Category: Facebook

Freewheeling about Facebook news feeds

I’ve been very taken with what the people at School of Everything are doing, so much so I had to meet the people behind it; we had dinner together some weeks ago, and I’m convinced they’re really on to something. More on this later, or as they say Watch This Space.

How did I come across them? Through Seedcamp, which I heard about via Facebook, more particularly  as a result of things said on news feeds by Saul Klein and Sean Park, two people whose opinions I trust.

So where was I? Oh yes, meeting Mary Harrington and Paul Miller and Dougald Hine for dinner. One thing led to another, and Facebook relationships were established. As one does.

And that meant their antics now appeared on my news feed. Which is how I came across this video of the Long Johns, posted by Paul earlier today. A fine subprime cut indeed. Enjoy! And my thanks to Paul.

I think people underestimate the value of personalised news feeds of the Facebook variety; they are simple and effective tools to apply a form of collaborative filter on the torrents of information that flow by.

Eye of the beholder

Take a look at this photo stream. 6EMEIA is a collection of young artists in Sao Paulo, and they’ve been converting mundane objects like storm drains and paving stones into works of art.

Maybe it’s the Calcutta in me, but I love stories such as the one above, where creativity blossoms forth in the midst of adversity, and then manages to thrive despite everything.

Before you ask. This was not a random find…. once every couple of weeks or so I visit The Daily F’log, something I’d come across via StumbleUpon. My thanks to both.

Why do I keep doing this, referring to the process I went through to find something? Because I think it’s important. I find tools like Blog Friends, a Facebook application (albeit not developed by Facebook), truly useful. As we learn more about learning and about teaching, we are going to find ourselves increasingly looking at the “audit trails” of how people learn. As more and more information becomes digital, our capacity to do this increases almost exponentially.

Which reminds me. It will not be long before I write Part 9 of my Facebook and the Enterprise series, looking at the importance of ecosystems. I will be looking more closely at apps like Blog Friends within that post. Then, as signalled earlier, I will close off the series with a post on Privacy; if there is enough interest, I may then write a brief “compendium” post summarising the whole series. Let me know if you’re interested.