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More Thoughts on FlashMeme

Thanks for all the great feedback and comments about my FlashMeme idea that I posted yesterday. There has a been an overwhelmingly positive response to it and loads of great suggestions too.

Yesterday I just wrote the idea down that was in my head without a great amount of planning or thought, so I thought I’d expand on some of the details and suggestions that people have made as well as fleshing out the concept a little more.

Just to reiterate the idea of FlashMeme:

Someone sends you a USB memory stick filled with their digital memes (things like their favourite software, music, videos, pdfs, pictures etc) that person then puts their memes on the stick and sends it onto a friend.

Google Maps
Dan made a great suggestion yesterday to make use of Google maps to track the journeys of the sticks as the are sent around the globe, the easiest method to use would be the new MyMaps which came out just recently although that’s not the best method to automate adding points to the map, a proper mashup may prove to be a better solution in the long term.

Waves and Donations
Depending on how the first wave of USB sticks go and how far they make it before they got lost, broken or simply not passed on, I was thinking that we could set up a system of waves, perhaps every month sending out a new set of sticks to a different group of people, this could be funded by donations.

There is also nothing to stop anyone from just sending a USB stick to a friend without anything to do with the site, feel free to run with the idea and implement it in your own way.

A Single Text file and Disclaimer
I also been thinking about how to organize the data on the stick and whether to keep the old stuff on as well as adding your own stuff, I even pondered a Subversion repository on each stick to manage all of the memes but I think the best way to handle it is with a single text file, explaining what FlashMeme is and giving some loose instructions on what to do next. The user can then do pretty much what they like with the stick as long as that text file remains on there.

There would also have to be some kind of disclaimer in the text file warning of sharing copyrighted materials without permission, which would obviously be on your head if you choose to send anything like that, you accept the legal responsibly for breaking the copyright law.

Naming
Naming the sticks seems to be the obvious thing to do, and everyone in the comments agree, so we need suggestions for naming conventions people, all kinds of wild and crazy things, the more the better!

Logo
I had a quick think about the logo too, the main concepts that sprang to mind are: a USB stick with FlashMeme written on it or an envelope with the USB symbol on it.

Simple and Open
I want to keep the whole thing simple and open, nothing propriety or confusing because we all know thats no fun! I also don’t want to have to do loads of baby-sitting and admin work for the site. In the same spirit I think the best file format for the sticks would be FAT32 since it’s the easiest way to maintain some kind of cross platform openness.

Crowd Sourcing
Along the same lines as keeping it free and open, I thought it might be interesting to try crowd sourcing some elements of the site, similar to the open source communities, if anyone feels like helping out with copy writting, logos or designs, I’m happy to open it up to the floor and I think the project will become better than it possibly could if I kept it closed and did all of the work myself.

If anyone else would like to become more deeply involved, or take up an admin kinda role just let me know.

Rails site
Initially I thought i could manage the whole thing with a wordpress blog but it’s becoming obvious that a more bespoke site will be required if only to reduce the amount of admin work. With that in mind I’m thinking of making a special website in Ruby on Rails, so we can keep all of the different elements together and make the site easier to use and more seamless to the users.

More Questions

• How should the signup system work?
• Where is a good place to buy some USB sticks in Bulk?
• What features should be on the website?
• Any more thoughts or concept drawings on the logo?

Thanks again for all of the great feedback so far, keep it coming! Keep your eyes on FlashMeme.com for even more details coming soon.

FlashMeme

Karen’s kindness a couple days ago got me thinking..

What the hell is a meme?!

“The term “meme” (IPA: /miːm/, rhyming with “theme”. Commonly pronounced in the US as /mɛm/, rhyming with “gem”), coined in 1976[1] by the biologist Richard Dawkins, refers to a “unit of cultural information” which can propagate from one mind to another in a manner analogous to genes (i.e., the units of genetic information).

Dawkins gave as examples of memes: tunes, catch-phrases, beliefs, clothes fashions, ways of making pots, or of building arches. A meme, he said, propagates itself as a unit of cultural evolution and diffusion — analogous in many ways to the behavior of the gene. Often memes propagate as more-or-less integrated cooperative sets or groups, referred to as memeplexes or meme-complexes”

Wikipedia helped me out with that one.

