Molecularist

Here’s an interesting article on Richard Florida and the thoughts on what make a city thrive and grow. I think this is particularly relevant to bloggers, who clearly fall into Florida’s ‘creative’ crowd and whom many view as a source of growth. But, I think this also ties into community and issues of only talking to ourselves, since many of the criticisms of Florida revolve around Latte-class elitism, similar to criticisms of bloggers and their impact on the society and economy at large.

Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Ideas / The road to riches?

THE ECONOMY MAY have been flat for the last two years, but Richard Florida is soaring. The Carnegie Mellon business professor’s 2002 book “The Rise of the Creative Class” connected with something in the public psyche. It heralded the arrival of a new breed of American worker: educated, ambitious, hip, probably a mountain biker, ready to dump a job whenever hit with the slightest urge for a “life shift.” These workers differ from the old Organization Man in many ways, but this difference is crucial: Creative-class members want not just decent jobs and good schools but “authentic” neighborhoods, Thai food, a happening arts scene, and — most importantly — proximity to other “creatives.”

It goes without saying that blogging from a mobile phone, with it’s smaller screen, T9 text input, and mostly offline existence, is not the same experience as blogging from a PC (or Mac) with a large screen, full sized keyboard, and usually full-time online connection.

What I really miss is a simple app for my phone that would help me get the stuff off my phone and published online, kinda like ecto. Our team at work has been thinking long and hard about the realtionship of blogging, content creation on the phone, mobilitiy, and so on (see this link for a neat Series 60 blogging app). We see that there are a few things that a mobile can do that an untethered laptop cannot compete with, such as portability, handiness, availability, integrated connection to camera (I use a Nokia 6600).

We’ve been looking into especially the issue of the content explosion – where the user has a device with them all the time, collecting their life through messages and images – and what are the best ways to handle, browse, store, and share that content. We find that folks always say “So this phone is nifty, enabling me to communicate through text and images. But how do I save it all and get it off my phone? I can’t bear to delete it!”

Having accumulated thousands of digital photos and videos, both from my digital (way unconnected) camera and my (quite connected) mobile, I too have become a victim of the content explosion.

More musings on this later…