2012 End-of-Year Update: Life, Blogging & 2013

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If you take a look past dates on my previous posts (not to mention their content), you’ll notice that this is the first time I’ve posted in a long while. Like my music, my blogging fell victim to the circumstances of Read more ›

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3 Social Media Trends: Segmentation, Specialization & Socialization

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You don’t need need to be an expert to conclude that social media are evolving at a rapid clip. Unfortunately, a lot of coverage seems more akin to conversations about another person’s favorite show (i.e., detailed accounts of characters I Read more ›

The Unification of Experience

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The number of ‘digital’ screens we view every day and the sheer amount of diverse content we consume through those screens can feel overwhelming at times. How our experiences of those screens and the content we consume through them (more Read more ›

The Loneliness of Social Media

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Are we becoming more ‘social’ as our lives are progressively saturated by social media? If so, why has the number of lonely people nearly tripled in the United States over the last 20 years, according to recent research? Observations That Read more ›

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Kinecting the Dots: How Microsoft’s Kinect Could Be a Game-Changer

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Microsoft’s Kinect (once known as ‘Project Natal‘) could be a game-changing platform, if marketers and developers can connect the dots (pardon the wordplay).  Not only does it provide unique opportunities for gaming and other more traditional forms of entertainment, but Read more ›

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Twitter Places: to check-in or not to check-in?

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A giant enters the landscape Twitter announced on its blog yesterday that it’s rolling out an optional location identification feature across 65 different countries to help provide context to tweets. According to the post, “…you can tag Tweets with specific Read more ›

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YouTube Turns Five: Changing TV & Creating Celebrities

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TV networks hate it, audience-seeking creatives love it, and we all watch it: YouTube. Five years ago this past Monday, three former employees of early PayPal — Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim — founded the ever-pervasive video-sharing platform. Read more ›

Facebook Privacy: the Tell-All Generation Learning Discretion?

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Privacy isn’t to be taken for granted in an increasingly ‘jacked in’ world, and many are taking cue. Last week’s security lapse that exposed personal Facebook chats was embarrassing for both the social media giant and its users, materializing  many’s Read more ›

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The Mobile Internet Era Is Upon Us

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Mobile internet is here to stay, and our social lives — that is, how we interact with others, the content we consume, and the things we buy — will be indelibly shaped by its imminent ubiquity. The Dawn of the Read more ›

Considering Social Interaction: Even Techies Meet Face-to-Face

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As virtual communications inch closer and closer toward simulating real-world everyday interactions, even techies, it seems, prefer meeting face-to-face. Last week, I was shocked to read Gizmodo’s scoop that Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt were spotted in person at a Read more ›

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2 Reasons Why People Trust Facebook’s News More than Google’s

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Within a week, online intelligence agency Hitwise reported two big wins for Facebook over Google: a full week of heavier traffic and a higher loyalty rate of news junkies who get their news through either portal. Facebook’s first triumph comes Read more ›

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Internet Access as a Right: the FCC’s National Broadband Plan

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Should internet access be a right? The Federal Communications Commission thinks it should be. Unveiled on March 16, 2010, the FCC’s National Broadband Plan outlines an ambitious vision to make broadband internet speed ubiquitous and affordable in the United States. Read more ›

New Frontiers: iPad e-Magazine Pricing

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While magazine giants like Wired unroll plans to enter the  iPad marketplace by summer, little has been said about the most pressing issue to most consumers: the pricing of e-magazines. Subject to ongoing battles over who has rights to what, Read more ›

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Liberty vs Privacy: the US & EU’s Ideological Internet Collision

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In 1863, Alexandre Dumas, famed French author of The Three Musketeers (and known for his love of women) , and Adah Isaacs Menken , a well-known Texan actress, posed for what then qualified as scandalous photographs. The photographer, an aspiring Read more ›

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Zeitgeist: Superman’s First Comic Sells Online for $1m

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Earlier this week Action Comics No. 1, which features the first appearance of Superman, sold online for a record-breaking $1m (£640,000). This event marks an important cultural milestone in media for a few different reasons, all centered on some notion Read more ›

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The Buzz Around Google Buzz

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Leaked yesterday in The Wall Street Journal, Google announced the deployment of Google Buzz, its exciting foray into providing its own real-time social media platform. Other Google Social Media Endeavors To say, however, Buzz is Google’s first social media venture Read more ›

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The iPad: 3 Reasons Why a Built-In Camera Will Make It a Must-Have Device

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  Rumors that Apple’s highly anticipated iPad will ship with a webcam gives me reason to believe that Steve Jobs’ tablet from on high is, indeed, the must-have item of the next decade. A webcam not only adds value to Read more ›

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Wiki-counter-terrorism & Social Surveillance

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In his book Wikinomics, business strategist Don Tapscott writes: “Employees drive performance by collaborating with peers across organizational boundaries, creating what we call a ‘wiki workplace.’ Customers become ‘prosumers’ by cocreating goods and services rather than simply consuming the end-product. Read more ›

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The Counterculture of Our Future: ‘Jacked In’ versus ‘Checked Out’

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It’s appropriate, I think, that the first post of this blog covers a subject characterized by all four categories of the blog’s tagline –  “media, technology, culture and life.” The idea for the post — the emergent counterculture of those Read more ›

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