Wow, the first photos from the “Where the Wild Things Are” movie look amazing. It’s being directed by Spike Jonze and written by Dave Eggers (of McSweeney’s fame (and, of course, is based on the book by Maurice Sendak).
Tickets for the PSFK Conference New York just went on sale. It’s Thursday, March 27th and speakers include: Adam Stotsky – NBC Universal (SciFi), Andrew Hoppin – NASA, Eric Ripert – Le Bernardin, Graham Hill – Treehugger, Greg Verdino – Crayon, Jeff Staple – Staple Design, Johnny Vulkan – Anomaly, Josh Spear – Undercurrent, Marc Schiller – Electric Artists, Mike Hudack – Blip.TV, Noah Brier – Likemind, Sascha Lewis – Flavorpill & Steve Rubel – Edelman.
Yup, I’m in there. I’ll be talking on a panel about Social Media, here’s the description: “In a ‘new guns’ versus ‘marketing gurus’ debate, Marc Schiller & Steve Rubel join Josh Spear & Noah Brier to discuss how social media will change in 2008 and how companies can leverage this digital phenomenon in the most rewarding way. “
Big old Economist article on the latest iteration of Virgin Galactic’s fleet and how they plan to launch the business (no pun intended).
I don’t often do book reports around here, but I just got through Duncan Watts and Peter Sheridan Dodds’ paper, “Influentials, Networks, and Public Opinion Formation” [PDF] and thought it might be worth sharing some quotes and thoughts (especially since it’s 36 pages of fairly dense material).
As I wrote recently their basic thesis is that so-called “influentials” are not all their cut out to be (especially by people like Gladwell and Keller). Though as they explain in the conclusion, “Our main point, in fact, is not so much that the influentials hypothesis is either right or wrong, but that it’s micro-foundations, by which we mean the details of who influences whom and how, require very careful articulation in order for its validity to be meaningfully assessed.” While Watts and Dodds’ own work leaves me with some questions, this seems like a hard assertion to argue with. To come up with a true theory of influence, the details of influence need to be universally defined and understood.
In fact, I don’t know that Watts and Dodds go far enough themselves, mainly because influence is so hard to pin down. Observationally, who influences whom and how can change on a daily basis and greatly depends on things like topic & relationship (as well, I’d argue, on outside factors like how busy the recipient is at time of influence). Watts and Dodds do acknowledge these factors, however, suggesting that “large scale changes in public opinion are not driven by highly influential people who influence everyone else, but rather by easily influenced people, influencing other easily influenced people.”
This, in and of itself, doesn’t seem particularly controversial. If you go with the idea that 10% of the population is influential, that leaves 90% of the population that’s not. Then if you assume that, especially in the current media/advertising landscape, the influential 10% is hardest to reach because they are the most overexposed (and thus have their attention stretched the thinnest), it seems that your effort may be much better spent thinking about options. What’s more, according to Watts and Dodds’ research, while “influentials have a greater than average chance of triggering critical mass, when it exists … [their effect is] only modestly greater, and usually not even proportional to the number of people they influence directly.”
As they explain in their conclusion, the simplest way to understand this is to look at natural analogues such as forest fires:
Some forest fires, for examples, are many times larger than average; yet no-one would claim that the size of a forest fire can be in any way attributed to the exceptional properties of the spark that ignited it, or the size of the tree that was the first to burn. Major forest fires require a conspiracy of wind, temperature, low humidity, and combustible fuel that extends over large tracts of land. Just as for large cascades in social influence networks, when the right global combination of conditions exists, any spark will do; and when it does not, none will suffice.
Upon reading that I was immediately brought back to something I wrote about last year. My thesis in that entry was that the marketing paradigm of leading with a single message was outdated and your better bet was to create a huge array of messages (sparks) hoping that one would ignite a cascade effect (forest fire). Especially in a digital context, where message production costs are significantly lowered, why not throw lots against a wall and see what sticks (after all, measurement and fast iteration are possible).
