The World, Filtered*

The World's First Crowdsourced Creative Agency
http://designmind.frogdesign.com/blog/the-world039s-first-crowdsourced-creative-agency.html

“It’s always good to be the first, and while crowdsourcing, the trend, may have jumped the shark, a fully crowdsourced creative agency is a bold creative experiment and still news. Two Crispin Porter + Bogusky alums, John Winsor and Evan Fry, together with Claudia Batten, the founder of Microsoft-acquired video game advertising shop Massive, have launched Victors & Spoils (V&S), “the world's first creative agency built on crowdsourcing principle.”

--------

Google's Dashboard Is a Window Onto Your Google Soul
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/kit-eaton/technomix/googles-dashboard-window-your-google-soul?partner=rss

“"Have you ever wondered what data is stored with your Google Account?" Google asks, and privacy advocates and techy-minded people will quickly answer "YES!" Now Google's Dashboard lets you see, but not delete, what's stored about you in Google's vault of mysteries.”

--------

Agile User Experience Projects
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/agile-user-experience.html

“Last year, we conducted a study of best practices in integrating usability methods with Agile development projects.
Usually, it's not worth studying the same problem again just a year later since user behavior doesn't change much. But this particular project didn't concern user behaviors, but rather the best way to run Agile projects to ensure usability.
Because this is still a new field, we decided to supplement last year's research with a new round of more detailed studies focused on additional organizations that have had more time to discover better ways to manage Agile user experience (UX).”

--------

New project: The Carbon Economy
http://www.xplane.com/xblog/2009/11/05/new-project-the-carbon-economy/
“For the second time in recent months XPLANE has partnered with The Economist to create a compelling video on a topic of global importance. After working together on “Did You Know? 4.0”, The Economist enlisted XPLANE’s visual communication expertise to develop “The Carbon Economy” about the growing importance of climate change and green technologies and solutions.”

--------

Digital World Explorer
http://www.good.is/post/digital-world-explorer/

“The digital ethnographer Michael Wesch on the dark side of social media, what we learned from Iran, and why the future of the web depends on human interests—not market interests.”

--------

Skills of a Successful Project Manager
http://pmtips.net/skills-successful-project-manager/

“In his book, “The Little Black Book of Project Management,” Michael Thomsett identifies his version of the skillset of a successful project manager. I’m providing it here to give you yet another take on some of the key characteristics and capabilities that go into being able to effectively manage an engagement and a team of highly skilled resources.

Mr. Thomsett’s version comes mainly from the viewpoint of a department manager being thrown into the project management role, so understand that this is assuming an experienced manager is handling the engagement, but not one well-versed in project management.”

--------

App of the Week: Visual Relationship Mapping 2.0
http://blogs.salesforce.com/the_appexchange_blog/2009/11/app-of-the-week-visual-relationship-mapping-20.html

“This week's app of the week is Visual Relationship Mapping 2.0 from Business Endurance Solutions.
Visual Relationship Mapping allows you to easily create a visual representation of how your contacts and accounts are related to each other within Salesforce CRM: “

--------

Two Obituaries from the New York Times

Claude Lévi-Strauss, 100, Dies; Altered Western Views of the ‘Primitive’
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/world/europe/04levistrauss.html?_r=1

Roy DeCarava, Pioneering Photographer, Dies at 89
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/roy-decarava-pioneering-photographer-dies-at-89/?scp=1&sq=Roy%20DeCarva&st=cse

Sent from my iPhone

3 from the Wall Street Journal:

--------

Lawyerese Goes Galactic as Contracts Try to Master the Universe
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125658217507308619.html

"Lawyers for years have added language to some contracts that stretches beyond the Earth's atmosphere. But more and more people are encountering such everywhere-and-forever language as entertainment companies tap into amateur talent and try to anticipate every possible future stream of revenue.

Experts in contract drafting say lawyers are trying to ensure that with the proliferation of new outlets -- including mobile-phone screens, Twitter, online video sites and the like -- they cover all possible venues from which their clients can derive income, even those in outer space. FremantleMedia, one of the producers of NBC's "America's Got Talent," declined to comment on its contracts.

