What are you coding? Let us know, copy paste a snippet to Pastie. Pastie is a service for anyone to communicate through the exchange of quick short code snippets. It is a type of Twitter for code. In fact Pastie is more loosely connected to the “rest of the world” than Twitter. There is no user system but a simple API. Besides manual pasting you can also paste from your console, from your text editor, or from an IRC channel, Pastie is close to where you work.

Screenshot from a code snippet on Pastie.

Pastie displays the snippets color coded and well indented, must haves for reading any type of code. It currently supports 14 programming languages including Shell Script, Ruby, Java, C++, SQL, and CSS.

Every snippet has a unique URL, so you can reference them elsewhere. It is generally used in the developer forums. Rather than pasting the code in the forum people just give a link to the beautifully displayed snippet on Pastie.

The simple Pastie API enables developing interesting new applications. There are already remote interfaces that enable using Pastie from TextMate, Vim, Shell console, and Ruby console. Using the API is quite easy, all you do is connect via HTTP and send the code snippet and the language type. I think Pastie could play nicely with any other web application. I can think of using Pastie as part of a social networking application for example. That would enable sharing “my code snippets” with friends and see their snippet stream in my large-scale conversations. Just like video or photo stream, code snippets from friends can be fed in to our fat RSS readers. That would make programming more fun, and social?

Pastie is created by Josh Goebel, one of the contributors to the Ruby on Rails project and co-author of the popular Ruby on Rails forum application Beast.

I’d like to mention another fantastic pasting system Paste (currently offline), an artwork from Martin Wattenberg and his collaborator Marek Walczak. You paste whatever is in your clipboard, something that’s on your mind or just a distraction. Paste combines these pastes into a single text stream, you appreciate the minutia of collective consciousness.

Today the YouTube Platform launched in Silicon Valley. The new YouTube API allows people to upload, watch, search, and comment on the videos on other websites. That is you can create a web service that has a video sharing feature but the videos are hosted on the YouTube servers. Great! We all want one! Apparently YouTube Partners are already on the bandwagon creating “cool YouTube applications“. The Partner program is US, CA, UK only.

You provide the video, YouTube hosts it, and in turn gets all the ad revenue. As I read from the TechCrunch YouTube Platform post YouTube product manager Jim Patterson confirms that there is no revenue-sharing built into the API. He says:

It is a YouTube-branded experience. It is free. The price you pay for using it is you must participate in the YouTube community.

We heard these before. Lets look at the contract, the immaterial contract between a regular user and YouTube, the immaterial contract written and signed only by YouTube. There are 3 monetization ways for YouTube:

1. In-video ads displayed in my own video at my own site
2. In-video ads displayed in my own video at youtube.com
3. In-video ads displayed in my own video that is embedded elsewhere on the web

whereas only 1 monetization way for a regular user:

1. Ads in video pages displayed at my own site

So the new deal is clear: 1 + 1 + n is not equal to 1 + some visibility.

With the new API YouTube massively extends its advertising real-estate, that is every person or web service who hosts videos on YouTube. It must be a clever move in the business literature, but it just increases the value imbalance between the user’s labor and the service’s offer.

Lots happening these days in NYC.

Casey Reas is in town, leading to two exhibitions today at Bitforms and the Pratt Gallery. His new work from the Process series are really nice. Both shows are open through the first week in April.

ABSOLUT QUARTET, an interactive robotic musical installation by Jeff Lieberman and Dan Paluska is currently on display until April 25th at 186 Orchard Street, Lower East Side (map). You can enter a melody through the absolutmachines website, initiating an original and unique piece of music to be played live by the machine in its lower Manhattan home. A short lo-res movie of the piece in action can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e9AJVtuCKc

I will do a presentation at Dorkbot-NYC on Wednesday (March 5). I will talk about my recent projects MYPOCKET, the personal spending prediction software (earlier post), and Meta-Markets, an experimental stock market for trading socially networked creative products.
http://transition.turbulence.org/Works/mypocket
http://meta-markets.com

Other presenter Noel Hidalgo will talk about his amazing project the Luck of Seven, an open-source journey around the world documenting free culture, social innovators & global change. I am quiet interested in the discussion on what he says 21st century anthropological view of the personalities in physical / digital world.
http://luckofseven.com

Marie Evelyn will present the Analogous initiative, an organization that seeks to support complexity-driven art and artists. She calls it a sort of “Santa Fe Institute” for the arts.
http://analogousprojects.org

See you if you are around. It is Wednesday 7pm at Location One in Soho.

* The image on top is the stamp I use to mark the predicted receipts of MYPOCKET.

Jonah Brucker-Cohen just released a new art project: “Google Alert Loop“. It uses Google’s “Blogger” software and “Google Alerts” to create a blog that auto-publishes based on mentions of specific alert topics sent to the email address specified. He says:

The idea is to create a self-perpetuating blog that will publish repeatedly based on the incoming alert feed. The project attempts to question the utility of these automated systems such as “Google Alerts” and how they are being used to aggregate and polarize opinions on the Internet.

I wonder if other blogs can get in this loop by writing about it (such as this post) / using a trackback? Google Alert Loop has an amazing logo!

Update: The site seems down, Google probably didn’t like this. Jonah has a page for the project. Here is what it looked like when I saw it:

“Design and the Elastic Mind” exhibition opens February 24th, 2008 at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The Real Time Rome project is included in the exhibition catalogue. The exhibition, curated by Paola Antonelli, focuses on designers’ ability to grasp momentous changes in technology, science, and social mores, changes that will demand or reflect major adjustments in human behavior, and convert them into objects and systems that people understand and use.

