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Interesting Reading: Ideas & Images 

In Da Bronx

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9 Circles and a Dog

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Interesting Reading: 11/23

India parliament uproar over Ayodhya mosque report
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8373586.stm

"Parliament was in uproar on Monday over the leaked inquiry report which is said to blame senior BJP figures including Atal Behari Vajpayee and LK Advani.

The Liberhan commission report was submitted to the government in June but its contents have not been made public.

Some 2,000 people died in riots across India after the mosque was demolished.

The commission was set up to investigate events that led to a Hindu mob tearing down the disputed mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya.

Led by former high court judge MS Liberhan, the inquiry took 17 years to complete its work, at a cost of more than 65m rupees ($1.3m). Details about the commission's findings appeared in the Indian media on Monday."

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As Sewers Fill, Waste Poisons Waterways
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/us/23sewer.html?_r=2&hp

"It was drizzling lightly in late October when the midnight shift started at the Owls Head Water Pollution Control Plant, where much of Brooklyn’s sewage is treated.

A few miles away, people were walking home without umbrellas from late dinners. But at Owls Head, a swimming pool’s worth of sewage and wastewater was soon rushing in every second. Warning horns began to blare. A little after 1 a.m., with a harder rain falling, Owls Head reached its capacity and workers started shutting the intake gates.

That caused a rising tide throughout Brooklyn’s sewers, and untreated feces and industrial waste started spilling from emergency relief valves into the Upper New York Bay and Gowanus Canal.

...One goal of the Clean Water Act of 1972 was to upgrade the nation’s sewer systems, many of them built more than a century ago, to handle growing populations and increasing runoff of rainwater and waste. During the 1970s and 1980s, Congress distributed more than $60 billion to cities to make sure that what goes into toilets, industrial drains and street grates would not endanger human health.

But despite those upgrades, many sewer systems are still frequently overwhelmed, according to a New York Times analysis of environmental data. As a result, sewage is spilling into waterways."

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A Portuguese Success Story: Could "I" be the Future of Newspapers?
http://www.core77.com/blog/business/a_portuguese_success_story_could_i_be_the_future_of_newspapers_15278.asp

"Portugal's newest daily newspaper, i, was launched in early May and has attracted a significant amount of attention due to its rising circulation figures and innovative approach. It recently won a design award from the Society of News Design."

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Top Internet Trends of 2000-2009: E-commerce

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/e-commerce_top_internet_trends_of_2000-2009.php

"Over the past decade, Amazon.com and eBay have continued to dominate the online retail market in the United States. However, there have been signs that more social and distributed forms of online shopping are gaining traction. eBay, in particular, is beginning to lose ground.

In this post, we review the past decade of e-commerce and the key trends. Advances in recommendations technology, together with the emergence of social media and mobile commerce, have combined to change the way e-commerce is transacted.

This is the third in a ReadWriteWeb series looking back at some of the key trends of the past 10 years. We previously covered the online music industry and the democratization of news media."

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Foodspotting: A Local, Visual Food Guide
http://www.psfk.com/2009/11/foodspotting-a-local-visual-food-guide.html

"Foodspotting is a service currently in private alpha that aims to improve the way we search for a place to eat. Instead of organizing food reviews by restaurant, Foodspotting’s community catalogs individual dishes. With descriptions and images of prepared plates along with where to find them, Foodspotting stands to provide a more natural way to find what people are actually in the mood for."

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Wine by Numbers, WIth A Digital Content Twist

http://springwise.com/food_beverage/94wines/

"We've seen several innovations at the intersection of wine and technology, including Aromicon's "virtual taste search engine," which we featured just last week. Dutch startup 94wines is now bringing a new technological twist to the table, so to speak, by offering a line of numbered and colour-coded wines that can be personalized with digital content.

Launched a week ago, 94wines offers a line of French wines in which each variety is indicated by a number and a bottle colour rather than a name linked to its maker, vintage or region. Consumers begin by taking a short quiz of six questions regarding their likes and dislikes. That, in turn, produces their personal WineID, which can then be used to guide their choices from among the company's series of wines. The use of numbers and colours makes wine preferences easy to remember, while personal ID profiles allow friends to see each other's preferences for gift-giving purposes.

