July 2007
Loosely joined or plainmessy?
Yes, Scott, using multiple flow apps that are largely unaware of what you might be doing in other apps can lead to inefficiencies. (But efficiency is not what Web 2.0 is about anyway.)
[from Web 2.0 Inefficiency: Crossposting On Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, Etc. ]
[…] As all of these new platforms jockey for position, and we’re all experimenting with them (which is on balance a...
Virgin America: A Picture Is Worth A Thousand...
I am not one to swoon under the blandishments of a new company’s come-on, but this picture from Virgin America makes me contemplate a wholesale defection from Jetblue, who has gotten a lot of my domestic agenda in recent years:
links for 2007-07-31
Dude, where’s your Facebook app? Rashmi Sinha “Its viral for viral’s sake. The point is not to create a cool, useful app and make it viral. The point is to create an app that is viral to begin with.” (tags: anti-facebook+backlash viral+for+virals+sake rashmi+sinha social+platforms)
Jarvis Is A Local Yokel
Jeff thinks people undervalue local:
[from Local lives]
[…] I care about local and so do most people I know, regardless of age. We care about our local taxes, restaurants, crimes, construction, economy, services, communities, neighborhoods, and gossip, too. I would take in more local reporting — more broadly definied — if it existed. I say we need more local reporting, not less, and...
Too Many Irregulars?
So, I guess that fact that I was completely unaware of the Enterprise Irregulars will do me no good. The fact that I changed my blog to /Irregulars, and that I plan to brand my diffuse network of co-conspirators the Brannan Street Irregulars has led to a long queue of them (or their fans) stepping up to slap me in the face:
[from /Irregulars: Name Change: /Work Becomes /Irregulars comments]
...
links for 2007-07-30
Cookery Masterclass - Irish Cookery School - Good Things Cookery Courses Ireland I want to try the 5 1/2 day miracle course (tags: cooking foodporn cork+ireland carmel)
Romney Is A Dunce
Mitt Pomney is calling for porn filters on every computer:
[from Romney’s V-chip for the internet at PrezVid by Jeff Jarvis]
Mitt Romney, who continues to believe that our children are swimming in a cesspool of perversion, now proposes that every computer sold in America should be sold with a filter on it to trap pornography that parents could turn on.
Omigod.
[from Romney’s Road...
links for 2007-07-29
A VC: Declaring Bankruptcy Fred Wilson suggests that Jason Calacanis needs a vacation: Facebook is not bankrupt, Jason just has too much to do and not enough to do it. He needs to just delete the inbox every once and awhile. (tags: jason+calacanis fred+wilson flow facebook overload+schmoverload)
The internet is only as good...
Downtown SF is increasingly becoming the epicenter of the tech world and nothing demonstrates this more clearly than the effects of the recent power outage because of an earthquake:
[from Power restored in San Francisco]
[…]
The problem began when breakers in the utility’s transmission service opened for an unknown reason, Chiu [spokesperson for PG&E] said. Every time...
Brian Alvey Is Smoking Crack
I’m willing to be wrong, or to have it turn out to be a huge spoof, but Brian Alvey (formerly of Weblogsinc, now AOL) thinks that AOL is going to rebrand itself based on his content management solution, TMZ:
[from Welcome. You’ve got gossip! - The Brian Alvey Weblog]
[…] Last year it [AOL] changed from America Online to AOL and this year AOL will rebrand itself as...
Peter Tuchman!
I saw a picture in the New York Times yesterday, and the face — many years later — jumped off the page. It’s a friend from college, and here he is, 30 years later, as a bond trader:
If anyone has a handle for Peter, let me know.
What Is Social Bookmarking
The example I use of the clustering excesses of the Web application world is “Yet Another Social Bookmarking App”… and here it is:
[from Streakr | Streakr Bares All For Beta]
Core Facts
Streakr.com, the new web discovery tool and social networking site today announces its launch into beta phase and calls for users to test its site.
Streakr brings users the best of the...
Name Change: /Work Becomes /Irregulars
I have renamed this blog /Irregulars instead of the the very generic /Work. Three reasons:
I am creating a new corporate shell for my work: Brannan Street Irregulars. The concept is to more-or-less continue on doing what it is I do — helping companies build social applications — but to start to bring in other contributors on a project-by-project, mission impossible kind of basis...
