katie van domelen *

Give power to the readers AND the writers.

Think about it. It's not a bad idea to surface all the songs my friends are listening to - that's what Last.FM is all about. But general sentiment was negative when the Spotify frictionless sharing showed up on Facebook. Why?

Or think about Goodreads. I'm a nerd who loves to read and I don't care who knows it. I keep my Goodreads account meticulously up to date with the books I've read and my reviews, but I don't post that content back to Facebook. Why?

The answer is simple. We don't want to push all that content to our friends and force it on them. I bet if there was a way to filter content streams that gave readers control over what they were looking at, we'd all be more open to sharing.

I guess the way I'm envisioning it is that there'd be a main stream where I'd post my normal status updates, photos, etc (my wall, the news feed) that I want to push to all my friends so they can see it. But then there should be a way to update content areas that don't push to a main feed. Like "Music I'm listening to" or "Books I'm reading" or "Movies I'm watching" - all would be perfect examples. Then as a Facebook user, looking for reading inspiration or music suggestions, I would navigate to the "music" feed and see all the music updates my friends have posted, or the [fill-in-the-blank] feed. I could see that easily applying to music, movies, books, check-ins, games, articles read, etc.

Essentially it's a double opt-in - one friend is saying "I'm willing to share this" and the other is saying "I want to read this type of info." It would be up to the writer to decide whether to publish to the main feed/wall or to a content area and then it would be up to the reader/viewer whether to look only at the main feed or at a paricular content area.

This way we can have our cake and eat it too - we can share to our hearts content without worrying that we're oversharing and bugging our friends. And we can hear all about our friends lives, but in a manageable way that fits with what we're interested in. And Facebook gets allllllll those impressions, and shares, and connections.

Win-Win-Win as Michael Scott would say.

This is incredibly important - if you haven't read 1984 since high school, pick it up and tell me this isn't the beginning of that world. It's all well and good to protest the systems that are in place to create such a gulf between the 99 and 1 percent in this country but it's nothing if you don't take action to stop yet another law that increases the barrier to entry for small companies and promotes the interests of the largest conglomerates. They don't need our protection.

Now do something about it.

"Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart." - Steve Jobs

This phone is phenomenal. Everything about using it is simple, intuitive and clean. And pretty. After I got it my boyfriend asked me if I loved the phone better than him and he still hasn't forgiven me for pausing before answering (I was only kidding I swear!) And with these upcoming updates, it just keeps getting better:

Why, yes, I am a little bit a closet geek. Why do you ask?

I think this is really cool. I wish I lived close enough to DC to try this today! Here's the best description on what it is:

“Unlike a number of other music apps out there, this one isn’t a companion to a normal album or an app that gives you tour dates or things like that,” Holladay says. “It actually is the work itself. The music has been composed to work specifically in this landscape. So, for instance, at the Lincoln Memorial, as you ascend the steps up to the giant statue, the sound of bells increases to the point where, when you are standing at Lincoln’s feet, they are surrounding you.”

Read more about it on Mashable.