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Catch up on Alex’s latest publications and appearances here.

Bathroom graffiti, meet social media

The back-to-school rhythm of September has stayed with me in the years since I graduated myself, but it has fresh resonance this September as I'm back in an academic environment. Here at Emily Carr the pace has quickened, the cafeteria is jammed and the anxious faces...

Alone online

When we have no project to finish, no friend to visit, no book to read, no television to watch or no record to play, and when we are left all alone by ourselves we are brought so close to the revelation of our basic human aloneness and are so afraid of experiencing an...

Talking about talking about social media

Daniel Greene has an interesting post about the need for offline conversations that can help us make sense of our lives online. As he puts it: I need a forum for discussion– a structured, moderated, real life, real time conversation about social media. I need to...

The size of social media

No one is perfect and you can’t expect to please everyone all the time, so the best trick is to be prepared for how to handle things if your company finds itself under attack in the social realm. That's the core of Mashable's advice in a piece running today, How to...

6 social web sites where you want multiple accounts

If you're trying to develop a consistent voice, brand or set of relationships across the social web, it's very useful to choose a username that is available on all the major social networks and use that as your consistent handle online. (I'm awsamuel, everywhere.) But...

5 life problems created by Facebook — and 1 solution

The launch of Facebook Places, which lets people "check in" to geographic locations the way they can with FourSquare, Yelp or Gowalla, has provoked a fresh round of reflection on how Facebook affects our lives and relationships. Here are 5 problems that Facebook could...

Alive offline

If the Internet is addictive, then how come there's no withdrawal symptoms? I've been on vacation for three days and haven't blogged, barely tweeted, barely Facebooked, and have yet to check into a single location using the local version of FourSquare. It's hard to...

2 weeks of tips on meaningful living online

Unplugging is not the only way to take control of your relationship to the Internet. If you want to create a more meaningful life and a healthier world, there are ways to pursue that online as well as offline. But you need to find tools that are more nuanced than the...