My girlfriend and I have been seriously working on saving money over the past couple of months. For her, it is because she is a poor college student. For me, I want to pay off all of my debt and save money for various things. However, this makes it difficult for us to go on fun and interesting dates. It’s also hard for me personally because I’m extremely old fashion, so I insist on paying and since I kind of like her, I enjoy planning nice things to do with her.

And with a face like that, who can blame me?

With all that said, recently, most of our nights together involve making dinner at home and curling up on the couch to watch a movie or TV (currently, we are speeding our way through Boy Meets World. Old school, I know). Quite honestly, we both are pretty content in this life. We love to cook and we are pretty happy doing just about anything with each other. Still, sometimes, you just want to get out.

You can only take so much of this

To that end, last night, we were sitting in my apartment, contemplating what to do with the evening. Faced with another night on the couch with Cory Matthews and friends, we decided to see what was showing at the cheap theater nearby. After watching a few trailers, we decided on a little movie called Like Crazy and set off to the movies. After the show was out, we were a little hungry and were debating if we should just go home and eat leftovers. Suddenly, my girlfriend had the brilliant idea of going to a local restaurant we both like, Twisted Rooster, and sharing an appetizer and our favorite entry, fish tacos. This was a great solution to saving money and eating less (another goal we are both working on). After a delicious dinner and a great movie, we went home satisfied that we not only had a great date night out, but also did it on the cheap. Total cost for a movie and dinner for 2: $30. I’d say that’s a big win!

We also occasionally go into space.

Do you have any suggestions for dating on the cheap? Share them in the comments!

I have loved computers for as long as I can remember. From the early days watching my uncles fix our family computer, to learning about how the Internet works in high school, to studying Information Systems in college, I have loved learning about technology my entire life. I have watched the web grow and evolve my entire life and have come to expect that anything and everything can be found there. We have an amazing and unprecedented resource available to us. Something that mankind has never had throughout our existence. SOPA and PIPA are steps towards censoring and, I fear, ending one of the greatest resources on the planet.

In our current economic climate and in these trying times, protecting business is important. And I understand the role that protecting copyright has in this need. But these two acts are not the solution. Simply stated, they go too far. They will stifle innovation and entrepreneurship on the web, one of the biggest areas of growth for our nation. So, I ask you, please stand against these legislation for the people you represent.

Respectfully,
Nicholas Nelson

It can’t be understated how much of an effect Steve Jobs has had on not only on me and the field that I work in, but on our society in general. It seems odd to talk about the CEO of a tech company like we talk about Steve, but there was no one with a vision for how technology could make our lives better like Steve. Whether you use (or like) Apple products, his work has had a profound affect on the technology that you use.

I have no doubt that my children and my children’s children and my children’s children’s children will be learning about Steve Jobs in the way that I learned about Edison, Einstein and Franklin as a kid. At a time when people were doubting that anybody would ever need a computer, Steve was putting one in every home. While we were all still buying CDs from Best Buy, Steve was revolutionizing the digital music industry. While we were all addicted to our primitive Blackberries, Steve saw the possibility of the world in our pockets. While everyone was stuck thinking of computers as boxes on our desks or laptops in our bags, Steve was dreaming up a revolutionary tablet that would change the way we think about computing. His contributions to the world of technology are unprecedented.

I could go on and on about the way that Steve changed our lives. But it’s simple enough to say that because of Steve and his vision for design and functionality, your grandmother can use an iPad. And not only can she use it, but she understands and enjoys it more than any other computer you could possibly give her. Steve brought technology to a level that is usable and enjoyable by everyone. That alone is reason to celebrate this man.

Steve will be greatly missed by a world that looked for his vision and passion for technology and the way it could change the world. Rest in peace, Steve. The world is a less magical place without you in it.

Mentions

History

I still remember when these nifty little things were in their infancy. I remember when it was just starting out and you would put @rob at the front of a tweet if you wanted to reply to your friend Rob, even though his screen name was likely not Rob. As Twitter grew, this was no longer possible, of course. And slowly, Twitter began to incorporate @s into the service, first just as replies, then later as mentions.

How they are used

To properly use a mention on Twitter, you will first want to ask yourself “is this something that I want the person (or organization) that holds the account to see?”. Or, more importantly, is this something they need and want to see. Said another way, these are meant to be a conversation with the account holder. You want them to know you tweeted this and/or you want them to respond. The most obvious case is when you want to reply to someone’s message. Most Twitter clients and even the website have this feature built in nicely. The other case would be, perhaps, when you want to get the attention of a person or company. For instance, if I wanted to tell my friend Dan that I got the concert tickets for us, I might tweet something like “Hey @danielslaughter, I got those tickets!”. Or maybe I just bought a new pair of jeans from the Gap and I want to tell them how great they are: “Just picked up a really sweet new pair of jeans from @gap”.

