Spare Key: Your ticket to a home away from home
Welcome to Spare Key
Spare Key is a new service using the power of Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter and Google Maps, along with your social graph, to provide you with a home away from home, no matter where you are in the world.
Entering the world of Spare Key membership is easy:
- Simply install the Spare Key app in your Facebook account.
- When you need a place to rest, a drink of water, use of a restroom, or a spare bed for the night, simply click the Spare Key button on your Facebook profile.
- Look at the map that appears, showing the locations of Spare Keys or alarm codes for homes and offices around you.
All we ask is the following:
- Please DO NOT use Spare Key for evil purposes like burglary.
- Please REPLACE each Spare Key back in its place after use or re-arm burglar alarm systems.
- Please RESPECT all homes and offices you access with Spare Key.
The Guardian Three Little Pigs video reveals truth about Big Bad Media
The Guardian’s two-minute commercial, Guardian open journalism: Three Little Pigs advert – video (view below), attempts to tell the story about how wonderful news coverage is in this age of social media.
However, it actually reveals more ugly truth about the media today then was intended.
I believe this commercial is the most convincing argument for closing down 24-hour news channels, most of which are responsible for brewing their own stories out of thin air to satiate their need for ‘content’. Even the term ‘content’ shows how little respect they have for us. The internal mantra must be, evidenced by the output we witness, keep them glued to nothingness and stage manage their emotions. We garner as much respect within news and current affairs outlets as a live television audience that claps and laughs on cue like a performing poodle.
This commercial fulfils Oscar Wilde’s prophetic insight that, “there is much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”
Let me explain.
Continue reading
Social Media Day in Adelaide 2011
Today was Social Media Day, a virtual event organised by Mashable, the online magazine of all things Web 2.0 and Tech.
In Adelaide, the key ‘gathering’ was an online converstation using Twitter and the hashtag #socadl. (NOTE: Using hashtags immediately before words or terms in Twitter, transforms an ordinary word or term into an index term that enables users to thread together all tweets using the particular hashtag into a timeline. #socadl is the term we created in Adelaide to thread together the thoughts and discussions of Adelaideans wishing to contribute on all things social media or social networking).
The official online conversation lasted one hour (although it continued on well into the night) and revolved around five questions. Given that Twitter is notoriously bad for archiving content and the fact that #socadl is used quite a lot outside of this particular conversation, I thought I should do my bit of internet curation and pull together some of the contributions I found most helpful or interesting.
Here are the questions and the comments. Continue reading
Christmas cards die slow death – good riddance
What happens after xmas with these? Photo credit: theogeo
Had a chat with Glen Ridge on Melbourne Tonight (Radio MTR) this evening in the wake of a Herald Sun report that only one in three Gen Ys and about half Gen Xs will bother sending physical xmas cards this season.
The theory is that social networks will carry the cheer and this will be good news to the planet because back in 2005, xmas cards purchased and sent by people in just the USA and UK would have stretched around the world 54 times! This is made worse by the fact that much new tree material, inks and plastics are consumed by the industry.
While there will still be some people who feel slighted if friends sent electronic messages, I think that feeling will pass as long as the e-greetings convey the warmth and generosity of spirit that we attribute to handwritten missives. Of course, there will still be loads of thoughtless, banal, carbon copy physical cards and e-cards sent this year – at least the thought will count for both of them, even though Mother Earth would probably prefer the latter!
If you weren’t in Melbourne tonight, here is the chat.
Oh, and Merry Christmas, or Happy Holiday, or whatever greeting you might prefer.
My latest snaps on Instagram
Listen to Steve
- stevedavis: The #socadl Daily is out! http://t.co/vLwzsWJH ▸ Top stories today via @scottmccarten @hayleybw @hellobenteoh May 18, 2012
- stevedavis: @JoshuaWhiteSM must be a good feeling! Wordpress workshop walks biz people through basics of running wp site with lots of marketing input May 18, 2012
- stevedavis: @JoshuaWhiteSM how was yours? May 18, 2012