The terms of use listed on Starwars.com, where people can post to message boards among other things, tell users that they give up the rights to any content submissions "throughout the universe and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or hereafter developed."

Lucasfilm Ltd., Star Wars creator George Lucas's entertainment company that runs the site, said the language is standard in Hollywood.

"But, to be honest with you, we have had very few cases of people trying to exploit rights on other planets," says Lynne Hale, a Lucasfilm spokeswoman."

--------

Dude, Where's My Car?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704222704574499251811024862.html

"...Encouraging more people to live in neighborhoods close to their workplaces is an element of President Barack Obama's broader effort to cut U.S. consumption of fossil fuels. The average American emits 19.8 tons of carbon dioxide per year—the most ubiquitous of several gases linked to climate change. The average German, by contrast, is responsible for 10.4 tons of CO2 emissions per year. There are lots of reasons for this disparity, but the tendency of Americans to live miles from their workplaces is a big one."

Note: At the "A Better World by Design" conference the idea of single use zoning was discussed heavily as one of the drivers that has caused this segmentation of our lives.

--------

On Mumbai's Streets, Cabbies Fight To Keep Passengers Uncomfortable
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125668745618111751.html

"MUMBAI -- Mumbai's taxi drivers are battling to block the newest trend in hired transport here: electronic meters, home pickups and air conditioning.

Customers are demanding modern taxis to better represent this booming city, as well as provide a modicum of comfort in a steamy, tropical climate. Mumbai's authorities, keen to make the city the new "Shanghai" of Asia by 2020, have decided to phase out the city's rusty old jalopies and are requiring that every taxi more than 25 years old be scrapped.

But many of Mumbai's 200,000 or so taxi drivers are having none of it. And they are resisting those who would offer a nicer ride in shinier new cars -- with strikes, court cases and violence."

--------

New Bikestation Secure Module Seeing First Installation
http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/new_bikestation_secure_module_seeing_first_installation_15056.asp

"Hardcore cyclists will ride their bikes no matter what. But for us borderliners--people who have some interest in the green benefits of bicycle travel but are not fully vested--it's tough for us to drop hundreds or thousands on a bike when we know, through countless anecdotes from fellow city-dwellers, that all or part of it will be stolen within months.

The Bikestation Secure Bike Module, produced by "alternative multimodal transit system" company Mobis, is intended to win us borderliners over. "The new bike modules overcome a top concern people have that keep them from using their bikes--theft," says Andrea White-Kjoss, Mobis president and CEO.

Covina, California will be the first U.S. municipality to install the new Secure Bike Modules, starting later this year with a 10 x 25 structure that will offer 36 secure parking spaces for bikes, accessible by electronic key fobs. The modules are, as the name implies, modular, and will presumably be expanded as interest grows."

--------

Xerox develops silver ink to usher in new era of low cost printable electronics
http://www.gizmag.com/xerox-silver-ink-printable-electronics/13211/

"Silicon is the main substrate used for the integrated circuits found in almost all electronic equipment available today. However, silicon could soon be replaced by plastic, film or even fabrics, with Xerox scientists developing a low-temperature silver ink that they say paves the way for the commercialization and low-cost manufacture of printable electronics. This process will offer manufacturers an inexpensive way to add “intelligence” or computing power to a wide range of surfaces to produce things like electronic clothing and cheap games.

Integrated circuits are made up of three components - a semiconductor, a conductor and a dielectric element - and currently are manufactured in costly silicon chip fabricating factories. Printable electronics promises to make the mass production of thin, cheap and flexible electronic circuits a reality, but researchers have been faced with the difficult challenge of developing conductive electronic inks that work in an ordinary, everyday environment. By creating a silver ink to print the conductor, Xerox has developed all three of the materials necessary for printing plastic circuits.

Using Xerox's new technology, circuits can be printed just like a continuous feed document without the extensive clean room facilities required in current chip manufacturing. In addition, scientists have improved their previously developed semiconductor ink, increasing its reliability by formulating the ink so that the molecules precisely align themselves in the best configuration to conduct electricity"

Filtering Reality
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200911/augmented-reality

“HERE’S A STARTLING vision for the next decade: two familiar online phenomena converge in an emerging technological arena to strike a fatal blow to American civil society.

