I should start by saying the openness junkie and information architecture geek in me is absolutely giddy over the outlines I’ve read about the OpenSocial API.
But, the HCI/User-Experience geek in me is skeptical. The title of this post says it all: what’s the value of OpenSocial to the end-consumer? If I [...]

In the context of the California wildfires, and now earthquakes, I thought I’d share one of my favorite quotes ever:
Words, pictures, numbers, facts, graphics, statistics, specks, waves, particles, motes. Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we need them, we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else. This is where [...]

My music collection is bigger than my iPod capacity, so I have a subset of my albums that I’m ignoring for months at a time. I would rotate these albums in more frequently, but it’s a chore to do this in iTunes.
Anyone have a solution to this problem they like? I’d like to see a [...]

Scott Heiferman wrote some strong words about the New York tech scene in response to John Heilemann’s NY Mag piece. Scott says that if he could do it all over again, he would have initially moved to Silicon Valley instead on New York:
If I was 22 today, in Iowa, making [the decision between New [...]

This is pretty interesting. AdaptiveBlue just released a bunch of widgets for popular sites that have semantic smartlinks baked in. I’m now displaying my upcoming Netflix queue on my blog sidebar (right side), each movie is one of the next three movies in my queue. You can click on each movie and [...]

Oh sweet… cask beer is making a comeback.
When I was in Salzburg a month ago, I went to a small brew house called Augustiner (not the Augustiner in Munich, a different one… though I went there too). I was standing in line waiting to fill my liter when I heard a terribly [...]

Ars Technica has a timely article about how the Net Neutrality issue is gaining traction again in the wake of some mistakes by the carriers. What were the infractions?

AT&T censored political lyrics in a Pearl Jam webcast (then apologized).
Verizon initially blocked a mass text message from NARAL Pro-Choice America (then apologized).
Comcast [...]

I’m trying out a new comment system from Intense Debate. If you have any thoughts about it, let me know what you think (unless you can’t comment at all for some reason, in which case email me… my address is on the top right of this blog in an image).

I saw jazz pianist Matthew Shipp play at Columbia’s Miller Theatre this weekend. He was playing a style he called “Nu-Bop,” or… that was just what he named his quartet… I have heard of nu-jazz before, but never nu-bop, so it was cool to jump into something new.
The quartet played two sets, [...]