I knew I liked the Sunlight Foundation. Here is one of their projects, OpenCongress. It is really nice to see nonprofits engaged in the social networking arena! So cool.

So, I found out from SimpleBits that AIGA (that's the "professional association for design") has lauched a new website design. It's beautiful, and I really like how it organizes the group's offerings. It aligns the group with how a lot of designers' sites are organized, which has to help the members feel at home.

Links to the pundits:  Read more »

Great treatment of the economics of attention over at Read/Write Web. Quote:

"The founders of AttentionTrust succeeded in defining a simple, elegant, yet encompassing set of principles that define the rules of the game, by outlining the basic consumer rights in the AttentionEconomy:  Read more »

I just finished reading Visual Function, by Paul Mijksenaar. It's a fairly seminal book in graphic design. I'm interested in graphic design not so much because I do it (which I don't really), but because I think we're all designers these days.

Mijksenaar at one point talks about the Roman architect Vitruvius who said that architecture should follow these criteria:

I think everything we do or build should be informed by these criteria. Don't you?

I've been sitting on this awhile, but I need to throw it out there. There is a new website called Nurse Linkup, that appears to put a professional face and focus on the 2.0 space. Since I work in a healthcare organization, I can tell you that nurses are highly fragmented but also that there are like a gazillion of them (all numbers approximate). The community is run by a for-profit company, itLinkz, based in Pennsylvania. So this is an interesting thing to throw out there. I'm gonna try to interview these folks one of these days. Seriously, I have to respect this.  Read more »

So, being particularly slow, I knew that my brother Paul was pretty impressive, but I didn't know that he's totally famous! Seriously, he is a game developer for Electronic Arts, and he programs sports games for X-Boxes.  Read more »

So I usually don't get caught up in hype-y stuff, at least that's what I tell myself to assuage my postmodern sensitivities. However, I just bought the single "Mine Again," by a group called Black Lab off iTunes. Here's the case for doing so yourself. And, today's the day!

Update: Disappointing outcome. Here is an analysis from blogger Nick O'Neill.

In the DMV
I can still check blogs and write
With my Sprint card now

Since I was in New York City visiting with some of my chapter people there, I took the opportunity to go to the ProBlogger Meetup hosted by Darren Rowse. It was a great time, and I met lots of people.  Read more »