The Verge - 5 Minutes on The Verges

Dmitry Itskov wants to help you live forever by swapping your body for an android avatar

2013-06-12T15:45:05Z

If Dmitry Itskov has his way, the human lifespan will soon no longer depend on the limitations of the human body. Itskov, a Russian tycoon and former media mogul, is the founder of the 2045 Project — a venture that seeks to replace flesh-and-blood bodies with robotic avatars, each one uploaded with the contents of a human brain. The goal: to extend human lives by hundreds or thousands of years, if not indefinitely.

Itskov’s wild ambitions have already attracted the attention of scientists at Harvard, MIT, and UC Berkeley, among other institutions, but he sees the venture as much more than a scientific one. Itskov’s overarching idea is to create something of a global utopia, one in which people, freed from the shackles of their corporeal selves, have ample time to pursue knowledge and spiritual growth. And he says he’s making slow progress toward that far-out ideal. In New York this week, Itskov plans to unveil a sophisticated robotic replica of his own head, designed by robotics pioneer David Hanson. The Verge caught up with Itskov to find out more about that creation, and his radical plans for the future of humanity.

Your second annual conference, the Global Future 2045 International Congress, will be held in New York this week. And we hear you’ll be unveiling a robotic head modeled after your own, designed by David Hanson. What inspired the decision to have that head constructed, and what do you hope it shows the general public when it’s introduced?

"My vision is to use the robot as a full-body prostheses for the human brain, to enable people to live longer."

Basically, I think that the idea of a head was the right one, because when you look at a human being, what causes the association? What makes you think that you are communicating with a human being? It’s about expressions, emotions, and the face as a whole. That’s why we’ve started with the face; because using the head of the robot, when it’s state-of-the-art like this, you can demonstrate to people that their future artificial bodies can be very realistic and look very humanlike.

I decided to work with David Hanson because he’s famous for having the most advanced technology available. There will be 36 motors in the head, which will work to create exceptional realism. Really, it will be an exceptional android. And actually, of course, we’re interested in creating a full android body, which could walk, jump — basically behave like a human body in the future. My vision is to use the robot as a full-body prostheses for the human brain, to enable people to live longer.

Since you started your 2045 project, you’ve met with prominent politicians, scientists, and even the Dalai Lama. Overall, how do you feel they’ve received your ideas about using technology — namely robotics — to promote longevity?

Many of the people I’ve met actually understand the necessity of the implementation of the kinds of technology I’m trying to promote. What has surprised me is that few of the people I’ve met have been ready to join the project publicly and openly. I don’t mean those people who are attending the Congress — they are with us, at least to some extent. But I mean those people who haven’t yet decided to present themselves publicly. I’ve met many more people than those speaking at the event: some politicians, spiritual figures, scientists even, who have supported the idea but are waiting for the right moment. They are quite prominent people, quite well-known names.

You’ve mentioned before that your lifestyle changed drastically when you launched the 2045 venture, back in 2011. Can you describe those changes?

I don’t like to talk much about that. But in general, I can tell you that my values in life have changed, my priorities have changed, and I have a new vector for personal development. One that isn’t so selfish and so self-centered. I used to be as selfish as anybody in this world, but since these internal changes have come into my life, I hope that I’ve become a little bit better than I was.

I can tell you that everything that has happened has been very sincere, very natural. I’m not playing, I’m not doing this to promote myself. For me being public is a kind of job. The project is associated with me, the ideas come through me, and I have to be public to promote this. I’m not doing it for my ego or to be a kind of superstar.

So let’s say you live forever — or at least much, much longer than the current human lifespan. What do you want to do with all that extra time?

"I want to see these amazing technologies transform the infrastructure of civilization."

You know, as for myself, I think I would use my personal time for spiritual self-improvement, for the spiritual practice that could allow me to expand my consciousness. To come closer to what people call “spiritual realization” — this is parallel to helping people, which is also one of my priorities. I think that helping people, being less selfish, thinking less about yourself, is something that is inseparable from spiritual growth.

But I want to be clear: My vision for humanity is not that I want everybody to be a kind of ascetic person. I also want to facilitate the creation of a new high-tech world. If you remember some of the best stories from sci-fi literature, that’s what I’m expecting. I want to see these amazing technologies transform the infrastructure of civilization.

You take a lot of flak for promoting ideas that seem really far out. But when you talk to scientists, what do they tell you are the key challenges to making these ideas a reality?

If we want a general picture, I would name two big challenges: understanding the human brain, and understanding at least part of the nature of human consciousness. The second is obviously more challenging than the first.

"If you understand what consciousness is, you basically understand what the universe is."

Overall, I think these are the most exciting, and most difficult, challenges for science right now. Especially consciousness. If you understand what consciousness is, you basically understand what the universe is. We know that every person has a very unique perception of the world, because each brain creates this uniqueness. Basically, we have some data about the external world coming from our sensory organs, and the brain constructs a perception of the universe. Philosophically, everything is in your consciousness. Physically, every consciousness is kind of a unique one. If we can unravel that, then we can make the progress we need.

Photo credit: 2045 Initiative

Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin on digital comics and the medium's 'second Golden Age'

2013-06-06T16:45:04Z

Brian K. Vaughan is a writer best known for his work on comic series like Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, and Saga, and he's also spent several seasons working on Lost. Currently he's devoting himself to the television adaptation of Stephen King's Under the Dome. Marcos Martin, meanwhile, is an artist who has drawn some of the biggest characters in the medium: everyone from Daredevil to Spider Man.

Recently the two decided to join together on an interesting project, The Private Eye, a digital-only, pay-what-you-want comic about a world without the internet. It's a strange vision of the future where citizens dress up like animals to protect their privacy and unlicensed journalists have become private detectives — and with our current fixation on oversharing, it's a future that seems plausible, in spite of its more outlandish elements. We caught up with Vaughan and Martin to talk about The Private Eye, the current state of comics, and why Brian has no life. You can pick up the first two issues of The Private Eye at Panel Syndicate.

