Author Archives: ksprague

Posted in Creativity, Thinks, Uncategorized /By ksprague /Leave comment

The Art Superbowl

Scope Art Fair Tent in Midtown Miami

Art Basel and the multitudinous spin-off art fairs are all set to open next week here in Miami. The whole city feels like it is on deadline. Up here in Midtown where Studio Two has based itself, 10 (ten!) huge tents have been erected in the last month to host the many satellite fairs – artmiami, scope, context, red-dot, etc. It has been stupendous to watch these massive temporary structures go up for essentially a 5 day run.

This is the superbowl of art and in an interesting way, despite the gloomy view of the entire art world by some, I’m reveling in the parallels. Think about it. Do you really care about football? Maybe yes, likely no – but has the NFL managed to infiltrate your brain to such a degree that despite having zero interest in the sport you maintain an underlying awareness of the event itself and potentially even who the teams are or some other salient detail? Imagine – they took an obscure game played by college boys and transformed it into an industrial mega-brand with influence far and wide. Why? Because there was money to be made.

Bake House Art Complex, Miami.

I like art – I like the idea that people have the right and the desire to create something from nothing, to imagine what isn’t and make it. I’ve been an artist at times in my life and enjoyed the mysterious flow of creativity in the middle of a project that might or might not resolve itself into something interesting, different and beautiful. I agree that sometimes the modern art machine turns out negligible or questionable product defined as art mostly because it is a: expensive to make, b: difficult to move, and c: someone likely got hurt in the process. Nevertheless, to carry my football metaphor a bit too far, much like when one watches a game of football only to see an extraordinary play – some kind of feat of physical prowess and magic that transcends the game and speaks to the human condition in all of us – there are discoveries to be made in the art world. Last night we went to the BakeHouse Art Complex here in Miami where professional artists have studios in residence. It was an open-house and we went from one studio two another and made wonderful discoveries along the way, particularly the outstanding work of Marcia Ramos-Perelló with whom we had a lovely conversation about how her work connects her to stages in her life and in the moment how she has been connecting to her mother’s hand-labor making clothes. You could see the intense dedication, focus and emotion in both the artist and the work. This is why art matters.

The work of Marcia Ramos-Perelló

To be in Miami right now and to be even 2 or 3 degrees of separation from the art world means that much like the superbowl, you just “know” that Art Basel is happening. Much like that over-hyped ball game, the best way to enjoy it is do dive in and take part. Yes, they’ve made a major industry out of what is really a personal and private matter – art – and in the course a world economy in jobs, money, media and all the ancillary spin-offs of the creation of a major market where one didn’t previously exist at this scale occurs. Like it or hate it, you cannot but be amazed that art has created this kind of gigantic happening and if it means the transfer of wealth between hedge-fund managers and artists, gallerist, critics and others, I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. What do you think?

30Nov

Posted in Consults, Thinks, Uncategorized /By ksprague /Leave comment

Rethinking the RFP

Have you ever had to respond to an RFP (A Request for Proposal)? Chances are you have – if you are in any kind of business providing goods and services to institutions and business. I don’t know that I have ever met anyone on the receiving end of the RFP process who is fundamentally happy about it – and that give me pause. I’ve certainly been on boards and committees where we needed to solicit bids from vendors and the RFP seems like the best way to bring definition to the project, but I think there is a better way.

In my business we primarily receive RFPs for building new websites for institutions The RFPs generally lay out the scope of the project, the needs of the institution, some background, qualifications and requirements of the vendor, and that kind of thing. They can be extremely time-consuming to respond to as each and every element needs to be accurately addressed or your bid will be disqualified for being incomplete. The RFPs vary widely from institution to institution – some include forms that need to be filled out and attached, some require an exact structure to the document you are preparing. All of them have a major, fundamental flaw – they assume that the requestor knows more about what is being asked than the vendor.

This is a key point – the RFP frequently presents a set of requirements that is so well thought-through from the client end that there is very little, if any, room for the vendor to add value to the discussion. Actually, its not a discussion – its a request for a unilateral response. Oftentimes any conversation, questions, or discussion is strictly off the table in an effort to create a perfectly level playing field. And this is where the RFP fails completely for me.

Servers on the web 1995-2012

In my business we design and develop websites. The manner by which we provide this service has changed and continues to change at an accelerating rate as a consequence of the rate of change in the underlying technology of the web itself. The web itself is only a bit more than a decade old – go back to 1995 and that was about when things started to take off. In the intervening 15+ years the rate of change – the growth of the web and its dominance on so many aspects of our daily life and how the world works – has been phenomal and continues to increase exponentially.