The emerging technology, called “Augmented Reality,” enables users to see location-specific data superimposed over their surroundings. Long a staple of science fiction, it’s trickling into the real world through the iPhone and similar ultrasmart mobile phones. With AR applications such as Layar, the smart phone displays what its camera sees, with information about nearby buildings and shops, travel directions, even notes and “tags” left by other users in that location. Although AR now relies on handheld devices, electronics makers like Sony are working on systems that you wear like sunglasses, making augmented vision more immersive.

Here’s where the first familiar online phenomenon shows up: spam. Nearly every communication method we invent eventually conveys unwanted commercial messages. AR systems will be used for spam too, whether via graffiti-like tags, ads that pop up when you look too long at a shop, or even abstract symbols stuck to a wall or worn on a shirt that, when viewed through an AR system, turn into 3-D animations.”

--------

With Video, a Traveler Fights Back
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/29/business/29air.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

“United Airlines learned its lesson the hard way that David Carroll was not just another customer.

After baggage handlers at United broke his guitar last summer and the airline refused to pay for the $1,200 repair, Mr. Carroll, a Canadian singer, created a music video titled “United Breaks Guitars” that has been viewed more than 5.8 million times. United executives met with him and promised to do better.

So how was Mr. Carroll’s most recent flight on United?
This Everyman symbol of the aggrieved traveler was treated, well, like just another customer. United lost his bag.”

--------

Video Games (No Controller Needed)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/arts/television/27video.html?_r=1&ref=technology

“...That is not faint praise. The term “multimedia presentation” is dry, but it is perhaps the only way to fully describe the spectacle of several dozen classical musicians, the Temple University Concert Choir, two guitarists and a female flutist dressed as an elf, all playing music from the Japanese video games Chrono Cross and Chrono Trigger while three large video screens suspended above the stage displayed scenes from the games in sync with the music...

...“Video Games Live” highlights the music in games that are primarily about other things, like saving the galaxy from aliens, defeating the undead or rescuing princesses from bad guys. But there are now also popular games that allow an approximation of playing music (Guitar Hero, Rock Band), that are built around singing (SingStar, Lips) and that are about the culture of music (Brütal Legend).”

-------

Emerging City Innovation
http://www.good.is/post/emerging-city-innovation/

“Most of the world’s population now lives in cities. How can we make sure these urban centers are good homes for humanity? Cities from Bogotá and Rio de Janeiro to Seoul are leading the way, using fresh ideas to reduce pollution and waste; provide efficient, clean transportation; and support biodiversity.”

--------

Google's Eric Schmidt on What the Web Will Look Like in 5 Years
http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2009/10/27/27readwriteweb-googles-eric-schmidt-on-what-the-web-will-l-68067.html

“Google CEO Eric Schmidt envisions a radically changed internet five years from now: dominated by Chinese-language and social media content, delivered over super-fast bandwidth in real time. Figuring out how to rank real-time social content is "the great challenge of the age," Schmidt said in an interview in front of thousands of CIOs and IT Directors at last week's Gartner Symposium/ITxpo Orlando 2009.”

http://www.tubechop.com/watch/32815

--------

Computer tasks for workers in the developing world
http://springwise.com/non-profit_social_cause/samasource/

“Earlier this year we covered txteagle, a service that aims to fight unemployment in the developing world by enabling mobile phone subscribers there to complete quick jobs via SMS. Operating on much the same principle, Samasource is a San Francisco-based nonprofit that connects workers in the developing world with computer-based tasks.

Samasource has partnered with 18 locally owned small businesses, nonprofit training centers and rural data centers in Kenya, Uganda, Cameroon, Ghana and Pakistan. Such service partners are first carefully screened, both for social and economic impact and for their ability to deliver good work. Next, Samasource provides those organizations with free business training, using live sample projects, web-based tools and site visits. Then, Samasource markets the services of its partners to paying clients around the world for tasks such as data entry and digitization, web development, image and site moderation, application testing, video and audio services, project management, research assistance, virtual assistance and tasks via Amazon's Mechanical Turk.”

