continuous partial attention

A day at What a Concept!

Today was a great day working at What a Concept! As of last weekend I am the proud owner of a Macbook, and have am now mobile in my ability to do work! This is thrilling on so many levels.

So, this morning Sherry and paid a visit to our attorney for some legal advice, and than went to Caribou Coffee to get some work done. I stayed behind while she went to her sons Thanksgiving lunch, and than she returned and we went back to her home to work some more and wait for some exterminators. When the wifi stopped working, we went to a nearby Starbucks where we continued to work on projects until the exterminator called and she had to briefly leave to go back home. She got back home and got online and we worked remotely while the exterminator did his thing. Following this, Sherry returned to Starbucks where we worked for another hour until we had to pick her son Dylan up from school.

As we drove to the elementary school, we were discussing emails we needed to send out as well as a newsletter that we're working on. This was actually the highlight of my day! Why?

Because before I had my MacBook I would always have to go home in order to get work done and be productive. My office space comprised of either my basement, or Sherry's basement. And now?

My office comes with me! My first day working with Sherry in person this week involved two coffee shops, and wardriving through an elementary school!

That's right! It may not sound very glamorous, but some of our most productive time today involved writing emails and Sherry dictating a newsletter to me while we drove around an elementary school to get the best wifi reception. And yes, as we were leaving we decided to turn back around and park to get one more email out!

This is why I love working at What a Concept! What's your office like?

Blogging out of obligation?

    This NaBloPoMo thing is a bit of an interesting exercise for me. For the first part, I've become busier than I can remember these past three weeks. After working with Sherry and others for two years in building What a Concept!, I feel like things are finally coming together now in terms of our vision, our team, and the potential we have for doing some good around Atlanta/Georgia/theworld/etc! For the past week it seems like I've had three meetings a day in different parts of Atlanta (lots of driving) and the thought of blogging something each day when I'm barely at a computer for more than five minutes other than to check email and work on projects frankly seems a bit ridiculous.

Secondly, I haven't actually been a strong blogger historically. Although, if you were to chart my level of engagement online you would likely see an upward sloping curve. I've gone from drinking from the firehose to actually contributing to the water flow myself in..

That analogy could have been executed better, and has thusly been executed well before completion. Let's go with straightforward speak.

Secondly (take two), I've been blogging a lot more in different places around the web, but usually in response to something else. Lot's more comments, lot's more annotation, bookmarking, microblogging, etc. Stopping to put together a blog post that's self contained and actually worthwhile seems a bit daunting for an every day commitment.

And when I get home near midnight on a day when I haven't even had time to respond to anything, there isn't even a barrel for me to scrape the bottom of.

So, I'm blogging out of obligation because I couldn't do so at any other point out of the day. Obviously, the commitment takes a bit more than just sitting down at the last moment and thinking of something to write.

It would be nice if I was able to write bits and pieces of blog posts at various points throughout the day when I'm not home... what to do?

That's my round about way of saying: I'm -finally- investing in a MacBook this week! :D I'm so excited, and I'm going to have some member of my family take pictures of the process for me to put on Flickr.

See? I did actually have something to say, and we'll at least have blog posts chronicling the process of my getting my first MacBook as well as the difference becoming a mobile blogger will make to look forward too! And hopefully further such posts won't be last minute and ramble on and on about nothing due to sleep dep and some strange sense of obligation I've imposed upon myself.

The Live Music experience in Second Life

Despite my expansive background in Second Life (I lived there for a year) I don't blog about it enough. Perhaps I should change that. Rather then go the technical angle, let's start with something cultural!

A link just hit my radar that talks about a new development that hints at the future of live musical performance in virtual worlds! Incidentally, it's written by one of my Second Life friends (based in San Francisco that I've met in real life) about one of my Twitter friends (based here in Atlanta that I haven't yet had the pleasure to meet).

