Quick link roundup

--From Margaret, an MSNBC article titled "140: The 2008 election's other magic number." The article provides a good overview of the role Twitter has played in the election-- to be honest, I've been using a mixture of NPR and Twitter to keep up with the election for months now. I get my "news news" from public radio, but I appreciate seeing what people are buzzing about in real-time through Twitter's election stream.

--From Jenny W., a Wired article: "MySpace and MTV Monetize Pirated Content With Auditude." If you can't beat 'em, throw some ads at 'em.

I get by with a little help from my friends

Too swamped to blog? Turn to your awesome coworkers for post-worthy content!

From Barrett, like twenty years ago (sorry): Volkswagon taps into the "clean street art" trend. The gist: reverse vandalism by cleaning off parts of graffiti-stricken walls to create new messages. Volkswagon is using it for a green campaign, natch.

From Lisa: How can we use widgets to measure a message's momentum? This particular article deals with the 2008 presidential election, but the concept is much broader than that, especially as we look for new ways to mark the success of viral campaigns. Without some sort of standard Nielsen ratings for the web, we have to be a bit more creative and track the process as much as the result.

From Matt: Some kids can now use a LunchPrepay.com debit card in the school cafeteria, but now parents can see how you spent your lunch money. While I think the card itself is smart, the fact that parents can monitor one more aspect of their kids' daily lives raises the hair on my arms a little. Maybe that's just because I know what I thrived on in middle school, and how little of my parents' business I thought it was. To Matt's point, "Do kids have any privacy anymore?"

And from Ried: Check out Mycrocosm, a new piece of social software that lets you visualize "everyday data." Browse through the ways that people are using a more visual medium to show their little statuses-- comparable to microblogging, or as Ried puts it, a "graphic Twitter thing, sort of."

Ahab vs Fail Whale, Orwell <3 Google Maps?

Something I've never heard about George Orwell before: "I think he would have been a blogger."

This morning, Jenny W. pointed me toward two interesting articles. The first is from The New York Times and discusses a project to put all of George Orwell's diaries online, in blog format, 70 years after he wrote them.

The coolest part of the blog (which you can visit here) is that it's not just churning out the passages, but is milking the inter-connectivity of the internet by linking to maps, definitions (since some 70 year old phrases don't exactly translate in 2008), etc. It reminds me a bit of this TED Conference video, in which Erin McKean talks about online dictionaries: they are currently just digital versions of their hardbound counterparts, but they could be doing so much more.

Jenny also sent me a bit about Moby Dick a la Twitter. I've blogged about something like this before, and I'm a little conflicted: I think it's an interesting use of micro-blogging, but essentially is the wrong medium for the message. Where the Orwell diaries are bringing new functionality and education to an overlooked piece of literature, reading Moby Dick through Twitter is more or less a gimmick.

There! Proof that I am not obsessed with all things Twitter!

Thanks for sending the links, Jenny. Anyone out there want to argue with me about Melville this morning? ("I grin at thee, thou grinning Fail Whale...")

Social media rations: a query

My brother and I were talking (online) about Twitter, and he said something that struck me:

I feel like the more I tweet the less I want to blog. Like Twitter steals all my good ideas.

("Tweet" means "post to Twitter," if I haven't covered that before.)

So there's the idea that "Twitter steals all my good ideas." I've found the same thing: why stretch out an idea that I was just able to sum up in 140 characters? If I've already distilled an idea down to its most succinct form... what more do I need to say? It has made me a more haiku-like person, I can tell you that.

But the thing that really snagged my attention was the first part: "The more I use (social medium 1), the less I want to use (social medium 2)."

Do you feel that you have an allowance? For instance: "I have x amount of energy/time, which I can either spend uploading pictures to Flickr, updating my Facebook stats, or writing a meaty blog post."

Have you ever experienced this? Which social media take precedence for you?

Persistent presence: Twitter & your bedroom

"Persistent presence" (or "ambient itimacy") is something I talk about quite a bit at work. (Jeff makes me do it.) Basically, technology helps you feel as though you're more intimate with someone than you are-- for instance, I know what's going on in my friends' lives even if they live half a nation away because of Facebook or Twitter (or a combination of multiple technologies). There's more to this idea, but that's the basic gist.

I was describing to Jeff how persistent presence helps ground me during business trips. The way I explained it: when you're away from home, sometimes all you want is your own bed. Your favorite chair. Your bedroom, where you know where everything is. You yearn for that familiarity... you want to be home.

I get that sense of familiarity from sites that I frequent. I love going up to my hotel room and logging onto Twitter: no matter where I am (Omaha, Little Rock, NYC...), Twitter always looks the same. There's the bright teal that sets it apart, and my friends engaged in their @fest.

You probably have the same sites that you visit frequently enough that you would notice if anything moved (just like items in your bedroom or drawers in your kitchen). Maybe you freaked out a little bit when Facebook revamped (or rejoiced when Delicious did).

If I could pack up my bedroom and bring it with me on business trips, I would. For now I have to leverage the power of persistent presence and my sickening familiarity with social networks to make me feel at home.

