In today’s trendwatching podcast, Cathi Bond gets into ’sharing’.  Why not have a USB sofa so you can leave digital media behind for your friends?  (via Gizmodo)

Meanwhile, Nora Young has been following Danah Boyd’s discussion (here and here) of her experience at the Web 2.0 Expo, where, amongst other distractions, a Twitter feed that contained unkind remarks scrolled behind her as she was giving a presentation.  It’s got Nora thinking about our blind assumption that more communication tools are necessarily better. The talk itself is here, and is well worth reading.

 

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In this trendwatching podcast, Cathi Bond says she’s finally over the ’small furniture for small spaces’ trend, with this example. The Paket table is designed to fold out, kind of like furniture origami.  Cathi thinks it looks like treehouse furniture, but Nora likes it.  What do you think?

Meanwhile, Nora revisits a story she talked about in her column, and has talked about on Spark in the past: hyperlocal journalism, and whether it can make a go of it.  She was inspired by this New York Times story on the demise of The Washington Post’s experiment in hyperlocal news.  She wants Cathi’s opinion, and yours! What would you do to fix local newspapers?

 

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