How did the project come about? And why did you decide to go the independent, digital-only route?

Marcos: Brian came up with the idea for the series and was kind enough to think of me as his partner in crime. I must say it took me a while to try and figure out the whole logic and the mechanics behind such a concept. It really wasn't until I realized that was the wrong approach and I had to see it more as a fable that it started to make sense to me. But really, I was sold the moment Brian called and told me about it. And I'm afraid it was my idea to go digital-only. I started thinking about a digital distribution model years ago.

"I was sold the moment Brian called and told me about it."

I've always felt that mainstream comics needed to find a bigger audience and lower the product price, which is the opposite of what's been happening for years now. Basically, to recapture the original concept of comic books as a popular product of entertainment, but do it in a way in which the creators are the main figure of the business model. For the first time, technology allows us to do just that. And I was hopeful that, through digital distribution, we'd be able to bring in more readers to traditional, print comics, also. However, for something like this to even have the slightest shot at succeeding I always knew I needed someone not only talented enough to come up with a great idea for a series, but with a big enough name in the industry to garner people's attention. And on top of it, was crazy enough to consider this idea.

Brian: Honestly, I'm just riding Marcos' coattails here. He's one of the best artists in the history of the medium, so I'll do anything to collaborate with him... even if that means trying stuff I'm horrible at, like anything involving computers.

Why was the idea of a future without the internet so interesting? Was the contrast between that theme and the digital-only nature of the book intentional?

Brian: I've said this before, but I'm kind of horrified at the way so many of us seem to have willfully sacrificed our own privacy at the altar of social media. When they grow up, I doubt my young kids will be nearly as interested in the online world as our generation has been. My parents, who grew up around the space race, envisioned a future where we'd all be living on moon bases, but life rarely works the way we anticipate. So I wanted to write about a future where the United States took a similar U-turn, and see what it might say about our present. But it was Marcos' brilliant idea to make a story where the internet no longer exists be available exclusively online. Still, readers own their DRM-free digital comics completely after they download each issue from Panel Syndicate, so if you want to print up a physical copy for yourself, please feel free.

Privacy is obviously a huge focus of the series. Is there a particular message you're attempting to get across with regards to the information we store online?

Brian: I'm obsessed with privacy, but it's not just about what we store online. Between increasingly sophisticated facial recognition software, wearable computing like Google Glass, and even the commercial use of drones, the idea that we might all someday put on masks before stepping out our front doors is starting to sound less insane every day. That said, we really don't have a single "message" we're attempting to get across. I'd write an op-ed piece or something if I had this all figured out. Instead, I just have a lot of questions about things that frighten and confuse me, and whenever that happens, I write a comic.

"I just have a lot of questions about things that frighten and confuse me."

How has this experience compared to working on books for traditional publishers?

Marcos: Creatively, it's a whole different animal since here I'm building up a whole world from scratch. When you're working with established characters that you've grown up reading there's already a well of ideas you can rely on and draw from, which always makes the work easier. And there's always that tingling of childhood joy that comes with the fact of knowing you're contributing to the history of characters that you've grown up with and that have become part of your life. Obviously, the satisfaction of working on something you've created and own completely is hard to beat, though.

How has the response been so far?

Marcos: It's working out quite well for now but we're afraid it's too early to say if this is something that's viable in the long run or if it could work for other authors. The risk is too big and that's the reason why we wanted to try it ourselves before approaching anyone else. So far, so good.

Brian: It's succeeded way beyond my wildest expectations. We've had tens of thousands of readers from all over the planet download the first two issues in multiple languages, and I'm shocked and honored to say that the majority of them paid at least something for the experience. The response to the Panel Syndicate business model has been overwhelmingly positive, but I think the only thing that will determine whether the project remains successful moving forward is if people connect with our story. Thankfully, I think our next issue is one of the best comics I've ever been involved with, so I hope readers will come back for more.

Why do you think this pricing structure works well for comics?

Marcos: I wouldn't say it has to be exclusive to comics, although the relatively cheaper production costs in comparison to other entertainment products definitely makes it a more viable option.

We do think it's the best possible model since it establishes a new, more direct relationship between readers and creators in which they both share equal responsibility for the success of the work. As creators, we are responsible for creating quality products to the best of our abilities and the reader is responsible for deciding the value he / she thinks that product has, according to each one's perception, possibilities and personal circumstances.

"I lack the speed and the ability to concentrate on working on two things at a time."

How do you manage to keep on a schedule when you're also working on other projects?

Marcos: In my case, I'm devoting all my time and energy to The Private Eye. I'm afraid I lack the speed and the ability to concentrate on working on two things at a time.

Brian: I have no life.

The first two issues are fairly standard comics just in digital form. But did you ever consider working with elements that don't have direct print analogues?

Brian: Not really, no. Marcos and I might be interested in new-school distribution models, but our first love will always be old-school comics, just words and pictures, no gimmicks.

Marcos: Personally, I have nothing against the options that have been taken when presenting digital comics. But I do think there's a risk of adulterating the comics medium to the point where it loses the elements that define its language and it ends up becoming something closer to a slideshow or an animated storyboard.

Marcos Martin

Does being digital influence how you approach the project in any ways?

Brian: Writing for screens has allowed Marcos and me to shift to a more horizontal form of storytelling from the relatively vertical world of print comics, but that's pretty inside baseball. For the most part, we've approached this the same way we have our past print collaborations: tell a cool story beautifully. I don't know if we've succeeded, but [illustrator Muntsa Vicente's] colors sure are gorgeous.

How do you find new good comics in general now? I used to be able to check the pages of a comic book for other titles from that press, but increasingly I'm relying on more scattershot things like Twitter.

"This is comics' second Golden Age."

