Down the Avenue Gets an Urban Facelift

Welcome to the new Down the Avenue design which went live this morning. Depending on who you ask, the new design either has a more urban and hip feel (brick + warehouse + artist lofts + a stroll down the street of some undefined American city) OR the main drag of a small American town (the majority said it reminded them of the East Coast). Perhaps it doesn't feel like any of the above to you.

The street is in fact based on the town where I grew up in the Adirondack mountains of upstate New York. The design is modified from real photographs I took along Main Street within the past decade.

Down the Avenue is about where old meets new. Culture meets technology. Feminine energy meets masculinity. Social media & new voices meet traditional journalism, marketing & branding. It is also an intersection between mobile, productivity, Web 2.0 and travel, and, where a passion for style & design meets a world who has no desire to honor it. Continue on the journey with me.

SUPER EMBED: Cool Discovery from within ONE Window

I've been playing around with Pearltrees' very cool "Super Embed" feature, launched this week. They'll be at the Moscone Center on Wednesday for Launch Pad, one of only 5 companies to present on-stage at Web 2.0 Expo.

Here's what I did to create the embedded Pearltree below. FREE and QUICK, I signed up for an account at Pearltrees and created a Pearltree called Down the Avenue, the name of my primary blog. Then, within the Pearltree, I created "Pearls" for about a dozen categories within my blog, largely categories of industries and areas of interests in recent years.

Next, I click on the Pearltree and hit SHARE and Voila, I'm given code to embed in my blog. It's that easy. Now, I can display one quick snapshot of a number of categories (which comprise a series of posts, articles, videos, etc) in one window, and people can view all of it without leaving my blog.

Each Pearl will take you to all the blog posts in my blog under that category. The Video Pearl will show you all the videos I've created. How cool is that?

With the onslaught of information we’re being hit with daily online, it’s impossible to keep up with content and even harder to discover or curate that content into something that is meaningful and relevant for us.

Imagine the possibilities using Pearltrees for your own blog or website. What's more, you can grab other people's Pearls and discover new people and interests within Pearltrees. This is creation, organization and curation at its best. SO, GO - Create, Envision and Explore!! Try it out.

Pearltrees Unveils SUPER EMBED at Web 2.0 Expo

Client Pearltrees is unveiling its new “Super Embed” feature this week at Launch Pad on Wednesday afternoon at the Moscone in San Francisco. They announced their new feature and other updates in a Beta 0.7 release today at Web 2.0 Expo.

If you're not familar with Pearltrees, it's a tool that allows you to organize and curate a series of web pages quickly and easily. You can not only discover new people and interests from within Pearltrees, but you can now display, share and display those web pages as "Pearls" inside your blog or website, hence the cool and appropriate name for the new feature: "Super Embed."

With this latest release, bloggers, journalists and Internet users can identify and organize a series of web pages about a particular topic, create one ‘tree’ that houses all that content and then embed that Pearltree in their blog or website so people can view everything they have discovered about that topic in one single window – all without leaving the blog.

Additional major improvements featured in this release include a Pearltree add-on for Chrome, real-time notifications about comments a Pearltree has received, as well as when other Pearltrees’ users “pick” or subscribe to a particularly Pearltree, a simplified user interface and a new social search engine that gives users a visual representation of the relevance of search results based upon proximity. This helps users see at a glance which results are closest to their search.

Pearltrees’ latest version transforms the process of discovering, organizing and sharing the things people find on the web while enabling bloggers, journalists and other content creators to add a new level of depth and context to the articles they post online.

Easy to integrate into all sites and blogs, Pearltrees’ new beta brings transforms web navigation and discovery. Simply click on the Pearltree you want to embed, click share and you are given options to share in Facebook, Twitter, or to embed directly into your blog, customizeable by size.

WHY THE SUPER EMBED WILL MATTER TO BLOGGERS & JOURNALISTS

For writers, users can discover a series of web pages and explore them in-depth without ever leaving your site. Users are exposed to a complete experience about a topic in one easy-to-navigate window.

With readers spending more time on your site, you have more time to engage with them and build a deeper relationship.

Easy-to-use, simply copy an HTML code from Pearltrees, not unlike you would grab HTML code from YouTube, and paste it into your site or blog. One click activates the window and simple arrows permit navigation from one page to the other. Suggested downloads are clearly signposted so you can start using it within minutes.

