Geek Gestalt

PROMONTORY SUMMIT, Utah--On May 10, 1869, the extraordinary happened here.

After crews from the Central Pacific Railroad had started in Sacramento, Calif., and laid 690 miles of track to the east, and teams from the Union Pacific Railroad had put down 1,086 miles of track to the west of Omaha, Neb., they met on that spring day at this spot just north of the Great Salt Lake.

They completed the Transcontinental Railroad.

For the first time, trains could traverse most of the United States. The huge event was celebrated on that day when the Central Pacific's Jupiter and the Union Pacific's No. 119 were brought nose-to-nose, with a one rail gap left in the track.

Then, as a brochure from the Golden Spike National Historic Site (see video below) puts it, "After a golden spike was symbolically tapped, a final iron spike was driven to connect the railroads."

I found the site as I was on my way to visit Spiral Jetty, the world-famous earthwork by artist Robert Smithson.

"No sooner were America's first railroads operating in the 1830s than people of vision foresaw transcontinental travel by rail," the brochure reads. "The idea gained support as a national railroad system took shape. By the beginning of the Civil War, America's eastern states were linked by 31,000 miles of rail, more than in all of Europe. None of this network, however, served the area beyond the Missouri River. Until the Great American Desert and the Rockies were bridged, the vast western territories would be a part of the nation in name only."

That was the theory behind the creation of the cross-country rail network.

In 1862, an engineer named Theodore Judah had completed a survey of a route through the Sierra Nevada and got funding from tycoons in Sacramento for his new Central Pacific Railroad, the National Park Service writes. The same year, Congress gave its approval for the Central Pacific to build east and at the same time, created the Union Pacific in New York.

Work began in 1863, with the western crews battling the mountains and the eastern crews having to fight off attacks by the Sioux and the Cheyenne. But they pushed on, using eight full flatcars of material for each mile of track.

And as the crews approached the final meeting point in Utah, they began to compete to see who could lay more daily track. They had been putting down no more than 5 miles per day. But in April 1869, the Central Pacific won a $10,000 bet by laying 10 full miles in a single day, outpacing the Union Pacific's record of 8 miles.

For the next several weeks, Geek Gestalt will be on Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and Colorado. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.

SAN MATEO, CALIF.--One of the great things about being at Maker Day, the day before the gates officially open at Maker Faire, is that every time you walk around the fairgrounds here, everything looks different.

That's because, of course, in the time it takes to make a circuit around the San Mateo Fairgrounds during Maker Day, the annual home of the do-it-yourself (DIY) celebration that is Maker Faire, a whole bunch of new "makers" have arrived and others have added a great deal to the projects they had only just started at the beginning of the circuit.

I was on hand for Maker Day on Friday because I find it's always refreshing to get a chance to see things in process. Also, with more than 80,000 people expected at this year's Maker Faire, I wanted to get a chance to see what some of the makers--the people behind the hundreds and thousands of DIY projects on display here--had worked on, without having to navigate unbelievable masses of people.

That's especially true if you see a really popular project and you want to find out something about it.

For me, that didn't take long. Only a couple minutes after I walked through the gates of the fairgrounds, I encountered a very familiar looking robotic structure. It looked very much like the "Rave 'Raff," a robotic giraffe I had first seen at Burning Man in 2005 and which I had seen several times since then at Maker Faire.

But the Rave 'Raff was white, so this couldn't be it. Yet when I walked over to see what it was, it was indeed the 'Raff, only with an entirely new paint job, it seemed.

In fact, it wasn't just a new paint job (which was now pearl sunset orange). The giraffe's creator, Lindsay Lawlor, told me that he and his crew had completely rebuilt the robot, and it was now well on its way to being an entirely interactive robot. (See video below.)

"We changed everything," said Lawlor. "We basically got out the cutting torch."

He explained that he and his team, with the help of some sponsors, had put about $10,000 worth of work into the redesign, and the end result was a giraffe with all-new hardware, hydraulic pumps made out of acrylic plastic sheets, shock-absorbing struts, and that new paint job. It also has a new hydraulic neck that is operated by a single piston.

