[Space Makers Agency] have been working with the local communities, property owners, local authorities, policy-makers and others to create new ways of "of thinking about the spaces in which we live, work and play. Our approach is to start with what is already there: the stories of a place and the people who live there. Then our role is as a catalyst, bringing out the possibilities which were already present in a situation and making connections which might not have been obvious.

My neighbor Paul Rifkin shot this nice aerial of the Cotuit village from the air on July 4th. My place is on the left side of the photo, above Main Street, long white clam shell driveway. So no waterview, but close enough without the taxes!

As floor plans go, there isn't much: one medium-size room; a galley kitchen tucked behind a wall; a bathroom; and, in lieu of a bedroom, a sleeping loft up a ladder from the living area, under the sloping roof.

Through motorcycles and text messages, FrontlineSMS:Medic connects doctors and patients in rural Africa.

In the developing world, most communities don't have access to a hospital, let alone a doctor. Valiant community health workers sometimes serve rural villages, but they don't have the training or technology to assist with major medical problems. The distance between village and hospital, both in terms of travel and communication, often spells doom for residents. But FrontlineSMS:Medic is aiming to change that. It

And you thought the South Carolina v. Craigslist story was dead.

If anything sucks more than being the target of an ambitious but delusional gubernatorial candidate who has suddenly developed a bit of a fetish for prostitution, it's being ignored by that candidate. As far as Village Voice sees the world, Craigslist just got a bunch of free press. And they want their share.

When Craigslist management was facing a criminal investigation for listings on the site they did the smart thing. They talked about the law, and they pointed out that the real smut was on other sites that were being ignored by the South Carolina Attorney General. If you really want hard core porn and prostitution, Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster pointed out, check out Village Voice's BackPage.com.

That's all body fluids under the bridge now, of course, since a federal judge smacked down McMaster and forbid him from stalking Craigslist management.

But Village Voice is still smarting from those Buckmaster links in that blog post. Yesterday they issued a very official press release titled Village Voice Media to Craigslist CEO Buckmaster: Calm Down, Back Off; There is Nothing Wrong With a Little Competition.

In an email, Village Voice's PR firm accuses Buckmaster of leveraging the legal bind he's in to damage Craigslist's competition.

The real reason for the press release and press outreach, of course, is to get a little bit of the spotlight pointed to backpages, too. Because their official story doesn't make sense.

Backpages has adult ads, lots and lots of them, and they're proud of it: We will continue to exercise our right to accept legal adult postings, they say. All Buckmaster did was link to a whole bunch of them. And since backpages desperately needs the traffic, what they really should be doing is thanking Craigslist, not attacking them.

What we learned today: If you really want to pay for sex, backpages is the place to go.

Full press release is below:

Village Voice Media to Craigslist CEO Buckmaster: Calm Down, Back Off; There is Nothing Wrong With a Little Competition

PHOENIX, May 29 /PRNewswire/ Last Friday, Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist, fired a deliberate, unnecessary and wholly inaccurate shot across the bow of Village Voice Media and backpage.com, our online classified advertising property. Given the serious nature of what Buckmaster inferred in his post about Village Voice Media newspapers and backpage.com, we can't sit on our hands and be silent.

In the original blog post, which was later submarine edited to reword and soften some of the attacks towards Village Voice Media, Buckmaster complained that politicians are attacking Craigslist but not Village Voice Media and other media outlets because they have a need for positive stories and campaign endorsements from those very same newspapers.

Is it possible that writing stories critical of Craigslist's (relatively tame) adult service' section is more career-friendly than attacking their own employer (or journalistic media brethren) for operating a (far more graphic) adult service' section of their own?

Buckmaster and Craigslist are in a tough, and in many ways, frightening situation - they have a number of moralistic state Attorneys General threatening them over their adult ads, and a raft of bad press following the terrible tragedy in Boston that the company is admittedly in no way responsible for. But, the manner in which Buckmaster is responding to this pressure - by disingenuously lashing out at competitors and caving to political pressure - is inexcusable, and displays a remarkable lack of sound judgment.

In 2002, Village Voice Media recognized the forces that were changing the classified advertising market and created backpage.com to answer that challenge. We've put a lot of work into making it the No. 2 free classifieds site in U.S. We're fine with being No. 2, proud in fact. Buckmaster, apparently, is not. Instead of working with his competitors to find a way to solve, or at least mitigate issues surrounding adult ads - the shortcomings of automatic content filters is something we are all trying to fix - Buckmaster simply attempted to take the competition down with him. And, his methods leave much to be desired.

First off, our newspapers don't endorse politicians and rarely have anything nice to say about them, so to say that politicians aren't going after Village Voice Media because they need our endorsement isn't viable. Secondly, Buckmaster is only complaining because a competitor is challenging his economic advantage in the free classified arena - which he built in part on adult ads - and has made him a very wealthy man. His talk of building community and serving his users rings hollow. It now appears that, as is so often the case with New Age entrepreneurs, it's all about the money.

