Touch screen. Awesome graphics. Online community. No, I'm not talking about the latest handheld device to hit the market, I'm talking about Control Data's PLATO system. [more inside]
posted by WolfDaddy on Apr 27, 2009 - 31 comments

How To Do Almost Anything With Social Media from Mashable. All kinds of practical tips and tons of useful link resources for personal or business uses. At the bottom of the page are additional links to things like 24 Most Underrated Websites of 2008 l How to Find a Babysitter Online l How to Find Your Way Around Any New City.
posted by nickyskye on Dec 28, 2008 - 8 comments

MeFi's celebration of the Ivy League continues with "The Facebook of Wall Street's Future," a New York Times map of social and professional connections in the tradition of They Rule (previously on Metafilter here, here , here and here). [more inside]
posted by GrammarMoses on Jan 14, 2008 - 25 comments

"We all leave something behind, but it looked like Olive had left nothing." Olive Archer passed away after five years in a care home, five years that passed without a visitor. Concerned that Olive was an Eleanor Rigby the minister prepared for her service by making an appeal to the public to find if anyone remembered Olive. Friends were found. Sadly, she is not alone. Maybe she needed SagaZone.
posted by geekyguy on Jan 10, 2008 - 45 comments

Virtual Friendship and the New Narcissism. Examining the social rules and norms, as well as the pitfalls, of electronic "friending" (yes, it's a verb now - or is it a gerund?). Via.
posted by amyms on Sep 24, 2007 - 54 comments

Akamai's Internet Visualizations. Akamai is a major mirroring and caching service which serves up a large chunk of all internet traffic. They are now sharing some pretty visualizations based on their data which used to be customer only. News. Music. Retail. Real-time Web Monitor . Network Performance Comparison. Visualizing Akami.
posted by srboisvert on Jun 7, 2007 - 19 comments

DailyHub - "Social Content for Business Geeks". A Digg-esque aggregator that purports to be grown up.
posted by Burhanistan on Jun 6, 2007 - 15 comments

Booktribes is a new site from the creators of writing site Abctales where bibliophiles can compile lists of every book they've ever read. Replete with a simple, intuitive interface, compiling your life's reading list becomes strangely addictive, and for the whole of March, the best comment of the day on this as-yet underpopulated site wins a copy of David Mitchell's Black Swan Green, with the best comment of the month winning the entire 21 volume Sceptre Collection. And if you're worried your reading list isn't up to scratch, don't panic - you can always cheat.
posted by RokkitNite on Mar 3, 2007 - 20 comments

RONJA is an optical networking device that can be built by nearly everyone, using readily available components and using only free software.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Feb 7, 2007 - 23 comments

Meet Stuart, the new mySpace-like networking site for Student Artists created by Saatchi and Saatchi. (discovered through the NYT).
posted by jacalata on Dec 19, 2006 - 23 comments

What News Corp doesn't want you to know about myspace is that the much of the success of myspace was due to a large successful advertising campaign and it wasn't grass roots at all. They also don't want you to know that Tom Anderson didn't really create the site and that it is more spam 2.0 than anything else. The article is written by a 19 year old web journalist called Trent Lapinski. Has everyone just been had? Does it matter? (via Digg and Valleywag)
posted by sien on Sep 11, 2006 - 92 comments

Stickam One might be tempted to dismiss it at first glance as just a video-enabled Myspace clone for emo teens with webcams; but looking past that you'll find a fairly robust and platform-independent Flash-based webcam broadcast and videoconferencing app. There's a profile page with an embedabble Flash viewer, a full screen personal conference popup with privacy options, group video chat rooms, and hosted galleries for photo, video and audio content. Is this the advent of Cam Whoring 2.0? (Oh, and see if you can catch the Pissed-Off Caveman online. It's a webcam pointed at a decked-out Robot Chimpanzee Head.)
posted by brownpau on Aug 8, 2006 - 16 comments

Tourfilter: Track your favorite bands. See who else is tracking them. Never miss another show! [Boston, Chicago, New York for now - other cities on the way.]
posted by mr.curmudgeon on Jul 5, 2006 - 15 comments

Newsfilter: The US House Committee on the Judiciary today approved the Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act (HR 5417) in a vote of 20-12, helping to improve the provision of equal network service regardless of who receives it, without added surcharges, along with other antitrust measures. Carriers like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon suggest no problem exists that requires this legislative solution, despite pushing their lobbyists hard to get Congress to enact opposing laws, and suggesting that prioritizing network traffic is required to develop newer products, such as high-definition video. Meanwhile, the FCC continues to encourage mergers while prices for telecommunications products continue to rise at rates manyfold higher than inflation, despite price gouging provisions enacted in the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
posted by Mr. Six on May 26, 2006 - 13 comments

Networking on the Network Started over 10 years ago, long before social web apps became ubiquitous, Phil Agre's Networking on the Network was an introduction to professional networking, using the internet, for graduate students.
The document has grown and evolved to encompass 90 pages of widely applicable advice on building professional relationships and helping others do the same. Much of what he writes is applicable to surviving in any institution.
Reading it feels like being taken aside by an expert practitioner who tells you, "Pssst....hey buddy, here's how things really work."
posted by mecran01 on Oct 7, 2005 - 12 comments

