Filtering the web of social data
The increase in connectedness combined with the torrents of realtime data that are spewing from our personal APIs means that there is a huge amount of data flying around, leading inevitably to overload. This creates a space for both technical and intuitive filters to emerge to help us navigate through the masses of social messages, to find the gems we are looking for.
Twitter lists have given us a simple tool to start creating our own mobs in an adhoc fashion, curating our information streams to align with the topics and events we are interested in.
Through these social liststreams we have the option to keep connected between events. I can say “I wonder what the Trampoline guys are doing at the moment?” The CPX? This is remarkable because it allows us to browse collective conversations on an individual scale.
Take an event like the World Economic Forum at Davos. We can see the official event face, we can see the media interpretation, and now for the first time we can dive beyond that into the stream of all the individuals who are attending to see what they are talking about in realtime. Each context gives us a more diverse array of messages and by integrating the three we can form a more resilient perspective on what is happening.
These lists have a lot of potential to help us shape the way we filter our sources, but remember that as we hit our natural rational processing limits we will need to go beyond these purely technical filters. We’re just getting started.
Your Personal API
Everyone has a Personal API these days. Look at my blog sidebar – I put my photos on flickr, my messages on twitter, my location on dopplr, my places… Read the rest of this entry.
We have got people everywhere
Prince William visited the town of Flowerdale on his recent visit for a community barbecue, playing a game of cricket with the kids as well as Matthew Hayden, Brett… Read the rest of this entry.
Let’s play, with experience design
The impressions we remember of an event are often based on many disparate elements coming together and integrating seamlessly to form an amazing experience. You can remember an experience… Read the rest of this entry.
Leah Culver’s web product guidelines
Leah Culver worked at Instructables (where she laser-etched logos into a sponsored Macbook Pro) before founding Pownce with Kevin Rose and Daniel Burka as a way of sending messages,… Read the rest of this entry.
Which stars will you hang this year?
Between celebratory drinks, new years is a great time to look back at the stars that you have hung in the sky over the past year and consider those… Read the rest of this entry.
There’s a crowd in every photo now
In Washington yesterday a snowball fight flashmob formed through Twitter, somebody decided throwing snowballs at Hummers would be fun, and it was! ..until one of them pulled up and… Read the rest of this entry.
Internet filtering: Listen to the people
Senator Conroy has just announced that the Labor government is green-lighting a plan to censor all Australian internet traffic with a mandatory ISP-level internet filter. Kevin Rudd’s election promise… Read the rest of this entry.
Melbourne Google Wave Meetup Report
Pete Williams and I hosted the first Melbourne Google Wave Meetup last week at the Deloitte Digital offices, with help from Merric Reese and David Warwick. It was great to get 80 people in… Read the rest of this entry.
Who moved your cheese?
I read Who Moved My Cheese? this morning over coffee (it’s a short 95 page book) after Joanne Spain suggested that it was similar to some patterns I have… Read the rest of this entry.
What is my signal vs noise?
I have been thinking quite a bit lately about which messages in my stream people like to see and haven’t come to any real conclusions… Is it signal? Is it… Read the rest of this entry.
Minimal Mac Menubar
For the last few weeks I have been working without the clock in my menu bar and it has been awesome. By taking something away you realise how often… Read the rest of this entry.
Where do the Fitzroyalty go?
Having spent the last few months living in Fitzroy I have certainly scoped it out and thought I should share some of the highlights.
The hyperlocal web market in Australia… Read the rest of this entry.
Invisible Infrastructure, by Brand
If you visit Southern Cross Station at the moment (as I do a few times a week) you will see ANZ billboards and banners all over the place. What… Read the rest of this entry.
Connectedness
There is a big shift happening across the world right now – structures that were centralised are now becoming de-centralised, while others are integrating. This is a very interesting… Read the rest of this entry.
Melbourne Google Wave Meetup
The very first Melbourne Google Wave meetup was held on Thursday 26th of November at the Deloitte Digital offices. It was a really interesting event and really great to… Read the rest of this entry.
Realtime Human Visualisations
Facilitation used to be quite simple – you survey and define your demographic, and then you serve up the things that the demographic wants to see. These days though… Read the rest of this entry.
Reader census / How accurate is Hunch?
Hunch is the new brainchild of Caterina Fake (of Flickr fame) – it is a prediction engine that asks you a few questions and then is able to predict… Read the rest of this entry.
How to run a Hack Day
There has been a number of Hack Days popping up in Australia over the past few weeks. Govhack was hosted at ANU in Canberra, Melbourne Hack Day was hosted… Read the rest of this entry.
