Andrew Lark

Moderating comments...

Here's how the New York Times moderates comments... Marci Alboher, NYT blogger, explains her responsibility -- here is the Times' official policy.

Interesting web aps

Lachlan has some interesting thoughts on cool web apps based on a tweetvey (twitter survey...)... And Richard weighs in with his...

Imeem (I'm enjoying exploring this admittedly trendy music site, especially the playlists), soup.io (an underrated lifestreaming app, better than Tumblr IMHO, with full-text feeds and loads of ajaxy goodness), and... Cuil. No I'm kidding about the last one. The third is Basecamp (the online project management service that keeps our RWW business on track and organized; maybe stretching to call it 'exciting', but as a business app it does the business).

Lachlan said that his favorite 3 things online were Twitter (www.twitter.com), Tumblr (www.tumblr.com) and Fire Eagle (www.fireeagle.yahoo.net).

I'm enjoying Jott, Twitter and Songza

Spot The Dell Laptop...

Watching the Olympics the other night us Dellies couldn't help but notice the Dells in use everywhere... Take a look at the judges at the Gymnastics... Umpires at the basketball...

Cool Social Media Map

Love this diagram from over at Brian Solis' blog and on Flickr.

The myth of the creative class

Really interesting post from Jeff Jarvis (hat tip to Stowe for the pointer). The concept of harnessing the power of community to make design and product choices more efficient is a brilliant notion - The Wisdom of Crowds put into practice. Love it.

The internet doesn’t make us more creative, I don’t think. But it does enable what we create to be seen, heard, and used. It enables every creator to find a public, the public he or she merits. And that takes creation out of the proprietary hands of the supposed creative class.

I'm not sure about the last sentence. The issue is you've got have the right product to begin with. And that's where the creative class holds court. Using Ryz as an example - if the creative class didn't design the sneaker, the masses wouldn't get to color it. I could be splitting hairs, but for me creativity runs deeper than coloring in the spaces between lines. It doesn't make the act less fun, or even useful. And, to Jeff's point, technology and participation become points of differentiation:

The curmudgeons also argue that this level playing field is flooded with crap: a loss of taste and discrimination. I’ll argue just the opposite: Only the playing field is flat and to stand out one must now do so on merit - as defined by the public rather than the priests - which will be rewarded with links and attention. This is our link economy, our culture of links. It is a meritocracy, only now there are many definitions of merit and each must be earned.

Competitive Analytics

Great post on competitive analytics. Never fails to amaze me how many PR Pros aren't aware of all the great free services out there that can give them insight into how both their site and keywords are doing.

As much as we focus on messages as communicators, we also need to focus on keywords and their overall performance. Keywords are much more than search teams... they are the language the people are using to talk about your products. Moreover, this is where the communications and web strategy has to dovetail.

The Trolls Among Us...

Missed this one in the NYTimes... interesting read on online trolls:

In the late 1980s, Internet users adopted the word “troll” to denote someone who intentionally disrupts online communities. Early trolling was relatively innocuous, taking place inside of small, single-topic Usenet groups. The trolls employed what the M.I.T. professor Judith Donath calls a “pseudo-naïve” tactic, asking stupid questions and seeing who would rise to the bait. The game was to find out who would see through this stereotypical newbie behavior, and who would fall for it. As one guide to trolldom puts it, “If you don’t fall for the joke, you get to be in on it.”

Wow, perfect description for all those bloggers on ZDNet...

A Night At the Opera

For us Kiwis, Janet Frame is an icon - same for most of the literary world. I finally made my way through a stack of New Yorkers this week only to discover a newly discovered story of hers. The last paragraph left me breathless - it is a remarkable piece of writing:

So we went to bed, assaulted by sleep that fumed at us from medicine glasses, or was wielded from small sweet-coated tablets—dainty bricks of dream wrapped in the silk stockings of oblivion. The shutters were closed across the wooden moon. Outside, in the hospital grounds, where the gardens were, a fake wind shook the cardboard trees in a riot of collapsing mirth. Then the day’s thin scenery toppled over, revealing the true dark. A real wind came blowing clearly, without pretense or laughter, from the cold actual sea, and spread its layers of knives across the empty stage. Unless it was protected by some miracle of faith, tomorrow would bleed, walking here.