“groovy mother...”

Just-launched social network site for video-gamers. A month ago, I wouldn’t have paid much attention, but having really gotten into the social side of Xbox Live, I can see the appeal.

Great post by Merlin, particularly for this description of why I can’t be arsed with the hype about Friendfeed: “On a site like FriendFeed, which has quickly become the platform of choice for the web’s least interesting narcissists — and the slow-witted woodland creatures who enjoy grooming their fur — this is a major breakthrough in the makebelieve friendship space”

Schulze & Webb’s hardware prototype of a socially-networked open-source digital radio. Some excellent ideas for internet-enabled physical objects in the pamphlet.

Clay Shirky’s talk from web2expo, which was by far the best of the keynotes. “Desperate Housewives essentially functioned as a kind of cognitive heat sink, dissipating thinking that might otherwise have built up and caused society to overheat.”

“Take it easy on the kid, SilverFox316; everybody kills Hitler on their first trip. I did. It always gets fixed within a few minutes, what’s the harm?”

“The Jack Principles is the first set of comprehensive guidelines for designing, writing and performing for an interactive conversation.” Great reading if you’re developing software for humans.

Another social software village I’m a member of: Basset hound owners on Flickr. There’s a great community forming of basset owners commenting on each others’ photos, and here, celebrating the birthday of another Flickrer’s dog!

Great post by Laura “@Pistachio” Fitton. Exactly sums up why Twitter is so lovely: “For a contrived, weird and techy way to communicate, Twitter’s “passive conversation” fosters very natural, gradual relationship-building.”

Google have bought the Finnish Twitter-a-like Jaiku. I always liked Jaiku’s S60 cellphone software — wonder if this purchase has anything to do with Google’s cellphone ambitions? (And I hope it does better under Google’s roof than Dodgeball did)

Satisfaction has launched. It’s a great idea — Give customers a place to discuss their experiences, problems and ideas, and give the companies the chance to join in the conversation.

Adam Green: “What I’m seeing on Twitter, however, is true social construction of software features. Users are coming up the ideas, and implementing them through adoption.”

Baratunde Thurston on being shut out from messaging the group he founded on Facebook for the specific purpose of messaging. “I invested a lot into Facebook, but I’ve discovered, painfully, that Facebook doesn’t value me nearly as much as I’d hoped.”

Schulze & Webb are working on an open, social digital-radio-plus-wifi prototype for the BBC. Fascinating the way they hope to apply “open source” to hardware design.

“Yes, I know you’d love to have access to my address books and IM lists. But stop asking me for my login & password. Like to poke around my bank account while you’re at it? Take my wife out for naked tequila shots? How about just kicking me in the nuts a few times to show me who’s boss?”

Open-source-software social network, tracking both projects and people.

New social networking site, aimed at a audience similar to the users of 37 Signals collaboration tools. I have a shitload of invites if anyone wants to play.

Really cool social family-tree building software. Allows you to invite your relatives to help build up the tree.

The new Facebook API. They’ve done a really good job of letting you integrate — essentially they’re being a platform and then getting out of the way of whatever you want to build.

Social site tracking what applications you use and how long you use them for. Kind of a Last.FM meets IUseThis.