"Live music is undoubtedly one of the most powerful and immersive experiences in Second Life. Some musicians here have been able to develop dedicated communities and followings that rival real life artists. But where does the future lie for this kind of performance? Grace McDunnough suggests an answer with Musimmersion, a new system of scripting sets which enables a Resident musician to instantiate custom-made 3D environments to accompany specific songs they're performing."

"The aspect most astonishing about concepts such as Musimmersion is the convergence of many skill sets for the purpose of developing ever more compelling interactions between a virtual 3D space and the person sitting in front of the computer. The future of live musical performances, whatever that will be, is likely to hold a mix of incredible art, scripting, and unique musical talents, which should make us take another look at McDunnough's vision, “We are in the age of a new renaissance - the emergence of a technically capable creative class.”"

Check out the complete post at New World Notes.

"Digital Ethnography"

You may not know the name Mike Wesch, but it's possible that you may have seen one of the Youtube video's he produced on the web! The first one that got a bunch of attention was titled "The Machine is Us/ing Us."

His new video entitled "Information R/evolution" just came to my attention, and it's just as excellent as his first, and I thought I'd post them both here for quick future reference.

From his Youtube profile page:

"My videos explore mediated culture, seeking to merge the ideas of Media Ecology and Cultural Anthropology.

Currently we are working on an ethnography of YouTube. You can check our progress at http://mediatedcultures.net/"

The Machine is Us/ing Us

Information R/evolution

Atlanta Foodbank Fundraiser

Dorothea Bozicolona-Volpe, a frequent of the Atlanta NetSquared meetup, is the organizer for a fundraiser for the Atlanta feed bank. She passed some information onto me about the event, and it looks like it'll be a bunch of fun! And fun for a good cause, which is my favorite kind of fun. :)

I would like to thank everyone for the years of support in my cause to address the issue of Hunger in our community.  As many of you know, "The Nourishment Cocktail" for seven years has raised awareness of Hunger and supported the Atlanta Community Food Bank (ACFB.org).
The 2007 Nourishment Cocktail event will be my last and I am asking everyone again to continue their generous support of ACFB's initiatives in supporting children and families that are in need of meals.

Nourishment VII: Cocktail in support of the Atlanta Community Food Bank
Nov 3 at Opera, 7-10 pm
Please access the following link for further information:
http://www.bondgirlproductions.com/events.html

If you are unable to attend, please forward this EVITE to friends and colleagues and consider a donation to the ACFB. I encourage you to donate at this link:
http://www.bondgirlproductions.com/events.html

Or you can arrive at the event to drop off food beginning at 7pm
Just $10 provides 100 meals to families, children and the working poor.

Thank you again for your support this year as in years past.

**Nourishment VII is dedicated to the memory of George Chang 1959-1999**

Warm regards,
Dorothéa Bozicolona-Volpe
Chair
Nourishment VII-Benefit for the Atlanta Community Food Bank
www.acfb.org
www.bondgirlproductions.com

I'll definitely be there tomorrow with cans of nonperishable food in hand! If any of my blog readers are thinking of attending, let me know so we can meet up!

NaBloPoMo!(What?)

While reading my daily digest of blogs last night, I found out about NaBloPoMo via this post on the Spunlogic blog! Now, I've known about NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) which is held every November, but I'd never heard of NaBloPoMo: National Blog Posting Month, wherein participants are to write at least one post every day for the month. I also hear rumor of a National Podcasting Month that also runs parallel.

Perhaps we should just rename this month NaWriWriMo (National Writers Writing Month) or even NaCrePubMo (National Creative Publishing Month).

How about NoVeMBer (Not Very Much... ok, I got nothing.)

Anyways, as I've always thought NaNoWriMo was an awesome event I'd love to participate in, I'm willing to settle for NaBloPoMo.

So, I'm throwing my hat in the ring. May the Almighty Zeus strike me down if I neglect to write a blog post for every day of this month!

Tags: NaBloPoMo, blogging, november

The day I lived! And ignore the butterfly.

Happy Halloween everyone! I used to hate this hallowday (sorry, couldn't halp it) but now I celebrate it as the day I survived.

