I attend a lot of hackathons, considering either I’m organizing them or sponsoring them or covering them. Though I hope to slowly change that a bit, I’m no programmer.

Still, sitting around these events has led me to conceive of and, in some cases, suggest projects that never actually happen. Maybe they someday will. Here are some that have crossed my mind:

1. What Neighborhood am I in? — For Philadelphia, GIS shop Azavea has a map layer for Philly neighborhoods (which are not formal political boundaries) though I’m not yet sure I completely agree with them . Still, that’d be a good start to a tool that could (and should) easily be brought to other cities. Give an address, intersection or your current location to find out what city neighborhood you’re in. (I’d love for this to perhaps also combine other map layers like political representative, city services including trash days, neighborhood groups and other information) **There could be a tab breaking down zip code or neighborhood-specific Census information like rental/homeownership, crime, etc.
2. Parking flow chart — I thought it might be cool to have a little yes/no web app that would help drivers to decide where they can park in given situations. The GPS tool could follow parking regulations and have yes/no functionality: “are you 25 feet from a fire hydrant,” “is a weekday,” or whatever.
3. ‘Fuck You’ world map — Translations and pronunciations of ‘Fuck You’ (or, OK, perhaps a few phrases) in as many global languages as humanly possible. Helps to see different native or national languages and learn a simple phrase.
4. Easy budget visualization tool — Lots of governments have PDFs or deep budget information. Some even offer some visualizations themselves, but I wonder if there could be some tool that could suck up some of that information and offer more interactive, variable and more easily updated online displays to be shared more readily.

The groundwork of privacy, anonymity and free speech is being set now with evolving jurisprudence and legislation surrounding the concept of social networking.

That is the overarching theme, as I read it, in I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did:  Social Networks and the Death of Privacy, a new book from Lori Andrews, law professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Ahead of moderating a panel at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia featuring the author and two other esteemed panelists, I read an advanced copy of book.

Details of Thursday night’s event here.

It’s a book worth reading, dense with stories and examples of the gray line of privacy and the constitutionality of the social web. Below, I share some of my favorites bits.

• The Internet is in need of a Social Network Constitution, a concept Andrews builds toward throughout the book, finally sharing a more detailed concept.
  
• “Reasonable expectation of privacy” is the key phrase that turned a case in which Charles Katz was arrested for illegal betting when a public phone was tapped. Regardless of whether the event takes place in the house or not, personal details cannot be leveraged if there is a sensible reason for an individual to expect privacy and a court of law has not given authority to override that due to probable cause of illegal activity. [p. 52]
• Online privacy and speech concerns have not be regularly upheld by courts as they have in the past analog world. Andrews argues that a lack of understanding of the fast-changing landscape has caused poor recognition of similarities between, say, the 1988 Bork Supreme Court justice nominee video rental list disclosure to social network attributes being used against individuals in hiring processes. [p. 57]
• If we are simply early in these technologies, we still need to move quickly in establishing rights, because while it has been less than a decade since Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook, social norms are changing rapidly. [p. 57]
• “Facebook describes itself as a ‘social utility,’” which is important to convey the frustration with the defense of eroding privacy being that those who don’t like it can go elsewhere. [p. 58]
• Internet Service Providers have the only real internet kill switch, and because Egypt has only five and Libya has only one, it is easier to control the internet in those countries. For comparison, there are as many as 4,000 in the United States, though the top five account for half of the U.S. market. American legislation has sought to create a mechanism to turn off internet access in an act of national security. [p. 63]
• Right to anonymity and Freedom of Speech at the heart of these issues, like the dark story of William Francis Melchert-Dinkel who, posing as a female online, allegedly encouraged a Canadian girl to kill herself, which she did. [p. 93]
• Are social networks publishers or communities?, which is important because they are being treated as the latter, in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which suggests in serving as a pass-through of information, the content cannot be blamed on the site. Examples like wide-ranging message board AutoAdmit, which was co-founded by a Penn law student, have faced legal action because of a lack of moderation. [p. 105]
• Passive publishers rights, like craigslist, earn a right of protection only by setting up reasonable efforts to reduce liability, so Roommates.com was liable for discrimination because by having a drop-down option for users to choose ‘No Minorities’ in roommate choice, it was encouraging illegal, discriminatory behavior. [p. 108]
• Lower Merion webcam controversy showed lack of legislation protecting technology-driven privacy, supplemented by the 2010 case of a Rutgers student who used video conferencing software to spy on his gay roommate. [p. 116]
• ‘You have zero privacy anyway, get over it,” said Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems, a sentiment Andrews questions with the above mentioned examples. [p. 117]
• Context may matter a lot in the placement of public information but perhaps not in court, which is made clear when personal information from a 17-year-old’s MySpace page were placed as a sexually-suggestive post on craigslist. However the 40-year-old woman charged with doing that act was found not-guilty in 2011 for cyber-harassment because the information was already publicly available. [p. 118]
• 81 percent of divorce attorneys have used an increase in evidence from social networks, including 66 percent using Facebook. [p. 138]
• An unsettling lack of due process is used in sharing changes in privacy from social networks, including a host of examples from changes in Facebook and efforts by Google+ to sell on privacy. [p. 175]

