Will Foursquare Be a New Model for Information?

I enjoyed listening to Foursquare and The New York Times discuss the future packaging of information at a conference in New York City this week.

The NYT's Michael Zimbalist described how every object has “information shadows” that can be conjured at different times on different devices.

For instance, Foursquare might work with more media partners (most recently New York magazine) to repackage their content into bite-sized nuggets of information.

As you know, I'm a huge fan of Foursquare, but I feel like I'm one of few of my friends (doesn't seem very mainstream to me). Will Foursquare or another geolocation service like it become more widely adopted?

The Kind of Stats that Could Make Someone Hate Weddings

Most working brides spends 10 hours a week planning their wedding, according to a recently released survey by ForbesWoman, TheKnot.com and WeddingChannel.com.

... I know, I mean, who the heck has time for that? It turns out they do it on company time, which most of us who've ever worked with a bride know: Almost 90% brides admitted to planning their weddings on company time, and one in three felt their workplace performance suffered because of it.

The survey looked at more than 1,000 working women (most of whom are college-educated, live in the U.S. and make more than $70k). Of course, most of the survey respondents came through TheKnot.com — so, presumably the sample skewed to the bridezilla side. I hope a regular sample of women would give me more hope.

Let me clarify: I'm not totally disappointed by my fellow women, but I'm kind of turned off by this complete obsession around one party and the continued female responsibility to plan it, even though most of us have careers. It's true men are more involved, but 90% of respondents said their fiance spends less planning time. Women still bring this on themselves/succumb to the cultural pressure to do it (OK, and maybe even enjoy it).

I'm certainly not anti-marriage or anti-wedding, but it seems like the tradition has gotten out of hand, turning into a big boring hobby for so many people. We shouldn't have to decide whether to have a life or plan a wedding.

Now, about that maid of honor speech I need to write...


Photo by Shelley Panzarella

Google News Users Prefer Dashboards

I previously wrote about how Google is changing news with new features. Now they revamped their revamp after users complained about some of the features. The backlash suggests that readers might prefer to consume online news as a dashboard, not a stream. I recently blogged about the topic at eMedia Vitals.