It even has 32 "teeth," little rectangular pieces of plastic with embedded LEDs, that mirror the exact number, spacing, and setting of real giraffe teeth.

In other words, when the Rave 'Raff gets going, it's one high-tech giraffe.

Lawlor said that the giraffe also has touch sensors in its ears, eyes, head, and mouth, and that by next year, he expects to have it speaking.

"The idea is to bring it to life like a real giraffe," Lawlor said. "It will follow me around like he's my pet giraffe."

Not far away, some folks from a group called Lightning Temple were setting up "Interactivation," a musical instrument with a musical tesla coil in the center.

Evonne Heyning, of Lightning Temple, told me that the tesla coil in Interactivation is designed to sound more like music coming from a speaker than the traditional sharp, electronic-sounding devices. She also told me that at Burning Man this summer, Lightning Temple, among other things, will be running a tesla coil repair station in case any of the many artists with the huge electronic devices need such services.

Some people have called Maker Faire "Burning Man on cement," but that's not quite fair. To be sure, much of the art seen at Maker Faire has also or will be seen at Burning Man. But Maker Faire has a somewhat different spirit. While it celebrates the DIY spirit, it is much more about showcasing the work of the many makers who trek to the Faire. Burning Man, while also about showcasing DIY art, has a more party-like feel, and is also intended to be for "participants only."

By contrast, Maker Faire is intended to instill the participatory spirit in people, but in a way that they take it with them when they go home. In other words, to turn people into DIYers once they leave.

Back in the Lightning Temple area, Heyning told me that she and her crew are taking some of the things they've done with Interactivation and are working on an iPhone application that would give people a way to experience a collaboration of music composition and energetic research.

Only at Maker Faire
One thing is for sure at Maker Faire--or Maker Day as the case may be. And that's that whimsy is king.

I ran into a couple of friends who told me a story about someone they'd just talked to. The person had had his hand inside a plastic bag in the way that dog owners sometimes do when they take their pooches for a walk. But instead of keeping hold of some dog waste, this person told my friends that, in fact, he was holding onto some condensed moisture from New York State. And that he had to run and give it to someone.

Indeed.

What may seem like whimsy today, however, was once pure practicality.

That much was clear in an extremely beautiful, classic machine I saw sitting quietly on one side of the fairgrounds.

This was a 1917 Case Traction Engine which, I was told by Zachary Rukstela, the chief engineer of a group called Kinetic Steam Works, was the very first model of tractor.

Rukstela's group had purchased the traction engine from a defunct Yuma, Ariz., museum, and was working to completely restore it. He said they were about 90 percent along. And to be sure, this thing was absolutely gorgeous, and looked brand new. But entirely out of place in the 21st century.

That makes sense, however. One thing abundantly evident at Maker Faire the last couple of years has been an overpowering steampunk look and feel. Evidenced by rustic coloring, lots of rivets, brass and leather, steampunk seems to be the official aesthetic of Maker Faire.

And that was definitely true at Maker Day on Friday.

Much the same, some different
Maker Faire is growing, as organizer Sherry Huss told me, and one of the major components of the festival this year is DIY robotics. There are expected to be at least 24 different groups showing off such projects.

But while there is always a great deal that's new at Maker Faire, it's also clear that many of the biggest projects on display are ones that have been to the fair many times before. And that makes sense, I suppose, since things like the Lifesized Mousetrap are huge crowd favorites. The same goes for the Neverwas Haul, a steam-powered Victorian house.

Still, I'd like to see more new big art at Maker Faire than I think I saw.

I guess I need to get working on doing some serious DIY myself.

If you go to Maker Faire: Be prepared for giant crowds, slow traffic, and having to park a ways away from the fairgrounds. Maker Faire is running a Twitter feed that should give steady updates about the traffic situation.

