Love/Hate - My ever evolving relationship with the Web

highschool

What i love:

That ideas flow fast and furious. It is open. All you need to be involved it a laptop, a connection and imagination and energy.
That people share these ideas and the more you share the more your receive. That there is a community. That authenticity rules.

What i hate:

The flame wars so obviously meant to push eyeballs and get attention. It works, but it gets old pretty fast.

You can find both love and hate in this Gillmor Gang podcast. I love the complexity of how to actually filter twitter. How do you make a firehose manageable for the mass? I hate the way they go about whining at each other like a bunch of high school kids. Its like a bad episode of 90210 meets Intervention.

Posted in by David Usher on January 4, 2009 at 8:43 am

Google Friend Connect…the new social network?

Google Friend Connect. What is it really? A bunch of independent Gadgets? I dont think so. I think its a really smart play by Google to create a social network outside the walled garden..out in the open. Without all the baggage of saying they are directly competing with the social network leaders (Facebook is going after the same space with Facebook Connect) Google is trying to build an open web social network running on our blogs and websites. Its really smart. Why do i need to go to facebook or myspace when i gt the same connectivity and interaction through my own site?

Watch the video, what do you think?

Posted in by David Usher on December 16, 2008 at 12:04 pm

Run, run run…can we keep up?

Social media is a crazy world, its ever evolving and moving forward. I often wonder what the “always on” culture is doing to us as a species. I met with a good friend of mine Peter Diemer and some of his clients last night, he runs a company call Hip Digital. We all had our Blackberrys on the counter and it was amazing to watch the light flashing. With regularity and like some modern tech dance of the swans we would each check our messages whenever the conversations gave pause.

This is the new world and it take thought and thoughtfulness to navigate it. Boundaries have to be set and limits defined. I have a family, music to make, 2 bogs to write, a start up that’s taking more and more time (im loving it btw). We really do live in the attention economy. For all of us, somethings gotta give.

How do you manage your digital life? your real life?

Posted in by David Usher on December 9, 2008 at 10:59 pm

seth godin on radio

Seth talks about his new book tribes, radio and “the most important person to me, is me”…its a good listen

the interview

Posted in by David Usher on December 4, 2008 at 11:57 am

Remember: on Myspace-you are just a Tenant

Ive been talking this up for awhile, there are really tangible reasons not to put your eggs into one social media basket. You don’t own the space. These sites are walled gardens and urls and data that you collect don’t there are not yours.

For nearly two years, Mobile had been accumulating friends at myspace.com/mobile, only to receive a troubling e-mail from MySpace last Wednesday. Like a house next to a highway that’s set to be widened, the band’s page would have to be moved due to a claim of eminent domain.

“We are in the process of making MySpace better which requires the use of the URL you have chosen,” read part of MySpace’s e-mail. “MySpace will reset your URL within 48 hours of receipt of this email. After it has been reset, you will be able to choose another URL. The reset of your URL will not affect your profile at all.”

Posted in by David Usher on November 29, 2008 at 4:08 pm

here comes Sni.ps

this one is for the bloggers…my good friend David Gratton and his company in Vancouver are developing amazing new technology which allows you to “snip” almost anything from a web page. i mean flash, text,  photos, youtube videos, almost anything. The application encodes the source of the media and then allows you to tag and save it for blogging or posting later. If you blog you can check it out here http://sni.ps/

these are some of the things ive been snipping:)

tinygrow

Art in Hong Kong 香港藝術

Posted in by David Usher on November 25, 2008 at 9:41 pm

iphone - The Musical

Posted in by David Usher on November 19, 2008 at 2:23 pm

Shai Agassi on Electric Cars

i love innovative thinking, here it is…

Posted in by David Usher on November 12, 2008 at 5:43 pm

Infopresse Conference Oct. 29th

I”ll be giving a keynote at Infopresse tomorrow morning, interviewed by my friend Mark Evans.  Then fly out right after to join the band and bus in Winnipeg for the show that night. Its going to be one of those days, but thats the way i like it:)

Posted in by David Usher on October 28, 2008 at 1:32 pm

Chirp, chirp, bit quiet here…

Ok, yes i know its been a bit quiet here at Cloudid.com. I have to admit that the launch of the album, the full blown tour, finding new merch designs and the new project Ive been working on (more on that later as we come out ot stealth mode) have zapped my ability to write here or comment much on anyone else’s blog. I still keeping up with my Google Reader but haven’t been able to participate as i would like. Anyways I’m coming out of the woods and will be putting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard soon.

Note: I’ll also be speaking on community building and web engagement at the Infopresse conference in Montreal on Oct. 29th.

Posted in by David Usher on October 16, 2008 at 7:49 am

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