I am fortunate enough to have once been surrounded by racks of designer apparel, bling, shoes, bags, hosiery… you name it… we had it at every photo shoot. However, as much I wanted to swim in all of that or drive away with it all in my old beat up station wagon and never return to my internship, I sat by on the sidelines and handed my editor that one Alexander McQueen ring, those Chanel earrings or that other Jimmy Choo shoe. She put her talent to work, styling to perfection, asking for this, handing that back until everything was perfect and I absorbed every moment for that ‘someday’ when I could do the same.
Looks as though that ‘someday’ as a fashion stylist is still quite far off in the distance, but I came across a website that makes it feel a bit more feasible – Polyvore.com
Polyvore is pretty much a site with an incredible database of the latest and greatest designer duds and accessories, all at your fingertips to create and style sets that inspire you to go to your wardrobe and see if you have anything real that’s sort of like what you just created to wear. My set, above, would be my perfect and coveted fall outfit. Colorful, yet neutral; hard edges, yet with soft and feminine appeal.. think I may tear up a bit, it’s so perfect! Now if only I owned all of those pieces!
There are just tons of fun and fabulous sets, like the ‘Autumn in Japan‘ sets, and there’s even contests within sets. Celebrity Stylish Rachel Zoe is even up in the mix. You can create your own look from Piperlime, and if she picks your set, you win a Piperlime gift card! Not too shabby!!
Hope you can find time to try it out and let your ‘fashionation’ (get it? fashion + imagination) run wild!
Toobla is a visual social bookmarking service that has launched its public beta today. After first debuting at the TechCrunch Demo Pit last year, and having spent the last few months beta testing, Toobla is ready to present itself to the world.
Even though it seems like yet another social link-sharing service, Toobla’s point of differentiation is the advanced social aspects of Toobla along with the interactive capabilities included for the content you’ve bookmarked. These are useful aspects of Toobla’s bookmarking service, as they present new dimensions to the ability of cataloging and organizing content you clip from across the web.
They’re also important because they incorporate many of the capabilities that are missing from similar bookmarking sites. While some offer the visual features that Toobla has, they may not offer the social sharing capabilities. To be fair, Toobla is very focused on the sharing capacity of social bookmarking, so the personal organization and synchronization features some may need will find tools better than Toobla.
Nevertheless, Toobla is going after a unique portion of the semantic web, looking to find a better way in which to experience the web. That means that the interactive aspects of Toobla are shifting the way in which users utilize browsers, websites, as well as organizing access to those websites. Coupled with the sharing features of Toobla, you now have a discovery engine for recommended web content as well as a visually organized and interactive web experience.
Twine is very similar in concept, in its ability to organize the web around personal and public needs. Both have a high focus on the sharing necessity of clipped web content. Along with other sites such as Evernote, it’s evident that there’s still an interest in finding a way to better organize the web.
While the hype around the semantic web trend has died down, especially in regards to sites such as Twine and Toobla, we are still seeing development around socially aware tools of this nature. We’re also seeing some development around browser-specific tools and new browsers all together, all of which look to find more effecient ways in which we comprehend and consume content on the web.
Time will determine the best way in which this can occur for the every day user. Other aspects of technological and social trends, such as increased mobile usage, will help to dtermine the winners and innovation leaders for these particular trends. In the meantime, sites like Toobla will help to push those trends forward and encourage development in this particular area of development.
Over a year ago, Tivo and RIM announced an app for Blackberry and it’s finally here. I wish I still had the Blackberry Tour to play with this app a little. I’m a devout Tivo user.
The app allows BlackBerry users with a TiVo box to access their program guide and remotely schedule recording. Yep, it’s a scheduling app. If you expected to be able to watch videos, that isn’t coming any time soon. I’ve learned when trying to export my own Tivo’d shows that most of the shows are copyprotected and not exportable, even if I’m just trying to watch them on my mobile phone.
Cheers!
