A little something extra…
It’s the weekend edition again.
The commentary piece from Bruce Sterling on Best Buy being the only electronics store left standing goes well with the slide-show of dead malls and big box stores. In that slide show, the photographer, Brian Ulrich, is asked how he sets up his shots, to which he gives an interesting example of how he blends the web and meat-space together for research and planning:
To set up a picture depends on what’s in front of the camera. I start by doing lots of research online. Looking through Flickr, Google Street View, Deadmalls.com, and Labelscar as well as retail real-estate listings. I’m trying to get an idea of what I might find in a given location. Some sites change fast as I have to sometimes have good timing to find some of the “label scars” before they are painted over. Other times it’s simply driving, looking, and exploring. Once I get to a location I make tons of cell phone snaps to start to make decisions about what kind of picture to make. It can be obvious or subtle and it’s not uncommon to not even make the picture until months later.
Just down the street from us in Austin is Highland Mall, a mall that’s been going through a weird transformation (or maybe slow death). I’m not sure why it’s declining as it’s centrally located for many well to do Austinites and still has good stores. As Labelscar puts it: “Austin’s Highland Mall has become one of 2009’s most famous dying (though not yet dead) malls due to some high profile craziness and catfights.”
The Links
- Houston biggest US city to elect openly gay mayor
"Parker defeated Locke with 53.6 percent of the vote Saturday in a race that had a turnout of only 16.5 percent…. A little more than 152,000 residents turned out to cast ballots in the nation's fourth largest city, which has a population of 2.2 million. Of those voters, 81,743 chose Parker — some 11,000 more than voted for Locke." - Facebook's New Privacy Changes: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
The EFF's take on Facebook's new privacy policies. "Our conclusion? These new "privacy" changes are clearly intended to push Facebook users to publicly share even more information than before. Even worse, the changes will actually reduce the amount of control that users have over some of their personal data." That said, the EFF does like the fine-grained nature: "Perhaps most importantly, Facebook has added a feature that we and many others have long advocated for: the ability to define the privacy of your Facebook content on a per-post basis. So, for example, if you only want your close friends to see a particular photo, or only your business colleagues to see a particular status update, you can do that — using a simple drop-down menu that lets you define who will see that piece of content." This is getting damn close to enterprise identity management, eh? - Austin Red Light Cameras | The Texas Tribune
Check out data on red-light cameras in Austin. Interesting estimated revenue, crashes, etc. - What, No Octomom?
- B.N.E., the Graffiti Writer, Gets a Manhattan Exhibition
“I don’t see other graffiti writers as my competition anymore,” B.N.E. said. “Now I’m going up against the Tommy Hilfigers, Starbucks, Pepsi. You have these billion-dollar companies, and I’ve got to look at their logos every day. Why can’t I put mine up?” - How dictators watch us on the web
Complete with some (gentle) Clay Shirky bashing! "Generally, in the absence of strong democratic norms and institutions, the internet has fueled a drive for vigilante justice" — "After the first flash mob, the authorities began monitoring By_mob, the LiveJournal community where the activities were announced. The police started to show up at the events, often before the flashmobbers did. Not only did they detain participants, but they too took photos. These—along with the protesters’ own online images—were used to identify troublemakers, many of whom were then interrogated by the KGB, threatened with suspension from university, or worse. This intimidation didn’t go unnoticed. Soon, only hardcore activists would show up. Social media created a digital panopticon that thwarted the revolution: its networks, transmitting public fear, were infiltrated and hopelessly outgunned by the power of the state." - Twitter against Tyrants: New Media in Authoritarian Regimes
- Ghosts of Shopping Past – The Morning News
- needs more salt
Holy crap, food blogging! - Why beauty queens reign in France
"How is it that Miss France is still a mainstream national institution when northwest Europe (Russia and east Europe are different) decided decades ago that beauty pageants were offensive and banished them to the margins? Yes, they are popular in Italy too, but France is part of the modern north for most purposes. Part of the reason is nostalgia. Miss France symbolises a stable, rural golden age that figures in the collective imagination — and which President Sarkozy sees as the key to French national identity. Miss France is supposed to carry French elegance to the four corners of the world but much of her job consists of travelling the country awarding prizes at agriculture shows and village fêtes." - The Millennials – Pew Research Center
The Pew goes over how they'll be studying "Millennials" – defined here at (US) people born from 1981 to 2000. As Bruce Sterling sums it up: "According to Pew Research, they’re like multiracial leftist cyberpunk atheist values voters." Also, I love that they call the generation born before 1946 as "The Silent Generation," saying "the label [was applied] relatively late in this generations life cycle, when their conformist and civic instincts made for a dramatic contrast with the noisy ways of the anti-establishment [baby] boomers." - Information leaking in the legal system.
- Cyprus's history: Aphrodite's troubled island
The briefest geographic history ever written. - The last American big-box electronic retail store left standing
"You really have to wonder what the United States of America will look like in ten years. So many multi-generational mainstays of middle-class suburban life are being rapidly swept away that there’s a Gone With the Wind feeling about American society. Pretty soon it’ll be like those heartrending scenes when Rhett smuggles Scarlett a pretty hat from Paris and she puts it on backward." - GOOGLE VS. APPLE VS. MS: MONEY VS. STRATEGY
Well, that's fun reading! - Vodafone’s Lukewarm 60-degree Offering
"Those of you with elephantine memories will remember Vizzavi — the 1.8 billion dollar balls-up joint venture between two commodity suppliers. On the one hand we had Big Red (”Vodafone”) fresh from buying up everyone it could under the direct reign of Sir Chris Gent. On the other hand we had Vivdendi, the mighty conglomerate, that, when it wasn’t arsing around with water companies, it was sodding about with music labels. The two of them got together and knocked out this massively ambitious WAP Portal and website that had a strategic promise hard to ignore. Free email integrated into your handset, online storage, synchronised address books and so on. Of course only the best handsets at the time could handle colour and the reality of WAP was beginning to dawn (the oft heard phrase from consumers: 'How shit is this?')." - Party Flyers
Pretty awesome flyers from the pre desktop publishing days, it seems. - Discreate Definition
"to reduce to nothing; annihilate." – when misspelling pays off!
Disclosure: see the RedMonk client list for clients mentioned.
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