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Coming to terms with groupness, on- and offline
Oct 6, 2010 | How to build community online, Community
How your life online can satisfy your need for belonging, community and “groupness”.
Locative technologies help us redefine what presence means
Oct 5, 2010 | Self
Simon King has a provocative blog post about the relationship between using technologies on-location, and actually being present in the location where you're checking. He begins by comparing e-readers and smartphones to books or magazines: In my experience, there is a...
Eat my words: a dinner club for copy editors
Oct 4, 2010 | Lifestyle
Rob and I love to go out for dinner, but food is rarely the highlight of the meal. Usually, the high point is the process of copy editing the menu. It's rare (virtually unheard of!) for us to dine at a restaurant that is typo-free, grammatically correct and...
Show + Tech: What I did on my summer vacation
Sep 30, 2010 | SIM
Stinky socks. Talking dogs. Dancing jelly beans. We got to see all of the above -- and more! -- at the SIM Centre's inaugural show + tech. Show + tech is a chance for members of Vancouver's business, art and technology communities to connect with the faculty, students...
Strengthening weak ties online: A first response to Gladwell’s take on social media activism
Sep 27, 2010 | Community
Malcolm Gladwell has a new piece on Twitter, Facebook and social activism that is a must-read for people working at the intersection of politics and technology, and which feels especially timely after spending the past five days at Web of Change. He argues that the...
Students use the internet to keep in touch with parents | Easier
Sep 24, 2010 | Family
A UK insurance firm has released the results of a study that looks at how students use the internet to keep in touch with parents: According to the study, parents rely heavily on social media platforms like Facebook to keep tabs on their children once they've left...
Addicted to Internet addiction
Sep 23, 2010 | Self
Thanks to Tonic for pointing me towards Mark Malkoff's unusual retreat from supposed Internet addiction: by spending 5 days offline, in the bathroom. Malkoff's stunt was clearly more relevant as fodder for his online videos that as an insightful investigation into...
The accidental online society
Sep 22, 2010 | Community
Anil Dash's blog post last week on The Facebook Reckoning includes this terrific summary of what's at stake for us in inventing our new, social media-ted society: But what if I weren't my own boss? What if my family couldn't accept parts of my identity? What if I...
Keep your Facebook friends from revealing your secrets
Sep 21, 2010 | Relationships
The T-List has a very readable, useful and detailed post, Are Your Facebook Friends Revealing Secrets? The post points out that when you leave a post on a friend's Facebook wall, their privacy settings (whether they allow their wall posts to be viewed only by friends,...
Another voice for your real life online
Sep 20, 2010 | Self
Suzanne Moore at the Mail Online has written my favorite recent social media polemic, Why my friends on Facebook and Twitter matter as much as those in the real world. As a journalist, I am a fan of both Facebook and Twitter and am rather bored of people telling me...