Post-it notes on the fridge

In the opening lines of an article about new chat-room interfaces, New York Times reporter Brad Stone makes a very succinct comparison.

People visit each other’s MySpace pages and Facebook profiles at various hours of the day, posting messages and sending e-mail back and forth across the digital void. It’s like an endless party where everybody shows up at a different time and slaps a yellow Post-it note on the refrigerator.

The “notes on the fridge” analogy is spot-on. Not so sure about the party part. Right now, it’s more like the afterparty. It’s where the mementos of real life – photos, video and even anecdotes – set up house.

But sometimes social-media spaces are more like board games. Some days it’s checkers. Other times it’s chess. A new conversation is akin to the opening move of a new game. A reply is a response to someone else’s move. And for anyone who plays Scrabulous, Facebook literally is a board game.

The main piece of news in Stone’s article is a new 3D chat application called Vivaty. It looks curiously like Second Life, but it’s a platform-agnostic app. And it’s backed by some deep V.C. pockets. Whether or not it will bring some life to the aforementioned party, that’ll depend on its functionality and how users respond to it.

Honk, honk. Beep, beep.

Pardon the noise. Just a little congratulatory horn tooting going on here. Friend of the blog, Supergeekery, said some very nice things about Chock-a-Blog in a recent post.

Supergeekery is a great source of news for all things digital. Ever wondered how to back up everything the right way with an external hard drive? How do you download a YouTube video? What’s the Web news from SXSW? What went down at the PSFK conference? Does anyone have a Kindle? How is YouTube influencing the election? Can you make a video go viral? Enquiring minds want to know. Be sure to check it all out at Supergeekery.

Follow the money

The folks at the Huffington Post have come up with a terribly interesting – albeit slightly invasive – widget bringing a lot of financial transparency to this year’s Presidential election.

Dubbed FundRace 2008, it’s a mash-up of Federal Election Commission filings and Google maps. Curious about who in your neighborhood donated to whom? Want to know how much Republicans raised, compared to Democrats, in Beverly Hills 90210 or Manhattan’s tony 10022? Just enter an address or a ZIP code and connect the dots.



You can even search by last and first name, if you’re dying to know how much Jennifer Aniston donated to whom. (Let’s just say, yes, she can to the fullest extent allowable by law.) FundRace was originally created by the smart people at Eyebeam.