WHY PEARLTREES SUPER EMBED WILL MATTER TO THE REST OF US

There is simply too much content in too many places on the Web and while various engines help filter what you’re looking for, user-generated content, aggregators and contributors such as Yelp, Digg and more, can only get you so far. While useful, they do not curate the web for you nor do they allow you to participate in the curation process.

Smart curation online is necessary in the next generation of the web – users will demand smarter ways to find content and services that help them save time and find their passions and interests faster and easier.

SOCIAL SYSTEM & SEARCH

When you pearl the same pages or use a Pearltree (part of another user account), you construct your account of course and automatically constitute your “interest graph”. Simultaneously, a search engine explores which connections already exist between users. Therefore, when a search is launched, you are presented with suggested Pearltrees which are relevant and of interest to your world.

Pearltrees addresses web curation by enabling anyone to individually organize their web and extend it to other people’s organization of the web. By doing so, you can discover new content from people with common interests.

Check out a couple of bloggers who have used the "Super Embed" feature to show the power of curation and discovery with Pearltrees: Michelle Kraus from Huffington Post uses an embedded Pearltree to show article references for her article and Beth Blecherman shows Parent Online Content in an embedded Pearltree on her TechMamas blog (moms and dads alike).

Relationships & Dating: How Offline Principals Apply to Blogging & Twitter

Relationship columnist Andrea Syrtash and author of He's Just Not Your Type, is on the 140 Character Conference stage sharing her principals of effective relationships - what works and what doesn't for dating offline. She takes these principals to the online world and demonstrates how the very same principals apply to social media - blogging, Twitter and in every other online communication.

Lesson number 1: let others impress you rather than you focusing on "me me me." In other words, listen to the inbound dialogue, engage and respond rather than having it all be about your own pitch.

Number 2: you can't have intimacy without vulnerability. You need to be present and let go - you need to show a little vulnerability and not try to be so polished and perfect. People can't connect with you when you're being perfect. The same goes for relationships online. It's okay to ask for help on Twitter, but be real in your ask.

Principal number 3: Remember that people want to be challenged, not changed. No one wants to date a doormat; most of us want to be stimulated and challenged. It's important to understand the difference between challenging someone and changing them. When you are having a conversation with someone, ask yourself - are you trying to change their opinion or change them or are you offering your opinion?

In the online world, the same is true. People love provocative conversations on Twitter - a debate online is 'magic,' but the moment someone gets mean or angry, it's the end of the conversation. People stop listening and engaging at that point. Remember, you can challenge someone online without undermining their position.

Principal number 4: don't confuse immediate gratification with long term fulfillment. This is obviously a lesson in life too. She refers to Aristotle on this one. Don't be distracted by material things, power or money when you're engaging with people, on or offline. Ask yourself, am I being brought to my highest potential with the person I'm engaging with? This is where an effective relationship starts.

Am I a good version of myself when I'm with the person I'm engaging with, relating to, IN a relationship with? If you focus on superficial measures of success, it's only going to give you short term superficial gratification, not sustainable success or happiness.

Effective relationships start with you - stop complaining and start creating. In other words, BE the audience you want to create. How does the story start and end? You can't control how everyone reacts, but you can only create how you react. Andrea ends with this statement and passing advice: "To be effective in relationships, you have to be authentic - on and offline, and in life and in love."

140 Characters: On Education, Journalism, Media, Location & More

The 140 Conference kicks off with a broad range of ten minute interviews with movers and shakers across a variety of different industries, ranging from evolution of people and places (@dharple), social media strategists from big media brands CNN, NPR, NBC News and the New York Times (@acarvin, @NYC_JenPreston and @todayshow), education (@chrislehmann), and journalism (jayrosen_nyu).

Kodak's CMO Jeffrey Hazlett (@JeffreyHayzlett) interviews Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) who gives the audience this piece of advice bout blogging and tweeting - B"e extremely consistent and direct in your messaging," something she says she learned from her dad who she says, "people really respect him for that."

140Conf NYC Kicks off with VIP Party on the East Side

New York's second 140 Characters Conference kicked off last night at Room Service NYC on East 21st, not far from the Gramercy Park Hotel on Lexington Avenue. It seems like most of our festivities this week will be on the East Side.

