Disordered Cogitations

From Slashdot:

An anonymous reader writes "Using data from the web game wheresgeorge.com, which traces the travels of dollar bills, scientists have unveiled statistical laws of human travel and developed a mathematical description that can be used to model the spread of infectious disease."

Doc points to Toogle. Great images from coloring plain text. Search for your favorite celebrity! Howdy Doody for example!

This morning on the way to work I listened to Joi Ito's IT Conversation talk at the Accerlating Change Conference. He mentioned the Creative Content website, where folks can post their Creative Commons Licenced content. Generally speaking, you can use Creative Commons content without paying a subscription, as long as you acknowledge the contect creator. I noticed that Creative Commons has two interesting variations for music.

• One for sampling music, and
• One for sharing music.

Joi had a good quote (paraphrased) that people want to share in a conversation not be consumers of content. The conversation can be music mash-ups, power-point mashups, or threaded discussions. The world is moving from industrial age content push to information age content share and re-use.

He also noted that good "amatuers" produce better productions than mediocre "professionals." The web age ushers in a very different work model that we are just beginning to see, much less understand. But, it is exciting.

A list of Mind-Mapping applications at Mind Mapping Web Log.

Innovation Weblog pointed me to Guy Kawasaki's thoughts on innovation.

1. Jump to the next curve
2. Don't worry, be crappy
3. Churn, baby, churn
4. Don't be afraid to polarize people
5. Break down barriers
6. Let a hundred flowers blossom
7. Think digital, act analog
8. Never ask people to do what you wouldn't do
9. Don't let the bozos grind you down

What is the promise of Web 2.0? Innovation Creators says:

When you use Web Office productivity tools, it doesn't matter what OS you are using. The World Wide Web is my OS.

According to Om Malik's blog, YouTube has matched Flicker in terms of serving content. Thanks to John Battelle for the pointer.

Conclusion: web video is hot.

. . . I want to listen to:

• Kim Stanley Robinson on what would happen if the Gulf Stream stopped flowing.
• Joi Ito on the future of blogging.
• Scott Sigler on voices in your head.
• Ray Ozzie on Microsoft.
• Danny O'Brien on the evil that lurks on the internet
  

At the screaming pickle site.

Check out www.theigloo.org. It is a very professionally done collaborative webspace built on OpenText and Enterprise File System. It seems to work well. In addition to collaborative groups, it has a research library, blogs, a news stream, and links..

Innovation Creators has a neat flash screencast on Web 2.0.

Great background wallpaper site. Was Digg's #12 of 100 stories of 2005.

Get old episodes of Rocky and Bullwinkle for $1.99 a pop from Google Video. In theory, the can be exported to the iPod. I will give at try later.

See this announcement from Google. We are now into the revolution in how we watch video entertainment.

. . . are referenced in these two (1, 2) Innovation Weblog postings.

Innovation Creators has a listing of Web 2.0 office automation technologies.

Battelle's Searchblog pointed me to Newzingo's tag cloud of Google News.

Google Pack is an interesting solution. Big enterprises have similar functionality, though probably not so simple. Once the pack includes Open Office it will be a real killer.

The following was recommended to me. The Amazon reviews are good, even 8 years after publication. I hope I have time to read it soon.

Orbiting the Giant Hairball : A Corporate Fool's Guide to Surviving with Grace

IT Conversations just RSS'd me with a link to a podcast of Bran Ferren's views on Web 2.0.

The Cranky Middle Manager has a podcast interview with EDS Fellow Charlie Bess, that I would like to listen to.

One of my favorite authors, Steven Johnson, made a fun little Hong Kong movie from a sequence of digital photos.

When I walked around on Sunday, it occurred to me what you needed to convey this quality of the city was not a photograph -- it was an accelerated, time-lapse-style film that emphasized the movement and change in the environment, and not just a static tableau. So I bought a little digital camera in one of those Bladerunner stores and did a five block walk through Kowloon, snapping a picture every fifteen feet or so. Turning it into a movie was literally a three step process: I imported into iPhoto, then opened iMovie and grabbed the whole sequence, and told iMovie to make a slideshow where each picture only lasts for five frames. You can see the end result for yourself.

Try this on your iPod!

Digg pointed me to PortableApps.com which has a version of Open Office that runs from a flash drive. How cool is that? Now I can take both my data and the program that manipulates the data with me. All I need is a generic machine on which to compute.

This has a lot of future potential -- especially when flash drives hit the 10 and 20 gig range. I will be able have my whole desktop on the drive.

I can't wait for cross platform apps that run regardless whether I'm plugged into Windows, Mac, or Linux.