What if you lost your social network?
Not long ago I posted the Do you back up your most important stuff? post, so are you doing it yet?
I thought I would do the figures on social networks… Read the rest of this entry.
Bifi = bicycle + free wifi
Bifi was just a glint in my eyes a few months ago but made its debut appearance at Trampoline 2!
It’s a simple idea: bicycle + free wifi = bifi!… Read the rest of this entry.
Pre-briefing for Govhack Melbourne
Open data enables amazing things for everyone – that is what drives Govhack and Mashup Australia.
GovHack is a free, intensive day and a half exploring ways of creating mashups and… Read the rest of this entry.
Donkey Wheel House
It’s a recurrent question – what is Donkey Wheel and Donkey Wheel House? There isn’t much information online so I snapped a photo of a descriptive poster there at Trampoline… Read the rest of this entry.
Micropatronage
Here are #trampoline lightning talk notes, which I will fill out soon. Please discuss the concept in the comments below!
View more presentations from rosshill.
- lot of amazing ideas today,… Read the rest of this entry.
Search don’t Sort: Forget filing, and embrace searching
Search don’t sort: Forget filing, and embrace searching
Photo at http://www.flickr.com/photos/nenaugust/3581968875/
It is a huge paradigm shift but one of the key changes that is happening all over the web right… Read the rest of this entry.
Trampoline 2 topics at Donkey Wheel House
Trampoline 2 runs next weekend at Donkey Wheel House. Being an unconference, there is no expectation at all that you have something prepared before you get there on the… Read the rest of this entry.
Efficiency vs Sustainability in Climate Change
At the recent Creative Performance Exchange meet we discussed Climate Change by sharing the experiences we have had that had the biggest impact on us. Shawn led a really… Read the rest of this entry.
What is Trampoline?
“how to get the most out of the day, including doing your talk (optional).”
Trampoline is an unconference (http://www.scottberkun.com/blog/2006/how-to-run-a-great-unconference-session/) event that is quite similar in format to Interesting*. The first… Read the rest of this entry.
iPhone productivity
It’s not Lodwick’s Standards single piece of paper, but I’m starting with a bit of a standards mission of my own. My first step was the iPhone since I spend… Read the rest of this entry.
Inside Google Wave: it’s time to learn how to surf
When Google asks a question like “What if email was invented today?” it’s hard not to be interested in the answer – that is exactly what the Rasmussen brothers… Read the rest of this entry.
Your Realtime Cloudification
Calendar, Contacts and Mail form a key part of your personal infrastructure. Google Apps provides the simplest implementation of this and they recently announced that they have enabled full… Read the rest of this entry.
These ships are going nowhere
It’s easy to play with numbers to make them look good or bad, but some things don’t change. The economy is based on trade, and if the ships aren’t… Read the rest of this entry.
Stories through sand
Kseniya Simonova moulds the shifting sands to tell the story of the Nazi invasion of Ukraine that began in 1932. It’s refreshing to see what is possible with nothing… Read the rest of this entry.
Augmented Reality is here
Wherever we go, there is always a huge amount of meta-information around us – it’s just not visible without a medium to show it. The hardware necessary for augmented reality is… Read the rest of this entry.
The Survivor Bias
It’s an old story well worth repeating here and considering in how we measure what we do:
During World War II the English sent daily bombing raids into Germany. Many… Read the rest of this entry.
Down for everyone or just me?
I really like this new breed of websites that serve a single purpose very well (Senduit, Feedmyinbox). It’s really a sign of the future as structures break down and… Read the rest of this entry.
Everyday Play
This is a guest post from Michelle Matthews, swing owner and founder of the Deck of Secrets.
It doesn’t matter how sophisticated and serious your world has become there… Read the rest of this entry.
Growing web infrastructure with Nodecity
We often give little thought to the infrastructure that supports the web. After doing a Cisco networking course years ago I abstracted my thoughts up to the higher levels… Read the rest of this entry.
Video is back for the next iteration
Video is back. The last big iteration was when Youtube exploded in popularity and anyone in the world could upload a video to share online. While that was cool,… Read the rest of this entry.
Pete Williams shares the Flowerdale story at #cpx
Pete Williams shared the Flowerdale story (and photos and video) this morning at the Creative Performance Exchange. Pete stepped in to help when his sister in law called for… Read the rest of this entry.
Inside Twitter: Building a platform for the planetary pulse
When TechCrunch got their hands on over 300 private documents from Evan Williams’ email account they decided to publish quite a lot of sensitive information, which has lead to… Read the rest of this entry.
