Links

       

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Over the next month or so, I am going to experiment with a weekly link roundup to share some of the most interesting, unusual, or thought-provoking sites and articles I’ve run into on the web.  Each Saturday, I’ll post a short list of five to ten of these links with a brief explanation of why they’re so nifty.  Let me know whether you enjoy or dislike this new feature!

This week, although relatively quiet in general, brought a little more social media and tech action than usual to the East Coast as Robert Scoble and Gary Vaynerchuk visited the nation’s capital for politics, photography, and excellent wine.  Although I passed up a chance to meet them by attending a fantastic Nationals baseball game instead, I’m certain I’ll have the chance to make up for it sometime in the near future.  Here are some of my favorite highlights of the week:

• How is technology changing the world of Washington, DC? -  Famed media advocate Robert Scoble visits a city near and dear to my heart to discuss the intersection of technology and politics with congressmen and more, and the first-ever Twitter tweet is sent from the White House.  A brief and powerful piece full of videos and other media, definitely worth a look.
• Universities need to take control of their brands - Referenced in yesterday’s follow-up article on social media for higher education, blogger Corvida posits that social networks may be evil for universities.  A well thought-out piece that really continues some of the conversation found here and elsewhere.
• Twitter best practices so far - Recommended to me by Aquent “minister of enlightenment” Dr. Matthew Grant, David Lee King’s article provides a simple yet informative way to get smart about Twitter or similar microblogging services.  Definitely worth the read.
• Facebook has FriendFeed envy: adds comments to Mini-Feed - New ReadWriteWeb blogger Frederic Lardinois announces a brand new feature that allows users to comment on items in their friend’s Mini-Feeds, concluding that “Facebook is getting some ideas from FriendFeed’s playbook.”  This is an interesting feature, but will it get much use from mainstream users?
• Smithsonian copyright-free images on Flickr - BoingBoing reports a slew of beautiful, high-resolution images from the most fantastic museums in the world are now available on Flickr Commons.  If only these had been available during all those fourth grade history projects…

Did you spot anything interesting this week that’s worthy of mention?  Let us know!  In the meantime, I’ll be striking up conversations on all of my pal’s FriendFeed items to see if they ever notice.