June 2010
1 post
I moved! But not far
I’m only a click away. 7billionfriends.com is retired for now. I needed a new sheet of paper and found one at The Great American Pixel. See you there!
CAW!
May 2010
2 posts
The Nosebriidge Neighborhood, SF Events This Week
Mary, Larry, Krista and I are all connected up in San Francisco getting ready for this week’s meetups and presentations. Tonight we’re at Noisebridge at 7 for an open meetup (Facebook event page with deets). Tuesday Mary and I are speaking at Institute for the Future. And Tuesday night Larry, Mary, and I are demoing at SF Beta.
For the Noisebridge event tonight we’re trying...
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"I want you to be there." Micro Meetups in Detroit...
OK first off, the new blog I tried to make is being a jerk, so long live this one for now! It’s good to be back in the neon green. :)
This week there are 2 informal micro meetup micro parties for LOVELAND micro real estate, one in Detroit THIS WEDNESDAY and one in San Francisco THIS SATURDAY. Mary and I have the honor of being flown out to west side for a talk about the project at a...
April 2010
8 posts
Begging For Batteries: What We Need To Make The...
Update: Wow, great news! Phillip Cooley has stepped in and purchased the battery we need to stream the property. You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar, and very worthy of Mary Lorene Carter’s newest trademark compliment: “You are a good person, and people say nice things about you.” We will do you proud, and you have made us and many inchvestors happy. Now everyone go eat at...
Neighborhoods, Services, and Sponsors, Oh My!
These past couple of rounds we’ve offered a new inchvestor reward and feature. If you own a square foot or more of LOVELAND (144 inches) you’ll get your own Neighborhood that you’ll be able to control with the similar tools to what we use behind the scenes, allowing you to give away or sell your land to friends or anyone and lay out their property lines. We’ll feature...
"@makeloveland Chicken!" My Short Talk On...
Mary gives the fuller story, but the panel I was on at the 140 Character Conference was rocked by volcanic eruptions that stranded Josh and Rita in London while Tish Shute and I carried on in condensed form. Here’s my supershort superfasttalk that touches on inspiration for bringing elements from virtual worlds out onto the realtime web and the really real world:
@makeloveland Chicken!...
First Day of Plymouth Construction and Lemon...
Yesterday Alan, Mary, James, and I (joined by two students shooting documentaries in Detroit) broke ground on the site of Plymouth, the first 10,000 square inch LOVELAND property. We dug out the shape of the grid so we can pour a concrete border and path into the middle and run the property lines for 10,000 square inches, and a 3 foot deep hole to plant the pole for our Lemon Battery solar panel...
"The project is too weird for me not to do it."
If you want to see one of the cooler, weirder, more surprising transformations on the popular internet, this is what Flickr the photo sharing site looked like when it started out as an open-ended virtual world called Game Neverending (2002 - 2004):
link via Waxy
Now co-founder Stewart Butterfield and friends are working on a new game called Glitch coming out later this year, which, if...
What's Goin' On?! A Quick LOVELAND Update
Holy crudler, time flies. Here’s the quick scoop.
☛ We’re beginning to fill in the new 50,000 square inch Hello World property. Please inchvest here at $1 a square inch. We have a goal to hit over the next few days. 1/2 of the inchvestment money goes to 7 other grant projects in Detroit. The rest goes to us building rad stuff for you. Not that we’ve been prying into your...
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Upcoming LOVELAND Parties & Presentations
Oh man, we got event LOVELAND stuffs coming up in San Francisco, New York, and Detroit (The Third Coast!). On the presentation end:
☛ On April 20-21 I’ll be speaking on a panel at the 140 Characters Conference in New York. As they say, “This event is shaping up to being the largest worldwide gathering of people interested in the effects of the real-time Internet on both business...
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Breaking Ground On A Ground Breaking Work of...
Hear ye, hear ye. This coming Sunday we’ll be at 8887 E Vernor Highway, the site of Plymouth, the first 10,000 square inch LOVELAND property, to break ground on the construction of the grid, and the property lines for LOVELAND’s initial 588 inchvestors will be set in place.
Here’s the location again (google map) on Detroit’s east side, in The Villages.
Here’s...
March 2010
21 posts
Leveling Up!
Man, what a week. We’ve grown a bit, and you can take a look at LOVELAND’s people page to see the crew behind the curtain. Krista and Nicole are the newest entrants and over the last week we’ve been getting everyone up to speed and setting up our collaboration tools and responsibilities.
We invited Krista onboard to lead outreach for inch sales in Season 2, with our ambitious...
New LOVELAND Site for Season 2!
OK! We’ve got a new site at makeloveland.com for the start of Season 2. Check it out!
