Looking back at this week it felt like a month of things went by. Last week there was a lot of talk about Facebook. I tried to avoid linking much to it because that was all I was seeing on Twitter. This week it was the same thing about Facebook. I picked a couple stories about it in terms of trust, lack of it and personal reasons people pulled the plug. As I mention below I felt that I was in control of everything I put onto Facebook though never felt that it was going to be 100% private. Soon as something goes on the net it’s going to morph into what ever people want to see. The stuff that people should worry about is not Facebook but the other stuff that people do to try to ruin people’s professional reputations. While all the posts did not originate from NYC I was able to make a connection that eventually did find it’s way from the city. That’s never really happened before. There’s a lot of ICFF related stuff going on this weekend which should make for some great openings this weekend and photos for the blog next week.

Biking in New York City



Nice illustration by a crazy lady that plays a mean foosball game. Even better is the background story to the illustration on Jennifer’s blog.

Did a Big Bet Help Trigger ‘Black Swan’ Stock Swoon?



Last week I quickly theorized on a post that blamed the iPad keyboard for the craziness of the stock market—even using a quote from CNBC. Turns out that probably wasn’t the case. Now there’s an even more fascinating story reported by WSJ that talks about a fund that may have started things that links back to the author of the Black Swan. Turns out that the author Nassim Taleb advises a hedge fund that made some bets that turned out to be pretty true.

The 20 Most Popular Twitter Users, According to the “Accept” Bug



Top ten or twenty lists are an okay way to rate things. Usually people have no idea how how these lists come together or what metrics count. What does count is action so I kind of like this list. A bug in Twitter allowed people to make anyone they chose to follow them. Basically people wanted their favourite people to follow them back. I’m guessing so that they could get them to pay attention to what they had to say. The bug was fixed eventually but there was plenty of information to be read from people’s actions.

11 Tips on How To Apply Social Interaction Design Thinking



More things to add to the all encompassing strategic document…

Thinking About Problems as Spaces


I can be vague occasionally, sometimes it comes off as being slow or perhaps not pushing things. But as David quotes Edward de Bono “the more specific the description, the more one is trapped by it.” I like to think that’s what I’m doing. Keep things open as possible. As I point that out, the article that David has written is much more about defining and understanding areas that design can be interpreted through space.

Caring for Your Online Introvert



Sure there’s a lot of hype to hate Facebook at the moment. I’ve had a lot worse done to me online then simply giving away information that I was in control of in the first place—but I digress, I’m not going to quit Facebook just yet. It’s just another aggregator to me. But here’s one person talking about pulling the plug.

Designed by people that hate you. No, really



No they’re not talking about Facebook but self service machines. I’ve never really used one before though maybe I now know why.

HEADZ WiLL ROLL



I like this type, I’m sure this style is already floating around already though I’m thinking it’s going to spread like a virus pretty soon.

What Silicon Valley could learn from these 14 Israeli companies



I haven’t watched all the videos yet but of the one’s I did were worth viewing.

UK Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo 2010



Last week I mentioned the Polish pavilion, this week I’m liking the UK Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo 2010. They’re taking bitmapping grids to a whole different scale.

Happy Scandinavian “Egg” Chair Month



I didn’t know that May was national egg month—did you? One person decided to celebrate the egg chair instead.

100-block, GPS Fifth Avenue tour launches for iPhone



I haven’t tried this app yet but it sounds like a great idea.

Women In Web Design: Group Interview



A roundtable of a bunch of people talking about web design—biggest complaint is that I wish we could move past the idea of web design being browser based and technical constraints…

EAMES INSPIRATION



Great idea to raise money—get a bunch of smart street artists and have them paint Eames Chairs…

Top 35 Flickr Groups for Infographics and Data Visualization



Here’s the motherload of flickr links to infographics…

Do Cities Need a Creative Director?



No.

VENTRICLE VASE – EVA MILINKOVIC @ LOUDreams, the Social Toolkit



I don’t usually post much about products but these vases look pretty cool.

Shepard Fairey says AP could “bankrupt” him



I’ve been a fan of his in the past until he lied about some of his court case which lead to his first legal team to quite which was quite disappointing to see him throw away a lot of his credibility. With that said I checked out his stuff at deitech which I thought visually was quite cool. Hard to say what will happen one way or another with the results of the case itself.

Confusing *a* public with *the* public



There’s a lot of negative hype towards Facebook these days. There’s some good points in this point talking about what line Facebook crossed with their latest evolution.

The Evolution of Privacy on Facebo



Sure there’s a lot of hate these days about Facebook and info graphics but as this example illustrates their working pretty good together. Really scary evolution of a service that people thought was private. I would be fine with how things were going if I could use my own info through rss. However that part of the system is closed.

Mint’s iPad Challenge



I hate reading the phrase “looks promising” on tweets on blog posts, but this sports visualization app does look promising

If You’re Looking At The Past To Design The Future, You’re Going To Crash And Burn



While this article is using Nokia as the company example there’s a lot of other tech companies that fall into the same bucket. “Every Nokia executive I’ve met generally has a “prove it to me” view of the world. Meaning, if you can prove the point in an excel spreadsheet and I can analytically test that thinking enough to validate the direction, then we’re golden.” I think most businesses act this way. Look at how Google’s search layout has changed. It now looks like Bing. I’m sure people inside Google have suggested that they change the column structure before but to no avail getting buy in from other Google people. All of a sudden a competitor improves on what Google did so they change. They could have been first and now they’re the ones reacting as opposed to ode defining what search is.