Name Change: /Work Becomes /Irregulars
I have renamed my /Work blog (see /Irregulars: Name Change: /Work Becomes /Irregulars), but more importantly, I have launched The Brannan Street Irregulars.
About Me, Stowe Boyd
I am fascinated with social tools, and their impact on business, media, and society. I coined the term “social tools” in 1999, only a few months before I started blogging, and I have never looked back. Since that time we have witnessed the rise of social media, social networks, and all things tagged “social.”
I spend most of my work life with companies that are...
4 tags
Nicholas Carr On Ozzie's Pipedream
I seldom agree with Nick Carr in an unabridged fashion, but here’s the counter example:
[from Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: Microsoft’s forecast: cloudy]
[after a long recapitulation of Ozzie’s longterm vision of Microsoft’s technology vision to dominate future web services, Nick gets to the core.]
Ozzie closed his talk with an attempt to position Microsoft as...
And things will get worse...
In a recentAOL study on mobile email, the researchers determined that Americans are addicted to mobile email. So much so that they are losing track of what bedrooms are designed for:
Fifty-nine percent of people emailing from portable devices are checking email in bed while in their pajamas
C’mon people! Get back to basics!
[pointer from Om Malik]
links for 2007-07-26
When gurus attack - Stowe Boyd gets defensive about Linda « Green Tea Ice Cream Michael Clark thinks I’m wrong-spirited in my argument with Linda Stone about Flow and Continuous Partial Attention. It’s just that I am so tired of her saying I just don’t understand what she is saying. (tags: linda+stone continuous+partial+attention flow traffic+and+flow)
Groundswell:...
David Weinberger on Why The YouTube Debates Matter
David is at least mostly dead-on in his usual sardonic way:
[David Weinberger: Suppose They Held a Debate and Everyone Came?]
[…] we get these rituals in which two sets of proxies — the journalists and our would-be representatives — face off, each standing in for us but each also implicitly declared to be unlike us. How do we know this? Because they get to speak and we get...
This Money I Don't Want To Make
Someone wants to advertise on /Message to help Internet addicts. Man.
[by email]
Hi there!
I want to pay you for a text ad on:
/message/2006/10/internet_addict.html
The ad would be a sentence or two in length. It would be for the website of an addiction treatment center.
My budget isn’t too big… I can pay you something around $35 for the ad.
If a normal ad wouldn’t be...
links for 2007-07-25
Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive 12 Ways to Use Facebook Professionally « facebook as a professional tool? (tags: facebook business+social+networks)
Facebook Is A Killer App For Limited Asynchronous One-To-Many Communication » Publishing 2.0 Scott Karp thinks the Facebook publishing model is great for business (tags: facebook scott+karp)
How social networks work: the puzzle of...
Why Would We Need a New Desktop OS?
I have to say I expected it: Microsoft partners are lining up against Vista. Acer president Gianfranco Lanci stated “The whole industry is disappointed with Windows Vista.” This is coming from the fourth largest PC manufacturer.
[from Acer: PC Industry ‘Disappointed’ with Vista by Matthew Broersma]
Users are voting with their feet, Lanci said, so that the Vista launch...
At The Edge: The Sweet Smell Of Failure
JP uncovers a classic Shirkyism about the network economics of innovation:
from Failing at the edges of the network | confused of calcutta]
[…] the cost of failure is carried by the individuals at the edges of the network, while the value of the successes magnifies and adds value to the whole network
One of the many profound benefits that edglings provide to their world.
[as cited...
JP Rangaswami on Agile
[from How risk management affects agile approaches]
[…] people act as if they know the risks they face despite not knowing them; they then disparage people who act to discover and potentially mitigate hitherto unknown risks
I have been working with a client — and I hope to turn this into a sanitized case study at /Work — who has little experience with agile techniques....
links for 2007-07-24
Latest unpopular Facebook move is apparently a glitch | Tech news blog - CNET News.com Whoops. Seems a glitch led to no longer being able to skip the relationship clarification step in making friends on Facebook. (tags: facebook social+networks meaning+of+friendship)
A VC: How Not To Reach Me Fred Wilson says email is better than internal social networking messaging, which often leads to...
