Beyond Blinking Lights and Acronyms

The Death of Social Media Wed 23 Dec 09

Are spam, hackers, privacy concerns and commercialization killing social media?

Social media comes in many forms and flavors with new types coming in and some older ones slowly dying out. It has become so ubiquitous that we rarely think about it when we use it.

I primarily use Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and LinkedIn, in addition to my blogging, but I have become less and less enamored with social media over time. Although I was never a rabid user of Twitter, I did initially use it on a regular basis but now will frequently go days between tweets or without even looking at it.

Crowdsourcing For Prize Money Wed 09 Dec 09

Applying Internet Technologies Creatively Can Generate Big Rewards

This past weekend DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) announced the winner of the Network Challenge ''to explore how broad-scope problems can be tackled using social networking tools,'' to mark the 40th anniversary of the ARPANet, pre-cursor to today’s Internet.

This was a great way to celebrate the anniversary as well as DARPA’s connection to the birth of the Internet. The winning team used social networking and demonstrated other concepts that take advantage of the power of the Internet. Oh, and team went home with a $40,000 prize.