October 2007
Steven Pinker
The goal of education is to make up for the shortcomings in our instinctive ways of thinking about the physical and social world.
From The Stuff Of Thought
September 2007
A Facebook for All Seasons: Skinning the...
Facebook has ‘groups’ in the works:
[from Facebook | What’s New]
In the Works
Sort out your friends.
We’ll let you organize that long list of friends into groups so you can decide more specifically who sees what.
Please don’t do this the wrong way: subdividing into discrete collections, where someone is either a Work friend or a Play friend, but can’t be ...
Chris Messina on Twitter 'Tracking' and #Hashtags
It looks like Twitter has been quitely upgraded, and includes a new feature:
[from Tracking Twitter]
[…]
Today we’re releasing a tiny feature to do just that, and we’re calling it “tracking.” If you’ve set up your phone or IM on Twitter, you can send a command like:
track NYC
When someone (anyone who updates in public) mentions “NYC,”...
6 tags
Remember The Milk, Redux
Ran Barton commented on a recent post about Todoist and Huddle:
As an avid user of Remember The Milk, I wanted to offer two quick suggestions:
RTM has a GMail extension, too - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5339
Also, RTM can be run in the sidebar via their very powerful Google gadget. I do this everyday - it’s great. http://www.rememberthemilk.com/forums/help/2222/
...
Muji Aluminum Portable Ashtray
Muji Aluminum Portable Ashtray Originally uploaded by Stowe Boyd
Groucho Marx
I would never join a club that would have me as a member.
/Messengers: Balancing The Ideas Of Many With The...
I am a lazy, lazy man. One of the characteristics of a productive laziness is that I try to do things the same way all the time, so I don’t have to expend energy dreaming up new ways to do the same old things. On one hand, I am aware that clients sometimes think that their brainchild, and the issues surrounding getting it to market, is totally unique, but when they think about it they...
links for 2007-09-28
burganprell josh dilworth tumblr blog on all the DEMO companies (tags: demo josh+dilworth)
CrunchGear Futurist: Web 2.0 Is Doomed By Laziness
This is the weakest argument against Web 2.0 yet:
[from The Futurist: Will Human Laziness Burst The Web 2.0 Bubble? by Seth Porges]
[…]
Right now, the bubble that the Web exists in is not so much a financial bubble as it is a time bubble. There is still a novelty for a lot of people associated with finding friends on social networking sites, Digging their favorite stories, updating...
Nonsense
In a flight from Oakland to Chicago last week, one of the flight attendants reeled off about two dozen connecting flights as we were descending to land. There was a slight whine and feedback going on the entire time, an annoyingly long five minutes. As he concluded he added, “And please double-check the connecting flight gate assignments when we land, since they may change.”
In...
Peoplejam
Peoplejam gives me the creeps.
It feels like the Reader’s Digest of social networking. Perhaps that swarmy ambiance is inevitable when the place is teeming with coaches and experts, breathlessly explaining how we should be self-helping ourselves into a lather.
But who knows? There may be people who really want a coach to help them find their inner underling.
links for 2007-09-27
shopmodi - restless
15 Excellent Examples of Web Typography. Part 1 | i love typography
Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: Transacting friendship It’s not “bureaucratization”, it’s openness that scare people, I think. It’s like free love: if is not managed its not real, they say. (tags: nick+carr social+networks New+Atlantis Christine+Rosen)
links for 2007-09-26
Leigh’s Blitherings: Mybloglog’s Been Yahoothanized I am saving this just for the “yahoothanized”; although I agree that Yahoo’s model — no real integration between apps, but a single login ID forced on you after you have been using Flickr or MyBlogLog for years — is painful. (tags: yahoothanized yahoo flickr mybloglog leigh+himel)
British Airways: Liars
Lying bastards. I got this price on the search. And then, once I clicked through and they made search again (the real search, I guess), I got this:
Only a slight difference of $1200+.
links for 2007-09-25
Dead Paradigms in Applications | socialwrite.com Jevon collects some dead things (tags: jevon+mcdonald dead+paradigms)
The Facebook economy - Aug. 23, 2007 Business 2.0? Didn’t they close down? (tags: facebook business2.0)
CleverClogs: Podcasting Professionals : Advanced News Radar using Grazr Marjolein has built an amazing site with Grazr (tags: grazr marjolein+hoekstra...
Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams Report...
I have tried seventeen dozen apps to help manage work: maybe more. I have recently bumped into two apps that some some interesting features.
Todoist
The first, Todoist, I am actually using as my primary work management tool these days. At first glance, the app (at www.todoist.com), looks like just another todo list manager with the usual Remember The Milk features.
But, the integration with...
Chico Marx
Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?
Free Ad-Sponsored Cell Connection
Several announcements in the ad-sponsored cell connection area today. Myspace is launching a free ad-based service:
[from Myspace to launch ad-supported cell phone - Yahoo! News]
[…]
The social networking Web site MySpace is launching a free, advertising-supported cell phone version Monday as part of a wider bid by parent News Corp. to attract advertising for mobile Web sites.
