Saturday, June 30, 2007
New Website a'brewin'
none ready yet . . .
http://www.acadac.net
http://www.acadac.us
http://wiki.acadac.net
http://guestbook.acadac.net
http://www.acadac.net
http://www.acadac.us
http://wiki.acadac.net
http://guestbook.acadac.net
Labels: website
Saturday, June 23, 2007
San Francisco Photos
Friday, June 22, 2007
Impact of Exponential Change
I am here at the Supernova Conference where we are discussing what to do with the ubiquitous web. This is difficult because it is hard to understand the impact of exponential change -- Moore's Law being one of the most famous. One of the speakers referred to Ray Kurzweil's 2001 paper entitled, The Law of Accelerating Returns. I know what I will be reading next.
Labels: exponential, growth, internet, Kurzweil, supernova2007
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Innovation in the White Spaces
My friend Gwen pointed me to an interesting piece on innovation from EDS. It cites Charlie Feld on the importance of engaging different disciplines, as well as creating an infrastructure that is innovation friendly.
Labels: Charlie, EDS, Feld, infrastructure, innovation
Takin' it to the (virtual) streets . . .
New World Notes reports on a protest inside Second Life against the government of Venezuala's Huga Chavez.
Labels: politics, Second Life, Venezuela
JackBe (nimble . . .)
JackBe has a well-designed, well-populated website, and an enterprise Web 2.0 product that has real potential.
Labels: enterprise, JackBe, web 2.0
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
The Redistricting Game
My friend Mark pointed me to a political game about redistricting from USC.
By exploring how the system works, as well as how open it is to abuse, The Redistricting Game allows players to experience the realities of one of the most important (yet least understood) aspects of our political system. The game provides a basic introduction to the redistricting system, allows players to explore the ways in which abuses can undermine the system, and provides info about reform initiatives - including a playable version of the Tanner Reform bill to demonstrate the ways that the system might be made more consistent with tenets of good governance. Beyond playing the game, the web site for The Redistricting Game provides a wealth of information about redistricting in every state as well as providing hands-on opportunities for civic engagement and political action.
Labels: game, political, redistrictng
Monday, June 18, 2007
Google Page Rank
TED Video
Watch an overview of TED 2007.
Think Cube
The Innovation Weblog points to an interesting new brainstorming product called Think Cube. Here's the hype:
While I doubt this contains ALL the tools I need to innovate, I would like to try it out on one of the tough problems we are having.
ThinkCube is a complete solution that provides you with all of the tools you need to innovate. It represents the culmination of 10 years of research in creative thinking and synthesizes today's leading creativity tools, techniques, and processes. Whether you use it alone or in a group, ThinkCube trains your brain and lets you exercise your creative muscles.
Our unique ThinkCubation process incorporates many conventional brainstorming techniques and frames innovation in a process that is easy to follow and consistently produces results. ThinkCubation turns the critical but normally passive step of incubation into an active process.
While I doubt this contains ALL the tools I need to innovate, I would like to try it out on one of the tough problems we are having.
Labels: creativity, cube, innovation, thinking
Book Review: Group Genius
The Innovate on Purpose blog has a good review of the book, Group Genius. The review starts:
The path to becoming more innovative often requires debunking a number of myths or commonly held beliefs. For instance, the idea that a lone genius is often responsible for an invention or innovation. In fact, most innovations or inventions spring from the combination of the work of many people. Edison did not create the lightbulb alone, nor did Al Gore invent the internet by himself.
Yet another book based on complexity theory and congruent with Web 2.0.
Labels: collaboration, genius, innovation
Monday, June 11, 2007
Sensor My World
Jonathan's blog points to a nifty little device called a SUN Spot. It is a battery powered, USB connectible, very small programmable computer and sensor pack
Friday, June 08, 2007
Robotic Baseball
PopSci Mag has an article about a robotic batter. Check out the movie.
Labels: baseball, PopSci, robots
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
The Bridges of Second Life
3pointD points to this interesting Flickr set that Forseti Svarog has put together.
