July 2010
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“The Internet’s future is not Web 2.0 or 200.0 but the post-Web, where time...”
– David Gerlernter, David Gerlernter on Flow
Time is the new space.
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Tumblr's Reblogging Mess Solved
The simple solution to Tumblr’s messy approach to reblogging chains is to reuse the logic and UX of Chat posts.
Currently, Tumblr turns a series of reblogs into a text glob like this:
carlos:
bette:
oneshakingfinger:
Pretty good
Nice
I agree
To say the least, this gets confusing.
The solution would be to adopt the convention of Tumblr’s own chat posts, and sequester that in...
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The Rise Of Social Distribution Networks →
John Borthwick writing in may 2009 on the inflection point in the social revolution: moving to streams and a flow economy.
“In an age of digital perfectability, it takes quite a lot of courage to say,...”
– Brian Eno, Wired interview, 2008
via John Borthwick
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“In a blinding flash of inspiration, the other day I realized that “interactive”...”
– Brian Eno, Wired interview, 1995
via underpaidgenius John Borthwick
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Washington Metro Area Transit Authority To Open...
Talk open data with WMATA officials July 19
Officials formally presented their Transparent Metro Data Sets initiative to the WMATA Board yesterday [July 8 2010], and will be presenting at a public meeting organized by the RAC on July 19.
We’d reported on this effort a month ago, when it appeared on the Board agenda but was then deferred.
On August 11, WMATA will release rail...
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New Places In 2010 →
Status update on my dad’s situation — now out of the hospital and in assisted living facility five minutes away from my home — and my thoughts about the changes going on as the result of him moving from the house we have shared for 18 years.
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Moving To Tumblr, Manually: I Must Be Nuts
A few weeks ago I decided that I really wanted to move the /Message blog off of Squarespace, which I had been using since early 2010 as my blogging platform.
I have been using Tumblr for several years for my other blog, Underpaid Genius (formerly Ambivalence), and I had become sold on the Tumblr model of social blogging (see WordPress Releases ‘Like’ And ‘Reblog’: We Need TumbleBacks, People). As...
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Analysis: What are the Web's Top Sources of... →
Looks like Slashdot has really dropped in usage, according to this analysis: less than 1% of referral traffic comes from Slashdot!
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Tech@State: Mobile Money →
Looks like I will be attending a Tech@State event on 2 August 2010, called Mobile Money. Very interesting stuff.
[It’s annoying that the announcement doesn’t have an address: I guess we are all supposed to know where the State Department is located?]
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Facebook Is to the Power Company as ..., Joshua... →
underpaidgenius:
The metaphor of Facebook as a utility has finally caught on (see Facebook Privacygate Continues).
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Creativity Increased By Multitasking
I love stories that debunk conventional wisdom, especially cobwebby corporate wish fulfillment. In this case, a wholesale frontal assault on creativity training:
Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, Forget Brainstorming
Brainstorming in a group became popular in 1953 with the publication of a business book, Applied Imagination. But it’s been proven not to work since 1958, when Yale researchers ...
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“If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive...”
– Thomas Jefferson (via underpaidgenius)
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“Imagine Walt Disney at the age of nineteen. His uncle asks him what he plans to...”
– Misfit Entrepreneurs - Dan Pallotta - Harvard Business Review
via barticz
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The Flipboard Dilemma: Who Owns User Experience?
Flipboard burst on the scene this week like a Rodriguez movie trailer, or a new diet drug, and everyone rushed to download (following Scoble’s recommendation). Now that the dust has settled, and the controversy about Flipboard being unready to handle the surge of signups has started to abate, some larger issues are starting to arise from Flipboard’s modus vivendi:
Joel Johnson, Is...
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Rescuing Nokia? A former exec has a radical plan →
Sounds like Juhani Risku has a screenplay for a plot to take over Nokia, perhaps where he was supposed to play the ‘co-pilot’ that would save the day, and push out all the executives who wouldn’t listen. No doubt Nokia needs to be shaken up, though.
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The Fear Of Being Found Out
Jeffrey Rosen has a recent piece in the NY Times Magazine, which exposes the natural conservatism of our theoretically open and liberal society. Every action that has been recorded on the web — that party where you drank too much and put on a tutu, your espousing socialist rhetoric, or calling a college buddy a racial epithet — and someone someday is going to dredge it up and use it...
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O'Brien: Lessons from the rise of Facebook - San... →
This piece is short on lessons and long on adoration.
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London’s Gatwick Airport integrates Twitter to... →
This is news?
What I would like is a single app that integrates this sort of functionality based on wherever I am at the moment.
ajeyy asked: hey how did you get the top corner of your website to have dashboard and follow? i've been trying to find out away to put it on my website too..
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Writing With Your Adrenal Glands
Jeremy Peters, In Online Journalism, Burnout Starts Younger Young journalists who once dreamed of trotting the globe in pursuit of a story are instead shackled to their computers, where they try to eke out a fresh thought or be first to report even the smallest nugget of news — anything that will impress Google algorithms and draw readers their way.
Tracking how many people view...
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“Daniel Dennett on consciousness
“There is no single, definitive “stream of...”
– Daniel Dennett, Consciousness Explained,
(via inwrdbound amiquote wildcat2030)
“I want to roam around, not be caged in, even if it is a cage of my own making.”
– Stowe Boyd
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Bob Herbert Joins The War On Flow
Bob Herbert, one of my favorite NY Times columnists, slips on his Cosby sweater and wags his finger at the 21st century; specifically, being connected through high tech devices and flow media:
Bob Herbert, Tweet Less, Kiss More
We’ve got cellphones and BlackBerrys and Kindles and iPads, and we’re e-mailing and text-messaging and chatting and tweeting — I used to call it Twittering until...
