Across the Great Divide

For Bike-Route Mapping, Look Past the Google Buzz.

Google has been getting a lot of play for its new bike-mapping function, as this Google-centric, front-page story in the Pioneer Press illustrates. Since Google's tool will cover the nation and has the computing power and brand of an 800-million-ton gorilla behind it, a lot of cyclists will soon be using this service.

The story does mention that there's a local Twin Cities bike-route-mapping option, called Cyclopath, which has been built over the last several years as a wiki, incorporating the experience of local cyclists.

When it comes to finding your way on a bike, as with other personal activities, local knowledge tends to be superior to what you can get from the big box info machine.

Which is better — Cyclopath or Google? This won't be a close analysis of the two, but I'd urge cyclists to compare them to see which best fits your needs and riding style.

I've used Cyclopath on occasion to test my own commuter routes or find alternatives when no good options were apparent. It has the advantage of allowing the rider to select along a continuum of bike-friendliness and time. If you want to get to your destination efficiently — and are comfortable with a stretch of University Avenue or France Avenue — then you can move the route selector closer toward "Minimize Distance."

Google might offer an alternative route, but it doesn't allow such fine-tuning... yet.

To compare the two, I chose three destinations that pose some challenges for the cyclist who needs to cover a fair amount of distance and arrive on time. They cross major arteries and are not directly served by bike paths for much of the distance. They are also places I go only occasionally, so I don't have a lot of opportunity to refine the routes myself through trial and error. It's these kind of trips for which these route mappers are most useful.

The first trip is to my doctor's office. He used to be in a more bike and transit-friendly downtown location. Now his office is near the corner of 494 and 169, a place that few people would consider going except in a car.

 Here's the Cyclopath route which covers 13.28 miles and is quite close to the route I actually take. (For this and all sample routes, I picked a midpoint between distance and bikeability.

The Google route was 2 miles longer. For a cyclist who wants to arrive without an elevated heart rate, that's maybe 10 more minutes onto your trip.

The next test was for an eye doctor location, also south, but on the other side of Highway 100. Freeways, and the car-centric sprawl they spawn, tend to make direct commutes most challenging. (To be fair, so do lakes!)

The two mappers were closer on this trek — 12.57 miles for Cyclopath (the green line in the map below) vs. 13.6 for Google, which was not bad, but contained a number of unnecessary jogs to route me through the Country Club neighborhood of Edina. Google also offered two even longer routes of 14.9 miles (because the bike path around Lake Calhoun is one way, forcing you to ride on the far side) and 16.9 miles incorporating the Kenilworth trail.

If you're looking for a nice ride as opposed to a direct and timely commute, you can select such routes on Cyclopath as well.

Here's where the flaws in Google really became apparent — a ride across town to the Raymond/University area of St. Paul. Again, the Cyclopath route approximated what I ride — a 10.46-mile route.

Google gave me two options.  The 12.6-mile low road incorporating the Midtown Greenway is not bad, and one I sometimes take for the return ride when my arrival time is not so important. The 15.2-mile high road is simply ridiculous.

As a route-finding tool with more functions, Cyclopath may be more difficult at first for a casual user, but I didn't do anything special to generate these routes.

For any cyclist looking for alternative routes, Cyclopath is worth a visit.

The Advantage of Being Half as Good.

Alert readers will note that I've moderated my blogging in a concerted effort to focus on a novel I'm writing. Haven't given up the ghost here, but will be picking my battles and serving up more tidbits from my reading, like this from Cory Doctorow:

The interesting bit isn't what it costs to replicate some big, pre-Internet business or project.

The interesting bit is what it costs to do something half as well as some big, pre-Internet business or project.

[...]

This is the pattern: doing something x percent as well with less-than-x percent of the resources. A blog may be 10 percent as good at covering the local news as the old, local paper was, but it costs less than 1 percent of what that old local paper cost to put out. A home recording studio and self-promotion may get your album into 30 percent as many hands, but it does so at five percent of what it costs a record label to put out the same recording.

What does this mean? Cheaper experimentation, cheaper failure, broader participation. Which means more diversity, more discovery, more good stuff that could never surface when the startup costs were so high that no one wanted to take any risks.

h/t Hal Davis

Was Give to the Max Day a Success?

Bob Collins at News Cut talks about yesterday's Give to the Max Day in Minnesota, which raised more than $12 million for local nonprofits yesterday. Commenters there and at this story weighed in with their confusion (and in some cases, disappointment) over the fact that $500,000 can't be a dollar-for-dollar match if there's more than $500,000 in contributions.

Duh.

The blame for this confusion is largely laid on the GiveMN organizers, but I fear it really reflects the weak state of financial acumen and development sophistication at too many non-profits.

I can't speak for the sponsoring foundations, but I think all the discussion about the match and whether the day attracted new money misses the larger point. I'd argue the day was about creating statewide awareness and increasing donor comfort with giving online.