Perhaps even more interesting, however, is that—much the way Enthusem allows consumers to create printed greeting cards with digital attachments—94wines customers can attach electronic content to any bottle of wine. Upon placing an order, they simply upload a text, photo or video file (one is allowed per bottle of wine), which 94wines stores on its server. 94wines then converts that content into a QR code, which it attaches to the bottle. (QR codes are included on all 94wines bottles, so if consumers don't upload their own content, the company includes a standard message instead.) Recipients can view the attached content using their mobile phone's camera or by entering the code at 94wines.com. There's also a free 94wines application for iPhones that includes an advanced QR reader along with the WineID test, an overview of the 94Wines assortment and the ability to view the profiles of friends. Per-bottle pricing at 94wines ranges between EUR 5.99 and EUR 9.99, with no extra charge for personalization."

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"Off = On"
http://trendwatching.com/trends/offon.htm

"Introduction | When something previously deemed ‘emerging’ has managed to completely invade the mainstream, you know it's time to throw overboard any remaining doubts and inhibitions, and just get going to claim your shrinking piece of the pie.

Case in point: the near-total triumph of the ‘online revolution’ (1.4 billion people online, anyone?), which now has the ‘offline world’ more often than not playing second fiddle in everything from commerce to entertainment to communications to politics.

In fact, ‘offline’ is now so intertwined with ‘online’ that a whole slew of new products and services and campaigns are just waiting to be dreamed up by … well… you? Our definition:

"OFF=ON | More and more, the offline world (a.k.a. the real world, meatspace or atom-arena) is adjusting to and mirroring the increasingly dominant online world, from tone of voice to product development to business processes to customer relationships. Get ready to truly cater to an ONLINE OXYGEN generation even if you’re in ancient sectors like automotive or fast moving consumer goods.""

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Chinatown Parade

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Interesting Reading: 11/20

SocialCycling Turns Unrecyclable Products Into Usable Items
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/ariel-schwartz/sustainability/socialcycling-turns-unrecyclable-products-usable-items

"We write a lot about upcycling, or the practice of reusing products for new purposes to prevent waste. Now DMD Green, an environmental management consulting company, wants to make the process even easier with its new SocialCycling program, which takes items that are nearly impossible (or impossible) to recycle and finds new uses for them.

The program, announced earlier this month, gathers reclaimed materials and post-consumer products from DMD Green clients at a central SocialCycling site. Once at the site, products are separated and delivered to artisans, manufacturers, and anyone else who might have use for them. PVC scrap, for example, is being given to workrooms in Africa to be turned into lining for backpacks. So SocialCycling simultaneously solves a disposal problem for a company and provides a service to African consumers."

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Google Image Swirl: Visually Clustering Similar Images Together
http://infosthetics.com/archives/2009/11/google_image_swirl.html

"Google Image Swirl [googlelabs.com] is an experimental feature in Google Labs which is based on new computer vision research to cluster similar images into representative groups in a visual, exploratory interface.

For example, for an "apple" query, images of the fruit appears next to many products or logos of Macintosh. Users can then click on any thumbnail and a cluster of images will "swirl" into view. Other examples include keywords like car or Eiffel tower."

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Chrome OS opens as Chromium: A Quantum Leap or Too Early to Tell?
http://www.gottabemobile.com/2009/11/19/chrome-os-opens-as-chromium-a-quantum-leap-or-too-early-to-tell

"Today, Google introduced the world to their Chrome operating system by releasing its code base and initial interface work as the open source Chromium OS. All the major tech watchers were on hand at a conference to cover the news. Google, of course, made their own announcement via Blogger and posted an introductory video on YouTube. Obviously, a lot of it is still unshaped, but based on the direction and structure of the project, it’s easy to get excited or pessimistic about it. Watch the explanation and tell me what you think"

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The Future of Search is More than Social
http://www.baekdal.com/future/social_networking/future-of-social-search/

"As you probably know, both Google and Microsoft have entered into a partnership with Twitter and is now incorporating social search into their regular search engines. This is a big deal because social is a very important element of the future of search... it's not the only part though.

