Photo: Flickr user gregw
Back in February, I reviewed all the book-oriented social networks I could find and concluded that what I really wanted was a more personalized version of Google Books. The rich related content with which Google surrounds many books is what makes it so valuable. Compare the book information pages for A History [...]
Category Archives: Ideas
Google Searching Your Bookshelf
September 7 07
Altering Finnegans Wake
July 25 07
With apologies to Tom Phillips, creator of the altered Victorian novel A Humument, and book alterers everywhere, I’ve been having a laugh altering Finnegans Wake. Amazingly, there’s a very straightforward linear narrative hidden in here about blogs. Parts 2-628 and back again TK.
The Message
July 16 07
High-rise architecture and mini-skirts have much in common.
Image, audio courtesy of UbuWeb.
See also: Getting Rid of Animus
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About UbuWeb But Didn’t Know Who to Ask
July 4 07
Concrete poetry was modernist in a Greenbergian sense. It embraced all of (Clement) Greenberg’s ideas. The flatness of the picture plane. There was never an illusionistic space in concrete poetries. Hardcore modernist! And it’s extremely graphic. The first time I saw Netscape in January of ‘95, the first thing that really caught me was the [...]
Embedding Your Brain With Box.net
June 18 07
Box.net has one of the best apps on Facebook right now, because it’s so open-ended. Their Files app stands out amid the Facebook app frenzy because it lets you easily share music, video, photos, images, documents and whatever else you can think of via one handy box.
Well, turns out it’s not just for Facebookers. [...]
Mahalopedia
June 6 07
Listen to this March 20 CalacanisCast interview with Andrew Lih, author of a forthcoming book (the first, surprisingly) about Wikipedia. Then go check out Mahalo again, Jason Calacanis’s new well-funded “human-powered search” project that currently has the blog world perplexed. Suddenly it becomes clear: Jason’s building his own for-profit mini-Wikipedia lite.
Wikipedia articles are in [...]
Overheard at the NY Tech Meetup
June 5 07
“Metadata is what you know. Data is what you’re looking for.”
-David Weinberger, author, Everything is Miscellaneous
“The Facebook guys are betting that the next fad or fun thing will be built on Facebook, not the internet.”
-James Hong, co-founder, Hot or Not
“I’ve been writing a blog comparing web 2.0 to hip-hop. The five elements of web 2.0 [...]
Math Blog of the Day: The Narrow Road
April 6 07
Hey, Sesame Street tried.
Up til now my math-blog reading has been limited to Scott Aaronson’s Shtetl-Optimized (entertaining) and BitTorrent creator Bram Cohen’s LiveJournal (always glad to help). But Leland McInnes’ The Narrow Road is the kind of math blog you can sit down and have a drink with, because the posts are long and you [...]
Bookish Social Network Socialization
March 1 07
When Ning relaunched with their “Create Your Own Social Network for Anything” tagline, I joked that someone should use Ning to create a social network for social networks. LibraryThing creator Tim Spalding was ahead of the game as usual and went and did exactly that: SocialCatalogers is a social network for people who make or [...]
The Book Widgets
February 28 07
Speaking of nerdy widgets, Random House and HarperCollins just came out with their own book widgets while I slept.
Both widgets allow you to read and search books, but the Random House widget is the clear winner for its self-contained design. Contrast it with the clunkier HarperCollins one.
For a good example, check out the widget [...]
Startup Your Lists
February 27 07
List of White Label Social Networking Platforms
Growing like Tom’s friend list.
10 Company Name Types on TechCrunch
Compound or blend?
Ning – Create Your Own Social Network for Anything
Now everyone create their own social network so we can build a social social-network network.
What the Web’s most popular sites are running on
Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP.
New York Gets Googled
Google’s [...]
Historical Society Podcast Roundup
February 16 07
New York, 1890. From How the Other Half Lives.
While doing some research for 92nd Street Y work, I walked right into the exploding world of museum podcasts. If you work for a museum and you don’t have a podcast, I discreetly suggest you get with it. Head for the Museum Podcast Directory.
But while I love [...]
The Big List of Bookish Social Networks
February 5 07
As I mentioned when I discovered Wordie and Coastr, I’ve yet to find a book-oriented social network that’s inspired me to register. And it’s not like there’s any shortage of them. Here’s an alphabetical list of all the players I know of, annotated with deconstructive criticism. The bold-face names are serious contenders.
aNobii: Multilingual Hong Kong-based [...]
Novelty Social Network Reviews
January 16 07
I’ve been collecting novelty social networks lately because I’ve been tinkering with one of my own (because who wants to start a blog network these days?). Since I have a passion for both interesting words and fine beer, Wordie and Coastr have received most of my affections.
Wordie is surprisingly fun. Like many people, I heard [...]