With all that said, there is one major issue I have with Watts and Dodds work, which they admit to in the paper: They are examining interpersonal influence, not media influence. While they admit that the distinction is a bit blurry, especially in the eyes of things like blogs, they continue on with the assumption (which doesn’t seem to be grounded in any research) that “the influence of the blogger seems closer to that of a traditional newspaper columnist or professional critic, than that of a trusted confidant, or a even casual acquaintance.” Now I don’t want to harp on bloggers, but I don’t know that I agree with this thesis.
Part of what makes blogs such a fascinating communications medium is the combination weak and strong ties that can constitute a readership. While large readership blogs (like BoingBoing for example) most likely reflect a more journalistic relationship, smaller blogs like this one act much differently. Of the thousand-plus readers who frequent this site I would guess that a significant portion constitute what I would consider a weak tie (we have emailed back and forth) and a smaller portion constitute strong ties (family and close friends). This, I would assume, is significantly different than the average “newspaper columnist or professional critic” who tend to live in another realm. In other words, the availability of bloggers may change how and when their influence functions.
This, of course, is a major critique I have of most communications theory. As my sister, who is getting her undergraduate degree in communications can attest to, I get incredibly upset when interpersonal communications disregards mediated communications. In our current age, the boundaries between interpersonal and mediated communications is hard to pin down. That’s because the same technologies (email, blogging and even text messaging) can be used for both broadcasting and interpersonal communications. Therefore, it’s left up to the recipient to decide whether the communications is interpersonal or not. Prior to that, interpersonal communications was done entirely via one-to-one media (things like face-to-face and phone). While I’m not sure how to resolve this, it does create a major issue in all influential research because it leaves the researcher with an incredible amount of variables to contend with.
Finally, I think a discussion of engagement is probably relevant as I think it’s directly correlated to influence (and when combined with reach may change things slightly). When we launched Street Mining we got two links from largeish sites, one with a very large, but more casual readership and one with a smaller, more dedicated one. While the larger site drove more clicks, the smaller site drove more signups. This, I believe, is the simplest explanation of engagement/influence I have seen: Clearly the smaller site’s readers were a better audience for the message than the larger site. (Of course the lack of control in this experiment means that it’s impossible to say whether it was these factors that led to additional sign-ups.)
This is an interesting paradox that I think relates to this whole influential debate and is often a stumbling block. Influence and reach are two entirely different things. While the two can be related (and historically have been), on the internet they’re not necessarily. For example, we’ve all heard about the “Digg effect” when I site gets to the front page of Digg and is hit with a deluge of traffic. What’s interesting about this traffic is that it often doesn’t result in much additional long-term interest, as the audience is a large and varied one. Therefore, while the site may be considered influential from a pure mass perspective, it’s influence seems much more superficial (I don’t have data to back this up, but have read many discussions on the subject). I would say that while Digg has a large reach and high influence (causing the influx of visitors), the engagement of that audience is low (meaning that they visit the dugg site once and don’t return). (Engagement is a bad word for this, but I’m having trouble thinking of another at the moment. If someone has a better way to describe it, please let me know.)
My argument would be that on many smaller sites the influence is deeper since those relationships tend to be stronger. This creates an interesting dynamic. While I don’t know that it’s statistically relevant, I do think it’s worth exploring some more. Blogs and other associated media do allow people to amplify their voices to more strong and weak ties than ever before, allowing people to have journalistic-sized audiences with relationships that more reflect interpersonal communication.
I think that’s about it. I hope I haven’t bored you to death (I can only imagine if you’ve actually made it to the bottom that I haven’t). Would love to hear your thoughts and feedback (on both Watts and Dodds’ paper and my thoughts). Thanks for reading.
I’ve been doing a lot of reading (and thus thinking) lately. What follows will hopefully hang together, but it may very well turn into a bunch of random ideas. So goest the dangers of blogging.
Okay . . . let’s begin with something Adrian wrote a few days ago about the digital divide: “I now often get the sense that the real digital divide is not so much around fluency or access to technology. Instead it is around ways of thinking and ways of seeing the world.” This is something I’ve been trying to articulate (hopefully effectively) for some time. Digital is not just the underpinnings of new technology, it is also a change in how the world operates.