Brian: I think the full list of nominees for this year's Eisner Awards is an excellent place to start (and not just because my other book Saga was fortunate enough to be included). It's a phenomenally diverse list, and not a clunker in the bunch. This is comics' second Golden Age, so whatever kind of story you're looking for, I guarantee you'll be able to find something amazing.

Marcos: I'd also suggest taking a look into the world of manga where you can literally find all types of story themes and subjects by some of the world's best storytellers: people like Naoki Urasawa, Taiyo Matsumoto, Suehiro Maruo, or Shigeru Mizuki to name but a few.

Adi Robertson contributed to this report

Brian K. Vaughn image courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Sketching Instagram: co-founder Mike Krieger reveals the photo app's humble beginnings

2013-05-13T16:30:03Z

Mike Krieger is a co-founder of Instagram. Having built the first version of the app years ago, he has been called the “soul” of the company and leads its engineering team today. Before Instagram, Krieger was a user experience designer and engineer at Meebo, a browser-based instant messaging platform. Krieger took a few minutes to talk to The Verge about the roots of Instagram’s many filters, the principles of human-computer interaction, and some of Instagram users’ craziest behaviors. You can find him on Instagram and Twitter at @mikeyk.

How have things been going since you joined Facebook?

We push code to Instagram like 20 times per day. For us, if it’s ready, it goes out. The fact that Facebook [pushes code twice per day] is actually still impressive given how many engineers they have. Now, it’s like, “We would’ve pushed this but Mike needs to support it in case anything goes wrong and he’s in a meeting.” I’m actually slowing down the team if I try to build more stuff, so I need to step back and make sure we’re focused on the right things.

Obviously you aren’t pushing out 20 features per day. What exactly have you been doing?

"At any given point, you’re going to be unhappy with over half of your infrastructure."

It’s mostly performance. Growing from 30 to 100 million [monthly active users] in basically a year or less … As a user hopefully you’re having a similar but better experience, but the infrastructure to support that looks really different now.

There’s this thing in San Francisco called Developer Boot Camp … I gave a talk there and ended up coming up with this slide that said: At any given point, you’re going to be unhappy with over half of your infrastructure, which is true. There are all these ways we’re doing things that could be better — it’s kind of like “painting the bridge.” You go from one end to the other, and once you’re done optimizing and improving your systems, you have to start all over because the assumptions are different.

So, the feed’s faster?

We’ve been obsessive. From day one the thing we wanted to do was make it fast, be it on the client or on the server. Loren Brichter (an Apple alum) had the defining article on how to do this. He said, “Alright guys, everyone’s doing this wrong. You’re trying to have 30 different layers on-screen, but you need to keep it flat — keep it one thing you draw on-screen at a time.” We spent hours [on it]. For v1 we opted to cut a bunch of features in favor of just making what we had really, really fast.

People get away with murder now because they have the iPhone 4 and 4S and the 5. They just have better processors. People are doing more but they’re also optimizing less. Who I love reading is Jordan Mechner, who wrote Prince of Persia, He put all his journals while he was writing Prince of Persia online. He was a kid, like 18 or 19, when he was doing this. There’s this point [in the game] where it’s you and your shadow self. He said, “Well, we didn’t have any memory left to do this other character, so we just took the character and bit-flipped it so there was its exact shadow.” The types of creativity they had to do back then when you had 8K of RAM, to make that work, was crazy.

What’s your take on the current online music space, and how do you think music streaming could / should work?

"Having the wrong timing is still being wrong."

I remember when I was in college an anonymous donor gave Stanford students a year of Yahoo Music Engine. It was like Rdio or Spotify, but 10 years ago. Ian Rogers (of Beats, formerly of Topspin) was the product person on this. I wrote to him once and said, “Dude, you guys had this! What happened?” and he said, “Having the wrong timing is still being wrong.”

I remember that and just being in love, and then it kind of went away. Lala kind of had it, and then that went away as well. And then when Rdio finally came around I was like, “Oh, this is incredible.” To me, the balance is this. I had a morality moment, a reality check while reading about the economics of this. This is actually not a really good way to support these artists. Now, if I really like it, I’ll go out and buy the iTunes album even if it’s mostly symbolic since I go and listen to it on Rdio anyway. It’s my own way of saying, “Here’s some money in the tip jar.”

In college you studied human-computer interaction. Why did you choose that field?

In high school, one of the things I loved doing was this after-school program where you would teach computer skills to some of the maintenance folks at school. I remember sitting with them and realizing some of the concepts we have that seem totally obvious; like when you click on a link, how do you know it’s [working]? Back in the day, it was because the Internet Explorer globe was spinning.

"Why do you click on things once on the web but twice on your desktop?"

The hardest thing for a lot of these folks that hadn’t grown up with computers was clicking on things. They would navigate, take their whole hand and try to hit the mouse and at that point it would move the mouse and they’d miss the link. It was really frustrating. And why do you click on things once on the web but twice on your desktop? Why? I knew I was interested in making that better for people and studying how we can take the goal of what the interface is and make it work for people.

How did you apply that knowledge to Instagram? The bottom-navigation bar inspired a generation of apps.

Before we wrote a line of code we had this notebook, and we said let’s draw the entire app. We came up with this whole feature, once, around being able to annotate your photo. We sketched it out, looked at it at the end, and said let’s junk this, it doesn’t work. We spent four hours doing that, which feels like a long time, but that would’ve taken at least a week or more to build.

The most pivotal week in the early Instagram days was when Kevin said, “I’m going to Mexico, I haven’t taken a vacation in two years. I’m gonna think about some of this filter stuff.” I said, “Okay great, let’s nail down the rest of the app, really detailed, in terms of UI mocks and what the interactions are before you leave.” My hours that week were really funny. I’d wake up around 2PM, code until 6AM. I think that’s my natural state if you leave me and tell me to get something done.

"Before we wrote a line of code… we said 'let’s draw the entire app.'"

