Because brave trees still give their lives so magazines can be printed (with apologies to The Lorax), why not honor them by reflecting on the past decade’s running narrative as told to us by magazine covers.
Will your favorite magazine stay in print long enough to be in next decade’s montage? Do Kindle readers judge magazines by their cover? Remember when album art mattered?
If you didn’t catch this yesterday, it will be the coolest thing you see on the Internet today. The Vintage Ad Browser has more than 120,000 ads from, “a variety of sources, including comic books, CD-Roms, websites, APIs, your submissions, book, magazine & comic book scans, and more.” The ads are categorized by topic (Celebrity, Coke, Future, Perfume, Office, etc.) and then within each topic categorized by decade.
The Ads go back to the 1800s all the way up the the 2000s. It’s an amazing collection. Be careful when clicking because once you start you might end up losing an hour or two. I just spent 45 minutes trying to an ad to demonstrate how awesome this collection is and got lost. . . It really is that cool.
Take a look at this one with Frank Zappa, easily my favorite so far. What’s your favorite?
Really? REALLY? You might asking yourself. Are we really still talking about Twitter? Yes, we are, and I promise this is worth your time. Like you the daily influx of hundreds of blog posts yammering about social media makes me want to hurl, so you gotta trust me when I say these two articles about Twitter are good, interesting reads.
First up with Anil Dash writing about his experience being on Twitter’s controversial Suggested Users List (which also features the likes of John McCain, Bill Cosby, and Lenny Kravitz). [confession, I looked all that up because aside from Anil, I had no idea who was on the list]
What interesting about this post is that since getting on the list Dash is averaging something like 3,000+ new followers a day, and yet the number of re-tweets, replies, and clicks he’s gotten is the same as before his inclusion on the list.
Twitter followers who come from the suggested user list don’t form real relationships or respond to the suggested users like “normal” followers do. If I’d have continued gaining followers at the rate I had been before being on the list, I’d have about 10% as many followers, but I suspect I’d have exactly the same number of replies and retweets. Before being on the list, a typical link that I tweeted would get between 250 and 500 clicks; After being on the list that hasn’t changed at all.
And for me, that’s a little off-putting. I feel very much like I’ve earned the readers who subscribe to this blog. When I meet someone at an event and they tell me they’ve read a post of mine, or that they regularly read my blog, it’s still a thrill, even after a decade, because there is some core sincerity to the exchange, a real basis to the relationship. With Twitter, it’s hard for me to tell whether someone’s made a decision to follow me because they find my ideas interesting or entertaining, or if they just were too lazy to change the defaults when they signed up.
And this dovetails nicely into David Carr’s article in The New York Times, “Why Twitter will Endure.”
“The history of the Internet suggests that there have been cool Web sites that go in and out of fashion and then there have been open standards that become plumbing,” said Steven Johnson, the author and technology observer who wrote a seminal piece about Twitter for Time last June. “Twitter is looking more and more like plumbing, and plumbing is eternal.”
Really? What could anyone possibly find useful in this cacophony of short-burst communication?
Well, that depends on whom you ask, but more importantly whom you follow. On Twitter, anyone may follow anyone, but there is very little expectation of reciprocity. By carefully curating the people you follow, Twitter becomes an always-on data stream from really bright people in their respective fields, whose tweets are often full of links to incredibly vital, timely information.
Though Carr’s premise, about the value of Twitter being in rigorously maintaining who you follow, on its surface seems diametrically opposed to what Dash is writing about, I think both men make excellent points about the impact Twitter has on how we interact with each other and the Internet.
Many nerds waited with bated breath for the announcement of Google’s new phone, Nexus One, and it’s finally here! Wired already has a pretty in-depth review on the new phone and it looks slick. Mashable’s got a nice little bullet list of features.
And, best of all, Google has a fun 3D product tour for people who want to see what the Nexus One will look like in their hand.
As an iPhone user and devout Mac fangirl, I hope Apple’s paying attention. That threaded e-mail makes me jealous as does the dark interface. Sometimes it’s the little things people.
In between holidays, word of the Nerdery Overnight Website Challenge spread via The Minneapolis Star Tribune and Minneapolis Finance and Commerce newspapers. And, this even more recent scoop, just handed to me from reliable sources: The Nerdery is now reporting that volunteer teams will have until January 18 to put the band together (some assembly required, register here).
While some of yesteryear’s volunteers hit the snooze button as they consider summoning their nerdy powers once again, one can’t help but notice that there are some bright-eyed newcomers on the scene – and they look hungry (is it just me or are they watching us all with the Eye of the Tiger?) Developing…
For fence sitters and those going through the motions of training for an all-night nerdathon and wondering, “what it’s like, in the room, in the wee hours,” here are some of the sights and sounds (the smells are gonna cost you – this ain’t no Jimmy Johns).
We’re Going to be Friends from The Nerdery on Vimeo.
