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ReadWriteWeb is pleased to be hosting a live-stream for tonight's Ai Weiwei event at the Paley Center in New York City. You can watch it live on our site , where we will be discussing social media and digital activism. Ai Weiwei will be joined by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, our own Richard MacManus, and moderator Emily Parker. Make sure to tune in tonight at 6:30 pm Eastern. Special thanks to Conjunctured Coworking in Austin for hosting the RWW team during the event. To take part in the conversation on Twitter use the hashtag #aiweiwei . Sponsor Ai Weiwei and Digital Activism in China ReadWriteWeb has been actively covering events in China this year, in particular Google's struggle to effect change regarding censorship in China. So I'm personally thrilled to join the conversation with these three smart and influential people: Ai Weiwei, Jack Dorsey and Orville Schell. Ai Weiwei is undoubtedly the star attraction. He is China's leading digital activist and a pioneer in the use of blogging and Twitter in China. He's also a renown international artist and architect. In the early 2000s, he collaborated with Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron on the famous "Bird's Nest" design of the National Stadium for the Beijing Olympics. Ai Weiwei later renounced that design as a "pretend smile" from the Chinese government. Details About the Participants This information comes from the Paley Center website : Ai Weiwei is a conceptual artist, curator, architect, social commentator, and activist. He was born in 1957 into the domestic political exile of his father, the noted modernist poet Ai Qing. Ai Weiwei's birthright was simultaneously one of a cultural insider and a political outsider, and he quickly perceived the contradictions of his condition. Ai Weiwei's art has been shown in museums and galleries internationally. As a curator, he is known for cutting-edge exhibitions. In the early 2000s, he collaborated with the acclaimed Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron on the winning design for the National Stadium project for the Beijing Olympics, popularly known as the "Bird's Nest," which he later renounced as a "pretend smile." Ai Weiwei has never sought foreign citizenship and maintains his credibility among a devoted Chinese following as a highly active blogger, with his finger on the pulse of modern China. Unafraid to spotlight injustices, he has documented the arbitrary conviction and swift execution of alleged cop-killer Yang Jia in Shanghai, investigated shoddy school construction in Sichuan, and led a movement to oppose the nationwide installation of Internet filtering software in new computers. He is critical of one-party rule and government corruption, as well as the nationalist tendencies of China's citizenry, which allow state power to go unchecked. As a result his blogs are shut down, his home studio is under surveillance, and he's had to have cranial surgery for injuries sustained during a recent altercation with local police in Sichuan. Jack Dorsey is the creator, cofounder, and chairman of Twitter, Inc. Originally from St. Louis, Jack's early fascination for mass-transit and how cities function led him to Manhattan and programming real-time messaging systems for couriers, taxis, and emergency vehicles. Throughout this work Jack witnessed thousands of workers in the field constantly updating where they were and what they were doing; Twitter is a constrained simplification designed for general usage and extended by the millions of people who make it their own every day. Jack is dedicated to creating public goods which foster approachability, immediacy, and transparency, and is starting a second company named Square focused on bringing these concepts to commerce. Richard MacManus is the founder and editor in chief of ReadWriteWeb, one of the most popular and influential technology blogs in the world. New Zealander MacManus founded ReadWriteWeb in 2003 and grew his blog about the evolving Internet into an international team of journalists. ReadWriteWeb is read by millions of thought leaders and consumers, and is syndicated daily by the New York Times. From the early days of blogging, social networks and YouTube to the future of machine learning, aggregate data analysis and other meta-trends, MacManus is widely recognized as a leader in articulating what's next in technology and what it means for society at large. Discuss
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Historic Conversation With Ai Weiwei Streamed Live
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Earlier this month we noticed PRManna climbing up the Hacker News front page and reached out to the creator for an interview . Ryan Waggoner started PRManna in his spare time and was open in saying that the project was inspired by Peter Shankman's Help a Reporter Out . The difference between PRManna and HARO is that Waggoner's product was specifically meant for startup companies to answer blogger and journalist tech queries. Whereas, HARO is a general news service. The question is, are the sites far enough apart to be considered different products? Sponsor In the Hacker News thread Waggoner acknowledges that in the time that he'd developed his site, Shankman's HARO had transitioned from a listserv to a more comprehensive tool saying, "Unfortunately, I took a look at HARO today and they've apparently launched something very similar, rather than just the old mailing list that I was competing against. So what do you think of this? Should I just drop it or should I add features to make it more valuable? Alternatively, is there something else I could use it for?" As of today Waggoner may not have the opportunity to change tactics. The developer wrote a blog post detailing a cease and desist letter sent by Shankman's lawyer. As a community with your finger on the pulse of tech launches and entrepreneurial resources, we want to know whether or not you believe Shankman's takedown notice is warranted. Let us know in the comments below. Discuss
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Open Thread: PRManna - Copy Cat or Inspiration?