Horrible Widget

If you haven't heard about Dr. Horrible yet, I'd be delighted for this to be your first exposure to it. I just discovered this widget through the Dr. Horrible Twitter feed (yessss)... my teams are always looking for good examples of viral widgets and this is one of the best ones I've seen.

I will probably do a longer post about the Sing-Along Blog later, but for now explore, view, click around and see what you learn. Leave questions and comments here!

Tweeting for Bell

I've been getting a good deal of feedback on the Cincinnati Bell spots... but not through the Wonder Blog. It's actually been coming across my Twitter feeds!

Here's one from newmediacincy, pointing people toward the spot (and I didn't instigate that, btw)... and here's another that danieljohnsonjr pointed me toward, where UCBearcats applauds the spots.

This post really isn't about the Bell spots (although that can't hurt)-- it's more about the increasing prevalence of media such as Twitter in the communication space. Microblogging is so much more immediate, more personal and more one-on-one than so many of the other media outlets that I'm involved in. If you haven't at least checked out Twitter (or FriendFeed or whatever), jump in before we all move on...

Meatballs, Iceballs

One awesome thing was just overshadowed by another awesome thing. Here goes.

Awesome thing: I just finished reading a borrowed copy of Seth Godin's Meatball Sundae. And it was fantastic. Full of brilliant ideas and the kinds of thinking that make Jeff and I bond so well (not that either of us are as ingenious or as articulate as Seth Godin, but we can aspire).

So I climb out of my bed and I'm formulating what I want to say from under the oppressive weight of such brilliant thinking, and while I'm mentally organizing I casually check my Twitter.


Mars Phoenix is the actual, official Twitter feed of the Phoenix lander. This not only marks a day so historic that I want to pee myself a little, but it also marks the first serious, important, world-changing event that I've learned about through Twitter. AND, in another credit to Twitter's instantaneousness (when it works, of course), may I add that I learned about this turn of events before my brother, who is an aspiring astronaut?

me: THEY FOUND ICE ON MARS!

Ryan: LKJ!L@J

Ryan: link me? something not a Rickroll or a picture of a glass of water atop a Mars Bar?

P.S. Follow the Twitter feed... updates keep comin'!
P.P.S. Here's the Phoenix story.
P.P.P.S. Seth Godin, I love you.

DailyTwit

Ohmygawd guess what starts in less than 4 days?

From the Twitter blog:

DailyLit is a nifty service that will deliver entire books to you over email in small, manageable bits. The idea is to read a tiny bit of the book every day until it's finished. Now, Daily Lit has announced support for Twitter.

I am now "following" three books... one, two, three. It took me far too long to find these links on the DailyLit site, but hopefully they'll elevate them more when the project actually launches.

Thanks to a Firefox add-on called Twitterfox, I have my finger constantly on the pulse of my Twitter feeds, and I've been looking for a new Twitter application (Twapp? naaaah) to reward this vigilance of mine. I just *thrill* at the idea of getting a new, ultra-brief installation of a book (or three) each day-- what a compelling idea, at least in theory.

Will it make sense in the long run? Will the book fit together cohesively in my head? (Honestly, paying that much attention to every 140 characters might make me read a book more thoroughly, in the end. Maybe.) The bottom line is that I'm just plain curious about this whole shebang.

And of course, one of the inaugural pubs is a Cory Doctorow book-- how fitting!

Dethroned

...What?! After a fifteen month hiatus, Spidey has swooped in to steal back the blogging throne?! How can this be?

But despite dear Spidey's fairweather blogging, he makes some good points. He even touched on Twitter, which I've been getting a lot of questions about lately. But first to defend my throne:

6 Reasons I'm a Better Tweeter than Spidey!

1. Dude, I said "tweeter." That's ten points right there.

2. I posted it first.

3. I would never liveblog Lost. ...I'd go for Hell's Kitchen.
(OMG no he didn't just kick that trash can 12 minutes ago from web)

4. I have 56 followers. Take that Jeff, with your close-knit circle of 3 people you actually know! (That's the nature of Twitter, isn't it? I have no idea how/why these people have added me.)

5. I also make keep an eye on Twitter peripherals, which can be pretty fun (if not "useful"). Check out Twist, which uses Twitter to show you trends in what people are tweeting about. Or use Tweetclouds! You know what? Just check out this list of 17 Ways to Visualize the Twitter Universe and be done with it.

6. While I'm not a Twitterholic, I can use words like "Twictionary" without batting an eye.

Alright, all joking aside, there are a few things about Twitter that I'd like to tack on to Jeff's points.

First off, to me, Twitter is about immediacy. Things that would make a frivolous blog post are what tweeting was made for. Jeff mentioned that it's about making your voice heard, but I'd add that it's about being heard now.

Secondly, since I last posted about Twitter over a year ago, it has borne a new functionality for me: quick, relevant news. My two most solid examples would be this winter's writers' strike and the upcoming presidential election. By subscribing to relevant Twitter feeds, I keep as on-top of what's happening as if I were constantly reading the scrolling text on the bottom of a TV news show. Especially with the writers' strike, each little bit of information helped build a larger picture--it acted like a tiny RSS feed.


That all being said, if you were to still tell me that Twitter seems useless I would not disagree with you. I would say that tweeting has as much merit as blogging, posting on message boards or engaging with any social networking at all-- same food, different portions.


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