Fox ...
links for 2007-09-24
Blonde 2.0 » Blog Archive » Have We Forgotten How to Sustain Deeper Relationships Due To Web 2.0? Blonde 2.0 zigs into the negativist camp by suggesting that web 2.0 social network tools decreases our social skills. I don’t buy it. (tags: social+networks social+skills facebook twitter blonde+2.0)
someecards.com
I love this company. The snarky and occasionally icky messages on these cards (“May you live long enough to shit yourself.”) are funny as hell.
links for 2007-09-23
stamen design | big ideas worth pursuing Great graphic representation of complex ideas and info sets (tags: graphics design stamen+design pointer:bokardo)
gapingvoid: “cartoons drawn on the back of business cards”: thoughts on microsoft “The future of Microsoft, and how Microsoft talks to people in the future, are one and the same. Yes, Virginia, the future of Microsoft is ...
Word Of The Moment: Pre-Mortem
[from Analyzing Failure Beforehand]
“A pre-mortem in a business setting comes at the beginning of a project rather than the end, so the project can be improved rather than autopsied,” Mr. Klein explains in The Harvard Business Review.
In the pre-mortem, company officials assume they have just learned that a product or a service they are about to introduce has “failed spectacularly.” They...
I Agree With Dave Winer (For Once)
Dave McClure has introduced the infelicitous term “Social Graph”. But We should just keep on with “Social Network” which is a synonym, as Dave Winer points out:
[from How To Avoid Sounding Like A Monkey]
[…] before we talked about social graphs we called them social networks, and you know what — they’re exactly the same thing, and social network is...
links for 2007-09-21
A Company that Matters - r21 Christopher Alden is new CEO and Chairman of Six Apart. How’d I miss that? (tags: christopher+alden six+apart social+media)
Dynamist Blog: 8 Random Facts, with a Kicker at the End Virginia Postrel starts treatment for breast cancer next week. My thoughts are with her. (tags: virginia+postel breast+cancer)
links for 2007-09-20
Making a New World — Doc Searls’ Open Sources II chapter There ‘s a reason that Doc is a Berkman Fellow, and this might be the proof (tags: doc searls, the because effect, pointer:jp+rangaswami)
Silicon Alley Insider: HuffingtonPost Hires “Citizen Journalism” Editor Marc Cooper joins HuffingtonPost to head citizen journalism project (tags: artisan+journalism...
The Walls Come A'Tumblin' Down
[via email]
Dear Home Delivery Subscriber,
We are ending TimesSelect, effective today. This will not affect any services you are already receiving as a home delivery customer.
The Times’s Op-Ed and news columns are now available to everyone free of charge, along with Times File and News Tracker. In addition, The New York Times online Archive is now free back to 1987 for all of our ...
links for 2007-09-19
ICQ is not really taking over AIM « Over Here Alan Kiester feels the rumors are enough to push him to say that ICQ’s team will not be taking over tech direction of AIM. Hmmm. (tags: alan+kiester aol aim icq instant+messaging)
The FASTForward Blog » Enterprise 2.0 Is Not A Fad: Enterprise 2.0 Blog: News, Coverage, and Commentary Big surprise! E 2.0 is not a fad! I needed KPMG to...
links for 2007-09-18
Christopher Herot’s Weblog: Whither Facebook? Christopher noodles on the paradoxes of social networking success (tags: christopher+herot facebook social+networks)
Xootr Cruz Ultra
My newest toy/urban transport. I solde my Dahon D7 today and bought a Xootr.
Kevin Gamble on Technorati
[from [from Twitter]
of late #technorati seems more broken than twitter and second life put together.
Newsome.Org
Link: Newsome.Org.
Jonathan Ives
if you want to create something great it requires deep collaboration.
3-dot Weekend: Andy Lark goes to Dell; Nikkei on...
Wow. Big news from Andy:
[from Andrew Lark: The Larks Are On The Move]
Well, it’s been an interesting week! I spent Monday - my first day as Dell’s new VP of Global Marketing & Communications, at the launch of a new family of storage products targeted at the SMB market.
[…]
So what of Group Lark and my other interests. I don’t plan to miss a beat. The team at Group Lark will...
links for 2007-09-14
Silicon Alley Insider: Americans: TV Getting Worse, So We’re Watching More “AOL and AP released a poll suggesting that 62% of Americans think TV programming is getting worse, but are still watching more. Over a quarter (27%) are watching at least 21 hours of television a week, with 13% saying they tune in more than 30 hours, up (tags: tv, aol, ap, television)
CuteCircuit + The...
Dorrn
we’re oversexed and underfucked
William Gibson
the street finds its own uses for things.
