We can no longer make sense of social software and related applications from a user-centric model�at least not the model that has come out of cognitive science. That model has insisted on a rational user, a goal-oriented user interested in achieving his or her objectives. An application would either satisfy or confound the user, and designers could set about improving UX and UI until users were all happy.

But social technologies are different:

• We often end up engaging in something that wasn’t on our minds when we started.

• Transactions are not discrete, they’re ongoing and episodic.

• More often than not we’re communicating with others, and communication clearly exceeds rational actor models of analysis (it’s psychological, it’s meaning-based, it involves self, other, performance, and so on).

• Interaction with others is mediated and so therefore we need new practices and new etiquettes, or codes of conduct and behavior (even when these are tacit, as most of them are).

• These technologies seem to have a relationship of observation and supplementation to real cultural phenomena and practices. Online dating does not replace dating. Online discussions do not replace real conversation. And the topics found in many of these services relate to real world news as if they are commentary on it.

• These tools enable direct interaction with others but often in a kind of public context.

• The activity on these applications is captured and then used by them, making social media dynamic (updated as they’re used): in short, a production medium that records as it produces.

• Much of the social dynamic here, because it’s rooted in social action, involves attention: paying attention, sharing attention, getting attention. Attention is the scarcity of these economies, not goods and materials.

• Where user interaction with non-communicating and non-social media is discrete, social interaction is ongoing. User actions don’t end with a function or operation’s conclusion; they solicit response from others. It is other users that pick up and continue a user’s action (that action being a communicative one: blog posting, video posting, commenting, etc.)

• These media are distribution media as well as content media, and their distribution is handled in part by web protocols, in part by communication (email, sharing, etc.), making them quick to create or to lose audiences.

• Any medium of experience structures experience according to its intervention in reality. Some part of our interaction is with the medium itself. For this reason we can’t ignore such simple things as pictures, text, links, etc., anymore than architects would ignore differences between surface materials like concrete, stone, glass, and wood. (Not to mention 50’s era carpeting.)

• It’s possible that social media operate in a kind of tolerable and sustained failure mode, by which I mean that people often get engaged because they can’t tell what’s happened to their participation (dates don’t happen; jobs aren’t obtained; friends don’t communicate; blogs aren’t commented on). But the possibility of missing an opportunity, combined with the fact that there’s no way to know what’s going on online besides going online to check, creates traffic in and of itself!

I could make more distinctions here but the point should be clear now: architecture, design, and implementation of these things puts them in a category of their own, an admixture of social and technical practices best approached from a socio-technical orientation.

(via Klastrup)

“An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator. An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator…. these are NOT three separate devices!”
Steve Jobs Keynote

Så skete det, alle rygterne om Apples iPhone er indfriet. Skal man grine eller græde?

PÃ¥ den en side ligner iPhone en mellemting mellem en superstylish PDA og en PSP konsol, og der er ikke noget kamera i… WTF. (De havde sÃ¥ ogsÃ¥ lige fÃ¥et klemt 2 megapixel ind i bagsiden) Og jeg bliver bange for batteriniveauet i sÃ¥dan en fætter med superskarp skærm og wifi (de lover 5 timers, tale, browse tid (hmmm)).

PÃ¥ den anden side Waaauv it’s a beauuuuty. Og den køre OS X. Apple kan virkelig trylle, interaktionsdesign mæssigt trækker de pÃ¥ hele batteriet. Holy smoke. og der nogle nifty innovationer pÃ¥ navigations, som vil kunne vække salige Jeff Raskin til live igen. Integrationen med Safari, Google og yahoo, og det at bringe widgets ind pÃ¥ den mobile platform, er godt set.
Men måske Apple her gør regning uden vært. En ting er at konkurrrere med Windows på konsum-markedet (Zune ser rimelig sucky ud nu). Med iPhone ligger de sig også ud med Nokia og Sony Erisson.
Apple har dog stadig den helt fantatiske fordel (som de dyrker til perfektion) at telefonen hopper lige ind i iTunes fødekæden og derved rykker syncing og intregeret kommunikation med computeren lysÃ¥r frem i tiden. Det er et omrÃ¥de ingen mobilproducenter har gidet at dyrke. Jeg købte for nyligt en Sony Erisson K800i og den medfølgende software var ganske enkel helt igennem ubrugelig. So for all it is worth – jeg skal have en iPhone.

UPDATE: SÃ¥ fik jeg set Steve Jobs keynote – oh boy, den dreng kan virklige sælge varen. Nu er jeg helt solgt.

I’m demoing a New Years Eve hat, developed and prototyped in the Chindogu spirit in 2,5 seconds. Allows you to fall a sleep drunk (or tired or what ever comes first) without you banging the head into the table. 2007 will be the year of Chindogu – mark my words.

But more importantly, at least symbolically, the two companies joins forces to battle Microsoft, no doubt. Apple has no specific strategic gain in this, as much as they like to see their own product taking bite after bite of the pc market. They still has a pretty good alliance with the Microsoft, especially with the iPod and iTunes as a Trojan Horse.
Google however has been trying to position themself hard against Microsoft’s online dominance, for instance trying to lure of users of from the MSN platform – by simply offering more for less, gmail, chat, calender, video, maps etc. to name a few examples.

Google has been launching one online app after the other “as proofs of concept”, trying to show that they could perhaps make a plausable contender to the holy Office package – for free. Calling Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to go megahard, pointing at the searchengine from Mountian View the no. 1. enemy of the Microsoft company, personated in Eric Schmidt, who Ballmer outbattered when he was cheif of technology at Sun.

Ballmer then pejoratively berated Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Lucovsky recalled.
“I’m going to f—ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again,” the declaration quotes Ballmer. “I’m going to f—ing kill Google.”

While there is not yet any formal aggrement on specific outcome of the Google and Apple top merge. It seems likely Eric is teaming up to battle with side by side with the other cool guys in the yard (that’s Steve Jobs). But still the puzzle remainsm, what could be the outcome of this? How significant will it be. Perhaps one scenario is a Google driven office package (developed on top of google spreadsheets and wordprocesser) native on Apple computers? To strees Microsoft away from their dominant position sustained by the Office package? don’t know – however the battle has begun.

Wow, tangible interfaces has surely come along way, just check out this multi touch "Minority Report" like demo and what seems to be navigation of Google Earth, and a super-funky DJ like interface.

more on Multi-Touch Interaction Research

Oh, and if you believe that graffiti can’t be deligthfully poetic then watch this.