From this very compelling TED video from former MoveOn.org Executive Director Eli Pariser on ‘filter bubbles’ happening online due to personalized algorithms (i.e., in truth there is no one Google search, as nearly 60 filters dictate results)

“We may have the story of the internet wrong. This is how the founding mythology goes: in a broadcast society, there were these gatekeepers, the editors, and they controlled the flows of information. And along came the internet, and it swept them out of the way and allowed all of us to connect together and it was awesome. But that’s not actually what’s happening right now. What we’re seeing is more of a passing of the torch, from human gatekeepers to algorithmic ones. And the thing is, the algorithms don’t yet have the kind of embedded ethics that the editors did. So if algorithms are going to curate the world for us, if they’re going to decide what we get to see and what we don’t get to see, then we need to make sure that they’re not just keyed to relevance, but that they also show us things that are uncomfortable or challenging or important…”

It’s a small, though clever, effort, and I appreciate being called among a select group of people locally highlighted as worth following on Twitter.

It’s a diverse group that is still changing, but the list is an interesting way to curate a list of people following, sharing and commenting on the goings-on of the city. I’ve always hoped to offer real value online and plan to keep doing just that.

It also helps that it’s a built-in community of people with communities online to share and drive traffic, audience and, perhaps, action.

On the 20 portion of its site, NBC 10 will use tweets from the list members to add perspective to local events, yes, like my amusement at the national conference of the International Cat Association. I’ll strive to offer some relatively more valuable information too.

I appreciate greatly the notoriety and impressive company.

Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Jim MacMillan hiding from Daniel Victor's iPhone camera to my enjoyment at the August 2011 ONA Philly meetup at Nodding Head.

Sometimes you need that kick in the pants from an outsider.

There is a new Philadelphia chapter of the Online News Association, something of a trade organization founded in 1999 for journalism innovation that hosts a popular annual national conference I attended last year and regional events across the country. (I’ll be attending the national 2011 ONA conference, this year in Boston in October, too.)

But it’s not the first ONA chapter here. As recent as summer 2008, an ONA Philly chapter, led by then Inquirer online editor Chris Krewson and Philly.com editor Wendy Warren, held a big regional conference. But it was a time of heavy contraction and stress over at 400 North Broad Street. The workload wasn’t spread enough and that iteration fizzled. (Credit to Krewson and Warren for first bringing the group here — and setting up the first Facebook group.)

Fortunately a newcomer has taken up the cause. (And has a new Facebook group up, in addition to a Twitter account to follow news.)

Young sage Daniel Victor, who took a gig at Philly.com under Warren earlier this year after the collapse at TBD, has taken up the cause. Enlisting the Technically Philly crew and local AP editor Amy Fiscus, Victor is bringing the show back.

We had small 20-30 person meetups in July and August and now are moving forward. On Sept. 15, NewsWorks is hosting a show and tell on their near one-year anniversary of work from WHYY, details above at right in sidebar.

From what I know, there’s never been a national ONA conference in Philadelphia. That’s something I’d like to see changed.

