Fraser Speirs on Future Shock
“What you're seeing in the industry's reaction to the iPad is nothing less than future shock. For years we've all held to the belief that computing had to be made simpler for the 'average person'. I find it difficult to come to any conclusion other than that we have totally failed in this effort. Secretly, I suspect, we technologists quite liked the idea that Normals would be dependent on us for our technological shamanism.”
A Whole New Mind | Daniel Pink
All the iPad discussions seem to point me back to Daniel Pink’s book. He observes that the future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind. The era of “left brain” dominance, and the Information Age that it engendered, are giving way to a new world in which “right brain” qualities-inventiveness, empathy, meaning-predominate.
Project SIKULI
Sikuli automates almost anything with screenshot ease, thanks to it's visual recognition technology. Works with any computing platform, including Mac, Windows, Linux! (via Lifehacker)
Panopticlick
EFF asks: Is your browser configuration rare or unique? If so, web sites may be able to track you, even if you limit or disable cookies.
The Pinky Show: Structure, Power, & Agency
Pinky's been thinking a lot about class treason lately: What does it mean that we do so many things in our lives 'automatically'? What can we really do to make this world better? And what will we have to give up or risk in order to achieve it?
Pictures + Stories = Pictory! And It's Pretty. // Current
Pictures have never been more share-worthy than they are within Pictory, a new, community-driven, ongoing series of photos and the stories behind them. Get out your Kleenex… some of this stuff will truly tug at your heartstrings! The Internet can be so great.
List of Corporate Social Media Strategists, Corporate Community Managers in 2010 « Jeremiah Owyang
There are very specific requirements for this list, please read before submitting: 1) You must have a public LinkedIn profile page that 2) indicates that social media is part of your full time career and job –not just for personal use, 3) You must work at an enterprise class corporation with more than 1000 employees.
Securing your iPhone's traffic | Macworld
There are several firms that specialize in “rent-a-VPN” service for travelers who don’t have a corporate information technology department behind them handling VPN service. I'm thinking it's the easiest way to spoof your iPhone's IP as well.
I keep having these aspirations to have my own daily video show, but until it actually happens (yeah right!), I’ll just share recent links I’ve enjoyed. I’ve heard from some of you that this is what you like best from my blog… less talkie, more linkies!
Sarien.net – Instant adventure gaming
Welcome to Sarien.net, the portal for reliving classic Sierra On-Line adventure games. With its focus on instant fun and a unique multiplayer experience, Sarien.net hopes to win new gamers' hearts and promote the adventure game genre. (via @tiffchow)
“Socialgraphics” webinar slides « Altimeter Group
Recorded webinar of Altimeter's “Understanding Your Customers’ Social Behaviors“. You can also download from Slideshare.net (for slides) and drop.io (for the recording).
Get Glue: The Network That Sticks To You
Glue is a service that helps you find your next favorite movie, book, music album or other every day thing (here's a list of supported categories). Glue shows you things that you'll like based on your personal tastes, what your friends like, and what's most popular on Glue.
Government posting wealth of data to Internet – washingtonpost.com
Under a Dec. 8 White House directive, each department must post online at least three collections of "high-value" government data that never have been previously disclosed. All the new data collections will be added to the government's Web site, data.gov.
IDEO Labs » Keynote Tweet: Participate in the backchannel of your own presentation
Enter Keynote Tweet, a simple open-source script that provides the capacity to participate in the backchannel by combining Twitter with Apple Keynote. All you have to do is add text wrapped in [twitter] and [/twitter] tags in the presenter notes section of a slide. When that slide comes up in the presentation the script grabs that text and sends it to Twitter on your behalf.
Conversations About The Internet #5: Anonymous Facebook Employee – The Rumpus.net
Samzenpus on Slashdot wrote: "A Facebook employee has given a tell-all interview with some very interesting things about Facebook's internals. Especially interesting are all the things relating to Facebook privacy. Basically, you don't have any. Nearly everything you've ever done on the site is recorded into a database. While they fire employees for snooping, more than a few have done it. There's an internal system to let them log into anyone's profile, though they have to be able to defend their reason for doing so. And they used to have a master password that could log into any Facebook profile: 'Chuck Norris.' Bruce Schneier might be jealous of that one."
