New Criticals

Seb Chan is Director of Digital & Emerging Media at Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in NYC where he is charged with reinventing the digital experience of the museum as it rebuilds its physical site on Museum Mile. He has had a long career as a change agent, helping cultural institutions make the most of a world being reshaped by technology, 'the network', and digital media. In a parallel life as a veteran DJ, club promoter and music writer, he founded Cyclic Defrost Magazine. He blogs at www.freshandnew.org and tweets as @sebchan.

Here are Seb's first five...

Well, it doesn't seem like I can check Google Reader any longer, with its premature death having just been announced.

Twitter is still one of the most reliable ways to keep in touch with my colleagues in other timezones. There's a really strong representation of interesting thinkers and makers in the digital humanities field and I keep it manageable by having a strongly asymmetric follower/following ratio.

Possibly the most comprehensive discography site on the web there are crowdsourced listings for millions of releases, along with a trading community. WIth its origins in DJ culture, it is an incredibly valuable reference source for tracking down obscure dance music - or different regional versions of particular releases. For some reason I end up on Discogs every day - either to answer some question about a particular track, or to use it as a demonstration of the power of well structured, crowdsourced metadata - something that museums could learn a lot from.

Not the cheapest online record store, but certainly one with great selections and hyperbolic mini-reviews. I get their new releases list every Monday and usually put some spare change towards a weekly does of edgy electronics. They are a good source of lossless downloads (as FLACs) and, unlike several other popular music services, actually care about the metadata embedded in their music files.Not the cheapest online record store, but certainly one with great selections and hyperbolic mini-reviews. I get their new releases list every Monday and usually put some spare change towards a weekly does of edgy electronics. They are a good source of lossless downloads (as FLACs) and, unlike several other popular music services, actually care about the metadata embedded in their music files.

Having grown up in Australia at the height of the West Indian team's domination of cricket, I have been instilled with a deep interest in cricket and like to check the scores worldwide every day. I have a running conversation with one of the Carribean security guards at the Museum about the current state of the Australian and West Indian cricket teams - so it is important that I keep up to date! Although owned now by ESPN, CricInfo has along history dating back to text-based commentary by cricket fans on IRC chat and an early version of the site even had a partnership with Mick Jagger in the late 1990s!

Thumbnail image of Seb is from here.