the one about web versions, Part II: Collaboration

Twitter

Twitter is an internal monologue that other people can overhear. I decided to give it a spin when they moved to my web host. I use it with Twitterrific, and I love the way a new message from someone I’m following punctuates my workflow. It’s like the first time you had email: you hear the little chime of a new message and rush over to see what it is. Messages on the system oscillate between the amusing and the enigmatic. What the system conveys better than information is mood.

The downside is that Twitter shortens the long distances between us, instead of shortening the short distances. Blogs suffer from the same problem. You can write a post or read your friend’s blog and feel like you know what they are up to. You are having an anonymous conversation with someone you know really well. It’s an I and a They when it should be an I and a You. It’s jumping 12,450 miles and landing feet long inside someone’s brain without ever seeing their face.

Camura

Consider the recent public launch of Camura (né Phlog): a public stream of cell phone pictures. I really love the concept. The site, as of now, is definitely web2.0-beta-you-gotta-be-in-the-know-to-know-how-to-use-the-site (like, for example, where are the instructions for how to post a photograph? I honestly had to ask Sarah, who has had an account since before open registration.)

Camura swings with the centrality of vision in our perception of the world. It also gives an immediacy that I’m not otherwise looking for in my photography. You don’t really have the time or ability to evaluate a picture photographically on the tiny cell phone screen, so the work becomes only what it depicts: this is my cat; these are my friends in a bar. This is a refreshing break from an (overwrought?) posture of photography as visual problem solving.

The results is that you instantly get what a picture has to tell you.

See also, Part I: Application