Two simple examples: Scarcity goes away with losslessness and complete control goes away with the multiple entrances and exits digital technology can provide (think fast-forward and rewind on the tape player versus skip on the cd . . . or even better, just choosing a song in iTunes). What comes out of these is a shift (that I would call postmodern). Here’s some more from Adrian’s post (who I hope won’t mind me reposting this graphic without permission).
What these leaves us with is a world where we need to reassess how things work. Traditional business and economic drivers (such as scarcity) don’t really work any more. Or, as Terry Heaton wrote, (quoting Ian Rogers), “Losers wish for scarcity, winners leverage scale.” I love Pixel Qi as an example of this. As I wrote last week, “Pixel Qi … is a spinoff from OLPC that hopes to sell the technology developed for the OLPC in a for-profit way, thereby helping the OLPC (and other firms) get the scale they need to lower the prices on the laptops. Basically: The more customers Pixel Qi gets, the cheaper kids around the world can get their hands on this technology.”
It’s almost laughable to think about that strategy in the face of OLPC’s whining about competition (yes, I know, much of it is fair complaints about unfair competition). Another great example of this is Google’s killing of domain tasting. I think Umair’s words about Google also work for the OLPC (although they haven’t chosen this path): By selling the technology and allowing more competition the ecosystem flourishes and “everyone is better off in the long run.” In other words, openness leads to higher returns for everyone and better products for the people.
Now for a slight diversion (since I’m not quite sure how it ties together yet).
In this new landscape everyone is competing with everyone. We see this in the media environment now, where “there are lots and lots of non-commercial alternatives that are free and quite good.” Just take the advertising landscape. As Terry Heaton wrote in his latest essay, what’s so interesting about this new media world is that advertisers are now competition (and that competition will only increase). Advertisers everywhere are creating sites with content and games that rival what you can find on the rest of the web because they realize that’s what they have to do. This is dangerous for media companies because advertisers have a completely different revenue stream than they do and is once again a case of fighting the crazy guy in the room who has nothing to lose (at least not in the media space). Throw in bloggers and the rest of the layfolks who are media owners with an entirely non-monetary revenue stream and you’ve got a recipe who knows what.
The question I have then, is what happens next. If we play this out to its conclusion and assume that what we are seeing in the media world will manifest itself everywhere what happens?
Interesting video and comments by Edward Tufte on the iPhone. A few choice quotes from the video: “The content is the interface” (referring to the iPhone’s brilliant lack of “computer administrative debris” like toolbars) & “To clarify add detail … clutter and overload are not an attribute of information, they are failures of design. If the information is in chaos, don’t start throwing out information, fix the design.” (I really love that last one.)
If everyone else has seen this, sorry, but The Gapminder World is an amazing visualization of international statistics. The program lets you program the x and y axes (as well as color and size) to correlate to different statistics (like per capita income, birth rate, life expectancy or percentage of women in the work force). What you get is an amazing look at how the world has changed and a really cool way to surface historical insights. Apparently Google bought it last year and you can watch Hans Rosling, the director, talk about it at TED.
Really great piece by the Freakonomics guys that asks, “What do a deaf woman in Los Angeles, a first-century Jewish sandal maker and a red-cockaded woodpecker have in common?” Turns out they were all on the short end of laws meant to do good.
Holy Crap! Facts is another semi-stupid idea that’s turned into a small side project that may or may not survive. Basically it’s a Twitter feed we (Joe and I) plan to update with crazy facts like “Shaquille O’Neal spends $23,000-per-month on gas for his cars” and “There are three times as many tanning salons as Starbucks in America” (which was the original inspiration for the site and came via Chet).
Got any facts to add?
Duncan Watts explains why he thinks Gladwell et. al are wrong about influencers. His thesis is that a trend can come from anyone and depends much more on the willingness of the masses to accept the trend than the “influence” of the individual. I think the core of the problem with influencer theory is that it’s often confused with reach, in other words, those who are considered influential are actually the ones with the most reach within a given community.