Also be prepared with a hat and sunscreen, and remember to drink lots of water.

On June 22, Geek Gestalt will kick off Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be looking for the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation, and more in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and South and North Dakota. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.

In just 16 days, Maker Faire, the annual do-it-yourself nirvana, will be returning to San Mateo, Calif., and you could be there courtesy of CNET News.

Last month, I posted an entry here offering 20 free Maker Faire passes for the best 150-word submissions on how you would use DIY to remake America. Unfortunately, I didn't receive enough submissions to make it a particularly competitive contest. So we're changing the game a little bit.

Instead of offering 20 people one free pass to the May 30 and 31 event, I'm going to offer five packages of four tickets plus a Maker Faire T-shirt. And if you are one of the people who sends in one of the five most impressive submissions, one of those packages will be yours.

The challenge remains the same: Give me 150 words on how you'd remake America the DIY way. If you've already sent me a submission, don't worry, I still have it.

For everyone else, please send me your submissions by the end of the business day on Monday, May 18.

If you're within striking distance of the Bay Area and you've never been to Maker Faire--I've been to all three in San Mateo, plus the 2007 edition in Austin, Texas, and I can tell you that it's nothing short of a blast--or even if you have, you should definitely be there. And you could either pay $30 in advance for a weekend pass (or $50 at the gate) or you could get in for free.

It's up to you.

Well, not entirely. The actual decisions will be made by my celebrity judge, Make magazine senior editor Phil Torrone. But if you've got a great idea, I'll do my best to nudge him in your direction.

On June 22, Geek Gestalt will kick off Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be looking for the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and South and North Dakota. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--I'm staring at a table covered in circuitry, a solderless "breadboard," a bunch of wire, an antenna, and some other components--all the things I've been given to build a rudimentary RFID reader--and I'm having serious thoughts about whether I'm in the right room.

I've certainly used RFID before--tiny radio frequency ID tags are increasingly showing up in everything from grocery store items to hospital wristbands to lift tickets. But the sum total of electronics that I've made in my life is, I'm now reminding myself, zero.

And yet, over the next three hours, I've got to take all these various bits and pieces and craft them into something that not only reads an RFID tag, but also can detect and store the serial numbers of up to 102 of them in resident memory. And do so while sitting pretty much front and center of a room full of other people who seem to me very confident in their ability to complete the same task.

I'm here at ETech, the Emerging Technology conference, and I'm sitting in on a session called "Hands-on RFID for Makers." Led by Tom Igoe, a professor at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), and Brian Jepson, from O'Reilly Media, the workshop is designed as a primer for people interesting in building RFID readers for use in a wide variety of situations. I thought it would be fun to sit in on the session and see how the systems work.

Only, I didn't know I'd have to wield a wire-cutter. Or for that matter, compile and error-check code. But I've come all this way, the electronics, are sitting in front of me and I don't think I can slip out without everyone noticing.

Because I'm a reporter with what are obviously very rudimentary electronics skills, Jepson has kindly given me a partially built reader, one with much of the wiring already connected, and its antenna already working. This means that while the rest of the people in the room are busy slaving away and trying to ensure that their red, black, and blue wires go in the right slots on the breadboard and that their antennas snap snugly on, I can concentrate on trying to understand the instructions for running the software that will power the reader.

It also means, however, that I'm missing part of the learning and discovery of the task. Still, I'm thinking that I just want to get through this without embarrassing myself, and so I'm happy enough at being able to skip the first part of the exercise.

My first steps then are to download two programming language compilers, one called Processing and another called Arduino. These are going to power the software that will control the reader once it's finished. But before I can even get going, I'm already getting an error message saying that Processing is incompatible with Mac OS X 10.5.

Perhaps, I think, this is a sign that this really isn't the place for me. Watching everyone else tinkering away happily, I'm wondering if I might have missed a notice that there was a specific set of coding prerequisites for this workshop. But just then, Igoe stops by and explains that the error message doesn't really mean anything, and that I should just proceed.