Everyone wore a badge in typical #140conf style that says I'm a Character, although the room held more than 140 of us and there were tons of video and still cameras shooting throughout the night. MC Hammer graced us with his presence towards the end of the evening when lots of mini-groups jumped in cabs and headed off for food and schmooze.

For those at the 140Conf at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles, this memory will bring a smile.

Jessica Gottlieb

Shira Abel-Shvo

Answers.com Bob Rosenschein, Renee Blodgett and Jeff Pulver

The King of the Show himself

Scott Beale, Steve Garfield

Renee Blodgett, Gowalla co-founder Josh Williams

Arne Kruger

Yuri Mustovoy

Alan Weinkrantz, Renee Blodgett, Owen JJ Stone

On Humans Becoming Firefox Icons

Below is a recap of my first contribution to Memeburn which launched about a week ago in South Africa.

The site is dedicated to news and opinion, tech culture, innovation and business, and while focused on emerging markets, it monitors worldwide trends. This post is the result of a dream I had where I had turned into a Firefox icon and was jumping from browser to browser in offices of new start-ups, a world I intimately know.

Nothing was real in the 'human sense' and yet I was connected to everything and everyone - in this online virtual world, the kind that so many of us have created for ourselves.

ARE WE BECOMING FIREFOX ICONS?

A few weeks ago in a very bizarre dream, I was a beautifully customised icon on my Firefox browser, adorned in bright colors with HC on the bottom right.

HC didn’t stand for HealthCrunch, nor was it an alternative to creative commons. What it stood for was Human Connector. The difference between this multi-colored creative HC icon and all the others was that it could jump from one Firefox browser to another. It could also pop in and out of people’s IE and Safari worlds, hang out, and observe their behavior.

HC didn’t have a face, but had a magical wand that allowed me to engage with whomever I wanted, a power granted by the HG – Human Gadget – who mostly hung out in the open source galaxy that only a few of us insiders knew about.

DREAM VERSUS REALITY

In this dream I watched a group of people in an Internet Café somewhere in Silicon Valley. They were referring to each other by their Twitter names, and many were shouting random things into their iPhones, such as “I just got tagged in a photo” and “I just joined the ‘I’m a social media addict group’”. The waiter seemed a tad confused by the names people used, particularly @madjellyman and @toadwalker.

Oh, the things I saw as HC. I watched my human self too, not unlike the way Sully watched his blue-bodied Na’vi body in Avatar. The difference was that my icon was the human and the human me had become the alien.

A couple of weeks later, I discovered a YouTube video that showed a Twitter and Facebook café with people doing the same things as I’d dreamed of. It was so similar it was surreal.

The always-on world is catching up to us in ways we’re not even aware of, simply because the rate of change is too fast. Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near talks about the intense pace we’re moving at, as does research on the psychological and sociological impact of technological stimuli on the human brain.

Our digital world moves so rapidly that the reality and the dream can become one before you’ve realised it’s happening.

Are we really ready to become Firefox icons? Will we have a choice?

We’ve become so addicted to the adrenalin we get from new gadgets or social media tools that it’s all too easy to put the human connection aside – even if it’s only an hour less people-time than it was last week and the week before. It’s a gradual thing when machines take over.

There’s no doubt about it – I love discovering new tools that help me navigate the web in different ways, social media apps that give me a richer experience on the web and iPhone downloads that fascinate me during a boring panel discussion.

When Foursquare came out, I was hooked within a week. Why? Because it’s cool. Not only is there a game component like many of the geo-loco services on mobile devices, but there’s a Twitter-like “wow” when you discover that a friend just checked into one of your favourite places.

THE UPSIDE

Services such as Skype, Twitter, Wordpress, Foursquare and Facebook are perfect for connectors like me who not only engage with people in their professional capacity, but in their personal lives as well.

These tools allow me to connect with people from countries all over the world. A day doesn’t go by where I don’t talk to Europe, Australia, South Africa, Israel or other American states.

Additionally, voices that were unheard 20 years ago now have countless platforms to tell their stories, in video, audio, on a blog, or in 140 characters or less.