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On March 15, at the prestigious Paley Center in New York City, a conversation will take place between Chinese digital activist and artist Ai Weiwei , Twitter co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey , and yours truly Richard MacManus (ReadWriteWeb founder and editor in chief). The moderator will be Orville Schell , the director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York. The topic of the event is the emergence of digital activism for fostering positive social change. The onsite event is invitation only, but it will be live streamed exclusively on ReadWriteWeb on Monday, March 15, at 6:30 PM EST, from the Paley Center for Media, New York City. Sponsor The Central Question of the event is: what is the relevance of new social networking technologies in our culture and society; and how can we use these tools for digital activism in order to foster positive social change, particularly in China? You can start the discussion about it now on Twitter, using the hashtag #aiweiwei . We would also love to hear your thoughts on the topic via the comments here on ReadWriteWeb. To this end, shortly we will launch a special webpage that aggregates media and real-time conversation leading up to this event. Ai Weiwei and Digital Activism in China ReadWriteWeb has been actively covering events in China this year, in particular Google's struggle to effect change regarding censorship in China. So I'm personally thrilled to join the conversation with these 3 smart and influential people: Ai Weiwei, Jack Dorsey and Orville Schell. Ai Weiwei is undoubtedly the star attraction. He is China's leading digital activist and a pioneer in the use of blogging and Twitter in China. He's also a renown international artist and architect. In the early 2000s, he collaborated with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron on the famous "Bird's Nest" design of the National Stadium for the Beijing Olympics. Ai Weiwei later renounced that design as a "pretend smile" from the Chinese government. Here is a video that explains more about Ai Weiwei's art and digital activism: Further Details About the Event This historic event will be streamed live from the prestigious Paley Center for Media in New York City, enabling an audience of thousands around the world to view and listen - as well as participate in the discussion. The live conversation on stage will be shaped in part by the digital commentary around it, which itself is part of the ongoing global conversation about social media and social change. ReadWriteWeb is driving much of the online component of this event. Stay tuned for more details on that next week. Date: Monday, March 15, 2010 Time: 6:30 - 8 p.m. (Eastern Time) Venue: Paley Center for Media 25 E. 52nd Street New York, NY 10019-6129 Details About the Participants This information comes from the Paley Center website : Ai Weiwei is a conceptual artist, curator, architect, social commentator, and activist. He was born in 1957 into the domestic political exile of his father, the noted modernist poet Ai Qing. Ai Weiwei's birthright was simultaneously one of a cultural insider and a political outsider, and he quickly perceived the contradictions of his condition. Ai Weiwei's art has been shown in museums and galleries internationally. As a curator, he is known for cutting-edge exhibitions. In the early 2000s, he collaborated with the acclaimed Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron on the winning design for the National Stadium project for the Beijing Olympics, popularly known as the "Birds Nest," which he later renounced as a "pretend smile." Ai Weiwei has never sought foreign citizenship and maintains his credibility among a devoted Chinese following as a highly active blogger, with his finger on the pulse of modern China. Unafraid to spotlight injustices, he has documented the arbitrary conviction and swift execution of alleged cop-killer Yang Jia in Shanghai, investigated shoddy school construction in Sichuan, and led a movement to oppose the nationwide installation of Internet filtering software in new computers. He is critical of one-party rule and government corruption, as well as the nationalist tendencies of China's citizenry, which allow state power to go unchecked. As a result his blogs are shut down, his home studio is under surveillance, and he's had to have cranial surgery for injuries sustained during a recent altercation with local police in Sichuan. Jack Dorsey is the creator, cofounder, and chairman of Twitter, Inc. Originally from St. Louis, Jack's early fascination for mass-transit and how cities function led him to Manhattan and programming real-time messaging systems for couriers, taxis, and emergency vehicles. Throughout this work Jack witnessed thousands of