And just then, I hear someone behind me mutter, "So basically, everything I've done is wrong," and I start to think that maybe, just maybe, I'm not the only one here who feels a little confused. That's a powerful sentiment, too, and I resolve to keep going.

Igoe is still nearby and once I get Processing running, he has me enter a line of code into the compiler: "println(Serial.list());"

I hit the run button and suddenly, Processing springs to life and spits out a list of all the serial ports it recognizes on my MacBook Pro. When I plug a cable coming out of the RFID reader into a USB port on the computer and run the program again, the list gets longer. It's working! It's recognizing the reader. Success!

It seems that the next step should be getting the program to actually recognize an RFID tag--everyone at ETech has been given a personalized tag--but any confidence I've gained from the previous step is quickly dashed as I encounter another error message: "You might be missing a library."

Holding down my panic, I summon the wherewithal to read through the instructions and discover that, indeed, I had missed a step and had neglected to download a crucial library of commands. So I read through the instructions, get a couple of suggestions from a neighbor, and it looks like I'm good to go.

That's because when I hit the run command again, the program seems to think for a second and then up pops a very promising-looking window with the words, "Hit any key to begin reading."

I tap a key on my keyboard, and then hold up my RFID tag to the reader, and voila! The words in the window disappear and up comes the prettiest collection of meaningless letters and numbers I've seen in a long time: "BEC02480," the serial number of my tag.

Feeling great, I summon my neighbor and ask him to swipe his tag as well, and sure enough, the serial number in the window changes.

Before I can bask in my achievement, however, Igoe strides back to the front of the room and announces that our next task--we still have about 90 minutes left in the workshop, after all--is going to be to work on the read/write capabilities of the reader.

"So don't pull the wires just yet," Igoe says.

Next up, then, is to build up our readers to be able to not only recognize the RFID tags, but also to store their serial numbers. Igoe, meanwhile, is dealing with some problems a few other people are having with their code.

"For those of you who find that when you hit a key multiple times, it locks up your computer," he said, "that's because this is example code, not enterprise code."

Given that my computer isn't locking up, I'm feeling pretty good. I must be doing something right. But then Igoe follows up with a throw-away line, "I'm going to assume that everybody here can look at code on their own."

Glancing at my screen, and the long lines of code--which I don't understand at all--included in the program we're supposed to run, I feel my heart sink.

Still, I resolve to gather my wits and continue. And that's good, because not wasting any time, Igoe instructs us to run the second programming language, Arduino, and begin working on the breadboard to get it ready for the reading and writing part of the task. Practically speaking, he explains, the idea behind writing to the RFID tag is so that it's possible to, say, walk around a conference gathering information about other attendees, on the fly, all without having to be connected to a computer.

It's time to build again, and this time, I'm not in possession of a pre-built board. This time, I realize, I'm going to have to swim on my own. Jepson comes by and gives me a hand, showing me how to attach the wires, and where to put a couple of them.

And the next thing I know, I'm cutting and stripping wire, and installing it, as well as a piece of Arduino circuitry, on the breadboard. And according to the diagram I'm following, I may even be doing it right. I slide a few red wires into their slots, and a few black ones. And suddenly, a couple of LEDs on the circuitry begin to flash, and I realize that I have built my first-ever piece of electronics.

There's still software to run, though, and after conferring again with my neighbor, I get the Arduino compiler working properly. I run my tag by the reader, and then the neighbor's, and then, executing a command, the software displays a list of serial numbers it has recorded, and sure enough, there's mine and my neighbor's.

This is a big deal. I ask another neighbor to scan his tag on my reader, run the command again, and indeed, it now shows that it's storing three IDs.

Sitting there, I started to have a feeling that I've often had when I've finished building a piece of Ikea furniture--that I actually know what I'm doing. But that's a dangerous sentiment. Building Ikea furniture is not the same thing as carpentry. And similarly, finishing this RFID reader really wasn't very complicated and wasn't indicative of any larger electronics proficiency.

