Piers Jones

Magazines on a tablet

With the arrival of hardware like tablet PCs people will be able to consume news and media in new ways that build on how they read print but take advantage of the capabilities of online.

I can't help thinking that the iphone user interface has had a major part to play in shaping how that might look for the next few years.

I like this concept  for reading magazine content on a tablet called Mag+ from from Bonnier and can imagine myself reading a magazine like this on the train. What do you think?

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

thanks to one man and his blog for finding this over a coffee

Twitterjobsearch

A relatively new job aggregator twitterjobsearch is pulling together all the jobs posted to twitter across the web. In this interview with Robert Scoble, cofounder Willaim Fischer claims that in the past month twitterjobsearch have used natural language search to publish 280k unique job vacancies to their site, making it one of the top five job boards in the world by jobs volume already.

found on cheezehead

Web Trend Map 4

Web Trend Map 4 Final Beta, originally uploaded by formforce.

A new version of the web trend map, just in and well worth a look.

Via information architects

Essential strategies for creating a successful web product from Dion Hinchcliffe

There is some excellent advice from Dion Hinchcliffe in this article outlining '50 essential strategies for creating a successful web 2.0 product'

Although web 2.0 is mentioned in the title I think these ideas could apply to most online products, especially "start by solving a simple problem".

I have a feeling that this is one of those reference articles that I may have to come back to from time to time. Its a great checklist.

The history of the internet video

Apologies if you have seen this already, but this 'history of the internet' video is well worth a look and very nicely animated.

I had never realised that the evolution of the internet owes so much to the cold war.

History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo.

via information aesthetics

Tim O'Reilly's response to Andrew Keen and 'the cult of the amateur'

Great video from adders from the web 2.0 expo in Berlin of Tim O'Reilly's response to the question 'what do you make of Andrew Keen'

Tim O'Reilly on Andrew Keen from Adam Tinworth on Vimeo.

Simple ideas work best - number 1

3 simple ideas that I have seen lately that have really impressed me;

• Having white roofs and lighter colour pavements could help reduce global warming
• A great simple tool for working out whether a website is down for everyone or just me? (via Lloyd Davis on Twitter)

• Probably the most successful idea from tv series dragon's den is a plastic cable tie, that just got a £36m order

Yep, the simple ones are the best.....

An anthropological introduction to YouTube

A really excellent and fun video on the ethnography of YouTube
from Michael Wesh who apparently is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University.

His original machine is using us video:

From: Johnnie Moore's blog

Book review: Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky

I have just finished reading 'Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations' by Clay Shirkyand I enjoyed it so much I thought that I would jot down a few thoughts here. I'm not quite sure how I came across the book, I hadn't heard of Clay Shirky before but he clearly has a deep understanding on how the internet has had an impact on society and how groups behave.

Every once in a while it's good to take a break from the day to day immersion in the here and now and reflect on some of the changes that have happened. I found this book to be a very valuable way of looking at those changes now that the use of collaborative tools are available to anyone that can get online or receive an email.

Here are my favourite thoughts and insights from the book:

• Some very succinct explanations of concepts like the Coasean floor, the tragedy of the commons and power law distribution which added a great deal to my understanding of why social tools have had an impact.
• A good debate around the changing nature of journalism and how this is now an activity as well as a job. Also a nice explanation of why 'User Generated Content' has value.
• Some good high level thinking about how the obstacles to collective action have been removed by the internet's new tools and more importantly how they might be used in the future to change the way we live.

If you like all this type of stuff I thoroughly recommend it as a good read.

If you dont have time for the book, here is the author's presentation to the TED conference from 2005 which covers the same themes in around 20 minutes.

The history of digital community

I really enjoyed this video (via Kristine Lowe) of Ethan Zuckerman presenting the history of digital community in less than 7 minutes. Well worth a watch.