Ok, so we know all this. What’s the issue? As an example, the aviation industry took 70 years to traverse the distance between the Wright Brothers and the Concorde. If you were an organization that needed an airplane in say, 1950, you could have written a specification for the airplane based on your present understanding of aviation, submitted it to manufacturers, and received something in 2 years time that was quite relevant to the progress of the rest of the industry – perhaps engines had improved in that period, or wing design, but it would still be recognizable as a contemporary expression of aviation design. Of course this scenario (unless you are the US Govt.) doesn’t happen – you would go to the industry leaders in aviation and describe your requirements (“I need to transport 30 people 2,000 miles safely”) and you would listen to what they had to say.

Unlike airplanes, most people who use the web everyday feel they have a good understanding of what works and what doesn’t. They feel qualified to write the RFP based on their experience using their own existing sites, surfing the sites of their peers or competitors, and researching trends and technologies on the web. Generally the specification they write is a good one – it outlines clearly the requirements as a snapshot in time and this becomes the goal. Here’s the problem – in the time that it takes to create the requirement, draft it, submit the RFP to vendors, collect responses and engage in the project, the underlying systems that the requirements are based on have moved forward. The playing field has changed.

It knows where it is. Does your desktop?

The web is an organic entity. As a dynamic meme, it evolves and mutates rapidly. For those of us who are engaged in that evolution on a daily basis, it’s exciting – challenges you had yesterday are easily solved tomorrow. New tools, technologies, code and whole environments spring up every day. Back 5-6 years ago, we struggled to write original code to solve challenges on a daily basis – today we rarely need to do fundamental programming because the solution is “off the shelf” somewhere out there for us to download and plug-in. My mantra as a web developer is to always assume that someone else has already built what I am seeking, and done a good job of it – my job is to find that tool and bring it to the task. The rise of open-source software and the whole underlying ethos of open-source has created a situation where I can participate in an ever-evolving, ever-updating core architecture (like wordpress) for the sites I build. Imagine if you will, an office building that is constantly changing, twisting, morphing, adding, subtracting and growing as you live in it – that’s what the web is today and what open-source creates. One aspect of participating in this world – even as an expert – is humility. Neither I nor anyone else really knows where it is going to go. Take the rise of the mobile device – as web designers we weren’t even thinking about delivery to phones 6 years ago – now it is a requirement to consider, and I suspect it will become the primary delivery modality in the next 3 years. What a change that is! A complete re-articulation of the whole user experience, interface, design and technologies. I know I am not the only person frustrated by the fact that my state-of-the-art desktop iMac is essentially “dumber” about its place in the physical world than my iphone – which knows where it is at all times and gives me data based on the geolocation.

So back to the RFP. In trying to create a level playing field, institutions are actually trying to freeze in time this rapidly developing architecture. Instead of saying “The website must do this and that” they should be asking “Who is our audience? What do they want to know? How can we best reach them today and tomorrow?” and they should sit down with vendors like myself and have a conversation. What I would dearly love to do would be to take the RFP, set it to the side as part of the overall definition of the project, and have a chance to tell the client my views on contemporary web design and the future of the medium. One conversation I have been having with clients in the last year goes like this:

“We can build the site you have defined in the RFP – it will take 3-6 months, cost $xx,000 and go through a traditional design process. Or we can launch a new site for you in a couple of weeks.”

This is a statement designed to create a conversation about the contemporary web, the design process that we prefer, and a completely new way of looking at the web as less of an edifice and more as an evolving, organic medium. The RFP process precludes this conversation – freezing the specification in time – and relegates my perspective to the boundaries where it can’t be heard.

I can understand the challenge that any organization faces in this process – how do you create conditions for success? You don’t want to hire the wrong vendor and be left with no budget and a site that doesn’t work. To that end I suggest that the client invest significantly more time in vetting the portfolio of the designers they are interviewing, and following up in detail with provided references, and stepping outside of those references and contacting people at all the organizations that the vendor has worked with in the past. I believe that good businesses are made on succesful long-term relationships involving trust and performance. If the vendor can’t display those qualities, they need to prove otherwise, in person, how they can guarantee the success of the project.

Let’s set aside the RFP and have a conversation. I think it will be fascinating.

