The New & Improved Dynamic Self

I’ve been retooling my personal portfolio site this past week.  Any designer will tell you that portfolio sites are a cruel, unforgiving monster.  Almost always, as soon as you finish all the work of concepting, coding, and design, you look back at the finish piece and feel disappointed.  Because that site just isn’t you, and just can’t do a good enough job of representing you.  And almost always, you’re too tired to care at this point – so that’s what goes online.  And it haunts you every time someone asks for a link to your site, because in your heart you know if it’s not good enough for you then it certainly isn’t good enough to share with the rest of the world – and certainly not fit for sharing with potential employers who literally wear pants made out of money and would like to possibly give you some.

So designing a portfolio site is exhausting work.  And I’m not going to share it until it’s done, which hopefully won’t be too terribly long from now.  But I can share some ideas I have about it, and the crazy thoughts that have come along with it.

I want my new portfolio site to be an absolute celebration of dynamic content.  I want the traditional elements of a portfolio to be there, the biography, the resume, all well presented.  But I also want to make it fun and interesting.  I want it prove that I’m intelligent and sort of well-rounded or at least not completely retarded outside the scope of my work. (Not that my portfolio would lead you to believe I’m some sort of creative savant, or anything.)  And the way to do that today is twofold: First, you supply interesting content of your own – blogs, photographs, side projects, video, microposts, etc.  And second, you show that you’re engaged with the rest of the world.  You show other people’s content that you really like, because that will always say more about who you are and especially who you want to be and have the potential to be than what you’ve created to this point.

Plus, and maybe this is just me, I always think other people’s lives are more interesting than my own.

Obviously there’s a danger there in overwhelming your own work with that of other people, and I think it’s a concept that works for some portfolios better than others.  Personally, I’m trying not to box myself to a design career, and I’m thinking a lot of about social media, viral marketing, and augmented reality.  So I’m trying to show a little interdisciplinary flair here, and hopefully it’ll work out.

Okay, now here is where this post gets interesting.

Assume you want to own your online profile entirely.  You want your site to be a portrait of authenticity, a portal to yourself.  So you want your twitter, blog, flickr, last.fm, etc all lined up in a row so there’s no mistaking who Matthew is.  This stuff is all cool, but pretty basic.  Why not try something more unique, more interesting?  Previously you’d need to dabble around in webapp API toolboxes and, man, I am just not ready for that level of development shenanigans.  But it’s becoming increasingly easier to tether data from multiple applications together and produce unique (and extremely cool) applications of your own.  Yahoo! Pipes, which I discovered today, has suddenly made this a lot easier.

So what’s to stop you from linking your latitude/longitude via iPhone gps to a flickr widget that will constantly display new images from your exact current location? Why wouldn’t you create a robot to  trawl the internet to search for pictures of anorexic midget clown porn (that got your attention) to automate your new photoblog? Who is going to walk up to you and say, “No, Matthew, you cannot create a “The Path of Matthew” page that displays, historically, exactly where you have been for the past year as a moving icon on Google maps?

No one is going to stop you.  The only thing stopping you is utility.  How useful would these machinations be? We’re approaching a time where anyone with basic web design skills can assemble an app that does truly stunning things, and all you need is an imagination.  So get in while the getting is good.  Make something cool before someone else does it first, and then share the coolest things other people have done with the rest of the world. That’s how you make your portfolio something to be proud of.

Excuse us, we’re not ourselves

via Christine Huang at PSFK:

The channels, gadgets, websites and apps to help us be and/or feel ’social’ (with a real person or just the idea of one) are only getting smarter and more diverse. Our everyday lives find many of us immersed in entirely virtual communication and socialization, based on a simulacrum of real life or an entirely fantastical one. We are avatars talking to avatars, on our own terms, at our convenience.

Except that’s not entirely true.  Because when the scope of communication transcends the normal human bounds of space and time—when your avatar is online constantly and you, being merely human, need to sleep/bathe/etc—communication is no longer a matter of convenience.  It’s a matter of necessity.  So if you’re not there, which you is that person really talking to?  And can you entirely trust your other self to behave while you’re away?

Christine addresses a couple of interesting stories in her post – the 2d otaku love affairs in japan (and here in the states too, to be honest) and a recent study equating feelings of belongingness gained from watching TV to the same feelings that come from real human interaction.  She concludes:

Our relationships with objects, characters and avatars is always at a distance – we are interacting with the representation of something, rather than the thing itself. This arrangement results in a unique type of relationship – one that should be considered differently than a real-life interpersonal one.

What if the reason we’re growing to identify more with fictional characters is that we ourselves are becoming fictional characters? Everyone’s got their own narrative and meta-narrative. Everyone’s persona is to some extent externalized, our connections and roots as human beings stored and managed online.  It’s accepted now that people are their own brands and need to manage their appearances accordingly.  Your digital self – arguably your most important persona – is way more malleable of an identity construct than any we’ve ever dealt with in the past.  It’s so easy to rewrite who you are.  It follows that it should also be easier than ever to imagine yourself in any situation with your favorite characters… because you’re just as imaginary as they are.

We’re soon going to look back on the days of mid-life and quarter-life crises with a sigh and a patronizing smirk.  The future is one long stretch of identity crises.  And even when you finally die, your other yous will remain.

