We are bombarded with the idea its good to talk and its good to text. But is texting and other forms of mobile phone interaction a useful form of communication? Or is it even a form of communication at all or something totally different? In a mini-book "Heidegger, Habermas and the mobile phone" the author invokes some key thinkers of the twentieth century to offer an essential alternative to the new doctrine of 'm-communication': Martin Heidegger, who saw humanity as ‘the entity which talks’ and Jürgen Habermas, current-day advocate of authentic communication.

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One of the papers I re-read lately is Clay Shirky's landmark speech at ETech in 2003 "A group is its own worst enemy" where he identifies 4 principles for social software/social network design. These principles are every bit as relevant today as they were 5 years ago.

I have been checking out Agna a neat little free social network analysis (SNA) tool which runs on both PCs and Macs (on top of Java). Agna allows social network data (directly input or imported from external systems) to be displayed, manipulated and analysed graphically in a number of ways/styles and is very easy to install and use. Agna is a great way to get into SNA.

Auren Hoffman, chief executive of Reputation Technology company Rapleaf, writing for BusinessWeek, reviews how the current presidential candidates have become exceptionally adept at "microtargeting" persuadable voters and in using the latest social media software to go beyond seeking traditional support ("give us your money and vote") towards also seeking active advocacy ("call three swing voters").