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Information Technology Innovation

Watch Alexis Ohanian’s “How to make a splash in social media” talk at TED

In a funny, rapid-fire 4 minutes, Alexis Ohanian of Reddit tells the real-life fable of one humpback whale’s rise to Web stardom. The lesson of Mister Splashy Pants is a shoo-in classic for meme-makers and marketers in the Facebook age […]

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China Consumer Behavior Trend Watching

Internet in China: Chinese Social Network Expands Beyond Students

Renren.com, often dubbed China’s Facebook, is re-branding itself as a social-networking site for everyone, not just Chinese college students […]

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Economics Information Technology Trend Watching

Watch Clay Shirky’s “How social media can make history” talk at TED

While news from Iran streams to the world, Clay Shirky shows social media help citizens in repressive regimes to report on real news, bypassing censors (however briefly). The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics […]

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China Consumer Behavior Software

Internet in China: ban on use of virtual money for real goods trading

China has unveiled the first official regulation, banning the use of virtual currency in trade of real goods and services to limit its possible impact on the nation’s real financial system […]

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Design Readings

Listen to Andrew Hinton’s “You are (Mostly) Here: Digital Space and The Context Problem” talk at IA Summit 2009

Lead Information Architect in Vanguard’s User Experience Group, Andrew Hinton provides engaging examples (including Mr. Spock, a speeding trolley, and a Dada urinal), illustrating how language powerfully affects context, and vice-versa. Andrew connects this understanding with real-life Information Architecture design issues such as Twitter’s syntax or Facebook’s Beacon and challenges us to think more carefully about how we shape context in the digital dimension […]

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China Consumer Behavior

Internet in China: A glimpse at the Chinese Parallel Cyber Universe, where Users Prefer Clones of Popular Global Websites

The Straits Times (Singapore) has an interesting article the contrast between the popular global Social Networks and the local websites in China […]

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Design

Autodesk Student Engineering and Design Community is Redesigned and Reaches Record Number of Members

Just in time for the Back to School season, Autodesk has redesigned its Student Engineering and Design Community website with a new look and feel that is more closely aligned with other popular social networking sites frequented by students. The enhanced Student Community offers several new features and benefits to more than 350,000 students and educators…