The great ben & jerry’s twitter heist

So as I was unwinding from a busy day of laundry and other household chores, I was followed by @benandjerrys.   This is ordinarily something I’d ignore or block – but this time something was different.  This time, something wasn’t right.  Can you guess what it is?

Oh no! They let an intern run their twitter! My first thought was that Ben and Jerry’s twitter had been hacked – plenty of news stories with a similar lede have been published recently – but with further research it turns up that B&J were sadly just too glacially slow to claim their brandspace on Twitter.  (B&J has multiple feeds for each of its most popular flavors, instead).  In fact, an untraceable, sinister shadow organization of militant anti-GMO organo-terrorists some devoted kossacks and self-appointed “Freaks, Uppity Women, and Politicos” at OBrag.org have had the space parked since at least June 11th, according to Google’s cache.  Or so I’m inferring from the evidence at hand.

It was at some point in this last month – I’d love to know when – that the owners deployed their defamation package.

Following 272 with 19 followers, @benandjerrys doesn’t hold a candle to the official B&J flavor pages, and ranks far below them on google even when specifically searching for the domain. But this is bound to become a bigger deal if the owners of the fake account continue to friend at a fast pace and garner publicity for their little pet project.  I’m not well versed on the legal aspects at play here but I’m not sure it’s fair game to be falsely representing yourself as an organization, even if it’s satire.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Can Ben and Jerry’s stomach a fake twitter page that bears the obvious intent to malign its brand? What should they do, and what will they do? Will Twitter intervene? Does it even matter, if the page isn’t ranking on google anyway, since fewer people navigate by direct addresses these days anyway?

Regardless, it could end up being a pretty good example of guerrilla counter-marketing, if the follow-through is executed well.  As for the anti-corn syrup campaign, I’m all for it, but I also think it’s a little naive to transfer all the problems of our nation’s agri-industrial complex onto one ingredient—especially when pure, natural sugar isn’t so great for you anyway.  But that’s a story for another post, when I’m feeling more Pollan-esque.

CATS: You have no chance to survive make your time.

You thought you had us under your thumb, didn’t you, Cats?  Ah, but the tables have turned – and turnabout is fair play, as you are well aware.  This is sort of like time traveling back to 1992 to stop Skynet from researching terminators, only cuter and probably less effective than blowing up whole buildings.  “Eeh-uhh-eeh-uhh-eeh-uhh click boom”, says Miles Dyson.  [Did you know that Miles Dyson is also an electronic group? Now we both do! And wow, aren't they terrible!]

Anyway — I am talking, of course, about catproofing your computer.

Yes, this is real. But more importantly it is amazing, because to my knowledge it is the first and only piece of software out there that adresses the very real need to keep our cats off the internet.  We cannot afford to let our malignant feline companions freely associate and trade ideas – because we’ve seen where this leads.

Yes, I am bringing it back.

w5snh7ybk4

These gifs give you eye cancer

Just kidding.  (Not really.)  I just wanted to mention this because I am enjoying this site:

GIF ATTACK

Source of the laughing men below as well as some other classics:

Franklin and Gob dramatic zoom

Stains the Crazy Eye Cupcake Dog:

Gary Busey Hand Puppet:

It looks to be a pretty young site and it doesn’t have the best design, but the content is worth the digging around.  Not too much material yet, but if things pan out this could be a great resource on the web.  There is a notable lack of Tyra though.

Fixed that for you.

Quickpost

http://www.whatthetrend.com/

Find out what’s trending on Twitter and why. For each trend, we give you a quick explanation of WHY it’s trending (these blurbs are edited by you!) You can also see the latest tweets, Flickr photos and news stories.

Embrace the twitterdom.

Virtual Viewing Parties

The next best thing since sliced bananas:

Earlier today we reported on YouTube’s plans to roll out a new real-time product that adds a new social layer to YouTube, allowing friends to share the videos they’re watching with each other in real time, without having to turn to outside chat programs or Twitter.

This is a feature I’ve been waiting on for quite some time.  Only, this seems sort of pointless for Youtube.  I don’t really want to get together with friends to watch a :10 video of some kid getting hit in the face.  That’s for when friends come over and we’re bored.  This sort of shared viewing technology should be applied to Hulu, or else integrated with DVD players or other long-form streaming media where you can actually sit down and enjoy something long together (I know, that’s what she said).

Just another opportunity for us to atomize into completely isolated bubbles and never physicallyinteract with another physical human.  Sweet (I jest).  Though seriously, this could make a widescale Room Party much more feasible.  And that is a great thing.

The Face of Spam

So if you’ve commented here you know that you get this cartoon face that’s determined by the letters of your name.  You might end up looking sad, or scared, or angry, even though that’s totally not how you really are (with a couple exceptions that I think are eerily accurate).

But anyway the point is I’ve been getting some more spam comments recently and check this one out:

Enhance.

Enhance.

So thanks, face-creator, for making sure I never, ever approve comments by this guy.

Just Got It Edit: Langoliers, anyone?

Forming

An excellent weekly comic by Jesse Moynihan – only about 11 pages in thus far.  It’s straightforwardly weird, weirdly straightforward and often hilarious. Family drama and covert ops suspense. Plus I think it might explain the origins of biblical history.  (Thanks Jordan!)

The Breakfast Crew, Murderers

And don’t you fucking forget it.  Also from Vermilyea:

Perfect for your avatars and what-not.  Send me some more art along these lines.