[CAT] Shakespeare, on the edge

[PHOTO] "The making of a popular photo app": Eszter Hargittai on Instagram

Estzer Hargittai writes about a lecture given by Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram, about the origins and design of that popular photography social networking platform.

On Wednesday, I had the great fortune to attend the closing keynote at the annual CSCW conference given by Mike Krieger, co-founder of Instagram, a photo-sharing site now owned by Facebook, but still operating largely independently, at least from the user’s perspective. In case you’ve been living under a rock, Instagram now has 400 million active users (75% outside the US) sharing 80 million photos and videos daily. Those are some serious numbers folks. And while they require considerable technical chops, I am glad Mike spent his time at CSCW talking about the design elements and human-computer interaction aspects. I share some nuggets below. (I failed to take notes so I’m skipping all sorts of info, sadly, and welcome corrections/additions in the comments.)

As old-timers here may recall, I am a big photo enthusiast and was a huge Flickr fan for quite some time. More recently, however, I have started getting into Instagram and now use it daily. Having thought about how these services differ and how I ultimately ended up using Instagram so much more these days than Flickr, it was a real treat to hear the brains behind the service share many of the conversations and decisions that went into making it what it is today. It was genuinely interesting to learn about the many aspects that he and his collaborators discussed and continue to ponder as they enhance the app.

In the first few minutes Mike shared some of his background, including his failure to get a paper into CSCW during his early days. I mention that as a reminder that people should not take the occasional setback too seriously.

Mike and his co-founder Kevin Systrom had worked on an earlier app called Burbn. The Atlantic has a few notes on this. This was the era of check-in apps so they focused on check-ins, but the app barely took off (we’re talking no more than about a thousand users). The aspect of the app that seemed to appeal to folks most was its photo-sharing capability. So they set out to focus on that primarily.

One of the conscious decisions they made up front was to downplay the importance of reciprocal following. That is, unlike Facebook where you have to agree to be friends with another person to share content (except for something like Pages or having public posts followed), on Instagram, not only can you follow someone who does not necessarily follow you back (like on Twitter), but the system in no way makes it obvious to know if someone you are following follows you (this is noted on Twitter when you check someone’s account while logged into your own). Generally speaking, information about followers is not easy to come by. You can see on an account how many others follow it and how many others it follows, but you cannot click through to get details. So instead of feeling pressure to follow people for social purposes, you can feel comfortable following just those accounts that are truly of interest.

[URBAN NOTE] "The creation of Toronto’s first City Hall and market buildings"

Spacing Toronto hosts an essay by Stephen Otto, originally written in 1985, about the genesis of Toronto's first city hall.

In July 1833 the Colonial Advocate took notice of the increased pace of commerce and improvements in York: “everything is going on charmingly … In short York bids fair to become one of the first cities of importance, for commerce, extent and neatness, in British America.”

That year the assessors counted 6,094 people, a startling increase over the 2,860 residents in 1830 when the Home District magistrates had advertised for plans to be submitted by early June for a new brick market hall, “about one hundred feet by forty” in size. When completed two years later, the Town Hall and market building was the largest structure erected in the capital of Upper Canada. A visitor noted it had, “no equal of the kind even in New York or in the States.” The lofty Town Hall was prominent along the south side of King Street, while the market structure with its monumental archways into the square was a major element in the panorama of York seen from the lake. Their scale seemed better suited to a much larger place, which York was rapidly becoming.

The market hall was to be sited on the eastern end of the market reserve, a generous space of five and a half acres bounded by the present Front, Church, King, and Jarvis Streets. It would replace a wooden building housing 22 butchers, which in 1828 had attracted the notice of George Henry, author of The Emigrant’s Guide, or Canada as it is. “The present market house, which is extensive,” he said, “appears scarcely large enough to accommodate the inhabitants of this fast increasing town.” This temple to lean trim and fair weight was surrounded by farmers selling butter, eggs, fruits, vegetables, grains, wood and hay from their wagons. After the magistrates examined the plans and estimates sent in they had second thoughts, perhaps about the suggested dimensions or the anticipated costs of such a building. In any event, new instructions must have been given to builders and architects because several months later, in January 1831, five fresh proposals were ready to be considered. These were narrowed down to two and a committee was appointed to confer with the authors, James G. Chewett and James Cooper, “in explanation of their plans.”