The 4 Big Myths of Profile Pictures « OkTrends
To write this piece, we cataloged over 7,000 photographs on OkCupid.com, analyzing three primary things: 1) Facial Attitude. Is the person smiling? Staring straight ahead? Doing that flirty lip-pursing thing?,
2) Photo Context. Is there alcohol? Is there a pet? Is the photo outdoors? Is it in a bedroom?, 3) Skin. How much skin is the person showing? How much face? How much breasts? How much ripped abs?
TheSixtyOne: Beautiful music listening + discovery + game service
TheSixtyOne is an amazing way to discover new music online. It's chock-full of musical goodness — including lots of Creative-Commons licensed music that can be freely downloaded. It turns music discovery into a social game and lets you "heart" songs (you only get so many hearts to give out each day, depending on your level). If others then "heart" those same songs, it means you've helped them discover good music, and you get more "reputation" points (which in turn allow you to level up and "heart" even more songs, and so on).
Thwapr – Mobile To Mobile Video Sharing
The easiest way to share videos and pictures from your phone to your friends' phones. All you need is text messaging and a mobile browser. Thwapr is free and requires no downloads.
An Illustrated History of Location-Based Technology – BlackBook
As far back as 200 BC, humans have been busy inventing a variety of tools to help steer us in the right direction. This timeline is an informative look at just how far we've come when it comes to location based technology.
UK Launches Open Data Site; Puts Data.gov to Shame
Data.gov.uk has nearly 3,000 data sets available for developers to build mashups with. The U.S. site, Data.gov, has less than 1,000 data sets today. When will we see Data.gov.sg?
L+E Visual Thinking Archive – a set on Flickr
This group of visuals has been designed and produced by me (David Armano). You are welcome to use the visuals for presentations, slideshows and blogs posts. Please provide proper attribution and a link is always appreciated. davidarmano.com
Booki: CollaborativeFutures
As we began the collaborative process of crafting this book on the future of collaboration, we realized we were all working from a set of assumptions, many of them shared, some of them divergent. We were talking about a specific form of collaboration, specific media of collaboration, and specific goals of collaboration. And we were talking about a specific history of collaboration, and a correspondingly specific set of futures.
PleaseDress.Me Finds Specialty T-Shirts Online – While this is a neat designer t-shirt search engines, the prize is in the blog comments: A cesspool of great t-shirt shopping sites to browse for your perfect tee!
Thwarting the Copycats: Sorta Free Anti-Plagiarism Tools – There are a number of free anti-plagiarism search tools available, although they don't offer the integration with a larger learning management package, or the many amenities offered by either Turnitin or SafeAssign
JDownloader: Automatically handles Radpishare & Megaupload – JDownloader is open source, platform independent and written completely in Java. It simplifies downloading files from One-Click-Hosters like Rapidshare.com or Megaupload.com
Writing for Friends and Family: The Interpersonal Nature of Blogs – Bloggers who exhibit both extraversion and self-disclosure traits tend to maintain larger strong-tie social networks and are more likely to appropriate blogs to support those relationships. Age, gender, and education have no relationship to network size, blog content, or the use of blogs as a relationship maintenance tool.
Use buzzwords to be cited, study suggests – Academics who use fashionable "buzzwords" in their research papers could enhance their reputations as their work is cited more often by their peers, a new study suggests.
Copyright/CC
EFF to ISPs and Content Owners: Do Your Part to Protect Political Speech | Electronic Frontier Foundation – Here are examples of free political speech being block in the U.S. As the country enters the most "wired" election season to date, EFF and the ACLU of Northern California strongly encourage online service providers (OSPs) and content owners to take special care to safeguard free speech. Copyright claims, trademark claims, and alleged terms of use violations can be misused to silence critics and stifle political dialogue online. Even temporary takedowns can harm open debate, as political speech depends on the spirit of the moment and the rapidly evolving arguments of the participants.
EFF: Veoh Decision Could Save Muxtape and Friends | Listening Post from Wired.com – When a Northern California judge Howard R. Lloyd handed down a decision on Wednesday in favor of the video sharing site Veoh, after it had been accused by IO Group of hosting ten of that company's pornographic movies without permission, he may have provided mix sharing sites like Muxtape with a blueprint for legality.
The Creative Commons and Copyright Protection in the Digital Era: Uses
of Creative Commons Licenses – This study explores whether Creative Commons (CC) licenses are a viable solution for copyright protection in the digital era. Through a mixed-methods approach involving a web-based survey of CC licensors, a content analysis of CC-licensed works, and interviews, the study characterizes CC licensors, the ways that CC licensors produce creative works, the private interests that CC licenses serve, and the public interests that CC licenses serve.
