Danah’s talks and articles are often fascinating, and this one on future information consumption trends is no exception.

I’ve often thought about the money-making strategy sites such as Facebook could use, and have come to the conclusion that advertising just doesn’t work well in these cases: the adverts are not being presented at a time when users are receptive to them (compare with search-based advertising). Danah points out this problem isn’t a new one, however:

Figuring out how to monetize sociality is a problem. And not one new to the Internet. Think about how we monetize sociality in physical spaces. Typically, it involves second-order consumption of calories. Venues provide a space for social interaction to occur and we are expected to consume to pay rent. Restaurants, bars, cafes… they all survive on this model. But we have yet to find the digital equivalent of alcohol.

Well, blow me down. Firefox and Safari render fonts completely differently on the same platform.

The camera on the iPhone 3GS is serviceable, but I doubt anyone would claim it was good. The tap-to-focus feature, which also does some exposure correction I think, is the only real improvement on my old phone’s camera; the picture quality certainly isn’t startlingly different.

I’ve found a few applications to help me produce nicer looking photos than the camera gives in its raw form. These applications are post-processing, so can only work with what the camera gives meaning they cannot perform miracles ¹. I’m sure I could improve the photos from my Ixus using similar apps—-if only they existed for the Mac for so little money.

I recently installed MacPython 2.4 while trying to get Plone installed using buildout rather than a binary build from plone.org. After I gave up and decided to use a binary build, I wanted to remove MacPython as the binary build comes with its own version of Python 2.4.

You need to uninstall MacPython manually, as there is no automated uninstaller. The documentation at python.org on removing MacPython and reverting to OS X’s default Python installation isn’t quite complete. I needed to follow a couple of extra steps, the final two below.

It’s amazing how quickly technologies make what was once established wisdom seem quaint. It often takes more than one technology, which is why it’s hard to foresee the path society will take—people combine things in unexpected ways.

The requirement to set aside a specific block of time to watch or listen to a broadcast—as one must do with live TV—has become an anachronism to me, like tube-based televisions. It took the rise iPlayer, PVRs, 4OD, Hulu and other technologies and services to make the idea of arranging my life around the times broadcasters select for TV shows seems ridiculous. Watching at the time of broadcast becomes pure coincidence. To put this in perspective: imagine needing to go to a gig to listen to a certain piece of music!