Digital Top Trumps

This morning I found this entertaining if thought provoking hierarchy of digital distractions over at Information is Beautiful. I've put it in the melting pot of my current thinking around changing communication preferences.

What would your digital Top Trumps deck look like? Telephone calls trump tweeting? Texts trumps conversation? It shouldn't do but frequently you see people distracted by the allure of that flashing light announcing an unread message. Behave!

The changing face of quality communications

I've been thinking about evolving communication styles and preferences a lot recently. I have so many different ways to communicate with people now: face to face, phone, letter, text, IM, Skype, email, Twitter, Facebook... the list goes on. That's even before you add in other places I can share stuff whether that's here on my blog, photos on Flickr, KodakGallery, Posterous, videos on YouTube or Vimeo, or even just sound bites on AudioBoo (not that I've resorted to that yet).

I have some spaces that are deliberately open, me mini-casting to whoever cares to read or trip over my ramblings. I have some spaces that are closed networks with my musings only available to a limited number of dedicated or approved recipients.

I have some people that I only use a particularly communications method to stay in touch with. I have other people who I communicate with across a variety of platforms depending on context. Heavens, I even have some people I actually see or speak to, and others to whomI enjoy taking the time out to refill my fountain pen and actually write to! Such things seem old fashioned these days but at least you can express sentiment rather more easily in person or on the phone when a raise of the eyebrows or a hint of sarcasm can add depth to the words.

Sentiment is so often missed, or mis-construed in a world increasingly written-word centric. Mountains made out of molehills by the absence of a smiley. But is that a sarcastic smiley or just a happy smiley!? ;-)

What we are saying in all these different spaces is interesting too. Mundane mutterings. Self-promotion. Self-less sharing. There's a time and a place for all but frequently the lines are being blurred by time-pressure on our lives, and we start resorting to lowest common denominator behaviour. I can't be bothered to email x or y so I'll just stick out a broadcast post on my Facebook status. Fail. Facebook status posts are a useful tool in the repertoire but not a substitute for quality communication with your friends.

Years ago I was introduced to Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He introduced the notion of the emotional bank account. Some of your friends / colleagues / contacts make positive contributions and others definitely just keep on debit-ing. Friendship is a two way street, and there are times when inevitably you'll make debits but they need to be counter-balanced by credit from time to time too. Think about it. Credit in pennies from Facebook status updates broadcast to all. Credit in Pounds for genuine efforts made. Then relate that to your brand communications. Are you flooding your customers with overwhelming emails / texts / tweets? Are you providing them with interesting relevant and valuable information? Credit v debit is a fine balance, particularly in our relationships with brands where we are likely to be less tolerant than we are with our friends.

My friend Fran kindly sent me this link to an interesting article on Facebook Fatigue from the Wall Street Journal. Interesting stuff. It also reminded me of this video on Facebook etiquette that I found months ago. Tongue in cheek but it makes some good points.

Sharing the easy way with Posterous

I tripped over Posterous via my friend and designer-buddy Mark a while back. It's great: easy-peasy to set up and use, a parking space and platform to share the interesting things you find on the web, ideal for those that don't have time or can't be bothered to set up and maintain a blog via Blogger, TypePad or Wordpress.

Set up your own personalised space in all of the time it takes to send an email, get given a unique email posting address and that's it you are off. Share your content just by emailing it, or easier still, add the Posterous button to your browser.

Too easy.

Mark posted an interesting thought on the originality of content. Check it out.

Spotify App for iPhone now available

At last! Premium Spotify subscribers can get Spotify on their iPhone or Android-powered mobiles

I make no apologies, it's Friday afternoon

My brain is fried, my politically correct sensor has been dulled and I found this quite funny. I don't speak German either so apologies to any readers that do if the effect isn't quite as good. I intend no offense at all.



This parody of it is even funnier, because it also makes a half serious point about intellectual property / copyright on the web. In this era of sharing, crowdsourcing and genorosity I'm a big believer in Creative Commons.

Hitler finds out about another Downfall parody - watch more funny videos

I can see the wave rolling ever closer

26 days and counting until Google Wave comes into proper, non-developer, beta status.
Can't wait. I hope I'm one of the 100,000 test invite recipients, having signed up forthwith in May. 30th September. I'll be ready.

Electronic communication is going to take on a whole new real time state. It might take some getting used to but I'm up for the challenge.

Music mash up

I've stumbled across a miscellany of interesting or quirky pieces of content this week. All of which I've been pointed to via personal recommendation (i.e influenced by people I trust). In one case someone I know, in another by someone I follow on Twitter because they have an interesting point of view). See, it does work!

I'm not quite sure what to say about this first piece of content. It's a collaborative music and spoken word project enabling you to compose you own music 2.0 piece via interacting with a selection of music / word related videos pulled from YouTube.

Go play

Then, mad as a box of frogs, is this site which if nothing else will hopefully serve to convince you that you should never let your creative ideas be limited by notions that the technology isn't there to deliver it!

Last weekend I ended up with a song lyric challenge that was driving me nuts, but happily was resolved speedily with a bit of help from Lyricrat. Bookmark it.