Disqus - Latest Comments for iwilker

Re: notify.me closing shop - Oct 4th

iwilker — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 14:40:46 -0000

Thanks for all the time you put into notify.me — it's been an essential tool for me for a long time! Good luck with whatever's next.

Re: Fight The Right-Wing Media

iwilker — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 20:42:47 -0000

Recessions, increasingly, don't hurt the truly wealthy. That simple.

Re: RebelCapitalist: Financial Information for the Rest of Us | They are Fooling Nobody

iwilker — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 22:06:18 -0000

Amen. That's really about all I can say — great stuff.

Re: Why might a social-media pioneer kill his online identity?

iwilker — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 21:35:41 -0000

Thanks for weighin' in. What worries me is that a few years back — when in fact there was a lot more variety/fluidity in the social-web-app ecology than there is today — there was also a lot of momentum behind efforts to:

» open-source a lot of the frameworks underneath the developing social web,

» standardize data formats (e.g. the microformats scene) and thus enhance portability/interoperability of one's data,

» enforce, via professional ethics within the web-development community, a general policy of engaging in as transparent and fair a relationship with one's customers/users/constituents as possible. (You know, "Don't be evil.")

The urgency isn't really there any more, at least that's my impression. Web-industry folks seem less prickly, less ready to take a stand against things like sleazy Terms of Service agreements, net neutrality, etc. Without a lot of energy behind doing things the right way, corps/gov't will not experience enough pressure to build tech infrastructure in such a way that it encourages innovation and, as my dad says, enhances "individual and collective well-being."

Re: R.I.P. Delicious: You Were So Beautiful to Me

iwilker — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 20:56:18 -0000

Damn. You nailed it, Marshall.

Grokking del.icio.us back in 2005 was literally a "satori" moment for me. Its architecture — the dynamic tag-based feeds, the "popular" pages, the way using the site mapped exactly to my own discursive, associative nature — is so simple, so perfectly and richly functional. Del.icio.us allowed me to see a lot of the possibilities inherent in the read-write web. I was in awe of Josh Schachter.

When twitter came along, one of my first thoughts was "Oh, this does kinda what I've been using del.icio.us for — as a microblogging tool/cms." (and better, in some ways — the granularity of tags, the high signal-to-noise ratio). I used it as an ad-hoc, groundswell-type platform for knowledge management in a large nonprofit institution. I used it to explain web 2.0 to dozens of people in that organization. I connected with who knows how many people through the nptech tag.

Things change, but this is a hard one. I dunno — del.icio.us is just deeply entwined with my own trajectory over the last 5-6 years.

Re: How Your Virtual Team Can “Crush It”

iwilker — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:48:38 -0000

I surely can relate — I've never had any formal management training. (What a novel idea!) I've gradually become more interested in project-management frameworks and the like after floundering around in the dark for years and making every mistake in the book, both as team member and as team manager. The school of hard knocks gets tiresome after a while.

Thanks for weighing in Kyra, and for your generosity in sharing your deck!

Re: http://www.underpaidgenius.com/post/1047512414

iwilker — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 09:12:10 -0000

Spot on.

In campaign mode, Obama and team successfully lit a fire under a huge number of people, many of them new to, or returning after long disaffection about, civic engagement. Well, that fire's dead as a stone now, squandered by an administration that minced around as the other side seized the initiative with jingoistic fake populism. Why a crappy, hopelessly compromised health care initiative instead of a New New Deal focused on taking global lead in building a clean energy economy? WTF?! How did they screw this up so badly? I'm disgusted with the dems.

I laugh sourly as I say this, but Obama might have done well to channel himself some Elliot Spitzer, of "I am a f---ing steamroller, and I'll roll over you and anybody else" fame

Re: Email/Text is saved, notify.me moving to subscription

iwilker — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:33:47 -0000

How 'bout tiered plans? I love notify.me's IM service, but have no need for email/text. I could see paying, oh, let's say $10/year for IM only; much more than that would probably send me hunting for another way to handle critical feeds for site-monitoring and -moderating.

Re: notify.me removes email/sms delivery and other updates

iwilker — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 18:10:22 -0000

Marshall, my jaw's agape just imagining the filter/intel machine you must have notify.me hooked into.

Re: notify.me removes email/sms delivery and other updates

iwilker — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 17:50:00 -0000

Notify.me has been a pretty important part of workflow on community-management jobs for me, and your IM notifications are all I've ever used. Thanks for a great tool, and I'm really glad I don't have to go kludge together something else!

Re: Twitter and Blogging Wisdom from Doc

iwilker — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 13:54:46 -0000

as regards my thinkin' about the internets, no one has blown my mind as regularly and memorably as Doc. Thanks for calling attention to this one.

Re: Lance Ball

iwilker — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:15:22 -0000

Wonderful color. And a subject that actually makes me homesick for New York, which is hard to do... I miss the Mermaid Parade.

Re: The Snow Leopard: So Much More Than An Operating System

iwilker — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:34:05 -0000

#5: Snow leopards have arguably the most beautiful tails in the animal kingdom!
I've always loved this animal. Thanks Danielle!