For those interested, here’s the PDF of Watts’ full paper: Influentials, Networks, and Public Opinion Formation (which I plan to read on my plane ride home).
I was in a vendor presentation yesterday when the topic of WalMart came up. For anyone working in the marketing industry, this isn’t a rare occurance, and in fact that was just the topic of conversation. “WalMartians,” as the presenter referred to them, were the clients who had superstore tunnel vision. Eventually something in the realm of “WalMart has ruined culture” was uttered, to which I responded, “or WalMart has become culture.”
Now I’m in no way here to defend the shopping giant, however, people make choices in their lives and things happen for a reason (or at least I believe they do). And while I certainly don’t agree with or even like everything WalMart does or the way its changed towns and cities, I don’t blame it. The way I see it, throughout the ages there have been any number of cultural forces that have “ruined things” and most of the time they haven’t really.
Not sure what any of this has to do with anything, but I thought it was a worthwhile anecdote.
What’s funny is that earlier in that meeting the same group had said something that I thought was quite brilliant (and in fact I thought they, a as a whole, were great). It was good to be an anthropologist, they explained, because “cultural models were always changing, but business models hardly ever were.” What’s so amazing about the WalMart story is it’s one where the business model actually changed the cultural model. WalMart is not just a business institution in America, it’s a cultural one. For whatever you want to say about them, they’re the largest employer in America with 1.3 million employees (just over 1 in 300 people work for them), they’ve used their size and clout to lower generic drug prices and people do things like travel across the country sleeping in their parking lots. The argument to me is not whether they’re good or bad, because like most things that kind of binary approach no longer works. Rather the more interesting question or observation is one around how they’re using their power.
I guess the bottom line for me is that sure the world is changing, however, I don’t really believe the change is any more drastic than the change in any other generation. As Rob Walker pointed out recently every generation goes through huge unprecedented change that it thinks is more huge and unprecedented than any other generation before it. In the end, however, everything settles into place and each generation is left with a handful of events and inventions that truly change the course of history.
Before I finish this semi-rant, I feel it necessary to add one caveat that may contradict everything I’ve said previously: I actually think digital is fundamentally different. Digital, in many ways, is a new kind of DNA or atom. I really believe it’s on that level. Digital technology is the fundamental building block for most of the change we will experience in the coming years and it’s unlike anything we’ve dealt with in this past (though to be honest, it’s not even really from this generation). Previously, communication (and life for that matter) mostly revolved around analog signals: Things degraded over time and rearranging pieces involved glue. For the vast majority of humanity we have only dealt with the physical (the telegraph was invented less than 200 years ago) and now we are living in this strange world where, for some of us, the majority of our time is spent manipulating pixels. It’s an amazing transition that’s happened fairly quickly in terms of human history.
However, I don’t feel nostalgia. Maybe I’m a techno-determinist, but I don’t necessarily agree with Russell Davies when he says that we’re not equipped for the world that we’re going to be living in. On the contrary I think we (and Russell is a great example of this) are more equipped than ever to deal with this new world. We are adapting to a universe where knowing how to do something is less important than knowing where to find out how to do something. That’s not a good or a bad thing in my mind, it’s just a thing like anything else.
While lots of people are worrying about the kids staying in all day playing with their computers and their video games, I find hope in it. I believe that what we’ll get is a generation more curious and prepared to deal with knowledge and information in whatever form they encounter it. I think entrepreneurialism will run rampant in the coming years as kids who grew up with Google as their door to the world believe they can build a better mousetrap.
As an anecdote, I often explain to people my domain buying justification: At $10 it’s the cheapest way in the world to provide myself a spark to make an idea happen. If one of the 50 comes to life, the $500 was worth every penny. It’s a world where “trying stuff is cheaper than deciding whether to try it”. If there’s ever been a better incentive for entrepreneurialism I can’t think of it. And while I have no idea whether this makes any sense at this point because I’m ready to go to bed, I do know that it’s a good thing.
I’m trying to collect links to videos that provide good explanations of the digital world for a project I’m working on. I’m thinking stuff like Michael Wesch’s Digital Ethnography videos (“The Machine is Us/ing Us” and “Information R/evolution”).