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I admit it. I’m old fashioned. That may seem a silly statement coming from someone as deeply steeped in the digital realm as I, but when it comes to certain things this Silicon Valley geek likes to roll old school. I believe in charcoal barbecues. I believe in hand-writing thank you notes. I believe that white shoes have no business being worn after Labor Day. Most of all though, and to the great amusement of many I know, I believe in daily newspapers.
So when someone started to steal my New York Times off the front step of my building, I did what any self-respecting social media person would do. I launched an aggressive effort to catch the SOB, and began to chronicle my efforts in streaming video.
After a couple of weeks of on and off success in at least getting my paper but failing to snare the culprit I escalated my efforts, as I explain in this video:
Day after day I arose far earlier than my non-morning person self cared to, and I waited. Through the process I got to know many neighbors – those in my building as well as various and sundry folks whose morning schedules took them past my stakeout perch. I realized that every morning more than a half dozen newspapers landed on the step of my building alone. I saw similar stacks of newsprint on other stoops. I saw myriad people walking dogs and striding purposefully towards bus stops – many of them also with broadsheets in hand.
When it came to that daily paper fix, clearly I wasn’t alone.
Then there were my online comrades. Besides the amusement several people seemed to get from my daily commentary, I found a growing chorus of support from folks on Twitter and Facebook. People shared my self-righteous indignation at the theft. That surprised me less than the passionate support that many shared for getting that daily slab of printed paper to complement their morning coffee. Most people felt I should just set up a streaming web cam and save myself the burden of getting up so darn early. Others suggested setting a booby trap for the culprit. Still others offered to come and sit in shifts to help me snare the thief. Then came a note from Chris O’Brien, a friend and long-time Journalist who writes for the San Jose Mercury News. His suggestion? My videos would make a great ad campaign for the newspaper industry.
Some might say that an ad campaign for the newspaper industry would be a waste of time. After all, why waste effort for an industry that, according to statistics, is on the decline? Seeing Chris’ name in my comment stream, however, reminded me that in addition to his being a dyed-in-the-wool member of the Fourth Estate, he had an up-close-and-personal perspective that maybe, just maybe things weren’t so bleak after all.
After a bit of calendar choreography, Chris and I managed to settle in for a phone chat one afternoon last week. Over the course of about a half hour, we wended our way through a discussion from which I gleaned several key points:
1) Newsprint may be black and white but the media business isn’t – While people tend to lean towards a twofold viewpoint (the world was this way, now it’s that way; people used to do things this way, now people do things another way), the truth is that the advent of new forms of media have yet to wholly kill previous forms. Television didn’t kill radio. The VCR didn’t kill the movies. Okay so maybe the Internet struck a near fatal blow to the music industry, but even in that case, things continue to evolve. In Chris’ words, “People want to get into a binary debate that we used to just all want (the newspaper) because we had no choice and now people want the raw feed to mix up their own news. From where I sit what’s really happening is that people have splintered in a lot of different directions. You still have people who value the gatekeeper/passive experience at one end and then you have (people on the other end) who just want the raw feed of all data washing over them, but mostly people exist on the span in between.”
2) Never underestimate the power of human nature - The people who get newspapers in print tend to be committed to getting the product in that form and whether it’s habit or not, they tend to stick with getting that paper delivered to their doorstep. O’Brien related that when the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ceased publishing its print edition and went web only, thanks to a joint operating agreement all P-I subscribers were switched automatically to the only remaining Seattle daily – The Seattle Times. People had the option to cancel, but something interesting happened. They didn’t. Not only did they retain their existing subscriptions, but when those began to run out, almost everyone renewed. O’Brien is not surprised by this and spoke of the digitally saturated people with whom he speaks every day – the venture capitalists and tech company executives whose lives are shackled to Blackberries and RSS feeds. “These are people who use technology for everything in their lives and they still get the paper in print. They still have it delivered to their doorstep.”