Re: Blender in Environmental Advertising

iwilker — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 08:56:07 -0000

Great stuff, Daniel! :-)

Re: I did the UX design for Brighter Planet

iwilker — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:20:11 -0000

Thanks, Whitney! And I'm @iwilker; been following your tweetstream for a good long while.

cheers! - Ian

p.s. almost forgot: All ye Whitney readers who see this — help us steer where we take the site from here. check out the beta, and any and all feedback welcome on our

Re: I did the UX design for Brighter Planet

iwilker — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:10:11 -0000

@Whitney - I'm Ian, Brighter Planet's community daemon (or something). Sure wish I'd been able to participate in the design process -- would have been so cool to work on something with you and the rest of the Cog crew, but I came aboard too late to take part. (Almost worked it out with Jeff and Greg Hoy to do this site a few years back, but to my undying frustration my side couldn't get our act together on funding.) In any case it's not too bad simply enjoying the fruit of all the love you and the rest of the team put into the site.

Adam would no doubt have dropped by here already, but he's on a much-needed vacation this week. Thanks for writing about the site, and for so enthusiastically tweeting about it over the last few days!

@A.J. - re Akoha: now that's a razor-sharp bit of insight. :-) Our CTO (the aforementioned Adam) really, really likes Akoha; lots of thinking underway along the lines you suggest.

And thanks for reporting on "how far I drive" -- known issue; we're working on it. As for supporting non-U.S. residents: we had to start this way, but internationalization is something we're looking at (and a lot of users want it -- we're listening.)

Re: Your flickr and twitter accounts can finally shake hands

iwilker — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:39:06 -0000

Gopal,

Glad you enjoyed!

cheers,
Ian

Re: Gore vs. Hansen: Enviros take sides in debate over House climate bill

iwilker — Thu, 21 May 2009 03:05:14 -0000

First of all: Nice scorecard, Lisa.

I'm with Randino, and Royal Enfield -- by all means do everything possible to strengthen this bill, but we're way past the point where we can afford to take our ball and go home in a snit. Failure to move it along would likely cripple the Copenhagen effort, which just can't happen. And people underestimate (a) the institution-building and experience that would result from implementation of even this bill and a less-than-adequate Copenhagen treaty, and (b) the psychological value of getting such laws into the real world, where people will -- as they always do -- gradually accept and adjust to a world in which carbon emissions carry a price tag.

These benefits of getting laws/treaties done now will make it much easier to tighten the screws as we go along. We know this isn't enough. We will have to fight relentlessly to improve the law for years, decades even, along the way accepting whatever fruits of the moment are possible.

@iwilker

Re: Gore vs. Hansen: Enviros take sides in debate over House climate bill

iwilker — Thu, 21 May 2009 03:05:14 -0000

First of all: Nice scorecard, Lisa.

@iwilker

Re: David Weinberger on Obama’s Singular Focus

iwilker — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 11:40:21 -0000

Thanks Mark!

Now that the post-election excitement has been replaced by the grind of governing, it's good to read your comment. I think Obama will be able to continue to inspire people, despite Washington's legendary ability to reduce everyone to petty partisan bickering. But I've no doubt that he desperately needs every individual like yourself who's willing to declare a desire to keep the faith.

Re: Twestival: Amazing!

iwilker — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 14:44:22 -0000

David,

I haven't had time in the last couple weeks to give to the twestival effort -- I've just been watching from the peanut gallery. And I agree -- the way it's come together here in Asheville has been astounding. Look at all those sponsors! And the talent people have donated -- video editing, coding, graphic design, writing, speaking, mandolin-strumming...

Anyway, it's been exciting to see, and I too am looking forward to meeting you and about 50 other people I've been floored by in the last couple weeks. See you there.

-- @iwilker

Re: Two Views of Twitter for Journalists

iwilker — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:19:27 -0000

CJR's question is silly -- at this late date, to invite debate whether twitter has any journalistic value is to be on par with global warming "skeptics."

Re: Almost Real Time

iwilker — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 12:53:53 -0000

Looks promising -- I've been casting about for a good mechanism for "redball"-type notifications for some time; have used Rasasa, zaptxt, others and these have all been unreliable in the extreme.

Re: Wonder of Wonders: A Mainstream Media Co. Offers Multimedia Embed Codes

iwilker — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:12:05 -0000

Good one. And of course Colbert in particular has famously benefited from viral distribution of his clips.

Re: 200,000 Letters In 32 Hours?

iwilker — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:17:12 -0000

Interesting insight from Andrew Wetzler, a lawyer and ESA expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, on his blog:

Having the Department of Interior, rather than the Fish and Wildlife Service, respond to the comments is consistent with some informal conversations I’ve had with Agency personnel, who told me that the scientists and policy experts at the Fish and Wildlife Service were not consulted on these proposed rule changes and would not be taking any role in analyzing them. Reading between the lines a bit, it sounded to me that the Service’s career employees were none to happy about the proposal or the Administration’s failure to run it through normal channels. Put another way, these rule changes are almost entirely the product of political appointees at the Department of the Interior and it looks like the Bush Administration is determined to keep it that way.

Wetzler's been a really good source on this issue.