Today I’ll be giving a presentation by phone to the National Educational Telecommunication Association covering what’s next in social media. The topic is very broad and difficult to address, as those of you who follow the social media business understand. Every day it seems as if there’s a new social media startup that’s poised to be the NBT and capture the public’s attention. So I’m going to do my best to introduce some of the networks and apps that garnering the most attention.

Did I already mention how much I love Processing? Because I really, really love Processing.

Here’s my latest project, which was created using this tutorial. Watch the objects for a bit and you’ll notice that their speed remains constant. If this project were created in Flash using Actionscript, everything would slow down over time and eventually move like sludge.

I’ve long been interested in the use of code to create art. The idea that code could build images that are beautiful or visually striking fascinates me. That’s why Recordnet.com/Fireworks remains the project I’ve most enjoyed working on in my year of so as a Web content producer. It’s pretty, and the idea for it came in part from an art project: Plug-in Media’s “Pyro(technics) to the People.”

But I’ve also realized Recordnet.com/Fireworks has a glitch stemming from the fact that it was created in Flash using Actionscript 3.0. It’s intense – both graphically and in code (300 lines or so) – and as a result the display can quickly slow down. The user needs to repeatedly re-load the page in his or her browser to get the full effect.

Honestly, though, the glitch didn’t bother me that much. I’m still very proud of that project. At the same time, however, I thought it’d be great to find a language or programming system that will allow me to make Recordnet.com/Fireworks faster this July 4.

Social media can get pretty complicated. I have a relatively small social media presence – the links/icons in the sidebar at left, plus Flickr – but at times I’ve forgotten how each of my pages or sites are connected.

Take, for example, the video blog below, which I uploaded to Youtube yesterday and intended to post here today. A few hours after the video was on Youtube I received a message from my sister on Facebook saying she had watched it. I had forgotten that I had a feed from Youtube to Facebook, and it probably cost ianhillmedia.com a few pageviews.

It’s something I’ll keep in mind in the future. Perhaps I need to create a flowchart mapping out the connections between my social media pages.