'The most important thing to realize about the flâneur is that he was a character; not a real person, but a "type," a fantasy of male bohemianism created by Baudelaire, Balzac, and the journalist Jules Janin. Just as we carefully curate our online presences today--tagging only the most flattering photographs, listing the favorite books and bands that prove our coolness--these men created the flâneur as an idealized version of themselves: a seductive master of the modern city.'

"I’d wager that all third-party clients will be forced to display the trends and ads within a year, and what we know as Twitter today — or at least what we knew until yesterday morning — will be a distant, quaint memory: Remember when it was just people you followed?"

"A total of 36,371 people were killed on Britain's roads between 1999 and 2010."

Key quotes: <br />
"Mr. Chen added “There are a lot of services trying to solve the information discovery problem, and no one has got it right yet.”" <br />
"“I signed up in 2005 and I didn’t use it again until 2011,” Mr. Chen said with an embarrassed laugh." <br />
"Some of the early users are still fiercely protective of the service. Mr. Chen and Mr. Hurley said they planned to invite the earliest users to test a version of the new site and solicit feedback about the designs and features." 

"Asked to picture a computer programmer, most of us describe the archetypal computer geek, a brilliant but socially-awkward male." "It may be surprising, then, to learn that the earliest computer programmers were women and that the programming field was once stereotyped as female." 

"It seems to me that one of our besetting problems these days is that there's a shortage of utopias on offer." To summarise the post would be to drain it. Just go and read it.

"Among Facebook's 15bn photographs there are, no doubt, some memorable and beautiful images, but to date I haven't seen any. That's not true of Flickr, which continues to be one of the wonders of the world and hosts hundreds of thousands of terrific pictures."

Simon Winchester, quoted in the article: "Until six months ago I was clinging to the idea that printed books would likely last for ever. Since the arrival of the iPad I am now wholly convinced otherwise. The printed book is about to vanish at extraordinary speed. I have two complete OEDs, but never consult them – I use the online OED five or six times daily. The same with many of my reference books – and soon with most. Books are about to vanish; reading is about to expand as a pastime; these are inescapable realities."

If I actually *used* Latitude, this might be useful. As it is, I'd be better pulling locations out of Twitter and Foursquare. Mind you, the moon banner is a bit Jones/Dopplr-y, although not as nice (obviously).

"All you have to do is create a set in Flickr and authorize MagCloud to connect to your Flickr account. MagCloud will import the photos and lay them out automatically. In just minutes, you'll have a photo magazine all your own!"

"I’ve decided that rejecting this product out of hand wouldn’t be fair. As much as I’m itchin’ to. And, well, since I’m trying to be more positive these days, I’ll see if I can be more rational in my constructive criticism." Chris Messina on that mouse: he succeeds in his goal, and the piece is well worth a read.

Khoi Vinh, slightly edited: "We’ve spent the better part of a decade and a half debating digital privacy, but compare the number of people who have been exposed to the sheer amount of manipulated, unreal and just plain fake imagery that assaults each of us every day, and the case for a more robust discussion about digital imaging looks like a pretty good one."

"As Web content becomes easier to share and distribute, and search and social media have become important drivers of audience engagement, archival content -- whether in the form of stories or transcripts -- has an entirely different value than it did in the past." Hurrah. Text is good.

A piece on Luke Jerram and Sing London's Play Me I'm Yours street pianos, which I didn't see much of, sadly. However, I was around the piano mentioned in the article, near the Millennium Bridge, when someone was playing in the rain. It was a lovely thing to be able to watch, and it made me wish I knew how to play.

Speaking of Instapaper, this is a good writeup on how one person uses it. Rev Dan Catt was in town last week and has a similar setup.

"Messages to Become Public By Default" Facebook really are trying to be Twitter, aren't they?

