Contact Me

The best way to contact me is via email. I welcome feedback, questions and responses. My email address is matthew@gray.org. Feel free to drop me a line.

All my blogs

I like the idea of blogging a great deal, and have been doing it since 2002. Lately there's been a proliferation of micro-blogging and mini-blogging formats, and while there's something sort of oddly simple about the phenomenon, it's an interesting social dynamic and I enjoy it as a way to maintain ambient social contact with friends and colleagues. So here's all my blogs or blog-like things:

• My main blog: I've been maintaining this (through several software changes) since 2002 and it's mostly about board games.
• Twitter: Iconic microblogging, which I've used sporadically.
• Google Reader Shared Items: A Google Reader feature, that, with the new notes feature is a nice micro-blogging/link-blogging format. If you're not reading this on RSS, these sit in the sidebar on this blog.
• BoardGameGeek forum postings: Not really a blog, but a potentially interesting aggregation of my posts there.
  
• This blog. Until I decide what to do, I'll probably mostly do "real" (ie, more than 2 sentence) blogging here, and if I abandon it, I'll move them over to my main/old blog, or if I decide to keep it up, I'll move all the old stuff over.
  
• Friend Feed: This aggregates all of the above and a few other not-really-blogging sources, which is awesome, but it's aesthetic and formatting bugs me, but it's manageable when read in Reader.

I also have an iPhone now, so I'm tempted to do a photo "moblog" even if I am several years late to that game. I could, of course, post those here instead of creating a separate blog and will probably do that unless someone tells me "I read your blog but would rather a moblog exist as a separate feed".

I am a social network

Friend Connect was launched yesterday. It is very cool. It's basically a plug-and-play social network for a web site that merges the social networks of various major social networking sites plus your address book. In fact, this site is now a social network. Check out the sidebar. If you haven't tried out one of the Friend Connect sites yet, it's really worth trying, and you might as well start here. For the moment, I just have the comments and friends gadgets in the sidebar (and in this post), but will probably add some as new things become available.

But, more importantly, it's a big step on the path that OpenSocial started. Unfortunately, OpenSocial itself is a little opaque and confusing, but the root idea of allowing applications to uniformly access social data is important. However much people tend to deride some of the shallow social contact social networks provide, it provides a kind of ambient social interaction which is appealing and not necessarily shallow. There's no reason any site where meaningful interaction occurs (commenting, even co-reading, as with many blogs) shouldn't have a "social" aspect, where I can see the posts of my friends, see the friends of friends, etc. Friend Connect does that. Better yet, it turns any site into an OpenSocial container. Ok, enough sales pitch, I'm just enthused :)



One of the things I like a great deal about the board gaming community is that the online social interaction translates into in-person social interaction. If it weren't for the Unity Games mailing list (and others), boardgamegeek, or even other non-boardgaming focused social networks, I wouldn't be aware of and be able to participate in anywhere near the fraction of in-person gaming that I do. I suspect (and in some cases know) many other small site communities have the same effect, probably more so than the big generic social networks. The big social networks are often "really" about dating or getting a job. The smaller networks can be about board games, or knitting, or geocaching or whatever. The "me" social network is, uh, about reading this blog. And really, ever since I was a little boy, I've wanted to be a social network, so please join. Haven't you ever wanted to be a social network?

(Disclosure: I work for Google and know the team that built Friend Connect, but am not directly involved in its development. This is my personal blog. The views expressed on these pages are mine alone and not those of my employer.)

Copyright, Patents, "Intellectual Property"

To me, one of the more interesting problems of recent times is that of
so-called "intellectual property" by which people mean copyrighted
works, patented inventions, trademarked terms and a variety of other
pieces of information. Calling it "Intellectual Property" is really
an awful name given that it lacks most of the qualities usually
associated with "property". It's non-rivalrous, in that I can have it
and give it to you and in no way diminish the extent to which I have
it. It's possible for two people to both have it without knowing it
or even ever having come in contact, in the case of simultaneous
inventions or works. It has zero marginal cost to produce "copies".
The list goes on. It's not really property.

