Gorgeous day for the beach

The Craft Racket

If you're a crafter or artisan, stop by tonight at Uncommon Ground for
some drinks and networking. The cafe is at the corner of Clark and Grace
streets just north of Wrigley Field.

Event Map

Here is a neat map documenting my route for this event. Made possible by the cool mapping site CommunityWalk!
CommunityWalk Map - FollowMe

Bucktown Arts Festival

Lots of great art; lots of dogs and strollers too. Well that does it for the inaugural Follow Me Chicago event. Look for another outing coming your way soon.

Artzilla Craftzuki

Come and help support your local crafter!

Another SMS service

Well, looky here. Another SMS group chat service launches. This one with venture backing. And too many MBAs, management consultants, and advisors on-board, imho.

Goodnight

In Joel's car on Kennedy expwy traffic heading home. Fireworks were
enjoyable way to end the night. Followme has now retired for the
night...more tomorrow though...stay tuned.

Navy pier

Safely ensconced at the pier for another round of drinks, then
fireworks!

Tea gschwender

After dinner we stumbled upon a lovely tea store carrying top quality
looseleaf teas. You can sample anything in the store. Chicago is the
only current U.S. location for this German company.

Ra sushi

Just sat down at ra sushi in the heart of rush st area

Apple store

Decided to stop at the Apple store for a bit of web surfing before
heading to Sabon soaps

Glenwood Festival / Sabon soaps

There was some cool art on display there as well as the usual jewelry
vendors. I resisted the urge to down a pint at Duke's bar and headed for
cafe ennui cuz someone at Mess Hall told me it was an internet cafe. It
did have free wireless but no terminals. So now I decided to catch the
sheridan xpress bus downtown, probably to check out Sabon soaps on
Michigan ave.

Internet cafe

Looking for cafe w terminals or nearby library

Heading south

Not a lot of bus options @ sheridan and lunt on a sat

Approaching Morse stop on red line

Glenwood ave arts fest up next

Heading north on red line

On to Glenwood Ave arts fest

Spacca

Spacca was a nice place. My friend Tammy joined me there and we had a
chance to catch up. Now waiting for sb brown line.

WB on montrose bus

May be a little late to Spacca. Hang tight!

On cta

NB on Pulaski to Montrose

Lunch at Spacca Napoli

The day begins with lunch at noon at foodie mecca Spacca Napoli. Address is 1769 W Sunnyside Ave
So, instead of Thai buffet as originally planned, it'll be thin crust pizza. We'll see how things go from there.

Influence the journey

Any suggestions on where to go? Post a comment here and I'll take it into consideration for tomorrow.

Wed night

Just a preview of what's coming on Saturday. This from tonight's final
Summerdance DJ series in Grant Park, going on right now.

More structure

Here's some more details about the project...it will start approximately at noon on Saturday the 26th and end around midnight. I'll probably kick things off with lunch somewhere...later on I'll pick a local pub to visit (i.e. there definitely will be alcohol involved!). El rides will be included, as well as some touristy spots, but I'll also try to pick lesser-known venues along the way. Sorry to be so vague, but the spontaneity and impromptu elements are what makes this project interesting!

The goal is to provide updates every 15 minutes on the day of the event.

By the way, if you can't follow along via text message or this website, you can always shoot me an e-mail: msmithivas (at) tmail (.) com and I'll try to keep you in the loop.

There will also be photos uploaded via Flickr tag followme.

SMS tools

We will be using some cool new apps for real-time SMS communications during the Aug 26 event.

The first is Mozes. Send a text message with the word "followme" to 66937 using your mobile phone. You will get a reply asking if you'd like to subscribe. Reply with Y. On the day of the event, this will allow organizers to send updates as the event progresses throughout the day.

Alternately, you can sign up and join Twitter.com, which is akin to a text message chat group. Once you join, add user mvs as your friend and you'll be set.

Both services will be used on the 26th. Note that your carrier may charge a small fee for each text message sent and received, so keep that in mind if you decide to join. You'll also be able to follow along via this web page.

Project Philosophy

There are at least two main drivers behind this project. The first is to illustrate the use of technologies like cameraphones, text messaging (SMS), and the wireless web as a means of facilitating remote publishing/communications. While none of these individual technologies is particularly bleeding-edge, I have not seen them deployed in a real-time manner. This then introduces the notions of geo-spatial and temporal aethetics which I desire to explore using this new medium. Simply put, representing human social activity around where and when things are happening.

Personally, I feel too much of the web revolves around stuff you do while you're at your computer, which probably is either located in your home or at your office. But there is so much going out out there in the "real world", and now your technology can travel with you as you go out and explore the urban environment. Thus the second driver for this project is to explore how content and community looks and feels when presented in the context of a mobile publishing framework.

Follow me

Follow me Chicago