Just recently I was in an interesting meeting discussing the ubiquitous topic of social media. In the advent of millions of people using Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter it’s interesting to hear what’social media means to people and their interpretation of its value. My interpretation of value in social media is the opportunity for technology to expose the interesting details of our day to day lives which are commonly hidden to others because we are at work, traveling, or any other situation where traditional or personal communication doesn’t readily keep us connected.  By no means is my interpretation ground breaking but does serve as a segue to an interesting question.

What is the best to expose the interesting details of our lives or organization and create a sense of connectedness; what should those details be?  For me it’s this blog because I can controll the format, content, and have ownership. Sure I use Flickr and Facebook but only for a point of contact and things I have no problem with existing and living in a public domain.

As a slight tangent … I’m definitely a fan of CommonCraft and their style of presentation; they’ve basically built a small media company based on the Back of the Napkin style of presentation. Staying with the topic of social media they’ve done a nice clip about Twitter in their ‘plain english’ format.  It’s mostly about the service itself but really describes the value point of social media I previously mentioned.

Social media is amazing. Whats even more amazing is when artists give raw content to a community and begin to see the community shape and mold the content on its own.  If you have not already, give a listen to NIN.REMIX.COM.

Recently I received an excellent recommendation that I should listen to a band called ‘Fleet Foxes’. As my tastes in music lean a little more towards the folk genre right now this is a very welcomed listening experience. Their Wikipedia page says the band describes their music as “baroque harmonic pop jams”. Being from Seattle I would expect Fleet Foxes to have a bit more ‘pop’ after listening to ‘Sun Giant’ yesterday. But rather than typing on and on you should scroll down a little further and press play.

I’ve listened to this song previously but just found a video was made for it. To me its a relaxing song and interesting video to watch. Samuel Beam uses a lot of imagery in his folk music; not something I’m heavily into bit a nice departure from other forms of musical entertainment.

One of my favorite bands, songs, and videos. This fall it was amazing to see this performed live again in Columbus; can’t wait for the next NIN tour.  If you havn’t checked it out NIN has a concert DVD from their last tour. When exercising at home I’ll put this on the big screen and crank the speakers.

edit: google video removed the video, replaced from one with youtube

Note: song gets NWS at 2:24

When working with my friend Eddie he would often make some great music recommendations that were posted on my old blog. One of them was Zero 7’s song ‘Destiny’. Its one of my favorites so I’m going to add is back to the site and place it on my 4gb Zune (the one that didn’t get Z2k9′d)