Apparently, taking the highway to school is not a shortcut but a giant circle. I guess I knew that but this map makes it ever more obvious.

Missing Image ;(

Elmwoodstrip.org is a community dataspace based in the elmwood strip community of Buffalo, NY. This digital public space brings local residents together by allowing them to digitally share and embed their local experience within the data structures of the site.

Elmwoodstrip. org recreates a public sphere in a place where public meeting places have been largely commodified (e.g. Spot Coffee), by providing a cost free place to exchange ideas. By using open source software in the programming and design of the site, I have been able to keep the cost at such a minimum as to provide this service free of charge to the public within this community. There are currently there are about 200 users and hundreds of local readers with a daily data consumption of about 200-500MB shared between around 200 unique visitors/day.

Users can embed text, sound, animation, and video without any previous web programming experience and without the use of any expensive proprietary or commercial software. After a user finishes click-publishing their media, the embedded data becomes immediately available to the public via the elmwoodstrip.com interface.

By lowering the learning curve for publication to the web, and tying the publication process in with a dedicated local readership, elmwoodstrip.org opens up this digital documentation process to a segment of the population that typically does not produce their own media or record their own historical experience. As with swatches in a quilt, the embedded media files are "sewn" together using MySQL, an open source database software package, and delivered to the public with PHP, another open source scripting language, to form a digital quilt of the elmwood experience from 2003-2005.

Elmwoodstrip. org is intended to counteract the negative effects on local community that have resulted from globalized communication on the internet by creating an immersive local web experience. Time spent at the site focuses the residents on communicating with each other and revitalizes the sense of local community. As the project site continues to grow, a people's history of this community begins to emerge and the interpretation of the local experience becomes more colorful and accurate.

Elmwoodstrip.org is based on open standards technologies such as HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, MySQL, RSS, and XML. User to user communication is handled via journals, cell phone SMS messages, site posts, integrated AOL AIM, integrated yahoo YIM, and email. Users can view the site from computer web browsers and even read the site, post and receive reader feedback from their mobile phones.

Although all users are essentially writing public journals, reader initiated comments are allowed only on the readers journals, as to promote a sense of responsibility when interacting with other users. By creating a method for inlinking between the writers and the readers journals, other readers can follow along the logical path of a discussion while avoiding the problem of spam that plagues many other online forums and journaling sites.

In the written segment of my thesis I will be exploring necessary technical and developmental decisions in the construction of such a data intensive and highly interactive web site, as well as, addressing issues of privacy, security, and public image in relation to elmwoodstrip.org and its users. Furthermore, I will be investigating and contrasting elmwoodstrip.org to other online communities that focus on the interaction of local residents such as the famous WELL online community in San Francisco, Craig's List, and others.

When I said I learned nothing useful at UB I lied. I learned to solder in my electronics class and tonight I needed to recharge batteries so that I can test the GPS for the web tracekr project I am working on. Unfortunately, the battery charger was broken. So I opened it up with the new found courage I developed in electronics class and soldered the power supply back onto the circuit board where it was severed. It worked and my batteries are recharging happily ever after.

Of course, I did this in a totally unventialted area and inhaled a bunch of chemical that are known to cause cancer in the state of california. I am so glad I don't live there. It seems like everything is so much more dangerous on that side of the country. Here I can safely inhale spray paint, right? I wonder what about the california environment makes everything so much more toxic to use there. lol.

I am out to dinner with (e:twisted). I love it. We ate at Casa Di Pizza.

Just when I am ready to never see another form again, I find more forms to fill out and more signatures to chase after.

In Paul's class today I finally learned how to make the machine I promised to make for (e:matthew) . Now I just need some transistors and a relay, a motor, etc. I am sure he will be pleased. But that is on hold until I get all this stuff worked out.

I also met with arzu? today and the project seemed pretty interesting. She had a GPS for me to test with, so we will see how that goes. When talking with her she informed me that in Fine Arts they don't need to write a thesis, they only have to have a final project. I have worked on my project for 2 years probably about 30 hours a week, so it is really annoying to now have to write a 60 page thesis on top of that only to get the same degree they get. I feel like I should get a higher degree with the added written thesis requirement.

I made such a mistake choosing media studies at UB. I guess its almost done now, and it wasn't hard really. Just a big waste of time and really costly. I wish I could say that it really taught me anything but in actuality it just set me back like a year in the devlopment of my projects. I guess I will have the paper to prove I can jump through hoops. To bad it cost me like $20,000.