Category: Social Interaction
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Facebook, BusinessWeek, and Me
Facebook is allowing users to subscribe to view periodic updates of various redesigned site elements that are under development. I was interviewed last week for an article on BusinessWeek.com, Facebook’s New Facelift. If you didn’t already know, Facebook is in the final stages of a redesign process. BW asked a few designers for their views.…
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The Peculiar 20th Century
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by
Fish Magic, 1925, Paul Klee It is said that a fish, even a really smart one, cannot really grasp the meaning of the concept “wet” because it is the only condition they know. There is no “dry” to compare it to. Humans, too, have a tendency to imagine that the way things are today is…
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R.I.P.: Owning Music (1880-2008)
Last.fm‘s announcement that they will be allowing their users to listen to full-length versions of millions of music tracks is one of the final nails in the coffin of the traditional recorded-music industry. Owning music is dead. The new business model for making money in the music industry is simple: Design a better music distribution…
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she looks like a f$^#%ing smeagol
I just watched the latest episode of FRONTLINE, whose title, “Growing Up Online“, pretty much accurately describes the content. The show is excellent, and while I’m not inclined to share my specific thoughts about the program, I am compelled to show you this screenshot illustrating “cyber bullyingâ€.
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Subway Orienteering
The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (the people who run the subways) have done a test installation of a new feature to help riders orient themselves as they exit our often-labyrinthine subway stations. They’re placing sidewalk-level signage to tell riders which way is north and indicating which direction the nearest streets and avenues can be…
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Ambient Intimacy, Collective Musing, Intellectual Doodling
Leisa Reichelt coined the term “ambient intimacy” to describe the genre of social computing apps led by Twitter, Jaiku, and Pownce. She was interested in the constant sense of closeness users feel with their circle of friends, no matter how far-flung, through technologies that informally reveal us to each other. Jyri Engeström, co-founder of Jaiku…
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Drinking, Talking
What can I say? I love “old man bars”, especially Irish bars. They’re the best place to actually talk to people (as I am here with my true love Peggy and our good friend Eric Swenson). And in New York City, very few have TV sets in them. Thank God.
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Check your Googlepulse
Every person, place, thing, and idea whose name can be found on the Internet has an existence that can be detected and measured by search engines. The relentless spiders of Google will find you and rank you (and let’s leave for another day the techno-philosophical question of whether web pages that have no incoming or…
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The Social Web’s Coffeehouses, Nightclubs, Country Clubs, and Taverns
In the 17th century, a peculiar phenomenon emerged in England: men with no family or institutional ties to one another would gather informally to socialize, debate, and network with like-minded peers and colleagues, to discuss everything from politics to literature to economics, building social connections between them that hadn’t existed before. They met in taverns…
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Idiocracy is Reality
In the future of the movie Idiocracy, Carl’s Jr.’s slogan becomes “Fuck You, I’m Eating”… which isn’t really a stretch from the attitude expressed in their current ad campaign. In fact, a lot of marketing today deliberately insults and degrades the consumer. Why?