Organizations and the members upset about their tiny match need to look at the bigger picture. GiveMN.org handed these organizations a new fundraising tool that otherwise might have been beyond their ability to implement. It spurred many of them to use the web in new ways to reach donors and considerably raised the profile of online giving.

For years, I've been using and recommending Network for Good — which appears to be affiliated with the "giving marketplace" that provides the GiveMN platform — as a way to manage one's charitable giving. For people who write just a few checks a year, a tool like this may be more than you need, but as more transactions of all types move to the web, non-profits must be able to move there, and use it effectively. This is tough to do on your own, especially in small, very resource-constrained organizations.

GiveMN also harnesses social media in ways that go beyond Network for Good, allowing donors to declare their support for organizations and share it with their personal networks — which is really how non-profits need to build their donor base.

I doubt that many organizations found new donors or raised much new money through Give to the Max Day. For most, I suspect that the annual appeal dollars and year-end giving from people figuring out their taxes might have just moved up in time.

But the dollars raised should not be the measure of success. Smart organizations will be using this day as a learning opportunity and this platform as a way to move their donor relations into a new realm.

UPDATE: A comment by Bruce at the News Cut post sheds some more light on how the confusion arose.

In their webinar presentation to charities some weeks ago, GiveMN.org reps said the $500K they secured from local foundations and other funding "partners" was to be allocated for underwriting the 4.75% fees charged by their processing "partner" Networkforgood.org until the money ran out. Then it was changed to a 1:1 match, then 1:2, then (and finally) proportional. The move to proportional came too late to effect the "buzz" of the 1:1 or 1:2 matches that were communicated prior to Nov. 17th. As late as Tuesday afternoon non-profits that one would think would know better were still representing "double your gift to us" through blast e-mails.

And the Strib comes out with a "Charitable Giving Guide" supplement on November 18th, the day after GTM Day!

Back When I was a Word Man.

This is a test of Typepad's audio player, which in my browser doesn't display as a player in my preview mode. It appears to require a right-click on the box to open the link in a new tab/window. But now that it's posted, a play arrow does seem to appear if you hover over the bar with your mouse.

Word Man

If U Like 2 Read This, What's the Fuss?

Ikea's decision to change its print typefaces to Verdana did not escape my notice, but did escape my comments when it was announced.

I've moved well beyond needing to care about budget, assemble-it-yourself furniture, and now that I am out of the marketing business, am relieved of the sort of anguish expressed by graphic designers over the switch.

"Ikea, stop the Verdana madness!" pleaded Tokyo's Oliver Reichenstein on Twitter. "Words can't describe my disgust," spat Ben Cristensen of Melbourne. "Horrific," lamented Christian Hughes in Dublin. The online forum Typophile closed its first post on the subject with the words, "It's a sad day."

While it's quite legible when viewed on a computer screen, in print and displays Verdana becomes  uglier as it gets larger, compared to the classic, Futura-derived Ikea Sans and Century Schoolbook-derived Ikea Serif. (You can view some before and after comparisons here and a somewhat measured designer's assessment of the issues here.)

Today, I read another take, from web strategist Gerry McGovern, who has had Ikea as a client.

The Web is resulting in the bursting of the ad-built branding bubble because web customers are much more fact-driven and less emotion-dragged. The very reason you’re on the Web is because you have not allowed yourself to get carried away by your emotions. You want to do a bit of research, get more facts, get the best deal.

Branding is essential but has been hijacked by an approach that seeks to manipulate the emotions. The less sophisticated a society is, the more brand loyal it is; the more sophisticated a society is, the less brand loyal it is. And that’s because of what branding has so often become—a way to get us to pay more for less.

Design is essential but too much modern design has been used to manipulate the senses. It seeks to reach into the unconscious and get us to do things that we might not do if we were thinking rationally.

He's right, about more than furniture catalogues.

Unfortunately, this old print-loving curmudgeon believes beauty holds less and less sway, the more we read from cellphone displays.

My Download Speed: A Good as Sweden's. Actual Results May Vary.

Ed Kohler isn't all that happy with Comcast, and in the comments, Robin Marty wonders if she's getting the speed the ISP promised her.

I just got a notice from Comcast that said:

Comcast wants to ensure that your cable modem can take full advantage of the speeds we are able to deliver over our advanced fiber-optic network. We would like to upgrade your existing cable modem at no additional charge.

We'll see.

Coincidentally, I received notice of a report on internet speeds in all 50 states. You can hit the link and go to a cool map that will let you drill down to the ZIP code level to compare your speeds with the rest of the nation's.

Interesting, that my neighborhood had the second-best download and upload speeds in the metro, after the University of Minnesota area. Also, Red Lake County, which is reservation country, had some of the best recorded speeds in the state. My Colorado service, by contrast, sucks, with about 1/4th the download speeds I enjoy in Golden Valley.