Anyone have some other good ones?
Fabulous, though fairly creepy, photographs of teddy bears inside out by Ken Rogowski (who also published the photographs as a book).
I didn’t know this, but apparently the Leopard feature “Quick Look” supports plugins for additional document types. There’s one to let you peek inside folders and another for zip files. Here’s a fairly comprehensive list of Quick Look plugins.
Wired feature this month is 33 Things That Suck, explaining why annoying things are the way they are.
A few highlights: DVD sound (“Basically, DVDs are just too lifelike for the living room. Their dynamic range  the continuum of sound levels they’re capable of reproducing  is more like the real world, where exploding cars and hails of gunfire really are a lot louder than casual conversation.”), plastic packaging (“Factories are loath to invest in new equipment, and most companies don’t want to pay a single penny more per item, even if doing so would keep your sanity  and fingers  intact.”) and air travel (“If anything, flying doesn’t cost enough: The average domestic fare in spring 2007 was $326. That’s $50 less than a decade ago, after adjusting for inflation. During the same period, fuel costs nearly tripled.”).
A group that includes 20 nobel prize winners, 10 congressmen and women, 25 university and college presidents and a ton of other incredibly qualified and prestigious people, are calling for the addition of a presidential science debate. The explanation: “Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Health and Medicine, and Science and Technology Policy.”
I just signed the petition.
While I love the new format of the blog (with much more of an emphasis on links), I also feel as though it’s allowed me to be a bit more lax than I might like to be on my more serious writing. I imagine over time I’ll find a way to balance things slightly better (ideally I’d get back to writing 2 or 3 long-form entries a week).
Anyway, now that the apology is out of the way, what I am hoping to do is kind of catalog a bunch of the themes and thoughts of last year/2008. What I expect it to be more or less is a look into what I think some of my themes of the year will be.
Call it whatever you want (metadata, attention data), but the basic idea is that if you record the digital footprints people leave behind and organize them you can extract and return an incredible amount of value. Rather than reply on people to actively take part in a system, you can allow them to opt-in their data and organize it for them. When I wrote “Fixing Business Software” I used the example of the Naked Aggregator, “Rather than forcing people to constantly update the Naked blog with full entries, why not pull from the content they’re creating anyway? So it pulls in content from del.icio.us, Flickr, Twitter and other people’s blogs and inserts it right into houseofnaked.com.” The idea being let the software do the work rather than the people. Basically, what’s the point in recreating the wheel if the wheel already has an API?
This isn’t a new idea, just one I think people will continue to struggle with. Your “good” self and your capitalist self no longer need to exist in separate spheres. More and more companies are finding ways to balance the two. I found Google’s announcement of investing in finding a renewable fuel source than coal a perfect example. As I wrote in November, “Google is not doing this for completely altruistic reasons: They believe this initiative will save them a lot of money in the long run and be good for business. With that kind of motivation I expect them to get more done.” Another great example of this is Pixel Qi which is a spinoff from OLPC that hopes to sell the technology developed for the OLPC in a for-profit way, thereby helping the OLPC (and other firms) get the scale they need to lower the prices on the laptops. Basically: The more customers Pixel Qi gets, the cheaper kids around the world can get their hands on this technology.
I don’t know about everyone else, but I’ve been finding a ton of inspiration in math, science and economics. It’s just another reminder of how important it is to move beyond one’s comfort area/focus. I don’t know a ton about any of these, but I hope to learn.
I don’t know that this is a big theme, more just something that’s been on my mind lately. I know many of the people that read this site are planners (as am I, I guess). Anyway, I believe blogs are most helpful to a profession like planning, where your output is basically your thinking. The problem was in the past there was no way to show your thinking/skill off. Designers and copywriters had portfolios, but planners just had to say they were “naturally curious” or something equally BS-sounding. Now, you can just click through the entries of a planners blog and get a real sense of how they think and approach the world.
So, I guess that’s it. A bit of a hodge-podge, sure, but at least I just needed to get some of these thoughts out. Have a nice weekend.
