Archive for October, 2005
The Long Now Orrery
Flock
Cool beans. I’m writing this post from within the built-in blogging tools on the Flock Browser – a self-acclaimed “social browsing” tool. Not much of an opinion about it yet, just some initial impressions:
- The blogging tools are clean and simple…but the formatting still has a few kinks.
- The integration with del.icio.us is pretty cool…although it means I need to start using del.icio.us more often.
- Tabbing works pretty well…but nothing new either.
- Sites seem to load quickly.
- Overall design looks pretty minimalist, but the tabs don’t align with the overall asthetic.
I’ll keep using it through the weekend and offer some more thoughts. If you want to test drive it form yourself, go here:
http://www.flock.com/developer/download/preview/
…and use these:
username: caveat
password: emptor
…and then tell me what you think.
What is the future of the blog?
Interesting read from Smart Mobs author Howard Rheingold: What is the future of the blog?.
Spout
I’ve been working on a
project since March for a company called Spout. What is it? As the
new blog states, "We started out as four guys who were excited about
film and about the
new technologies that allow thousands of films to be made each year.
But we were frustrated that most of those films are cut off from their
audiences because of the way the old Hollywood system works. What’s a
guy (or four) to do? Focus on the power of people connecting with
people, develop some amazing new tools so we can talk about film the
way we do in real-life, then open the doors for a community to move in."
Check out the blog at www.spoutblog.com, I’ll be contributing from time-to-time as I’ve recently joined the team. Let me know what you think.
The Oldest Domains
Interesting list from John Battelle’s Searchblog: The Oldest Domains…especially that BBN was near the oldest.
Web 2.0 Review
There’s been a lot of buzz as of late around the concept of Web 2.0. What is it? Good question. There have been a number of attempts to define it, but like anything new and conceptual it probably makes the most sense to define through example. Two great sources doing just this are: BuzzMachine’s Web 2.0 Launchpad post and Tim O’Reilly’s What is Web 2.0. I really like O’Reilly’s focus on the design patterns of Web 2.0 instead of more rigidly defining it. As Chris Anderson commented, "the lack of a crisp definition is a feature, not a bug."
So the question remains, is this mostly hype? or the web actually being used for what it does best? My inclination is to say it is the latter, but you tell me.
Exercise your short-term
I wrote about this very topic a number of months ago, and now I have stumbled upon some similar insights at a million monkeys typing in this post: Who Would You Phone?. So, the question remains: what are the implications of such gadget induced memory loss?
Long term thinking
Think you’re a long-term kind of thinker? Well, try to conceive of a project whose goal is to create a clock that will last for 10,000 years. That’s what the Long Now Project is all about. I’ve been following this group led by pioneer Danny Hillis for some time now. For the past couple of years they have been hosting seminars about Long-term Thinking…which are available for download here. Also, if you are in San Francisco in November, you can check out Clay Shirky’s presentation on "Making Digital Durable: What Time Does to Categories."
PR doesn’t create itself
Check out this post from Brand Autopsy: Another Wal*Mart Feel-Good Story. I was at a local AMA event a few weeks ago on this very topic – the power of PR over marketing. Although I don’t want to diminish the nobility of Wal-Mart’s actions, it should be noted that events like this don’t become news worthy until someone from Wal-Mart informs the press. John is very right to say that these sorts of actions are far better than any advertising campaign, but you need to have a good PR machine to recognize the opportunity too.