Cloudspotting for beginners with their head in the clouds
I started the weekend with another session from the howies’ Do Lectures. In this one Gavin Pretor-Pinney shows us some great examples of the diversity that clouds can share,… Read the rest of this entry.
Pick your own editorial team
The chatter about how the newspaper industry is dying is massing, again, but recently I have been thinking about how my use of Twitter has been replacing their key… Read the rest of this entry.
Indy Socks Mission Report: Cards
If you saw my recent Mission Report: Indy Socks post you would know that Steve Hopkins is working on a sock company and that he had just gotten a logo… Read the rest of this entry.
Why so serious?
I thought I would share this photo I took near a train station in Brisbane.
Why so serious?
The Peters World Map
Most of us take the world map for granted – but have you ever wondered about the different ways a map can be drawn? Recently I have seen a… Read the rest of this entry.
It’s got the internet inside it
I have been thinking a lot lately about the concept of the internet as something that can come in a box, and that an item can have inside it…. Read the rest of this entry.
Community Action 2.0
At Future Summit 2009 the topic Priorities For Australia In The Crisis And Beyond was one that Peter Williams has had plenty of experience with – working with the people of Flowerdale… Read the rest of this entry.
Mission Report: Indy Socks
Steve Hopkins has always been that guy in the office who wears the crazy coloured socks. You know the one. Taking on the Four Hour Work Week idea, Steve… Read the rest of this entry.
Game Mechanics: Putting the Fun in Functional
Games themselves are nothing new, they have been around for thousands of years – so it makes sense that we have figured out what makes them work. Game designers… Read the rest of this entry.
The power of the prototype
At any networking event there is a healthy dose of “so, what do you do?” and last night at the Churchill Club was no different. The best reply that I… Read the rest of this entry.
Show me the people
The social web took off because as humans we like to have conversations. This is what we need to remember this when we are creating a site – what… Read the rest of this entry.
Your Desktop Wallpaper
I’ve got this beach wallpaper happening at the moment. You can get it from Flickr.
What have you got? What does it mean? How often do you change?
Big Omaha – Jason Fried and Gary Vaynerchuk
Today I watched two guys talk about the future of business and I think they are on the money so I wanted to share them. They spoke at BIG Omaha, an… Read the rest of this entry.
Mob Mentality on Twitter
I have been on Twitter for almost three years now and during that time I have tried many different ways of using it. The progression so far has explored how… Read the rest of this entry.
Emergent events with realtime backchannels
Having run and participated in a number of interesting events recently I have been thinking about the formats that we use, and which structures produce an effective environment for… Read the rest of this entry.
Connect and collaborate to improve learning
I found this little story from Mark Zuckerberg in Jeff Jarvis’ new book What Would Google Do?
At Davos, Mark told the story of an art class he took at… Read the rest of this entry.
I’ll be at Future Summit this week
Future Summit is an annual event that is run by the Australian Davos Connection to share the wealth of ideas within the broader World Economic Forum community with the thought leaders of… Read the rest of this entry.
Meaningful engagement is the key to happiness
Many people wonder in the pursuit of happiness..
From Martin Seligman in the Princeton Alumni Weekly:
“There are three levels to happiness: pleasure, the delight you get from chocolate, fast cards, and sex; engagement,… Read the rest of this entry.
You don’t need a replaceable battery, or that other stuff
When was the last time you replaced a laptop battery? In the past 5 years I never have.
Apple have moved most of their products to sealed batteries and they… Read the rest of this entry.
How to create a winning business pitch presentation
In 2008 I was involved in two business plan pitching competitions and I wanted to share with you the process my teams used to come up with our award-winning… Read the rest of this entry.
Do you back up your most important stuff?
I keep hearing about people losing heaps of important stuff so I thought I should give you all a reminder to back up your stuff (as I run my… Read the rest of this entry.
How Eddie Harran got to San Francisco
I met up with Edward Harran (@edwardharran) before The Hive Brisbane a few weeks ago and he was telling me about how after winning a scholarship to go to… Read the rest of this entry.
She holds the Deck Of Secrets
Ned Dwyer interviewed Michelle in a newsletter for The Hive - I thought I would copy / paste it for you. Update: The latest Apple TV Commercial features the EAT.sydney app,… Read the rest of this entry.
Watching a Yammer network explode
Yammer is like an internal discussion board where anybody can post a response to a message. It helps people exchange ideas and send real-time messages in small or large groups. The… Read the rest of this entry.
