Hyperlocal Media http://hyperlocalmedia.com/ Producing great sites since 1835. en Copyright 2007 Tue, 04 Sep 2007 07:16:46 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification A Brief Message Khoi Vinh and Liz Danzico have a new site dedicated to short-form design criticism called A Brief Message. It's first Op Ed was published today. It's by Steven Heller and about why he doesn't feel like doing his homework. A Brief Message is an exquisite idea and its execution is stunning and signature Vinh--sIFR, Subtraction.com framework, MovableType.]]> http://hyperlocalmedia.com/2007/09/a-brief-mesage.php http://hyperlocalmedia.com/2007/09/a-brief-mesage.php Design Visionaries criticism Heller Vinh Tue, 04 Sep 2007 07:16:46 -0500 It's a Twitter Thing: You Shouldn't Understand haters of certain social media find messages on Twitter and Pownce banal because the missives are so insular--because the messages either assume/require that you know or want to know the person writing them. If you do, much of what they have to say in streams of SMS messages is compelling or amusing or at least gestural detail serving the same purpose as seemingly random description in minmalist fiction--to create/convey an impression of someone's life--what they're doing, thinking, feeling. That's cool. And I think it works for hyperlocal or placeblogs as well. If one of these sites is done well, unless you know a place...or want to know a place...they don't make sense. That's how inside, how without context, how fuck-you-if-you-don't-get-it placeblogs ought to be. And if you buy that, the issue isn't how to scale a placeblog, or a personalty-driven blog/microblog. There are just so many people who will "get it", who care enough and in similar enough ways. I you buy that, the question becomes how deep can you drive that relationship? How much can you make people care as much as possible about you or the place you blog about?]]> http://hyperlocalmedia.com/2007/08/its-a-twitter-thing-youre-not.php http://hyperlocalmedia.com/2007/08/its-a-twitter-thing-youre-not.php 2.0 Applications Local Placeblogs Favorite hyperlocal pownce twitter Wed, 08 Aug 2007 23:40:53 -0500 If Google could only know one thing about you... doghouse sponsor. And that was so her. Is so her--a distilled and kind gesture that I'm sure is one of others that went publicly unrecorded. One kind and common act chronicled incidentally now stands as a perfect emblematic personal artifact. Now along with missing her, I envy her. For all the talk of gesture streams and Twitter threads, my old friend is represented in a quiet corner of the web by one modest, caring, selfless, defining, casual act. A small part of me hopes I don't find her. If I did, I'd probably send her a Pownce invite and fuck it all up.]]> http://hyperlocalmedia.com/2007/07/if-google-could-only-know-one.php http://hyperlocalmedia.com/2007/07/if-google-could-only-know-one.php Read/Write Web favorite pownce twitter Sun, 22 Jul 2007 07:44:37 -0500 In the future, things will be pretty much the same award-winning Global Warming Campaign, another brilliant one from Marcel and Diesel. diesel_01.jpg]]> http://hyperlocalmedia.com/2007/07/in-the-future-things-will-be-p.php http://hyperlocalmedia.com/2007/07/in-the-future-things-will-be-p.php Advertising Diesel fashion Marcel Thu, 05 Jul 2007 08:24:28 -0500 Marc Aurel Fall 2007 Online Presentation: Badass The site for the Fall 2007 Collection is not just a perfect distillation of the line's design aesthetic, I think it's one of the few perfectly executed gestures on the web. It's simple and elegant and there are more and more welcome surprises the more you play around. Props to Patrik and Dirk at ArtificialDuck Studios. aurel_01.jpg]]> http://hyperlocalmedia.com/2007/07/marc-aurel-fall-2007-online-pr.php http://hyperlocalmedia.com/2007/07/marc-aurel-fall-2007-online-pr.php User Experience Design fashion flash Mon, 02 Jul 2007 17:31:54 -0500 CEOs Must Be Designers, Not Just Hire Them must be. But with experience, I'm learning what a CEO can be. Nussbaum's speech to the Royal College of Art in London is convincing and compelling, but then it was intended for an audience of practicing and aspiring creative professionals...so, of course I'd dig it. CEO's need force of will. They need to be able to sell. They need to be able to manage. They need to be able to attract and retain really smart people and motivate them to do seemingly impossible things. CEO's need to know how and how far to put a foot in someone's ass. Sales culture can produce people with those skills. Product development and marketing can produce people with those skills. What I find interesting (and affirming) about Nussbaum's speech was not just that creative services can also produce people with those skills, but that those folks have a unique advantage--one born of the influence semiotics, anthropology, psychology have all had on user experience design (UX). Money Quote:
Designers are the sherpas of culture, the guides to community, the empathizers of the odd and foreign. Globalization and the spread of the market into each and every traditional village at the bottom of the pyramid opens up ancient communities that we now need to understand. Social networking creates entirely new communities, each with a distinctive new culture, that we need to understand as well. The empathetic tools of design can bring business people, educators, urban planners, hospital managers, transportation developers-everyone-- into these communities to understand their values and rules, their needs and wants.
