The World, Filtered*

Steven Levy on the Burden of Twitter
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/17-02/st_levy
 
"Guilty. I feel guilty that I have a blog and haven't contributed to it
for seven months. Guilty that all my pals on Facebook post cool pictures,
while the last shots I uploaded were of Fourth of July fireworks- from
2007. Guilty that I haven't Dugg anything since, well, ever.
 
It's not that I don't like social networking - I adore it. I love the way it
transforms my ragged circle of contacts and acquaintances into something
approaching a community. Every site becomes a personalized small town
where strangers don't stay that way for long. I'm fascinated by the quirks
and preferences my "friends" reveal through comments, status reports, and
alerts.
 
...The latest source of my dilemma is Twitter, which lets you spit out
real-time reports about what you're thinking and doing. It's fun to track
the digital ejaculations of selected Twitterati. But a couple thousand
people signed up unsolicited to follow my tweets. And I feel guilty when
not serving this hungry crowd - remorseful when I am."
 
 
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Jon Stewart on the Bizarro World of Wall Street
http://www.oculture.com/2009/02/john_stewart_on_the_bizarro_world_of_wall_street.html
 
"As usual, Stewart cuts to the chase and says what has to be said. And
gets a good laugh along the way…"
 
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Calendar and Contact syncing for iPhone and Windows Mobile Devices
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/calendar-and-contact-syncing-for-iphone.html
 
"One advantage of storing information online is being able to access it
from anywhere, on any device. Last year we released a tool for Blackberry
devices to sync Google Calendar and Gmail contacts with the pre-installed
calendar and contacts applications. Today, we're offering more people easy
access to their information on the go with two-way calendar and contacts
sync for iPhones and Windows Mobile devices, and two-way contacts sync for
mobile devices that support SyncML. This will be a particularly handy
improvement for people who regularly use Google tools, like corporate
employees, university students, and busy families.
 
For iPhone and Windows Mobile devices, Google Sync allows you to get your
Gmail contacts and Google Calendar events onto your phone. Sync uses push
technology, which means that any changes you make to your calendar or
contacts from the browser or phone will be reflected on your device within
minutes. For phones that support SyncML, the tool will allow you to get
your Gmail contacts onto your phone. For all of these devices,
synchronization happens automatically over the air, without having to
manually sync your phone. The connection is always on, which means your
information is always up-to-date, no matter where you are or what you're
doing."
 
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Trackle Feeds You Personalized RSS
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/10/trackle-feeds-you-personalized-rss/
 
"Silicon Valley start-up Trackle.com is launching the public beta of its
personalized Google Alerts to track pretty much everything in an internet
user's life. Trackle's technology and interface is innovative and
disarmingly comprehensive. It provides real-time personalized RSS feeds of
the latest crime in a user's neighborhood, fluctuating airline ticket
prices, how much a user's house value is down this week, updated job
listings, sports scores and much more.
 
The breadth and specificity of Trackle's information is what
differentiates itself from other RSS tracking applications like Google
Alerts, Yotify and Notify.me. Trackle doesn't just search for keywords, it
incorporates change into the keywords and provides up-to-date, highly
customized information about ever-fluctuating internet content. For
example, if a user is eyeing a camera on sale at Amazon.com but only wants
to spend $200, Trackle will monitor the sale and provide you updates of
when the camera price reaches $200. Trackle keeps all of this information
on the user's personalized site but the user can also choose to receive
the real-time alerts via SMS and e-mail. Imagine if a user is bidding on
an Ebay item; Trackle claims to give real-time price updates on an
auctioned item. For free."
 
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Descry
http://www.visitmix.com/Lab/Descry
 
" Ever wonder what goes into building an effective visualization? Look no
further. We decided to roll up our sleeves and explore the topic. We're
calling it Project Descry.
 
Project Descry demonstrates the power of data and information
visualization as a communication tool. As a part of Descry, we are
releasing a set of open source, web-based visualizations and an article
written by the Jon Udell that serves as a broad introduction to the
topic."
 
