confused of calcutta

There are many things I’ve been accused of over the years: being Confused is something I aspire to, so I’m pretty relaxed about it. Nevertheless, I take all comments seriously, seeking to learn from them. All of them. So, as you should expect, I’ve been taking a look at the Tonnies 1887 definition of “community”, [...]

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It’s rare for me to buy more than three copies of a book, and Amy Jo Kim’s seminal Community Building On The Web is one such book. It’s so good that, over the last seven years or so, I have repeatedly bought it and given it away. Which was fine when the book was actually [...]

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Thanks to Sean (and yes, I did read what he said via Facebook. Of course.) I was made aware of The Open Library. There’s a lot I like about their vision:
The “Collections” approach to book selection is appealing, so much so that I can foresee a time when I try and provide a collection myself, [...]

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Going by the number of people who pooh-pooh, write off or just plain criticise Facebook, and by the vehemence with which they do it, I’m surprised that they aren’t calling it the F-word.
I feel old and in the way. Seen it all before. In fact, I’ve seen it so many times that I’m tempted to [...]

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The Wall Street Journal, in today’s print edition page C8, has an article headlined Facebook’s software boon. [The link should lead to a summarised version of the article that has not yet been paywalled.]
The article discusses the purchase of Where I’ve Been (a Facebook application) by Expedia (or, more accurately, Expedia’s TripAdvisor unit) for $3m, [...]

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I’m one of those people who likes the Max de Pree definition of leadership:

The first job of a leader is to articulate strategy and vision.
The second and last is to say thank you.
In between, a leader should be a servant and a debtor to the led.

De Pree’s definition, which forms the basis for his works [...]

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I’m not a particularly jingoistic person. I’ve heard and seen too much damage done in the name of “national pride”. I’m not a particular lover of passports either, believing that they’ve become bureaucratic barriers over the years, rather than the leave-to-wander-unfettered that they originally represented.
Notwithstanding all that, I’ve held on to my passport and nationality [...]

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Went with the family to MOMA today, something we try and do every time we’re in New York. It was very crowded, so we decided we’d come back another day; but we found time to visit the shop. Yes, we’re like that.
I came back delighted. Because I’d been looking for a Kyocera Perfect Peeler for [...]

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…this video by Simon Willison is a good place to start.
Incidentally, the way I got to the video is probably the way I’m going to get to many things in the future. I was in Facebook, used Blog Friends to get to Chris Messina’s Ma.gnolia, read a very interesting article on Identitu.de by Dan York, [...]

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There was a time when I was happy with enterprise budgeting processes and their underlying technology support. That time was thirty years ago, before I ever worked for an enterprise. [And that's probably why I have so much time for Sig and Thingamy. Disclosure: I have no stock in Thingamy. Or any other company for [...]

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