What's so interesting to me - aside from the incredible growth spurt and the beautiful imagery - is how differently people engage with this site versus, say, Flickr (which could have been Pinterest all along). The social sharing here is on steroids; consider this: I pinned about 80 pictures from my long-standing Flickr account to Pinterest and this is what happened to traffic on my Flickr pages...
The spikes occuring around Jan 20th are when images were cross-posted on Pinterest. There was of course a drop off when I stopped "pinning" but it's interesting to see the new life Pinterest infused into the old Flickr account.
It's Girl Scout Cookie time, and I have it easy: I get my annual Samoas fix through a coworker's enterprising young daughter (she's got a lock on all orders in our office).
But what if you don't know any Girl Scouts (who are in fact the sole distribution channel - selling cookies is part of the Girl Scout Leadership Experience, so they don't simply sell them online)?
Then the Girl Scout Cookie Locator app is for you! Using your phone's GPS, the app will show you cookie sales nearby, as well as information on flavors and some social media integration.
It's currently only available for iPhone (I'm Android, so thank goodness I have my contact!), and is reportedly rather buggy, but I like that the Girls have gone mobile.
This email I received recently from restaurant reservation site OpenTable made me chuckle: I sure do eat out a lot! And the funny thing is, it doesn't even include the nights out when I didn't use OpenTable or when someone else made the reservation.
But it's a great tactic on their part, and a great walk down memory lane for me. I didn't realize I'd been using the site for so long - I registered way back in 2002! Back then, it was strictly a web-based solution, but now I primarily use their Android and iPad apps.
A friend sent this one to me, and I'm not sure what to make of it. The Little Printer is an electronic device that lets you set up subcriptions to a variety of content providers - major publishers, game & horoscope providers, or even your friends' social profiles - and aggregates them into a daily feed.
Sounds like RSS you say? Yes, but The Little Printer (as it's name suggests) prints out your aggegated news items onto a thin strip of paper, non unlike a grocery store receipt. It is the invention of BergCloud, a company dedicated to creating connected products with beautiful design.
Watch the video below to see what I mean. It's incredibly cute, but would you use it?
There's a wildly popular productivity app called Evernote that lets you store notes and ideas - in the form of text, images, web pages, or voice memos - for future reference, list making, and archiving. I use it in its Web, iPad, and Android incarnations to note restaurants I want to try, wines that I like, travel ideas, and other random info that I want to remember. The beauty of it is that I can store info from all three devices (laptop, tablet, mobile phone) and it synchs for easy access from any of them.
So I was excited to read about its latest update: Evernote Food. You know how much I like to document great meals (as evidenced by yesterday's post and my Flickr feed dedicated to good eats), and this app promises to let you "capture, share, and relive your memorable meals." Sadly, it's not yet available for Android so I'll continue with my traditional ways. But I like where they're headed.
I jumped on the InMaps meme yesterday, using this latest experimental tool from LinkedIn to visualize my professional network. The result is interesting (and also quite beautiful):
The only real surprise is the inclusion of Compete, a local data analytics company, as a major node. While I have never worked for the company, I started out as a client of theirs about 5 years ago, and have grown into a "friend of the organization," both professionally and personally. So it makes sense that they're there, too (and I'm happy to be affiliated with such a smart group of folks).
Data visualizations like this are so interesting & informative. In one glance, you can quickly get a handle on my professional experience and the company I keep. Wouldn't it be cool if we could build similar visuals for a company or brand? LinkedIn Labs, are you working on this?
There are tools to visualize your Facebook network as well, but for the most part their value is unclear to me (basically, they all display some variation of which friends know each other). The one exception is UpGo, a Facebook app which does let you sort & filter your network based on different filters (high interaction, mutual friends, interests, age, location...) and groups (companies, schools, affiliations...). It's actually more like the inMaps app, but with a few more bells & whistles:
Want to explore more visualizations? Head over to Visualizing.org, a new, collaborative data visualization hub created by Seed Media Group and GE. It's a great resource.
Attention fellow media, arts, technology, and culture junkies!
This April, Boston will host the fifth annual National Conference for Media Reform (NCMR), where over 2500 people will gather to collaborate on a new vision for our media system.
For three days, NCMR participants will explore the future of journalism and public media, consider how technology is changing the world, look at the policies and politics shaping our media, and discuss strategies to build the movement for better media.
While the full program schedule won't be available until late March, it promises to include include live musical performances, film screenings and over 50 interactive sessions about journalism and public media, technology and innovation, policy and politics, arts and culture, social justice and movement building, plus hands-on workshops and how-to trainings.
I'm particularly interested in the "Media Makers, Culture, and the Arts" track, which will explore music, art, film and other creative media, showcasing inspiring projects, examining how media and technology are affecting our culture, and connecting the arts to media policy and politics.
Here's a sneak peek of the event:
NCMR is the brainchild of the non-profit organization Free Press, which is dedicated to making media reform a bona fide political issue in America. Through education and advocacy they promote independent media ownership, strong public media, quality journalism, and universal access to communications. From their web site:
Our media system is in a crisis.
The takeover of our country's media outlets by a small handful of giant conglomerates puts too much power and influence in too few hands. That's bad for our democracy, which depends on our ability to access diverse sources of news, information and opinion.
