wake up!

Joseph Smarr, Plaxo’s chief platform architect, says, “The web is now social, and the social web is now open,” and I of course agree.

In fact, I think a case can be made that the Internet, from its first RFCs, was built on a process and with a philosophy that was already social and open from day one.

Check out all the useful examples in Joseph’s talk (from Google I/O):

Another in my new series of longwinded Aardvark answers made public, in this case answering a question about U.S. history from a 19 year-old in New York State: “What was the watergate scandal?”

Here’s my answer. (How’d I do?*):

Watergate is the name of a famous hotel in Washington, D.C. where a lot of political organizations (and individuals) kept offices and apartments. In the 1972 presidential election the Democratic Party, or the campaign of Democrat George McGovern, had an office in the Watergate. This office was robbed in a burglary that turned out to have been planned by undercover operatives working for the campaign of Republican Richard Nixon. This story leaked out bit by bit, mostly in the Washington Post (the movie “All the President’s Men” and the book it was based on, by Post reporters Woodward & Bernstein, tells this story pretty well if you’re interested, btw) and eventually turned out to be a scandal that reached up to the president himself. As with nearly all such poltiical scandals, it was the coverup where the worst crimes were committed. In the end, Nixon resigned (in 1974) rather than face an impeachment hearing. Hope this helps!

(image found using Creative Commons image search at Yahoo! and used with permission)

*I know the comment system seems to be churning here. I’m hacking on the blog so I’ll try to fix that. Reply to me @mediajunkie on twitter to comment.

I got this question from Aardvark and gave a speculative answer

i’m not sure, but it may go back to the greek definitions of comedy and tragedy, which are different from ours today. for the greeks, a comedy is a drama with a happy ending and a tragedy is a drama with an unhappy ending. either can have laughs in the them. there’s more to it that i forget (tragedy involves a hero succumbing to hubris - that is, getting arrogant - and having a downfall, comedy probably had “plot rules” too), but the point is that those terms have changed. …. I think Shakespeare comedies may be the same thing: stories with happy endings and not necessarily the funny ones.

but what’s the real answer?

hells yeah
Originally uploaded by xian

if it’s really him, why not?

what’s the difference between a duck? - Wolfram|Alpha
Originally uploaded by xian

ok - trick questions are no fair, but hire someone with a sense of humor and load it up with snappy answers, yo.

Michael Port, author of a number of bestselling sales-guru business books, has now come out with a pocket volume called The Think Big Manifesto: Think You Can’t Change Your Life (and the World?) Think Again.

I like the arresting graphic design of the book (a publicist sent me an advance copy) but was somewhat wary of the bold marketing language on the wrapper. Still, I found on opening the book that I was drawn in by the author’s cool, knowing style and I prepared myself to be convinced.

I started reading the book, nodding my head: I agreed with just about everything I read. The prose voice is somewhat breathless, though, and I had trouble staying focused on the book’s flow. As brief as it is, I noticed myself skimming ahead to the summarizing statements.

I found myself agreeing with all of the specific advice in the book and wondering whether I can (or do) actually follow it myself. What most of it comes down to is daring to think big and avoiding the doubts and negativity and small thinking that can so often hold us back.

I like this kind of thing, though I am also wary of it. That is, I want self-help, breakthrough, artistic and entrepreneurial leaps, but I have also seen a lot of snake oil and easy answers in my day. So it’s love/hate with this type of thing for me, and sometimes I adore it (The Power of Now, The War of Art, Money & the Meaning of Life) and other times it doesn’t stick.

For all of the books of this ilk I’ve devoured, where are my masterpieces, my killer apps? I’m still waiting to see if this one will take.

as promised via twitter:

Serves 6:

7 limes
1 blood orange
4 mandarin oranges (medium sized)
1 pink grapefruit
8 fl.oz. Patron reposado
6 fl.oz. Cointreau (or Patron Citronge or any decent triple sec)
rock salt
table salt
3 ice trays of cubes

1. Put six cocktail glasses in the freezer to chill.
2. Reserve one of the limes.
3. Juice the rest of the citrus, mix, stir (you need about 9-10 oz. of juice. If significantly more or less, adjust the tequila and liqueur proportionately).
4. Add the tequila and liqueur, stir, put in refrigerator to chill/stay cool.
5. Crush the ice cubes.
6. Pile the rock salt near the edge of a circular plate.
7. Put the table salt on top of the rock salt.
8. Slide the one lime into at least seven wedges, notch the wedges with a knife.
9. Remove the glasses from the freezer.
10. Wet the rim of each glass with one of the lime wedges.
11. Turn a glass upside down and swipe its rim through the salt pile, repeating for each glass.
12. Put a large mound of crushed ice in each glass.
13. Pour the margarita mixture over the ice.
14. Garnish each rim with a lime wedge and serve.

Designing Social Interfaces - Rough Cut | O’Reilly Media
Originally uploaded by xian

The unedited, 500 page first draft of our book is available now in PDF format for review by anyone who can’t bear to wait till September for the first (“real”) edition to come out.

Yay!

Erin Malone and I introduced some of the fruit of our effort to carve out a pattern language for social user experience design. At the Information Architecture Summit in Memphis this past week we taught our pattern library workshop and then delivered this tandem presentation:

south by, in a nutshell

this is a screenshot of a sampling of the tweets about the core conversation i did with erin malone re social design patterns.

there was one that said we weren’t prepared and were just promoting our book, too.

i do wish we had explicated an example pattern. the summit talk with slides will be more useful, i think. but then this was a core conversation. we tried to seed it and then go with what the room wanted to talk about. that’s unstructured for a panel.

also, we could have walked through the handout all together. live and learn.

Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman

My review

Thanks to Julie Choi who is producing this series and Ricky Montalvo who directed and filmed this five-minute talk. I really enjoyed it and I think they did a great job with it (and the whole series, actually):

In anticipation of the Pattern Library workshop I’m teaching with Erin Malone and Lucas Pettinati, Will Evans interviewed us for Boxes & Arrows, the premiere user experience magazine online.

Will asked great questions and I think he brought out some interesting discussion among us all. Here’s a taste:

Question: I have heard it argued that use of design patterns and pattern libraries removes creativity and innovation from the solution-finding process? Do these criticisms have merit?

xian: I don’t really think that argument holds water. I do understand the concern, and it’s totally possible to apply patterns mindlessly or to force their use inappropriately, but, to my mind, patterns focus innovation and creativity on the leading edge of the problem: the unsolved part.

Read the whole thing over at B&A!

Dave Gray articulates clearly some ideas I’ve been wrestling with about writing, publishing, bookmaking, the web, and social collaboration:

gee and i’ve only met barlow once
Originally uploaded by xian

was JP Barlow idly doing the comparisons today, or is this more like secret-admirer spam?