In one week we had the basic app. The way we were able to do that and not run off in a totally wrong direction was by having really good UI mocks beforehand.

How do you invent filters?

Kevin did most of the filters in the early days. A lot of that was going through … Flickr collections and seeing what happens when these photos age. Or, even looking at photos of ours from our childhoods that were only 20 years old at the time, but had already gone through some process and had some mood and just trying to reproduce it. In Photoshop we’d create the effect and translate that into code.

We’ve gotten better at this over time. I was going back to my first photos and we all had borders on our photos. We had way too much color correction. The photos you’re going to look back on five years from now are not the ones that are super processed, but the ones that maybe had a shade of a mood versus the plain photo. But not so overboard that it’s unrecognizable.

So why did people stop using borders?

I think it’s because looking back you want the photo. The borders were actually mostly unintentionally amazing marketing tools from day one. What is this photo? Oh, it’s an Instagram photo because it has that border. The New York Times had an Earlybird photo on its cover. Of all the coverage we’ve gotten, that was the coolest moment. It wasn’t even coverage of us, it was just using an Instagram photo. It was a Yankees player. You knew it was an Instagram photo because of the Earlybird border. But I think people gradually tend towards the more subtle, not super-editorialized version of the filter. I think we also defaulted [the borders] to off, which has a huge impact on what people do.

Seen any crazy user behaviors?

I love seeing people use and adapt the product. Adrian Grenier took advantage of it by doing three photos in a row: he built this mosaic by posting one photo at a time so at the end he had a whole mosaic. It was pretty cool, and then you realize that the next photo is probably going to throw it off. We used to have four up, four photos to a row [in profile view], and we’re like we want to make our photos bigger, since you can’t really see these thumbnails. All of us agreed that this was a great direction and when we shipped it we got these letters like, “All I do is make my mosaic!”

"I don’t think mobile-only is a sustainable thing to do long-term."

There’s a great xkcd comic that’s release notes for some software application and they’re like, “Hey we fixed a bug where holding down the spacebar increases your computer’s temperature” and some people said, “Man, I had hooked it up so when the temperature increased it actually meant this different command!” With 100 million people, somebody is using your product in some interesting way. If you change it… you’re going to break some use cases.

What took so long to develop a web version? Has it met your expectations?

There were third-party sites that would do it, but each had its own identity. That was definitely a need that people were filling. We could tell. It’s really funny to look at your web logs and to see what people are doing, and so many people would get 404 errors since they were trying to type people’s usernames in there. That was a gap we are really happy we filled. I’m really glad we did mobile-first, but I don’t think mobile-only is a sustainable thing to do long-term.

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The illusion of simplicity: photographer Peter Belanger on shooting for Apple

2013-05-08T15:00:04Z

You’ve almost certainly never heard of Peter Belanger, but you’ve definitely seen his photographs. In fact, you may even see his work every day, and it’s likely that you own some of his most famous subjects. Belanger is the man behind some of Apple’s most iconic product images, a San Francisco-based product photographer at the top of his field. Apple is but one of his clients — he’s done work for everyone from eBay and Nike to Pixar and Square — and we sat down with Peter to talk about his work, his background, and some very, very expensive gear.

Where are you right now?

I just put the kids to bed and I’m waiting for Mad Men to download from iTunes.

Your portfolio shows your focus (and prowess) as a product and advertising photographer. How did you find your way to that specialty?

"I could actually make a living doing what I loved."

While studying photography I was in a program that really pushed the creative side of the industry (concept and meaning more than technique). The goal was to hang in a museum. At one point I decided I wanted to learn a bit more about the commercial side of photography and applied for an internship in San Francisco. I could see there was a lot of work in the area for commercial photographers due to all the product companies around Silicon Valley. This was when desktop publishing and computers were just taking off. I liked the aspect of working with clients and solving puzzling challenges with each job. I also liked that it seemed I could actually make a living doing what I loved.

What artists inform your work or inspire you the most?

There isn’t any one source that stands out, but I do like looking at current magazines to see creative images and new styles. I often find influences in images that might be a completely different style than mine, but have great lighting or a unique set. Movies and television shows are also strong influences.

The technical details behind your photographs seem to vacillate between deceptively simple and incredibly complex. Sometimes it’s tough to see the product from outside of the lighting rig. Can you describe in general how you plan and execute a shoot?

The biggest factor is how many photos need to be accomplished in a day. I try to keep the shot list reasonable so there’s time for me to light each product uniquely. Ideally, I consider the material of the product and how best to light it. Sometimes it’s easier to light the materials without a surface getting in the way (since it can be added later). When I’ve had ridiculously complex sets around a product it is a result of needing to light something very precisely and be able to control each highlight and shadow independently.

If I’m not given much time or the product isn’t very cooperative I have to simplify my lighting. On one job I was shooting expensive leather shoes with actual snakes crawling out of them at the Academy of Science. I decided to use very forgiving light on that project because the snakes were moving and doing their own thing and I only had a small window of time for each shot.

What camera is nearest to you at the moment?

Canon 5D Mark III, this is my go-to camera. My base lens is the 24-70mm; if I could only have one lens this would be it. It works in almost all situations. I’m always impressed with how shallow the depth-of-field looks at f/2.8 with this lens.

You’ve created images seen by millions of people every day, but most people probably have no idea that you’re the photographer with whom they’re so familiar. I see your images every day walking around New York City. How did you come to work with Apple so much?

When I was starting out I freelanced for agencies that had Apple accounts. Over the years the agencies evolved and many of the designers and producers moved internally at Apple. Because I had a working relationship with lots of them, they kept using me. I feel very lucky that this relationship continued.

Can you describe the creative process behind an Apple product shoot?

"I think of my lights as layers that I can adjust individually to get the desired results."