Five years ago today, at 6:47pm est, I was walking across a street on the way to dinner when I was struck by a car going 40mph by a drunk college student going from one party to another. I flew over the 30 feet or so (I'd have to check the records) and was going in and out of consiousness for about 40 minutes until the ambulance came. My clothing (including an awesome and brand new sweater I had just gotten for my birthday! ) was unceremoniously ripped off of me by the paramedics rather dissimilarly to the way I had imagined and hoped it might happen that night. I was taken to the hospital where I was given a clean bill health and walked out a few hours later! I had to borrow some clothing from a few friends.

This was an event that changed the course of my life. And it's totally awesome memory! It also changed my outlook on Halloween. It's the day I survived!

Given the circumstances of the accident, and the fact that I suffered no major physical injuries other then really painful bruising (in the following days), led many to consider the event miraculous. From what I've been told however, most people on campus hadn't heard that I actually survived. Apparently I still haunt the place.

To be honest, I would have preferred the physical damage.

The damage from the accident was mental. And thank god for it! If it weren't for the brain damage, I would never have pulled out of school the next semester. I would never have run into the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, the Acceleration Studies Foundation, nor had time to obsess over all this open source, blogging, and social networking stuff!

The day I survived led to the rest of my life. So, thank the gods for drunk driving, brain damage, and Halloween!

In other news, if you frequent my site you may notice a few changes. First of all, it's no longer blue, but red! Also, there's a pretty butterfly in the top right corner. Ignore the butterfly. I like the overall color scheme, and am thinking about revamping my web presence and the butterfly is helping me in my thinking. Ignore the butterfly.

You may also notice a new widget to the top right. It's a countdown to my next surgery. This will be number thirty.. something on my vocal chords since I was an infant. I lost count after I passed thirty.

For many, this would be something to be sad about. I find it life affirming. And funny. Very funny.

Each time I have surgery, there's a remote chance I might not wake up from the anesthesia. This is a reality I've faced since I was young. It's never something I've feared. (Needles on the other hand...) To be honest, I've almost grown to enjoy my hospital visits in some perverse way! Save for having to deal with insurance.. That completely ruins the experience.

Why am I blogging this? Because each surgery I've had has been a day I've survived. I've had more brushes with death than I can even count, and each one has given me an appreciation for life that I'm thankful for without words, and a morbid sense of humor that it pains me to have to reign in around most company.

Also, I wanted to explain the widget. It's my way to celebrate! Ignore the butterfly.

Tags: surgery, halloween, life, celebration

Coworking Atlanta. Let's do this!

As I mentioned previously, Coworking is something that's been on my mind for a bit.

So what is Coworking exactly? From the Coworking Community Blog:

"Coworking is a movement to create a community of cafe-like collaboration spaces for developers, writers and independents."

This can take a number of forms, from a bunch of people getting together at a cafe (with open wifi), someone's home, or a shared community space in order to get work done.

I've had conversations over the last few weeks with a number of people (too many to mention here) about coworking, and there seems to be a lot of interest. Also, given the level of social media connectivity that's  (finally!!) forming in Atlanta, the time seems to be right for coworking to start happening.

Why do I want this?

If you know me, you know that I'm really into the stuff I work on! I'm big on understanding where the world/web is going, and I'm even bigger on using this knowledge to mobilize communities to make a difference. I'm lucky enough to be working with a team of people who share many of my goals, philosophies, and values, but as we're a virtual team I often feel like I'm missing out on the type of community that being a part of a physical workplace brings.

Bottom line? Working at home sucks. It can be lonely sometimes (not to mention difficult to self motivate) and I want more exposure to a diverse range of people who are as passionate about what they do as I am! (Srsly!!)

Secondly, we often talk about "Web 2.0" and social media as not being about technology, but being about culture. Social media is both a product of cultural change as well as a catalyst for change that's driven by people. For the past two year, it's been difficult being a social media consultant in Atlanta because the city has been so far behind the learning curve.

