Author Archives: Steve Mays

The art of the tweet

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From a thoughtful –and useful– post by Tammy Erickson (@tammyerickson) on how to make Twitter fun for your followers:

  1. Don’t report banal details. Unless you’re observing a true breaking news event (and note: this term does not include what you or your child ate for lunch), skip it.
  2. Do interpret your experiences. How do they make you feel? What do they mean to you?
  3. Do share the oddities you observe. Look for things that seem unusual, out-of-place, surprising.
  4. Do share things you love – quotes, phrases, descriptions of events that brought joy to your day.

Her conclusion:

“Slow down, enjoy. Listen to the world’s music. Share the best of your experiences, but remember, 140 characters is a unique format — more like poetry or Haiku than news reporting.”

Lady Gaga meets Pattern Recognition?

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Okay, this post is for William Gibson fans only. Specifically, fans of his novel, Pattern Recognition. Here’s a grossly over-simplified plot summary. Actually it’s not even that, but I had to provide some context, so…

“…a cult-like group of Internet obsessives strives to find meaning and patterns within a mysterious collection of video moments, merely called “the footage,” let loose onto the Internet by an unknown source.”

This morning on his Twitter feed, Gibson posted:

“That putative Lady Gaga virus is as seriously Footage-y as anything I’ve seen on YouTube.”

Curious, I found my way to this video:

UPDATE: There were a couple of videos on YouTube to which I had linked but they’ve been pulled. Very suspicious.

Stephen Fry on the iPad

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British wit and tech daddy-o, Stephen Fry, on the iPad (just a couple of snippits from lengthy but excellent review):

“Newspapers, magazines, literature, academic text books, brochures, fliers and pamphlets are going to be transformed (poor Kindle). Specific dedicated apps and enhancements will amaze us. You will see characters in movies use the iPad. Jack Bauer will want to return for another season of 24 just so he can download schematics and track vehicles on it. Bond will have one. Jason Bourne will have one. Some character, in a Tron like way, might even be trapped in one.”

“How much easier it is to distrust, to doubt, to fold the arms and say “Not impressed”. I’m not advocating dumb gullibility, but it is has always amused me that those who instinctively dislike Apple for being apparently cool, trendy, design fixated and so on are the ones who are actually so damned cool and so damned sensitive to stylistic nuance that they can’t bear to celebrate or recognise obvious class, beauty and desire. The fact is that Apple users like me are the uncoolest people on earth: we salivate, dribble, coo, sigh, grin and bubble with delight.”

Ahem. I confess to all but the dribble. I try not to dribble.

Blog. Book. Book Tour.

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I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned that my friend Henry turned his blog (Health Care Fine Art) into a book. He didn’t try to sell the book but gave it to the best customers of his art. Some call it “vanity press,” Henry calls it marketing.

A year later… Henry has been invited to give a talk about his book in New York. Last week he did a series of presentations in Boston. In a couple of week he’ll be in San Francisco and next month, San Diego.

It’s a beautiful book and nobody know more about this kind of art than Henry.

Welcome to the new normal.