[Offered up by Anne Galloway as part of her disquisition on how we consider technology innovations to be inevitable, and through that we obscure our own agency in the process.]
Eons Lays Off 1/3 Of Staff
Right on the heels of all the prosy, rosy predictions of boomers and other older generations adopting social networking tools designed for their particular needs, we learn that Eons, a company devoted to folks ‘on the flip side of 50’, has laid of one third of its staff:
[from Xconomy � Blog Archive � Eons Announces Big Layoffs as Company Refocuses on Social Networking: “It Was...
links for 2007-09-13
Social Graph: Concepts and Issues Alex Iskold does a good job summarizing a bunch of social network theory (tags: social+networks facebook mark+granovetter six+degrees+of+freedom)
Simple Living Manifesto: 72 Ideas to Simplify Your Life | zen habits I am not trying to simplify my life, per se, but I find strange overlap with much of this, especially working so I can have time alone, small ...
James Garfield
Truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.
Clay Shirky on Arrogance and Humility
I am enjoying aBriefMessage.com, where great minds explore design in 700 words or less. Clay Shirky wades in:
[from A Brief Message: Arrogance and Humility]
[…]
Arrogance without humility is a recipe for high-concept irrelevance; humility without arrogance guarantees unending mediocrity. Figuring out how to be arrogant and humble at once, figuring out when to watch users and when to...
A Book In The Making: Metanomics
Robert Bloomfield at Terranova has coined a term that I think will stick:
[Terra Nova: Metanomics]
[…]
It feels somewhat silly to coin a new word, but “metanomics” does a nice job of communicating the scope of the series—and a field of study—in a single term: Metanomics = metaverse economics. The term isn’t perfect, as this field of study is broader than just...
Targeting gray because theyll stay while the...
Traditional media seem all aglow with the neat and tidy notion that different agre groups will naturally gravitate to separate social networks. Kind of like the Web does LeisureWorld:
[from The Graying of the Web - New York Times by Matt Richel]
[…]
Social networking has so far focused mainly on businesspeople and young people because they are tech-savvy and are treasured by Madison...
David Cushman on The Edgling Future
David Cushman does a masterful job of pulling together thoughts from Doc Searls, Alan Moore, David Reed, and, yes, yours truly, into a great post. One snippet:
[from Faster Future: Don’t just witness the network. Be part of it]
[…]
What characterizes the new world we see emerging?
It is inhabited by what Alan Moore refers to as the We Species, what Stowe Boyd calls the Edglings....
Kent Newsome on The Conventional Wisdom About...
Kent, who is generally smart, goes off the tracks in response to the newest flap about Facebook costing corporations millions in lost productivity (see /Message: Facebook Is Bankrupting Our Business! Shut It Down! Shut It Down!). He suggests that I made a case for the use of Facebook as a corporate tool, which I didn’t, at least not explicitly. Here’s Kent:
[from Newsome.Org]
...
links for 2007-09-12
ALLIED by Jeneane Sessum: If I were writing the press release… Jeneane wishing that Google would come along and benevolently solve the heath care crisis. (tags: health+care jeneane+sussum google)
The Social Graph and Objects of Sociality - Bokardo “Why our relationships can’t be explained without the objects and experiences that we share.” (tags: social+networks...
Diving Into Something New
Perhaps the single most helpful innovation in my life for far in 2007: the Google Reader ‘Next’ button.
I don’t like the RSS reader experience, but the Next button (a bookmarklet in Firefox, in my case) allows me to jump from actual blog pages in situ, one by one. I never have to hit the back button. I just click to go to the next place, glance to see if it is interesting, ...
Google Social Activities Stream: Mocha-Mocha (Or...
A video leak has led to a new insight into what Google is doing behind the scenes in its social tools development:
[from Nooglers and the PDB: Reactor - Google Blogoscoped Forum]
[…] Google’s recent big social effort is called Mocha-Mocha (or Mocka-Mocka?), and will become the infrastructure for all social stuff across all of their applications. As a part of this, a new feature ...
Clocky
A clock that runs away from you when the alarm goes off.
Ebola Outbreak In Congo
My personal nightmare is an airborne Ebola. This is *merely* the conventional sort:
[from Congo Confirms Deadly Ebola Outbreak - New York Times]
KINSHASA, Congo (AP) — The World Health Organization issued an alert Tuesday urging more doctors to travel to Congo to combat an outbreak of Ebola fever, which kills nearly all of those it infects and has no cure or treatment.
The Congolese...
Tech Digest Has Been Out Of The Loop: Barack Obama...
Hmmm.
[from Tech Digest: Barack Obama signs up to LinkedIn, expect Twitter account next]
Yep, LinkedIn, which was once one of the most popular sites on the interweb, and allows business people and assorted corporate-types to network with one another. Before you roll your eyes and proclaim it to be yet another dismal PR attempt, consider the following…
With LinkedIn’s average...