Are the iPhone and social networks making the classic Web and intranet obsolete?
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe/?p=1007

“There’s been an important and relatively sudden change taking place over the last couple of years in the way that we interact with the Web. While direct access or search activity has been (and still is) the most common way that we access the content and applications of the Web, new ways have been rapidly growing and competing with how we work online, both at home and at work.

Thus these new models, exemplified by social networking sites like Facebook or mobile apps on platforms like the iPhone, Palm’s new webOS, and Android, will ultimately herald a change in the way that we work with our IT systems in the enterprise.

The once relatively unified world of the Internet, with a few major top-level types of access directly connected to it (browser, e-mail, IRC client, newsreader, etc.) and a few key sub-apps such as search that virtually everyone online used have been extended — as well as fragmented — into popular new channels into which users are now rapidly moving en masse.”

--------

Why Design Thinking Matters
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/oct2009/id20091026_228986.htm?campaign_id=rss_innovate

“"Design thinking" proponent and business school dean Roger Martin argues that the discipline provides executives with competitive advantage critical for success”

-------

No Need to Unplug
http://www.ideaconnection.com/new-inventions/no-need-to-unplug-02943.html

“No need to unplug your gadgets. With a simple twist the universal Switch plug disengages the plug from the power source.
The power connection is closed when the plug is not in the socket, and the socket cannot be turned unless the plug is fully inserted.”

-------

Now Use Google Voice With Your Existing Phone Number
http://mashable.com/2009/10/26/google-voice-existing/

“One of the sticking points with the otherwise highly convenient Google Voice service has been that you had a choose a new number to use with the service. If you had an existing number that everyone already knew and wanted to switch over, you were pretty much out of luck.

Luckily that changes today, with tonight’s Google announcement that you can now use Google Voice () with an existing phone number. Also notably, you can now add Google () voicemail service to any of the mobile numbers linked to your account. Think of it a bit like Gmail for voicemail.”

IBM Debuts Food Traceability iPhone App
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ibm_debuts_food_traceability_iphone_app.php

“Today at the IBM Information on Demand event, IBM will demo a new app that will bring the Internet of Things to the iPhone. The as yet unreleased iPhone app is called Breadcrumbs and it will give consumers access to information about grocery food items. The app will be able to scan barcodes and deliver a summary of the ingredients in a food item, along with when it was manufactured. That data is usually on the food label, but Breadcrumbs goes a step further - it can provide extra information such as product recall data. If a product has been recalled in the past, this app will tell the consumer all of the relevant details.”

--------

Three Years of Silent Retreat
http://www.good.is/post/three-years-of-silent-retreat/

“In late 2010, in the sun scorched highlands of Arizona’s Chirakawa Mountains, some 50 Buddhist students will embark on a retreat. For three years, three months, and three days, they will have no contact with the outside world, and they will not speak a word. The retreat will be lead by Lama Christie McNally, one of the only women in the world to carry the title of “lama” (or teacher), and Geshe Michael Roach. (The Buddhist degree of geshe is comparable to a doctorate in the United States.) McNally and Roach are the founders of Diamond Mountain, a school some 100 miles from Tucson which is modeled after Buddhist monastic tradition, and which is not far from where the retreat will take place. Earlier this month, while Lama McNally was visiting the Asian Classics Institute of Los Angeles’s Mahasuka Center to teach from and talk about her book, The Tibetan Book of Meditation, she spoke to GOOD about what would move someone to take a vow of silence for three years, and what it’s like when those three years are up.”

--------

Ira Glass on the Art of Story Telling
http://www.openculture.com/2009/10/ira_glass_on_the_art_of_story_telling.html

No one tells a better story than This American Life, the award-winning radio program coming out of Chicago. And no one is better positioned to explain the art of great story telling than the show’s host, Ira Glass. Above, Glass gives you his thoughts. And this clip comes in 4 acts. For more, get Act 2, 3, and 4.”

--------

Will Allen and the Urban Farming Revolution
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/010670.html

“Will Allen is redefining farming. His farm is a set of greenhouses in a corner of Northwest Milwaukee, walking distance from the city’s largest housing project. His farm doesn’t just feed 10,000 local residents – it’s a source of jobs, of training in polyculture and transformation of waste into food, and a model for the future of urban farming.

