On Muxtape, Twitter, and the Future of Web Services and Platforms

Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 by Garrick Schmitt

My favorite web service of 2008 is Muxtape which, inspired the analog mix tape cassette culture of the 80s and 90s, allows users to create their own mixes — typically 12 songs — upload the files, sequence the songs and post. One of the pure joys of the service is ...

The Web Agency: There Will Be Blood…Or Not?

Thursday, March 13th, 2008 by Garrick Schmitt

And if there is going to be blood in the digital agency world, who's blood will it be? That was the question (or more accurately "questions") that hung over the SXSW panel that I spoke on at this year's conference in Austin, Texas. The answer was far from clear, however. The ...

The Politics of Digital Participation

Monday, March 3rd, 2008 by Garrick Schmitt

Wired.com has a great piece on Barack Obama's utilization of the Internet and custom social networking tools to fuel his 'Net-centric campaign which it calls "the most ambitious, and apparently successful, internet campaign effort in any presidential race in the web's short history." Inside Obama's Surging Net-Roots Campaign looks at how ...

The Social Web and the Rise of Ron Paul for President

Monday, January 14th, 2008 by Garrick Schmitt

As an amateur political junkie and digital design advocate, I can't help but get excited about the role the Internet is playing in this year's U.S. Presidential Race. Last week I predicted that the Web will play a larger role than most pundits -- and pollsters -- think in shaping ...

2008 Forecast: “Traffic Distribution” Metric to Define Site Health and User Engagement

Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 by Garrick Schmitt

Late last year I prophesized the "death of the homepage" and predicted a new online paradigm where the homepage as we know it today just didn't matter as much as it used to. I argued that search, RSS and widgets were driving more and more users deep into ...