Surveillance/Security
Unmanned-On-Unmanned Vehicular Combat In Iraq – Unmanned systems destroying other unmanned systems is now a reality following the destruction by an MQ-9 Reaper of a remotely controlled car carrying an explosive device in southeast Iraq. This is the next stage of war.
Camerahead Project has its “Eyes” on surveillance – The Camerahead Project is presented through the eyes of 10 Camerahead agents, and the images they record. The project not only raises the questions of who is watching who, and who is watching the watchers, but also asks questions of why we are being watched at all.
Features of the new SAF combat uniform – Camouflage is an important element in military tactics. With today’s advanced surveillance equipment and weapon optics, soldiers face a greater risk of detection in combat. Recognising this, the Army and the Defence Science & Technology Agency (DSTA) have jointly developed a new SAF combat uniform with an enhanced camouflage pattern to reduce detection – based on the science of human visual performance and visual biophysics. Besides an enhanced camouflage pattern, the new SAF combat uniform also consists of better quality fabric and an ergonomic functional design.
So what is Nico Nico Douga? (For Non-Japanese readers only) – Incredibly popular in Japan, Nico Nico Douga was originally created as a mash up of Youtube and 2-channel – the latter is Japan’s most popular BBS (bulletin board system). This explains the whole Japanese video mashup phenomena, with how-to join in.
VUVOX – Photo Collage – It's Photojournalism & Storytelling, Creating a media wall of photos, video, text & music. A panoramic experience of multiple media.
Kevin Kelly: Tools for Vizuality – Vizuality is visual literacy. In theory, we should be able to annotate, reference and hyperlink moving images as easily as we do text. Features a bunch of interesting tools!
Alternative Books
Little Fuzzy as an award-winning audiobook – Little Fuzzy is a tight science fiction story that epitomizes the golden age of sf. Explores the nature of colonial economies, the deepest questions of consciousness and intelligence, paternalism and self-determination, and the nature of the rule of law.
Cory Doctorow’s “Little Brother” – It's 1984, updated with hyperaware teenage hackers and the panopticon of homeland security. Perhaps the first ever CC-licensed novel to get on the New York Times list. Buy or Download for free!
Productivity Web Apps
mobaganda* – Mobaganda is a simple way to plan parties, meetings, conference calls, etc. and track who is coming, and who is not. You do not need to register or login at any time. Mobaganda is like Evite, without all the bloat, clutter and unnecessary crap.
rush: wearable camera system – The camera is waterproof and has a shock-resistant body. The quintessence of RUSH is the multifunctional attachment tool, composed of three specific parts: camera, trigger ring and a feedback watch.
I’m already late with my “Social Media Strategist” post since last week, and there’s so much to talk about that I’ll revert to doing link dumps in the form of twitter and del.icio.us links.
Fellow Mac users, the most-secret capture shortcut is Control-Command-Shift-3 (or 4), which copies the capture into your Clipboard memory. I used this tip for the above collage!
Intense Debate: Reputation Blog Comment System – Lets you track comments, have user profiles, thread comments, establish a reputation system.
I’ll be at Genesee Community College for CIT 2008 (May 27th – 30th). I’ll be at the Twitter for education workshop. Why use clickers when kids have cellphones?
Hope you guys know that the RC Flying Penis was inspired by griefers in Second Life. I remembered when that happened to SL “millionaire” Anshe Chung at her virtual press conference.
@Lucian: pssst. go to http://www.moe.gov.sg and look for the praetorian pi at the right side of the footer. A tribute to the terrible movie: The Net
Around 20 men took part in the ‘protest’ along Orchard Road on Sunday afternoon to demand for equality and the right to participate in the women-only-run. However the organisers could not produce a permit when the police arrived on the scene, after a member of the public alerted the police of the ‘protests’, just as the PR-stunt ended (@litford).
Singapore blogger arrested for racist comments. Netizens archived his entry so no denial. TODAY news report as well as the full account (sources, kid’s photo, and cached blog post) on Alvinology (via @Sivasothi). Have to be careful though… Online vigilantism can turn into lynch mobs, which is a social problem in Korea, China, Japan.