Still, I walked into that room with no skills, and I walked out having built an actual piece of technology. It's not much, but it's something.

"Yay."

That's one of the colorful and energetic buzzwords that Moo.com, a U.K. company mostly known for its whimsical user-generated business cards, has used to get people excited about its products.

And now, it might well be the grateful word coming out of the mouths of its American customers--who make up about half of the company's sales--because Moo.com has finally decided to open a U.S. operations center.

Until now, those of us on the western side of the Atlantic ordering Moo cards, as they're known, have had to wait, sometimes for up to two weeks, to take delivery. That's fine if you don't have any kind of time crunch, but one way that many people use Moo cards is to quickly order up a set to take with them to an event. If, like me and a few people I know, you're not always on top of your to-do list, this often didn't work because the cards wouldn't arrive from Moo's London facility until it was too late.

With the opening of its operations center in Providence, R.I., however, Moo should be able to get cards into U.S. customers' hands much quicker, something that should help keep customers happy and returning again and again.

The decision is also a good sign for Moo--and perhaps for other companies that focus on so-called "people-powered" products--since putting resources into a U.S. expansion shows that it is doing well enough during the recession to warrant crossing the ocean.

The company said it will open the center sometime during the first half of 2009. Until that happens, however, plan well ahead for any kind of Moo cards you might want to order. And if you want some for South by Southwest, which is coming up in less than three weeks, you'd better move fast.

Following on the success of their hit do-it-yourself magazine, the people behind Make will now bring their efforts to public television.

On Saturday, Make: Television will debut, a partnership between the magazine, Twin Cities Public Television, and American Public Television. All episodes will also be available for DRM-free download in HD, on YouTube, Vimeo, iTunes, and Blip.tv.

"Make: is the DIY series for a new generation," a release about the new show began. "It celebrates 'makers'--the inventors, artists, geeks, and just plain everyday folks who mix new and old technology to create new-fangled marvels. The series encourages everyone to invent, revent, recycle, upcycle, and act up. Based on the popular Make magazine, each half-hour episode inspires millions to think, create and, well, make."

The show will focus on the same kind of activities and people that have filled the pages of Make magazine. Among those featured in the first episode, for example, are Cyclecide, a group that travels the country putting on a bicycle rodeo; the maker of a cat-feeder built from an old VCR; and the man behind the "laser harp," a musical instrument played by strumming laser strings.

For some time, Make has been producing video content that has been available online. But now, for the first time, it is creating all-new content that is intended for television.

Make is also behind Maker Faire, a two-day DIY festival that takes place each year in both San Mateo, Calif., and Austin, Texas.

The launch of the show comes at a difficult time for media, what with layoffs across the industry and a weakening environment for advertising. But Make senior editor Philip Torrone said that things are going well for the magazine and that it is doing as well as it ever has.

One explanation for that would seem to be that as the economy falters and people struggle to make ends meet, Make helps them learn to do things on their own, without spending a lot on pre-produced goods. And, because it fosters a do-it-yourself ethos, the magazine--and its related media--is attractive to those interested in becoming more self-reliant.

Whether the TV series will be a success is unknown. But the fact that Twin Cities Public Television and American Public Television have decided that now is a good time to launch the show is a sign that people, there at least, believe that the time is right to promote DIY to a larger audience.

If you're a fan of things like MythBusters, Make magazine, Burning Man, the do-it-yourself movement and the like, you are probably going to love Prototype This

The new TV show, which debuts tonight at 10 p.m. on Discovery Channel, is a celebration of what intelligent, creative, and slightly crazy people can make when given freedom, expert help, and a bit of a budget.

The basic theme of Prototype This is that the four hosts, Terry Sandin, Zoz Brooks, Mike North, and Joe Grand take their combined skills and use each episode to conceive of and craft some entirely new design, product, or technology. The end result? A full season of prototypes that are off-the-wall, entirely practical, and everything in between.