Copy / Paste Thinking
Where do you find things to blog about? This is a very common question from people who don’t have a blog and wouldn’t think of starting one because, well,… Read the rest of this entry.
Realtime web statistics with Chartbeat
Ever since the internet began, people have been addicted to checking their web statistics to see how popular their site is - but just as the web has moved from… Read the rest of this entry.
The Hive meets Richard Eastes in Brisbane
Last week I flew up to Brisbane for the first Hive Brisbane event. We have been running The Hive in Melbourne for over a year now and when Mike… Read the rest of this entry.
Entrepreneurial Ethics, what would Alice do?
Ned asked me last week what I think about entrepreneurial ethics and what we can do about it as part of an article he is putting together, so I… Read the rest of this entry.
Your iPhone is simply a new interface
I have been thinking about this for a while now, but it took Mick’s Mobile Killed The Desktop Star post to remind me to write it down. The correct answer… Read the rest of this entry.
Be yourself, even when it is just yourself
How many employees do you have? Where is your office? How much venture capital have you raised? How much will you exit for? In the past, business was all about… Read the rest of this entry.
How to follow an event on twitter
Twitter can provide a fantastic backchannel to have conversations during events. The conversation always varies but you might find comments about what the speakers are talking about, links to photos and… Read the rest of this entry.
The Hive with Brendan McKeegan
Last night we had Brendan McKeegan speak at The Hive in Melbourne (rumor has it we’re starting in Brisbane later this month too..) Brendan is the CEO of EMUE -… Read the rest of this entry.
Video production for bootstrapping startups
Making videos has traditionally been a long, technical and arduous process.. but this is 2009 – we can all record video on our digital cameras and every new computer… Read the rest of this entry.
Melbourne, Meet Craig
Craig is becoming infamous since so many people have been forwarding emails of his posters around the social networks. These posters can be found around the Prahran area in… Read the rest of this entry.
How To Be Interesting
I came across Russell Davies when he spoke at The Do Lectures last year. He has written an insightful post about how to be interesting that I think is… Read the rest of this entry.
Make the real world more engaging with ARGs
I was first exposed to Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) in 1999 when the Metacortex game was created to promote The Matrix movie. In the last 10 years they have… Read the rest of this entry.
Peter Williams talks business at The Hive
Peter Williams, CEO of Deloitte Digital, spoke at The Hive last week. This is the first episode of the new Hive Podcast – subscribe to us in iTunes to… Read the rest of this entry.
Where the Big Picture blog came from
The Boston Globe’s Big Picture blog is one of most compelling photoblogs around. It tells stories by featuring amazing and huge (990px) photos put in context by a paragraph… Read the rest of this entry.
Make your iPhone battery last longer
Like anything if you use it more it will take more energy. That’s the only ‘battery issue’ with any of the Apple stuff – it keeps coming up.. iPods,… Read the rest of this entry.
Less is more with EcoFont
SPRANQ have taken the less is more idea and applied it to fonts.
How much of a letter can be removed while maintaining readability?
The EcoFont reduces ink use by 20% and… Read the rest of this entry.
The Nature of The Flow State
At the last Creative Skills Training Council, Susan Ryan from Artelier lead a live drawing session “Creating Life in Flow – The Artist’s Process”. It was a very interesting few… Read the rest of this entry.
Big Websites Start Small
It is easy to forget that the big popular sites were once small too.
The first version of Digg cost $200 to build and launch.
After Kevin Rose came up with… Read the rest of this entry.
Infrastructure failures a win for community
Public infrastructure failures are temporarily a massive win for the local community. In times of crisis, we take a step back from the world and focus on what is… Read the rest of this entry.
The making of Coverhunt 2.0
I thought I would share the process that I went through for the CoverHunt2.0 redesign. I started this site about 2 years ago when I needed a way to… Read the rest of this entry.
Following the crowd on Twitter
Since you asked, I’m going to share some of my ideas about Twitter. This is not a prescription, it is simply a recipe that works for me. If there is one thing… Read the rest of this entry.
The iPhone Headphone Mic Buttons
The iPhone iPod app is obviously great because it holds your music collection. I have got the home button set so that if I push it twice quickly it… Read the rest of this entry.
It Is Time To Get Past The Paradigm of Printing
I grew up reading books so I will still have a few around me but.. well I walked into the library of the RACV Club in Melbourne not long… Read the rest of this entry.
Get a Gravatar for your comments across the web
You might have noticed that some blog comments have little pictures next to the authors name and others get a boring gray blob. Those photos are called Gravatars or… Read the rest of this entry.
