Book review: Is the Internet Changing the Way You Think? In the mid-20th century, the French sociologist Jacques Ellul posed 76 "reasonable questions" that he thought we should ask about any new technology. They included moral questions such as "What values does its use foster?" and "What is lost by using it?" and social ones such as "What are its effects on relationships?" Today, as we rush to embrace the latest gadgets and apps, we tend merely to ask: "What does it do?" Luckily, John Brockman, the founder of the online science-and-technology site Edge.org, decided to pose a bigger question to a varied group of 150 writers, artists, scholars, scientists and pundits: "Is the Internet changing the way you think?" Although the sciences are heavily represented among Mr. Whether poets or programmers, the book's contributors write from the perspective not of "digital natives" but of creatures from an earlier age who have had to adapt to the changes wrought by the Internet. These are not the laments of technophobes. Ms.
February 21, Robert Bloomfield sits down with Paul Ford, Writer and Web Native. Searching for local service provider in Australia was made easy. All thanks to Oneflare for providing quality e-marketing platform where thousands of service providers are always on stand-by to receive an offer from consumers. Since consumers are now turning to the internet to search for almost everything that they need. This company on the other hand also has its own way in providing consumer what they need at the best cause as possible that will benefit both the consumer and local service provider from Australia. But what is Oneflare and how do they alter such changes for home services in the marketplace through e-commerce? Fast services The use of computers and internet had never failed to impress Oneflare’s CEO and founder Marcus Lim as he venture the world of e-commerce. Time efficient Oneflare always consider time as a precious matter as well as being an online business, this company provides quick responses and a 24/7 service. Guaranteed services Provides everything
Inside the heads of the developers the mobile companies (Apple, Amazon, HP, Nokia, Microsoft, Google, RIM) are fighting over Today Facebook will announce something new for mobile phones. Business Insider gives its guesses as to what’s coming. At 10:30 a.m. today, Pacific Time, you can watch the Facebook press event live streaming on the Web. To prepare for the event I wanted to get inside the heads of a successful mobile app development team. But there’s something bigger going on. Almost every developer I’ve visited lately says they’ve had a visit from either Nokia or Microsoft or RIM or all three. But that’s only one way to look at this interesting team. 1. Anyway, this conversation is long, but there’s lots of interesting insights into how mobile developers think and how they make their development decisions.
Sustaining Innovation Book Discussion Part 1: What Does it Take Innovate Naturally and Frequently? This is the first in a series of posts about Paul Light's book Sustaining Innovation: Creating Nonprofit and Government Organizations that Innovate Naturally. This post is my review of the book. Next Tuesday, we'll experiment with an "open thread" post, in which you are encouraged to share your own experiences (positive and negative) with innovation in organizations. The longer I consult with museums and cultural institutions, the more time I spend peering into people's eyes, wondering: do folks here feel able to innovate? Is this a place where staff members are comfortable taking risks? Sustaining Innovation is a thoughtful, comprehensive book that has helped me think more concretely about these questions and their answers. It focuses on non-profits and government agencies instead of for-profit companies. What differentiates innovation in non-profits and government agencies from that in businesses? So what did I learn? There should be an entire book about innovative failures.
Google's decreasingly useful, spam-filled web search Jeff Atwood, in Trouble In the House of Google: People whose opinions I respect have all been echoing the same sentiment — Google, the once essential tool, is somehow losing its edge. The spammers, scrapers, and SEO’ed-to-the-hilt content farms are winning. (via Anil Dash’s nice roundup on the issue) I’ve been frustrated as well by Google’s apparent defeat by spam. When I ask Google for something, it’s usually from these types of queries: Address bar: Where is this specific page that I know exists but I don’t know its URL? Over the years, the impact of spam — mostly affiliate marketing and auto-generated splogs — has decimated the usefulness of the “product research” category. But recently, spam has taken over the “guide” query results, and even many “reference” queries. In other words, it’s now nearly impossible to find good results for many commonly asked types of queries. But that’s no longer what web content looks like. “Hey, anyone know how to wire an outlet?” They call this “content”.
