Hi, I'm Alex Vorbau and I'm a Researcher at HP Labs. That's what I say to people at parties and the response is hilariously predictable. Sales people start looking over my shoulder longingly at the wine table. I back-pedal and quickly try to explain that my job really is interesting, apologetically, as if I had accidentally said something rude about their child...social networking...peer-to-peer...video streaming, oh and Web 2.0! He re-establishes eye contact, smiling politely and then returns to scanning the room for his wife to rescue him from nerdboy. Ah, but the spousal unit is nowhere to be found as nerdboy continues...

 

I work in the area of Social Media, which is technology that uses media -- photos, videos, voice, and so on -- to connect people together and bridge distance. Social Technologies are fascinating to me. If the telephone is useful, why don't people want a videophone? If someone else has a photo of me or my child, whose photo should it be and what technology could we create to help sort that out? What is the modern digital equivalent to social interactions we're so accustomed to? For example, how can we re-create, digitally, the face-to-face conversation at a party without the technology getting in the way? These questions are essentially what gets me out of bed in the morning. That and the little boy screaming in the bedroom next to me.

I should say that I understand that the term Social Media is often used to describe blogging and "collective knowledge" systems like Wikipedia and Digg. These are excellent and innovative sites, but I will focus more on the technologies that help strengthen the relationships we have with our existing social circles -- our friends and family. So to avoid comparison with these, I chose the more general title for this blog, Social Technology Innovation.

Here are some ideas I have for the blog. Let me know what you think.

• Interviews - there are folks here at Labs who are doing some really interesting work in Social Networks and Imaging and I'd like to talk with them and possibly post some video of the interview.
  
• Development - What's even more interesting than discussing innovative Social Technologies is building them. I'd like to get technical at times and build some stuff, with help from you, of course.
  
• Gadgets - everyday some of my favorite blogs like TechCrunch, Gizmodo and Engadget are writing about interesting Social Technologies and I like to add to those discussions.
  
• Discussion - there are loads of unanswered questions to be discussed in the area of work. I truly hope that as I earn the attention of readers that we can have constructive and open conversations around these questions.
  

Ok, you're free to go now...better hurry before I start talking about Xbox Live and VoIP...