23Nov

Stanford University. Photo by Kevin Sprague ©2008

Posted in Thinks, Uncategorized /By ksprague /6 comments

Maybe our kids won’t go to college…

Technology and the internet are changing everything – we all know this – and we experience it in our lives every day. It’s nothing to be in constant communication through our mobile devices 24/7 now. It’s taken for granted that crowd-sourced tools like Wikipedia, TripAdvisor, Twitter, etc. can bring clarity to chaotic information streams (or not – still a lot of work to be done here). So why is it that we go to college like 19th century scholars at Oxford – bearing our books into rooms with chalkboards? And why is it taken for granted that we should mortgage our futures to pay for this?

I believe in education – I had an excellent one with a succession of carefully chosen private schools and 4 years at Cornell. My parents had the means to make that possible and I thank them for it – but since becoming a parent to two boys, now young teenagers, I’ve been aware of the powerful marketing forces working on me, and them, to convince us that we must, without fail, save every possible dollar to pay for the astronomical tuitions of the future. You can’t turn on the television or browse the web without having Merril Lynch or T.RowePrice remind you that college will cost upwards of $500,000 for your newborn so you better start saving. Inflation in the USA has been moderate to negligible in the past decade -around 3% per year -

but in the meantime college costs (tuition, fees, etc) have increased 6%-9% annually in the same period with an aggregate national average growth of just over 30% for the past decade.

Every parent knows this – and yet the universal response is to toe the line and concede that a 4-year degree is “worth it” and we will “figure it out” when the time comes. Well, lets imagine different. There’s an exploding new movement in higher education pairing online classes, crowd sourcing and real-time feedback going on: massive open online courses, or MOOCs. MOOCs have been written about extensively but I haven’t gotten the sense that we are seeing the forest for the trees here. A recent article in the New York Times gives a good picture of the revolutionary nature of this new idea.

What’s going on here is education embracing technology for communication and feedback like never before – and people love it. What’s unsaid in all this is some pretty powerful stuff – namely, the internet is about to kill college. Think about it – the internet has transformed whole industries completely – we all participated in the transformation of music, the complete revolution in publishing, the accelerating demise of the post office, the transformation of private capital investment that is being currently foretold by Kickstarter and others… But College? The sacrosanct temple of learning? The grassy Quadrangle the hearkens back to Socrates holding forth in the public forum? Could these places, their bricks and mortar, their entire institutional construct, truly be threatened by a bunch of people using google hangout to share ideas?

Yes. I think the internet will kill College as we know it – it may take a long time and it portends to be an ugly, protracted fight. The institutions are embracing new ideas like MOOCs today because they want to explore this space – they are mission-driven to do so. But these institutions are also businesses – massive businesses with trillions of dollars of hard assets – real estate, intellectual property, cash, and the best human-capital on the planet. The facts don’t lie though – the charts above are clear indications that something in the system is fundamentally broken – if the cost of higher education is out of reach for 99% of the people then it is fundamentally irrelevant and requires replacement or revolution. In 2008 teh New York Times wrote about this with the headline “Higher education may become unaffordable for most in the U.S.” - Well, here we are in 2012 and it is. So now the revolution starts.

Lets look at the pattern of events that will unfold.

1) The recession that started in 2007 struck many colleges where it matters most – in their investment funds. Headlines around the nation called this out at the time and the repercussions on the institutions were significant and deep – suspended capital projects, hiring freezes – all the usual effects that industry feels in an economic downturn. The recession illuminated the degree to which these institutions have become focused on amassing massive hoards of cash – endowment funds are safety nets that hopefully never get deployed – but they have become an industry all by themselves. So what happens when an institution is faced with the fact that they have to subsidize tuition for every student on an increasing percentage scale year over year as tuition become impossibly high? This is already happening throughout most of the USA where tuition fails to cover the costs of the product – and endowments are being tapped to pay that subsidy. Its a broken system that is highly volatile and tied to the risk/reward matrix of the international stock market – and we know how stable and predictable that has been for the last decade or more.

2) Technology accelerates. Moore’s law still applies and its echoes are felt everyday as we experience the arrival of the future on an exponential curve. I’m referring to the unpredictable and transformational change that is occurring for all of us in our communications, our ability to interact with the data-sets that are our world, and the speed by which we connect and share ideas. This is not slowing down – its speeding up and nobody really knows what the world will look like in ten years as a consequence. I hope that it looks beautiful – more connected, intelligent, educated, aware (if you’ll forgive the geeky reference – more Star Trek than Blade Runner….).