The team at Apple always has a really well developed shot list and sketches of what they need. I work with their talented art directors to translate those sketches into photos. We start by getting the position of the product and then move forward on lighting. Because Apple products have such carefully selected materials it is incredibly important to light the product in a way that will showcase the various materials accurately. I pick an area to start with and think about how that material needs to be described. Once that section is done I move on to the next. This is how my sets get so complicated! I need to have control over each and every surface so when the client asks for a highlight to be elongated, I can do that. It’s similar to working on a file in Photoshop: you don’t do all your work on one layer. I think of my lights as layers that I can adjust individually to get the desired results.

When you create images, how do you balance working in the camera, versus post-production?

I try to do as much in camera as possible. Even shots that are achieved in camera need some post production. This is because no matter how well a product is made, when you magnify it at 100 percent, you see more than the human eye can see. Something that looks smooth as you hold it will have scratches, chips and other imperfections once magnified. However, there are times when I shoot in what I like to call "Frankenstein photography." I shoot various parts and combine everything later in Photoshop. This technique is great when I want to avoid reality (like my donut series) or when I can achieve something that couldn’t have been done in-camera. I did an album cover for The Brokenmusicbox this past year where the image was crafted out of various pieces to achieve a combination of elements and lighting that wouldn’t have happened any other way.

What do you photograph for fun?

"I'm the dad that shows up to baseball games with a 400mm lens."

My kids! I know that sounds boring but it’s not. I’ve been taking a photograph of them every day since they were born. This is a great outlet for me because it’s very different than my normal work. It’s something I can do and not worry what a client or anyone else thinks. Without that pressure I can take risks and experiment. I’m the dad that shows up to baseball games with a 400mm lens. I can hear my kids say to their friends, "It’s just what my dad does — ignore him." At the end of each year I make a photo book with 365 photos for the kids to see. I just finished book ten. It even landed me a job photographing my family for some Apple marketing materials.

If you could watch any other photographer work, who would it be?

It would be cool to spend time on a shoot with Anton Corbijn. I’ve been a fan of his work for a long time, especially since he’s worked with so many musicians that I have listened to forever — like Depeche Mode and U2. He has a much more documentary-like style and different clientele than I do. His images have a strong style and while they may seem simple they also have a story within.

What tools and apps do you use to work every day?

For software I use Aperture for Canon Raw conversion and to archive camera files, Capture One for Phase One Raw conversion, and Photoshop. xScope is a small but very useful app. Evernote and Dropbox help keep my office paperless and organized, Blinkbid for estimating and invoicing. I try to keep up to date with my photo gear. Up until last year I only used Profoto lights. I wanted to expand my lighting so I added some Broncolor lights. In the studio I shoot with a Phase One digital back with a Sinar X view camera, and Phase One 645 camera system. Outside the studio or doing handheld work I use a Canon 5D Mark III.

"I love figuring out how to photograph something rather than being shown what someone wants."

What’s your favorite movie, period?

True Romance is one of my favorites. There is an intensity of passion. It showed the extent people will go for those they love, blurred the lines between right and wrong, and had some great lines as well. I wanted to name our first child Alabama after the main character, but my wife vetoed it.

What or who is your dream subject?

Products that aren’t out yet and haven’t been defined by millions of photos. I love figuring out how to photograph something rather than being shown what someone wants.

Images courtesy Peter Belanger

How @breakingnews keeps news junkies current in a crisis

2013-05-02T18:30:05Z

Lots of people follow @breakingnews on Twitter — the account and the breakingnews.com website and mobile apps have become indispensable resources for news junkies who need to stay up-to-the-minute on the biggest news of the moment.

But few people know that Breaking News is actually owned by NBC, and operated as what general manager Cory Bergman calls an "internal startup." I spoke to Cory about how that works, how his team runs @breakingnews, and how the site managed to be both fast and accurate as the chaos of the Boston Marathon bombing story unfolded.

I don’t think a lot of people know Breaking News is owned by NBC. How does that work?

It’s actually a terrific setup. We’re owned by NBC News, but we operate as a standalone startup. I report directly to Vivian Schiller, and we have our own editorial and tech teams, and neither report up through NBC News Digital. So we have the freedom by design to be editorially independent, and on the tech side to iterate quickly and not have to use the tech that the rest of the company is using. I don’t know many examples like that in media companies today — not only do you get to be funded, but you get to break off and operate independently.

So how big is the Breaking News team?

We’re over a dozen.

What’s the split between editorial and tech?

It’s about 50 / 50 editorial and tech. On the editorial side we’re located in New York, Seattle, and London, so there’s at least one person on and working at all times, and when there’s a story that’s ongoing we bring on more people. For the Boston story it was four people.

You’re called Breaking News — do you feel pressure to be first? How do you balance that with accuracy? The Boston bombing story obviously tripped a lot of other outlets up.

"There’s also a gut check. Does it feel right? If there is anything that doesn’t feel quite right we’ll wait a little bit."

With us it’s interesting — there’s pressure to be second. When someone breaks a story all eyes are on us to see if we’re going to cover that story. So there’s definitely a balance between speed and the ability to verify that something is real. And there are a number of factors that come into play. What source or sources have broken that story? What’s their track record? What are other sources saying? How likely is it to occur? What’s the history of stories like this?

There’s also a gut check. Does it feel right? If there is anything that doesn’t feel quite right we’ll wait a little bit. In this business it only takes a minute or two for others to chime in and others to begin reporting on it. So if there is any doubt about the truth, we’ll wait a beat.

So what was the process like for the Boston story, where there were so many competing streams of information and misinformation?

For a big story, we have one editor who’s really at the console, who really makes the call on what we publish. We use our own content management system that is designed for really quick publishing to multiple places. 20 percent of our coverage went to Twitter and the rest went to our main website and to our apps.

Running alongside that, all these different streams of information are coming in from Twitter and the wire services, and all the live feeds we’re watching. We’ll divvy up people to watch different live feeds, and as they began to discover new pieces of information they’ll put it into real-time chat. So one editor is in charge of making the call, and he or she is watching all these different discoveries come in from Twitter, and on the chat.

