We humans are social creatures that thrive on face to face interaction and communication.   Tom Erickson, interaction designer and researcher in the Social Computing Group at IBM’s Watson Labs defines social computing as providing an online place, application or service that have some of that “life” to them. 
His new report provides a though-provoking analysis of what is “social computing,” how does it differ from “social media,” and what is its impact on the way we work, live and play.

Erickson’s report and interview discussions provide insight for digital designers and developers like Manning, but also important ideas for those in online marketing and communications.  He likens digital designers to architects and urban planners who are creating public spaces to encourage people to interact, communicate, and live together.  He suggests that we look at online spaces in terms of the interaction they support and promote.

It’s a compelling analysis well worth the investment of time.

Post-graduation.

Our professors and advisors warned us to think ahead and be prepared for it, but there was no time to. There were too many thumbnails to sketch, too many emails to read, too many content dummies to print out and bind, too much sleep to catch up on. It almost didn’t matter to us, sleep-deprived and over-caffeinated 3^rd year art students, what was going to be going on in our lives two years from now in the thing called the “real world.” Some of us knew what we would like to be doing after college, but most of us had yet to figure out what we liked to draw best. Besides, two years away was still too far away. If college so far taught us anything, it was that about 43 minutes is enough for everything to change anyway.

But now it’s happened. Suddenly, my student ID doesn’t let me into my home the studio building anymore, I must pay the full price for student-discount art supplies, and the only new email in my inbox is the automated ad from GradPhotos hassling me to purchase the overexposed photo of me holding my BFA degree.

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The legal profession has been turned upside down by changes in technology, new competition, globalization and the recent recession.  Firms have been forced to rethink their business model, to reevaluate their practice areas, provide alternatives to hourly billing and implement new technology, all of which are radically changing the way law is practiced. But many firm websites don’t reflect these changes – and remain the same static law firm brochure websites of 10 years ago.

We’ve spent a great deal of time looking at these sites in conjunction with the work we do for our law-related clients and are truly surprised by what we see. While there’s some variation from site to site, we observed five troubling practices with these brochure style sites. Continue Reading →

Periodically, we like to challenge ourselves and test out an idea we’ve been kicking around. In this case, we asked ourselves, “What if we create a web app that uses the content of people’s tweets to determine what gifts they might like?” That’s the basic premise behind our Twitter gift idea generator: tweeSP.

We’ve just launched the site and so far we’ve been very pleased with the results of our little social media experiment. We’ve used tweeSP to find gifts ideas for friends and family, or just had fun seeing what presents are recommended for celebrity tweeters.

Many people question the value of Twitter, but here’s one example of how tweets can be used in an incredibly interesting and useful way. So take tweeSP for a spin and see if you get some interesting gift ideas for the last few people on your holiday shopping list.

PS – for those of you scratching your head over our name for this cool new toy, it’s a play on Twitter and ESP. Now aren’t we punny!

For anyone following the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the vuvuzela is an impossible-to-ignore aspect of the tournament’s location. A traditional South African musical instrument, soccer fans have turned the now-plastic noise makers into the Jar-Jar Binks of the sporting world – loved by few, hated by most, ridiculed by all. The buzzing noise has gotten so bad that FIFA briefly considered a ban in response to players, commentators and broadcasters complaining about it’s impact on the game. Now, if they’d just stayed in the soccer stadiums where they belong, I’d have nothing to blog about. But the vuvuzela has become an internet sensation as well; that’s right: its trademark buzz has gone viral.
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Facebook is trying to take over the world/the internet/your life! Or at least, that’s the impression someone might get by perusing blogs, news aggregators and general web industry water cooler discussions.  With the implementation of their “Instant Personalization” feature, Facebook basically drew back the curtain on the amount of personal data they’re willing to share with other sites. Couple this with the brouhaha over their almost constant mis-steps and backtracking with regards to their privacy policies and it’s almost like Facebook can do no right.

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Q&A is our chance to get inside the head of some of our industry’s movers and shakers. In this installment, I interview Kyle Smitley, founder of environmentally-friendly childrens clothing company barley&birch. Her designs can be seen on the children of celebrity moms like Jessica Alba and Sheryl Crow.

PM: So in the interest of full disclosure…you’re a perfect interview for what you’re doing with b&b, but it doesn’t hurt that we’ve known each other for a long time. (Kyle and I are from the same small town in rural Ohio.) Do you want to sort of start out with the Reader’s Digest version of your background and what you’ve been up to in the time leading up to starting b&b?

KS: Well, I graduated from DePauw University with degrees in Philosophy and Environmental Geoscience and minors in Spanish and Chemistry. While there I was lucky enough to travel the world and work with a lot of great organizations helping others. After graduation, I took the LSAT while working in Washington D.C. and then got out to San Diego, where I surfed all day and dreamed up a business where I sold childrens clothing in order to fund the dozens of good causes with which I’d worked in Haiti and Central America.

The business was born as barley&birch and we opened our doors in February of 2009, in some of the darkest moments of the recession and right int he middle of my first year of law school. We had no money whatsoever, so we worked hard to get all the free press we could. I didn’t sleep for about 8 months of my life, I believe.

In November, I was named one of Inc. Magazines Top 30 Under 30, and by our first anniversary, we were selling in 30 retail stores, moving into larger office space, and revamping the website we’d quickly outgrown. We have funded 3 schools and a clinic in Haiti and El Salvador. We hope to see upwards of $1.5million in sales for 2010. We will be announcing a plethora of great partnerships and undertakings.

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Twitter has been a topic of conversation lately around the water cooler, for reason soon to be revealed. I think that it is interesting that the “I ate crispix for breakfast” meme is still around. I wanted to counter with just one of the many ways that I employ Twitter—professional development resource.

As someone who works in the web world, Twitter fits nicely in my tool kit. After all, it is folks like us that created the service that is currently winning the Webby People’s Voice battle for the entire internet. Twitter is a representation of what the web has become: real-time, democratic publishing platform and the finger on the pulse for the planet. I use Twitter in many ways, but one of my favorites is as an aggregator for the cutting edge in web design and development. Follow my workflow outline to see how I have put Twitter to work for me. Continue Reading →

We’ve been hearing a lot of discussion lately from folks looking to harness that Web 2.0 phenomenon known as “social media” to help promote their brand/business and generally gain exposure to the millions of people blogging/tweeting/yelping/facebooking/youtubing/what-have-ye. While we’re all for reaching out to clients and promoting transparent interactions between businesses and users, I often get the nagging sensation that some people are approaching social media the wrong way, and so are losing out on what it could and should be.

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Facebook has over 400 million active users. People are tweeting an average of  600 times a second. For those of us who are still wondering who the heck are using these services, the answer seems obvious: everyone…and their mother. These enormous user bases are mighty attractive to any marketing team out there, regardless of industry, and the race is on to translate these huge numbers into something more valuable that a database of a billion daily blurbs about what folks are having for breakfast.

Now, it may just be because I’m an English major and thus love the evolution of the English language, but to me one of the more interesting results of this attempt to leverage the social media masses is the appearance of the social media lexicon in mainstream advertisements. The earliest example I can think of regarding this meeting of words involves the 2007 AT&T ad for text plans:

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