virtualDavis

Johnnie Mac (didgeridoo) busking in Prague. (Frugal Traveler)

When you travel, you see them everywhere: a guitarist strumming and crooning in the Paris Métro, a juggler in an Italian piazza, a human statue on a New York City corner. They are buskers, and these street performers are not necessarily locals; many are travelers looking to make a bit of extra money and prolong their journeys around the globe.

One of these is Johnnie Mac, a 40-year-old Australian singer-songwriter who, after some initial success playing with bands in Sydney in the late 1980s, decided to take his act to the streets of Europe. (“What are you doing that for?” he said his family asked him. “Are you mad?”) For years, he roamed the Continent, exploring the newly opening east and making it as far as Siberia and Mongolia.

Having settled down from his wandering ways, Johnnie Mac is married and fathering, but still finds time to assist fellow buskers. Visit his website BuskerWorld.com or read his eBook, “The Busker’s Bible”.

Read the full article at Frugal Traveler

Users Focus on Faces:

People instinctively notice other people right away when they come into view. On Web pages, we tend to focus on people’s faces and eyes, which gives marketers a good technique for attracting attention. But our attraction to people’s faces and eyes is only the beginning; it turns out we actually glance in the direction the person in the image is looking in.

via smashingmagazine.com

This post over at Smashing Magazine shares insightful website usability guidelines for designers and developers.

The Center for Digital Storytelling is “dedicated to assisting people in using digital media to tell meaningful stories from their lives…” Central to their mission “is an enduring respect for the power of individual voices and a deep set of values and principles that recognize how sharing and bearing witness to stories can lead to learning, action, and positive change.” This is one of the progeny of Dana Atchley’s work in digital storytelling.

Storybird Quick Tour from Storybird on Vimeo.

Take a tour of Storybird

Attention parents, babysitters and elementary school teachers. Have you discovered the Storybirds website yet? Storybirds are short, visual stories that you make with family and friends to share digitally. And soon you’ll be able to print them as well. Neat! The perfect place to start: Timothy, the Existential Bear…

Steve Rubel’s observations after using the iPad as his “primary computer” for five days:

First, you would be surprised what a joy it is to have a device that: turns on instantly, requires no saving (!), is completely silent and has incredible battery life…

Second, there’s no doubt in my mind that the iPad marks a pivotal moment in the history of computing. People want computing to be simpler…

Finally, I notice that now when I use my phone it feels, well, tiny! I am using my smart phones less and using the iPad more…

via steverubel.com

Could you switch over to iPad as your primary (or only) computer?

Photograph via foxnews.com

Welcome to the digital age. Do you speak 21st century social networking lingo? Language is shifting before our eyes, absorbing new terminology and references so quickly it can get a little confusing. If you’re feeling a little foggy on digital vernacular, John Brando’s “25 New Tech Words You Need to Know” is a must read. And a must print, carry in your wallet, demystify the water cooler cheat sheet. A few highlights: co-creation, ideation, mehsayer and lifestream. Oh, and if you haven’t discovered vooks yet, you haven’t been reading my posts!

What tech-talk terminology are you sick of hearing?

“I always like to stress the following rather obvious point. The paper book is a marvelous combination of two quite distinct products: a story (or body of information), and a crafted, physical object. Once you can separate these two things in your mind, it becomes much easier to see how stories can be shared and sold distinct from their traditional, physical bodies. And, comfortingly, it’s easier to see how printed books will always be highly valued for their physical beauty. In consequence, the digital world both enables a rapid increase in story-telling, free from the costs of physical production, and increases the value of well-crafted physical books. Any successful publisher will find a way to make the most of this.” (digitalbookworld)

Arthur Attwell, co-founder and CEO of Electric Book Works, offers seven tips for small publishers adding digital titles to their inventory:

1. Don’t think ebooks are only for technical folk
2. Don’t worry about digital rights management (DRM)
3. Convert books to ebooks with free online services
4. Distribute and sell ebooks with free online services
5. Don’t limit yourself to ebooks; get more from their content
6. Think of your print books as a value-added version of your ebooks
7. Read and learn about digital publishing

Read Arthur Attwell’s full post at digitalbookworld…

So what does Marvel do to “enhance” its comics? They take away the right to give, sell or loan your comics. What an improvement. Way to take the joyous, marvellous sharing and bonding experience of comic reading and turn it into a passive, lonely undertaking that isolates, rather than unites. Nice one, Misney.

I think that the press has been all over the iPad because Apple puts on a good show, and because everyone in journalism-land is looking for a daddy figure who’ll promise them that their audience will go back to paying for their stuff. The reason people have stopped paying for a lot of “content” isn’t just that they can get it for free, though: it’s that they can get lots of competing stuff for free, too. The open platform has allowed for an explosion of new material, some of it rough-hewn, some of it slick as the pros, most of it targeted more narrowly than the old media ever managed.

If you want to live in the creative universe where anyone with a cool idea can make it and give it to you to run on your hardware, the iPad isn’t for you.

If you want to live in the fair world where you get to keep (or give away) the stuff you buy, the iPad isn’t for you.

via boingboing.net

Cory Doctorow’s post “Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t, either)” over at Boing Boing is timely, feisty and smart. The four paragraphs above capture the essence of his argument. Apple, take note! The future is open. To gain a place of enduring relevance, iPad must learn to play well with others.

For my part, I will buy an iPad. And I will challenge its creative limits while exploring my own!

Will you buy an iPad?