The Importance of Vacation | Wired Science “Welcome to the workin’ week. I know it don’t thrill you, I hope it don’t kill you.” – Elvis Costello One of the great luxuries of the 21st century is vacation without e-mail. If I had to choose between a pampered resort with constant internet access or a dowdy motel without any cellphone service, I’d go for the motel every time. There is something truly decadent about turning off e-mail, quitting Twitter, signing off Facebook and going to the beach. The first few hours are a bit bumpy — I hallucinate the ping, ping, ping of my inbox — but I eventually get over the anxiety of my digital disconnectedness. This blog post is an elaborate rationalization for why such lazy vacations are so useful. Look, for instance, at a recent experiment (“Lessons from a Faraway land: The effect of spatial distance on creative cognition“) led by the psychologist Lile Jia at Indiana University. A prisoner was attempting to escape from a tower. Consider a field of corn. Image: Flickr/Bob Gaffney
February 7th: Daryl J. Bem, Social Psychologist Emeritus Joins Robert Bloomfield at 12pm (PT) | Educators have a special energy in the summer. Perhaps it is the freedom from classes, grading and being so adult. Summer is a great time for learning, exploring and yes, professional development but why choose something dry and serious. How about camp? Project Lead Lisa Dawley, PH.D. has assembled an incredible team to guide campers at 3D GameLab’s first ever, GameCamp in August of 2011. Lisa is Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Technology at Boise State University. From Lisa’s blog: “We are thrilled to finally announce the launch of the beta version of 3D GameLab, an online learning platform that lets teachers turn their classrooms into a living game! “For those of you who know me, I’ve been interested in using games and game-like environments in education for many years. 3D GameLab will grow and evolve in ways we can’t even imagine at this point. PLEASE NOTE – MIXED TEXT AND VOICE SESSION: The Metanomics Community Forum is a mixed voice / text discussion session.
Technology Review: New Chip Captures Specialized Immune Cells A novel microfluidics chip developed by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) will let doctors examine how white blood cells called neutrophils help the body cope with burns and other traumatic injuries. It may also shed light on why the immune system sometimes spirals out of control, resulting in dangerous inflammation. The chip lets scientists do something they’ve never before been able to do: quickly and easily capture neutrophils from a small volume of blood. In the long term, scientists hope to use this technology to predict which patients are most likely to develop serious infections after an injury and therefore need the most aggressive treatment. “People have been looking for biomarkers for injury and sepsis [blood poisoning] for a long time,” says Steven Calvano, a researcher at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. Calvano, who was not directly involved in the project, says, “This could be an extremely valuable clinical tool.”
Nonprofit Blog Carnival: Openness in the Third Sector The diversity of sub missions to this month's carnival speaks to how truly relevant the cultural and rhetorical move towards "openness" is to the work of nonprofits. The demand for openness is affecting nonprofits in almost every dimension of our work, including: fundraising, research, marketing/communications, operations, evaluations, and outcomes. But we have a long way to go before openness in our practices and approaches could be considered the norm. Each of the posts in this month's carnival makes its own argument for why nonprofits not only have to accept this cultural shift but also why its to our real benefit to do so. "Ultimately real dedication to openness means to publish every piece of relevant data in a searchable format for the world to look at, to search and to analyze." "“How open do I need to be?” "The social media policy for one organization may not be appropriate to your association. "Openness is a broad concept. How open are you?
The Decline Of Web 2.0 19 December '10, 03:39am Follow We are all obsessed with sites like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin at the moment but rewind a few years to when the term Web 2.0 first popped up and a whole host of different sites were the hot young startups destined for great things. It’s amazing what a couple of years do though because as we can see below, some of the biggest sites from the “Web 2.0 generation” are either on a massive decline, facing huge competition or about to be closed down. There’s a good lesson here to highlight; how the hype cycle around websites and services can come and go and what was once lauded and destined for great things can within a couple of years shut down and be abandoned… Delicious One of the most popular and useful sites of the Web 2.0 era, this massively practical bookmarking tool was used by many people to keep track of content that they found online. Digg Flickr Myspace Bebo What Does All This mean?
Crap Detection 101: How to Distinguish Good and Bad Information Online - O'Reilly Media I found a video series titled "Crap Detection 101: How to Distinguish Good and Bad Information Online" by Howard Rheingold (available from Oreilly Media), and was instantly intrigued. When the opportunity came up to see it free as part of the Blogger Review Program, I felt that it would be a good choice. The short version: If you are a cynic and/or have been on the net for any significant amount of time, this series probably isn't for you. If you have children, it's a good idea to watch this so you can frame how you want to talk to them. The main points that I boiled this down to are:-Be aware of Bias-Look into the source-Wikipedia is a place to begin research, not end it. The Long Version: This video series by Howard Rheingold (UC Berkeley and Stanford University lecturer) addresses the basics of protecting yourself from misinformation and fraud while going about your daily online life. Mr. The production and presentation of the video gives me mixed feelings. -Waldo