In the case of the Boston story, I think we were operating relatively normally after the bombing occurred, but when more information came in about possible suspects, we began to notice a lot of noise in the system — some contradictory statements and reporting at a low level. So when the major news organizations went with the news that an arrest had been made, we were already very tentative because we saw so much randomness from so many sources.

"We made a very difficult and agonizing decision just to sit and watch."

Typically on a big story with a lot of risk behind it, we tend to wait until there are as many as three different news organizations reporting it. In this case there were three reporting it, but we saw others saying that there were no arrests or that they had no knowledge of arrests. So there was enough conflict from other news organizations for us to wait just one more beat. At that point we made a very difficult and agonizing decision just to sit and watch. And for Breaking News that was a very difficult thing to do, and I have to give a big shout-out to our editors who made that decision under the pressure to go.

NBC’s Pete Williams really stood out during the chaos as a reliable source of information. But what if he’d been wrong? How do you think about NBC’s reporting given your relationship to them?

We’re neutral. We’re relatively familiar with the track record of various reporters, and that does come into play. So Pete Williams’s voice was a little bit stronger — not because of our parents at NBC but because of the track record of Pete Williams. So I will admit that was a factor in our decision. It wasn’t overwhelming, but it was a stronger signal.

So you’ve got all these people, you’ve got a huge platform. How do you make money?

Just this week we launched our first native advertising. You’ll only see it until 10AM EST — if you go into breakingnews.com or open our iOS app and soon our Android app, you’ll see a story from GE. These are our first tentative steps into trying to figure out how we can have breaking ads come into our real-time streams. We’re fully disclosing that it’s coming from a sponsor, but giving companies the ability to break news very quickly to an influential on-the-go audience. This is not on our Twitter account or any of our social accounts, just our apps and website.

Do you feel any pressure to go beyond just aggregating news to reporting it your selves?

That’s not on our horizon at all. There are so many news sources out there today, and then you add all the official sources that are suddenly becoming more active, and then you add the flood of eyewitness reporting that’s only going to expand over time — that’s going to keep us busy.

"We bring some sense of perspective and balance to real-time."

And I think there’s a role for our company to be that middle ground. You have the unstructured, unverified world of social media, and then you have the rich context of storytelling and original reporting that comes from news organizations. We fill the middle role, we bring some sense of perspective and balance to real-time. We still want to be fast, but we want to be right, and when we’re wrong we’re going to be fully transparent about it.

One of the new things we might get into is asking ourselves, if someone else is reporting information that’s wrong, that’s spreading very quickly, what role can we actively take to help shut that down? So that’s what we’re going to be exploring next.

Science writer Mary Roach: ‘everything I learn is pretty shocking and weird’

2013-04-17T15:21:14Z

For someone who never set out to write about science, Mary Roach has certainly proven herself up to the task. More specifically, Roach has become something of an expert at exploring weird, uncomfortable, sometimes taboo questions — from how quickly a cadaver decays to how paraplegics can achieve orgasm — and doing it with an unmistakable combination of candor and comedy.

Her new book, Gulp, takes readers through the alimentary canal to explore the science of human digestion. Along the way, Roach samples rancid olive oil and whale skin, shoves her hand inside a living cow’s stomach, and follows a human fecal transplant (it’s exactly what it sounds like) from donation to insertion. We caught up with Roach to learn more about the ins and outs of science reporting, the weirdest facts about digestion, and how she decides which far-out topics merit the signature Roach approach.

What got you hooked on writing about science, instead of spending your career covering something else?

To be honest, it turned out that science stories were always, consistently, the most interesting stories I was assigned to cover. I didn’t plan it like this, and I don’t have a formal background in science, or any education in science journalism. Actually, I have a bachelor’s degree in psychology. But whenever I got a call about doing a science story, I was always drawn to the assignment. I guess for me, it’s sort of like being in continuing education classes all the time. You’re always learning something new, and that’s what I really like about it.

You just finished Gulp, a book about digestion. What was the weirdest thing you learned in the reporting process?

Keep in mind that I come into these things with no background, so everything I learn is pretty shocking and weird to me. But I was really surprised to find out that we have a second set of nostrils, in the backs of our throats towards our nasal passages. When we chew, some of those [ed: airborne] molecules actually enter this nose and help our brain figure out what we’re eating. I really like wine and gin, so now whenever I drink either one, I try to exhale with my nose when I have some in my mouth. It makes a huge huge difference in what you can taste.

What’s the toughest part about science reporting for you?

"I come into a book with the same sense of awe as my readers."

Hands down, the fact that I don’t have a degree in any type of science. I’m always on thin ice with getting stuff straight. Even if I have the basics, or all the little pieces of a story, I’m always at risk of missing some big part or misstating some important detail. When I’m done a book, I always give it to someone with expertise in the topic and tell them to flag all of my stupid mistakes.

At the same time, this means I come into a book with the same sense of awe as my readers. I’m discovering all of this stuff with them at the same time, this feeling of "holy shit, I cannot believe that!"

You certainly seem to pull it off. Which means other writers want to know: how do you work? What’s a day in the work life of Mary Roach?

I work out of a little office with 11 other writers and a few people in the radio business. We share office space in downtown Oakland, and that’s where I do my research and my writing if I’m not out on a reporting trip. I have a nice little office, with a nice little window in it, but I do basically spend huge amounts of time in what you could consider solitary confinement.

"I’m basically a professional pesterer."

I usually work Monday to Friday, 9-to-5 banker’s hours, but not because it necessarily has to be that way. I guess that just makes it easier, because those tend to be the hours that the rest of the world is working.

I spend a lot of my time on the phone, pestering people. What’s new in your lab? Can I come visit your lab? When can I come visit your lab? I’m basically a professional pesterer.

Your books have run the gamut: space, sex, digestion. How do you decide what topic to devote a book project to?