Flow and Streams
Josh Porter writes about the Stream term that’s spreading in the Web:
You’ve probably heard the term “stream” in relation to attention, as in “attention stream”.
The usage of the word is spreading, however, and is now finding its way into web application vernacular. It is called a “lifestream”, “socialstream”, “friendstream”, “contentstream”, among others.
It has come to mean a list of...
Stowe Boyd, The Band
I guess Stowe Boyd, The Band, should plan on playing Buffalo on the next tour.
tags: stowe+boyd+the+band, eventful
The Future Of The Social Web: The Social Platform...
Perhaps the “start pages” category is inherently likely to blur into whatever users are starting to do when they use them, but it is clear that Pageflakes and Netvibes are trying to compete with the rise of social networks, particularly Facebook.
Richard McManus provides a very ‘close to the screen’ analysis of Pageflakes Blizzard and Netvibes Universe, the...
Business 2.0 On The Ropes?
Seems like the ad downturn in business publications has shken up Business 2.0:
[from Ad Downturn Threatening the Survival of Business 2.0 - New York Times by Brad Stone]
Business 2.0 magazine, a seven-year-old Time Inc. publication that covers start-ups, technology trends and changes in the new economy, might publish its final issue in September, according to people briefed on discussions...
links for 2007-07-22
How-To: Turn Your Mac mini into a DVD Jukebox trying to figure out Handbrake settings (tags: video handbrake)
Pardon My Dust
Hacking the design of /Message this weekend. May not be a glorious reading experience.
5 tags
Anne Truitt Zelenka v Peter Drucker
Anne has a solid post that includes this in a recast of something Peter Drucker once wrote:
[from Knowledge Economy (Drucker) vs. Web Economy (Zelenka)
Web workers do not start with their tasks or with their time [Drucker stated that executives start by examing where their time ‘goes’.]. They start with their attention. And they do not start out with planning or by finding out...
links for 2007-07-21
Mark Jaquith on Tech » Blog Archive » New MacBooks Pro I am buying one of these in the next few days. Good timing. “Yesterday morning, Apple announced an update to their MacBook Pro line of professional portable computers. A processor upgrade means that all models are faster, and can now address 4 GB of RAM. (tags: macbook+pro)
Why is Seth Godin not talking about the...
2 tags
Anne Galloway
[from Purse Lip Square Jaw]
Observation # 457 It is only with artists that I become a scientist.
4 tags
Ross Mayfield: CEO 2.0 For Socialtext
My pal Ross Mayfield is recruiting a new CEO for Socialtext:
[from Ross Mayfield’s Weblog: CEO 2.0]
I’m going to transition to Chairman & President and focus on growing the top line with my external facing duties and drive corporate and product strategy. CEO 2.0 will bring a strong operations background and have a mandate to grow the bottom line.
Ross is a phenomenal...
Marc Andreesen Goofs
Marc outlines a bunch of things he’s learned about blogging, so far, after five weeks. But he has made a mistake:
I turned off comments on this blog because I was no longer willing to spend the time required to moderate for relevance and civility, and that has me thinking hard about the topic of Internet conversation.
He goes into a long-winded discussion about conversation, one that...
5 tags
Backfence Is Dead: What About Hyperlocal?
paidContent reports that Backfence, the hyperlocal citizen journalism start-up, is dead:
Backfence, the once-hyped citizen journalism startup, is closing all its 13 local sites, after a series of management troubles over the last year, and inability to get any local traction editorially. CEO Mark Potts has also left, and told me in an e-mail that the investors are “continuing to talk to...
links for 2007-07-20
Customer Ratings and Reviews - Feature - Wal-Mart Wal-Mart adds customer reviews: if they start to add social features, it could actually mean something. (tags: social+commerce user+reviews wal-mart pointer:andy+sernovitz)
Pageflakes will be back, same time, same channel! Blizzard launch — pageflakes social network — leads to the servers crashing? (tags: pageflakes social+networks...
7 tags
Blog 2.0 --- More Conversation Required
Apparently my planned revamp for /Message is part of a greater trend that I was unaware of:
[from Hugh MacLeod’s twits]
Thinking about gapingvoid 2.0. gapingvoid 1.0 HAS GOT to die…
And Dave Winer’s response:
[from Winer’s twits]
@gapingvoid, funny I’m thinking the same thing! (About Scripting News.)