Social Media Breakfast Melbourne
The Sydney crew were getting far too confident about their recent slew of events so it was awesome to see Kate Kendall step into the ring and summon the mob… Read the rest of this entry.
Done One Thing? Now Do This.
With over 1000 pageviews I think it is fair to say that the I will do one thing today idea is a popular one.
Once you have done your One Thing there… Read the rest of this entry.
The Interesting* and Hive events
I’m interested in what makes events worth sharing, both as a co-founder of The Hive and as somebody who likes going to interesting events – so when I heard… Read the rest of this entry.
Aussies get good mileage
A recent study by the University of NSW found the average Australian walks about 900 miles a year.
Another study by the Australian Medical Association found that Australians drink, on… Read the rest of this entry.
Simple web platforms make amazing things happen
If you spend your time making websites or platforms that enable people to connect it is easy to get lost in the numbers and get carried away with things… Read the rest of this entry.
Is it worse to be late, or a serial rescheduler?
I ran into this situation late last year trying to have a celebratory dinner with some friends. They had rescheduled (a whopping 4 times) which really annoys me, and… Read the rest of this entry.
12 Web Services That Shine
I just wanted to highlight some really well-built websites I might not use every day, but like anyway.
They have a strong brand, they have attention to detail, they have… Read the rest of this entry.
This is how news breaks from now on
When my grandparents were young they waited months for news about the war because it had to be mailed from the theatre of operations back across the oceans to… Read the rest of this entry.
Do is the action behind your beliefs
I’m sure you have had conversations with people then afterwards had a sudden rush to do things. The Do lectures are about getting a handful of speakers together in… Read the rest of this entry.
Let’s fill the Melbourne Cricket Ground
I sent this message to the Rentoid Team the other day as a reminder of where we are and where we need to be. It’s now on the wall… Read the rest of this entry.
Revisit Your Old Flickr Photos with Time Capsule
Photographs have an amazing ability to induce nostalgia. We capture them without regard for how we will view them in the future. They are sharper than our memories, something… Read the rest of this entry.
I will do one thing today
For those of us who are hopeless at todo lists, this pad is revolutionary.
I will do one thing today. thing: ___________________.
The pads are available from the Pretty Bitter store,… Read the rest of this entry.
The Rudd Filter Has Been (Phone) Bombed
You wouldn’t have seen the headline in the media, but on November 10th 2008 Senator Conroy’s office was phone bombed. It’s alright, he is in good health. In fact,… Read the rest of this entry.
Silicon Beach Melbourne
Meetups are important. As much as the internet promises to connect us all around the world, nothing beats face to face interaction. Let’s step away from our screens for… Read the rest of this entry.
Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe, in pictures.
Zimbabwe’s official inflation rate is now 231,000,000% – while Australia sits on 3%. The World Food Programme has launched an appeal to feed 5 million Zimbabweans as they say… Read the rest of this entry.
Twitter: Fishing for thoughts in the collective consciousness
Twitter is a messaging service that limits you to 140 characters just like an SMS does. This means that if you want to say something you have to get… Read the rest of this entry.
What action are you taking?
This is an entry to LearnAboutPoverty.org’s Blog Action Day Competition – to win an epic prize of a trip to Sydney to play with Australia’s only Microsoft Surface, learn… Read the rest of this entry.
17 Secrets to Finding New Subscribers for Your Blog
When Darren Rowse made a post about how to find new subscribers for your blog I was a little underwhelmed, but of course he was trying to prove his… Read the rest of this entry.
Google shows their hand with Chrome
Google have expanded their vision. They started off with a simple search box that simply found you whatever you were looking for. That google search page is just as… Read the rest of this entry.
Creating Passionate Addicts
This post has been imported from the Thrive Web Marketing blog in 2006.
Nudie Juice went about business in an interesting fashion – “Tall Tim” wanted to sell juice just like the kind… Read the rest of this entry.
The places Google sends its traffic
This post has been imported from the Thrive Web Marketing blog in 2006.
A few days ago AOL released the data (mirror link) for 20 million web queries from 650,000 of its users. This… Read the rest of this entry.
How long does time fly for?
This post has been imported from the Thrive Web Marketing blog in 2006.
Most of us have experienced the “mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he… Read the rest of this entry.
The Future Of Blogging
Recently there has been a lot of talk about the Future of Blogging, and since have just decided to start blogging again I find this conversation quite interesting.
Before considering the… Read the rest of this entry.