When to not use them

You should not use mentions when you are talking about a subject and you want to group these messages together, even if the subject is an organization that has a Twitter account. We will talk more about this when we discuss hashtags, but here is an example of how not to use mentions: “Man, that writing exam was hard! @gvsu”. In addition, you should not include a mention in a tweet that has nothing to do with the subject. For instance, even though I am a member of the @gvwebteam, I don’t need to include this in every tweet. You should not do the following: “Going out to the bar to get wasted. @gvwebteam”. Not only is that a good way to annoy people, but it is also a good way to get fired!

Hashtags

History

Hashtags have also been around for a very long time, though they are just now becoming popular among Twitter users. Hashtags were originally used to pull in tweets to a 3rd party site where people could go and search for tweets about a particular topic. This really helped users to find information about a topic they were interested in and for organizations to group all the chatter about their event in one place. Adoption was slow at first, but once Twitter started to include these in the service, they became highly popular and are used quite frequently today.

How they are used

Hashtags should be used when you are talking about a topic or want to group the conversation about something in one place. Even if you are talking about an organization or person that has a Twitter account, if you do not directly want that account to be notified or they will not find anything useful in the notification, you should use a hashtag. For instance, if I was going to Bonnaroo, I might want to tweet “Heading to #bonnaroo! Can’t wait!”. This way, people who are searching for #bonnaroo will find my tweet. In addition, people who follow me can click on that hashtag and see others who are talking about that subject.

When to not use them

Obviously, based on what was said above, hashtags shouldn’t be used when you want to directly mention someone and want them to be notified. For instance, if I wanted to tell my girlfriend how much I enjoyed spending the day with her, I wouldn’t want to put: “Just had a wonderful day with #annethel!”.

I hope this little summary of mentions and hashtags helped those who are confused about the subject. We should all try as best as we can to adhere to these standards that have been established by the users and are encouraged by Twitter. In this way, we can make Twitter useful, organized and, most of all, fun! If you feel like I have made an error above, have any questions about this subject, or just want to provide your own input to this subject, feel free to comment below!

Reid Hoffman
Partner at Greylock Partners

Introduction

Web 1.0 was a very low bandwidth environment. We went out and searched for files. HTML, PDF, Flash, etc. We went into cyberspace not as ourselves, but a different person

Web 2.0 mixes our real life and the web. Our presence online is our real personality. The apps are used to help us facilitate our real life connections. Blogging, social networks, mobiel, etc.

What is web 3.0?

What people have said

• Bandwidth
• Mobile
• Video
• Location

We are generating massive amounts of data with all of our activities online. What we should be looking at for the future, for web 3.0, is what we are going to be doing with all of this data.

Challenges

• Privacy
  • What are corporations doing with this data?
  • What are governments doing with this data?
• Truth vs. Lies
  • With all the data being generated, how do we know what is the truth anymore?
  • Many people will stop basing decisions on their own thoughts, but data provided

The Data

Rule 1: Never ambush your users. Ensure that you a trustworthy with your data collecting from the data.

Rule 2: Not all data are created equal. Identifying information is more important to protect.

What can we do with the data

Mashing up data from our website with other websites to make it easier to navigate the data to find useful information. Example: taking “tag” data on LinkedIn and comparing that with skills on Wikipedia to find marketable skills to add to profiles. Mint.com mashes up our financial data with data from other users and helps you make decision on your spending by comparing it to others. Also, they look at what a lot of people are spending money on and try to bring in offers to help people save money.

Creating Web 3.0

10 rules of entrepreneurship

1. Disruptive change: when you start something, think “is this new and game-changing?”
2. Aim big: is it going to affect the whole industry?
3. Build a network: networks enable us to have a distributed intelligence store.
4. Plan for good and bad luck.
5. Maintain flexible persistance
6. Launch early enough that you are embarrassed by lack of features
7. Always keep your aspirations and aim high, but don’t drink your own kool-aid
8. Having a great product is important, but it’s more important to have a great method of product distribution
9. Pay attention to the culture of your hires from the beginning. They will be hiring the next group of people.
10. These rules are not laws of nature. You can break them.