3) Traditional models for jobs and career are transforming. Its accepted now that you may have multiple overlapping careers in your life – not just one. Our current crop of business heroes tend to be college dropouts who found the rigid 19th century model unworkable for their nimble, technology-focused minds. They went to work building facebook, microsoft, apple, twitter, and just about everything else while the rest of us were writing papers about Chaucer (that would be me….). I grew up a geek but I put it aside for the sake of my piece of parchment, and having a good GPA and I wish today that my parents had just set up a small venture capital fund with the money they spent on tuition. The rigid rules are breaking down for what it means to live and learn and work.

4) We no longer need to physically convene to share ideas. The college campus is a beautiful thing – but it will increasingly play second fiddle to people who are connected globally and seamlessly. Bricks and Mortar will become increasingly less relevant.

5) Traditional models are ripe for exploitation by disruptive ones. I think that the higher education system and the healthcare industry are the two remaining systems in our world that have not been forced into full revolution yet. Healthcare is there – in the midst of some really rough waters without a clear direction. Higher education still sits in ivory-tower glory on the hill but its turn is coming next and I think we are going to see a massive and traumatic change here in the coming decade or two as the old system resists the new and deploys its resources aggressively to fight it. Perhaps not – perhaps it is in the DNA of education to respond to the over-arching mission at its core which is to enlighten, educate and elevate the people – but I see a large, embedded and static industry with lots to lose. This is Detroit in 1970 making fun of Toyota’s first imports….and we all know how that worked out.

So what can we learn here? What is the opportunity we have as individuals, as institutions, and as a nation? Here’s what I think:

1) As individuals we need to create a new system for tracking, assessing, and reporting educational progress. Jobs in the future will be about what you know and can do, and the technical and creative skills you bring to the table. We need to find accredidation and tracking for these online courses like MOOCs immediately – not in 5 years time. There needs to be a unified view of achievement and progress that is socially-networked and aware – something of a collision between the resume function of linkedin, the timeline aspect of facebook, and the reputation management of a Kred or Klout – but stripped down to be a vivid, professional representation of your individual education, skills, portfolio and ideas.

2) As institutions we need to rapidly embrace the future and shed the past – campuses need to be completely re-thought as places of convening and conversation – students need to be liberated from the schedule, the classroom, and space and time constraints. Administration needs to find ways to fairly compensate and oversee educators and stimulate on-going education and a more competitive model for career evolution than tenure. In many ways the post-graduate research-model of higher education is a much better and more evolved one than the undergraduate experience – lets break down the barriers and allow people to move into place as their ideas accelerate. Ditch the 4 year schedule of requirements. Today.

3) As a nation we need to build bridges for all people to participate in education regardless of age or economic status. Learning should be a cultural norm – we need to talk about learning as something everyone takes part in. Curiosity and creativity is not just for children or young adults. Today, if you have a question you are often only moments away from starting to find the answers online, and engaging in a community of ideas and opinions. the TED conference has shown vividly how much hunger there is in the world for transformative ideas and kudos to TED for opening up their archives, the conference and every idea to the public for free.

In conclusion – the 4-year undergraduate system is broken – we can’t afford it and it has ceased to be relevant to how we are and will learn in the future. It needs to change radically and it can either fight change tooth and nail or embrace it.

This is kind of a long post – apologies – but it’s been on my mind and I hadn’t really seen it out there. What are your thoughts on this? I can’t wait to see it happen.

21Nov

Posted in Internet Fluency, People, Work /By ksprague

The Touch of the Connection

He looks friendly, no?

As many of you who read this may know – I’m down in Miami, FL on an extended stay to build connections and business for our new office here. At present this has really been about networking, learning, seeing, meeting and connecting to the community and the individuals. We’ve had some great introductions and I am constantly suprised at the rich connectivity between the Berkshires and Miami… But what’s there to be suprised about? It’s easy to move back and forth between the two and as the snow flies in MA the blue skies in FL look better and better.

Working on connections has taken me down the rabbit hole of social media – facebook, twitter, linked-in (who would have thought – it’s actually useful now!) as well as some tangents – Kred.com being my most curious find today (shows your connectivity/influence, etc.). Now I’ve always been a pretty active user of these tools but I’m not a recluse. I really like meeting new people in the flesh and talking with them, sharing a cup of coffee or a meal, and getting under the surface.