We’re still getting some things into place and stacking and re-stacking words, but Larry rocked it, and we got it up just in time to see the end of the first full day of spring like we’d hoped.
Some very notable notes on the site and season 2:
First, if you’re an inchvestor, you can...
"I've Never Heard Of Logging Into Property Before"
Yesterday was the first day that some inchvestors started logging in and poking around the new site. If you’re an inchvestor and want to test it out and give feedback before we replace the old site, let me know. I’m sitting here right now with a piece of paper and a pen trying to condense the simplest bestest feedback directions for Larry.
Here’s the homepage after you log in...
What's Up? To Do List Number 7,846.538
LOVELAND next to do’s for me, Jerry P:
The new website is alllmost ready! We need some inchvestors who want to login early to come test it out and refine things over the next few days. Get in touch if you want the access info. Basically, Larry has been kicking butt at it and it looks great. What we need are peops who want to poke around and send us feedback for the things they want added or...
LoveMachine Collaboration: Can 10,000 Inches...
OK, so I don’t know if 10,000 inches can become a person, but I’m modifying that from LoveMachine Inc’s provocative self-description:
Right now we have three projects, in different areas and stages of development:
Work. Software for companies to work better and faster. Money. A digital replacement for world currencies. The Brain. Can 10,000 computers become a person?
...
The Continuation of The Ghost Inches and Project...
Yesterday was the big St. Patrick’s Day parade in Corktown, Detroit. Thousands and thousands of people don their greens and go marching down Michigan Avenue right outside our house. It’s a pretty crazy all-day party.
In the morning I posted a new Kickstarter round and the next episode of the Ghost Inches:
The Legend of The Ghost Inches Part 2: Ghost Inches Unleash Ravishing...
LOGINLAND! New Site In Progress
Larry just sent me the framework for the clean new LOVELAND site, where I was able to log in for the first time. Awesome! So pretty soon inchvestors will all have accounts where you can create a profile, link to things from your property, meet the neighbors, and so on.
I’m currently going through the site updating content and making notes for Larry. ¡Viva la inchvolucion!
Oh and look....
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Animated Gifs + LOVELAND Fashion =
50 inch inchvestor Nicki Manchisi models her new LOVELAND shirt in San Francisco:
We were just catching up about the project and Nicki was reminiscing about its origins and all the inch grids I was leaving around the house back in the day, which are still hanging up on the walls. <3
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w00t! Just Commissioned A Functional 8-Bit Map of...
Awesome! I saw this pop up on my radar and went for it. It’s too perfect.
Brett Camper is making fully accurate 8-bit maps of real cities. His Kickstarter project advertises that for $200 he’ll make any city you want (there are also cheaper rewards, check it out). 8-bit New York City is live right here (also pictured above), and he’s got a list of the usual suspect cities...
Cameras and Robots, Oh My: LOVELAND Special Ops...
There are two LOVELAND special ops projects in progress: Project Lemon Battery led by Alan Languirand in Detroit, who is creating a solar powered web cam, and Project Pico Mover led by Mike Mayfield in San Francisco, who is creating a web controlled robot that can manipulate a grid.
Alan has a new update on the camera as he pieces together the components for more testing. The goal there is to...
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Building The Bridge To Everywhere
One of the components of LOVELAND Season 2 is that we’re building a bridge from Detroit to Canada. What? Yep. Well, it’s an imaginary bridge that will be visualized inching across the Detroit River (all 50,000 inches wide of it) as inchvestors move into the second property. I’m giving some images to Pierce so he can create an awesome new illustration and visualization based on...
Asking The Creative Crowd Nicely: The Itty Bitty...
OK, brief backstory. Chainpaws are animals with chainsaw hands. It’s a storyverse concept I worked on a while ago. That is all. You may proceed… :)
Last year I put a few dollars into Mechanical Turk to commission images of chainpaws for $0.20 each from total strangers. People were given an example chain paw. I told them not to take a lot of time, and just get it done, either...
Catching Up With Loved Ones, Players Of The Game,...
I’m in San Francisco until the 10th catching up with friends and collaborators on the project. First let me say that Larry Sheradon is *killing it* on the map and website updates. We met up right when I got in to go over plans, and he whipped out pages of drawings and pulled up prototypes on his computer that had me drumming the table in joy. Dude’s good. Real good. Hello World indeed...
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Mystery Is Strength: Lost, LOVELAND, and The...
J.J. Abrams traces his love for the unseen mystery –- a passion that’s evident in his films and TV shows, including Cloverfield, Lost and Alias — back to its magical beginnings.