It’s largely a process of elimination. A lot of interesting topics out there just won’t work for me. People have suggested that I write books about sleep, or drugs, but those are largely internal — a lot is going on inside someone’s body or inside their head — and I have a hard time making that compelling. I like scenes, events, on-the-ground reporting.

"But there’s no magic potion for coming up with the right idea."

A topic really has to be broad enough so that I can cover a bunch of research and a lot of different angles, but it also has to be appealing to a lot of readers, because publishers like selling books. And let’s face it, so do writers. But there’s no magic potion for coming up with the right idea; you can’t just sit down and decide that you’ll find it in the next two hours. It often just pops up right under my nose, or in the case of Gulp, I guess it popped up inside my nose.

If you had to pick, what’s the one scientific breakthrough you most hope to see in your lifetime?

I get really excited about specific therapies, personalized therapies. Like, let’s say taking a piece of someone’s tumor and testing a bunch of treatments in a lab and being able to come up with the right therapy for that specific patient. Right now it’s still really expensive and it might still be a ways off, but I think we’re on the verge of a huge breakthrough right now. Who knows how long it’ll be, but that’ll be a big day. And I think that’ll be pretty amazing.

Speaking of digestion, let’s say you have to pick your last meal. Right now. What is it?

We’ll start with 12 oysters from pretty much anywhere, as long as they’re fresh. Then I’d have to have beef pho, with the raw beef that you put into the soup yourself and let it cook as long as you want it to. And somebody’s gotta do a good job on the broth, because this is my last meal. Then I’d have a few al pastor tacos from the Sinaloa taco truck in Oakland, where I live. And some really good ribs.

For dessert, a perfectly fresh mango and some perfectly fresh cherries. But I don’t care so much about dessert; I’d rather save myself for the main courses.

Finally, a very, very dry martini, because I need to be a little bit drunk before the executioner pushes the button, or whatever he’s going to do to me.

Image credit: Chris Hardy Photography

Timehop CEO: 'Reminiscing doesn’t have a home online yet'

2013-04-09T15:30:03Z

Jonathan Wegener is CEO and Founder of Timehop, an app that plugs into services like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to show you what you were doing one year ago today. Prior to founding Timehop, Wegener hacked together 4SquareAnd7YearsAgo, an app that surfaced old, nostalgic Foursquare checkins. Wegener took a few minutes to talk to The Verge about the first app he ever coded, a future filled with personal assistants doing our chores, and why it took so long to find a place to reminisce online. You can find him on Twitter at @jwegener.

What are you doing right now?

Typing.

Your Twitter avatar shows you eating a rainbow-colored apple. What’s that about?

Benny (my cofounder and also college roommate) took the picture of me eating a giant apple back in 2005. I liked it and needed a Facebook profile picture so I used a black and white version. Then I decided to make the apple red. Then I decided to make it Apple Computer-colored, as if I was the one who took the bite out of the Apple Computer logo!

"It’s a wide-open playing field if you can figure out how to make a compelling product."

Why did you start Timehop?

We built 4SquareAnd7YearsAgo at a hackathon two years ago and it caught on. People loved the product and stayed engaged with it consistently, so we decided to double down on it and work on it full time. Nobody had built anything interesting in the space — dealing with historical stuff and being about your personal memories. It’s a wide-open playing field if you can figure out how to make a compelling product.

What tools and apps couldn’t you live without?

Mac OS: Jumpcut, CloudApp, SizeUp. iPhone: Flashlight.

You’ve called Timehop "the ultimate digital history experience." What does that mean, and what does that look like a few years down the line?

Our goal is to build Timehop into the place to reconnect with friends online. Reminiscing doesn’t have a home online yet and we want to be that place. What that looks like I’m not sure. We’re figuring it out as we go.

"I think people underestimate little problems."

What companies in tech do you feel have the most potential to change our daily lives?

I really really like the personal assistant / errand space: TaskRabbit, getMaid, WunWun, FancyHands, etc. I use and love them all. I think those are going to make our lives so much easier. I also think the transportation space is awesome and I love Lyft, Sidecar, and Uber.

How do you stay focused while at work? 5-Hour Energy? Pushups during lunch? Quick breaks in the holodeck?

I plug into a good album on Rdio, put on my headphones, and I focus on a single task at a time. I avoid multitasking as much as possible and give myself long stretches of uninterrupted time to focus and get deep into my tasks. I delegate as much as possible — either to my coworkers or to contractors / service-people, etc.

What was the first line of code you ever wrote?

The first memorable app I built was a QBasic script that animated the New Year’s Eve ball drop. It drew a circle on the top of the screen then redrew it a pixel lower each time, counting down from ten until it said "HAPPY NEW YEARS"

You once created an app called Exit Strategy to help travelers save time by getting on the right subway car. Are you ever going to update it? What other little problems would you like to fix?

Yes, I am going to update it — stop nagging me, Mom! I think people underestimate little problems. If you can figure out how to make peoples' lives one percent better through some little utility or hack or application, they’ll love you for it and they’ll pay for it. Exit Strategy is an example of this. So is Dropbox, RetailMeNot, Slickdeals, CloudApp, and lots of other successful services.

"If you can figure out how to make peoples' lives one percent better, they'll love you for it and they'll pay."

What percent of people check out their Timehop every day?

Close to 40 percent. For a mobile app, that’s huge.

How do you plan to monetize Timehop? Why will that plan work?

We’re focused on growth first, monetization second. Once we get big (millions of users) we shouldn’t have a problem figuring out a way to monetize. But I believe in solving one problem at a time, and right now we’re focusing on growth.

What album has been the most important in your life?

Probably Beastie Boys’ Hello Nasty. It was the first CD I ever owned, and I’ll never forget the first time I put it in the CD player and listened to it straight through. I had never really been into music before that.

What obsolete gadget do you miss using the most?