In August, I spent a day shadowing the show's hosts and producers as they worked on creating some very useful new tools for firefighters (see video). Later, a colleague of mine wrote about a separate project in which the show chronicled the creation of an autonomous Prius.

Until today, the machinations of the show were entirely behind-the-scenes. Now, Prototype This is being unleashed on the public at large, and my hope--and Discovery Channel's as well, I'm sure--is that the efforts of this new-style band of TV stars will forever change the way people view geeks and the things they can make with the power of their minds.

Popular Mechanics magazine will unveil on Wednesday its Breakthrough Awards, the publication's annual celebration of the brightest innovators and innovations.

This year's winners include tech that lets you read books on a thin, digital device, see all around your car as you park, and explore outer space through your imagination.

Logan Ward, a contributing editor at the magazine, said that he and a team of fellow researchers scour the country looking for 30 to 40 candidates that are then winnowed down to the eventual 10 winners. The magazine also identifies 10 individuals for special innovator, leadership, and future-looking awards.

To identify the potential candidates, Ward and his team contact most of the country's research institutions, including universities, engineering organizations, robotics labs, government labs.

"The thing that's most important in looking at all these tech advances," said Ward, "is what is its impact...So when we evaluate innovations, we really look at how it's going to change people's lives for the better.

Of course, given that Ward's efforts take him through a wide variety of science- and technology-related fields, he has had to develop competencies in an equally wide spectrum of disciplines.

"I think I'm a very good generalist and a pretty good journalist," Ward said of the challenge of having to understand so many different kinds of science and technology. "I bring my curiosity to the table. I ask a lot of questions...And I'm honest about my limitations. If something comes across my desk and I don't understand it, I'll reserve judgment about it until I do."

All in all, though, Ward's journey through the best innovations of each year leaves him "with a sense of awe at how technology really can improve our lives."

This year's awards go to these 10 products:

• The M-Spector Digital Inspection Camera, from Milwaukee Tools. This device is designed to give people trying to do home repairs a way to see behind walls without cutting holes first. It features a 17-mm-wide 2x zoom lens and a 2.5-inch LCD. It costs $259.

• Spore, from Electronic Arts. The long-awaited evolution game from famous designer Will Wright tasks players with evolving from single-cell muck to outer space, with stops along the way as individual creatures, small tribes and city-size civilizations.

• The Livescribe Pulse Smartpen. This pen-size device allows its owner to take notes on special paper while simultaneously recording audio. Later, by tapping on a specific section of notes on the paper, users can get a playback of that section of audio. It can also perform simple language translation as well as other functions.

• Potenco's PCG1 power generator. This user-driven device allows anyone to power up small devices like mobile phones with their hands. Pulling on the unit's cord for two minutes provides 40 minutes of power-up.

• Intel's Atom processor. Microprocessor powerhouse Intel has built a low-power chip designed to give high-performance capabilities to mobile devices and light laptop computers.

• The Craftsman Nextec Multi-saw. The well-known toolmaker is giving buyers a combination jigsaw and reciprocating saw. It is powered by a 12-volt lithium-ion battery that can drive the unit to cut in a variety of places difficult to reach by any single tool.

• Microsoft's Photosyth. This free software from Microsoft allows people to create a browsable 3D model based on a series of related photographs. The software stitches the pictures together, creating the model based on overlapping elements of the images.

• Amazon.com's Kindle. An e-book reader from the famous online bookseller, the Kindle allows people to read books, newspapers, and other documents on a thin, light digital device. It has been panned by some, while others have written rapturously about it. Either way, it is sparking innovation in e-readers.

• The Around View monitor from Nissan's Infiniti division is designed to give drivers a 360-degree view around their cars while parking and backing up. The system features a series of ultra-wide-angle high-resolution cameras that produced images that are aggregated to give the driver a top view of the car and the area around it. It is hoped that the monitor will save lives, especially those of children, who are difficult to see from inside a car, especially when they are behind a vehicle while a driver is backing up.

