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The talk I gave last fall at the Institute of Design’s 2007 Design Research conference is now available as a video!

It’s probably one of the funniest (and most fun) talks I’ve ever given. Enjoy!

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The bulk of SG Foo Camp was staged on Saturday with talks from 10am to 10pm.

It was interesting to get a feel for the recurring issues. The really big issues are social in nature: user expectations, data ownership and, of course, social network portability. On the technical side, I was struck by how big XMPP has become. It’s something I know next to nothing about. It was really gratifying to see how established XFN has become. It came up time and time again as key component in glueing social networks together. It’s going to really explode now that the Google SG API has launched.

Speaking of which, the day kicked off with Brad Fitzpatrick and Kevin Marks answering questions about the API. The unanswered question right now is also the most exciting: how are people going to use it?

After that, Chris and Steve did a run-down of DiSo. During the following break, I was having a nice chat with Rohit Khare about social objects. Somehow we got onto the subject of Hackfight and I mentioned Justin Hall who was a big inspiration. I looked around and who did I see but… Justin Hall! Cue the next conversation.

Matthew Rothenberg from Flickr asked me to come along to a discussion on user expectations to share my story of the Adactio Elsewhere shitstorm. Then I listened to Tom share his excitement about Fire Eagle before slipping out to join in a discussion about games and play.

During the dinner break, I took the opportunity to gather together my fellow South by Southwest panelists, all of whom are here. I have feeling that the panel is going to be teh awsum.

After dinner, it was my turn to host a session. My subject was the password anti-pattern. Brave representatives from Facebook, Plaxo, Twitter, LinkedIn, Dopplr and Pownce showed up to be named and shamed (though most of the shame was reserved for Google in not providing an API for contacts). I can’t talk too much about some of the things that were said but it was by turns frustrating, exhilarating, inspiring and depressing. Someone pointed out that the session was like a bunch of oil barons gathered around a table discussing the impact of environmental issues on the bottom line. I guess I was the tree-hugging activist.

All in all, it was quite a day; full of good chat with interesting people. Needless to say, I’m now exhausted. I don’t know if I even have the energy for Werewolf.

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Tagged with sgfoo2008

Interactions Magazine is now online. Read up.

All the links you can handle regarding Google’s Social Graph API.

Shaun Inman shows the role geometry played in the Mint logo.

Easy podcast recording remotely using a few cheap tools.

Blink Interactive shares their informal design library. Neat stuff.

If Tufte redesigned the iPhone. And, a response.

Some controversial thoughts on debunking the Tipping Point.

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I didn't expect to be writing this, when the iPod touch was launched I saw it as a bit of a pointless device, it had only a few applications and the capacity sounded small compared to the other iPods, however a friend of mine just bought an iPhone and decided to sell his iPod touch so I went to meet him and left with my wallet £90 lighter.

I made this page to replace my site with on Tuesday. Feel free to copy it and do the same.

Just bought this on ebay, reasonable price. Penrose Annuals are brilliant, rich in content: from the mundane technicalities of press technology to the cutting-edge of typographic development. I've been collecting them (very, very slowly) since I started working. I've got eight, there's lots more to get but I thought it would be good to get some highlights online.

They're actually not that difficult to get hold of, although I expect there's rarities.

For a better insight, read Steve Hare's article for Eye
And more pics on Flickr.

Thanks to my life-saving inflatable mattress, I managed to get a decent night’s sleep. A full day of sessions is about to kick off so I’m going to fortify myself with plenty of coffee.

But markup comes before coffee. I’ve copied down the schedule (as it currently stands) from the whiteboard and turned it into a nice portable hCalendar:

http://icanhaz.com/sgfoo

If you’re here, you might want to subscribe to the schedule and stick it on your phone (or any other device with a calendar).

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Tagged with sgfoo2008 hcalendar microformats schedule

Do we grow old because of natural cellular mechanisms or because of gradually accumulated environmental toxins, like lead?

AP's science feed reported last week that "what has been called normal aging might in fact be due to ubiquitous environmental exposures like lead."
Aging, in other words, would be one of lead's "delayed effects" – and "other pollutants like mercury and pesticides may do the same thing."
So does architecture and the built environment, on a material level, actually contribute to human aging?
This obviously over-states the case; after all, cells age. It's what biology does. It doesn't take exposure to pesticides to grow old on this planet.
But there are at least three things worth considering here:
1) How interesting to think that certain "pollutants" are responsible for what we consider signs of old age – poor memory, fading eyesight, loss of hearing, insomnia. Maybe if you'd lived in a different house as a teenager, or your dorm room hadn't had lead paint on the walls, you'd still have perfect vision at 93. Maybe you'd live to be 116, with perfect hearing, your mind as sharp as a tack, if you hadn't grown up beside a highway.
2) I'm reminded of a post on MetaFilter last year in which it was suggested that the decline in New York City's crime rate wasn't due to Rudi Giuliani but to "local and federal efforts decades earlier to reduce lead poisoning." The man whose research supports this claim has found "an identical, decades-long association between lead poisoning and crime rates in nine countries." Lead! It poisoned the Romans, and maybe even made their Empire fall. So what'll it do next?
3) Let's pretend that this doesn't over-state the case. What if biology doesn't age outside of exposure to things like lead, mercury, pesticides, etc.? What if there was no lead on the earth at all? No mercury? Nothing that could form dioxin? What if there were no anti-biological pollutants of any kind? Might "life" then live forever?

(Earlier on BLDGBLOG: Literary Atmospheres).