This weekend everything here was moved from brelson.com/blog to brelson.com, and a couple of links summaries were missed as a result. So I’ve decided to post them manually instead…

Planet of the Lemur: 10 Beautiful Little-Known Species
Here are some excellent pictures of lemurs. My favourite is the crowned lemur.

Thoughts for an eleventh September: Alvin Toffler, Hirohito, Sarah Palin « Adam Greenfield’s Speedbird
The titular concept of sociologist Alvin Toffler’s 1970 book “Future Shock” was a predicted social reaction against a period of accelerated technological change. Or, in other words, social and technological change leading to a large section of society with a feeling of disconnection and disorientation. The author of this article, Adam Greenfield, had always imagined ‘future shock’ as a sudden outbreak, like a flu epidemic, but in this article, whose sentiments I wholly sympathise with, he speculates that this condition may have been slowly starting to manifest itself for several years now, and that Sarah Palin is among its prime exemplars.

BBC NEWS | Magazine | Compact and bijou – the slums of tomorrow?
The shiny, aspirational and modern-looking blocks of flats dotting the modern skylines of suburban London are, once you’re inside, cramped and claustrophic, and have strong potential as the cornerstones of future slums. JG Ballard was right, etc.

Local paper ‘tweets’ the funeral of 3-year old boy killed in ice cream shop
“When Twitter goes wrong” – a bizarre case involving a reporter posting updates from the funeral of a 3-year-old. There’s something intrinsically trivial and quotidian about microblogging in the same way as there is about text messaging, which is possibly the reason why the headline of this feature alone triggered a confused/repulsed response on my part. I should add though that I’m also faintly repulsed by the tone this article takes in its final paragraph.

Social Networking Watch: Friendster, Kent Lindstrom – CEO Interview
To be honest I’d assumed Friendster must have died a death after its explosive growth in 2004-2005 was bogged down by general infrastructural fail. But in fact Friendster lives on and is the number one social network in Asia, with loads of users in Malaysia, Singapore, Korea and so on. A happy ending!

The end of the beginning of Web 2.0 – broadstuff
“In other words, the current generation of ’2.0′ technology is becoming settled – reliable, predictable etc – and, well, boring. That layer of bedrock is done, and people are using it for the next layer…”