A car, but I consider cars obsolete. The idea that everyone in the world should own 4000 lbs of metal and get a new one every few years is just crazy. With that said, I love driving — the power, the ability to go anywhere. I’m a big Zipcar fan and think that biking, trains, and mass transportation combined with Zipcar is the future of American transportation.

Read more 5 Minutes on The Verge

The man behind Flickr on making the service 'awesome again'

2013-03-20T18:43:44Z

For a long time, the photo sharing service Flickr felt like an abandoned product. It was well-loved in its younger, more innovative days, when co-founder Caterina Fake made it a point to comment on every image that was uploaded. But once it was bought by Yahoo, Flickr sort of froze; and by doing so, it allowed its users to be lured away by Instagram, Facebook, and even Google+. However, the service has started to come alive again, with more than eight billion photos from more than 87 million users, more than 3.5 million new images uploaded daily, and a refresh of the mobile apps which led to a significant boost in traffic.

The beginnings of Flickr’s comeback happened after a photographer from Radebeul, Germany, Markus Spiering (@spieri) took over as head of product in 2011. After just a year on the job, he pushed Flickr’s biggest makeover in years. Then came a massive update to the iPhone app. Now, almost exactly two years after he took over, Spiering reflects on how Flickr has changed and what Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Mayer has to do with it.

After Marissa Mayer took over, there was a public appeal to "make Flickr awesome again." You guys responded with a website that directed people to a jobs site, but it takes more than just hiring new people — how is Yahoo going to make Flickr awesome again?

I don’t remember the date or time, but I do remember our reaction where it’s like, "that’s pretty amazing." We did put up the response to the internet: "yes, come help make Flickr more awesome, we are hiring."

Did you feel insulted by that at all?

No. You see that there were a lot, a lot, of users that are really passionate about Flickr, the brand, the service. So no, not at all.

For a long time, Flickr was not a top priority for Yahoo. Has that changed?

"Yahoo is focusing on daily habits."

Marissa, the leadership team, [and] Yahoo overall is focusing on daily habits. Taking, sharing, and consuming photos is a top daily habit. Digital photography is an evolving, engaging, and very popular daily habit, which makes Flickr a priority for Yahoo.

With Marissa joining there is overall a new energy in the company. One of the ways we are going to see this very directly is, we are hiring, and the amount of candidates — as well as their willingness and their interest and excitement to work for Yahoo and for Flickr — is quite different. It’s quite exciting to see that.

You’ve hired an undisclosed number of people for the Flickr team since Mayer started (although it has not quite doubled, as was rumored). Has the pace of development accelerated?

Yes, with more manpower you can do better things. I can’t talk about like the things that are coming up. But if you think 2012 was a big year, 2013 will be bigger.

Creating beautiful and engaging experiences for Flickr users and attracting new users to the service is always our goal. The latest update to the app was primarily driven from direct user feedback. Users wanted to download their photos, wanted to mention their friends in their photos and comments and asked for faster uploads, while maintaining the original photo quality. So that’s what we built and released.

Speaking of 2012, how did you decide what to include in the big iPhone update in December?

"How do you take this to mobile in a way where its very easy to use?"

The overall goal for the big release was how to redesign Flickr in a way where, on one hand, you have this extremely feature-rich website. It’s kind of an entire photo solution for you that is really rich and complex. So how do you take this to mobile in a way where its very easy to use, so that people can quickly see the latest activity from their friends, quickly take and share photos in the best quality possible? But then how do you add in the richness that the Flickr platform has?

I think that’s our leading design principle: finding the right balance between ease of use and providing a very powerful tool to users.

What is the roadmap for mobile in the near future? The iPhone app looks great, but there's still no iPad app. How do you decide what to build next?

We are working hard to make the best Flickr experience available wherever our users are, but I can’t share an exact roadmap.

One [thing] we look into when we design new services, new products, new features, is data. So for example, we see that the iPhone is the most popular camera, but the experience that we used to have before the big iPhone release wasn’t really catered to share images quickly from an iPhone.

The other thing — and that’s the wonderful thing about the Flickr community — there actually is a public forum where people can come to us, give us their ideas, give us their needs. It’s something we as a team monitor very closely, and it’s basically open to everyone that’s in the community.

There is a mechanism within the update to provide feedback. We certainly, every day, look through the App Store reviews and what people have to tell us over there. That’s certainly a source that we use in order to make product and feature decisions.

What about other social services that have become more photo-centric, like Tumblr and Instagram? Do you watch what they’re doing?

You are always aware of what the market is doing and where the market is going. Where Flickr is uniquely positioned is, we have this amazing big website, and we’re doing a lot of work over there. We’re making a strong push toward mobile.

And the really amazing thing about Flickr is it’s bigger than Flickr itself. If you take a photo with a third party app like Hipstamatic and you simultaneously upload it to Flickr, and you go home and turn on your Apple TV — your photo is there, and it’s only because it’s on Flickr.

So what we always try to do is think about our own product experience, but also about the platform. And the interesting piece about the platform is that our own products are built on our API. It’s something that’s super important to us because it makes Flickr bigger than just Flickr.

"We’re making a strong push toward mobile."

Almost every photo sharing app — Hipstamatic, Instagram, a lot of other services — uses the Flickr API to post photos or retrieve photos. On the desktop, that is very popular with our users, we have Adobe Lightroom, iPhoto. On tablets you have Flipboard. On the web you have services like Pinterest which integrate with Flickr. Apple TV and Google TV have Flickr built in.

What’s the end goal in focusing on the platform — will this ensure Flickr remains relevant?

The end goal for the platform is to provide users with the possibility that, as long as they have their photos on Flickr, their photos are everywhere.

In the end it’s a big ecosystem. You have multiple devices, you have multiple screens, you have different software. Regardless, if you for example got a new Windows 8 machine and Flickr is built in, or you use a Mac and Flickr is built in... it’s something that, you have Flickr, and you always have this functionality with you.

Interview has been condensed and edited.