I think this is rapidly changing. It's becoming much easier to talk about blogs, open source, virtual worlds, etc with people, and we're beginning to see lots of interest in events around said topics and using said mediums. We've had a number of unconferences this year including (but not limited to!) SoCon07, Podcamp, and most recently a Barcamp! I look out at the what's going on in this city, and I see that there's a lot of connectivity between creatives of all types (software developers, artists, entrepreneurs, bloggers, etc) and a thirst for even more community, interaction, and the personal and professional opportunities these would bring.

Historically, it's been difficult for creatives in this city to form such a community because there are too many centers. Atlanta is the poster child for urban sprawl, and until last year I didn't even realize that there was anything to do! Let alone people to meet. But now things are so interconnected that I think we can finally start connecting the dots here.

So, let's do this!

What's next?

Amusingly, while doing a bit of research for this post, I found that someone beat me to the punch! Last friday was the first meeting of a group of coworkers under the banner of Jelly led by one Kristyn Shayon and attended by a number of people I know! So there's already one coworking group within the Perimeter! The next meeting is on Friday, November 16th and you can go to the groups wiki to rsvp.

Secondly, I've talked to a number of my colleagues at What a Concept! and we're going to start having coworking sessions as a company on the north side of Atlanta (From Buckhead all the way up to Sandy Springs, Alpheretta, maybe Kennasaw, etc.) We think it would be really cool to extend an invitation to anyone who would like to join us! We'll be posting details on our company blog in the next few days.

Eventually, I'd like to have a coworking space that we can call our own. Check out Citizen Space in San Francisco to see an example of what I have in mind! Of course, placement is difficult due to urban sprawl... and first things first: bringing the community together.

So rather then try and centralize the Atlanta coworking community to a single place or under a single banner, I'm proposing that we use Yahoo's Upcoming event service so that anyone can post coworking events to a shared calendar. I've created a Coworking Atlanta group, and hope that everyone interested in organizing coworking events will join me in posting their events to this calendar. Join the Atlanta Coworking group on Upcoming, and link to it with the words "Atlanta Coworking" (like I just did) so it will be easily googleible. (And don't tell me that's not a word, Sherry.)

As mentioned in the block quote earlier, coworking is a movement that's gaining steam in cities all over the place. If you're interested in learning more and becoming involved in the larger conversation, there's a blog at coworking.info, a wiki at wiki.coworking.info, and a coworking google group where you can connect with members of the global coworking community.

Lastly, if you're planning on blogging about coworking activities in Atlanta, posting coworking pictures on flickr, social bookmarking, etc: I propose we use the following tag scheme: coworkingatlanta, coworking, atlanta.

Tags: coworkingatlanta, coworking, atlanta, community, social media

Fires in Southern California

As I blog, the fires in southern California are all over the news and on the front page of everywhere! Of all the things I'd have liked to replace Georgia's drought problem in the news, this was not among them.

A friend of mine in Cali is Twittering some social media disaster relief efforts that I wanted to share forward. If you know anyone in southern california near the fires, this might be helpful.

The Las Angeles Fire Department is Twittering fire updates.

Someone has created a google maps of the fires with emergency centers, and evacuation routes, and more! Click on "View Larger Map" to go to the full google maps pages.

View Larger Map

A mapped timeline of how the fires have spread:

View Larger Map

I wonder if there is a way to find out how much impact these tools are actually having at this time. Their promise is immense, and I'm hopeful that we will continue to see more of this type of activity occur when disasters happen. This is the type of creative use of social media tools that can save lives!

Tags: sandiego fire, disaster recovery, recovery 2.0, google maps

Barcamp Atlanta Followup

Following Barcamp I slept 15 hours (after having been up for over 30!!) and then jumped straight to working on projects, and I haven't yet had a chance to post a followup until tonight!

