have their opinion about web design as a profession c) can write.

But the book #5 Designing for Emotion gives me hard time. Look at the titles of the first 4 chapters … and now imagine that they (and the rest of the book) are written without any mention or reflection of web sites people were making in the 90’s and are still making. Sites that are emotional and personal and human for real, not because of a marketing strategy.

The author, Aarron Walter, confesses in the beginning that for him the WWW started with dot.com with the gold zeros and gold ones rush. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t know or doesn’t want to know that the web outside of company websites and facebook profiles is and always was a very human environment. And beside it, makers of early web pages command an impressive set of instruments to appeal to the emotions of other users, to keep their audience and to be special and authentic.

The ignorance of web design professionals to the vernacular web started in 1997 and still progressing. Instead of valuing the rich history of their own medium, they’re proud when their web sites look like comics, magazine spreads, bottle labels or cartoons. Web designers, learn from the users, learn from the 19 (not 15!) years of web design, dig through the Geocities Torrent with us. It will bring you closer to “emotional design’s primary goal to facilitate human-to-human communication” (p.29), if this is really the goal.

P.S. Designers at Work

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please bear with me ⁋ by olia

+ 2012-05-22

Found this picture on my desktop. I can’t remember what profile it comes from. May be it is not even from Geocities. And I’m not sure if it was planned for this blog or for car metaphors…

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This may take up to 20 sec ⁋ by olia

+ + + 2012-04-28

Why in the second part of the 90’s animated GIFs were rarely (outside of porno sites) used to show film and video sequences? Because even half a second of heavily compressed and and downscaled, barely recognizable footage would be still too heavy and slow network of that time.

In 1998, Shocking Blue fan Greg converted one second of a TV performance of the group’s hit song “Venus” into a GIF. It is 160×120 pixles, contains 15 frames and weights 93KB. Greg didn’t dare to confront the visitors of the page with such a huge file.1 He uses a static image and suggests to start loading the animation with a click, but to be ready that “it may take 20 sec”.

Starting image

Animated GIF

The moment in the original video

Original URL: http://www.geocities.com/ofmang/greg/shockblu.html

  1. Just for comparison, the third picture in the Alternative Animated GIF Timeline, a video loop as common in GIFs today, is 461×322 pixels, 2MB, 42 frames.
    [↩]
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word ⁋ by olia

+ 2012-04-25


Original URL: http://www.geocities.com/vienna/4302/

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V(RM)Lcome to my page! ⁋ by olia

+ + + 2012-04-25

null

Original URL: http://www.geocities.com/~johanh/

The page is still on(VRM)line.

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Designing for the Future ⁋ by olia

+ 2012-03-21

New Media researcher Anne Helmond asked if her 1997 “Unofficial Eric’s Trip Homepage” at SunsetStrip/3500/ was archived.

It is there. The lo-fi (html) part is almost complete and functional, only guest book and “Sounds” are missing. Hi-Fi link leads to a non existing ethi.html.

As I mentioned in Ruins and Templates of Geocities, we rarely know whether missing files were lost due to glitches during the archiving process, or to the site owner’s lack of skill or failure to maintain the files and links between them. But this time I could ask the user personally what was there.

Anne said that probably she never ever made a HiFi version and can’t remember what she planned for this.

It is so 1997! I remember myself believing that broadband is just some weeks away and preparing for the nearest future with links like that. This can be it. Broken links were links to the files to be made very very soon.

Original URL: http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/3500/

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