In times of mass customisation, children aren’t forgotten. Creashirt offers them – Crea Kit – a package that contains a T-shirt with an original drawing and a set of felt-pens.

Children can colour the drawing in accordance with their own taste or mood and create in this way an unique creation, that will generate some jealousy on the playground.

Does it sounds familiar: constantly refreshing your Facebook page, logging in more than 10 times a day, overwhelming your friends with Facebook gifts … it sounds you’re a Facebook addict! But no worries … there help on the way! Fighting your addiction with BeatingAddiction….a social network that helps users to overcome their addiction(s) by talking and communicating with others.

Mass customisation … the buzz word … everybody knows what it means and can instantly name 10 to 20 examples of companies that provide their products with mass customisation options.

But how does the production of those mass customized products work …. how do the underlying technologies funtions? On the blog of Joseph Flaherty - founder of Replicator, Inc, a company that manufactures and sells custom consumer products – all technologies that enable personal fabrication are explained.

Everything you always wanted to know about 3D printing, Laser Cutters, Waterjet Cutters, 2D Plotter Cutters, Print on Demand, Direct To Garment Printing, CNC Milling, CNC Embroidery, Cut & Sew Construction, 3D Scanning is explained with small video contributions in his post: ‘Personal fabrication for dummies’.

Since everybody – or almost every woman I know – is or wants to be pregnant, a social media site dedicated to mothers is likely to become very popular!

Circle of moms is a social media site for online moms who want to connect with other moms. With more than 850,000 members, Circle of Moms is a vast growing social network site, mothers can join communities, create new communities to share experiences concerning all aspects of motherhood. The site includes all features that you expect from a social media site: photo, video, creating groups, Q&A section, virtual gifts and … of cours user profiles.

So for all those mommies … one adress: circle of moms or join them through the facebook application

In preparation for my class on Social Media I came across two interesting courses dealing with a variety of topics which I perceive as key elements of what can be called Social Media.

Creative Networking – Burak Arikan

At the NYU artist & researcher Burak Arikan teaches a class on creative networks. He focuses on the emergence of networks within the context of art. His course consists of two parts. One part focuses on the structures of networks. What is for example swarming, distance or clustering? The second phase deals with the processes taking place in social networks.

I especially like his structured approach and the fresh graphic style for visualising the different concepts.

Creative Networking, NYU / ITP

Digital Methods Course – New Media TEMLab, University of Amsterdam& Govcom.org

Google Movie Image

The Digital Methods course is a way to try to find new research methodologies (besides the existing ones mostly originating from social sciences) linked to the specific language of new media.

On their opening page they provide a summary, if you click deeper you reach the Wiki which is constantly updated and gives hands on advice to do research.

Digital Methods Course