Presented By

Genevieve Wilkins
Creative Director at DCI Group LLC

Michael Cooper
Web Accessibility Specialist with W3C/WAI

Introduction

The 50+ demographic is the new target market on the web. Our vision decreases as we get old and people are living longer. Therefore, there are more people over 50 that are on the Internet.

WAI – Web Accessibility Initiative

Focused on making the web accessible to people with disabilities. Part of the W3C. The goal of the W3C is to make the web accessible to all, so the WAI springs out of that. Founded in 1997, 3 years after the W3C.

How the Web Impacts People with Disabilities

• Perception of content; the output from the computer
• Interaction with content; can you input into the computer?
• Understandability of content; complexity, structure of content.
  • Some people may have learning disabilities.
  • Visually impaired people use a 1-dimensional approach to the Internet, while visual users use 2-dimensions.

Assistive technologies sometimes but not always used to help with these issues

• Output
  • Screen reader
  • Screen magnifier
  • Braille display
  • Captioning
• Input
  • Keyboard
  • Mouse
  • Speech
  • Switches

WAI Guidelines

• Guidelines
  • Authors: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
  • Authoring Tool Developers: Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG)
  • Browser and assistive technology developers: User Agent Accessibility Guidelines (UAAG)
• Technologies
  • Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA)

Designing for Accessibility

• Accessibility is both a design and technology issue
• Some issues are principally design (e.g. color scheme, page layout)
• Some issues involve good use of technology (e.g. proper encoding of features like headings, regions, lists, etc)
• A good design reduces need for technological accessibility features, and makes it much easier to implement them when needed
• Universal design: designing for all users makes a better experience for even those without identified special needs

Guidelines Support Materials

• Background
  • WCAG Overview
  • WCAG 2.0 at a Glance
• Guidelines
  • WCAG 2.0
• Support materials
  • Understanding WCAG 2.0
  • Techniques for WCAG 2.0
  • How to Meet WCAG 2.0

How Often to Standards Change?

Guidelines change as technology changes, however the guidelines are written to be as technology independent as possible. The techniques change often, depending on the technology.

Phil Zimmermann
Zfone

Sorry for the lack of formatting and the random nature of the notes. Just trying to get down the things he is saying.

When PGP was first founded, it was to protect against governments. Now, organized crime is becoming the new threat model. Spam, botnets, phishing scams, etc are the new threats to the average internet user. The most popular target for identity theft is children because they don’t do much with their identity.Most crimes are known about very quickly, but identity theft can take much longer, especially in the case of children. The crime itself depends on you not being aware of the situation. The Pentagon spends lots of money on situation awareness, which are systems that help know what is going on on a battlefield. Situational awareness is something we should have on our side when our identity is at stake. The criminals are banking on our lack of situational awareness. We focus a little too much on digital signatures, but those can be spoofed. We need to step away from our computer screens a little and live in the analog world.

Hugo Liu
Chief Scientist at Hunch
@dochugo

Jennifer King
PhD Candidate at University of California at Berkeley
@kingjen

Mat Harris
CEO at BizGreet Inc
@matharris

Noah Weiss
Project Manager at Foursquare
@noahweiss

Vijay Ravindran
Chief Digital Officer at The Washington Post Company
@vijayravindran

Why is personalization important?

Life is too short to see random stuff. We have the ability and the data to show you relivant data, so why can’t we? But it is important that users understand where the personalization comes from and how you know this data about the person. If someone wants to know why, there needs to be a pathway to tell the user why they are seeing this. There also needs to be a way for the user to turn it off if they are uncomfortable with it. Users don’t read privacy statements, and they don’t read it when you change it. We need to take back privacy from the lawyers. Great relationships come from intimacy and customers want to be intimate with a brand. But it must be done right. This is as important as supply chain optimization in the 90s. It is affecting our economy.

What is the line between great and creepy personalization?

Trust is fleeting once you have violated it. Expectations is crucial. The user needs to have control over what is shared and what is personalized. And the privacy should be the most strict when the user starts. Start conservative to gain trust. “Don’t try to get laid on the first night.” But don’t hide your intentions. Personalization should be a dialog with the user.

Should personalization always be opt in?

Users don’t always understand what is going on behind the scenes. With a single facet model, the user might understand (Twitter, Foursquare) but when a user is being tracked across multiple sites, it is much more confusing and creepy, so these should be opt in. Product design is like designing a building. You wouldn’t make a building that isn’t easy to get out of, but there are a lot of online communities that are hard to opt out of. Opt in can be an opportunity to get the user to provide more data, or better customize their experience, if they understand the benefit they will see.