Which gets me to the point – connections are in and of themselves not enough. Touching base with the other person at the other end of the wire – be it by phone, email, skype, inmail, or whatever – is really the point when sparks start to fly a little. Connections in today’s world are counted by Klout and Kred – brand names that rank you on an algorithmic popularity scale – but just like high school, popularity is not necessarily all it is cracked up to be. Friends – real ones – matter the most. Respect, knowledge, touch – matter.

I’m a geek but I’m also human. Recently I was reading about some research that was looking into how interacting with the smooth screen of an ipad triggers fundamentally different parts of our brain than interacting with the physical, tactile world – you can throw a virtual ball but never experience the physical act of throwing. I’m interested in this difference right now as I reach out to connect – when will the virtual become the real?

Lets see how it goes. If you happen to want to connect in the real world, and we are already connected virtually – reach out! -Drop me an email or call me. I’ll be happy to shake your hand.

07Nov

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Posted in Uncategorized /By ksprague

Sorting the Real Sandy Photos From the Fakes – Alexis C. Madrigal – The Atlantic

via theatlantic.com

Great article in The Atlantic about real vs. fake (photoshopped, mis-attributed) images coming out of hurricane Sandy. The most interesting thing are the overlaps – images that appear to be fake but are actually real, like this incredible, surreal image of a flooded but lit-up carousel in DUMBO. Reality is almost always going to trump fiction and this is an astonishing image.

Posted via email from Kevin Sprague

31Oct

Posted in Creativity, Film and Video, Uncategorized, Work /By ksprague

Loving Video

Video production is what got me into my career in design and technology – shortly after graduating from College my … Read more »

02Oct

North Adams, Stoplight. 2012 by Kevin Sprague. Original iphone photo printed at 56"x42"

Posted in Creativity, Photography /By ksprague

Channeling Gregory Crewdson with my iphone

Gregory Crewdson is an internationally-known photographer and artist who also happens to be a habitué of the Berkshires – the location of many of his iconic photographs and projects. I know Gregory a little and have long admired the persistent vision, creativity and technical aspects of his work. His aesthetic and mine are different – I generally revel in beauty in a more optimistic state than Gregory, who (to me) enjoys exploring the darker and mysterious motivations within humanity. That aside, the formality of his composition and choices he makes as a visual artist and photographer are familiar to me and one that I enjoy participating in as a viewer.

On a recent trip to North Adams, MA, I happened upon a scene that aligned in my mind as “Crewdson-esque” – lacking my professional camera equipment, I pulled out my iphone4s and recorded the scene – a man waiting at a stoplight on an otherwise deserted street. On returning to my studio, I was struck by the image itself and the technical aspects of it – exposure, focus, depth. Deciding to experiment, I enlarged it to 24×36″ and made a print on our large-format HP inkjet. The print held up remarkably well. The next day I decided to push the envelope a bit more and made another print at 42″x56″. I did perform a few photoshop tweaks to the image – increasing the pixel density, adding a tiny bit of noise, and enhancing the photo slightly with a bit of sharpening and contrast curves.

The resulting print is an interesting object. It’s certainly not a crystal-sharp Crewdson print from 8×10 film positive, but it is remarkably satisfying in its scale, story, and impression. I have no intention of pursuing Gregory’s line of work – I acknowledge fully that the creation of a given image is only a tiny, tiny part of the act of creating a body of artistic work and its related market and commercial success – but it gives me confidence in the iphone as a “backup” tool and also a bit of perspective on what photography will look like in the future. I used the “Filmic Pro” app on a short film for the Berkshire International Film Festival in the winter of 2012 shot on my iphone (one of the requirements of the project) and was struck by how simple and powerful the interface in that app was for controlling exposure and focus on the phone – frankly, the best camera interface I have ever used – Nikon, Canon, etc not withstanding.

Being a great photographer requires vision, creativity, technical skill, inspiration and ambition. It also requires experimentation and evolution. Instagram, pinterest, iphones, 3d, twitpic? I’m a fan. These tools make it more fun, more interesting, more social, and more amazing to be a photographer in 2012.