My overall impression is that this is exactly the type of event we need to see more of in Atlanta! This was a very different group from what I've seen at past events focused on social media in Atlanta where there's traditionally been more of a business community presence. (It's Atlanta. We do things a bit differently here.) This event was totally geek, and seemed to draw from diverse range of interests and expertise! We definitely need more of this. We need more of this, and often.

Among the highlights (if anyone knows the names of people I mention in these bullet points, let me know so I can link them!):

• Dinner on the top of the ATDC parking deck. The sunset was absolutely gorgeous, especially with how the sunlight reflected off of nearby skyscrapers in downtown.
  
• Someone brought an XO Laptop (one laptop per child project laptop). As far as I'm concerned, no Barcamp is complete without one!
• Talks on space travel, venture capital, and the energy politics. All by Stephen Fleming! He's one smart dude, and reminds me of some of my favorite people in places like Boston. ;)
  
• Playing a board game and finally giving up because no one could harvest enough resources to build enough buildings to get enough points to build a society to end the game.
• Lots of discussions about the Facebook platform.
• Creating ad-hoc presentations/discussions with people who's names I hadn't even learned yet.
• Blow darts!
• Wiimote music!! This was seriously awesome! (Srsly, If anyone knows this guys contact info, let me know.)
• Staying up till odd hours of the morning with smart people talking about gis technology, politics, linux, and art!
• Dave Coustan had the absolute coolest Google Reader shirt! I wants it. It will be mine one way or another.

My sessions went great. The first was the discussion on the open social graph/social network portability that Toby Ho and I hacked together the night before. A number of people joined us, and I thought there was some good discussion.

My second session was the one I sensationalistically entited "The Future of Democracy: Social Software, Law, Gaming, UI design, and You." Unfortunately, half an hour isn't enough time to make these connections and then shift to discussion and Q&A. By the time I got to stopping point, the time was up! The feedback afterwards was very positive though, and I can't wait until I work out my thoughts and examples enough to actually give a more formal presentation! David Cohen blogged a great summary of my session.

The third session was one on coworking attended by Sam Shenkman-Moore and... myself. Both of us are interested in coworking, know a bunch of people who are also interested in coworking, and so we talked about the steps to creating a coworking community. And I may have a plan. Stay tuned for that.

What would I like to see at the next BarCamp? Definitely more time per session. More freedom for guided discussion that only a schedule stickler can provide. Not necessarily someone herding people to sessions, but at least making people aware of when sessions start and stop and what's going on. I paradoxically found the chaos a little restrictive. Lastly, more closure at the end. That's how I like my storybooks, and this was definitely a geek story book weekend!

Kudos to Jeff Haynie and everyone else who had a hand in organizing the event and making it the wonderful experience it was. And because I haven't mentioned them in this post yet, here's a shoutout to Michael Mealing, Lance Weatherby, Jesse Newland, Chris Martin, Michael Ivey, Selah Abrams, and Brian Pitts!

BarCamp Atl: Session Planning 1

The sessions have ended for the night and we've moved into the main networking part of the night!

I'm currently working with Toby Ho on the Social Network Portability session tomorrow. We're looking through converations about this topic that have been happening the past few weeks.

We're probably going to be stealing borrowing using part of this presentation that Tantek Celik gave a little more then a week ago. (Public domain FTW!)

Toby and I both prefer more open discussions rather then formal presentations, so we're doing a mindmap to get key points out of the way and set the stage for the discussion as quickly and clearly as possible.

Actually, here's an idea. For presentations and blog posts and other things we might want to share for our session, let's use the barcampatl tag on del.icio.us.

BarCamp Atlanta!

I'm really excited that BarCamp has FINALLY come to Atlanta! It feels great to have the unconference flavor in my own backyard for a change rather then have to fly elsewhere to be amongst my peeps!

So far, I've attended two sessions: one on OpenID, and the current one on the technical ramifications of privatized space travel. Dave Coustan is currently in another room giving a talk on creating corporate blogs that doesn't suck, a topic of which he has much experience. :)

During dinner, (which was on the roof of ATDC's parking garage) I spotted someone with an XO laptop, which is the computer created for the One Laptop Per Child Project. A mob of us convinced him to give a demo tomorrow. Totally excited about that!