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Thomson Reuters Releases Reuters Messaging Interchange
http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/ArticleReader.aspx?ArticleID=52500
 
"Thomson Reuters announced the launch of Reuters Messaging (RM)
Interchange, which allows Enterprise Instant Messaging (EIM) users to
connect and communicate with colleagues and counterparts by using one
link. RM Interchange connects Thomson Reuters RM with other EIM systems -
Cisco's Jabber XCP, IBM Lotus' Sametime, and Microsoft's LCS/OCS. Users
of these systems can now connect with over 5,000 external organizations
and add their business contacts to a global external community. RM
Interchange offers carrier-grade connectivity for IM across the corporate
community. Customers connecting to RM Interchange are also automatically
connected to the Reuters Messaging community including over 130,000
end-users in 5,000 firms worldwide."
 
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Microsoft's New Mobile Strategy
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2009/02/for_the_past_fe.html?campaign_id=rss_innovate
 
"For the past few years, Microsoft has been losing share in PCs to Apple.
It's been losing huge money on the Web. And it's been badly shown up in
mobile phones, where Apple and Research In Motion have far more momentum
and even Palm seems to have more mindshare. But now, the company is
preparing plans to do what no other company is as well-positioned—at least
on paper - to do: tie the PC, Web and phone together.
 
On Feb. 16 at the Mobile World Congress, CEO Steve Ballmer will announce
the outlines of the plan. He'll unveil a service called My Phone, that
allows anyone with a Windows Mobile phone to automatically have their
photos, contacts, calendar items, favorite websites and other data
backed-up on a web-site hosted by Microsoft. The service, which will be a
beta version, will be free to anyone that has a phone running a version of
Windows Mobile 6."
 
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Apple's Flatland Aesthetic, Part 1: The Mac
http://www.asktog.com/columns/075AppleFlatlandPart1.html
 
"Appleland is becoming progressively flatter and, at the same time, less
usable.
 
Apple has released a series of revolutionary products over the last
several years, from System X to the iPhone. All represent Herculean
software efforts. With such marked changes, one can expect that early
releases will tend toward the primitive. Over time, users can expect
missing functionality to fill in. For the most part, this has occurred and
will continue to do so, with even highly-sophisticated features appearing,
such as copy and paste.
 
Filling in obvious features, however, is only one aspect of software
evolution. Equally important is keeping up with the users. The beginner
today will be the expert of tomorrow. The user with 200 photos today will
be the user with 2000 a year from now. The user with 10 songs today will
be the user with 100 songs six months from now. The user with one or two
extra apps on the iPhone will be the user with 100 apps three months from
now"
 
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Writing Usability Requirements and Metrics
http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2009/02/writing-usability-requirements-and-metrics.php
 
"In this installment of Ask UXmatters, our experts discuss how to write
effective usability requirements and metrics for the redesign of a legacy
public sector system."

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Thinking in Systems: A Primer
http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Primer-Donella-Meadows/dp/1603580557/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229607540&sr=8-1
 
I just received this intriguing book last night from Amazon. So far this
is a great, easy to understand, introduction to the idea of systems
thinking. The author, who died in 2001 was a MacArthur "Genius" Award
recipient and nominee for the Pulitzer Prize. The book is from a
manuscript she was completing at the time of her death.
 
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How Did the Economy Go Bad - an Onion Infographic
http://www.theonion.com/content/infograph/how_did_the_economy_go_bad
 
"In 2007, the economy was extremely robust. Less than 12 months later, the
United States is facing a plunging stock market, record unemployment and
total credit collapse. How, specifically did this happen?"
 
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Send Money Through Twitter With Twitpay
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/17/send-cash-through-twitter-with-twitpay/
 
"Twitpay is a start-up that aims to allow people to send small payments
through Twitter. To do this they include the recipients' username in their
message. For example, posting the update "@johnsmith twitpay $10 for
lunch" would deliver the cash to that Twitterer's Twitpay account. The
company monitors the public stream of messages for the keyword "twitpay"
and facilitates the exchange. You replenish your Twitpay account using a
site like PayPal. Once recipients have accumulated more than $10 in their
accounts, the balance can be cashed out in the form of an Amazon gift
card. For all transfers exceeding $1, Twitpay will take a flat cut of five
cents."
 