Until later, no professional architects existed in York. Chewett, who was well known to members of the committee, had been trained as a land surveyor and draftsman by his father, the deputy Surveyor General for Upper Canada. He is known to have prepared occasional designs, although it is uncertain which of these, if any, were built. Cooper was a less familiar figure. Possibly he was a builder, the “Mr. Cooper” whose designs were adopted for St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church at Niagara in early 1831.

[URBAN NOTE] "What Toronto’s March 2016 Transit Reports Mean for the City’s Future"

Noted for the future. Torontoist's Steve Munro examines the various transit reports published by the city of Toronto.

Toronto’s City Planning Department released a major update on rapid transit network plans on March 3, and the information will inform the city’s transit debate for the near future. The report will be discussed at the Executive Committee on March 9, and then at Council on March 30.

Although there are over 400 pages, much of the material (attached as appendices) has already been published. Council must now digest the staff recommendations available at this time.

Eventually, as part of the Official Plan, Council’s decisions will guide development for decades to come. But this is not the final, definitive version with priorities of various projects nor a discussion of how they will be financed. That will come in June, and it promises to be a long and challenging debate.

Here’s where we’re starting from.

[LINK] "Saving the Self in the Age of the Selfie"

3 Quarks Daily linked to James McWilliams' essay in the American Scholar, looking at how to make best use of social networking and instant telecommunications for our own sake.

In 2012, Paul Miller, a 26-year-old journalist and former writer for The Verge, began to worry about the quality of his thinking. His ability to read difficult studies or to follow intricate arguments demanding sustained attention was lagging. He found himself easily distracted and, worse, irritable about it. His longtime touchstone—his smartphone—was starting to annoy him, making him feel insecure and anxious rather than grounded in the ideas that formerly had nourished him. “If I lost my phone,” he said, he’d feel “like I could never catch up.” He realized that his online habits weren’t helping him to work, much less to multitask. He was just switching his attention all over the place and, in the process, becoming a bit unhinged.

Subtler discoveries ensued. As he continued to analyze his behavior, Miller noticed that he was applying the language of nature to digital phenomena. He would refer, for example, to his “RSS feed landscape.” More troubling was how his observations were materializing not as full thoughts but as brief Tweets—he was thinking in word counts. When he realized he was spending 95 percent of his waking hours connected to digital media in a world where he “had never known anything different,” he proposed to his editor a series of articles that turned out to be intriguing and prescriptive. What would it be like to disconnect for a year? His editor bought the pitch, and Miller, who lives in New York, pulled the plug.

For the first several months, the world unfolded as if in slow motion. He experienced “a tangible change in my ability to be more in the moment,” recalling how “fewer distractions now flowed through my brain.” The Internet, he said, “teaches you to expect instant gratification, which makes it hard to be a good human being.” Disconnected, he found a more patient and reflective self, one more willing to linger over complexities that he once clicked away from. “I had a longer attention span, I was better able to handle complex reading, I did not need instant gratification, and,” he added somewhat incongruously, “I noticed more smells.” The “endless loops that distract you from the moment you are in,” he explained, diminished as he became “a more reflective writer.” It was an encouraging start.

But if Miller became more present-minded, nobody else around him did. “People felt uncomfortable talking to me because they knew I wasn’t doing anything else,” he said. Communication without gadgets proved to be a foreign concept in his peer world. Friends and colleagues—some of whom thought he might have died—misunderstood or failed to appreciate Miller’s experiment. Plus, given that he had effectively consigned himself to offline communications, all they had to do to avoid him was to stay online. None of this behavior was overtly hostile, all of it was passive, but it was still a social burden reminding Miller that his identity didn’t thrive in a vacuum. His quality of life eventually suffered.