I've signed up to facilitate a session tomorrow I've titled The Future of Democracy: Social Software, Law, Gaming, UI Design, and You. In typical Barcamp fashion, I have nothing prepared for it yet.

I may also be co-facilitating a session on Social Network Portability in the morning. We'll likely be cannibalizing presentations given this past week at the Graphing Social Patterns Conference. Ad-hoc presentations are the best!

Here's the Flickr page for the BarCamp Atlanta photo pool that I'm posting photos to.

Notes on Anthropology and Social Media

Today was the first day of Fall semester, and the first day of an Anthropology course I'm taking! Ordinarily I'm not big on taking notes on my reading unless I my mind starts connecting the material with other things. (I think they call this kind of connectivity "learning"...)

Surprisingly (ok, not so much..) I looked back on the notes I took and found that most of it dealt with social media. So I've decided to publish the Google Doc and share it with you all!

Keep in mind that these are -supposed- to be notes on an introductory textbook on Anthropology. Instead, they're a great look into the way my mind works and perhaps may give many of you some idea as to why I have had problems with school in the past. ;)

If any of you are interested in my thoughts about the relationships between social media and Anthropology, definitely check out my notes!

Oh, and if any of you are curious, the (absurdly priced) textbook that we're using this semester and that my notes are derived from can be found here.

The Web 2.0 Arc

There have been a number of milestones these past few years in what we're calling Web 2.0. For the most part, they have been small incremental developments that have led to massive paradigm shifts (I've been using the phrase "paradigm shift" since before it was a buzzword, so leave me alone about it!) in the way we think about the web, and connecting, and cooperation, and all that good stuff. I can't even begin to cover what they all are, because it's been distributed throughout the industry, and realized in completely different orders by different people as ideas and practices have diffused outwards. It's been a huge learning curve that all of us have (and still are) experiencing differently. And so I can only discuss the developments that have caused shifts in my own personal thinking.

For me, it started with Livejournal. My first blog was a livejournal, and that is where I first experienced the power of the social network divorced from geography. When the dot-com crash happened, and all the hype turned into anti-hype, I was immersed in a community of friends nationwide engaged in all sorts of discussions that confirmed the idealism we all had about the web. Far from dying, I intuitively knew that some powerful ideas I couldn't yet articulate had survived the dotcom crash, and so I started paying attention. In 2003, while volunteering/hanging out with the Singularity Institute for AI, I encountered my first wiki.  At the time, wiki's were still hacked together bits of code that lacked polish. But their potential for collaboration was obvious to me.

I started noticing all these RSS symbols everywhere. The concept was kinda cool, but their potential unrealized until Bloglines came out with their web based RSS reader.

Then somwhere in there, Friendster showed up, as well as Orkut. Google's Orkut had closed membership, so we all felt special when someone invited us to join the network.

Google Maps sent the idea of Mashups into high gear.

Gmail seemed to institutionalize the private beta cycle.

I took my first look at del.icio.us and had no clue what it was so ignored it for four months until December of '04 when I finally figured it out. The understanding and the practices that came from del.icio.us changed my life.  I think it also changed the industry by creating the initial Web 2.0 echo chamber that led to the rapid adoption of AJAX, among many many other ideas.

At the same time I was learning all these things about what the web is -supposed- to look like, and how connected humans will be interacting with each other in the 21st century, thousands of other people were learning many related lessons in parallel. In October 2005, Tim O'reilly brought it all back together in this document that really clarified and drew lines between so many of the lessons we were learning. I think that was another milestone.

Around the middle of 2006, I noticed that I had stopped learning anything. There was nothing new, and money had already well begun to enter the equation again. For me, it seems that we had entered a time period where the incremental breakthroughs had stopped, and all the ideas and technology we had learned into existence were diffusing outwards from the Web 2.0 echo chamber.

