Five things on Friday #51

Things of note for the week ending December 21st, 2012

1. One helluva tree house
The above image is, believe it or not, one of the primary residences of the Korowai tribe. Living over a hundred feet in the air is second nature to this isolate people as the area they call home is somewhat dangerous nearer the ground (thanks to killer insects, flooding etc). Some people would move out. The Korowai, it would seem, move up.

via

2. The Web We Lost
This, from Anil Dash, is one of the best things I’ve read this month –

When you see interesting data mash-ups today, they are often still using Flickr photos because Instagram’s meager metadata sucks, and the app is only reluctantly on the web at all. We get excuses about why we can’t search for old tweets or our own relevant Facebook content, though we got more comprehensive results from a Technorati search that was cobbled together on the feeble software platforms of its era. We get bullshit turf battles like Tumblr not being able to find your Twitter friends or Facebook not letting Instagram photos show up on Twitter because of giant companies pursuing their agendas instead of collaborating in a way that would serve users. And we get a generation of entrepreneurs encouraged to make more narrow-minded, web-hostile products like these because it continues to make a small number of wealthy people even more wealthy, instead of letting lots of people build innovative new opportunities for themselves on top of the web itself.

We’ll fix these things; I don’t worry about that. The technology industry, like all industries, follows cycles, and the pendulum is swinging back to the broad, empowering philosophies that underpinned the early social web. But we’re going to face a big challenge with re-educating a billion people about what the web means, akin to the years we spent as everyone moved off of AOL a decade ago, teaching them that there was so much more to the experience of the Internet than what they know.

Read the whole thing, won’t you?

3. The XX doing LAST CHRISTMAS

There is no need to say anything else.

4. Under Cover: Erotica and Sexism
I first met Zoe Margolis way back in 2008, I think it may’ve been at Tuttle – all those many moons ago. Delightful, warm, and fiercely intelligent, we had a fantastic stroll around Soho discussing all sorts. I follow Zoe on Twitter and recently I saw her tweet a link to her Lost Lecture on ‘Erotica and Sexism‘. I’ve only just got ’round to watching it – this morning in fact – and it’s a damn good watch. Enlightening and engaging, you’ll never look at an erotic book cover in the same way ever again.

And quite right too.

5. In Praise of [PR] Student Bloggers
Stephen Waddington, author of Brand Anarchy (book) and Two-Way Street (blog), is not only [still] taking offers of guest blog posts for his [highly-read] website, but also rounding up the best ones he’s had to date.

Looking for a break? Go talk to Steve.

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Bonuses this week are super random; first, this East/West College Bowl piece made me laugh more than it probably should; second, this Google Hangout with the chaps from Unleash the Phones was quite fun to be a part of; and third, Happy Birthday for yesterday Jane Fonda.