Will’s a soft-spoken guy, a former Proctol and Gamble executive, who’s been transformed into a farming innovator. He thanks Michael Pollan for being “the world’s greatest framer” in explaining the global food crisis, and especially in our inner cities. The global migration into cities means we’ve got to figure out how to feed these folks in the future, without totally destroying our environment.

Allen’s talk is focused on solutions – how do we bring good food into “food deserts”, places that have been redlined by grocery stores. It’s a social justice issue, not just an health and environmental issue. There are now ten farms in Allen’s project, over 100 acres in the city of Milwaulkee. The farm is located in a food desert – the nearest grocery store is four miles away, and his neighbors, living in housing projects, often don’t have access to transportation.

His solution is to produce food in cities, year-round. In the process, these farms grow communities. The project began in 1993, when Allen bought the last working farm in Milwaulkee. He shows us a photo of local kids in those days – we can tell the photo’s dated, he tells us, because the kids have their pants pulled up.”

When Folly Is Forever
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704597704574485742145322708.html

"Historians, accustomed to rummaging through document-stuffed archives, are now worrying about the future of the past. Our lives, they note, are ever more digitized: family joys and sorrows, work-place successes and setbacks, government directives and debates, are increasingly composed and conveyed digitally. The seeming ephemerality of these records—their formats may become obsolete or they may otherwise blip out of existence—has led to fears of a "digital dark age." Archivists and librarians have looked for strategies to preserve digital public records, with mixed success. As futurist Stewart Brand put it a few years ago: "There is still nothing in the digital world like acid-free paper."

But maybe the historians have it backward. In "Delete," Viktor Mayer-Schönberger argues that we should be less troubled by the fleetingness of our digital records than by the way they can linger. You may scoff—especially if you have ever lost valuable files on an irreparably damaged hard drive—but Mr. Mayer-Schönberger, a professor at Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, believes that we are not losing enough of our digital data. We are, he says, "failing to forget...

...So forgetting, the default mode for millennia, today requires effort and expense. "With the help of digital tools we—individually and as a society—have begun to unlearn forgetting," Mr. Mayer-Schönberger says. We have erased "from our daily practices one of the most fundamental behavioral mechanisms of humankind."

The implications are uncertain but potentially troubling. "Will our children be outspoken in online equivalents of school newspapers if they fear their blunt words might hurt their future career?" Mr. Mayer-Schönberger asks. "Will we protest against corporate greed or environmental destruction if we worry that these corporations may in some distant future refuse doing business with us?" We once could remake our lives; we could improve ourselves and even seek redemption by shedding our past. Mr. Mayer-Schönberger fears the oppressive weight of a past always with us.

--------

New Perspectives On The Work/(Life) Conundrum
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704597704574485742145322708.html#printMode

"...In an article about growing disenchantment at work (“Hating What You Do”), this week’s Economist cites a survey conducted by the Center for Work-Life Policy, an American consultancy. It found that between June 2007 and December 2008 the proportion of workers who professed loyalty to their employers slumped from 95% to 39%, and the number voicing trust in them fell from 79% to 22%. Furthermore, the article refers to a more recent survey by DDI which found that more than half of the respondents described their job as “stagnant,” as in “nothing interesting to do” and “little hope of professional growth" within their current organization. Half of these “stagnators” said they were planning to look for another job as soon as the economy recovered. These survey findings are flanked by several recent cultural events in the US that indicate a shift in the way we negotiate the meaning of work, for example Michael Moore’s “Capitalism – A Love Story” and a whole New York Times Magazine issue on “Anxiety.”

And yet, Americans will be surprised to hear that the most dramatic manifestation of this apparent misery-at-work trend occurred in “socialist” France. A spate of attempted and successful suicides at France Telecom that occured over the past twelve months, many of them explicitly prompted by stress and dissatisfaction at work, forced the deputy CEO to resign and sparked an emotional national debate about life in the modern corporation."

--------

In Interview with Dan Pink
http://lateralaction.com/articles/dan-pink/

"Dan’s new book, Drive, is subtitled ‘the surprising truth about what motivates us’. It introduces some scientific research that turns received business practice on its head – and offers all of us a more inspiring and meaningful vision of work."

Sent from my iPhone

Sent from my iPhone