Well, Adam and I both announced Marginwalker on our sites. So I guess you can feel free to get link crazy.

I'm awaiting the vast hordes of excited netizens as we speak. ;-)

Centuries ago, on a different planet, Abe posted a list of his current working tools to the board we both belonged to - these were the daily companions that helped him make a nomadic life doable, from clothes to connectors.

I was reminded of this when he again namechecked a few of these items in his introduction here, and it made me curious. Since a lot of us here seem to spend a good deal of time "on the road" (or committed to one or another node of global airport-hospitality complex hyperspace), what tools do you consider indispensable?


Not so much an opportunity to wallow in commodity fetishism - tho' I suppose it's that, too - as an inquiry into what you wouldn't leave home without...and what becomes home when all you've known is mobility.

I was watching Arundhati Roy on Bill Moyers' Now a couple months back and she was talking about the positive aspects of globalization specifically as relates to politics -- for example, the globally co-ordinated anti-war protests, which I think is an excellent topic, and she is exceedingly articulate on the subject so I won't attempt a paraphrase.

But I'm wondering about other examples of positive globalization, particularly things which are not strictly in response to war- or power-mongering, but things born of their own impetus. Our media and our discourse in general remains centered on the powerful as defined by money and military might. Yes to those in power - no to those in power / either-or. But what else is out there? Is there a third way -- or fourth or fifth -- which sees the dichotomy as irrelevant? Or end-run-able? And less isolationist than simply tending one's own garden?

Since we apparently have some brilliant minds here, and many who are well versed in the world of Urban-ity (pun definitely intended), allow me solicit some ideas about the real world in which I live.

I live in Toronto, one of the "hot-spots" for SARS. We are on the same tragectory for the disease as Hong Kong, with about a 2 week lag. We have already seen our hotel, restaurant and tourism industry devastated over the past few weeks; forecasts for our peak tourist season are dismal, to say the least. The economic fallout of this disease on our city will undoubtedly be felt for months. As one commentator noted, the effects of the World Trade Center disaster on New York City were not long lasting; the effects on Toronto tourism, theatre, arts, hospitality, and all those whose livelihoods depend - directly or indirectly - on these industries will continue to be felt for a very long time.

Unfortunately, we don't have our own Rudi Giuliani. Our civic leadership is non-existent. Our mayor is missing in action; the premier of our province is too busy brain-washing a perceived gullible public into forgetting the messes his government has created over the past 8 years. The best that we have is a planned publicity campaign led by one of the theatre impressarios...

So, to the collected brain trust here at marginwalker, What would you do to mitigate the perceived risks of visiting Toronto?

Personally, I find this much more interesting than the World Trade Centers competition; Libeskind's WTC is a unique project, but something that rethinks the way malls work provides an almost universal benefit to North American urbanism. Only one city has a WTC, but everybody's got a crappy mall or six.

I tend to find COA's mall more interesting than Stoner Meek's (you'll have to delve through the above links to find images of each). COA's is a dense, multi-use space, whereas Stoner Meek's looks more like a contemplative concretescape built around a wetland. Which is fine, I suppose...but not for malls. Malls do not need to be a simulacra of peaceful Arcadia. Malls are fast, and dense, and loud -- innately so, and it is both what we love and hate about them.

In fact, the most interesting thing about malls is that they provide the opportunity to create a commons for the suburbs...and have failed miserably, for the most part, in the thirty years they've been a dominant paradigm of commercial development. Partially, I suppose, this is because malls are almost always privately-owned rather than public spaces, as far as I know. They are the property of money-minded developers rather than cities.

Could this change? What is the feasability of cities reclaiming dead malls and turning them into pre-fab cultural centers? Would it be possible to do this privately, say, as a non-profit organization? And would it be worth the effort?

Or are dead malls simply another American non sequitur, something else that exists only so that pomo kids can get their J.G. Ballard on in dissertation after endless dissertation?

One thing every community needs, I think, is a topic where people introduce themselves. It's an easy and simple enough thing, and it's intended to be different than just clicking someone's name and seeing the corresponding profile. And so...

So I'd like to point out that this is a work in progress, if you hadn't tipped to that already, and provide a space for your questions, critiques, comments -- specifically about the site itself, in this case.

Info: this runs off of a very cool and useful blog engine called Nucleus. There are certain limitations involved in modifying blog software for these purposes, but so far, I think the simplicity outweighs the minor irritations -- though as more people begin actively posting, that might change.

I believe it's possible to allow UBB-style responses to posts, with full HTML capacity, etc. I'm assuming y'all would like that -- I mean, there is a reason italics were invented -- and so I'll be looking into implementing that in the very near future (think days rather than months).

So: a lot of you are designers, IA, usability freaks. What are we doing right? What are we doing wrong? Is it readable? Some of the design decisions are based simply on a limited amount of time and an insistence upon cross-platform compatibility. Most of you are probably on PCs; Adam is a Mac guy; my scary home network is running OS X, Linux and Windows XP, and I use at least four different browsers on a regular basis. I do not like incompatibility.

But we'd like to make it prettier and easier to use, so help us.

Other design/technical notes:

• I'm trying to force the responses to show your real name, not your login, but I'm not quite sure how at this juncture.



• I want to have the 'Admin' and 'Post A New Item' links invisible unless you're logged in.

So what are your thoughts?

So, I'm curious about some of the parameters of use. First and foremost: am I right in guessing that membership is invitation only, but posting a public link to an interesting discussion is okay? I'm not going to, certainly not until I've got it clarified, certainly, but it might come up.

Beyond that, as I don't see an "about" page, I suppose I'm curious about some of the mechanics of the site, and whatever rules there are. DirectoryofDating