THE DOWNSIDE

While there’s no question that I love trees and lakes more than my Blackberry and iPod, the connection that I have to my devices isn’t a small one. These devices go with me everywhere, the technology “hooked factor” sets in and the result isn’t always a healthy one.

You are not a Gadget argues that Web 2.0 designs value the information content of the web over individuals. Says author Jaron Lanier: “It suggests that only the aggregator (like Google, for instance) gets rich, while the actual producers of content get poor. Web 2.0 is a formula to kill the middle class and undo centuries of social progress.” He also believes that the internet has become anti-intellectual because web 2.0 collectivism has killed the individual voice.

It’s another perspective, not one that everyone shares. Yet I don’t know anyone who doesn’t agree that managing an ever-growing world of online content and conversations sucks up far too much of our time – and many are opting out because they simply can’t keep up.

While the grass is growing around me and the waves are crashing against a shore somewhere not far from my house, their voices are getting dimmer as the calls from my countless inboxes and browsers are getting louder.

It’s no great surprise that as technology continues to beckon us with its magic and promises, our time connected to it will increase.

But as our inboxes, IM and Twitter clients, Facebook pages and text messages continue to grow, isn’t it long overdue that we demand products that give us more time with friends, more time on mountaintops, and more time playing with our children?

We need tools that really merge and converge, not tools that only promise this. We want solutions that simplify, not complicate, and smart aggregators and personalised curators.

We need to demand solutions that humanise our daily lives and serve our personal needs. Before it catches up with us and turns us into Firefox icons.

Google vs China in Cyberspace

David Strom writes about Cyberwars: China versus Google, what they mean, and the results.

He writes, "we just witnessed the first Cyber War, but it didn’t go down quite as many of us expected. Instead of a group of anonymous hackers trying to take over thousands of infected PCs or trying to cut off access to critical infrastructure, we saw Google declare the first salvo in its war against Chinese censorship by moving its servers to Hong Kong."

You can read the full article by clicking on the Pearltree below.

  

Memeburn Goes Live

Memeburn goes live, a news and opinion platform tracking tech culture, innovation and business. The new site, founded by Cape Town-based Matthew Buckland, focuses on the web, mobile, social media, online media and social networking fields.

I am a contributing blogger together with dozens of others, and although Memeburn has a particular focus on emerging markets, it tracks innovation worldwide.

Get WILDLY Creative About South Africa Online BUZZ Campaign

This week, South Africa marked the start of the 100 days countdown to the 2010 Fifa World Cup with a variety of patriotic celebrations and flag-flying spectacles. The football spectacular kicks off on June 11, 2010.

The newly announced "Get Wildly Creative About South Africa" online advertising contest aims to inspire South Africans to get together as a nation, use their creativity, collaborate with the international community, and come up with ways to promote the country as a vibrant destination ahead of the World Cup.

The eight-week, people-inspired, online ad contest, which starts on March 15, is part of a major nation branding research project undertaken by the CMO Council and the International Marketing Council (IMC) of South Africa.

The IMC is responsible for defining and shaping Brand South Africa’s image throughout the world.

With social media networks hosting billions of monthly visitors, conversations and connections, the CMO Council’s new GeoBranding Centre is looking to evaluate the level of voice, influence and creative pull in these interactive online communities, particularly as it relates to shaping perceptions of countries, destinations, locations and origin of products.

GOING VIRAL BABY

The Get Wildly Creative About South Africa ad contest will be hosted on the Zooppa.com people-inspired advertising platform and will use viral communications, online conversations, blogging and cyber-chatter to pump up the interest and participation in this country branding program targeted at the world’s 1.7-billion Internet users.

Current and aspiring creative professionals, digital media buffs, South African citizens and expatriates, and anyone with a lust for travel to Africa, are invited to come up with inventive ways to produce a fresh and evocative message about a country that has gone from tragedy to triumph in less than two decades.

Cash and prizes - donated by SA Tourism, in-country partners and creative technology solution providers - will be awarded to the top submissions within each category. These are Best Print Campaign, Best Online Banner Campaign, and Best Video Segment or Commercial.

Among other things, the Winning entrants will have their work showcased globally to the CMO Council’s 5K+ members who control more than US$150 billion (R1.2-billion) in annual marketing spend and recognized at a special IMC-hosted reception in New York City, the world’s media centre and creative hub.