We will continue to exercise our right to accept legal adult postings from our users and concentrate on growing backpage.com. We are aggressively building additional technical solutions as well as increasing our manual site inspections to improve efficiency of removing content that is illegal or otherwise violates our Terms of Use.

About Village Voice Media

Village Voice Media is a collection of 15 weekly newspapers and daily Web sites, including New York's Village Voice, the LA Weekly, Denver's Westword and the Phoenix New Times. Online, in print, and on mobile devices, VVM's products combine music, food and events coverage with gritty, hard-hitting journalism to create the most powerful city guides in each market. While the focus of the brand is local, its free classifieds site backpage.com, partnership with social recommendation engine LikeMe.net and national sales force, Voice Media Group, extend its reach on a national level.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

A New York City startup called Howcast is launching today that wants to be the YouTube of instructional videos. In fact, the three foundersJason Liebman, Daniel Blackman and Sanjay Ramanare ex-Google employees who worked on Google Video and YouTube before they left eight months ago. They actually are going for a little more polish than YouTube, trying to bring some production values to the world of Web video.

Howcast is also announcing an $8 million series A financing, led by Tudor Investment Corp. In addition to their own site, they already have a Youtube channel (where they split advertising revenues with their former employer). The Howcast team also has signed distribution deals with Myspace, Verizon for its Vcast phones and FiOS TV, Joost, and ROO. JetBlue is the launch advertiser. Howcast faces competition from Expert Village, 5min, and Instructables (even though the latter uses step-by-step images more than video).

The site is launching with professionally-shot instructional videos on everything from How to Paint a Wall (see embed below) and How to Groom Your Cat to How to Get Laid. There is a familiar formula for each one: The Howcast graphic, an intro explaining what you'll need for the task at a hand, and step-by-step instructions explained in a voiceover. The video player on the site lets you jump to different chapters or steps, lets you zoom in for a better look, and provides the transcript as well. Viewers can add comments in the form of tips, warnings, and facts to each video. And the Flash-based site lets you browse the video directory on the left hand side while you are watching a video without interrupting it or going to a different page.

Audience participation in the creation of the videos starts with the ability to suggest video topics such as How to Do A Television Appearance, How to build a Sofa From Scratch, How to Make Tempura, or How to Fire a Nanny. The audience can then vote the best suggestions to the top in a Digg-like fashion.

Audience members can also look at upcoming scripts and improve them or write their own in a guided wiki portion of the site that follows the Howcast script template (introduction, instructions, tips, end with a fact). The script is then approved by Howcast, a voiceover is recorded, and Howcast farms out the production to young film school students and graduates. They get $50 for each video plus a 50/50 rev-share from any advertising. Anyone can also upload their own instructional videos to the site without going through this process.

The video ads are in the form of clickable overlays that pop up to take up the bottom part of the screen. Pre-roll, non-skipable ads are bad, in our opinion, says CEO Liebman, who originally joined Google through the acquisition of Applied Semantics and helped roll out AdSense. Howcast is starting with a $20 CPM rate card. The more targetable those ads become, the higher the rate should go. Each video is tagged by topic and each one has a visible script, making them highly searchable. A paint company might want to buy up spots in the How to Paint video, for instance, or even buy paid links in the list of necessary supplies that is part of the video. Can you say AdSense for video? Jason Liebman can.

Instructables

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Expert Village

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5min

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Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it's time for you to find a new Job2.0

Ok, I'll admit that I was a bit unsure of the actual usefulness of Twitter, but a couple months ago I figured I'd give it another shot, and it's been growing on me. The first thing about it that struck me was how incredible it was to follow the Iowa caucuses via Twitter. People who were actually taking part in the caucuses were reporting in real-time on what was being said in the caucuses, and it made it clear that there was a real groundswell of support for Obama. What was most amazing was contrasting that to CNN, which reported a statistical dead heat between the three leading candidates quite late into the night, before Obama's sizable lead emerged. Yet, watching the real-time reports via Twitter, it seemed clear that there was strong Obama support. That's only one data point, but it was kind of neat.

Now, a second useful Twitter example. I'm not sure how long ago, but a while back I became an email acquaintance with Whitney McNamara. I'm not sure when/how it happened. I think he may have commented on Techdirt a few times with pretty intelligent thoughts, or maybe sent in some stories/feedback. Just a couple weeks ago, he started following me on Twitter, and I started following him as well. Last week, he mentioned that he was going to Mamoun's Falafel for lunch with his Dad, which set off a wave of nostalgia for me. I love Mamoun's. Back in high school, Yuval and I used to go visit record stores in the Village and get Mamoun's for lunch. It was a pretty regular ritual. I do still try to go to Mamoun's whenever I'm in Manhattan, though it's increasingly rare that I need to be anywhere near the Village.