I tried out the Tweroid service. [Updated: I also tried the service for @TechnicallyPHL]

The value proposition is to sign in, wait an hour or so, get an assessment of when your followers are most active online. The ask might be to then starting tweeting at those times to have the biggest impact.

So, according to this, for maximum audience, I should be tweeting at noon and in the 4pm hour on weekdays

I’m left wondering if that’s the value of social media — directing your gaze to the biggest crowd, or if it should be more spontaneously. As metrics can continue to deploy

1. Signing off initials — If you have multiple people using your organization’s account, sign off with initials for transparency, personal connection and ease.
2. Do create regular content — Part of my schtick is having a lunchtime regular feature, like Noontime Number for Technically Philly and Running News at Noon for Back on My Feet. It’s something followers come to expect and helps you be sure to fill content.
3. Do take the RSS feed from your blog and then do a second (or third) tweet later for ifferent audience — It helps feed the beast, but also means your next tweet will hit for a new audience. Note, though, that some feel Twitter should be all engagement, so sending an RSS feed is somewhat looked down on. Still, I think as long as an RSS feed doesn’t dominate your Twitter conversation, it’s an added value.
4. Do tweet your content more than once — Yes, as a follow up to the item above, keep in mind that Twitter users tend to focus in at different times, from the morning to lunch to the evening or something like it, so by tweeting a story a few times (without getting spammy), you have a better chance of hitting an interested party.
5. Do use CoTweet to manage multiple accounts with multiple user — the former central Pennsylvania startup has a lot of good features for archiving messages, assigning followup and forward posting tweets.
6. Instead of just responding, RT a meaningful message — When you reply to someone, RT her message and add your own when space allows. This gets other people into the conversation. If no one is interested, then take it to DM or email.
7. Do more often have a call to action — (usually a link) but don’t be afraid to offer meaning in words. It’s a push media, so what are you pushing? Don’t take that to mean you should always be pushing your stuff, but conversation, engagement, sharing, linking, etc. are all good calls to action.
8. Do be able to share a specific point in those 140 characters — So, ‘Man speaks at classroom’ is a whole lot less effective than ‘this is how we can make homework suck less, man says,’ which can inspire conversation or thought or response or, even better, a click.
9. Tweet strong quotes or (even better) hard numbers – I’ve always found pushing clear information and statistics travels better than something less actionable or more vague.
10. Break quick news on Twitter — When you’re reporting on something, feed good, interesting, independent content on Twitter. When possible, sure, having a link of yours can help you capture the clicks, but ultimately, you’re trying to create an audience and you do that with content, so Twitter needs its own material.

Facebook pushes traffic and helps build an online community.

We’re over that. Joining Facebook and learning lessons from it is in the distant past. It’s time to have that next conversation.

I’m interested in moving to the next step, creating more compelling Facebook pages that keep people coming back, attract more eyeballs, develop brands, help create communication and, of course, help push eyeballs.

I’ve been moving through some conversations, trying to pull out the best lessons. I’m not behind anything compelling yet, but I’d love to do something fun with NEast Philly’s incredibly active Facebook page.

Some worthy reading below:

• Data lessons on journalists using Facebook
• So you want a Facebook Fan Page for Your Nonprofit? Here’s the Scoop! –
• 8 Essential Apps for Your Brand’s Facebook Page –
• Is Your Target Audience On Twitter, Facebook, Or LinkedIn? — Because you should only focus energies where it makes sense. This has been a focus of a NEast Philly BarCamp presentation.
• 5 Easy Steps To A Great Facebook Fan Page — Biggest take aways: You have to vary the types of content and be willing to strike up debate yourself. That means effort, but it will grow awareness and use. That’s a big first step.
• How To Build A Customized Facebook Page For Your Business –
• Facebook pages wih static FBML application
• Wiki on FBML development Facebook static FBML problems and solutions
  
• How to customize Facebook fan page with Facebook static FBML application
• A Facebook Page is probably what you want, but compare them with Facebook groups and get more about that fight with Mashable here.
• Want an RSS feed of a Facebook group? There’s a Yahoo Pipes mock up for that.

