Any of you who are so inclined who could please vote for the panel I’m co-planning with a couple of other chaps for SXSW 2008 would have my undying devotion. Or at least some good inkblurtian karma :-)
Check it out here: 2008 Online Identity: And I *Do* Give a Damn about My Bad Reputation
Come […]

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I finally got a chance to listen to Bruce Sterling’s rant for SXSW 2007 via podcast as I was driving between PA and NC last week.
There were a lot of great things in it. A number of people have taken great notes and posted them (here’s one example). It’s worth a listen either way […]

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This is delightful. A sort of logo for hacker culture. Not hackers as in criminals (hacker culture calls those people ‘crackers’ among other things) but hackers as in lateral-thinking technology heads.
The graphic … is called a glider. It’s a pattern from a mathematical simulation called the Game of Life. In this simulation, very simple […]

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Yeah, I modified the title a bit… but that’s the gist of what I’ve scanned so far. Basically, all this worry over teens naively posting all their personal information for predators to poach may be somewhat overblown. The kids are alright, and savvier than we think.
Pew Internet: Teens, Privacy and SNS
Some 55% of online […]

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I wasn’t aware there was such debate over what makes a blog a blog, and a wiki a wiki. But Jordan Frank over at Traction Software makes a sensible distinction, one that I could’ve sworn everybody took for granted?
What is a Blog? A Wiki?
And that, finally, brings me to a baseline definition for both blogs […]

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I’ve been thinking a lot about mashups recently. I’ve been asking myself the question: as a user-experience designer, what happens when the experience I’ve designed gets usurped, or disintermediated, by people taking what they want of it and leaving the rest behind? What does that mean to me as a designer: i.e. what is it, […]

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Using the wonderful tools available over at WetPaint, I have now set up the OmniShrine Wiki
For years I’ve had a post here about Omni Magazine, something I used to love to read when I was growing up. Over those years, many people have added comments on that post, explaining particular stories or art they had […]

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I just posted another bit about Second Life a little while ago, and though to myself, “Why are you posting so much about it? You hardly even go there!”
It’s true. I really don’t actually use SL much. I love thinking about it, reading about it, and checking out the occasional amazing build there, but […]

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Bruce Sterling’s blog at Wired has a post summing up and riffing on the most recent “Future of the Internet” whitepaper at Pew:
The future of the Internet lies not with institutions but with individuals. Low-cost connections will proliferate, encouraging creativity, collaboration, and telecommuting. The Net itself will recede into the background. If you’re under 21, […]

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I haven’t made my way through this yet, but Boyd’s the go-to-person for social network thinking these days:
Friends, friendsters, and top 8: Writing community into being on social network sites
Friending is deeply affected by both social processes and technological affordances. I will argue that the established Friending norms evolved out of a need to resolve […]

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I must seem Second-Life obsessed… there really are other things going on in my life. (Getting over a horrible horrible cold, for one.)
But this seems to be the week of Second Life. They just hit a million registered users … and their media coverage has hit the tipping point. It’ll be amazing if […]

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The New Yorker has a very good article on Wikipedia this week. It acknowledges both the positive and negative aspects of the site. I have to agree that Wikipedia will ever supplant the usefulness of a peer-reviewed traditional publication, but it will serve as a useful foil.
Over breakfast in early May, I asked Cauz […]

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