The rapturous Ratliff rocks the microphone

Four speakers working on the future of digital publishing took turns presenting to an audience of about 100 at the second Code Meet Print event at General Assembly last night. Glenn Nano of Centurion Venture Partners played host, and judging from the applause, the social hierarchy of the speakers was as ridged as at a high school assembly.

The Atavist, starring Wired writer Evan Ratliff, was the cool, smart kid who is probably going to go to a good school and everyone likes to think they are friends with. Social Book was that English teacher who did a bunch of cool things before teaching and everybody tries to get him as their advisor. Joyland was the nerdy fanboy who is funny in class but spends all his time getting his friends to submit to the lit mag he started. And FS Publishing was the girl you know from your English class who doesn’t understand why people argue with her so much.

FS Publishing spoke first about a revolutionary method for publishers wading through a slush pile. Right now, editors are the first line of defense, using qualitative methods to decide what to acquire.  Then the manuscript goes to marketing, where they use more qualitative analysis (are vampires trending?) to judge whether a book will be successful.

FS wants to switch the order of the process. Instead of subjective and only occasionally helpful editorial comments at the end of a manuscript, the FS platform allows readers to rate the submissions with a happy face, medium face or sad face. Then, when the votes are tallied, editors can read the culled works and decide what to pursue. One imagines will be a hard sell to editors who feel like they have already have given too much power to marketing. Then again editors may be happy just to still have a job.

Next up was Joyland, an online lit magazine for short fiction. The idea did not seem that revolutionary (sample question from the audience, " So this is a literary journal that exists online and sometimes asks questions on Facebook?”). But the talk was snappy and presenter Brian Joseph Davis pronounced words with a Canadian accent. Mr. Davis’ answers seemed to satisfy the crowd and by the time he got to the finale, a contest for best Twitter short story, the audience engagement was high (winner gets a kindle!).

Social Books’ Bob Stein, who we last saw listed as a "Visionary" at a publishing panel, presented next. Even if his visions for CD-ROM magazines haven’t quite come true, he is always going to be the guy who came up with the idea for the Criterion Collection and thought that movie buffs might just want to listen to a director talk about his work while watching that work.

Mr. Stein speaks in a soothing tone and seems generally knowledgeable and insightful (they don’t call him a visionary for nothing). It's all about teaching people new behavior. “I have never had anyone say ‘this is yucky,’” said Mr. Stein. “Only ‘give it to us better.’”

Last was Evan Ratliff of The Atavist, clearly the star of the show. His company publishes original longform non-fiction to the iPad, Nook and Kindle, sharing the proceeds with the authors. "We are in between a magazine and book publisher so there is no word for it"

If you use the Atavist on the Kindle, you're kind of missing the best part, the multimedia component. An article about a Swedish bank heist opened with footage from the actual heist, which Mr. Ratliff said was better than any lede he could write. The future of print is video.

After the Q & A, there was an informal line to talk to Mr. Ratliff as people finished their beers and waited until they got kicked out of General Assembly.

Facebook likes the least loquacious.

Bantr is bored with babblers.

So when accepting a Webby. Keep it short and sweet.

The opposite of sexting

NYC Condom might just be the most embarrassing App ever created. As the city’s new App store advertises, NYC Condom Finder promises a protection finder for the pocket of the laziest person ever hoping to get laid.

“Find Condoms NYC uses your iPhone's GPS to locate and provide walking directions to the 5 nearest venues that distribute FREE NYC Condoms! With more than 3,000 locations throughout all 5 boroughs, no matter where you are, you'll always be protected.”

Because the only thing more attractive than finding out that the guy you met at that bar uses city condoms is finding out that he has an App helping him find walking directions to them. At least he can afford an iPhone, even if he is too thrifty to buy his own protection. Don’t expect dinner or flowers, ladies (and gents). This App owner knows how to take advantage of all the free swag the city has to offer. Romantic!

Other useless Apps include Best Parking, which lets drivers “Compare Prices, Rates, Spots, and Locations for City and Airport Garages and Lots” – just don’t use it while actually in your car driving or you can get a ticket. Other titles App developers may have kicked around: “eyes on the road: or “why do you even have a car in the city, anyway.”

Contrary to what the name suggests, You The Man is not a new Judd Apatow movie. Oh no. It is a handy App for drunk people who want to find a car service and either don’t realize that cabs stop for people who put their hands up or else are in an outer borough. Maybe this is the answer to the city’s yellow cab/ livery driver conundrum. And it didn’t even have to go through the TLC or City Council.

Unfortunately for musicians, many of whom are literally poor, the record companies are going to get the lions share.

One week into a federal grand jury trial, Michael Gorton, LimeWire’s founder, agreed to pay the Recording Industry Association of America $105 million. Gorton was already found guilty of copyright infringement, so the trial was about how much LimeWire would have to pay up, not if.

Having to pay $105 million is actually a good deal for LimeWire, since the RIAA was asking for a total of $1.4 billion.

