Infomatics has released some data on mobile phone growth for the year. Subscribers are set to jump from 335 million to 380 million this year - however, if we look at past trends, each year's "estimates" have been exceeded quite significantly, so I wouldn't be surprised to find the same going on here. Although many developed countries are nearing saturation, developing countries will push the growth, and we'll start to see more people around the world supporting 2 or more devices. Via Moore's Law

I am sorry to say that I won't be able to attend the upocoming Our Social World conference in Cambridge, England. Many of my favorite people are going to be there, presenting their fascinating insights, dammit. [tags: our+social+world

Paul Scrivens, who I recently met at the Blog Business Summit, has an interesting post on Being the Hype, making the case that hype can be overblown, like the boy who cried wolf, leading to negative effects: "If you continue to hype every product you release, hype will no longer be generated. This is what 37signals was doing wrong in my opinion. It's not that they are releasing a number of products or that many of them, some will argue, share the same qualities. It's that instead of just telling us that a new app will be launching next week or simply just launching it, we get a taste of our 4th product marketing speech which begins to wear on people. Apple gets hype because they don't bother hyping anything themselves. The rumor sites take care of that. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Microsoft hypes every new OS and has no chance of living up to their own hype." Amen. [tags: paul+scrivens]

Seth Godin Goldstein has launched AttentionTrust, a non-profit "dedicated to promoting the basic rights of attention owners." Which I believe is us.

Join Now
If you believe in and are willing to adhere to the following four principles, you are invited to apply to the AttentionTrust:

Property
You own your attention and can store it wherever you wish.
Mobility
You can securely move your attention wherever you want whenever you want to.
Economy
You can pay attention to whomever you wish and receive value in return.
Transparency
You can see exactly how your attention is being used.

David Beisel riffs on John's Herran's quip -- “http://del.icio.us/popular is the new Slashdot.” -- by pointing out "tagging is the new black." [tags: Social Architecture]

Niklas Zennstrom, co-founder of Skype, estimates that 30% of its 40 million customers are corporate users. via Financial Times Tag: skype

Chris Allen is trying to understand why it is so easy for people to spin into madness online, and suggests that people are involved in ad hominem stereotyping -- extrapolation, as he calls it -- and that this leads them astray: "I doubt if explaining this theory to someone who writes a hostile message is useful -- they will take it as yet another attack, which will likely contribute to another cycle of flamage. [...] Understanding this lets me add another widget to my social software toolbox: when a group process results in a hostile message, try to determine if the author is actually reacting to what you said or if their hostility is based on extrapolating to "obvious" generalities. This may not allow you to directly address the hostility, but it may help you better understand it and thus not contribute to the cycle of flames." Hear, hear.

Russell Beattie hit a few nerves with his recent PR People Are Morons. His contention that there are many, many clueless PR flacks out there is well-founded, but the blanket indictment of PR as a whole has folks like Shel Israel and Anil Dash slapping his wrist. My hope is that the PR professionals that do get it will quickly wise up their clueless comrades, or else the PR trade will continue its plunge in respect. Russell is the one willing to overgeneralize to get attention on the real problem: PR folks attempting to short circuit the blogosphere for personal gain. [pointer from Micheal O'Connor Clark] [tags: PR People Are Morons, Russell Beattie, social+media]

Buried in the middle of a Gelf article about Google search, Does Google News Have a Sense of Humor?, I found this factoid about Google juice: "Ethan Zuckerman, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, told the Online Journalism Review that he has a theory as to why smaller-time sources get ranked higher than obviously bigger sources on some stories, especially those having to do with people's names. "I think what you're seeing is an odd little linguistic artifact," he said, explaining that while mainstream news publications refer to people on second reference by their last names, alternative news sites often use the whole name multiple times on purpose. As far as Google News is concerned, this means that the smaller sources are more relevant." Hmmm. I guess I will have to thank Ethan Zuckerman for that advice the next time I see Ethan Zuckerman. [tags: Google juice]

I recently participated in Ed Batista's "Three Questions with..." project, which can be seen here. Even has a bonus question about karate!

MIT is running a Weblog Survey; calling all bloggers to participate.