Miller recalled the low point of this period of social isolation. He was walking to the subway one evening with several friends. When they reached the platform, his companions did as he once would have done: they whipped out their smartphones and went into other worlds. Feeling awkward, he stood on the platform, looked into his empty hand, and simulated using a smartphone. “I now called it my dumb phone,” he said. When the offline year ended, he was relieved.

[LINK] "Imperfect groceries can make perfect sense for budget shoppers, Loblaws program bets"

CBC shares the Canadian Press' report about this entirely laudable program. Needless food waste is best avoided.

Ugly food can mean a pretty profit.

At least, that's the bet Loblaws is making with its ugly duckling line of produce aimed at shoppers looking to save money on the sky-rocketing cost of fresh food.

The company launched its Naturally Imperfect line last March, offering ugly apples and potatoes to Ontario and Quebec shoppers as part of a trial run that later expanded to select stores in other provinces.

More types of cheaper, but blemished and misshapen, produce will soon be available across the country, the company announced Wednesday.

"It really went well above and beyond what our expectation was," said Dan Branson, the company's senior director of produce.

"I think it really spoke to the fact that Canadians are out there really looking for some options."

[LINK] "Why Starbucks Will Win Over Italy: It Doesn’t Really Sell Coffee"

Wired's Simon Chandler notes the rationale behind Starbucks' expansion into Italy. It is not so much the coffee as it is the venue.

The news that Starbucks is set to invade Italy in 2017 has left an equal measure of horrified Italians and bemused commentators in its wake. Opening a branch in Milan early next year, the Seattle multinational will apparently attempt the impossible and the needless: selling Italian-style coffee to the nation it stole the idea of Italian-style coffee from in the first place.

Given that Italy is globally renowned for its coffee culture, and given that it’s already taken steps to prevent the adulteration of this culture at the hands of Starbucks-esque globalization, it’s little wonder that a raft of objections from Italian patriots and sympathizers followed the Seattle giant’s announcement.

[. . .]

Amid the reports of horror and confusion, pundits declared that Starbucks was entering its most intimidating market yet, underlining the steep challenge the company will face in establishing a niche for itself in the home of the espresso, the cappuccino, the latte, and all those other drinks that wouldn’t sound quite as appealing if they were called coffee, foamy coffee, and milky coffee.

And yet, as improbable as the idea of Starbucks being successful in Italy must surely sound, there’s every chance that it will find a footing for itself in the ‘home of coffee.’ Yes, the chain may arguably sell inferior versions of what Italians can already buy cheaply on every street corner of their homeland, but the simple fact that many have missed in all the furor surrounding the coffeehouse’s announcement is that beverages are not the only thing it sells.

In fact, coffee and its accessories may not even be the main thing the Seattle chain serves to the public. As other commentators have noted, and as revelations on the choice of venue for a first date have attested, a big chunk of Starbucks’ success resides with the ambiance and environment it provides. That is, it doesn’t simply offer its customers buckets of coffee, but also a kind of neutral, inoffensive space that’s familiar enough to be comforting, yet blank and generic enough to lend itself to whatever meaning people want to project on it.

[LINK] "Panama’s Expanded Canal Faces a Challenging Scenario"

The Inter Press Service's Iralís Fragiel notes the various external factors that have the potential to complicate the expansion of the Panama Canal.

When the new locks of the expanded Panama Canal begin operations, they will do so amidst numerous challenges, because of the storm clouds hanging over the global economy, especially China. But local authorities and experts are not worried about the possible impact on the expanded canal.

The slowdown in the Chinese economy, the second largest client of the Panama Canal, transporting 48.42 million tons in 2015, is one of the factors causing concern regarding this motor of the Panamanian economy, which last grew six percent, the highest rate in Latin America.