I’ve done this enough times to figure out how to do it without screwing everything up.

Suppose you start a project on a free WordPress.com, and, as it grows, you want to move it to a self-hosted platform version of WordPress, like I did with this site and NEast Philly and my thesis and others.

So, in case you need to do the same, here are the steps:

1. From the Tools option in the WordPress.com sidebar, choose to Export.
2. Download the XML Export file, being mindful that all fields in the drop down menus are chosen, so you are downloading everything.
3. Open in Wordpad and change your file extensions with a Search and Replace. i.e. So, in the XML file from my thesis site, I replaced ‘phillypolitics.wordpress.com/’ with ‘thesis.christopherwink.com/’, meaning that the links would then associate
4. *Make sure permalinks are the same from your WordPress.com to your new site.
5. From the Tools option in your new self-hosted WordPress platform, choose to Import.
6. Browse and choose to Upload the XML file that you downloaded from your WordPress.com and then edited in Wordpad.
7. **Easy-to-miss step** Upon selecting your XML file, under ‘Import Attachments’ be certain to check off the box next to ‘Download and import file attachments’ so that your photos and other uploaded media will be transferred to this new database. (I’ve missed this step before to much frustration).
8. Delete the old jawn — Take down the old WordPress.com or, if you want to transition some search engine love, you can block the WordPress.com from being picked up by search engines but keep it alive for old links with a post pushing to the new site and eventually delete.

Short, compelling videos of interest travel well on the web.

That means video can take your brand, organization, mission, message or call to action with it. I served my media director role with Back on My Feet for less than a year, but I’m proud of moving the staff to more frequent video creation for those reasons and to give our members — people experiencing homelessness — a platform to share their stories.

Looking back, though I shared other metrics from my time there, I realized I never shared the best of what I thought was some meaningful video for just a start.

So, below, that’s what I do, highlight 15 of the best videos we created during my tenure as media director, clamoring on email that “everything is content!”

A Boston member of the month Jackie Kenyon talking about her path:

There were also some great write ups, like this one of a Boston member grappling with serious weight issues.

We highlighted new members each month, like Tyrone Collins in Philadelphia not long before I left.

One of the first member interviews we did on video was with Stacy Stone at Brotherhood Mission in Philadelphia:

One of the more powerful member speeches was from a Boston volunteer talking about her own past with addiction, one of physical and emotional abuse.

We took to tracking progress and interest of our members, by introducing them early in the process and planning on checking in later, as we did below with some new Chicago members.

We highlighted our corporate partners, like the Hauptman Wellness Center and, as seen below, tailor Henry A. Davidsen, which donated suits for our members.

Baltimore member Charlie Tiller was interviewed for the Baltimore Bash.

I grabbed video of Philadelphia alumni Eddie Smith speaking at the 2010 Bash.

I interviewed Philadelphia alumnus Kenny Herder at least a half dozen times.

We interviewed our volunteers, especially before they tried to run 100 miles straight in our 20in24 ultra-marathaon.

Philadelphia Member Antonio LaBoy spoke poignantly about losing a son and that affect on addiction. Below is one of several videos:

During the Boston chapter launch, Philadelphia alumnus Kevin Brown brought down the house with his emotional, honest story.

Video played a role in many ways other than member stories.

We amplified and archived what we shared at smaller events, like when our founder Anne Mahlum spoke at the National Press Club in Washington D.C..

We introduced our audience to our organization, like celebrating our staff running the Chicago Marathon or, as seen below, the tradition of staff signing a wall in our office.

We were able to share the many, many TV news stories, like D.C. member Chris Hatton, who returned from serious jail time to work for stability.

We used existing video to connect our running-crazed base, like with these great commercials.

Video also enabled us to share amazing opportunities our members had. I can’t embed the video and I can’t lay claim to having anything to do with this, but one of our Baltimore members and a Vietnam veteran spoke before a Congressional sub-committee on Veteran homelessness.

We offered a multimedia dimension to our events, like this Bash introduction video.

The devotion to video has continued. Recently I noticed that the staff made sure to record the Dallas chapter launch kickoff speaker, and Charlie Tiller made the organization proud.

And the second part