Of course Winer has been threatening blogicide for some...
2 tags
Mohandas Gandhi
Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected.
4 tags
Clarification: I Am Not A Blue Whale
Just to clarify my status, because so many people still are confused: I am not a partner in Blue Whale Labs. I parted amicably for the company in February, and my former partners, Greg Narain and Ranvir Gujral, continue to grow the company as a Ruby development shop.
I guess our tiny marketing campaign for the company must have been effective, since people continue to associate me with the...
10 tags
Debbie Weil: Social Media Profiteer
Debbie Weil is interviewed by Maggie Fox about the blog PR ‘imbloglio’ associated with her pimping GlaxoSmithKline’s Alli blog. Weil suggests that the outing of her email to colleagues by David Murray, which asked them to browse the site and leave comments, was a breach of ettiquette by David. A personal email! Published on the Internet! Egad!
But this is dumb. If you socially...
links for 2007-07-19
disambiguity - » What’s in it for me? Why people participate in social networking websites Leisa quotes Tom Coates (but not me, goddamnit) agreeing that users start their involvement in social apps for personal reasons: their heads are on fire with some burning need. (tags: social+architecture social+tools social=me+first)
Full Text: Keen vs. Weinberger - WSJ.com David bitchslaps...
7 tags
Ribeye For Dinner, Ribeye For Breakfast
Ribeye was on special. So I cooked it for dinner, with Pesto Butter, and Grilled Tomatoes, and a side of Spinach Salad with Onion Sprouts and Balsamic Garlic Salad Dressing:
I also made a simple dessert, with Madeleines in Cherry Yogurt with Chocolate Shavings:
I had some ribeye left over for breakfast, so I made a Tomato Souffle to serve with it:
5 tags
Picasa, Mi Casa
I am using the Flickr upload by email option:
One of the benefits of doing this my Gmail is that the pictures are saved as attachments in my account, and so I have two copies of all the pictures: one at Flickr, and one at Google. If Google provided a simple interface to attachments, I would be inclined to delete the originals on my hard drive, after doing the email.
This leads me to a ...
5 tags
Midsummer's Eve Party
Saturday, Andrea Weckerle and I threw a dinner party at her place in Sunset. I cooked, she was hostess.
Andrea at the Whole Foods:
And with filled carts:
Salmon, Goat Cheese, and Onion Sprouts appetizer:
Salmon, Goat Cheese (different sort), and Onion Pizza (not baked):
Onlookers looking on as I cook:
Orange and yellow was the color motif. Here, Orange and Yellow Balsamic Maninated...
links for 2007-07-18
Inside The New ‘Times’ Cafeteria: The Full Report - Gawker All about the New York Times new cafeteria. It’s not Google, but its not brownbag either. (tags: media new+york+times gawker)
The 2007 AO 100 Top Companies | AlwaysOn KInd of suspect list, just because I think AlwaysOn may be influenced by other factors than the technology (read: sponsorship). Overall winner: Gaia...
7 tags
Moved to Wordpress
I am going to be dramatically revamping my Typepad set-up for /Message over the next week or so. Pardon my dust as I am futzing around.
The motivating cause is my desire to get Sphere working on the blog, which has proven to be a real headache. The nice people at Wordpress — solicited by Tony Conrad of Sphere — discussed moving me over to Workpress, but that soon started to look...
9 tags
Synching is Dead: Moving From Replication to Flow
I had a major headache occur, as the result of moving onto a new Mac. All of a sudden the sync stopped working for calendars: I couldn’t get calendar info onto my n95 from iCal. I would select the ‘sync calendar’ option for the n95 (or other devices) in iSync, and I would get the message that some iCal compliant app needs to be running for the calendar sync to proceed. I...
4 tags
Will Freedom Help AOL?
More rumors about AOL being spun out from Time-Warner, which sounds like a good idea on both sides:
[from Time Warner May Split Off Cable, AOL Units, Pali Says.
[…]
What Time Warner decides to do with cable and AOL might also be decided by Jeff Bewkes, who may be planning to simplify the company, Greenfield said. Bewkes was effectively named heir apparent after being promoted to ...