We've launched a new blog today, called Future Tense, where a great group will be exploring the future of work: Elizabeth Albrycht, Dave Desforges, Jim McGee, Regina Miller, and Jim Ware. My only contribution is the name! - Stowe

Over at Boing Boing, the uselessness of Friendster is once again mulled over, as contributor Macki trashes a totally dumb search tool they implemented: "Tracking infection vectors via social networking is definitely not a new idea, but it's apparent now that Friendster is sufficiently mature to start tuning this feature. Maybe they can start keeping track of individual's risk factors and generate a score ranging from the coveted "Raping me cures AIDS" to the dreaded "Anna Nicole Smith's Vagina"." Yikes. [tags: Friendster]

OpenBC announces they have reached the 500,000 users milestone. Definitely a serious player in today's approach to gated social networking, although I am still withdrawing from these sorts of solutions. [tags: Unlinking From Social Networks"]

Nancy White notes that I have been blogging like a maniac recently (easier when you don't travel every minute), in Stowe on a Roll. She quotes my announcement of an open business plan (although her link is broken), and then asks, "After reading that, I realized from that point on, I was hearing more of what I think of as "Stowe's voice." He has always shared links, trends and thinking, but somehow it seems to have more of his voice in it. Is this my imagination?" I don't think you're imaging things; I am trying to be more open about what we, and I, are doing behind the scenes at Corante. More to follow! [tags: Corante Open Business Plan]

Marc Canter agrees that conferences need an overhaul, or are totally broken. "I had an opportunity of helping one of the new conferences push the envelope. I suggested that perhps the notion of a conference - which only existing for a few days a year - was passe. Conferences of the future will be on-line, and 24/7/365. A brand. An IRC channel, a Wiki and a marketplace. It's a new paradigm of conferences." Hey, Marc, let's plan a new conference trying some of these ideas. [tags: Marc Canter, Death To All Panel Sessions]

Check out Min Jung Kim's Lifecycle of Bloggers.

I did some sniffing around, and Adam Kalsey has built a MT plugin, Technorati A 1 that does at least some of what I wrote about yesterday in the Distributed Architecture for Social Media piece: "I've whipped up a quick MT plugin that can get the Technorati link Cosmos for your entire blog or a specific entry and insert it into your blog pages." tags: [Technorati A 1]

I guess I am not surprised to read that Fast Company is up for sale. I don't know the particulars of the company's finances, or of the parent company that is also trying to dump Inc., but being the edgiest of mainstream media's business pubs is kind of like being the world's shortest giant, nowadays.[tags: Fast Company]

Seen in recent email, a footer that displays blogability of the contents: "This email is: [x] blogable [] ask first [] private".

Just an update on the lagtime of Technorati updates: its been 7 days since the last update of Get Real's ranking (3,259) although Technorati shows an additional 108 links from 42 sources in the past 7 days. Even the Cosmos is lagging: "last updated 8 hours ago." I love Technorati, but I really need it to be instantaneous.

[tags: Technorati]

Via Wired News, Will Wright, the mind behind The Sims, talks about his new "game" called Spore: "Can a computer game bring you to theological discussions, or philosophy, but at the same time remain eminently whimsical and playful and approachable? That's an interesting balance to strike. I like the idea of an extremely whimsical toy that has deep philosophical implications." Kind of like David Weinberger.

[tags: Wll Wright, Spore]

Oh boy, things are moving fast in VoIPland. At IGN.com, Craig Harris reports from E3 2005 "Earlier this week, we reported that Nintendo would be demonstrating something called DSpeak at its Electronic Entertainment Expo booth this week. After experiencing it hands-on, we can tell you what it is: Voice-over IP using the Nintendo DS' wireless and microphone capabilities." Just a concept demo, but this should create even more panic in the traditional phone companies. [pointer from Waxy.org]

[tags: Nintendo DS, Dspeak]

Virginia Postrel has a new column at Forbes -- Looking Forward -- where, at least in this issue, she is taking MSM blogbashers on: "Something about blogs makes a lot of respectable journalists hyperventilate." Go get'im!

[tags: Virginia Postrel, Watching The Watchers]

Anne Galloway has a few choice words re: Mass Amateurization, and why Flickr and Dodgeball have been scooped up: They convinced us to play with their products and help build them. "Don't get me wrong. Generally I stand behind what some folks call 'mass amateurisation' - or more specifically I support challenges to traditional professional expertise. But when Microsoft or the BBC want me to "play" with their products it's different from when I play with my friends and peers. Not necessarily worse, and wonderful in all sorts of ways, but different nonetheless. Started as basically DIY efforts, Flickr has become Flickr/Yahoo and Dodgeball has become Dodgeball/Google. Blogging the latest conference I attended or building patio furniture from the latest issue of Ready-Made is different than squatter entrepreneurship. Assembled relations shift, will continue to shift, and that's never a neutral occurrence."

[tags: Anne Galloway, Mass Amateurization, Flickr, Dodgeball]