New Yorker Photographer on Instagram Experiment: My Kid Could Make That

The artist Instagrams real film.

As with every social network that takes over the world (however briefly — hello, Pinterest!), media companies are fooling around with Instagram. Even a legendary magazine like The New Yorker, whose old-fashioned reputation favors the printed words to images and the Internet, is using the Facebook-owned photo-filtering app, a favorite of small-time foodies and big-time rappers. How and why remains to be seen: With just around 2,000 followers, the magazine decided to hand its account over from the PR department to real photographers who will rotate control, like an insider version of Sweden's Twitter.

First up was Martin Schoeller, whose recognizable portraits have turned up in the magazine since 1999. As for why he got to be the Guinea pig, "I have no idea," the photographer told Daily Intel.

"I'm not that up on this new media technology myself, so I haven't been on Instagram before," Schoeller said after his trial period. "I'm not even on Facebook." (New Yorker PR director Alexa Cassanos said, "He's been a longtime staff photographer for us, so we thought it would be appropriate for him to do the Instagram takeover. We were hoping it would be a fun thing and a little different.")

Schoeller said he "enjoyed it in the sense that I felt like a photo student again, having a fresh outlook on my environment," but was too busy taking real photographs to really focus on the app. "I was just snapping away without overthinking it," he said.

"The problem with this Instagram is that I could hand the phone over to my 3-year-old son and he could come up with a good picture," Schoeller said. "Maybe I should've come up with a concept instead of just using it how everyone else uses it, with no meaning or depth."

Over about a week, he took eighteen pictures and the account gained around 2,000 followers. Cassanos said the next photographer in line will be announced soon, and that those being considered "have some Instagram experience."

"I'm glad people are taking an interest in photography," Schoeller stressed. "I just don't think those pictures are important or should be given much thought."

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Defcon’s NinjaTel cell network could solve real-world problems

The Defcon security and hacker conference in Las Vegas is home to a unique cell network built using GSM and Wi-Fi. The private network was built for fun, but it could have a serious purpose when governments try to lock down cellular communications.

At the Defcon hacker convention going on now in Las Vegas, roughly 650 attendees received a custom phone that allows them onto a secret local cell network called NinjaTel. Both Ars Technica and The Verge have stories offering screen shots and details, but I’m curious about the real world implications of this experiement.

Ars Technica says the network uses both a GSM network (not sure what frequency it’s operating in, or if it is indeed a real “pirate” network as The Verge asserts) and secured portions of the conference Wi-Fi :

For redundancy and reliability, Ninja Networks engineers took advantage of a feature added to the Ice Cream Sandwich release of Android that makes it easy to route calls over GSM or, using the SIP, or Session Initialization Protocol, over a private portion of the Defcon WiFi. As each subscriber was added to the network, a syncing app added the user to the list of contacts contain on all other phones, giving each person a way to text or call the other. An app contained on the custom phone made it easy for other users to write apps for the device.

Those with phones can only use voice or SMS, and are all visible as contacts on the network at any one time. There are peer-to-peer modes where folks can converse without going over the wider network as well as apps that let users interact with each other or other Ninja-approved devices. But outside creating some fun for hackers at a security conference, this type of network might be useful for places like Syria or Egypt where governments can control and shut down cellular networks as a means to cut off unrest.

I’ve written about a variety of projects–from Serval to OpenGSM — that could be used to create peer-to-peer or actual cell phone networks for groups of users to rely on when their own communications are spotty or compromised by hostile governments. Such networks could be a boon for democracy and freedom worldwide, but could also easily become a headache for law enforcement when in the wrong hands.

But the implementation of such networks by technologists, much like the development of the Internet, could provide a platform that helps democratize the flow of information. And trying that out, and possibly making versions of it that are ever easier to use on handsets could create yet another avenue for information sharing.

And for those who think that such technology isn’t needed in the U.S. or developed countries, just recall when the Bay Area Rapid Transit authorities shut down cell phone access on platforms because it was concerned about protests or when India wanted the ability to snoop on BlackBerry devices. So NinjaTel may be a cool one-off experiment today, but with time and work it may become the next-generation’s Internet. A massively democratic and redundant way to share information — even when governments would rather shut such information sharing down.

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Apple and Twitter Could Be the Next Huge Tech Alliance

After the royally botched Facebook IPO, which was followed by a precipitous drop in the social media giant's stock price (and expectations), it is entirely understandable that tech observers might be a little wary of prognosticating on what the next great digital thing will be. But that's no reason to discount early-stage talks between Apple and Twitter first reported by the New York Times in a cover story today. According to people in the know, Apple is considering investing hundreds of millions of dollars in Twitter — chump change for a company with well over $100 billion in the bank — as a way of breaking into the social media game.

The idea that Apple, creator of beautiful gadgetry and sleek hardware, would want to jump into the fast-changing world of social media might just raise alarm bells. Consider other recent tech crossovers: Bing, Microsoft's attempt at a search engine, which should be renamed the Belly Flop Heard Around the World, and Google Plus, the search giant's anemic Facebook competitor. Google's plans to build a smartphone (and rumors that Facebook is considering the same) have similarly been panned as bizarre and a distraction.

But as Apple CEO Timothy Cook reassuringly told the Times, "Apple doesn't have to own a social network. But does Apple need to be social? Yes." Which is why Apple's failed social media music service, Ping, was rolled out in partnership with Twitter and why Apple has already integrated Twitter (and Facebook) into its newest operating system, 10.8 Mountain Lion. It also wouldn't be crazy to imagine future Twitter-ready iterations of Apple's vaunted iOS operating system for the iPhone.

Meanwhile, Twitter — which considers itself the "lucky mistress" favored after Facebook jilted Apple — has appointed a vice-president, Kevin Thau, to work full time on the company's relationship with Apple. Thau will also likely get a leg up from CFO Ali Rowghani, who, before joining Twitter in 2010, had worked for nine years at Pixar under Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

Ultimately, cynics may see in these talks a simple ploy by Apple to get in on the next overpriced tech IPO — Twitter is, after all, expected to go public sometime in the coming years, accompanied by a boatload of fanfare. But, on closer inspection, an Apple-Twitter alliance might just be the perfect match Silicon Valley has been waiting for.

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