: North Adams, Stoplight. 2012 by Kevin Sprague. Original iphone photo printed at 56″x42″

: The print in my Studio

: Detail of the image

26Jul

Posted in Case Studies, Photography /By ksprague

Custom Book Project

Studio Two recently took delivery of an interesting and unique custom book project that we designed for long-time client McTeigue & McClelland, Jewelers (MCII). This publication was commissioned to commemorate the design and creation of a one-of-a-kind piece of personal jewelry – a rosary and crucifix for a private collector. The rosary was a private commission with specific parameters, but its overall design and execution, as well as the selection of materials, gems, and techniques, was done by Tim McClelland, master jeweler, and Walter McTeigue, master gemologist.

Studio Two worked with MCII on the design and production of the volume. Working with supplied photographs that Tim took during the construction, and original photography by Kevin Sprague done on-site at their studios, the piece was created to show the unique steps and thoughts that went into making this substantial piece. From original research and sketches, to the casting, fabricating and etching, to the final construction and finish – the book tells the story of how something unique and wonderful is made, by hand, from fundamental raw materials.

A limited edition, the book was printed using blurb.com. The innovation and freedom of on-line, on-demand publishing systems like Blurb has allowed us to bring a very high-quality, well-crafted final product to our clients in efficient and affordable ways. If you have a custom publishing project you would like to explore, please contact us.

04Jul

Posted in Photography, Theatre /By ksprague

American Theatre Cover

American Theatre Magazine has one of my photos of John Douglas Thompson as Louis Armstrong (Satchmo) on the cover for the July/August issue. Nice to see that they used it to highlight this great actor and the interesting project he is engaged in this summer of 2012 with Terry Teachout’s “Satchmo at the Waldorf”. The shot they used was from a short session we did back in spring of 2012 with JDT channelling Armstrong in his own fashion.

28Jun

Posted in Consults, Thinks, Work /By ksprague

SCRAMBLS hits top gear

It’s not every day that one of your brands really “gets in gear” but today we’re proud to bring attention to the partnership of Studio Two branding client and cutting-edge social media tool SCRAMBLS with KleenSpeed Technologies and their revolutionary electric CAN-AM racing car. SCRAMBLS is a technology (www.scrambls.com) that allows users of all types of social media and the web in general to encrypt and manage private communications on public networks – you might have seen it in use on your facebook page. We’ve written about them previously here and here. The official press release is here.

A strong, well-crafted brand is one that has a flexible foundation – the ability to adapt and integrate well with a changing media landscape without losing its impact and clarity. A shout out to SCRAMBLS lead designer Simon Tidnam for the excellent deployment of the brand onto the car’s skin. Now here’s to hoping that they win their series!

28Jun

Posted in press /By ksprague

SCRAMBLS in the press

Description: The Washington Times Online Edition

Inside the Ring: FBI on social-network risks

By Bill Gertz

The Washington Times

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

The FBI recently published a report warning of the dangers posed by social-network sites that it says are being exploited by digital “con artists, criminals and other dishonest actors.”

The FBI report, made public earlier this month, states that social-networking criminals are “exploiting this capability for nefarious purposes,” using two main tactics.

They include computer hackers who specialize in writing and manipulating computer code to gain access or install software on computers and phones. The second method involves hackers who specialize in exploiting personal connections through social networks.

“Social hackers, sometimes referred to as ‘social engineers,’ manipulate people through social interactions (in person, over the phone, or in writing),” the report said.

“Humans are a weak link in cybersecurity, and hackers and social manipulators know this. They try to trick people into getting past security walls. They design their actions to appear harmless and legitimate.”

Social-networking sites such as Facebook and others are Internet-based services that are used to share information and communicate.

According to the FBI, the risk of using social-network sties is that “once information is posted to a social-networking site, it is no longer private.”

“The more information you post, the more vulnerable you may become,” states the report, posted on the National Counterintelligence Executive site. “Even when using high-security settings, friends or websites may inadvertently leak your information.”

Personal information obtained by hackers and criminals on social networks can be used to conduct attacks on people or organizations; and the more information that is shared, “the more likely someone could impersonate you and trick one of your friends into sharing personal information, downloading malware, or providing access to restricted sites,” the report said.

Foreign intelligence agencies, predators, hackers and business competitors are among those who use social-networking sites that can be targeted in attacks. The information may not be used to attack the social-networking site, but could be used in other attacks.

Among the tactics used are infected USB flash drives preloaded with malicious software that are provided to people as part of an attack.

Another method is the use of messages from a friend on the social network that directs you to view a video on another site. However, when you view the video, a message appears asking you to download a new version of the software that is in reality a virus that will then take over your computer.