Yet, when I saw Whit's Twitter about Mamoun's, I wrote my own about my Mamoun's obsession, noting that I was hoping to go this week, since I was in NYC. A few twitters/direct messages back and forth, and yesterday, we were sitting in Mamoun's enjoying the best falafel sandwiches money can buy and having an interesting conversation about online communities. It worked out perfectly, as I had a hole in my schedule and no lunch plans. Here's his version of the story as well. It's pretty clear that this never would have happened without Twitter.

Without Twitter, I probably wouldn't have remembered that he was in NY, thought to get together with him, known that he liked Mamoun's (or even convinced myself to make a trip down to Mamoun's). So, while I'm still not totally convinced that Twitter is as amazing as some make it out to be, I'm beginning to understand the areas where it has potential.

Conferences, job interviews, parties, and other events that bring people together to meet for the first time can be tricky for some people. Or what about when you are looking for people that share your interests regardless of location. On one hand, you have people who are a little shy, and unsure what to say upon meeting someone for the first time. On the other, you have people who aren't especially shy, but who don't like meeting someone cold. Social media tools are perfect for this.

Before Events

If you're going to an event, start checking around to see who's attending. Look for an Upcoming entry or a Facebook group. Most modern conferences put these up as matter of course (and if you RUN a conference, consider this step). From there, see if you are already friends (social network definition) with any one. If not, consider friending them based on the fact you're heading to the same event.

Other places to check for event communities are on Yahoo! Groups and Google Groups. You might have some other recommendations for this one, too.

Before Interviews, and Related to Events

Log into LinkedIN and see what you can find about your interviewer, people who work at the prospective new company, and other companies in the industry. It's a way to build a picture of the landscape without relying on other people's information. For instance, if the company you're thinking of working at turns up zero results in a search on LinkedIN, it might mean that the culture is less forward-thinking or at least not social media equipped. If you look at a few profiles that come up in the search, and note that people are only there a year (two or three samples, maybe), then perhaps the place is big on competition, or maybe not really rewarding to long term employees.

Related to events, once you know someone's going, see if you can find them in Facebook (maybe MySpace), LinkedIN, Twitter, and see if you can search out a blog by putting their name and blog in a Google search. Oh, and don't forget Flickr.

Flickr is a PERFECT tool for searching out info on people. I've known some people who don't use their headshot as an icon on any social network, but a little Flickr searching later, I realized I could point them out at an event. (By the way, if you don't know this, that's why I put LOTS of pictures of myself on my website. It's because I want you to be able to find me at events. Not because I'm vain, though I guess you could argue that one, too).

Conversation Pieces

From here, once you find some shreds of this person or some people online, you've built yourself a means by which to seek out similar points of interest, tangential conversational topics, and maybe even potential business opportunities you can discuss, should the moment arise. That's the beauty of social media and social networks. They let you better understand the people who participate.

If You Find NOTHING About People

That can be a conversation starter, too. I didn't find you on Facebook. What do you think of those social networks? You can assume that the person isn't especially convinced of the value of social networks and making media, but I wouldn't lead outright with that. Maybe this person is a prolific blogger behind the firewall. Maybe they're using an alias. It took me a little TOO long to connect Genuine on Twitter with Jim Turner of One By One Media. They were two different people in my head until spending some time at an event.

After Events

Stealing a page from Jeff Pulver (who is a MASTER at building community in the real world and online), after events is a great time to plumb up all the various social media connections. Get connected in Facebook, maybe LinkedIN, in Twitter, Flickr, and wherever else you tend to use. Consider reading their blog, adding it to your reader for a while. Make it a chance to learn more about the person now that you're in their orbit. Do what Laura Pistachio Fitton does and invite them into your Twitter Village. The point is to get to know them now that you've met in person.

Reflect on YOUR Presence

Some people are debating the value of Facebook right now as a business platform. At the very baseline, fill out your profile. Give information that you wouldn't mind your employer seeing. Not because you have to self-censor, but in this world where people use the tools that are available, your Facebook page and your Twitter stream and all these various artifacts you're creating are available for people to search.

At the same time, once you get over the paralysis of the above, make sure you put enough of yourself into your profiles that people can get these conversational hooks to communicate with you at events. If you're strictly business at your conference appearances, try to indicate that in your profile. The point is, once you realize that you can use these tools to build real world relationships, consider the effect in both directions (you finding them; them finding you).

First Moves Are Yours

The conversation itself is up to you, and no, I don't tell you how to not be shy at an event directly (though one way you can do this is to find your way into circles of people on the periphery, and look for your conversational in). But with some of this prep out of the way ahead of time, you'll find yourself a lot more prepared than when you used to show up at these events cold.

The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.

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