Labels: bridges, gorseti svarog, SL
PMOG not MMORPG
3pointD points to this website:
Just imagine this in the work place. Firefox can just watch what I do, count up my score, and my annual performance review is done -- no mus, no fuss.
PMOG stands for Passively Multiplayer Online Game. It's like a Massively Multiplayer Online Game, except played passively. That means a lot of people just going about their life online. Our actions in our web browser feed moves into a game. That game shows us the characters and situations we create just by surfing the web! . . .The Spring 2007 incarnation of PMOG works using a Firefox extension, a small software add-on you install in your web browser.
Just imagine this in the work place. Firefox can just watch what I do, count up my score, and my annual performance review is done -- no mus, no fuss.
Labels: innovation, MMORPG, pmog
Good Foreign Policy is Overated
The Dilbert Blog waxes eloquent on foreign policy:
and
and
Successful groups, whether they are Al-Qaeda or the Founding Fathers of the United States, tend to start out with brilliant people who have clear objectives. Those brilliant people attract other smart people by the power of their arguments.But as an organization grows, you rapidly run out of bright people. The average IQ of any organization starts dropping, and before long, the power of identifying with a group overwhelms the power of reason.
and
The government of the United States is the quintessential example of an irrational organization. No matter what your political leanings, you can find mounds of examples where the government was – in your own irrational opinion – being irrational and working against its own best interests. If you think Al-Qaeda can act rationally, you are holding it to a higher standard than the U.S. government.
and
Our best bet is to divert their focus to more accessible targets, just as the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan shifted their focus to us. Ironically, the civil war in Iraq might have accidentally accomplished through irrational means what good foreign policy could not. Al-Qaeda is using far more resources fighting other Muslims than fighting the U.S.
Labels: Al Queda, dilbert, foriegn policy
BumpTop at TED
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Creative Commons MP3s
I saw a blog reference to the "Grand March" from Verdi's Aida. The Wikipedia article referenced a site (classicistranieri) that offers MP3s under the creative commons license. While the site is in Italian, it also has a significant collection of English language audio recordings, in addition to its music MP3s.
Labels: Aida, creative commons, mp3, Verdi
Monday, June 04, 2007
Vernor Vinge's Singularity
I finally read Vernor Vinge's famous 1993 paper entitled:
A few good quotes:
The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post Human Era
A few good quotes:
- Even now, the team of a PhD human and good computer workstation (even an off-net Develop interfaces that allow computer and network access without requiring the human to be tied to one spot, sitting in front of a computer.
- Develop interfaces that allow computer and network access without requiring the human to be tied to one spot, sitting in front of a computer.
- The change in viewpoint here would be to regard the group activity as a combination organism.
- A central feature of strongly superhuman entities will likely be their ability to communicate at variable bandwidths, including ones far higher than speech or written messages. What happens when pieces of ego can be copied and merged, when the size of a selfawareness can grow or shrink to fit the nature of the problems under consideration?
Labels: AI, IA, singularity, vernor vinge
Wikispaces INSIGHT
Virtual Life?
TerraNova speculates on the advancement of "intelligent" non-player characters (NPCs) inside virtual worlds:
This, of course, is what the forthcoming game SPORE is all about.
Once the intelligent NPC's can interact with humans, they can evolve based on what they learn from us, and the decisions they make interacting with us. We, as players or participants, now become a stimulus for the virtual life. We can observe the NPC, help it with its goals, alter its food source, reproduction, start relationships, make NPC's jealous, and start fights, even wars. They would remember you from the last time you visited. They would have real experiences, real relationships, and real intelligence, and if the power happens to go off or memory gets corrupted... they cease to exist.
This, of course, is what the forthcoming game SPORE is all about.
Labels: AI, virtual world
Critique of Brainstorming
The Innovation Weblog cites a critique of Brainstorming. While the critique has some merit, the proffered alternative--two people without a moderator--seems to miss the point of brainstorming all together.
Labels: brainstorming, innovation, insight
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