Since that video I’ve been trying to think of a way to repay the favor of that awesome chocolate (mmmmm) and funky CD she me out of the blue. Something similar but different and cool, that would make her smile.. hmmm

I had a flash of inspiration whilst in the bath, I have all my best ideas whilst I’m in the bath (something to do with water on the brain) having bought myself a 2GB USB Flash drive only a couple days ago for the tiny some of £8, I could send one of those packed with ‘memes’, that would be geeky and cool.

By why stop there? The whole point of a meme is sharing and propagating ideas and tastes around the world, if once karen had the flash drive she could put some of her digital memes on it and mail it onto someone else, who could then mail it on again, it’s like a chain letter without the lawsuits!

But thanks to years of technology I have a shorter attention span than the life of a flea, I wanted it all to happen faster and bigger.. so why only send one out?

I jumped on the ‘Bay and purchased ten 1GB flash drives for £20, what a bargin! I’ll send them out to 10 different people and get 10 times the effect and 10 times the smiles, and hopefully they will send them on to other people netting even more smiles. Am I starting to sound like a hippy?

So that sounds like a plan, of course it will need some kind of website to keep up with it, how about FlashMeme.com, sounds good!

All I need now is a bit of feedback from you guys:

• What do you think of the idea?
• How do I manage the whole thing?
• Should I give the USB sticks names?
• Do we keep the previous memes on the sticks and add to them before passing them on or start a fresh each time?
• What kinds of content can we put on them?

The Long Tail

Just last night I finished reading “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson, it’s a book about Economics and Culture on the internet and how it is changing everything. It’s a really interesting read although sometimes feels a little fluffed out to make up the 200 pages, I believe it started life as an article in Wired.

Anyhow if your interested in new media and the opportunities that the web is opening up for not only entrepreneurs but consumers and content creates it’s a great read and if your anything like me it will get your brain ticking on all kinds of ideas and ways to bring big slow dumb companies and organizations *cough* traditional media *cough* to their knees.

There is also an accompanying blog at Longtail.com with all kinds of interesting articles and updates on the theories since the book was first published, also checkout the Wikipedia page about it. My next read comes in the form of “Pragmatic Version Control Using Subversion” from the Pragmatic Programmers since my new best friend Capistrano insists that I use it to look after my precious Rails apps.

Presents from San Francisco

Remember that video that Karen made a couple days ago?

Well it turned up in the mail today and I managed to snap a few photos before I scoffed all of the amazing chocolate, it was all gone within a few minutes of the gorgeous smell reaching my nose. It went great with a nice british cup of tea!

Along with the Choc was a CD-R full of what i suspect is some of Karen’s Fav music. And she has good taste in music with tracks from OK Go, The Faint, Bloc Party, Spoon. I especially like the one by Ratatat, I think I’ll have to grab some more of that.

Did I mention Karen works for Jumpcut? Well she does and I think to say thank you everyone should signup for an account right now (if only to shoe horn in better support for safari), if you’ve already got an account then add me as a friend, if I had a video camera I’d be using this site loads.

This whole meme/random generosity thing set my mind running and I’ve come up with a pretty cool idea, but more on that tomorrow

New Mac Mini

So I gave in and snapped up a Mac Mini last week as a backup machine and media center, I couldnt go for any longer without a second computer and I don’t feel safe tweaking and experimenting with the Macbook either, I needed a second machine to play with and the intel mini was perfect and very cheap.

It’s really nice, works well and fast and it’s small and simple to set up. One thing that strikes me is how similar it is to the macbook, I know it is the same OS but when ever I got a new windows system there would always be new things to discover and learn but in the change from Macbook to Mini the only real difference is that I use a bluetooth keyboard (which I love btw) and mouse to type rather than the built-in trackpad and keyboard.

It’s going to be sans internet for a while so I’ve yet to get the 500mb+ system updates or play with it a huge amount, computers these days are a little boring without the net and especially as a web designer/developer there are quite a few things that are hard to do offline without first downloading some software or updates.

It’s acting as data storage and media center for the moment and doing just fine.

Any suggestion on projects or hack i can try out on it in the future?