Once or twice in a week, I go and visit hiptop nation.

I love it. I still love it.

It’s so full of little slices of realness.

Low, low, cross-cultural barrier to entry (cf. previous post about this) No need to be a great writer, thinker, proselytizer to blog there… Just see something that catches your eye and post it…

It’s got so much – no other word than the very cheesy, disneyfied – ‘heart’.

I love it like almost no other place on the web – it’s being let in on
millions of little personal places all at once. I can’t wait until it’s
HiptopPlanet. I want to see tacos in Texas next to street violinists in
Vienna next to schoollife in Kabul next to crazy bleachhair Ginza action in
Tokyo.

It’s going to be like those cheesy ads that tech companies used to run full
of images of grinning gap-toothed farmers in paddy field next to wall-st
brokers or something, except it’s been handknitted, ground-up by a bloke
called mike who just happened to love his hiptop.

Some lovely things this morning:

• Slice…
• …slice…
• slice…
• …SLICE…
• …slice.

I’m not really thinking too critically about this at the moment, just preferring to enjoy the web getting “more real”, more open and react until I can participate: but there’s been lots of people are, with much comment about ‘this’ lately, mostly hubbed-on Justin Hall’s ‘Moblog’ writings:

» Justin’s original piece in “The Feature”
» Adam Greenfield on HipTop Nation
» Smartmobs Category: The Mobile Many

From The Reg on Rhiengold/Smartmobs:

“For years we’ve been pointing out that the biggest computer company on the planet is not Dell, or Sun or IBM, but Nokia. At the four corners of the globe, people use these computers without even realizing it or sparing a thought about the ‘platform battles’ that the tech press chews over daily. It’s a popular revolt of sorts.”

Some flakey logicflips (of the type I am wont to perform) from this would dictate that Nokia has the most familiar UI in the world. I wonder has anyone created a website or interactive TV app, that slavishly copies the UI and interaction design of Christian Lindholm’s ‘Navikey’ interface for Nokia and recorded how it performs?

» The Register: Phones more disruptive than PC or Internet – Rheingold

Most people who know me are fed-up to the backteeth of hearing me go on and on about Hiptop Nation, the collective photoblog for those in the USA lucky enough to have a hiptop/sidekick.

Last week, they staged a hiptop-augmented team scavenger hunt for Halloween.

The results are not as far as I can tell posted on the site in coherent form yet, though I’m sure they will be. Already however, those who took part are starting to describe it as revelatory experience; which they are going to devote study to:

“This paper examines the successful evolution of a specific smart mob into a wireless community of practice. It begins with an examination of a popular wireless blogging website “Hiptop Nation” (http://hiptop.bedope.com). “Hiptop Nation” acts as a central blogging site for owners of the “Sidekick” device, a portable handheld data communications device recently introduced by Danger (http://danger.com). The Sidekick supports wireless AOL Instant Messaging, email, SMS text messages, and web access. Users of the Sidekick can post wireless public blogs on Hiptop Nation via their Sidekick device, as well as upload photographs from the Sidekick’s digital camera.

On Halloween, October 31 2002, Hiptop Nation sponsored a photo-scavenger hunt competition across the US. Participants were users of the Hiptop Nation blog site who were placed into competing teams, and participants coordinated their actions as well as acquired and uploaded photographs across the US exclusively via their Sidekick wireless devices. The hunt lasted for 24 hours.

The author of this paper participated as a member of one of the teams (Team Raven), and witnessed firsthand the evolution of an unorganized and homogeneous wirelessly-connected group of people (smart mob) into a highly motivated and organized group of team members with very common goals and flexible roles (wireless community of practice).“
[my emboldening]

I’m really looking forward to reading more of what the participants thought of the experience – particularly around the aspects of the technology giving rise to cooperative relationships between stangers, as alluded to in the paragraph I’ve emphasised above.

I so have to get round to buying/reading Smartmobs. Luckily, Peter is doing it for us.

All this reminds me of how much fun playingNoderunner was. Fascinating to see so many people investigating how personal tech is going to give rise to new urban games and sports, and redefine our relationships with the space of the city.

Adam Greenfield has redesigned V-2.org, making one of the most well-considered sites writing about technology, humans and cities even more elegant, and very, very usable. Permalinks, at last!

He’s written, as have Steve Bowbrick and Kevin Werbach, about the recently produced map of Manhattan’s wireless access points. His post is entitled ‘The digital divide made visible’ points out as Steve also has, the naked truth of access to technology, laid bare through visualisation.

Two things:

• With reference to the project I’m working on: he power of visualisation to inspire social/political thought; and the attendent dangers: “lies, damn lies and sexy-info-visualisations” if you like. Aside from Tufte (I guess?) anyone got any pointers/research for me around computer visualisation and politics?
• Bobby Womack’s ‘Across 110th Street’ is now lodged in my brain:
  

  “Been down so long, getting up didn’t cross my mind,
  I knew there was a better way of life that I was just
  trying to find.
  You don’t know what you’ll do until you’re put under
  pressure,
  Across 110th Street is a hell of a tester.”

Apparently, folk who are liveblogging the Eldred vs Ashcroft court case are doing so via a warchalked access point!

“This blogging brought to you via 802.11b equipped PDA (please excuse typos, etc.) and warchalked wireless access point, somewhere in the vicinity of the Supreme Court building (thanks warchalkers!)”

» Smartmobs.com: Supreme Court wireless blogging: Eldred v. Ashcroft

Dan Gillmor’s prophesy comes one step closer: The Hiptop Nation…

“Take a few thousand people. Give them the ability to communicate wirelessly with a simple portable, always-connected device. Oh, and they have cameras too. Now give them a way to post words and pictures on a communal weblog quickly and easily, from wherever they happen to be. What happens?

Um, I don’t know the answer. But, it should be fun finding out. Welcome to Hiptop Nation. If you have a hiptop device (such as the Sideckick), then you have all you need to join in the fun here. Jump right in!”

Wow.

» HiptopNation: wireless blogging for the Hiptop masses

Short, thoughtful recap of a lot of the memes around wifi vs 3g by the old man of the seachange, Nicholas Negroponte:

“In the future, each Wi-Fi system will also act like a small router, relaying to its nearest neighbors. Messages can hop peer-to-peer, leaping from lily to lily like frogs — the stems are not required. You have a broadband telecommunications system, built by the people, for the people. Carriers are aware of this, but they discount it because they do not feel there will be sufficient coverage. They are wrong.”

» WiReD: Nicholas Negroponte: Being Wireless
[via warchalking.org]