A SMALL BREAK FROM THE DAILY MIND FOR ANYONE WHO LIKES TO GEEK OUT OVER STREET ART, TECHNOLOGY, SMARTY PANTS INNOVATIONS, EMERGENT MEDIA & OTHER NEW STUFF.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Geek is back




Remember the guy with glasses in the back row who never quite got it? Who never kicked the football far enough or could scull enough beer fast enough to enter the kingdom of coolness? The guy who nobody wanted to be, that is, until technology became cool and suddenly everyone got online, was talking html, pretending they understood the significance of metaverses and online gaming and suddenly the future's cool again.

Now we see the rise of fancy marketing phrases like 'participatory journalism' and 'we-media', every tom, dick and barry has a blog and what'd you know? geek is back.

And it's not just technology, we've got people geeking out over the future of the planet, organic macro wholefoods grown on environmentally sustainable farms, grassroots activism, economically sustainable social justice ventures.The cloud of coolness surrounding apathy has well and truly lifted and now it's cool to be into something. These days it's not just "what do you do?", the million dollar question has become, 'what are you into?'.

So whether you're geeking out over greenhouse gas or gluten, stand up and be counted, because life isn't a spectator sport and geek is well and truly in.

Swaptree now in beta


The latest addition to shopping & trading online is Swaptree, a site which lets users trade books, videos, music and games peer to peer.

You simply log on and create a list of things you're looking to trade and a list of items you'd like to trade for. Swaptree reviews your lists and sets up the trades for you, the idea being that you're willing to trade anything on your 'trade' list for anything on your 'want' list.

It doesn't cost you anything to trade so it looks like their business model depends on advertiser revenue rather than any user generated revenue.


They're in the midst of beta testing and are set to launch 4th July to the public.

Check it out :: swaptree