Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke died today. He was 90 years old.

Clarke’s 3 Laws of Prediction:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

He’ll be missed, Dave.

This weekend I finished migrating this blog over to WordPress, thus ending a six-month experiment with Typo, the WordPress-like blog tool built on top of the web application framework Ruby on Rails. I originally went to Typo for two reasons: To evaluate RoR performance on my ISP (The much-maligned Dreamhost) and to keep up with the numerous blog platforms available floating about in the ether. In the end, I gained a better understanding of some determining success factors for open source software projects.

continue reading »

After dealing with various crises at the 9-to-5, bronchitis, a cheap hotel in Albany, NY, a coolant leak in my car, Skaneateles, NY in a snowstorm, and more bronchitis, I’ve officially caught up with the rest of my life and finally feel like I can blog again.

Lots has happened since my last post here. Facebook launched, and then relaunched (and then re-relaunched) Beacon. Google launched Open Social on which LinkedIn launched their own platform.

I mention these things because they dovetail nicely into what has been occupying so much of my time. Specifically, I’ve been spent in the last few months immersed in either designing total experiences or being hindered by applications that have been organically grown without much thought to their experience at all.

It’s been a very tiresome, but very educational experience.

I’ll be spending much of my time here detailing some of the lessons I’ve been learning, and (hopefully) they will coincide with what others in my discipline have been experiencing.

I’m here at PodCamp Boston 2. The Unconference on social media. The unconference format, with content provided by the participants, has been a fantastic and informative experience so far (even when the speaker doesn’t show up for a session, which is the case right now. PodCamp’s co-founder, Chris Brogan is running an ad-hoc session on the world of Podcasting.

‘

I’ve been a fan of the folks over at Common Craft for a while now. Just in time for Halloween, they’ve released their guide to Zombies in Plain English. This instructional video is especially handy for those of you who haven’t read Max Brook’s Zombie Survival Guide

Boy wonder Mark Zuckerberg and company announced today that Microsoft infused their little social platform with $240 million in cash for a 1.6 percent share. This puts Facebook’s value at $15 billion, which makes MySpace’s purchase price fall somewhere between pocket change and one car payment, relatively speaking.

And so ends the flurry of blog posts and newsbites regarding the tug-of-war between Microsoft and Google. Microsoft will serve international banner ads on the Facebook site, and Facebook can continue their plans to expand their targeted ad network.

The other obvious win for Microsoft is that it gains footing in what has become the most successful open web-based operating platform while still in its infancy, a move which will (hopefully) provide some meaningful competition to Google’s efforts on the web-OS front.

This can only be good for the rest of us. I would expect to see some cohesive form of social network/web OS come out of Google soon, integrating what has become several interconnected but disparate service applications. A little competition never hurt anyone.

As someone that publishes two blogs (or is attempting to, at any rate) and works deep within the bowels of the industry that spawned today’s ubiquitously connected society, I’m always ready to jump at the chance to mingle with other like-minded folks. One such opportunity came up last night thanks to the good folks at EMC and web strategy guru Jeremiah Owyang.

I’ve commented on Jeremiah’s blog a few times, so I thought it would be great to meet him and others in the Boston new media community in person. Of course, Jeremiah was so busy, and I so sidetracked with the other great folks milling about that I never got to get a chance to say hello.

No matter, it was great to meet all the folks I could. Some of the more interesting folks I met were from the first generation of those raised on MySpace and Facebook, folks like Amanda Rooney and Amanda Gravel, Dan Zarrella and Alison Driscoll.

I was raised on The Cosby Show, FYI.

In any case, thanks all. It was a pleasure meeting you all, and I’m sure I’ll see you at PodCamp.

This weekend I took a much needed day to myself to hang with a few celebrities and take in some jazz.

On Saturday, the cast and crew of Dane Cook’s upcoming motion picture vehicle, Bachelor No. 2, arrived at the end of my street and filmed all day. The three principle actors were on hand, including Cook, Jason Biggs, and Alec Baldwin.

After spending a bit of time chatting with the location manager and other members of the crew I firmly believe that the most interesting folks to talk to on a movie set are the crew and not the talent I headed four blocks down Columbus Ave for the Beantown Jazz Festival. After spending a several Saturdays in a row getting this site up and running, I enjoyed being outside for a change.

In preparation for the launch of this website, I did a lot of pruning and cleaning of the various social network sites of which I am a member. As you would expect, the more involved in any particular social network, the more connections I made. Inevitably, responding to the amount of communication within my networks has started to become an enormous time suck.

This is obviously not an uncommon problem. Lifehacker pointed me in the direction of Steve Rubel’s use of Gmail to consolidate his social networking communications.

What he doesn’t mention is how he deals with e-mail clutter.

In 2001, maleszyk.com began as a personal blog that chronicled my life as a single guy working to make a better internets. I talked about the women I dated, the movies I saw, the music I listened to, and what I had for dinner.

What I didn’t talk about, at least not at length, was what is commonly termed in our society as my “work.” Not because I didn’t enjoy it, but because I didn’t feel I was engaged enough to have anything worthwhile to say on a regular basis.

Over the last few years as a consultant in user experience design, I’ve been quietly but intently watching, listening, and thinking about the dramatic ways in which what I have been doing for a living for the past 11 years has been dramatically changing the world that we live in. The rise the move toward miscellaneous, the power of the long tail, and the increasing focus on findability in an information economy has changed the way we date, watch movies, listen to music, or decide what to have for dinner.

And here I am, standing in the middle of all of it, a member of the information cognoscenti. I hope to contribute my wisdom, if just a small part, to the crowd.