We all know they dress up fast food for the ads, but it’s amazing to see the side-by-side comparison (I think the Subway sandwich, the Whopper and the Egg McMuffin actually look better than the picture I think).
Holy crap, MTV’s Rock Band sold 2.5 million songs in 2 months (most popular song: Foreigner’s “Juke Box Hero”).
Feed43 lets you make RSS feeds from any content on the web. I just made one for the Marketplace of Ideas section on the home page of American Magazine (which is a great magazine about economics I highly recommend subscribing to.)
An unbelievably disturbing article about an unbelievably disturbing show. The show, if you haven’t seen it, lures men to a house to meet an underage person to have sex with and then ambushes them with cameras and eventually a police take-down (which is alway much more violent than it needs to be). The strangest part of the show is when men have seen it and acknowledge they’re on the show and will be taken down by police when they get outside. It’s like some alternate universe.
Slate article from three years ago about athletes getting LASIK surgery and better than 20/20 vision.
Stephen Colbert convinced the National Portrait Gallery to hang his portrait. “His portrait was hung Wednesday at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington for a six-week showing in what the museum considers an “appropriate place”  right between the bathrooms near the “America’s Presidents” exhibit. Museum officials stress it’s only temporary.”
Looks like Sun is acquiring the open source database MySQL for $1 billion. Sun CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, explains the rationale over at his blog.
Great list from last year of Gridskipper’s favorite spots in the East Village for drunken eating. Found it while putting together my own map of some of my favorite NYC spots. Any suggestions on additions to my (admittedly unfinished) map?
This guy is a party animal. For real.
Great article on how the NBA grew to prominence from one of my new favorite magazines, The American. Beyond lots of info on the marketing decisions the NBA made and is making in it’s global expansion, these two basketball facts stood out:
“Even abroad, howÂÂever, American players typically attract the most fans. Yao’s teammate, Tracy McGrady, sells more jerseys in China than Yao or anyone else.”
&
“When James Naismith invented the gameâ€â€hanging a peach basket on a YMCA wall in 1891â€â€basketball experienced its first great stroke of fortune. The Y’s missionaries spread the sport globally and nationally. They brought basketball to France, India, and China, and the game came to dominate the gyms in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and other cities.”
In an effort to shame sites into proper password storing practices, Greg has launched Plain Text Shame.
Every year, Nicholas Felton releases his own personal annual report. He just finished up 2007 and it’s just as fantastic as years past.
For the record, I wish I could design like this.
Marketing Charts is just that, “charts and data for marketers in web and Excel format.” Just in case you ever need some data to justify an idea.
Looks like New York has finally gotten some public restrooms. According to Newsday, “The self-washing, wheelchair-accessible toilets cost 25 cents for 15 minutes before the toilet doors automatically open and a 60-second cleaning cycle begins after each use.” Cemusa, the same company responsible for the new bus shelters, designed the toilets.
Yesterday I went snowbaording up at Hunter Mountain. Beyond learning an important lesson about snowbaording on ice (which has left me bruised, battered and slightly numb), I was amazed by the number of helmets I saw. Now Hunter is a bit of an exception in that they give free helmets with rentals, but I would guess about 90 percent of people on the mountain had them. Got me thinking about a few things that I’m not sure all amount to anything, but I felt like sharing anyway.
Anyway, like I said, I’m not exactly sure where this was meant to go except to say it’s an interesting case study in adoption of safety gear.
Back to icing my wounds now . . .
Satish had a great post on the Naked blog about how Bombay convinced people to keep the city clean: “See, about five years ago, when Bombay was just starting the process of cleaning up, it encountered one major issue. People were not respecting the walls, and that meant random spitting and urination (yes, I said it) on every corner wall across the city . . . [So . . . ] the Bombay Municipal Corporation decided to put up pictures of gods and goddesses on all walls, so that people think twice before doing their dirty deeds.”
