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Comments Are The Currency of Social Media
Oct 15, 2009 1:17
For non-bloggers it must seem a little weird, all this preoccupation with how many comments your latest post got (or didn’t get). But the comment is the unrivaled currency of social media. It’s the proof that someone listens, that someone cares about what you said. In essence the comment is the evidence that the Internet, [...]
Bruce Sterling’s Forecast For The Next 10 Years: “Dark Euphoria” [#reboot11]
Jul 6, 2009 1:43
Below is the video of Bruce Sterling’s fantastic session at the Reboot 11 conference. It’s very satirical, grotesque even, and yet pretty thought provoking. I think it was the best presentation at the conference, and his 10 years forecast resonated well with my own sense of where we’re going: “Dark Euphoria”. He also introduces the [...]
Quantity Vs. Quality. Does The Web Stupify Our Culture?
May 28, 2009 5:26
For years I’ve been thinking about quantity and quality on the web. There is so much fixation on quantity and anything you can put a number on. Show me the number of visitors to your site, and I’ll tell you who you are. Seemingly the beauty of numbers is that they promise comparability across languages, [...]
Europeana, The European Wikipedia Alternative is Back Online
Jan 14, 2009 2:35
The database and portal for European culture is back online. I mentioned them a while ago as an EU alternative to mainly US-based information aggregation services (such as Google and Wikipedia). When they first launched they crashed due to overwhelming traffic. Have a look. I tried searching for famous wild painter Karel Appel (he’s Dutch) [...]
Only $10.5 Billion to Save the Book Industry: Lay Off 137,500 American Writers
Dec 13, 2008 11:16
According to Paul Greenberg in New York TImes, it could cost as little as $10.5 billion to solve the writing crisis. “According to the industry tracker Bowker, about 275,000 new titles and editions are published in the United States each year. Let’s say we want to eliminate half of them. Assuming it takes about two [...]
Branding the non-brand: The Blackspot Unswoosher
Jun 13, 2008 6:38
I just bought a pair of Blackspot boots. You may not have heard of this brand. It’s not a brand; it’s an anti-brand launched by Adbusters, a network of artists, activists and the usual bunch who aim to “topple existing power structures”. Blackspot took it’s name from the action of erasing the brand of a [...]
The streets as a canvas – for animation!
Jun 2, 2008 8:01
Blu is the author of this amazing street art/slash/stop-motion animation. It’s fairly easy to imagine the process of creating it. But on second thought; try imagining the number of frames, the questions from bystanders (I mean: it’s grafitti at broad daylight, right?) and the sheer creative thought that went in to this short (but actually [...]
Radical drinks pricing policy: Yuppies pay extra
Mar 25, 2008 5:52
I wrote about Karierrebar earlier, a rather unique place where art space and bar room melts together. Now they’ve launched a new pricing polity, courtesy of artist Kenneth Balfelt. According to this, the bartender will decide what you pay for your drinks. The price is set according to social status, sexual orientation, and skin color. [...]
My interview on Advertising Anarchy
Mar 14, 2008 3:47
I had the chance to talk about online advertising etc. on Advertising Anarchy’s blog a few days ago. The blog takes a critical look on advertising in relation to the massive SXSW festival and is run by Door 3, including a few of the guys from the brilliant Austin subculture magazine, Misprint. A few highlights [...]
You must see this: Story of Stuff
Mar 10, 2008 5:27
This is definitely a must-see. Winner of SXSW Web Award’s ‘Educational’ category, Story of Stuff, shows you in 20 minutes exactly how Western society (read: USA) is trying to consume its way out of post-war depression, failing miserably, and destroying the planet at a suicidal pace.