Not:The is hosted offsite by Far until some permissions get sorted out on this weblog. Please be kind, rewind the torrent before you return it.

If you were at TNH, you may have heard there were some technical issues with the badges that popped up on and off during the event. Yeah, it happens. Our issues came in 2 categories. We had some minor (and trivial to fix) power issues on some badges, and some connectivity confusion with the API and website. That is just part of the game when rolling out a system for 2K users in under 24 hours, on all volunteer effort, with approx. zero budget.

We had a lot of request for more details when we were at The Next HOPE, and below is some more information on what it took to make OpenAMD happen.

The System: The reader system consisted of ~30 readers hidden about the conference on 2 floors, an independent network for the readers, including 8-10 POE switches to power and send data, web servers, a data aggregation boxes, webserver box, API server box, Visualization displays. Oh and 2 tents. The tents are important, especially when someone is adding features until 3AM.

The Team:The core OpenAMD team for THN came from all corners of the USA. We had contributors from Germany, San Fransisco, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and NYC.

The Timeline: To start with, a neighborly hacker started working on badge design months before the convention. Then about 5 weeks before the convention we started testing with a mini-network and a single machine as aggregation and API service.

Then, the real crunch time comes when we finally get access to the convention floor. Starting Thursday at 1PM, the OpenAMD team has serious crunchtime. We then have about 24 hours to get the readers installed, run our network, and setup the computers we need. Since these kinds of systems are only deployed once or twice a year, and the software is improved each time, there is always new details to work out.

So, that is a rough overview of the OpenAMD project rollout and setup. Hopefully that answers some questions folks had during The Next HOPE.

(Photo cc by blinkenarea)

BADGE.HOPE.NET

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Your badge number is on the back of the badge.

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The verification code is on the badge wrapper.

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If you lost your wrapper, go to the Info Desk on the expo floor to get a new verification code one.

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Email the OpenAMD team with:

• Title
• Description
• Screenshot
• Thumbnail/logo
• URL

We look forward to seeing what you folks have done.

• creation.csv – This file records when a user created an account, and which registration code they used.
• person.csv – This is the profile record. It contains the user’s handle, their stated age, gender, location, cell provider, etc. None of this data is verified or validated. This is data is useful for labeling and getting beyond user ids. Many of these handles are designed to be recognized. Mining forums for these handles could tell us more about the user.
• ping.csv – This file records everybody that pinged somebody else and when they did it. Think of this like Facebook’s “poke” feature.
• position_snapshot.csv – This file records what zone each user is twice a minute.
• talk_presense.csv – This file joins user locations with where talks were being held to infer which talks a user attended. This can be further used with talks.csv to link users with talk descriptions and interests associated with a talk.

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Check out http://sunnythinking.org/blog/mining_thelasthope.html for the rest of this analysis.

Today we’re officially launching the new OpenAMD website. You can still view the teaser video, and download the public API, which will allow anyone to create their own applications to work with the badge system at HOPE.

However, this new website will have more updates on the project as we get closer to the conference, including both cool things we’re working on, as well as ways you can help.

We have a lot of ideas in the works, some of which will not be revealed until HOPE. In the meantime, please contact amd@hope.net if you’d like to help. One of the biggest pressing needs we have right now is to get PoE switches that will allow us to deploy the system. We’re doing this project on a budget, mostly self-funded, so any resources or leads for materials is extremely helpful and highly appreciated.

Stay tuned!

New York, NY

Personal privacy will become a thing of the past this July, when hackers unveil technology that could send privacy advocates into a panic mode.

Conference attendees will witness first hand while voluntarily wearing futuristic RFID badges what human tracking capabilities have become.

This system, termed OpenAMD, will both show the fun and reveal the dark side of familiar social networking websites like MySpace.

In addition to making the entire project open source, developers can now create their own software before the conference using the newly released public API.

Download Press Release [PDF]