Which brings us to the past few months. There's a new milestone, and it comes in the form of Facebook! By opening up their user data via their platform, social networking has become a utility that services can be built on. The idea of a service opening up in this way has yet again changed the landscape on the web, and I finally see movement beginning to move towards what I have long considered the holy grail of Web 2.0: a completely distributed and manageable identity system where ones social network exists as a cloud between any and all web applications with social functionality.

Brad Fitzpatrick, the man responsible for Livejournal (where it all began for me) and OpenID, is at it again by starting conversation on what he's calling the "social graph problem". This conversation has started a few times in the past, but the pieces to move it forward haven't really been in place until now, and it looks like Brad is trying to bring a number of the big players  to the table to solve the problem of disconnected networks.

I'm super excited, because this is the direction I think the people part of Web 2.0 has been moving all along!

Facebook Rocks Firefox!

I've been spending quite a bit of time recently (a little too much for my comfort) trying to keep up with all the new Facebook apps. Believe it or not, I think I've stumbled upon what could potentially become a killer app: Firefox!

Stay with me here.

Two years ago I was a bit struck by the fact that the Mozilla Add-ons community wasn't all that Web 2.0. This was supposed to be a revolution, and Mozilla was supposed to be spearheading it, right?! I had the realization then that Mozilla was missing a huge opportunity in not using the power of the network to spur adoption of third-party add-ons and increase awareness. And so it's remained until this past week.

Mozilla has created a new Facebook app called "Rock Your Firefox" that essentially takes advantage of the Facebook platform to give Firefox Add-ons the same viral effect of Facebook apps. This is great news for Firefox developers, and it's also great for the entire web ecosystem!

This application is basically a mirror of the Mozilla Add-ons Directory that let's users browse/search through Firefox Add-ons and save them as favorites to share with their Facebook friends. After you have your favorites selected, they show up in a widget on your Facebook profile, they also show up on your Mini-Feed and consequentially the News Feed of many of your friends (this is what makes it viral) and then you can also browse through the Firefox Add-ons that your friends have as Favorites.

Naturally my mind went towards where this app could go next. To put it simply, I see this Facebook app as a potentially significant piece in what I see as the next generation browser experience. (Or at least a really really really useful feature!) What's missing from the equation is a Firefox extension with the following functionality:

• It should autodetect installed add-ons and update the Facebook app accordingly.
• It should be able to download and install add-ons based on the information stored in the Facebook app
• It should be fully integrated with the Firefox Add-ons UI

Given a Firefox extension with this functionality, the "Rock your Firefox" Facebook app would need some additional functionality for solid integration:

• It would need to differentiate between "Installed Add-ons" and "Favorite Add-ons"
• It would enable you to select which Add-ons the extension should bulk install by default.
• It should have privacy settings that you could set per Add-on.

For the individual user, this would make it dead simple to install all of your favorite extensions on a clean install of Firefox. In fact, why not forgo this hypothetical Firefox extension entirely and just build this functionality into the browser itself? Imagine opening up a fresh install of Firefox, and instead of having to tediously install all your extensions, being prompted for your Facebook login. Firefox would do the rest. And if your Facebook account is tied to a Firefox user profile, imagine going to someone else's computer, logging them out of Firefox, and logging in with your Facebook account. At this point all the extensions you depend on are installed and you're back in action! And let's not forget the social component that helps you share the browser experience with your friends!

Naturally, this killer(well, for me at least) functionality doesn't have to be tied to Facebook. I imagine that "Rock Your Firefox" will be ported to other "Social Utilities" as soon as what makes the Facebook Platform successful is replicated via other services. (Anybody care to place bets?) In which case, when you first log into Firefox, you will be prompted for your username and Social Utility of choice.

Such is my vision for Firefox 3 (or 4 maybe?) Come to think of it, I wonder if this could be tied into something like the Mozilla Coop project that we heard about a few months ago... Anybody at Mozilla listening? :)