While I was in college, I was first exposed to the whole idea of "free
software" and later, "open source". These are very compelling models
for software and I use and contribute to such projects regularly.
However, I started a proprietary software company, I hold a patent, I
wrote a copyrighted book, and don't have a problem with the idea of
proprietary software or other works as a governmentally granted right.
I have a great deal of respect for the ideals of folks like Richard
Stallman, but I think a world in which all software was copylefted
would have some incentive issues.

As a producer of creative works I recognize the value of a "creative
commons", as described by folks like Lawrence Lessig and well
discussed in a recent piece
on DRM by Cory Doctorow. I also see the value in protection of
works as an incentive. While it is true that a great many works would
be created even without the ability to legally prevent copying and
redistribution, many would not. As has been pointed out by many, this
would still be the case even if the duration of the rights were
dramatically reduced.

If copyright were a "mere" 10 years, I can't imagine many works would
go unproduced as a result. Blockbuster movies certainly wouldn't be
shied away from. Most books don't stay in print that long. Much
software is useless after that long. And yet, every decade or two
there's a court case to extend the duration of copyright.

Patents seem to be a somewhat different case. Reducing the duration
of patent protection would probably have limited impact on software
inventions but could substantially deter more costly innovation such
as pharmaceutical development. Given that patents are individually
inspected and evaluated anyway, it seems natural that the patent
office could assign a term for a patent on a case-by-case basis.

It's a real shame that the recent case opposing to the copyright
extension didn't succeed. I fully believe copyright and patents are
important to encouraging innovation, but much shorter durations would
be a real societal benefit without be a substantial deterrent to such
innovation.

Sleeptracker Review

While I was in college, I thought it would be really great if I could
arrange it so my alarm clock would wake me up when I was in a light
sleep rather than when I was in a deep sleep. I tried hooking up a
microphone to the computer near the bed to detect sound (I assumed I'd
be more likely to roll around and the like when in a light sleep) and
trigger based on that. There was too much ambient noise in a college
dorm environment and I gave up on the idea and I haven't had a
computer near my bed to try again since.

When I read about the href="http://www.sleeptracker.com/">Sleeptracker, I was naturally
very pleased, but at the same time skeptical. Their webiste had the
tone of a scam; light on specifics, high on claims. A while later,
Gear Live published a href="http://www.gearlive.com/index.php/news/article/sleeptracker_watch_review_03221147/">very
positive review and my interest was again piqued. I decided to order one.

It works. I wouldn't say I bounce out of bed, exicted and happy to
start the day with it. I'm simply not that much of a morning person.
However, I've not had that awful "please, not now" headache feeling I
often get when the alarm goes off. Of course, with a baby, the baby
often beats the alarm, in which case it's less effective.

It works by having an internal accelerometer which detects motion over
some period of time (it seems to require two movements in about a
minute, but that might not be quite right) and it considers such
movement a "light sleep" moment. It then ignores you for 8 minutes
and starts waiting for movement again. It's a simple and good system.
It doesn't require any reliable skin contact, it isn't sensitive to
ambient light, noise or even to my detection movement by someone else
in bed.

I wish they'd put such an explanation on their web site that explains
this rather than mumbo jumbo like: "[it] continuously monitors signals
from your body that indicate". Yeah, singals like whether or not
you are moving. It would improve their credibility a lot. They should at
least put something in the manual. The fact that it uses an
accelerometer was apparent after playing with it for an hour or two.
The managing partner in the company stated it explicitly in href=http://www.gearlive.com/index.php/news/article/interview_with_lee_loree_sleeptracker_inventor_04131225/>this
interview, so it's not a big secret. Oh well.

It's a bit expensive ($150), but it does what it says and it does it
well. I'm glad I have mine.