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Staying Informed Without Drowning in Data
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/technology/personaltech/18basics.html?_r=1
 
"I'M a reporter and I write about the Internet. I write about its culture,
its latest developments and the people and companies involved. You may
think this means I spend a lot of time watching videos of
advice-dispensing ninjas and funny photographs of cats but that, sadly, is
not the case.
 
What I do spend a lot of time doing is scouring the Internet for
information and news. This is great because the Internet makes this easier
than ever. This is also a huge pain because the Internet makes this easier
than ever. There's a never-ending sea of news sources, and if I just
plunge in headfirst, I'll probably get overwhelmed in minutes. And yet to
be ahead of the news, I can't just read the big, mainstream publications -
I have to dig deeper and find more specialized sites and blogs that are
often closer to the action.
 
The key is to manage the information overflow. This can be done through
sites and services that filter and curate the online news-scape into
something I can actually digest. With a little time spent exploring and
tailoring these sites, you too can get better, deeper information on
subjects you care about - and it won't take you days to sort through it
all."
 
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Learning About the Backstory of the Clothes We Buy
http://www.psfk.com/2008/12/learning-about-the-backstory-of-the-clothes-we-buy.html
 
"Amsterdam-based MADE-BY recently launched a new program called
Track&Trace that gives shoppers the opportunity to learn about the rich
backstory of some of the products they buy. MADE-BY has partnered with
several Netherlands-based fashion brands to insert an added tag to their
products that comes with a code which "unlocks" the history of the item.
Shoppers enter the code on the MADE-BY site and are given a glimpse of the
product's long journey to the shop window - where the garment was
manufactured and by whom, who spun the yarn, who grew the cotton. Each
step in the process includes a picture of the worker(s) and a brief
interview about that stage of production and the labor that went into it.
 
The purchase-then-learn model might not directly help those looking to
make their shopping choices based on sustainability, but MADE-BY's
initiative promotes more informed consumption and serves as a nice
reminder of the many steps it takes to create the things we buy."
 
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Web-based Business Model Innovation Software and Working on the Wall
http://business-model-design.blogspot.com/2008/12/web-based-business-model-innovation.html
 
"Boris Fritscher, a brilliant masters student of HEC business school in
Lausanne, Switzerland, has picked up on using software to sketch out
business models under the guidance of my co-author, Professor Yves
Pigneur.
 
Yesterday he showcased the tool to me and Patrick van der Pijl, producer
of my business model book. Boris built a web-based tool that allows the
design and description of business models. But Boris didn't keep it there.
He extended the tool to allow designing business models live on a
projected image on the wall (see picture where Boris works on a business
model). How cool is that?"
 
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10 rules for making good design
http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2008/12/i-picked-up-a-book-recently-called-design-elements-a-graphic-style-manual-by-timothy-samara-that-is-quite-good-samara-start.html
 
"I picked up a book recently called Design Elements: A Graphic Style
Manual by Timothy Samara* that is quite good. Samara starts off his book -
after a short discussion on what is meant by design and graphic design -
with a list of "Twenty Rules for Making Good Design" which includes a
brief but good elaboration of each of the rules. Now, as Samara points
out, rules are important to understand but it's certainly permissible to
break the rules (he even shows how later in the book). What is not
permissible is to remain ignorant of the rules. Samara quotes Typographer
David Jury here: "Rules can be broken - but never ignored." I tend to
think in terms of Principles rather than Rules, though this is really just
a matter of semantics. This stuff is old hat for longtime designers, but
for the rest of us Samara's list of 20 Rules is a useful reminder. Here
are just Ten of Samara's twenty rules below just as he wrote them (though
not in this order). I chose the rules (principles) which I think are both
the most important and yet easiest to grasp without much or any
explanation. Keep these rules in mind when designing your next
presentation or website, poster, etc."
 
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Prezi = The Zooming Presentarion Software
http://prezi.com/
 
I highlighted this outfit before. They have a new domain and have
steadily been updating the software.

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