Look like the latest Bioshock wasn’t far from the truth. The Seasteading Institute is an organization dedicated to creating experimental ocean communities with diverse social, political, and legal systems. Founder Patri Friedman (from Google) stated that “[g]overnment is an industry with a really high barrier to entry. [...] You basically need to win an election or a revolution to try a new one. That’s a ridiculous barrier to entry. And it’s got enormous customer lock-in. People complain about their cellphone plans that are like two years, but think of the effort that it takes to change your citizenship.” Wired has the full story…
An extremely popular meme: Lolcatz. So hardcore, even i can has cheez burger blog commenters write in lolcatz-speak!
“The Matrix” Hacks
Susan Blackmore: Humans Are Just Machines for Propagating Memes
Susan gives three reasons why people don’t like memes: 1) Often misunderstood as simply ideas, when it’s the process of copying that’s significant. 2) We fear that we lack free will. Thing is, if memetics were true, facts supersede emotions. 3) No testible predictions yet. There’s a need to find discerning patterns which lead to how we copy and remix ideas. Keywords: memes, psychology, research, interview, culture, evolution
QR-Kill. First Match in History | QR-Code
Before the match starts players are to decide a scenario, a modality and a meeting-point. Players will stick in their back a QR-Code with his/her telephone and name embedded. They will have to kill each other capturing the code and sending an SMS. Keywords: gaming, qrcode, mobile, cellphones, sms
Behind the Great Firewall | The Guardian
While the old media quoted "heartwarming words" of appreciation for the government’s response and praised its own "heroic" reporters, the internet has been abuzz with furious denunciations of state broadcasters and officials for getting the picture wrong. Keywords: china, media, internet, citizenjournalism, politics
Hydra: Never forget that sunset again
Hydra gives human eye perception to your photographs by allowing you to create high dynamic range (HDR) images from a series of regular photographs, either from DSLRs or traditional point-and-shoot cameras. Even joins photos for you. Keywords: hdr, photography, mac
EarthE: Eco-Currency
EarthE .org is the place to find eco money, art, kisses, awards and other goodies that can be used to thank friends, customers and others for helping protect this exquisite planet. Keywords: currency, environment, gaming
The Next Big Puzzle Game Wave? iPhone + Accelerometer!
Called Trism, it’s a Bejeweled-like game except that you slide triangles and use the iPhone’s tilt sensor to gain an advantage. Now that’s a very unique puzzle game! I hope Apple opens up for developers to build apps as creatively as these! Keywords: gaming, iphone, video
iBand: Music band using a Nintendo DS and two iPhones
Since Electroplankton on the Nintendo DS we constantly think about implementing those sounds, and since the iPhone we like to play with PocketGuitar (played in the clip by Roland Dell’mour.) Now that iAno came out (played by Marina Dell’mour) we just had Keywords: music, nintendo, iphone, collaboration
FUPPES – Free UPnP Entertainment Service
FUPPES is a free, multiplatform UPnP A/V Media Server. FUPPES supports a wide range of UPnP MediaRenderers (see "features" for details) as well as on-the-fly transcoding of various audio, video and image formats. Supports Xbox 360! Keywords: xbox360, networking, opensource
Reuters + Nokia collaborate on project for reporters on the go
Called Reuters Mobile Journalism, the initiative relies upon connecting peripherals to Nokia’s high-end N95 device: A Bluetooth-enabled keyboard, a small tripod for video interviews, and a microphone that can plug into the mobile handset. This is the sort of discreet marketing that sells the N95 to adopters like me! (via Brian)Keywords: mobile, socialmedia, web2.0, media, journalism, nokia, gadgets
Nokia Nseries: 14 Days Videocast
Brian from Ogilvy is managing the “14 Days by Nokia Nseries” video podcast about shooting videos using the Nokia N95. My friends told me how they found it -insert expletive- silly to use Velcro to stick a US$699 camera phone to the BMW for dramatic shots. On the flipside, they like watching the for the Brit-Asian female host. Priorities people! Keywords: videos, nokia, podcast, marketing
Uncanny Valley: Furreal Friends Butterscotch Pony
Not exactly creepy yet, but this steps it up a notch. Every girl dreams of having her very own pony! With realistic animation, movement and sounds, this incredibly lifelike pony is a very special, once-in-a-lifetime friend. This adorable pony stands over Keywords: uncannyvalley, toys, robots, animals
Blogging for Large Classes
Prof. Alex Halavais provides examples of failures and successes in managing blogging in large classes, and some indication of where this might go in the future. Keywords: academia, blogging, howto, tips, pedagogy
Authority Level Stamp (for blogs)
