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  • The Big Lebowski (Limited Edition) [Blu-ray Book + Digital Copy]
    The Big Lebowski (Limited Edition) [Blu-ray Book + Digital Copy]
    starring Jeff Bridges, John Goodman
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    The Big Lebowski (Widescreen Collector's Edition)
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    The Big Lebowski - 10th Anniversary Limited Edition
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Tuesday
Jan082008

links for 2008-01-09

AuthorYoung Urban Professional

Comment3 Comments
Tuesday
Jan082008

The Lazysphere and the Decline of Deep Blogging

AuthorYoung Urban Professional

Lazy Cow by law_keven

Tech bloggers (and I put myself squarely in this group), I am sorry to report that many of us have become lazy - really lazy. So, with this in mind I offer a challenge: in 2008 let's strap back on our thinking caps and get our blog mojo back. Let's kill the Lazysphere once and for all.

The Lazysphere - a working definition - is a group of bloggers who I won't name by name, but you can spot them a mile away. Rather than create new ideas or pen thoughtful essays, they simply glom on to the latest news with another "me too" blog post. Their goal is largely to land on Techmeme and sometimes digg - perhaps Google in an archival/Long Tail perspective. These sites - and Twitter too - have perpetuated a lot of lackadaisical writing. The Attention Crash is another factor at work here. People don't have as much time to think.

If you want to see the Lazysphere in the wild, I encourage you to take a look a two resources. The first is this terrific video that Amit Argawal put together. It distills 50 hours in the life of Techmeme down to 50 seconds. It shows how often bloggers will gather like a pack of wolves around news that will be largely forgotten in a month. The other is digg swarm.

Somewhere circa 2006 the tech blogger mindset shifted - at least among the majority. People who used to work hard creating and spreading big ideas resorted to simply regurgitating the same old news over and over again, often with very little value add. It's almost like we stopped the real work of reading, thinking and writing in favor of going all herd, all the time.

My blogging New Year's resolution is to quit The Lazysphere. I can't go cold turkey reading it, but I aim to avoid using my blog to perpetuate it. To inspire me (and perhaps you) I have started a category of feeds in my Google Reader that include a group of people I feel really think - and do so often. You can browse or subscribe to the feed stream here. A list follows below. I plan to add or subtract to these over time.

Who's with me? Can we kill the Lazysphere this year? That's a challenge that I feel is vital to the future of blogging.


Comment58 Comments
Thursday
Jan032008

links for 2008-01-04

AuthorYoung Urban Professional

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Monday
Dec312007

2008 Digital Trends Part II: Living Room 2.0

AuthorYoung Urban Professional


Entertainment, Mac Fan Version by Horrortaxi

This is the second in a series of posts on the big digital trends to watch in 2008. Part I is here.

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For much of the 20th Century, the living room was our virtual social hub - a tangential connection to the broader world around us. The experiences, however, were never really social. However, they felt that way because we all experienced the same events from the same spot in our homes at precisely the same time.

Let's call this era Living Room 1.0. It was marked by dates like December 8, 1941 when 81 million of us flocked to the living room to get closer to the radio to hear FDR's famous "Infamy speech." Years later, as television began to dominate, it was where we "participated" in major global events, such as the Challenger Disaster, the Thrilla in Manila or Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon. The living room kindles strong memories (both positive and negative) for anyone 30 or older. And while the technology changed from radio to TVs and later video games, the experiences were really universal.

In the broadband era, however, the living room appears to have lost relevance. Today, the web is where we turn connect with others - and the connections are real, not imagined.

Consider, for example, the big news this week - the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Many of us I bet, unlike days of old, did not participate in this global event from our living rooms. Rather, we did so in real-time with peers on Twitter via a gaggle of connected devices that really can be anywhere - bedrooms, offices, home offices or, above all, our pockets. (Consider too that Bhutto's son and heir apparent is a Facebook user.)

So is the living room as a social hub dying? Hardly. It's quietly undergoing a revival - dare we call it Living Room 2.0. The revolution started with the advent of HDTV, which is now in 13% of US homes and growing - slowly. However, the real magic happens when we connect Internet-enabled devices and services to those sets. Suddenly, the living room becomes social again because it bridges our offline connections (the family) to our online friends around the world.

Right now it's largely the early adopters who are benefiting from the revival of the living room as a social hub. There are very few Robert Scobles of the world who connect Mac Minis to 50" TVs so they can use Dave Winer's Flickr Fan to view photos of their friends in glorious hi-def. This will change, however, as the devices get simpler, cheaper and the benefits are more pronounced.

For example, one of the biggest Living Room 2.0 successes is arguably XBox Live, which is now becoming a social network. (Edelman handles all XBox PR for Microsoft.) They won't be alone. By the end of 2008 every device that already has a place in an home theater set-up will connect not only to the web but, increasingly, to existing social networking platforms like OpenSocial, MySpace, Facebook and others. This means that devices like the Wii, Slingbox, Vudu, TiVo, Apple TV or even your trusty digital cable set-top box will start to allow you to connect with the rest of the world online. And then it will become more mainstream.

So don't reminisce about the days of old when we gathered around the TV or radio and felt a sense of connection to the world at large. What's old is new again. This time your living room is going to get a lot more crowded. Get ready to invite the world over because Living Room 2.0 is going mainstream in 2008.

Comment8 Comments
Sunday
Dec302007

links for 2007-12-31

AuthorYoung Urban Professional

Comment1 Comment
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