Customization vs. personalization

Customization is allowing the user what they want to see and what they don’t. Personalization is about using data to derive information about the customer.

Hank Williams
Founder/CEO of Kloudco

Why are databases important?

The way the database stores your data and the way you query on that data reflects in your application. We hav e been doing relational databases so long that we just write our applications to fit into that model.

Are relational databases really dying?

For 30+ years, there was only one way to store data. In the last few years, people are beginning to realize that there are other ways that we can store data. Relational databases have gone from 100% of the data storage to about 95%. And that number could continue to decrease as people become more aware of alternatives.

• Benefits of relational databases
  • They have been around for so long that they are incredibly tuned
  • Very efficient and powerful
• Problems of relational databases
  • The interface we use to interact with the database. They do not reflect how we naturally think about information.
  • Scaling becomes difficult. You have to be able to know everything you are going to use this database for in the future.

Why are things changing now?

• There are free (or cheap) tools available to play with
• There are fast tools available
• There is an information overload

Some Tools

• mongoDb
• couchDb
• neo4J
• Riak
• Redis

What would the best database interface look like?

We need the ability to have heterogenous collections. We should be able to store anything we want, with no restrictions. We also need relationships as objects. In a SQL database, we have objects like people, invoices, etc, but we don’t have relationships as objects. In other words, we need a graph. Facebook’s social graph is an example of this. People and groups are nodes and there are relationships between these nodes. You can always add more object types and relationships and you can ask any questions you want, as long as the data is there. Graph storage solves the largest problem in data management: siloization. Whenever we want to do something new in relational databases, we create a new database. But we cannot reach across the databases if we want to connect them. Current solution is data warehousing.

Ideas discovered along the way

• When all of your stuff is in one place, you need to specify who has access to what. When we create web apps, for example, we build permission models. Why can’t this be part of the database?
• We need a way to confer permissions to people.
• When you modify the data, you need to be able to notify other code that the data was modified. Your data begins to react to the data it is connected to, automatically.

What are some of the opportunities?

• Machine learning. The more data that is in the same location, the more the machine is able to make sense of the data.
• A modular web.

What does this all mean?

It’s about smart data storage that allows you to extract real value from accumulated data.

Seth Priebatsch
Chief Ninja (founder and CEO) at SCVNGR
@sethpriebatsch

The Game Layer

• Next decade of human interaction. Game mechanics in the real world to drive human actions.
• The last decade was the decade of social.
  • We digitized all of our social connections and put them online.
  • Facebook created the open graph protocol so that you can build onto the social layer with facebook.
• The next decade is the decade of games.
  • The game layer seeks to act on individual motivation and to motivate where we go and what we do.

School is a Game

• School is a game, but poorly designed.
• Near-perfect game ecosystem
  • Motivated players
  • Challenges
  • Rewards
  • Rules
  • Allies
  • Enemies
  • etc
• 2 majors problems
  • engagement
    • students are not engaged
    • don’t do homework
    • check out early
    • come late
    • grading is a game mechanic but done wrong
  • students are also cheating.

Engagement

Students are bored. The grading system has replaced the real reward (learning for the sake of learning) and replaced it with a fake reward. Once you take away the reward, people stop doing it. School is a game that you don’t want anyone to lose. But grades are a game mechanic that you can fail. If you base your grades on experience, people can’t move down, only up.

cheating

We currently use disincentives to prevent cheating. But it’s only bad if you get caught, so people figure out how to not get caught. We need to change the game to have all the players (students) enforce the rules, instead of the omnipient overseer.

Customer Acquisition

• Free lunch
  • The deal is too good to be true.
  • Plays off of our skepticism but the game tells you exactly how you must get the deal.
• Communal gameplay
  • Disconnected community comes together to solve a problem
• Countdown
  • Ff you provide a countdown, people are more likely do jump on a deal.

Loyalty

• Status
  • The idea of being a regular somewhere.
  • Businesses that reward people who are regulars have higher loyalty.
• The “level-up”
  • By providing an incentive to going back and leveling up, you are creating a feeling of loyalty

Location-Based Services -> Mainstream

• Lots of big partners and lots of big money. but no one is adopting it.
• 2 problems
  • The game is too hard
    • People aren’t playing. So we need to losen the rules. The big rule that needs to be loosened is that you must be at a place to play. Being able to engage with a place from afar, or saying that you will be at a place in the future.
  • Reward schedules
    • All LBSs have rewards for playing the game. Rewards spike interaction. But people stop checking in. People have started to expect something for checking in, but we can’t always offer rewards.