workers in the field constantly updating where they were and what they were doing; Twitter is a constrained simplification designed for general usage and extended by the millions of people who make it their own every day. Jack is dedicated to creating public goods which foster approachability, immediacy, and transparency, and is starting a second company named Square focused on bringing these concepts to commerce. Richard MacManus is the founder and editor in chief of ReadWriteWeb, one of the most popular and influential technology blogs in the world. New Zealander MacManus founded ReadWriteWeb in 2003 and grew his blog about the evolving Internet into an international team of journalists. ReadWriteWeb is read by millions of thought leaders and consumers, and is syndicated daily by the New York Times. From the early days of blogging, social networks and YouTube to the future of machine learning, aggregate data analysis and other meta-trends, MacManus is widely recognized as a leader in articulating what's next in technology and what it means for society at large. Orville Schell is the director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York. He has written fourteen books, including nine on China, and is at work on an interpretation of the last one-hundred years of Chinese history. He was a Fellow at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and the recipient of many prizes and fellowships, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Overseas Press Club Award, and the Harvard-Stanford Shorenstein Prize in Asian Journalism. Prior to assuming his position at Asia Society, he served as Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. Discuss
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Historic Conversation in NYC: Ai Weiwei, Jack Dorsey & Richard MacManus
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Email startup ReMail announced this afternoon that it's been acquired by Google and there's a pretty interesting story behind this cool technology that could inspire future developments in Gmail. The news was announced by ReMail CEO Gabor Cselle on his blog today (we learned about it first via CenterNetworks ). Gabor was a former Gmail intern and was YCombinator funded. There are even more interesting elements to this story than that, though. Sponsor ReMail the app has already been discontinued from the iTunes App Store, but here are some ways it could impact Gmail in the future anyway. Cselle will now become a product manager on Gmail. The core feature of ReMail was full-text search of all the emails in your Gmail or other online inbox, even when you were offline. That wasn't the only cool thing about ReMail, though. The Reboxed application that sorts your contacts by priority was really interesting. It was like a little game that scrolled through your contacts, displayed two at a time and asked you to prioritize one over the other. Your individual ratings and the aggregate ratings of particular email contacts across all ReBoxed users were then used to bring emails from high-priority senders to the top of your inbox. It was a really fun little feature. While many data-centric startups would have just picked up email prioritization based on implicit behavior (whose emails you open and reply to) there was something to be said for allowing explicit rankings in a game-like setting. Whose emails are more important to you, your boss's or your mom's? That Google just bought something that's all about one of the iPhone's core functions, email, is interesting. Sure, the app is shuttered now, but imagine if Apple had decided to buy ReMail instead. If Cselle was working on the iPhone's native email application, that would have been better for Apple than this may turn out to be if he helps make Android's email the best in the mobile world. ReMail's founder was previously a VP of Engineering at the very ambitious Outlook plug-in provider Xobni . He left Xobni and ended up creating something very different. Cselle says he had a "multi-step plan for global email domination" but received advice "that instead I should build something small, simple, and useful." The end result? "It worked," he says. The man that gave him that advice and invested in his company, was Paul Buchheit , the creator of Gmail. Finally, Google just acquired a native mobile app, built on another platform. Much has been made of Google's emphasis on moving everything to HTML5 and the mobile web. But here's evidence that you can build an innovative application in an entirely different direction and still capture the company's eye. (Admittedly it probably helps to be super connected like Cselle was.) Discuss
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The 5 Most Interesting Things About Google's ReMail Acquisition
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