But the start of operations of the expanded canal, due in May or June, does not worry Luis Ferreira, spokesman for the Panama Canal Authority (ACP), an autonomous government agency.

“When there were economic problems in the past, we would lose basically two to three percent of the cargo; the same thing might happen this time, but we don’t expect a substantial decrease, unless there is an all-out recession in China,” he said in an interview with IPS.

[. . .]

The expansion of the 80-km canal, which turned 100 years old in 2014 and which handles approximately five percent of global trade, involved an investment of 5.25 billion dollars. Work began on Sep. 3, 2007.

With this megaproject, carried out by Grupo Unidos por el Canal (GUPC), the consortium led by Spanish construction firm Sacyr, Panama hopes to increase daily ship traffic from 35- 40 to 48-51.

[LINK] Bloomberg on the relative strength of the economies of Central America

Bloomberg's Michael McDonald reports on the relatively strong growth of Central America, although the "relative" has to be underlined in the context of what is, at best, a stagnant Latin American economy.

The slump in raw materials prices that has hurt Brazil, Chile, Peru and Colombia is leaving Central America unscathed.

The region is bucking a trend of sluggish growth in the rest of Latin America as cheaper crude prices cut its fuel bills and faster growth in the U.S. boosts remittances and tourist spending. The region will grow 4.2 percent this year, led by Panama’s 6.3 percent expansion, according to forecasts from the International Monetary Fund. That compares to a forecast of a 0.3 percent contraction for Latin America and the Caribbean as a whole while Brazil, the region’s biggest economy, is set to shrink 3.5 percent.

All seven Central American nations count the U.S. as their biggest trading partner, while Brazil, Peru and Chile all do more business with China. Cooling demand in the Asian giant has contributed to falling prices for South America’s oil, iron ore, copper and soy. As a net importer of oil and most other raw materials, Central America is a net winner from falling commodities prices.

“Their fortunes are really tied more to the U.S. than to China,” JPMorgan Chase & Co emerging market analyst Franco Uccelli said in a phone interview. “They aren’t seeing some of the perils of being an oil exporter with oil trading as low as it is today.”

Remittances sent home to Guatemala by workers living in the U.S. and elsewhere rose 18 percent in January from the year earlier. The country, which has the largest economy is Central America, had received a record $6.3 billion in remittances last year, equivalent to about 10 percent of gross domestic product.

[FORUM] What places in Toronto and southern Ontario would you like me to visit this year?

I did a bit of travelling around Toronto last year, and this year I intend to do much more.

Any suggestions? I'll share my photos, and other reactions, with you all.

[BLOG] Some Saturday links

• Bad Astronomy shows a photo of an ancient X-ray jet amplified by photos from the Big Bang.


• Centauri Dreams considers fast radio bursts.


• The Great Grey Bridge's Philip Turner notes that the Republican Party establishment is finally responding to Trump.


• Joe. My. God. and Towleroad note the ridiculousness of Caitlyn Jenner's desire to be a trans ambassador to Ted Cruz.


• Language Hat notes medieval naming patterns, with many religious names and many of these shared.


• Language Log notes controversy over a Chinese newspaper headline.


• Lawyers, Guns and Money looks at American conservatives who think that the failure of people in distant countries to hear of minor figures in their movement proves a conspiracy.


• The LRB Blog argues the Swedish model is a viable alternative.


• The Map Room Blog maps the distribution of Syrian refugees across Canada.


• Marginal Revolution notes the low crime rate in many Muslim societies.


• The New APPS Blog argues Donald Trump is the perfect expression of contemporary capitalism.


• The Planetary Society Blog pays tribute to astronaut Scott Kelly.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer considers how Mexico can go on the offensive against a Trump administration.


• The Russian Demographics Blog looks at statistics on religious affiliation in Belarus.


• Transit Toronto notes the various subway disruptions this weekend.


• Whatever's John Scalzi admits the possibility of being wrong, while still keeping to his criticisms and predictions re: BernieBros.