The malware then communicates to all “friends” on the network directing them to the same virus and thus giving them control of multiple computers.

The FBI report warns computer users to avoid “phishing” scams by not opening email or email attachments or click on links from people you do not know.

“Spear phishing” was behind the March 2011 hacker attack in emails sent to a small group of employees of the security firm RSA, which provided banking and other corporate-security software.

“They only needed one employee to open an infected file and launch the malware,” the report said. “The malware downloaded information from RSA that then helped the hackers learn how to defeat RSA’s security token.”

That attack led to the compromise of “a number of defense contractors’ networks” that were broken into as a result of the compromised RSA security token.

U.S. officials said at the time that China was thought to have been behind the RSA hack and the subsequent breach of the networks of the defense giant Lockheed Martin.

Another cyberthreat in the FBI report is called “click-jacking,” or concealing hyperlinks beneath legitimate clickable content that, when clicked, causes a user to unknowingly download a computer virus or send a user’s identification to a site.

Facebook “like” buttons and digital “share” buttons have been used for this purpose.

The FBI suggests using high-security settings on all social-networking sites to avoid being hacked.

SCRAMBLS ENCRYPTION

To deal with the problem of unauthorized access to digital communications, especially risks linked to social-networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, a new, free software was released this month and is rapidly catching on within U.S. and allied intelligence agencies.

The software is called Scrambls. It automatically encrypts messages sent on social-networking sites using software added to Web browsers.

Once installed, all text between two @ signs is scrambled so that only the intended user can read it.

The software was developed by Wave Systems Corp. and is designed to help computer users regain control of messages posted to the Web and social-network sites.

One key feature is that using Scrambls allows users to take back messages that were sent, an option currently unavailable for most digital communications.

The company also hopes that the use of the technology will help protect children online by boosting the security of their conversations and communications.

At least one U.S. intelligence service is using the product, and another North American intelligence agency and one Asian service also are interested.

“Greater control enables greater use of social media,” said Michael Sprague, Scrambls co-creator.

“Post confidently, knowing your boss won’t see messages meant for high school friends, and permanent records of what you say online won’t come back to haunt you in the future.”

Scrambls uses key-encryption, where decryption keys are provided to recipients through a browser plug-in. The result is that messages posted on Facebook and Twitter will only be legible to friends who are given the decoding key.

The software is available from www.scrmbls.com

01Jun

Posted in Case Studies, Film and Video, Photography /By ksprague

Doing it All

I was asked by friends who run 16 sur 20 - a bespoke clothing brand based in NYC – to produce a short film that they were developing in collaboration with Noritoshi Hirakawa. Noritoshi is a conceptual visual artist who works in film, video, photography and other media and they were interested in the possibilities for an interplay between his vision and their product and brand. After some months of discussion, pre-production planning, storyboarding and casting, we decided to pull the trigger on a 4-day shoot on locations in NYC and the Berkshires – Lenox, MA and at Jacob’s Pillow. The production called for a series of complex shots, many at night or in dark rooms, and a very visual storyline (the script had no dialogue).

I embraced the challenge of this shoot with the collaboration of Jerry Johnson of MicroDolly Hollywood – a Berkshire resident when he isn’t in California. Jerry supplied me with jibs, dollys, and car mounts for the shoot. I managed to pack 3 cameras, 2 tripods, a full jib, dolly and light kit into my Audi A4 for the duration of the shoot! In NY we shot on 3 locations within a few blocks of each other on a 100-degree day, carrying the gear from one place to another in SOHO (parking spaces were at a premium…). The entire shoot was on a Canon 5dMKII. I handled audio with a wireless Sony system direct into the camera and used a combination of Canon and Nikon lenses (with adaptors) for the shoot. In the Berkshire location, Kira Murdock helped me pull focus and manage the rigging of the camera and the shots and the addition of a young friend as a PA and that was our crew (plus Jerry who helped us rig his gear correctly!).

The camera performed flawlessly shot to shot, with a lovely image. The night shots, motion, dolly shots, cranes – everything worked brilliantly. I did the first edit of the final piece – Noritoshi ultimately worked on his own version – and you can take away from it what you will but I was very pleased by the technical outcome of the final product. The capabilities of the new, small DSLRs, the sensitivity and quality of the image, and the portability of the production gear really allowed for an amazing speed, independence and flexibility.

I make good pictures. And I like collaborating with adventurous, visionary clients like my friends from 16sur20.