"mainstream acceptance" entries
Celebrities Embrace Twitter (and vice-versa)
When I pondered the future of micro-blogging last June, I wasn't paying much attention to the few celebrities from pop culture and politics using Twitter. Over the last month, the number of celebrities (from pop culture, sports, and politics) who have appeared on the Twitterholic Top 100 jumped from 7% to 46% of users on a given calendar week. I…
Seesmic Starts Adding Features
Seesmic is a company built specifically to encourage asynchronous video conversations. We spent a few hours recently with Seesmic founder and CEO Loic Le Meur, who kindly gave us an update on the company. Four weeks after opening its service to the public, Seesmic recently announced a product roadmap heavily influenced by users. After focusing on making sure the service…
Understanding Web Operations Culture (Part 1)
“You don’t choose the moment, the moment chooses you. You only choose how prepared you are when it does.” – Fire Chief Mike Burtch (Note: I became a Firefighter-1 and EMT in 2000. My experiences in the fire service profoundly influence my efforts in technology. Much of my work over the past few years has been translating and distilling my…
When Micro-blogging Grows Up
Will Twitter and other micro-blogging services start resembling the blogosphere down the road? We are in the early days of micro-blogs and I still remember when Twitter was used mainly for "status" reporting. But more people are using Twitter instead of blogs, following links from trusted sources essentially using Twitter as a highly filtered blog reader. Just like the early…
DisasterTech from Where2.0
I was honored to speak with Mikel Maron at Where2.0 about innovation in Disaster Technology, a topic that is extremely important to me. Here is the video: This talk covers the ongoing efforts of: World Shelters, the UN Joint Logistics Centre, Humanitarian.info, InSTEDD, and Humanlink. You can read about the development of SMS GeoChat, the Sahana effort for Burma/Myanmar (Radar…
Virtual Worlds & the Cognitive Surplus
How much work went into producing all the (language) versions of Wikipedia? The answer: much less than the total number of hours Americans spent watching TV over the last year. Listening to Clay Shirky estimate the amount of untapped cognitive cycles in his Web 2.0 keynote, reminded me of a similar calculation we did early last year. Amidst the flurry…
Fabulous Eulogy for Gary Gygax
Writing in yesterday's New York Times, Wired senior editor Adam Rogers contributed a wonderful meditation on the recent death of Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons and Dragons, in which he argues that Gygax's contribution to modern culture is far more profound than most people realize: GARY GYGAX died last week and the universe did not collapse. This surprises me a…
Neuroscience and Epistemology at ETech
At ETech, I had a fascinating conversation with Marie Bjerede, VP and General Manager of Qualcomm's Portland Design Center. She was telling me how the threads we'd brought together at ETech had validated her own thinking and helped her bring together her private passions and her professional life. I asked her to write up our conversation, and she agreed. Here's…
Teaching design to businesspeople
The "D" in TED stands for "design," and it's become a truism that design is a crucial element of business success. Ask Apple. But the conventional wisdom still maintains that design is a "soft" art, not worthy of attention by serious businesspeople. It's for the designers, the marketing people. And when top executives insert themselves into the design process,…
BarCampBank in San Francisco & New England
BarCampBanks are a series of unconference events dedicated to "fostering innovation and the creation of new business models in banking and finance". Ben Black and I organized the first BarCampBank in the US last year, and it was an incredible experience. (See: BarCampBankSeattle recaps from NetBanker, CurrencyMarketing, Gene Blishen, William Azaroff, and many others.) I'm excited to see two…