I want this poster.

Also, if you haven't seen the movie, you need to.

Give the blog a once over if you have some time.

These guys are hitting big in the geek world right now. They're attempting to build a new kind of social network that [allegedly] more accurately mimics real social behavior. They plan to provide a system that allows the sharing of content while maintaining privacy through the permission of the user. This feature will be inherent in the network, not a feature; an anti-Facebook, if you will.

They have a point. We don't toss up random tidbits of information and "status updates" onto the interwebs for our "friends" to see and call it a community. Although we've accepted Facebook's take on how social networks should operate, it certainly doesn't reflect reality. Outside of Facebook, we share [trade] information [experiences] on a more personal level in varying degrees of intimacy, slowly accumulating what was once known as "friends" - valuable people in our social lives in whom we can trust for various things.

And Diaspora couldn't have come at a more opportune time. The four-man underdog team of self-proclaimed nerds from New York have well-surpassed their $10,000 [they're on the north side of 100K last time I checked] goal for seed funding at Kickstarter and are spending the summer in "programmer mode". The announcement comes while Facebook is under fire for its confusing privacy settings and some statements made by its young CEO when Facebook was in its infancy. Amidst the media smoke and the labyrinth of the new Facebook privacy settings, Diaspora is an attractive alternative for weary photo-sharers and friend-connectors.

I'm not holding my breath, but if these guys have the chops, I do think they have a viable social networking model. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they were bought out sometime in the near future. Facebook isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but if these guys can execute, I'd be highly interested in their work.

This made me smile because the brilliance is in the execution. It's a step towards future commuting, smart travel, and collaborative traffic infrastructure with a nod to the past - 2-wheeled transportation.

It's based on older technology. It's not "winding the clocks back". It's a shift in commuting mentality. It's an integration that allows for public transportation to co-exist with private transportation efficiently and safely.

This is lifestyle innovation.

Useful to know. Maybe it's ridiculous that I need a cheat sheet to adjust the privacy settings on a social network in which I willingly participate?

Maybe the infographic is grossly exaggerating? Maybe after seeing it and knowing just how much personal information Facebook controls, people will still leave their online social networking habits unchanged?

Maybe.

Update: Why doesn't Facebook provide a visual map like this for its users to navigate the privacy labyrinth? Something like this would be easier to navigate and highlighted blocks or other visual cues could provide feedback to the user to show what's actually being changed.

Innovating in an old and established industry is difficult. The manufacturing industry in particular is a stubborn landscape because of the high costs associated with molds, process changes, and early prototyping.

That's why the advent of the unibody Macbook line impressed me. Apple rightly boasted it as a new and improved manufacturing technology [not exactly the hype associated with hip and chic consumer electronics] and they succeeded in highlighting the feature as a selling point to customers. I'm pretty sure no one really cared how their Powerbook was made, but unibody is often the term used to describe the newest generation of laptops from Apple.

I don't know if this "metal origami" is going to hit or miss. It sounds like they have a number of big names willing to try it out. [Maybe work out the aesthetics of this beast?]

Regardless, kudos to those still stretching the boundaries of fields often thought of as stagnating or having already "reached their peak".

Jump to Core77 for the article.