But this is not a good deal for artists. RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy previously told TorrentFreak that any money awarded from piracy-related lawsuits will go towards funding more anti-piracy campaigns.

If this is indeed how the money will be spent, it doesn’t bode well for the RIAA’s faith in the effectiveness of the existing anti-piracy campaign.

Which is exactly what LimeWire’s lawyers argued – that music piracy was not invented by LimeWire and will keep happening even after people just remember LimeWire in a vague, Napster-y way.

During the trial, Gorton’s attorney told jurors that when a file-sharing service goes offline, users “just funnel into the next-best service.”

“The next best thing” is kind of a catchy name for a new file sharing service. Some savvy pirates should snap that up while the domain is still available.

Roboticist Heather Knight, the festival’s founder, hopes to help counter negative stereotypes about robots.

“Terminator types stories are fun but that is not all there is,” said Knight. “There are myths about robots, but this gives the power to create new stories about robots in society.”

If there is anybody who will make strides as a spokesperson for robot-human interactions, it’s Knight. Last year, the bubbly blonde took to the TED stage to showcase Data, a robotic stand-up comedian that gathers audience feedback probably more effectively than most human comedians.

“It’s exciting to unveil the films in a setting where everybody is all about robots,” said Knight. She came up with the idea for the film festival focusing on robots while working on her doctoral research on robots at Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute and running Marilyn Monrobot Labs in New York, which creates socially intelligent robot performances and sensor-based electronic art.

Criteria for submission to the festival is that the films need to have a character, real or fictional, that is a robot or have a framing device or narrative that relies on robots. But that can mean a lot of different things, and according to Knight, the definition of robots changes over time.

“For example, dishwashers could be seen as robots at one point but now they are just machines,” she said. “What separates robots from machines for me is a sense of character.”

Expect several emotionally wrought sagas about the life of appliances. The festival will feature screenings, as well as performances by bands that rely on robots, and will take place on July 16-17.

h/t @CMB and TNW

Stop maximizing that Excel worksheet whenever a coworker walks by your cubicle. Everyone already knows that you are looking at the J-Crew sale page while playing angry birds on the iPad in your lap.

Or if they somehow didn’t know, they will soon. Once you download School of Visual Art Interaction Design MFA candidate Eric St. Onge’s thesis project, trying to hide your shocking lack of productivity on sunny spring Fridays (but also, be honest, on rainy Mondays too) will be even more impossible.

Obtract is a Mac App that “monitors your activities and allows you to identify your own distractions” by collecting your data and analyzing what you are doing instead of filling in that spreadsheet. Then, it makes those enjoyable distractions feel more like work by making you do “increasingly complex obstacles” in order to access them. Your “teammates” (office lingo for “people who sit in the cubicle next to you”) can see all of that data.

People love to compete - especially on a computer. The app graphs your productivity vs. distraction levels against that of your colleagues.  Maybe most embarrassingly, it charts where your time goes over the course of a day (five minutes on Facebook ten times a day starts to add up).

A little window pops up when you spend too long looking at pictures of cute puppies that says: “You’ve become too distracted to use this application. To dismiss this box, click the ‘Ignore’ button, or switch to a more productive activity.”

The app blacklists the most distracting sites, tells you when to take a break and makes you go through a maze when you get too distracted, just like that Internet game you were playing to avoid working!

Photo credit: twitter

Instead of gossiping about teachers over chardonnay after a PTA meeting, New York moms are blasting the Internet with opinions about their kids’ schools.

And judging from her impassioned tweets, one mom seems to be drinking alone.

Seema Kalia, the mom of a second grader at Trinity, alleges that there is trustee fraud, an unlicensed school psychologist and an IRS investigation at the 300-year-old Upper West Side private school – and she is not doing it quietly.

Kalia has waged a campaign against the school using all the social networks at her disposal – Facebook, Twitter and mommy blogs. This has led to a frantic back-and-forth of gossip and rumors across the Internet. Although these allegations seem bizarre at the very least, many moms are taking the bait. Over at Urban Baby, commenters have become authorities by virtue of having friends who have kids at Trinity.

A former lawyer, local TV host and HuffPo blogger (no word on whether she is part of the lawsuit, but considering her husband manages a $200 Billion-dollar hedge fund, one would assume she doesn’t need a freelancer’s salary), Kalia has decided to turn her Twitter account over to a PR Firm.

“Don't worry, I haven't changed - delegating all media to an outside firm. Msg me and I will forward all press and public body queries” wrote @seemakalia.

Back in March, the mother of a four-year-old made headlines when she filed a lawsuit claiming that her daughter was not receiving adequate test preparation at York Avenue Preschool. And of course, there is always the Tiger Mom herself (whose older daughter is currently deciding between staying near her mom in New Haven and fleeing for Cambridge). Unlike those moms, who seem to be crazily committed to getting their kids into the right schools, Kalia is in the process of getting her daughter expelled.