Here’s something I think about a lot while working on LOVELAND. Because many aspects of the project are necessarily and openly improvisational, and there’s an evolving storyverse alongside the...
Listen To LOVELAND On NPR's All Things Considered
Check it out, earlier today NPR aired a story about LOVELAND called Inchvesting In Detroit: A Virtual Realty. Click here to listen to it.
They interviewed Rita King (who has her own write-up here), a project skeptic (hi, you know I’m available at jerryp[at]gmail[dot]com or 908-343-1981 if you want to talk rather than snipe, I’m more than happy to connect about the project, as a real...
There's Something About Mary's Blog
Esteemed LOVELAND teammate Mary Carter has a new blog called […drum roll…]
Check it out and follow her inchventures!
Reason Number 1,337 Why Everything Is Awesome:...
When LOVELAND first went online, the earliest inchvestors were friends of mine, and then it started spreading out to friends of friends or people who know me by reputation. And then it started flipping over to people I don’t know at all, and that’s awesome.
A little while back someone from Hoboken, New Jersey bought a square foot of Plymouth (144 inches). I wrote back to say thank you...
Towards Radical Asking And Radical Crediting
Two healthy forces are colliding that are leading to a big change in LOVELAND operations. 1: LOVELAND, while still very early stage, has more demand and has grown larger than what I working mainly as an individual am able to sustain, and 2: more of the friends who have informally worked with me on the project are starting to bang their shoes on the table and say GIVE ME MORE CREDIT AND LET ME DO...
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Project Lemon Battery Sucks In Sun, Spits Out Fun
Check it out, Alan’s got an update and video showing more early progress on the DIY solar powered web-streaming camera we’re going to try out on LOVELAND properties: And then there was light…
Incremental progressing being the name of the lemon battery game, here’s a big upgrade and good news for the project. Gone are the days where stabbing a lemon with nails and...
Got More Shirts! Still Need More Shirts!
Sweet, we got another shipment of shirts for inchvestors from crazycompany.spreadshirt.com! I really like spreadshirt for the options it gives on shirt styles, and printing just one at a time works out very well for testing and for individual buyers. But for this to work at scale for a poor startup who wants to distribute them to inchvestors we still need to get a bulk silkscreen going.
Thanks...
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To L3C or Not To L3C, That, Is...Confusing
Hokay, so. I have an open question. When I started working on LOVELAND I incorporated an LLC in Michigan called Why Don’t We Own This? as the legal entity behind it.
A lot of people have asked why LOVELAND isn’t set up as a nonprofit. Well, I have experience working at a nonprofit and two early-stage for-profits (one from scratch as a co-founder working directly with venture...
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Let's Get Physical: Plymouth Grid Update
The snow is coming down in New Jersey, with about 12 inches on the ground [badumbumching].
I was talking to my dad about the latest plans for the physical grid on the first property. I told him how we were working on individual square foot tiles that would be gridded and installed in the ground, and why in the matrix of tradeoffs between cost, clarity of division between spaces, durability and...
February 2010
18 posts
Nothing Functions Like A Deadline: Preparing for...
I’m writing this from my parent’s house in New Jersey, where I’m spending time with the fam on my mom’s birthday. Tomorrow I’m speaking to my sister’s social media class at Centenary College before busing it to New York for a few days and then flying to San Francisco on Thursday, then back to Detroit on the 10th.
Along the way I’m fitting in as many...
Say Hello To Nicole The New Inchtern
A couple of weeks ago I was invited to talk to a business school class at U of M-Dearborn about LOVELAND and some of my previous experiences with startups. Afterwards a few students came up and were interested in helping out and getting involved as interns.
As Janine says in Ghostbusters: “WE GOT OOONNNEEE!!”
Nicole will be in the office at the Russell for a couple of hours a couple...
From The Mail Room: What Did The Snail Say When He...
While waiting for my Detroit Ice Potato shirt to arrive some other stuff came.
A solar panel for outdoor camera testing (rock on, Alan):
A poem:
Property law spam (I think — either way, we’re a little past this already ;)):
A sample of green cleaning products for a possible (very wild) product placement story line:
I can’t wait to have a real mailbox set up for...
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To Do List #1(,987)
I’m going to try posting some of my to do’s here on the blog, maybe every other day, and cross them off as they’re completed. Why? Well, first there’s a lot to be done, and I think I’m doing a good job at it all, but by making some of my to do’s public it gives added incentive to be efficient and cross them off fast; it lets people and inchvestors see some of...
New Kickstarter Season 2 Pre-Game: The Legend of...
Ding ding ding! There’s a new Kickstarter round up called The Legend of The Ghost Inches. Based on requests, prior to season 2 you can get inches there.
