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How to think like a social media artist

Mar 9, 2010 | , ,

If you want to sharpen or deepen your use of social media, try going to art school. That's the big takeaway from my first months here at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. I can't say I'm "going to" art school -- my role heading up the new Social + Interactive...

A novel approach to life online

Mar 6, 2010 | ,

For the first time in a year, I've lost myself in a book. It's Barbara Kingsolver's latest, The Lacuna-- a marvellous historical novel that centers on a Mexican-American who becomes cook and secretary to Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky. I've disappeared...

The message of usability

Feb 18, 2010 | , , ,

Completing an online form that reminds me that when you're the one GIVING the money out, there's no pressure to create good user experience. I celebrated Valentine's Day the traditional way this year: filling out a really terrible online form for a funding...

The beauty of baffling

Feb 17, 2010 | , , ,

It's the nature of Twitter that you baffle half the people who follow you & are baffled by half the folks you follow. I wrote this tonight in response to an old friend who was teasing me about finding half my tweets baffling. It's a comment I get a lot, often from...

An open source bedtime story

Feb 3, 2010 |

Tonight my daughter, a.k.a. Little Sweetie, requested a bedtime story that was "more educational". (Apparently she didn't like my version of the Three Little Pigs, in which the Big Bad Wolf helps the pigs with their unwanted facial hair.) After trying her on the...

We tweet: 6 ways Twitter can strengthen your love

Jan 25, 2010 |

A few weeks ago Rob and I went out for dinner at r.tl, which must have the best URL of any restaurant in the world. A waitress brought us our menus, and asked if we'd eaten there before. "We were here for Valentine's Day," I said. "Actually, I think you were our...

Need a woman for your all-male SXSW panel?

Jan 21, 2010 |

I'm looking forward to this year's SXSW (including lots of panels featuring great women), but I've noticed that the all-male panel is alive and well. I'd like to offer up my XX chromosomes (among other qualities) to round out one of the already-scheduled panels...and...