EchoDitto

It is with a heavy but excited heart that I tell you all: as of today, EchoDitto is ceasing to operate as an online consultancy and instead will refocus our efforts on the ancient art of pantomime.

For over four years now, we have worked to empower organizations through the innovative use of technology, but it’s time for us to move to a more creative arena. Along the way, we have become leaders in our field promoting the philosophy of open source collaborative solutions to real world organizing problems. Our influence has cut a wide swath, with former Dittos moving on to fulfill leading roles at media outlets, advocacy organizations, and political campaigns. Our team members have had speaking events from California to Austria, teaching industry leaders to embrace collaborative ideology. Our know-how has known few boundaries.

As such, we feel our work here is complete. The logical next step is changing the world through the healing power of silent movement.

First, we need to prepare. The entire team will be moving to West Bengal, India to attend the prestigious Jogesh Mime Academy. You can read all about it here. Needless to say, we are all extremely excited.

So, we bid you farewell. To all of our clients and partners: thank you for four years of phenomenal envelope-pushing work. You will be in our hearts always.

It's been a bit over a month now, and I have to say that I love my iPhone. It's small--thinner than a Motorola Q, which I think used to be the thinnest smartphone on the market--and lightweight. It works a lot better than my Treo 650, even though the virtual keyboard took a little getting used to. I find that I'm using my mobile email a lot more often than on my Treo, probably because of my iPhone's ability to work well with IMAP folders. The iPod and phone features all work very well.

Google just started offering a free "click-to-connect" service that allows you to phone anyone with a listed phone number in Google Local. I think this is a pretty big deal :

[Note: The address Google shows for us is old, here are the right addresses for EchoDitto in DC and NYC. And, yes, that's my cell phone number in there.]

This last Saturday, I was at DrupalCamp here in New York. I went because I:

It was wicked fun, and I have some musings about what I learned later. Skip this paragraph if you already know about Drupal...in case you don't know what Drupal is, it's a feature-rich open-source web Content Management System that simplifies publishing web content. For example, it has a What-you-see-if-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) content editor, so you don't necessarily have to learn HTML to publish web pages. Several organizations, notably MTV UK as well as certain clients of EchoDitto, like the Pearl Harbor Stories Project, use Drupal. I should note that Drupal can be a partial alternative to the packages that the two companies Michael talks about in this post, although there are pros and cons to making that choice.

Yes, I know. The NYC January Tech Meetup was like two weeks ago. Our retreat distracted me from writing this post, but there were a few cool things that were previewed that I want to share:

(1) Platial: "the people's atlas." Interesting social mapping tool that has some powerful APIs/hooks into popular blogging platforms. They've even opened it up with a roll-your-own Mapkit package. This sort of geo-location stuff is going to be, in my opinion, pretty important in 2007 and 2008. Interesting social maps already created, including this one to New Jersey's best hotdogs. Yeah, kind of cheesy right now, but I think this tool has interesting social organizing implications. However, I don't see any organizations/companies using it (just individuals)--yet. This is likely to get even hotter once GPS-enabled cell phones integrate with this service (coming soon, I'm sure). Interesting note: I heard at the Meetup that it's partially funded by Kleiner Perkins.

Nicco's recent post about his support for Senator John McCain has caused quite a lot of ruckus. We at EchoDitto disagree with his decision. While Nicco does not work for Senator McCain, his support for a possible McCain candidacy runs contrary to many of our core beliefs at EchoDitto.

As a firm, EchoDitto is committed to progressive campaigns and organizations. We started in the political space and have been privileged to work with a lot of progressive candidates and campaigns as well as clients in the non-profit and corporate spaces. We're proud of the work we've done over the past three years with our partners, and we look forward to all the great work ahead.

Two main reasons:

• First, last weekend, I made an international phone call. By itself, it's not that cool, but what was cool was I connected using my VoIP phone to my mother who happens to be in rural India right now. Not only that, but she was travelling, so I had to connect to her cellular phone. While my mother and I were talking, we realized that we had a question for my father, who was in Anchorage, Alaska at that very moment. So I conferenced him in on his cellular phone. And I was in the middle--talking to them both from EchoDitto's New York office. Amazing. All for the low cost of 5 cents per minute.
• Second, I discovered that our office phone system had an amazing feature built into it already (clicking on the icon will connect you to me via telephone. Feel free to give me a ring):

I'm thinking Google's monopoly on search could be ceded if they don't catch up in the war against search spammers (people who contaminate search results). I was reading a book this past weekend about Google, called The Search, and it mentions a story about Bill Gross, of idealab fame (think goto.com (excite), eToys.com, etc.) who has come up with a new level of search. There's also an interesting blog post about it here.

Microsoft's goal, 20 years ago, was to put a Micro$oft product on every personal computer in the world. They have achieved that goal, and are now entering the search market. Microsoft, along with Yahoo and Google, are now going to take search to the next level: they want contextual search to be a reality. What is contextual search? Think the computer interface in Star Trek: The Next Generation, where the computer responded to your mood, not just the syntax of the search command itself. Contextual search theoretically allows answers based on intent, not simply the text of what you enter. Think about it: right now, search is essentially limited to a text prompt entry; searching for musical notes, or using a style of image, etc. is not possible.

Could this possibly be the first blog post from  on board a commercial cross-Altantic flight? As if London and Lebanon weren't enough, Nicco and I are off to India for ten days. I'm writing this blog post while I'm flying 30,000 feet above the Atlantic ocean, using Lufthansa's new SkyNet®, wireless internet service.  SkyNet ...wait a minute... it's actually called Flynet.  I have to say, FlyNet is pretty freaking fast:  I'm getting speeds approximating a slower DSL connection, around 300 kbps download.  Fast enough to download a video while surfing the web and checking email!

If you didn’t know me, you’d think that I’m a guy who goes around setting off revolutions everywhere I touch down on the globe. That’s because in the past couple of months, my work for EchoDitto sent me to places now experiencing political shifts that will definitely change those countries, and possibly change the world. To say I’m a lucky guy to have been a part of those changes is an understatement. I’m lucky to have been there and to have lived to tell the tale.

Seriously, fomenting revolution in places like Lebanon is injurious to your health.