April 2009 Archives

Been thinking a lot about co-design recently and came across this lovely animation by Think Public

Here’s their youtube channel

I just love it that Caterina hasn’t changed her blog template since the dawn of time:-) And now the imperatrix is up to something new and of course exciting…

What is Hunch?
Look. Decision-making is difficult, and decisions have to be made constantly. What should I be for Halloween? Do I need a Porsche? Does my hipster facial hair make me look stupid? Is Phoenix a good place to retire? Whom should I vote for? What toe ring should I buy?

It’s dark and lonely work. Coin-flipping, I Ching consultation, closing your eyes and jumping, postponing the inevitable, Rock-Paper-Scissors, and asking your sister are all time-honored means of coming to a decision — and yet we think there’s room for one more: Hunch.

Hunch is a decision-making site, customized for you. Which means Hunch gets to know you, then asks you 10 questions about a topic (usually fewer!), and provides a result — a Hunch, if you will. It gives you results it wouldn’t give other people.

From http://www.caterina.net/archive/001169.html
Hunch is: http://www.hunch.com

Props @marshamusic for pointing to @veryshortstory

“Firetruck!” yelled 5 year old Billy. His Mom had told him his Dad was a fireman. When he got older he set fires, hoping to meet Dad.

Beautiful:-) I you want to join in, post your very short story and tag it #vss

The unstoppable Shel Israel continues his journey of immersion and involvement through social media:

What I love is this is that I get to talk with students.

Through their questions I get to learn what’s on their mind regarding Twitter and social media. Like many people, I would love to spend more time as a guest instructor, but schools have little budget for people like me where travel costs are involved. I’m sure what we do tomorrow will have a few glitches and bumps, because as far as I know, no one has tried to guest instruct a class via Twitter before.

My hope though is that others watch what we do then try something like this themselves. Take what I do with 35 students at UMass Dartmouth and refine it. This may be a new way to remotely talk with people who want to learn.

From Global Neighbourhoods

Wow, finally a sensible-looking alternative to sIFR. I mean don’t get me wrong, I’ve used sIFR all over the place and I love it’s type-handling but dang, those variables are pointless. Pretty much most of the ‘adjustments’ you’re supposed to be able to make to control size etc. have just never made it out of fiddlycamp…

From the Cufon site:

Cufón aims to become a worthy alternative to sIFR, which despite its merits still remains painfully tricky to set up and use. To achieve this ambitious goal the following requirements were set:

1. No plug-ins required - it can only use features natively supported by the client
2. Compatibility - it has to work on every major browser on the market
3. Ease of use - no or near-zero configuration needed for standard use cases
4. Speed - it has to be fast, even for sufficiently large amounts of text

And now, after nearly a year of planning and research we believe that these requirements have been met.

More on the imminent Twitter ‘Pro’ accounts.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123793945676332341.html

I’ve just done something a bit odd. I watched Jonathan Ross’ Film 2009 on BBC1 and then called the duty officer (well, invested 50p on directory assistance to get the duty officer’s number). He’s not called the duty officer anymore and doesn’t have a phone number as such… In today’s BBC one uses the internet to do these things :-)

I just posted the following comment on the official complaints site:

To whom it may concern:

I would like to complain about the segment on copyright theft in tonight’s Jonathan Ross film 2009.

I have three specific complaints.

1. The piece was not balanced and presents a one-sided view. All quotes were from film-industry representatives and all opinions reflect those of powerful copyright lobbyists such as the RIAA and MPAA
2. The segment failed to discuss the relevant and significant trend that many, many law-abiding, tax-paying, child-rearing citizens are deciding to exercise their fair-use rights under copyright legislation. These citizens are trying to effect democratic change and create better and fairer copyright law. The segment derides their activities as plainly criminal
3. The segment repeats a number of damaging and discredited clichés and makes no effort to explain any of the issues beyond those clichés. In particular, the phrase “piracy is killing the film industry” is repeated in a couple of formats.

Just as video didn’t kill Hollywood and home taping did not kill the music industry, the market forces and technical, cultural and economic ecosystems in which the players in the copyright wars are currently fighting are complex and deserve a measured, in-depth explanation.

I expect no less of the BBC.

and as I was looking for the details Google let me to the fabulous “home sewing” graphic :-) The artwork and blog post it goes with are the work of Bo Peterson from Malmö, Sweden (thanks Bo).