Bourgeois-Bus, originally uploaded by the biella.

We found this bus at South Street Seaport on Sunday. Someone thought I was photo shopped in but I was really there, lampshade and all. Someone should tell the bus owner that he/she needs to replace the image with something less Amish-like/Chinese-ice-skater and more fitting.

For those in New York and interested in Public Transit and getting reliable information from the beast of an organization that is the MTA, you may be interested in the Public Transit Data Summit with beer!

WHERE: 148 Lafayette St, NY, New York, 12th floor (map)
WHEN: Tuesday, August 25 at 6pm
WHAT: Meetup to discuss how the MTA and the developer community can best collaborate.

I doubt the Path will receive much air time but I just had to include the logo above as it is my favorite transportation logo, not only because it looks cool but it signals the TIGHT relationship between NJ/NY, a relationship that nonetheless can be pretty tense. Here though is the relationship represented in Total Harmony.

Make your Wifi-open but not painfully slow (at Eyebeam)

Great research opportunity for PhD Students out there.

Peer to Patent Summer Research Fellowship
New York Law School
Summer 2009

Background
Peer to Patent is the groundbreaking program developed by New York Law School and run in cooperation with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office, along with the assistance of a number of private stakeholders. It harnesses the power of citizen-experts to assist patent examiners by searching for, identifying, and annotating prior art relevant to pending patent applications. A first Peer to Patent pilot was launched in June 2007. During the first year the project participants (peer reviewers) assisted in the prior art searches on 40 patent applications, generating 173 items of prior art. These items of prior art were the basis of rejection in over ten of the patent applications considered. In June 2008 the pilot was continued for a second year, and was recently extended to encompass a pilot program in the United Kingdom.

Research Issue
Although Peer to Patent has attracted over 350 active peer reviewers, the project team has little or no idea as to the motivations that cause these individuals voluntarily to contribute their substantial time to the project. The average reviewer spent approximately six hours searching and annotating individual patent applications. The project team also does not fully understand the best means for attracting additional peer reviewers to the project. In order for the project to scale to larger volumes of applications, both of these points need to be understood and addressed. More generally and theoretically, the motivations of citizens in producing material for governmental use are not well-understood. This fellowship seeks to provide an account of this sort of activity, as well as generate a design for a controlled study of incentive mechanisms for these sorts of activities.

Research Activity
The selected fellow will conduct interviews among a meaningful number of currently active peer reviewers to elicit their motivations for participating in the project and contributing their time. The fellow will review the non-profit motivation literature to provide a number of alternative methods of reward to determine whether any or all of them would induce the participants to continue their participation, increase their participation, encourage others to participate, or cease their participation altogether. Potential rewards may include: (a) basic recognition; (b) monetary interest; (c) cash awards; (d) prominent public recognition; (e) some other form of reward; or (f) no reward whatsoever. The fellow will develop a survey to be conducted among a wider segment of active and potential peer reviewers to test for validation of the data gathered in the initial sampling. From the results of the initial sampling, literature review, and survey, the fellow will develop findings on which to base an incentive program to attract and retain peer reviewers. The fellow will develop an experimental design to test the efficacy of each of these incentive possibilities.

Term
The fellowship will commence on or about June 1, 2009 and will continue until on or about August 31, 2009. The fellowship is a full time position for the three months stipulated; but this is open to negotiation for an exceptional candidate.

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If you are in the greater or lesser NYC area, there is a conference on IP and circulation that has a pretty nifty line-up as well as a international perspective. If you are in the Montreal area, IP reformer James Love will be giving a talk “NGO efforts to reform the World Intellectual Property Organization and there is a semester long series (almost over) sponsored by the Columbia Society Fellows on IP with a fantastic line-up

Craft Hackers is a panel being held tonight at the New Museum in NYC. Looks craftastic.

Craft Hackers is a panel discussion among artists who use crafting techniques to explore high-tech culture and the relationship between needlework and computer programming. Panelists include Cat Mazza, who translates moving images into stills knit in yarn; Christy Matson, who uses Jacquard Looms (some of the earliest computers) to knit landscape images from computer games; Ben Fino-Radin, whose witty needlepoint sculptures translate the World Wide Web into yarn and plastic, one pixel at a time; and Cody Trepte, whose embroidery of retired computer punch cards rekindles an old-fashioned love affair with the hand of the artist

If you are into tech, data, visualization, and some good art, (and are in NYC), it is well worth checking out Design and the Elastic Mind. It is only open for another week so take a peek if you have the time!

This is a very local copyright story that concerns a local NYC coffee shop by the name of Think and a NYU student but it is this locality, or the fact that copyright regimes often act as a barricade in everyday, “mundane” situations, which makes these regimes so problematic in the first place.

They say seeing is believing and well here is some cool Internet data to feast your eyes on:

New York Talk Exchange illustrates the global exchange of information in real time by visualizing volumes of long distance telephone and IP (Internet Protocol) data flowing between New York and cities around the world.

One of my favorite radio stations, KEXP, based in Seattle is coming to NYC by parenting with a local station. Not much will change except that we will have the incredible John in the Morning for some of his time and he will, according to their website, scout out local talent:

Does this mean that John in the Morning is leaving Seattle?
No. Starting in June 2008, John will split time between Seattle and New York, broadcasting his show live from both locations throughout the year. While he’s in New York, he’ll be searching for new bands and discovering new music that The Morning Show listeners will be the first to hear.