The next stage of evolution for social networking AlwaysOn, a social networking business site, is working on an ambitious new project, GoingsOn (screenshot), that encompasses most of the hot features that are all over the web, like photos, videos, and dating info. More in comments...
posted by rzklkng on Jul 19, 2005 - 27 comments

How to make friends with your IT department
posted by cbrody on Jun 21, 2005 - 20 comments

Roadcasting is an idea bandied about for ages: create ad-hoc low power FM networks that let you share the mp3 music you're hearing in your car with those driving around you. It's basically a blueprint for shared pirate radio as you drive, surfing the dial for a variety of music from nearby motorists. They've got screenshots and source code and it looks just like the system imagined in Cory Doctorow's books. I can't wait to see where this project is headed. [via unmediated]
posted by mathowie on May 22, 2005 - 37 comments

What's a namber? A namber is a word that acts as a mnemonic for a number. For example, 65 is drum, and 181 is push. A namber address uses an arbitrarily-chosen list of nambers to represent each of the numbers from 0 to 255 in order to assemble four words to represent any IP address. Metafilter.com's namber is earth.frog.brown.tooth, and mysteryrobot.com conveniently provides translation and forwarding to the real IP address.
posted by TheCowGod on Mar 22, 2005 - 32 comments

[TheFaceBook]: It comes in the genre of LiveJournal, MySpace, and Friendster - except with a focus on digitally connecting pre-existing friendships on college campuses rather than finding new friends worldwide. Subsequently, it has thus far avoided the stigmas I’ve seen attached to its predecessors by non-users. Its use has skyrocketed: about 15% of my campus has signed up since this past winter. All of it through word-of-mouth. One of the neat tricks it does is show a visualization of your friends on the network in a spider webbed vectored graphic connecting them based on their mutual friendships. It’s also proven very useful in tracking down those “where do I know him/her?” names through a prominently displayed list showing up to two-degrees of separation to the mystery person. Oh, and you can send text messages to cell phones through it. Did I mention it also reminds you of birthdays?
posted by trinarian on Mar 19, 2005 - 29 comments

iNeighbors is like groupware for neighbors. The site lets members define neighborhoods and provides tools for meeting and talking to your neighbors, like posting reviews and building a mailing list. It sounds like MeFites want to meet people nearby, a desire this site is banking on. (via Smart Mobs)
posted by revgeorge on Aug 16, 2004 - 18 comments

On Fornication And Genetics in The Breedster Age The site which launched a social networking app based around insect fornication and copulograms, gave rise to mass projects, insect personals, and even racist clans now presents some early findings including interesting animations of a populated world.
posted by vacapinta on May 25, 2004 - 11 comments

Bay Area Link Up is a social/business networking site for professionals in the Bay Area. Some use it for business networking and getting freelance work. Others use it for other reasons. They've recently expanded to other regions (and also added a monthly fee). I like this model better than Yahoo Groups or Usenet, simply because people create events that you can sign up for if they interest you. What online networking groups do you like to use?
posted by culberjo on Apr 6, 2004 - 4 comments

Buddyzoo is an interesting new site that lets you see which buddies on your AIM buddy list your buddies share with you. Sort of like a six degrees of seperation kind of thing. Very neat. Go check it out and sign up! And tell your friends!
posted by aznblader on Apr 15, 2003 - 13 comments

The 2003 Winter Music Conference is now one month away. During the conference you will be able to attend the main conference, the 2003 DanceStar USA awards show, the huge ULTRA 5 Music Festival, and countless other parties during the week. Everyone influential having anything to do with dance music will be there for 5 days of endless pool parties, late night clubbing, networking, and general debauchery. If you need to know what will be going on, you should already be on the Miami Master List, the definitive guide.
posted by cmicali on Feb 17, 2003 - 12 comments

I couldn't find Kevin Bacon anywhere on this list. I guess this guy prescribes to the "idle hands are the devil's workshop" world view. This bloke has apparently gone to great pains to list everyone he has ever known on his website. What a massive undertaking, as well as a complete waste of time.
posted by psmealey on Jan 7, 2003 - 22 comments

How to work a room - tips for networking. Also useful for parties! The graphics aren't beautiful, but they make effective use of the web to communicate something which is easily forgotten after a live presentation.
posted by sheauga on May 16, 2002 - 27 comments

Your house is set to become a sprawling, and cheap, computer network. Ninety technology companies — including Cisco Systems Inc., Intel Corp. and Motorola Inc. — are part of a group that announced a major breakthrough Tuesday in the years-long push to use power lines to transmit data. As early as October, consumers in Canada and the United States will be able to use any plug in their house to connect computers to each other and to the Web. No extra wiring will be required.
posted by tranquileye on Jun 27, 2001 - 32 comments

This is pretty damn cool: your bookmarks, napsterized. A new app (windows only, sorry) to let you share your favorite sites with everyone and allow others to search for them. If they add a hotlist, ala napster, this could be one killer app.
posted by mathowie on Jan 28, 2001 - 7 comments