Most people aren’t privy to Detroit’s haunted micro real estate past so check it out and edumacate yoself. These ghost inches come with spoookky surprises………………
LOVELAND Season 2...
An Update On The Detroit Ice Potato
He’s baa-aack! UPDATE: with his own website at detroiticepotato.com.
picture from onemorespoke:
illustration by Connor Goodman:
Last week I had some fun making the Detroit Ice Potato. Basically, after seeing the creation of the Ice House I was inspired to point the concept in a different (and very Jerry) direction. I put a potato in a cup, froze it, and put it on the street corner.
...
Plymouth Grid Construction
A quick update on the construction of the 10,000 square inch Plymouth grid that will be physically installed for inchvestors on the first LOVELAND property.
I had a breakthrough the other day after meeting with James Willer, an architect in Detroit and early inchvestor who I’ve been consulting with on how to put a durable grid into the ground, the right way.
I like to create meaningful...
Plymouth Is Full! WDET Radio & The Detroit Free...
As they say in France, now le fun really starts. Plymouth, the first 10,000 square inch LOVELAND micro real estate property is now fully occupied by 588 inchvestors from around Detroit, the country, and the world. This is a huge first milestone for the project that we’ll build from for season 2 in the spring. Join the Facebook group to follow along with updates.
I’m overwhelmed with...
Sweet (Sour?) New Project Lemon Battery Site
Alan made a beautiful new site for tracking progress on Project Lemon Battery: an effort to create a solar powered web-streaming camera that can be used to show LOVELAND property.
True to code name, he’s literally starting from the baby step of using an actual lemon to power LEDs, learn from that and move from there. How ‘bout them apples?
You can follow Alan on Twitter here, and...
Building Out The Microhood
LOVELAND map master Larry Sheradon made a tool for rearranging the properties you see on the Plymouth map. Basically now I make little neighborhoods and change the shape of inch lots, putting whatever property wherever. So cool. If you’re an inchvestor with a neighbor request, holler at me. Progress continues inch by inch…
Bruce Sterling On Atemporal Process
Bruce Sterling’s keynote at the Transmediale conference caught my ear as regards work process and problem solving now that we’re all in Internet Land. He compares the late great scientist Richard Feynman’s straight forward problem solving process to how his problem solving process might work today. This hit home as a pretty clear articulation of my own work process (the...
Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes: The End of Season 1 & The Start...
Hokay!
There are only 390 inches left in the first Plymouth colony. 575 people from around the world have inchvested in 9,610 inches in Detroit. Awesome. Get them while they’re hot right here and join the inchventure at its earliest stage — not least because you will kick yourself later if you do not. ;)
When the remaining inches go, that will mark the end of LOVELAND season 1 and...
Detroit Ice House Is Up! (And Introducing Detroit...
Well, the awesome crazies did it. The Detroit Ice House has been frozen and it looks beautiful. Read about it on the artists’ blog and visit it at the corner of McCllelan and Mack if you’re in Detroit (while it’s still froze). These are just a couple of my dinky pics:
I had the pleasure of meeting and becoming friends with one of the artists, the photographer Greg Holm,...
Ze Pickles Are In Ze Mail! Thanks, McClure's!
The 18 inchvestors in LOVELAND Round 9: The Case of The Pickled Inches are about to receive the unprecedented 1-2 punch of LOVELAND Detroit micro real estate and tasty tasty McClure’s Pickles.
Yesterday I packed up a bag of addresses, square inch golden deeds, magnifying glasses, and inchies:
And I just got back from McClure’s Pickles HQ where I personally handed them to a very...
Playing Towards A Unified Theory of Alternate...
Here’s a little glimpse into the LOVELAND studio as we prototype some ideas for season 2. I’ve started creating a tiny environment on the floor so we can do some Augmented Reality camera tests. Basically that means a web cam in the corner of the room looking down where a streaming video image like this:
Can become a graphically layered image like this:
While I was setting things...
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Project Pico Mover Update: Making Robots Is Like...
Mike Mayfield writes to check in on the status of Project Pico Mover, the LOVELAND robot that can zoom around and manipulate a grid or tiny landscape:
Hey DUDE, Just wanted to give you an update on the pico mover… This weekend I was able to fully assemble the first drive system and was a little underwhelmed with the performance. My current design requires the rotation of a 6’...
Motherboard Interview
The other day I did an interview with Motherboard.TV, Vice Magazine’s technology and culture site. Check it out: “Loveland is Rebuilding Detroit Through the Internet, One Square Inch at a Time”.
Being a Vice production, I was not surprised to see American Apparel ads gracing the margins. However I was surprised to see the model:
Thanks to Michael Byrne for a great interview....