Our media is in trouble in other ways, too.
The big cable and phone companies that control access to the Internet want to be gatekeepers, deciding which Web sites and services you can use depending on which companies have paid them the most. They want to turn the open Internet we've always had into a closed, private toll road.
And public broadcasting, one of our most valuable public resources, is under constant threat in Washington by those who would cripple alternatives to the commercial media and muzzle the critical voices and diverse fare that public media offer.
It's up to us to change the media. The way we do that is by changing media policies.
NCMR 2011 takes place April 8-10, 2011 at the Seaport World Trade Center. About 2,500 people are expected to attend, so get your tickets now! Early bird registration is available through January 28th at $125; regular registration is $175.
You see, Gutenberg created the printing press, which is here credited with having created the modern mind:
Print’s uniformity, its immutability, its rigidity, its logic led to a number of social transformations, among which were the rise of rationalism and of the scientific method. In facilitating reason, print also facilitated complex ideas. It was no accident that it coincided with the Renaissance. Print made us think better or, at least, with greater discipline. In effect, the printing press created the modern mind.
Gabler counters that instead of building upon this intellectual progress, social media has just created "new ways of minimizing how we communicate with each other." He writes:
The sites, and the information on them, billboard our personal blathering, the effluvium of our lives, and they wind up not expanding the world but shrinking it to our own dimensions...Gutenberg’s Revolution left us with a world that was intellectually rich. Zuckerberg’s portends one that is all thumbs and no brains.
With all due respect to Marshall McLuhan, I don't think the casual, short-hand nature of social media means that we will become incapable of developing and sharing complex ideas. If these critics spent more time using these channels they would see them for what they reall are: a treasure trove of information including business updates, global news, local events, fundraising efforts, fashion, food, and travel tips. They also serve as a quick connection to friends and family...and what's wrong with wanting to connect? Yes, there's garbage out there. But there's garbage everywhere (have you flipped through your television stations lately?).
I do think that ongoing studies of the impact of new media & technology on our thinking and behavior are fascinating and attention-worthy. I, myself, am trying to multitask less in favor of giving activities my full attention. But that doesn't mean I can't find valuable, entertaining, and inspiring content in the social media realm. I do so nearly every day.
And for the record, I just ate a ham sandwich and it was delicious.
In a recent email from VolunteerMatch (a match-making service for volunteers and people who need their help), I learned of a remarkable organization called Infinite Family, which uses the Internet to connect adults and families with parentless children in southern Africa.
In the wake of the AIDS epidemic, thousands of African children are orphaned every year, leaving the ratio of children to adults in many areas at 12:1. Infinite Family has made it easy for people to become virtual mentors to these kids, using video conferencing, email, and a secure Internet platform to span the physical distance.
The VolunteerMatch newsletter tells the store of the Benedict family from Pennsylvania, who discovered Infinite Family's Video Mentor program and now regularly connects with an orphaned teenager at a computer lab in sub-Saharan Africa. Not only does this youth get much-needed attention and guidance from the adult parents of the family, but she also enjoys camaraderie (and help with homework!) from the Benedict children. And they, of course, get the chance to learn about a very different culture and make a life-long friend.
What a fantastic way to use technology.
Think you want to be a virtual mentor? Check out the Infinite Family page on VolunteerMatch. Mentors must be 21+ years old, have a high-speed Internet connection, and be approved through an application process. Once approved, they undergo an online training program to help understand the culture, the technology, and the children.
Two of my favorite shows on television right now are Mad Men and Sons of Anarchy; I've been a fan of both since the beginning.
Unless you live under a rock, you know that Mad Men chronicles the wild and wooly days of a 1960s Madison Avenue ad agency; it's won numerous awards for its lead actors, writing, and spectacular costume and set design.
Sons, in contrast, is more of a sleeper hit. It follows the rough-and-tumble lives of a gun-running motorcycle club, and it's a great gangster show in same vein as The Sopranos and The Wire.
On the surface, these shows seem wildly different, but plot twists in both this week highlight how similar they actually are.
You see, they both have these wonderfully-complicated, brooding leading men (the dashing Don Draper and the rough-hewn Jax Teller, respectively).
And they both have equally-complicated, career-driven leading ladies who put up with all their partners' foibles (research director Faye, left, and surgeon Tara, right).
And in both shows last week, the men betrayed their leading ladies by hooking up with younger, simpler, adoring girls. Don - in a singularly impulsive but not entirely unexpected move - proposed to his secretary (ick), and Jax turned to a stripper (double ick).
New York Magazine did a wonderful job analyzing what happened in Mad Men, noting that "Faye has so much to offer: smarts, sympathy, insight, lamp-rattling sex, genuine self-sacrifice." But in the end, she is "selling everyman comfort to a man who’s always craved his own unique drama." In the end, both men fulfilled their cliche, escapist fantasies, choosing uncomplicated, doe-eyed youth and admiration over pragmatic, mature love. What would Gloria Steinem say??
Mad Men critiques are quick to dismiss this as representative of the fate of women in 1965, but with SOA set in present-day California, it's a behavior that's all too familiar to modern women as well.
Interesting side note: before her turn as Dr. Tara Knowles on SOA, actress Maggie Siff played another career-oriented woman in Season 1 of Mad Men - department store owner Rachel Menken.
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