The Berglund Center for Internet Studies and the Matsushita Center for Electronic Learning at Pacific University have a means to indicate the level of authority of the electronic materials we post. Here’s how it works… Keywords: authority, reputation, blogging, academia
Gamasutra – Defining Games: Raph Koster’s Game Grammar
Ralph Koster touches on a ton of stuff – the shift in game design, the ultra-casual market like Habbo Hotel vs. WoW, this idea of ‘game grammar’, why patents are a necessary evil, and is ’single-player gaming dead’? Keywords: academia, gaming, research
On Being Graphomaniac
If general isolation causes graphomania, mass graphomania itself reinforces and aggravates the feeling of general isolation. The invention of printing originally promoted mutual understanding. Keywords: funny, geeks, books, culture, behavior
The myopia of PR detractors
Yet ANOTHER case of PR needing a dose of its own medicine. Seriously, our poor PR practitioners face same questions washed, rinsed and repeat every few media cycles. There’s nothing new here people, just remember the magical word: Appropriateness! Keywords: publicrelations, blogging, media, business, socialmedia
The Pournelle Political Axes
Look at the chart… is it proof that the political spectrum has more than one dimension; that the old left-right category doesn’t really work? Keywords: politics, research, academia
Malaysia to Make ‘Islamic Cars’ with Iran and Turkey
A niche for automobiles? Proposed by Iran, the collaboration would include installing features in automobiles such as a compass to determine the direction of Mecca for prayers, and compartments for storing the Quran and headscarves (via MrBig). Keywords: transportation, cars, religion, malaysia
We heart China
China: “Journey to the Heart of Internet censorship”
Via Reporters Without Borders, a Chinese Internet expert working in IT industry has produced an exclusive study on the key mechanism of the Chinese official system of online censorship, surveillance and propaganda. The author prefers to remain anonymous. Keywords: censorship, china, research, phd
As taken from a small museum near China Square, Singapore
The China Angle: ‘Online Games in Shangri-la’
The popularity of WoW in remote Shangri-la shows that WoW’s lower penetration in lower tier markets (relative to Fantasy Westward Journey and Zhengtu) is a matter of income level rather than geography. Hmm, I’m thinking huge income disparity as observed from “dangerously” fast boat to China. Keywords: china, gaming, mmorpg, business, geography, money, research
Statistics: Xbox 360 By The Numbers
The stats cover everything from Xbox Live play hours (3.2 billion, or 376,000 years), Xbox Live content downloads (over 290 million), games sold per console (6.3 on average), and just oodles more. Keywords: statistics, gaming, microsoft, xbox360
Text100: Social Media Report (Feb 2007)
in Jan – Feb 2007, 500 regular 16-54 Internet users were sampled in each of the following 21 markets. 9,460 people completed the survey. Universal McCann estimates that these markets represent 75 % of the 500 m frequent Internet users worldwide. Keywords: statistics, web2.0, blogging, research, pr, singapore
YouTube 101 – Yes, It’s a Real Class
Professor Alexandra Juhasz of Pitzer College began teaching a course entitled Learning from YouTube. The idea behind it is to engage a group of students around the culture of YouTube, while requiring them to use YouTube as one of the primary mechanisms fo Keywords: video, youtube, teaching, learning, politics
GAMER THEORY by McKenzie Wark
Within the Institute for the Future of the Book, lies a free-fire discussion area to discuss the text in all its versions, the visualizations, and any other issues related to games and game play. Keywords: gaming, books, infoporn
Featuring Slife: An “Awareness Browser” for Mac users
Having recently gotten a copy of The Whole Earth Catalog, this time’s del.icio.us links are related to self-help, a quintessential social use of the web. Here’s a roundup of the neatest tools I’ve discovered in recent weeks…
LifeShaker: Shakable To-Dos (mac)
LifeShaker for Mac OS X is the brand new to-do list software for busy bees everywhere. Uses some kind of grid concept with the ability to shake them or something. Keywords: productivity, mac
app2you: Customize. It’s up to you.
Simply sketch the pages of your application and the flow of information across pages using the intuitive, browser-based JustSketch™ interface. app2you™’s sophisticated algorithms automatically infer the database design and logic behind the pages. Keywords: tools, web2.0, webapp, productivity
Dr. Kevin Lim recently graduated with his PhD in Communication at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). Dabbling for both pragmatic and play, he seeks an ideal interplay between online and offline life, through social networking, blogging and lifecasting. He openly wishes to become a "social cyborg", where the meshing of human and networking technology would allow one's presence to be augmented by the minds of many. Read more...