Charles Arthur: "an organisation that relies on pieces of paper written and considered by lawyers (most MPs are) is not going to be able to catch up with the internet, where new ways of breaking existing laws (copyright, usually) are discovered all the time"

"There was an implicit value judgement in Greenfield's talk between the "purely sensory experiences" of raves or today's computer games, and the cognitive activities of reading a book or listening to a symphony, which, because they make us "see one thing in terms of another thing", involve a more mature mental engagement" Indeed. Interesting to note Greenfield didn't have a column in Wired UK this month.

"What now is going to be killer interesting is will there become a legal fight in the Control layer or not. It did not happen in the past paradigm 'soft keys', when Nokia let the others do soft keys, to the great benefit of humanity in my opinion."

Yes yes yes. This is what I was trying to get at in my commentary on the link I posted yesterday, but Tom's far more eloquent than I am: you don't need to code, you need to be able to think in terms of data, and how to use that to extract information (to misquote someone at Papercamp).

"We will launch with the ability to backup Flickr and a blog (via RSS feed). Google Docs, Twitter feeds, Youtube and Facebook backup are all in the works" Interesting. I think I'd prefer self-hosted deep aggregation to an offline backup, though. Now I just have to, you know, build it...

This is maybe the second for-pay app I've bought for my touch, and it's wonderful. My only criticism is of the scrolling (especially in the level I'm currently stuck on, navigating the Prince through the fire canyon), but, frankly, given the fact it costs a fifth of what a DS game does, but has a similar level of polish, that's really picking nits. Recommended.

"Forget design, even. As a subset of our culture, video games are clearly headed to center of the conversation, where it’s not inconceivable that one day they might shoulder aside old media mainstays like television and newspapers."

The book's subtitle is "How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science". From the review: "200 years ago, poets, writers and scientists shared a common vision of Nature. There is no reason why they should not do so again."

"Ever since my childhood I have particularly enjoyed travelling on trains. Trains give me a comforting feeling of independence and self-sufficiency, of being in control." Lisa Jardine is back on Point of View on Radio 4; here's a transcript of her latest.

"[O2] integrated Oyster card technology and a Barclaycard Visa card into a Nokia 6131 handset and gave it to 500 testers who spent six months using the phone as a mobile wallet." Not surprising, but it's good to see it making it to live trials, at least.

While we're in nature mode, here's a good analysis of the threat to the honeybee, which did the rounds last year (and now seems to be a Doctor Who running joke).

"it doesn’t remember Wi-Fi passwords after shut-down (though it does retain them while in sleep mode)" actually, candace finds the opposite: if the router hiccups sleeping lets it reconnect, otherwise it asks.

There's really beginning to be a consensus here: the Eee (and machines in its class; there'll be more soon) won't replace the laptop-as-desktop but are very useful if you're really mobile.

More refutation, perhaps: Pew report that 21% of young adults use libraries to find out how to do certain things, which is higher than the 12% for the general population. Hm.

An interesting piece on the retreat of reading. There's some good stuff about literate vs graphical thinking in the middle (I'm kind of obsessed since reading The Alphabet vs The Goddess).

Interesting article about a new college for engineering and science in the US. "Its method of instruction has more in common with a liberal arts college, where the focus is on learning how to learn, than with a standard engineering curriculum."

Possibly more depressing than the thread about Talk Like A Pirate Day. If you don't want your pictures on the internet, don't make them public. (Posted partly because bookmarks are the easiest way to track discussions on Flickr, still.)

"you cannot make culture with this device, not unless you construct “making culture” as everything you’re doing when you use the iPhone. Consume, yes" I almost did this rant when Front Row debuted, and I still think it's a concern for me. also: YouT

Don Norman: "What is to replace the GUI? Ah yes, journalists are constantly asking me that[...] it’s already here: search." Reminds me of Wistow's "desktop dipsy" musings from years ago. Complete with login-breaking URL cruft.

"London's handwriting, the development of Edward Johnston's Underground Railway block-letter"