rxdxt

On Vox: Social media is a feature not a product.....

So Chris Anderson has given me my new favorite quote of the week.

I spend a lot of time wrestling with both the power of Social Media and with the inane time-wasting most of it encourages..  I sense there's something powerful there, but wrestle with Wisdom of Crowds, vampire-kiss-of-facebook-uselessness.   Jury is still out on what/why this is important long-term. We all know I agree with him on the long tail niche content theme - won't belabor it here.

One interesting stat lately. In looking at the behaviors of our younger demo at the BBC, we've noticed that email is primarily the domain of old people (i.e. +25) employed, higher earning and retired.

Young people use IM, facebook/myspace. They think email is quaint.. and useless. Maybe this is an age thing? maybe Facebook is the new eudora ?

BTW I'm relatively intrigued by Twhirl - which I use in conjunction with Twitter & Friend Feed. It's rapidly making me like FF more - especially as I integrate it everywhere else - facebook, here, etc.

I'm with Michael Arrington - I want unity of my messaging & social networks. But with Avatar control... like personalities. Just like a human, I want to have different expressions of myself while unifying my control of those selves and selective publishing of their content..  My facebook, myspace, blog, linkedin & even a few others you might not know about selectively share pieces of me with groups of my associates/friends/acquaintances and random people I don't even know. I think that's wonderful and I wouldn't change the different aspects of me I share with them:
- Linkedin says highly successful serial tech entrepreneur with a big Rolodex
- Facebook says adventure sports loving father of two
- Myspace says .com filmmaker possibly confused about age appropriate content/behavior ( I haven't touched it since my last sabbatical)

None of these is problematic until you try and link my myspace to my linkedin with no filters or controls.  there's lots of people messing about with solutions to this headache, but many of them miss the point. the issues are:
- I want to enter my data once. (cue open id)
- I want to update once and change everywhere (ibid, maybe)
- I want to control where and when I publish my data..  (creative commons?)
- and to whom

Lots of partials, no full solution. Feels like a start up for somebody, but not me - I have a big British website that needs lots of sorting out and thinking about.

Originally posted on rxdxt.vox.com

Surface Computing with Andy Wilson, Part One

Andy Wilson, a UX and product genius, demoing the Surface table from Microsoft.. very very cool.

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Mark Pesce - Only Connect

Mark Pesce is one of my smartest Friends..

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Hulu Traffic raises on deals

An article talking about Hulu's growth tied to some interesting deals and the general growth of the IPTV market.

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On Vox: Orphaned copyrights & Burning Man..

So I had dinner with my dear friend, and Lawrence Lessig's mortal enemy, Chris Castle last night at Benares.  First off, that is definitely one of the best nouveau Indian restaurants in history... amazing meal and fascinating conversation. He's quite active - opposed to Lawrence of course - on the Orphan works/copyrights.  Talking to him made the debate much more interesting to me - especially in consideration that my wife and I own quite a few copyrights between us.  His take on libraries and schools is quite interesting too - essentially free use for ANY non commercial use for works which were already public... but the catch is how to define libraries and museums and to avoid the GOOGLE MUSEUM locking up materials. 

Essentially the question is, how hard should people be made to work to find copyright owners, and should the lack of ability to find them make the works unusable.  When we made Who Killed the Electric Car? we had serious issues on this due to our desire to use some footage of which provenance was at best hazy. It's a very real issue in the world of digital where everything has potential permanence.  At the BBC, we think about this a lot vis a vis the Archive.  Many of the rights holders in some of that material would be quite hard to find or could actually be quite in need of compensation.  Personally, I come down in the middle some place: I think content should be able to be experienced, and that there should be simple ways to find/register copyrights as well as simple ways to set aside part of revenues for future claims.   But I don't think we should lock anything up in a vault. Vaults are cold dark places and frankly I'm claustrophobic.

So this a.m., since my foot is still quite swollen, I was drifting around the blogosphere and suddenly remembered I'd suggested going to Burning man with an old friend. The idea is recapturing momentum in my small brain. I think I'm going to go, I need a break, a solo break with 20,000 of my closest non-friends.. and a few close ones. My fear is that it's just a mid life crisis rearing its head - but optimistically I think I need some spiritual/mental space.

It could be a blast - given the right group of friends.. hmmm...

Originally posted on rxdxt.vox.com

On Vox: Flattery...

So I got an email today.. RTL has just launched their new website...

http://www.rtl.hu/

feels pretty similar to

http://www.bbc.co.uk

We were all quite flattered.

Originally posted on rxdxt.vox.com

London is getting so expensive it's unlivable!

Don't i know it.


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On Vox: Live work balance...

So I have a sinus infection, actually apparently a rather nasty one. in fact I don't seem to get rid of it.  I was supposed to fly today on a trip for a week, but went to see the doc this a.m. to get some drugs to keep the sinus' clear. Instead he forbade me to fly.. saying "well, you could fly, but that'd be about the stupidest thing you could do" so now I'm here in London - for a bank holiday weekend...

Actually so far, I've rolled around my bed with my daughters, had a tea party, read a pop-up jungle book with them. Now I'm watching them sleep.

Originally posted on rxdxt.vox.com