Thinking of Ways to Ruin the Internet: The Basilisk
September 4, 2009 :: Joe LoongLately, I’ve been trying to come up with ways to ruin the Internet.
Not by using any means that would get me put on a terror watch list (targeting infrastructure is just so gauche), nor by counting on a well-placed comet or convenient thermonuclear cataclysm to bring about the end of civilization (which would presumably also [...]
Event Reviews: DC Google Meetup and TechCocktail DC 6
August 31, 2009 :: Joe LoongHere’s a followup to my entry about DC-area late-summer social media meetups; this week, I went to two of the events from the list.
The first was the First Official DC Google Meetup, at the swank Lima Restaurant and Lounge in DC. (So swank, in fact, that a would-be attendee posted to the Meetup event page [...]
Social Gaming as Social Grooming: Mafia Wars and my High School Reunion
August 27, 2009 :: Joe LoongTwo independent events have sort of collided for me on Facebook, resulting in something that’s sort of interesting, sort of annoying, and sort of disturbing.
The first event is that I started playing Mafia Wars this month (my excuse that I’m merely doing it to evaluate online gaming mechanics and explore ways to use them to [...]
Maybe You Can Stop Reality From Being Real: Augmented, Artificial, and Virtual Reality
August 25, 2009 :: Joe LoongA philosopher once said, “You can’t stop reality from being real.” Actually, it was Flavor Flav, way before he embarked on his reality TV career (which I guess is an ironic twist, since there is nothing less real than reality TV). I’m not sure if it means something, or if it’s one of those statements [...]
Blocking Twitter Spam Followers: Does It Matter?
August 24, 2009 :: Joe LoongI’ve gone back and forth about how aggressively I police followers on my Twitter account (@joelogon). When I first wrote about this in February, I had 218 followers, and was pretty strict about managing followers (save for a few lapses).
Likewise, in March, I complained about obvious spammers who still managed to gain reciprocal followers, presumably [...]
Upcoming DC Area Social Media Events: Blog Days of Summer Edition
August 17, 2009 :: Joe LoongWe’re in the dog days of summer (blog days of summer?), so things are supposed to be slow, although it just seems to mean there’s more time available for events, meetups, and other types of social media schmoozing and networking.
Here are a few things upcoming for the metro DC area, culled from DCTechEvents.com, Social Media [...]
Twitter Retweets Go Native
August 14, 2009 :: Joe LoongIt seems impossible, but apparently I haven’t said anything about Twitter (save for one or two purely passing references) in nearly a month. (It’s true — hard to believe as it is, I checked.)
Probably the biggest news to come up since then, was the announcement in the Twitter blog on Thursday that Twitter is [...]
Event Review: Unintentional Entrepreneur Workshop DC
August 11, 2009 :: Joe LoongWednesday night was the DC-area installment of the Unintentional Entrepreneur series of workshops, held by Network Solutions and Outright.com as a way to help guide entrepreneurs into building and growing their businesses.
Along with traditional entrepreneurs, in this economic climate there have been a bumper crop of unintentional entrepreneurs — people who, through circumstance, have found [...]
Going to the Chapel and We’re Going to Get Microfamous
August 10, 2009 :: Joe Loong[If this were a serious academic paper, the serious subheader would be, "That Wedding Dance Video: Private Events as Public Performances in the YouTube Age."]
By now, you’ve almost definitely seen the video of a decidedly-nontraditional wedding processional, danced to the tune of Chris Brown’s Forever, which caught fire on YouTube and spread to the mainstream [...]
Mafia Wars, Gaming and Getting People to Do Stuff
August 4, 2009 :: Joe LoongUp until this point, I’ve avoided Mafia Wars, which I’d previously known as “that multiplayer game on Facebook with all the annoying status updates.” However, since I’m trying to look at ways that we can use social gaming to help influence and change offline behaviors (especially in the areas of disaster / personal preparedness), I [...]