Been thinking about this possibility a bit lately. Seems to me that there’s a real danger of Twitter becoming a spammers paradise. There are very few safeguards in place (other than a captcha during sign up). People could easily @reply and direct message you until the service got so annoying you had to leave . . . Am sure the guys over at Twitter have given this though, and it doesn’t seem to be an issue at the current size, but as with anything internet, the spammers are never far behind the trends.
A bunch of interesting theories on why the pollsters were so far off in New Hampshire. One theory is called The Bradley Effect, where white voters say they will vote for a non-white candidate and then end up not. As Andrew Sullivan explains, New Hampshire was “the first primary – not a caucus. People get to vote in a secret ballot – not in front of their largely liberal peers, as in Iowa. They may have told the pollsters one thing about voting for a black man, but in the privacy of the voting booth, something else happens.”
Another interesting theory from the article: The order of the names listed on the ballot. The random starting letter was ‘Z’ and therefore Clinton showed up much higher than Obama did.
Funny enough I was having a conversation about just this at breakfast today. Looks like yesterday Facebook, Google and Plaxo joined the DataPortability Workgroup. The Workgroup sounds quite a bit like what AttentionTrust was trying to do. As explained on the homepage, the group’s mission is “To put all existing technologies and initiatives in context to create a reference design for end-to-end Data Portability. To promote that design to the developer, vendor and end-user community.”
All Newsgator Individual Products for RSS reading have gone free. Now this wouldn’t be all that exciting (as I really like Google Reader), except Newsgator has a mobile app that syncs with NetNewsWire and Newsgator Online.
Dapper looks like a super-slick screen scraping app that automatically creates RSS/XML (amongst other things) for you (the demo is quite nice). While clicking around the site I ran into a few other cool looking things: Swivel (a data sharing site I had seen a while ago, but not looked at since), Particls (looks a bit like Twitterific for more than just Twitter) and Mashery (out of my league for current projects, but a good thing to know about).
Hi, I'm Noah. I am the co-founder of Percolate. I like writing on, thinking about and making stuff for the internet. I'm responsible for a few internet experiments like Brand Tags, likemind and My First Tweet. On this site I write about media, marketing, culture, technology and randomness. I like it when people email me.
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The drip denotes a curated post from Percolate. The comment is mine, the content on the other end of the link is not.
Q: What is this site all about?
A: I think Michael Bierut explained it nicely a few years ago in response to people asking him why he didn't write more about design on Design Observer: "But the great thing about graphic design is that it is almost always about something else. Corporate law. Professional football. Art. Politics. Robert Wilson. And if I can't get excited about whatever that something else is, I really have trouble doing good work as a designer. To me, the conclusion is inescapable: the more things you're interested in, the better your work will be." Replace "graphic design" with "media/marketing/technology" (or whatever you'd like to call my field) and you've got my deal.
Q: Where else do you live?
A: Good question. All over the place as a matter of fact. On Tumblr for more randomness, Twitter for short bursts, Dopplr for places I'm going, Delicious for things I'm reading, last.fm for music I'm listening to, Flickr for photos I'm taking and Facebook because I don't really have a choice. (Oh, and Amazon for stuff I want people to buy me.)
Q: I meant that literally. Where do you live?
A: Oh, sorry, Brooklyn, New York is where I call home at the moment.
Q: Any other side projects you'd like to tell us about?
A: As a matter of fact, yes. There's How Much Does it Buy?, a calculator for the rest of us. Holy Crap! Facts (and accompanying Twitter feed) which is pretty much exactly what you'd expect. Da' Bears Blog is, in my opinion, the best Chicago Bears blog on the web (I don't write it, I just helped it get off the ground) and Tweemail is a little PHP script I wrote for getting Twitter updates by email. I'm also always working on a few other things and will let you know when they're ready for public consumption.
Q: Um okay.
A: Yeah, that's a fake question mostly so I can throw in this one other quote I like that I think sums up some of what I try to do here. This one comes from Albert Einstein (or at least the internet says so) and goes something like, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." Words to live by.
Q: What sites do you like?
A: Well that changes all the time. At the moment I've been digging clusterflock, Beyond the Beyond, Bobulate, Barking up the wrong tree and The Awl.