everwas

Month: January 2011

  • Two ways to watch the SOTU

    Last night I watched the 2011 State of the Union address, conveniently streaming it via YouTube in 720p over the home wifi and out to my flatscreen Samsung TV here in Finland. I found the archive easily enough and noticed that the White House had conveniently split the screen to show helpful infographics on the…

  • Foursquare 2010 Infographic

    Foursquare has published a beautiful infographic highlighting tidbits gleened from the collective check-in activity of their global audience of over 5 million.

  • Skeuonyms and Collapsitarians

    Just finished Kevin Kelly’s latest book, What Technology Wants, and learned two new words/phrases. Skeuonym – an expression left over from an older technology, no longer used. Examples include, “rewinding the tape,” “dialing the phone, “filming a movie,” or “cranking the engine.” Anti-civilization Collapsitarian – folks like the Unabomber who view technology with suspicion and…

  • More LinkedIn Visualizations

    A couple more visualizations that use the LinkedIn API that I missed on the previous post. LinkedIn Maps announced yesterday creates a poster-ready view of your LinkedIn network complete with color-coding showing how everyone is related. This type of visualization can reveal interesting things about your career. In my case, it looks like my colleagues…

  • Smart LinkedIn Integration

    Congratulations to whomever is turning up the heat over at LinkedIn. It’s been just over a year since they opened up their API and now we’re really starting to see the fruits of this effort.  The latest integration with Fortune on their 100 Best Companies to Work For demonstrates how a professional social network can…

  • Celebrity Sellouts in Japan

    Here’s a bit of Friday fun for you. Way back when the internet was limited to newsgroups and those with access to a university network, I put up a bunch of scans I made of celebrities shilling for Japanese products. The other day, while clearing a bunch of old files off my wife’s Macbook, I…

  • Facebook and your Contact Info, a Proposal

    Facebook just announced that they are suspending a previously announced expansion of their API allowing third party developers to request access to a user’s address and phone number. Some history and a modest suggestion follow. When Facebook announced Facebook Connect in 2008, Dave Morin wrote about a concept he called Dynamic Privacy. Facebook Connect would…

  • Raindrops and Private Clouds

    Before Christmas I posted about the possible break-up of clouds.  For the past 5 years or so, the usual suspects such as Yahoo, and Google, and more recently Facebook and a re-vitalized AOL have been sucking up smaller collectives of socially active sites in search of rich pockets of user engagement. Clouds are an apt metaphor because…

  • Social Cruft

    First I read through a longish piece outlining how Forbes is re-inventing itself into a hub that harvests it’s audience and transform them into content producers in a new media factory.  Then I read about how Gawker is embracing the transformation of the web into a visual medium, prepping their web pages for the eventual living…