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75+ Social Media Resources for Artists and... →
Great list of resources (including musical instruments for iPad!)
Anonymous asked: hey do you work for backtype
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Squarespace Gets $38M to Compete With WordPress... →
Just as I move my blogs off to Tumblr, Squarespace gets a big funding. Well, I left because I wanted to get onto Tumblr, not just because Squarespace isn’t really oriented toward solo blogger like me.
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Billy Pilgrim Has Come Unstuck In Email
I had been using Google’s Gmail for years until quite recently. Among other things, it offered high speed access to a large store of email, until earlier this year when it seemed to start slowing down. And, as I had transitioned to iPhone, it seemed increasingly unintegrated with how I was living.
A few weeks ago, after downloading the iPhone 4 OS for my old iPhone 3Gs, I noticed that Apple...
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Reddit Needs Help →
Wonders how much people would be willing to pay. Me: $0. I never use Reddit.
I guess the Conde Nast folks are putting the screws on.
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Why is Nick Denton suddenly so bullish? | Felix... →
Denton is hunkering down, folding Valleywag and Defamer into Gawker, and happy to see Jezebel getting more page views that Gawker, too. A sale pending?
And a nice piece in the NYTimes on Jezebel, too. ‘Blog that’s not afraid to pick a fight’.
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Which End Of The Innovation To Look At?
Tim Kastelle, An Innovation Paradox « Innovation Leadership Network
David Lazer included a really interesting demo in one of his talks at the Sunbelt Social Networks Conference. He was in a session talking about using the internet as a research resource, and there were about 100 people in the room. Lazer asked how many people there were under 30 years old – about 40% of the people...
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“The first step is to measure what can be easily measured. This is okay as far as...”
– David Yankelovich
(via underpaidgenius)
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The PepsiGate linkfest : A Blog Around The Clock →
Coturnix has a massive list of posts regarding the Pepsigate mess: where SEED Scienceblogs management apparently allowed Pepsi to publish a blog as if the company was a reputable scientist, and they were spinning psuedo science about nutrition and diet.
I also like Carl Zimmer’s take on this.
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“The anthropology of the future is the study of ourselves.”
– Claude Lévi-Strauss
(via underpaidgenius)
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Zuckerberg Is As Puritanical As Steve Jobs, It...
@RossDawson asked why I and others in the US had not blogged about Facebook’s recent censorship of photos involving dools with nipples. Honestly, I hadn’t seen or heard anything about it.
Sheena Goodyear, Facebook censors nipples on $40K doll
Australian jewellery designer Victoria Buckley posted pictures on her Facebook page showing naked porcelain dolls modelling with her...
World of Warcraft: Regarding real names in forums →
Blizzard backs down from blocking anonymity in WOW forums.
(via @catherine_white)
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Short URLs in Academic Citations?
Catherine White recently brought this question to my attention, as a result of her using Bit.ly links in a citation for an academic paper she’s working on:
A bit off topic (my nod to the social ‘rules’ of thesis-post blog replies ;-) if such exist. I suppose by this I am indicating my ‘correct’ socialization, but begging your indulgence for an exception) but is there a citation style that...
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Google's Long History of Social Media Attempts... →
Zachary Sniderman at Mashable put together a graphic depicting the timeline of Google’s efforts in social, showing acquisition after acquisition and the eventual shit-canning of Dodgeball and Jaiku, and other gaffes, like Orkut.
Yikes.
I can see why they are searching for a head of social. Maybe Google should just hire a hangman.
(via andypiper)
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Social Trails
Desire Path A desire path (also known as a desire line or social trail) is a path developed by erosion caused by animal or human footfall. The path usually represents the shortest or most easily navigated route between an origin and destination. The width and amount of erosion of the line represents the amount of demand. The term was coined by Gaston Bachelard in his book The Poetics of Space.[1]...
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Pew Wonders: Will Gen Y/Millennials Grow Out Of...
The Pew Internet folks have a new report, Millennials will make online sharing in networks a lifelong habit, based on recent research they’ve done.
The highly engaged, diverse set of respondents to an online, opt-in survey included 895 technology stakeholders and critics. The study was fielded by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and Elon University’s Imagining...
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Run don't walk →
I got [an email ] this week from Jack Rabbit Sports, reminding me that it’s time to buy new running shoes. But instead of sending some sort of poorly designed generic coupon, they sent a simple, well-designed email, making it clear they have been paying attention — and not just to me, but to something I care about: running.
‘Webful’ marketing is about connection: a brand is no...
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The War On Flow
I have to agree with David Brooks, at least with regard to some of the observations he offers this morning in the NY Times, when he says that participating on the Internet is different from simply reading books. However, I disagree with nearly every specific point he makes, and the conclusions he draws.
It’s a culture war, and Brooks joins Nick Carr, Andrew Keen, and a long list of others who say...
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Time Raises The 'Hot News' Wall
As a first strategic step away from free online content, Time is taking the recent news stories off its website, leaving only summaries:
Time Moves to Limit Free Content Online
Time has decided to dive headfirst into an issue that has bedeviled many a news organization before it: how to cure online readers of their addiction to free content.
But Time’s approach is more a process of weaning...
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Prosperianism? What About Breaking Out Of The... →
I argue with Umair Haque’s attempted ‘third way’ in the arguments about austerity v stimulus, and ask him to respond to the question of no-growth.