Overall, Minnesota (23rd) and Colorado (26th) are mediocre in a country where our internet connection speed averages 5.1 megabits per second, compared to South Korea (20.1 mbps), Japan (16 mbps) and Sweden (12.7 mbps).

Spending Some of My Surplus.

The Strib is running a commentary by me about flying the flag. Here's another part of the back story...

Last month, I read Jim's post about how he responded to coming across a homeless person's camp.

This morning I went downtown and signed up for a volunteer gig at a homeless shelter.

It struck a chord. He runs a business and has two small kids, not to mention an esoteric set of other interests. What's my excuse?

I shot him an email and asked for the name of the place and if it needed other volunteers. It turns out, People Serving People has an online form, and within the week, I'd sent it in, completed a tour and signed up for one morning a week in the children's center.

Since I run into Jim occasionally at his shop, it's very remotely possible I might've eventually heard a story about his volunteering. And then I might've gotten around to doing more than congratulating him for being a good guy. But the internet and the communication it enables — both intimate and transactional — deserves a lot of credit for getting me into my own volunteer gig.

Clay Shirky talks about the "cognitive surplus" created by our current accidental prosperity and the web putting us on the cusp of "the greatest expansion of expressive capability the world has ever known."

Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened--rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before--free time.

And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV.

We did that for decades. We watched I Love Lucy. We watched Gilligan's Island. We watch Malcolm in the Middle. We watch Desperate Housewives. Desperate Housewives essentially functioned as a kind of cognitive heat sink, dissipating thinking that might otherwise have built up and caused society to overheat.

And it's only now, as we're waking up from that collective bender, that we're starting to see the cognitive surplus as an asset rather than as a crisis. We're seeing things being designed to take advantage of that surplus, to deploy it in ways more engaging than just having a TV in everybody's basement.

Some of us may spend that surplus time gaming or creating YouTube parodies, while others will innovate in unpredictable ways.

We also have the option of saying, why am I sitting here pecking and clicking about change?

First Thing in the Morning, IT Style.

The chief operating officer of my former company had a theory. Many of the world's software and IT systems have been developed not because we're driven to innovate and be efficient but because IT guys are basically lazy.

For example, if they have to do something that might involve walking to another room, they'll invent a way to do it from their computer. As a side benefit, this allows them to continue gaming uninterrupted by their clients.

Generational differences may also enter in. Those seeking the IT support may be Boomers and the IT guys are likely to be from whatever Generation still has a letter left in the alphabet.

Case in point.

Woman arranges for one of the in-house IT guys to set up wireless access from her home to the company's virtual private network. It's her day off, and she has a lot of other things to do.

IT Guy: When should I come over?

Woman: I'd prefer first thing in the morning.

IT Guy: Okay. 10 o'clock?

Woman: I was thinking earlier, like between 8 and 9.

IT Guy: I'd like to avoid the traffic. How about 9:30?

On the appointed day, IT guy shows up at 5 minutes to 10. He was following his GPS, got turned around and ended up going the wrong way into downtown.

What is Wrong With This Picture?

Give up?

Cheating Ain't What It Used to Be.

A story about how to prevent students from cheating in the digital age got me thinking. Does it really matter whether they walk in with the answers?

For the record, I didn't cheat in college. There was a code of academic integrity at my school and I followed it. (I did develop a technique of distilling course content to one note card that I reviewed before walking into a test, but that was a study aid — not something I consulted once I knew the questions.)

Later, as an instructor in information design, I took this approach with students. Early in the course, I let them know what I thought was important to learn, and before the exam, I reviewed all the key concepts in a distilled form. I didn't view teaching as refereeing a contest, but as bringing students to knowledge and habits of thinking. I wanted to give them markers that would help retrieve those ideas later. It was okay to open the book.

How do we use knowledge once we are out of school? We work in groups, consulting others with information and different perspectives. We rarely memorize anything or rely on rote classroom learning. Instead, we know the world is constantly changing, so the key skill is being able to find new information or to locate a particular piece of information. Pattern recognition, research, reasoning, principles, cooperation, imagining, communicating. This is what an educated person really needs at her disposal.

I am impressed by those who can quote Diderot or minutely describe biological processes. I used to be a dominating Trivial Pursuit player,  myself. But the old trivia has been replaced by the new, so my memory banks are less useful now.

Back to cheating. In some cases, at least, a classroom "cheater" would be considered a resourceful, productive worker, capable of anticipating events, organizing information and processing it quickly to meet a requirement.

I'm not saying cheating is right at all, because it's breaking the rules, and in certain courses may involve failing to develop essential intellectual skills. But in view of the way information is changing, distributed and  applied today, educators should consider if the definition of cheating needs to change, too.