"Abundance creates more problems than scarcity." Clay Shirky
A lot has changed since the early days of web design, when tools were scarce and skills were in high demand. Design tools, platforms and patterns have become ubiquitous (and often free). Does this spell the end for digital design agencies?Read More →
Social media is the buzzword of the day, but do you know what it means to your business? And do you know how to integrate it with your other online activities? This presentation provides an integrated strategy framework, along with a clear approach to developing an effective social media strategy. View on SlideshareRead More →
I started my “perfessional” blog sometime last year, and decided to go with a hosted Wordpress site (i.e., something hosted on wordpress.com’s domain, no software install necessary). It worked at the time, and the barrier to entry was low. Sign up, pick a theme, tweak the CSS for an hour or so, done. It was easy and it got me going. After using it for awhile, I realized that it didn’t give me the freedom I needed. So, after a bit of teeth-gnashing, I decided to take the plunge and switch to self-hosted Wordpress (i.e., on my own domain, software installed and maintained by yours truly).
It’s do-able, but involves a little DNS tomfoolery…Read More →
The Wisdom 2.0 conference was an energizing event (see my synopses here and here). Not only did it remind me that I had allowed the digital world to hijack my deeper connections with the real world, but it allowed me to meet and reconnect with many inspiring and amazing people (@CDEgger, @alizasherman, @kanter, @sh0wn and @SorenG to name a few). It revealed a hunger for something deeper than bits and bytes in the world, while recognizing that our digital attachments enrich us, and present us with previously unimagined opportunities.Read More →
Want to know the basics of Twitter, and then take it a bit further? Here’s my take on the popular microblogging platform, and what you need to know to make the most of it. View on SlideshareRead More →
I had lunch recently with @SarahKennon, aka Sarah in real life (IRL). Twitter facilitated our introduction by opening doors that may not have been cracked otherwise. We saw some shared professional interests (social media, user-experience design) and found some overlap with other things (e.g., sustainability and green). So, lunch seemed like a good idea and we met. It wound up being a fun mind-meld at Umi in Potrero Hill, a long chat about our professional trajectories, where we want to go and the kinds of strategic and design problems we like solving. While this digitally inspired crossover is pretty cool, it’s also becoming commonplace (andRead More →
Many companies are trying to figure out how to use social media effectively, and hordes of social media thinkers are eager to help (from those worth your time to the snake-oil salesmen). A quick Google search for social media success yields more than 500,000 hits as of this writing, with the top results mostly of the “Five easy steps” variety. While simple recipes can offer some good advice, as many of these do, they can do a disservice to businesses by creating the illusion that (a) it’s simple to succeed with social media, and (b) there’s a one-size-fits-all solution. Dorothy’s quest in Oz provides aRead More →
After years of maintaining a personal blog with professional bits scattered throughout, I finally decided to separate church and state, as it were, and this is the result. You’ll find my thoughts on digital strategy, web and mobile experience design, social media, and anything else that fires me up professionally here. Dusty entries prior to September 2009 are from the technology category of that older (somewhat defunct) blog. Rereading them is like looking at old High School photos: a combination of nostalgia tinged with embarrassment. Some are quaint anachronisms. Some are snarky (and not in a good way). Some are just not that well-written. MostRead More →
ideally, blogs should say something interesting. this isn’t generally a prerequisite, but it’s what i always wanted. i’ve never been too interested in turning my blog into a linkroll, since others do that much more effectively. the problem is that for me to blog the way i want to, it takes time (which i either don’t have, or want to spend elsewhere).
enter new ways to blog: microblogging (e.g., twitter), image blogging (flickr) and other lightweight blogging services (e.g., tumblr, posterous). there are other things that could be seen in this light (e.g., dopplr, YouTube), but i’ll only focus on the first two.Read More →
i’ve been having some issues with a few neologisms that have hit the internet and blogosphere (ahem) lately. it’s not so much that new words bother me (although some, like nucular, most definitely do). i came to the realization today that it’s their origins that can bother me. take AJAX as an example.Read More →