• The Caroma Profile dual flush toilet. This system pipes gray water from a bathroom's sink into the toilet's tank, cutting down on water wastage.

CBS Early Show video
Glenn Derene, senior technology editor at Popular Mechanics, talks about the top
technological inventions of 2008 with Harry Smith and Julie Chen of CBS.

In addition to selecting products, Popular Mechanics is honoring people as well.

Amy Smith won the Breakthrough Leadership Award. Smith, a senior lecturer at MIT, was cited by the magazine for research into water purification and both boosting the quality of medical care and reducing daily work burdens of rural women. Popular Mechanics said, "she is leading a movement to tackle complex problems with simple technology."

Rudy Roy, Ben Sexon, Daniel Oliver, and Charles Pyott are the co-winners of the Next Generation award. Recent graduates of Caltech and the Art Center College of Design, the four have made names for themselves with a technique that makes wheelchairs for residents of developing countries out of inexpensive bicycles. One major benefit of their innovation is that the wheelchairs can be repaired in any bike shop, unlike normal chairs.

And for Ward, what is the most rewarding part of the annual project?

"A combination of talking to all of these really incredible people," he said. "People who are at the top of their game, but people who also care about others, people who are trying to solve some of these problems we read about in the headlines. So I always get a sense of hope at the end of this project. You know, there are people out there making a difference."

In 2006, Wired magazine reporter Jeff Howe published a story about a phenomenon he'd been following in which the power of large numbers of people was being harnessed to make things happen that hadn't been possible before outside the auspices of corporations or other big institutions.

He called the phenomenon "crowdsourcing," and the term quickly caught on, joining others, like "tipping point," "wisdom of the crowds," "the long tail" as household phrases for the ways that things were changing all around us, often thanks to the democratizing reach of the Internet and the commoditization of tools, like high-quality digital cameras, that had previously been out of reach of most.

One of the elements of Howe's defining crowdsourcing was a new understanding of how, when brought together to utilize collective intelligence, big, disparate groups of people working on a common task can be extraordinarily productive and deeply creative.

That, maybe, was the chief differentiator of Howe's discovery from James Surowiecki's Wisdom of the Crowds: that far-flung people are able to achieve great things outside the box.

He likes to talk, for example, about how a large number of people are now able to take great photographs, thanks to their high-end but relatively inexpensive cameras. This enabled a new kind of stock photography world to emerge--one that seems to be doing away with the traditional model in which only a select few photographers could have their work collected by stock photo agencies.

On Tuesday, Howe published his first book, appropriately titled, Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business. And as he prepares to storm the book world on a promotional tour, he is also giving interviews far and wide about the topic. On Tuesday alone, he writes on his blog, he will speak on 27 different radio programs around the country.

Last week, Howe and I spoke about where this crowdsourcing phenomenon fits into our world. I had hoped to ask him to spell out the differences between his book and that of Surowiecki, but before I could, he had to leave to be with his family at his home in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Q: Is there a bit of a tragedy-of-the-commons element to crowdsourcing, to content on YouTube and things like that, where the 80-20 rule--that 80 percent of content is low-quality--governs?
Howe: There's an antidote to the 80-20 rule, and it's that the crowd filters itself. I just put up a blog post about Dell IdeaStorm, which is just a modern-day suggestion box.

Dell receives about 9,000 ideas, and some 500,000 people vote on them. And what those votes do is drive the best ideas up to the top. A lot of those ideas suck, but you don't have to read them, and Dell doesn't have to take action on them.

The essence of crowdsourcing is to take an overwhelming task, and by breaking it up into little chunks and distributing it to a large number of people, it becomes feasible. The good ideas rise like cream to the surface.

You write in the book about the success of the low-budget Web TV show, The Burg. Does that success create more opportunity for people working outside the mainstream system?
Howe: Absolutely. We're seeing the emergence of a different kind of complex ecosystem where some shows have the very highest production values but other shows look better with lower production values, and so it just an aesthetic, and the fact that aesthetic exists means that people without a big budget can exploit that.

