The Weekend Links Post: No. 21

Welcome, again, to another entirely subjective selection of 15 links, humanely culled from my week's online reading and roughly collated under the seven broad categories seen below:

Selected Highlights from Guardian Technology (Because otherwise I just don't get around to reading it now it's no longer in the print edition).

Why the internet isn't as important as we think it is, according to economist Ha-Joon Chang.

The interactive datamap that investigates and charts the growth of Twitter.

Social Innovation Camp: hacking to make the world a better place.

Guardian Tech is a newspaper supplement, again - online.

Social Media

We are all bloggers now, blogging has taken over the world, according to The Independent.

Diaspora - an open-source, privacy-aware alternative to Facebook - to launch on 15th September.

Books, Writing & Storytelling

JotSpeak: audio networking for writers. (More info at The Compulsive Reader.)

3-Day Novel Contest: for those who think a month is just too long, presumably?

Wylie Agency and Random House reach ebook truce; Wylie now in negotiations with Penguin.

Useful Apps, Utilities & Downloads

Jolicloud: the free, cloud-based netbook operating system is now in version 1.0 and available to all.

The Polyglot Project: improve your language skills, read foreign literature online with a built-in translation tool. (Has a few flaws, at this early stage, but worth keeping an eye on).

Music

Pitchfork's Top 50 Music Videos of the 1990s - and, over the coming week, a countdown of the Top 200 Tracks.

Games & Other Distractions

YouTube UK now has free full-length movies - er, quite a mixed bag at present, though, I think it's fair to say...

Miscellaneous

TIME Magazine's '50 Best Websites 2010'.

The Future of the Internet, as predicted by Smashing Magazine.

The Weekend Links Post: No. 20

Welcome, again, to another entirely subjective selection of 15 links, humanely culled from my week's online reading and roughly collated under the seven broad categories seen below (well, when I'm not moving house anyway):

Selected Highlights from Guardian Technology (Because otherwise I just don't get around to reading it now it's no longer in the print edition).

The future for virtual worlds - and their not-so-virtual economies.

The internet: is it changing the way we think? (Oddly, no mention of edge.org asking much the same question not that long ago).

Social Media

Social marketing, or socially-reactive marketing? Wired's Eliot Van Buskirk takes a look at the potential of reputation-tracking tools like Revinate and ScanBuzz.

Facebook adds location awareness feature Places - but so far just in the US.

And why Facebook Places might not be entirely 'a good thing'.

Rounds: a video-chat social network - think Chatroulette with elements of Facebook.

Books, Writing & Storytelling

The Bat Segundo Show: excellent literature/culture podcast, hosted by litblogger Ed Champion and named after the radio show at the end of David Mitchell's Ghostwritten. (Link to show archive here.)

'I've decided not publish any more books in the traditional way,' says Seth Godin. 'I can reach 10 or 50 times as many people electronically.'

Looking For Truth With A Pin: a 2005 BBC4 documentary on deadpan melancomic poet/musician/writer Ivor Cutler; which someone's helpfully uploaded to YouTube (link goes to Part 1 of 6).

Useful Apps, Utilities & Downloads

Matrix: the flight price-comparison engine behind services like Kayak - but ad-free.

Music

Shuffler: a new streaming radio service powered by music blogs (imagine Pandora fed by Hype Machine, but with stations organised by genre and each new track accompanied by the blog post where it was posted).

Sad Steve: simple, ad-free MP3 search engine.

Games & Other Distractions

Violet: defeat procrastination, or lose your girlfriend; an award-winning interactive fiction rom-com.

Miscellaneous

Is the World Wide Web dead?: Wired asks whether apps and mobile devices are fundamentally changing our internet use; also featuring a three-way e-mail debate between Chris Anderson, Tim O'Reilly and John Battelle.

Unsuck It: cynical and irreverent online translations of common (and hopefullly not-so-common) business jargon.

The Weekend Links Post: No. 19

Welcome, again, to another entirely subjective selection of 15 links, humanely culled from my week's online reading and roughly collated under the seven broad categories seen below:

Selected Highlights from Guardian Technology (Because otherwise I just don't get around to reading it now it's no longer in the print edition).

Crowdsourcing doesn't work, says UK government (or actions to that effect).

Carphone Warehouse launches 'infinite MP3 player' cloud music service.

On being young and lonely in the age of social networking.

The tablets are working, says Murdoch, tablets are our future. (Meaning the iPad, etc. Obviously.)

Social Media

Ian Bogost explains the mechanics of social games (e.g. Farmville) and why he created Cow Clicker: "a Facebook game about Facebook games".

Google buys social games site Slide for $182m, adding yet more fuel to rumours of a future Google answer to Facebook.

Books, Writing & Storytelling

The Marketplace of Ideas: "a radio show and podcast about books, culture, commerce and fascinating concepts." (The show archive on iTunes is well worth a look.)

The author who paid actresses to read her book - prominently, in public places around New York.

Useful Apps, Utilities & Downloads

Marklets.com: "the internet's largest" library of bookmarklets - all of which can be easily accessed from your browser with the site's über-bookmarklet.

Music

Film footage from the Alan Lomax archive of American traditional music is gradually accumulating at the Alan Lomax Archive YouTube channel.

Spotify now has a Google Chrome extension - use it to search for and preview music from within the browser.

Games & Other Distractions

BattleCell: a free massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on Google Maps.

Miscellaneous

Google Wave is dead. Long live Novell Pulse?

Remember Mouse Trap (the Heath-Robinson-esque board game)? Now it's lifesize.

Errotica: the joys (or otherwise) of being wrong.