links for 2007-07-01

First in a series of posts on the sig­nif­i­cance of Sec­ond Life. Part of a debate with Clay Shirky and Hen­ry Jenkins.

Elab­o­rate write-up by Alper on a way to make your social net­work portable between ser­vices using open stan­dards and formats.

Inter­view with Matt Bid­dulph shin­ing some light on where social trav­el ser­vice Dopplr is headed.

First post of Clay Shirky’s part in the debate on Sec­ond Life’s sig­nif­i­cance, main­ly zero­ing in on the false sta­tis­tics (aren’t they always) behind the hype.

Descent piece on the cur­rent state of (US) loca­tion based services.

More CSS typog­ra­phy good­ness, this time on incre­men­tal lead­ing; the ‘next lev­el’ after base­line grids.

Cri­tique of Marin­ka Copiers the­sis on the non-exis­tence of a mag­ic cir­cle in mas­sive mul­ti­play­er online games. I don’t agree with Marin­ka or Jör­gen, I guess I should blog on that some­time soon.

Timo reports on NFC devel­op­ments around the world. It’s com­ing fast! (Or actu­al­ly, it’s already here.)

This seems to have stirred up quite a storm. Thought-pro­vok­ing essay by Danah Boyd on the dif­fer­ences in audi­ence of Face­book and MySpace.

Mer­holz’s angle on expe­ri­ence design: the start­ing point for a prod­uct should not be features.

First in a two part post with some use­ful point­ers to things you should address when design­ing social sites.