So there is more opportunity?
Howe: There's enormous opportunity for amateur filmmakers with talent. The bar is no longer, "Do I have access to 16-millimeter film or enough money to get it developed?"

It's really exemplified by MDotStrange, who literally created a feature-length movie that got screened at Sundance in his little studio apartment in San Jose, using software that he'd presumably pirated and with a budget of zero dollars. It was simply labor, and that means that the game is open to anyone.

If you have the talent, you can make it. This is one of the central themes of crowdsourcing: There's a meritocracy, where people count no matter whether they have the connections or the budget or expensive equipment. And it's everything from astronomy to science to graphic design to photography to writing.

Since this meritocracy is opening up doors to everyone, how can endangered businesses like journalism save themselves?
Howe: By thinking creatively and streamlining. Journalism faces a lot of challenges. The advance of the crowd is only one of those. But smart news organizations are realizing that having their readers engaged in the media production process--in a richer, more sophisticated way--is its own end. It sells papers, it sells Web sites, it brings readers in.

You talked about Gannett being one of those news organizations, right?
Howe: I think Gannett has done smart stuff. It's the largest newspaper publisher in America, and it has made some smart community-oriented moves. But Gannett just laid off 1,000 people, so the fact that it's engaged its readers doesn't make it immune from market forces.

One example you talk about where a business is getting it right is the Netflix Prize, where Netflix offered $1 million to the first person who could improve his or her recommendation engine by 10 percent. What makes that your favorite problem-solving network application?
Howe: Because it got such a robust response very quickly, and it showed what brilliance was out there in the crowd. It's got all the elements of crowdsourcing. I was only theorizing about this two years ago, so to see practice mimic theory in this case was gratifying. And it was great to the see that the contestants were collaborating with each other, despite the fact that they were helping competition.

How will crowdsourcing change in the next few years?
Howe: We're seeing Crowdsourcing 2.0 emerge, a more intelligent form of crowdsourcing. Dell is using it intelligently. But I see a lot of the early adopters getting out of it.

Suddenly, every corporation wants the crowd to create their own ads, and that's often a disaster. Everyone wants to throw out a shingle and create a social-networking site.

We saw like Wal-Mart try to do this, and it created fake entries about kids who were buying Wal-Mart products. Any of us who track stuff like this thinks, "do you have no one smart in your entire organization? You're the largest employer in the world."

And the fact is they probably don't. So those companies will get out, or they'll get smart. As crowdsourcing continues to penetrate the mainstream, more companies will use it, but only the smart companies will succeed at it.

You wrote that diversity of experience trumps expertise. Why is that?
Howe: Well, these aren't my ideas. I'm merely re-presenting what are pretty standard collective-intelligence principles. A diverse group of problem solvers will almost always beat a homogeneous group of problem solvers. The reason is, very smart people tend to come from the same institutions, and they tend to try to solve problems in the same way. And sometimes that works, but often, it doesn't.

What diversity of experience brings is, even if someone may not be well-versed in that subject matter, she is able to apply her expertise from another subject matter entirely and say, "Well, you know, but wait, what if we try this?" And when you have a crowd, because you have the power of large numbers, there are times that taken as a whole, they excel because they are trying so many different things all at once.

What are the best industries for crowdsourcing?
Howe: It has totally transformed stock photography. So the question I pose in my book is, "Is stock photography the canary in the coal mine?" We might be beginning to see this with graphic design. I don't know yet because I haven't done the reporting on it, but it's at least something similar.

You have a lot of people who can do low-end design. You know they can create a logo. They can lay out a Web page, even though they're not professionals. They're adequate enough that they can make a supplementary income doing it or do it for fun, which is why photography works: because a lot of people love to take pictures.

Crowdsourcing is also having a big impact in corporate science, through companies such as InnoCentive and YourEncore and, you know, my suspicion is that it will continue to migrate into other fields, especially creative services.