Musings on media, culture, and technology
Reinventing the Clothes Shopping Experience
Most of my clothes shopping experiences go something like this… 1. Decide I need a new shirt or pants for whatever reason. Walk into clothing store determined to find something I like this time. Open mind, open mind… 2. Immediately get [...]TV Testimonials: The Influence of Participatory Media on Commercials
Today is the age of the user review — of consuming products and services based on what others say about it via Amazon stars, blogs, and YouTube testimonials. This paradigm shift in how consumers engage and participate in the buying [...]
Electronic Superhighway: My Favorite Art Museum Exhibit
Last May I visited Washington D.C. and was in museum heaven at the Smithsonian. “I can waltz right in here for free?” I saw the historical staples of the institution – The Hope Diamond, Dorothy’s ruby slippers, the Star Spangled Banner. I was [...]New Computer Nesting and Bonding Behaviors
Say you’ve just received your brand new personal computer. Maybe you spent time picking and choosing the exact computer you wanted, or rather you made your selection based on the release date of the latest and greatest technology. Maybe you [...]
Adventures with MOOCs
For the last few months, web spheres have been quite a-buzz about massive open online courses (MOOCs), likely due to the Fall 2012 launch of edX. What do you mean I can take a free MIT or Harvard course online? Obscene! MOOCs [...]
Lyrics Websites – The Best and Worst
For those of us who like to look up song lyrics, the transition from music CDs to digital formats has been less than perfect. Oftentimes one could just reference the tiny words printed in a CD’s pamphlet insert. Now we must [...]
Toys 2.0: New Furby, Skylanders, and Hybrid Tangible-Digital Play
In Fall 2012 Hasbro relaunched Furby, the fuzzy plastic bundle of artificial intelligence for kids. While the toy retains most features from its wildly popular 1998 ancestor, kids can now play with their Furbish pals through a mobile app. Feed [...]
Twitter’s Vine App — Understanding its Bad Publicity and Potential Merits
Last week Twitter launched Vine — a new app for iOS that allows users to create and tweet 6-second micro-videos, often comprised of multiple even shorter video clips shot with one’s mobile phone camera. The concept actually sounds pretty interesting, [...]
A Collection of Weird Facebook Ad Nostalgia
Ahh, remember the good ol’ days of Facebook? Poking, writing on walls, sending gifts, collecting pieces of flair and bumper stickers. Oh, and reading the absurd and hilarious sidebar advertisements. Today Facebook is home to more typical corporate advertising, but only [...]