What continues to fascinate me about the Japanese is not (just) their technology, but how they apply it. Sometimes it feels like we’ve had the hacker attitude beaten out of our culture in the West – when we buy something, we get sold its functionality and its mindset at the same time.
OK, maybe I’m gushing rather unfocusably, and PR efforts always do their best to, uh, think different, but this YouTube video for Nikon’s Coolpix camera/projector (DPReview) shows how something fairly simple can be used in fairly unexpected (if rather weird) ways.
A lot of the time it seems like the things we invent have value more as distraction than anything useful – playthings for those bored at work, or content designed to pass time until we die. But at the same time, entertainment can be a great thing – we learn through play, we explore relationships through stories, we find out about the world through the models we build.
So do we take technology as a plaything for granted? Or do we waste too much time on incessant chit-chat? Are our idle conversations network builders for greater things, or do they prevent us from moving towards real goals and real action?
(N.B. Hopefully any comments via Twitter will be picked up as comments here.)
Another site update, and things are getting simultaneously more complicated, but also more clear in terms of what direction to go in. Perhaps. Some notes on progress:
1. Theme
For the website, I’ve installed the minimalist theme from techdesigns, for the simple fact that it’s closest to what I have in mind for the eventual site design. Apart from the simplicity, I wanted to get away from the “blog” design that so many sites have – a list of articles tucked one under the other, a never-ending downward stream of item-after-item. I like the way this theme focuses on the navigation – more browsing, than catching up. More exploration than scrolling. It’s only in version 1, and I’ve had to make a few small tweaks, but I look forward to seeing where we can go with it, especially as more content gets rolled in from outside.
2. Twitter
For Twitter integration, I’m currently playing with 3 plug-ins running alongside each other. There’s decent overlap between them, but it seems as though each does or doesn’t do one thing slightly better. here’s what I’m playing with, and why:
Twitter Blog – for posting articles from the blog to Twitter (as it doesn’t seem to be able to turn them off, although this post is the first try), and for turning tweets into blog posts as it apparently does hashtag filtering.
Twitoaster – for gathering @replies on Twitter and turning them into blogposts.
Twitter Tools – for posting weekly digests of Tweets, which I may or may not turn off later…
I may have to re-think this combination, but it’s all part of the process. I’ll definitely be reporting back on how well this is working over the next few weeks (e.g. do I really want to tweet every post?)
What are you using to integrate Twitter with WP? Does it work for you? Is it even a good idea? Feel free to comment here, or tweet replies to @emptytech and test the system out…