3) In today’s rapidly moving world, tactile yet passive experiences have merit - One of my favorite things about that morning paper is, quite simply, turning the pages. Humans are, after all, kinesthetic creatures, so the hands-on experience of a paper has some value. O’Brien agrees with that, and thinks that there’s something even more simple. Sometimes people just want a “psychologically different experience … a purely passive experience.” He went on to explain that oftentimes people don’t want “something with buttons or to click around. Even with a Kindle, there are buttons to push and that’s not appealing to them. They just want something that’s there. Something they don’t have to think about.” There are some who disagree with that perspective, but I’m not one of them.
What does all of this mean? From where I sit, it’s pretty clear newspapers aren’t going away. While some may enjoy the macabre view of a deathwatch, the truth is that this is all about evolution; and as these things go, it’s not about today – it’s about what and who is coming across the horizon.
For starters, there are myriad efforts to revitalize and retool newsrooms and O’Brien has done more than dabble on this front. Awarded a grant from the Knight Foundation, O’Brien tackled the task of building a next generation newsroom for Duke University. His “Next Newsroom” project, included the development of a site on which to archive his research and create a conversation around the task of designing this newsroom of the future. Though the official part of the grant ended in 2008, the Ning network he created lives on – and is thriving. In addition, in spite of the bleak industry outlook, the numbers for Journalism programs across the US proffer a glimmer of hope – they’re on the rise.
Are these monumental steps that will swoop in and save the anemic newspaper industry? No. They do, however, represent positive movement in a necessary evolution – an evolution that will no doubt lead to a new kind of newspaper for a new kind of audience.
As for me and my newspaper thief – the problem has been resolved. No, I haven’t found the culprit (though I did narrow down the potential suspects to one of eight residents in my building). Instead, my newspaper delivery man has adapted. Rather than whizzing by my house and winging the paper out of the open window of his car, this fine fellow stops his car, and physically hides the paper for me every morning.
Besides the guarantee that this great service will keep me as a subscriber, you can be sure I’ll be giving him a nice present for the holidays.
NewsGator has launched a new version of Social Sites 3.0, with features for tracking colleagues’ status updates and streamlining knowledge within a corporate team. The social computing platform is built into Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, giving business professionals the integrated social tools they need to keep teams abreast of ongoing projects.
The two main new features for NewsGator Social Sites 3.0 revolve around microblogging and the practical ways in which microblogging can be used within an enterprise setting. For starters, the Socialpedia feature is a self-assembling wiki of sorts that organizes the information shared amongst team members in SharePoint. The Knowledge Explorer is actually a visual representation of search queries in order to help you find the best person to help you.
The good thing about the NewsGator update is that it’s incorporating real ways in which you can utilize information already being shared across a given company. NewsGator achieves this by automating some of the shared information, while making tangible connections between employees so that they can work more efficiently.
NewsGator has always been about streamlining the process of sharing information, making it easier to track what you’ve already done so that you can better focus on what you need to do. After teaming up with Microsoft SharePoint, NewsGator has taken a decidedly enterprise approach to its products. Seeing the inclusion of microblogging features with this latest update indicates a continued interest in creating value around short-form communication.
From real-time search to corporate use, microblogging is becoming a readily utilized platform that we can pull from. Organizing all of this information for practical use cases has been the primary challenge for developers in the past year or so and we’re beginning to see the ways in which this type of information-sharing can be best converted into readily accessible data for users.
n wagon and never return to my internship, I sat by on the sidelines and handed my editor that one Alexander McQueen ring, those Chanel earrings or that other Jimmy Choo shoe. She put her talent to work, styling to perfection, asking for this, handing that back until everything was perfect and I absorbed every moment for that ‘someday’ when I could do the same.
anything real that’s sort of like what you just created to wear. My set, above, would be my perfect and coveted fall outfit. Colorful, yet neutral; hard edges, yet with soft and feminine appeal.. think I may tear up a bit, it’s so perfect! Now if only I owned all of those pieces!
NewsGator has launched a new version of