]]> http://hyperlocalmedia.com/2007/05/nussbaum-ceos-must-be-designer.php http://hyperlocalmedia.com/2007/05/nussbaum-ceos-must-be-designer.php User Experience Design creative UX Tue, 29 May 2007 23:03:09 -0500 Steven Johnson's Outside.in: Local 2.0 del.icio.us, before Kevin Rose's Digg, before Jason Calacanis' Netscape, there was Plastic. Web visionaries Steven Johnson, Joey Anuff and Carl Steadman came together in 2001 and brought with them FEED, Suck, and Alt.Culture to establish a 'live collaboration between the Web's smartest readers and the Web's smartest editors, a place to suggest and discuss the most worthwhile news, opinions, rumors, humor, and anecdotes online.' plastic.jpg What resulted from the first part of that mission was the creation of a new center for new media cool. The mission's second part is what proved to be pivotal, groundbreaking, and archetypal in the history of the social web. Instead of just presenting stories submitted by users, posts on Plastic were chosen by the best editors found on the web-the whole web (including affiliate sites like Movieline, Nerve, NetSlaves, Spin, TeeVee, and The New Republic) intelligently aggregated into manageable chunks by editors under the direction of Joey Anuff, Plastic's editor-in-chief. Editors and affiliate sites were to get part of Plastic's ad revenue, traffic, attention and profile. The money never came though, and while Plastic got a lot of buzz, a year after launch, the affiliates left along with Suck,Feed, Joey Anuff and Steven Johnson. What they left behind was an influential model that aggregated quality content, enabled users to rate it, talk about it, and, secondarily rate the contributions of the participants in the conversation the aggregated content spawned. Plastic was one of the first and certainly the highest profile execution of a social media model that successfully integrated principles still in vogue today: quality content, participation, conversation, attention, and gestures. The essence of that model (participants with high user ranking were recognized and given access to make higher order editorial contributions themselves) is at the center of leading social sites like Digg and Netscape. But, more interestingly, the evolution of that model is at the core of a recently launched site founded by bestselling author Steven Johnson-the same Steven Johnson who co-founded Plastic. This time his idea is more focused...and universal. Johnson's first major web site since Plastic and FEED, is "an attempt to collectively build the geographic Web, neighborhood by neighborhood." Recently, one of the most interesting and dynamic parts of the Web is the part dedicated to local. The increase in number and influence of hyperlocal blogs-maintained by individuals or teams to share observations, impressions, and experiences of a particular place-review sites like Yelp and Judy's Book, and mainstream local media, particularly newspapers as they attempt online to hold on to audiences increasingly uninterested in print have all contributed to a "divided space". outside.jpg There have been attempts to make some sense of the space using aggregation, efforts like Topix.net. However, those methods are "dumb" and yield results almost exclusively drawn from local mainstream media that read like a schizophrenic crime blotter-results that don't contain as much hyperlocal content as they do content only grossly relevant to the neighborhood the user's interested in. But outside.in is more than just a "smart" aggregator. It's built around many of the driving principles and tools of the social web: blogs, geographic and category tags, providing users with tools to generate results that are as specific and relevant as possible, and the recognition that content, specifically hyperlocal content, has a long tail. The last conceit and core principle of outside.in is the most compelling part of the application. Johnson explains:
Local news often has a long-shelf life. One thing both blogs and traditional newspapers share is that they are organized around time, with the latest news given priority. But a lot of neighborhood information is news that stays news: a parent's comment about the science program at a local school is just as relevant six months after it was posted; a guide to gay-friendly bars could be useful for years. That's why outside.in is designed not just as a "latest headlines" service; it's also an evolving neighborhood encyclopedia, capturing all the things that have been said about specific places.
Outside.in aggregates hyperlocal content (posts written by hyperlocal bloggers and tagged by geography) in much the same way Plastic aggregated content from all over. And just as Plastic relied upon high quality contributions from editors and affiliates, outside.in is driven by select content written by authors with specific knowledge of what's going on in their own back yard and a demonstrated ability to report it in a compelling way whether they're amateur or professional. The result is a relevant and engaging experience driven by place. Johnson and the rest of his team who also live in Brooklyn (possibly the Hyperlocal blog capital of the world) have seeded outside.in with approximately 500 blogs from the top 25 metropolitan markets in the country-but the Brooklyn offerings are, right now, some of the richest. So check it out. As Johnson writes, "sit at a computer and type in a street address, or a neighborhood name, or a zip code -- perhaps for your own home area, perhaps for a place you're visiting or interested in -- and within seconds the screen gives you a glimpse of all the textured, real-world issues and conversations and news unfolding in the location you've entered." Photo by Esther Dyson]]> http://hyperlocalmedia.com/2006/11/steven-johnsons-outsidein-loca.php http://hyperlocalmedia.com/2006/11/steven-johnsons-outsidein-loca.php Local Visionaries aggregators Favorite hyperlocal Steven Johnson Wed, 01 Nov 2006 22:07:11 -0500