“Are you on Twitter?”

If your answer is “No,” then this is for you. And if you’re over 45, chances are that’s your answer. But before you write off Twitter as a time suck, or a toy for kids, you should know that most Twitter users are between 26 and 44. Grownups like it, and for good reason.

For quite a while now, reading my Twitter timeline has been one of the most gratifying and important activities of my day. But back in 2008, this was what I had to say about it:

You know those sci-fi movies where some guy suddenly has the ability to read the minds of everyone around him and his eyes roll up in his head and he collapses in a heap, frothing at the ears and utterly insane because he can’t handle the flood of inanities? That’s why I’ve been avoiding Twitter.

At the time I wrote that, Twitter was still young, and the prompt its founders had come up with to get people to use it was “What are you doing?” In response to this we got a lot of sandwich eating and jogging in the early days. This drove many people nuts away.

Read the rest of How Twitter Became My Morning Paper on the Huffington Post.

Another part of the equation is the readers, who are very free with their likes (easy to be generous when it costs you nothing), but likes don’t pay the rent any more than exposure does.

Speaking of readers, permit me to draw your attention to Flattr, which I affectionately refer to as “likes with balls.” It’s a revolutionary idea, though most people don’t seem to have grasped that just yet. (Or maybe they have, and they’re just selfish and lazy. Or maybe they’ve lost their jobs and homes and are living in their vans and eating uncooked Top Ramens every day. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.)

Read the rest of If content is king, why are content creators slaves? on frogblog.

Instagram appeals to the idealistic part of me, that withered little corner of my soul that is some days barely clinging to life… Here’s why:

…Instagram is much more than a toy. There are two things about it that really make my heart swell. First, seeing pictures taken by people all over the world, being privy to moments friends and semi-friends and total strangers find exceptional enough to record and share, really makes you hyper aware of the beating heart of humanity on this planet. The other six-plus billion souls cease to be an abstraction when you see that somebody is living a moment in a dusty street in a Korean village or on a beach at sunset while you sleep or wash dishes. It’s exhilarating, extraordinarily moving and, on some level, reassuring. When the “other” becomes real, we’re less likely to destroy him.

Read the rest of this post on frogblog.

We do love our business cards, though. We’re still passing them out at even the most high-tech conferences. They’re little bits of art, tiny extensions of ourselves, especially if you’re lucky enough to not be a cog in the works of some giant corporation. 

When I get home from a conference and sift through the stacks of them I’ve collected, I feel the way I did after my elementary school Valentine’s Day card exchanges.

Now there are a couple of platforms you can use to create something resembling an online business card. I doubt they’ll replace the paper versions any time soon, but they can be fun and practical. Read about them in my post About.me and Flavors.me: Online Calling Cards on GigaOm Collaboration.

Right now (by invitation), any site owner can use TinyPay.me to create a branded C2C marketplace on which the site owner and visitors can sell products. Essentially, TinyPay.me is a build-your-own Etsy.

That’s exciting, but even more exciting is that early next year, it will be possible for site owners to use filters and tags to curate merchandise that is for sale on all of TinyPay.me, thus increasing their offering to their audiences with minimal effort. With this innovative distribution model, TinyPay.me will enable entrepreneurs to act as clearinghouses for products that appeal to their particular audiences. This platform may just be what long tail e-commerce has been waiting for.

Read the rest of my post (and get an invite, if there are any left) on ReadWriteWeb: TinyPay.me: The E-commerce Long Tail is Still Twitching.

Upon reflection, I was surprised that I was surprised that people had no idea that Facebook has, from Day One, been subject to scrutiny and criticism for its morally questionable actions, blatant fuck-ups and lack of respect for users and their personal information. Of course (lightbulb)! Ordinary people don’t read about the Internet, they just jump right in and use it. And Facebook banks on that kind of lemming-ness.

Read the entire post on frogblog.

But although Posterous makes it easy for you to spread your Internet finds around, this doesn’t appear to be its primary goal. I have reason to believe that the people behind the app don’t want you to use it solely as a personal “cloud,” even though that’s how I suggest it be used in my article. The fact that all the content you send to your various social sites also appears on a Posterous site tells me that Posterous wants to be a blog unto itself and a stand-alone element of your online presence. Plenty of people do use it that way.

But Posterous is rather late to the blog game and, with its limited theme options I can’t see choosing it over WordPress, or even Blogger, if you want to publish a good-looking blog with some spiffy functionality without having to code. A community of designers will undoubtedly spring up around Posterous, which will make it a more attractive option.

In the meantime, try it anyway. It’s exceptionally usable and useful, with close to zero learning curve.

Speaking of fatigue, I saw the expression “social media fatigue” for the first time in a while the other day, just a few days after announcing to my husband “I’m bored with the Internet and Twitter right now.” Maybe that’s what I’ve got.

And of course, with what’s happened in Haiti, the expression “compassion fatigue” is on my mind, especially since I can’t seem to inspire even 188 Francophilia members to donate five bucks each to reach my $1,000 donation goal for earthquake relief. Inspiring is hard work. It’s making me tired. They must be fatigued too…

De tous les appellations que j’ai entendues pour parler des personnes qui travaillent partout où il y a du wi-fi, ma préférée est la nomade attitude. Il y a quelque chose de Lawrence d’Arabie dans cette expression-là, du mystère, de l’intrigue.

London-based nomads now have WorkSnug, a sexy, brand-new augmented reality app for the iPhone that points them directly to work-friendly spaces with wi-fi in their vicinity.

Les londoniens qui ont la nomade attitude ont accès à WorkSnug, une application iPhone en réalité augmentée qui leur indique les espaces conviviaux avec un accès wi-fi à proximité.

Now they’re working on the Paris version of WorkSnug, and I get to do the research.

Bonne nouvelle, WorkSnug travaille désormais sur la version Paris de l’application, et je vais m’occuper de la recherche.

So I’d really like your help in finding the best places where Parisian nomads can hang out online for a while and do some work if they want to. I would like you to recommend places with personality, nice staff, good coffee, and any other characteristics that would make a nomad happy.

J’aimerais donc avoir votre avis sur les meilleurs endroits pour parisiens nomades. Des lieux parfaits pour surfer et/ou travailler en toute sérénité. Vos lieux favoris, pratiques et agréables, où l’on peut boire un bon café, bref tout ce qui pourrait satisfaire la nomade attitude !

If you have a favorite hotspot, please let me know in the comments, by e-mail, or through Facebook or Twitter (right).

Si vous avez un point d’accès wi-fi préféré dans vos tablettes, partagez-le et faites-le moi découvrir dans les commentaires, par e-mail, via Facebook ou Twitter (à droite).

Merci @Myriam pour la traduction ! Thanks Myriam for the translation!

Read my post Online seduction on frogblog, about being a conscious user (but mostly about how I was seduced by Squiz, and their anti-business cards).