mtl3p

iTunes + Rendezvous is like a WASP-y do-over of the ghettoblaster. Public, but so discreet and exclusive ;-)

With Patrick’s help, I got to try ad-hoc audio streaming at one of our hotspots. While I don’t grok the intricacies of Zeroconf, it was pretty easy to listen in on what Patrick was playing on his iBook. (Zeroconf -Rendezvous for Macs - is something that takes care of networking itself with whatever is near you and is zeroconf aware - web,ftp servers, printers, audio, chat programs, etc.)

iTunes is Zeroconf enabled. So I installed itunes for Windows on my comp along with Howl (a Zeroconf implementation for Windows). Patrick started up iTunes on his iBook and his playlist automatically showed up in my Windows iTunes. Zeroconf took care of all of the discovery. If someone else in the cafe started up his iTunes, it would show up on my comp too. No info or intro needed. I loved it. It is the first application that we have that promotes connections / community at our hotspots. Not sure how we are going to convince our users to give it a try, but we’ll figure out something. Maybe a “Hints” area on our login page?

Anne Galloway talks about all this stuff here (less HowTo, more sociological)

I also got this great quote through her links.

“remember when the “ghetto blaster” — the gigantic boombox turned way way up high — was a way of asserting one’s individuality (and a challenge to others, since it was almost always a young male who used it) at the expense of others’ auditory privacy? Another example of the phenomenon you note? “I am here, I am in your face, and what are you going to do about it?” ” from Howard Rheingold’s article about tech/city in The Feature.

Lots of space-carving for different communities the other day. On Thursday, after the Games research meeting we all went into what is to be our physical space. We decided what we were doing to do with our half of the room (STAR gets the other half). Then we pushed, lifted, and pulled heavy things around till we got it right.

Then in my Cities, Eros, and Citizenship class we moved desks and chairs into a circle. That was the first university course I’ve attended in which we’ve done that. I had warm, fuzzy rememberances of high school - where 90% of each class was student discussion.

Also, the other day, IleSansFil had it’s meeting at our new hotspot (still under testing). Tobias and I set it up the other day and we moved the bi-monthly meeting there so everyone could check it out. Around 12 of us showed up -it very much felt like we were claiming the space as ours.

After so much time spent paying attention to the online spaces that communities create it was interesting to come back to the physical world - creating some space, with my hands, alongside other people in that community.

I have to submit a set of 12 journal entries based on my reactions to my Soci 353 course. Guess what that means? Yup, I’m going to post them here.

So, this blogging thing is tough. Naively, I thought this blog would spring full-born from my head, an insightfull, informative source about Montreal’s community/tech scene. Two problems with that: 1) I still don’t really know how to blog (feel comfortable) and 2) my life isn’t about Tech/Community right now. Well, I am very involved with a few projects, but I am by no means a Montreal digital node.

So, what do I do. First, I am going to make the aims of this blog more realistic. I’m going to blog what I’m living. Hopefully this will help me get comfortable and figure out how I want to use this tool. Secondly, I’m going to try to start a category about Montreal digital organizations. Doing research for starting ISF I looked up info on pretty much every Montreal group that has anything to do with the internet. During the upcoming weeks, I will make a short entry on some of them. Kind of a brief, survey course on the community players in the Montreal digital scene. It should start tomorrow, as I have a meeting with a few other ISF members at Communautique about starting a wireless PAC pilot project.

Thanks for setting up the blog for me, Boris. And much love to Mina for hosting it. You guys rock!