The exhibition highlights examples of successful translation of disruptive innovation, examples based on ongoing research, as well as reflections on the future responsibilities of design. If you are around NYC, you don’t want to miss it!

I am participating in the Connect the Dots exhibition (Feb 16, Saturday) with a piece from the Meta-Control set. The exhibition will take place at Hafriyat in Karaköy, Istanbul. Hafriyat, the name of an independent civilian group movement and the name of their space, means “excavation” in English.

I’ve first been to Hafriyat for a poster exhibition titled Allah Korkusu (”The Fear of God”) in November 2007. It was the most radical taboo breaking group of work I’ve seen in Turkey (video from the show). By putting a critique of Islam and Ataturk out, the artists put their lives at risk. This may not mean much in the so called western world (critique != life thread), but in the Hafriyat opening I was worried that the place will be bombed by some radical islamists in a second or so. After some time we got the police force “in” the gallery. They came to “secure” the gallery they said, however the police themselves were aroused by the show.

Connect the Dots show is about drawing, not a big thread for status quo it seems. Here is the announcement:

Connect the Dots at Hafriyat Karaköy.
February 16 - March 9, 2008
Opening at 18:30

Organized by Koray Kantarcioglu, the exhibition brings together 16 artists and contains work which departs from the idea of understanding the line as an independent visual unit and manipulating it as a unique form of expression. The exhibition also displays a varied and laid-back attitude in the production and exhibition of the works: from the use of fabric, paper, screens, walls and wallpaper to paint, ink, the pixel and the biro.The same attitude pervades the conceptual framework of the exhibition: open-ended, these works are not preoccupied with completeness, they have no singular destination.

The opening of the exhibition will feature a performance by Nazim Dikbas But It Doesn’t Look Like Me. A sentiment often expressed by people when their portrait is made by aspiring illustrators, Dikbas will attempt to draw attention to further aspects of the act and product of drawing.

Participants:

Aksel Zeydan Göz
Alina Viola Grumiller
Bora Baskan, http://borabaskan.blogspot.com
Burak Arikan, http://burak-arikan.com
Cem Dinlenmis, http://cemdinlenmis.deviantart.com
Erlea Maneros
Ekin Saçlioglu
Erkin Gören, http://erkingoren.com
Erdem Ergaz
Gözen Atila
Günes Terkol
Inci Furni, Bio
Klaustro, http://myspace.com/klasor
Koray Kantarcioglu, http://www.koraykantarcioglu.com
Mihda Koray, http://myspace.com/mihdakoray
Nazim Dikbas, http://www.extramucadele.com

Today I am leaving to Boston to attend the Turbulence Mixed Realities Symposium. It is an exhibition and symposium that explores the convergence—through cyberspace—of real and synthetic places made possible by computers and networks. Well, what is mixed reality?

Mixed Reality is the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments where physical and digital objects can co-exist and interact in real-time.

With the panel participants we’ve done a teleconference session to layout the panel topics. Based on our discussions, panel moderators Gene Koo and Eric Gordon posted the tentative plans on their blogs:

• Real World Implications of Virtual Economies
• Immersion, Presence and Place

Please participate by asking your own questions in the comments of these blogs. We will try to address them in the panel.

UPDATE
Join the panel in Second Life location (Emerson Island)
Ask and vote questions live at Backchannel

In terms of economy, I think there is no virtual vs. physical separation, they are extensions of each other. Micro-labor on the social web has lots in common with the labor in Second Life and World of Warcraft type environments. I will to raise questions about the closeness of these worlds, discuss how micro-labor relates to micro-politics, bring in pragmatic approaches, and discuss the resonance, as Maurizio Lazzarato puts it, between neo-archaism and hyper-modernity.

For the past few weeks I replied Greg Smith’s excellent questions for the interview on Serial Consign. We talked about our work ranging from OPENSTUDIO to Meta-Markets to MYPOCKET to aesthetics and critique of networked systems. Thanks Greg!

RSG is launching a new project, KRIEGSPIEL – Guy Debord’s 1978 “Game of War” produced for computer. They port this forgotten game to a downloadable computer game. Pre-launch LAN party is on Friday, Feb 8 from 7 pm to 10 pm at MTAA’s Brooklyn Studio. I wish I could join the game, but I will be in Boston at this time.

Update: LAN party postponed to today (Feb 22, Friday).  Instructions on how to play the game and more info is here:

http://r-s-g.org/kriegspiel

The announcement:

KRIEGSPIEL
Guy Debord’s 1978 “Game of War”
Produced for computer by RSG

* bring your own laptop *

In 1978 the French Situationist Guy Debord designed and fabricated a board game called “The Game of War.” Thirty years later RSG is resurrecting this largely forgotten game, translating the game instructions from French to Java and releasing it as an online computer game. We explore the contradiction between Debord, a symbol of radical politics and art in 1960s France, and the Napoleonic war game he created. In Debord’s own words the game was the only thing in his entire body of work that had any value. Was it nostalgia, or a vision of things to come?

Founded in 2000, RSG is a collective of programmers and artists working on experimental software products. The Kriegspiel team consists of: Alexander R. Galloway, producer and programming; Carolyn Kane, research; Adam Parrish, programming; Daniel Perlin, sound; DJ /rupture and Matt Shadetek, music; and Mushon Zer-Aviv, design.

* bring your own laptop *

* Image on top is from the RSG website, more images at http://r-s-g.org/kriegspiel/images_300dpi.html