Emily Chang – Designer

Just downloaded the first version of Twitter for iPad (iTunes link) and trying it out. On first glance, love the clean, properly-sized UI. Try pinch/zoom on a tweet to see more info. Pinch again to close. Swipe down with two fingers to see a thread. The “write a tweet” view overlaps a bit much for my preference, but otherwise, really liking it so far. If you’ve had the iPhone version, delete it from your iPad, then reinstall from the App store.

I was still curious after taking this photo of the trees on 24th Street at Bryant earlier today. How could I identify these trees?  I did several searches on variations of “trees on 24th street mission san francisco” which brought up some great local links, including SFTrees and a good list of trees in the Mission district but without photos, making it hard to decipher. I did some Google image searches on species listed but that only ruled out most of them. I did see a mention of a Chinese Banyan which looked like it could be but the many of the photos returned in Google showed bansai versions. After some more search, I ended up at the site of the San Francisco nonprofit group, Friends of the Urban Forest and saw a link to a collaborative project called the Urban Forest Map.

The Urban Forest Map is a collaboration of government, nonprofits, businesses and you to map every tree in San Francisco. Along the way we’ll calculate the environmental benefits the trees are providing — how many gallons of stormwater they are helping to filter, how many pounds of air pollutants they are capturing, how many kilowatt-hours of energy they are conserving, and how many tons of carbon dioxide they are removing from the atmosphere. The information we gather will help urban foresters and city planners to better manage trees in specific areas, track and combat tree pests and diseases, and plan future tree plantings. Climatologists can use it to better understand the effects of urban forests on climates, and students and citizen scientists can use it to learn about the role trees play in the urban ecosystem.

What a fantastic idea. I did a location search on the site for 24th Street at Bryant, zoomed in on the map, checked the map points for trees on that block and sure enough, located the Chinese Banyan trees that line both sides of the street. I signed up and added my photo to the page. Each tree page includes user contributed content such as scientific name, trunk diameter, height, as well as site-provided data like estimates of yearly energy conserved, air pollutants removed, carbon dioxide reduction, and more. There are also two Google maps, one showing a satellite view of the location and another of the street view. The project is also open source and if you’re a developer or want to make a mashup, you can download the map data (links to “export options” above the map).

I’m enamored with the idea and purpose of this site. I’ve been fascinated by the trees in the city and the West coast in general since moving here from the East coast. Excited to be able to learn more about the more than 200 species of trees in the city alone. As equally excited about contributing photos to tree pages. Going to start with my hood in SoMA and places I frequent.

Hopefully, this idea will spread to other cities, with the cooperation and passion of local citizens, the government, scientists and environmentalists to make our urban ecosystems flourish.

Facebook finally launches its geo-location social app, Facebook Places, bringing location features to its 500 million users. You can checkin to locations, see who’s nearby your vicinity as well as tag the names of other Facebook friends who are at the same location. As a test, I checked in from the iPhone app and added Ideacodes as a location. To claim the location, you have to provide proof that you’re officially affiliated with the organization and upload business documents for review.

Admittedly, I’m not a heavy Facebook user. In fact, I only login to see what people are up to a few times a month. Mostly, I’m drawn to it as a way to keep in touch with my oldest friends from high school and college. While most of them aren’t on the early adopter social networks, they’re ALL on Facebook posting photos and witty status updates. Even though Twitter’s already mainstream, most of them aren’t on Twitter, but lots of them update their status on Facebook every day. So I’m sure we’ll start to see mainstream adoption (and also rejection) of location checkin practices given Facebook’s sheer reach.

At launch, a few other popular location services (Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and Booyah) are using the API to push information back into Places. I’ve been using Foursquare for checkins since it launched and use Check.in to push to both Foursquare and Gowalla. I’m not convinced I’ll publish my location data to Places. My network on Facebook is spread all over the world and ranges from close personal friends to startup ceos to business clients to readers of my sites. If most of your Facebook contacts were local, then that would be a good way to keep friends up to date with where you are. That’s how I use Foursquare. On the other hand, I might start checking Facebook more to see where my friends (that aren’t on Foursquare) are ;)

Before you just start checking in without regard on Facebook, there are some issues you want to be aware of. Take a look at ACLU of Northern California on Facebook Places: Check This Out Before You Check In. As with all social media, it’s your choice to use it within your own context. If you decide it’s not for you, here’s an article at LifeHacker on how to disable this feature.

Relying on a user’s picture or the sound of their voice, future portable devices from Apple like an iPhone or iPad could recognize individuals who pick up and use the item.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office this week revealed a patent application from Apple entitled “Systems and Methods for Identifying Unauthorized Users of an Electronic Device.” The security-centric invention describes methods to identify users through a picture, the sound of their voice, or even their unique heartbeat.

via AppleInsider | Future iPhones, iPads could recognize, adjust for individual users.

MoMA has been quick to adopt online and social media practices in the last few years, and they’ve now released the first version of their free MoMA iPhone app (iTunes link). The app gives users “access to 32,000 works of art in the museum’s wide collection of modern and contemporary art; a dictionary of art terms and a database of artist bios; calendar information for exhibitions, film screenings, and events; and a wide range of audio tours consisting of special tours for children, teens, and the visually impaired.”  I love the availability to audio tours and the ability to browse by floor or stop number.  I also like that MoMA is encouraging visitors to take their own pictures in the museum and send it as a postcard to friends.  The app will be available shortly for Apple iPod Touch devices as well as Android. I suspect we’ll see a later version with slightly different features for iPad. I’m hoping SFMoMA creates a comprehensive app soon as well, given that they’ve already started with a rooftop garden iPhone/iPad tour.

Steve Rubel has an interesting article in AdAge, although I would argue that innovation, simplicity and utility have always been dominant trends even with PC internet browsing. I do think that the scale in which we consume has rapidly changed and the “always on” generation views content and connectivity as ubiquitous. Technology is just catching up to our expectations.

Within five years global internet consumption on mobile devices will surpass the same activity on PCs. This sounds like good news. It’s natural to think that browsers on the third screen (phones) and the fourth screen (tablets) will simply replace time spent in front of the same on a PC. That’s not the case.

Mobile devices, by their nature, force users to become more mission-oriented. As more internet consumption shifts to gadgets, it’s increasingly becoming an app world and we just live in it. Innovation, fun, simplicity and single-purpose utility will rule while grandiose design and complexity will fall by the wayside.

via It’s Time to Prepare for the End of the Web as We Know It – Advertising Age – Steve Rubel.

Spotted a series of ads for Earthjustice in the Montgomery St. BART station here in SF. Check into the ads on Foursquare and Earthjustice donates $10 to various activist and environmental causes. The ads have been running since May. Great use of social media. Also funny, but not surprising to see my Twitter friend KyNam Doam is the mayor.