...So far Google has been really good at things, places, sites or pages, but it lacks relevance because it doesn't know people. Twitter have the people element (although Twitter search doesn't extract any meaning from it), same with Facebook, comments on blogs, reviews on product sites (from real people), rankings, and general activity.

Combine all that and you got the future of search. It is not social, not traditional - but both + it's targeted to you. And it can be used for more than simply searching."

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Telling stories in new ways
http://www.danpink.com/archives/2009/05/telling-stories-in-new-ways

"Did Tomas Nilson just tell the entire Little Red Riding Hood story using nothing but infographics?

You’re damn right he did. Just watch below."

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Interesting Reading: 11/19

Paying More for Flights Eases Guilt, Not Emissions
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/18/science/earth/18offset.html?_r=3

"In 2002 Responsible Travel became one of the first travel companies to offer customers the option of buying so-called carbon offsets to counter the planet-warming emissions generated by their airline flights.

But last month Responsible Travel canceled the program, saying that while it might help travelers feel virtuous, it was not helping to reduce global emissions. In fact, company officials said, it might even encourage some people to travel or consume more.

“The carbon offset has become this magic pill, a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card,” Justin Francis, the managing director of Responsible Travel, one of the world’s largest green travel companies to embrace environmental sustainability, said in an interview. “It’s seductive to the consumer who says, ‘It’s $4 and I’m carbon-neutral, so I can fly all I want.’ ”

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Mapping Job Loss Live! In Gloomy Color!

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/ben-paynter/ben-paynter/mapping-job-loss-live-gloomy-color?partner=rss

"You might remember this graphic depicting the spread of economic stress in the U.S. when the AP did it a month ago. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have done snapshot versions, too. But now it's caught on with the kids. (Can it be long before Kanye features his own map in a video?)

While this latest graphic's predecessors were much more elegant, didn't resemble a pack of Fruit Stripe gum, and knew better than to use radical color shifts to represent tiny changes in stats, the AP, the Times, and WSJ employ armies of designers. This one appears to have been done by a grad student at American University. And rough as it might be, it's kind of neat to hit the play button (on the AP's interactive, you have to move the slider yourself) and watch the ripple affect of what happens when the guy in the cubicle or on the assembly line next to you disappears.

Another minor difference: the AP graphic uses stats from October 2007 on. This one uses U.S. Bureau of Labor unemployment statistics from January 2007 (just before the collapse) to September 2009 (when there seemed no end in sight). It shows how job loss rolled inland from the coasts."

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"Father of video games" documentary
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/11/father_of_video_games_documentary.html

"Motherboard has this wonderful look inside the world (and workshop) of Ralph Baer, creator of Pong, Simon, and other electronic/video game classics."

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17 Things Worth Knowing About Your Cat
http://www.bspcn.com/2009/11/18/17-things-worth-knowing-about-your-cat/

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Three on Time Management


No Time to Read This? Read This
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704538404574541590534797908.html

"Are things you need to get done falling between the cracks? Does taking an entire day off seem impossible?

Maybe you need a time-management system.

Many readers seem to think they do, based on the email response to my recent column on the importance of taking time off. Dozens asked me to recommend a time-management method that would help them get on top of their work and home duties. In response, I asked a half-dozen executive coaches to help me pick the most widely used time-management systems—not just software tools or high-tech to-do lists, but behavioral-change techniques that help people get organized, clarify thinking and increase output. Then, I tried out for a week each of the three methods they mentioned most often—including one that involved a ticking plastic tomato."

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PomoDoro Technique
http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/

"  The Pomodoro Technique™ is a way to get the most out of time management. Turn time into a valuable ally to accomplish what we want to do and chart continuous improvement in the way we do it.

Francesco Cirillo created the Pomodoro Technique™ in 1992. It is now practiced by professional teams and individuals around the world."

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Getting Things Done with Mind Maps
http://blog.mindjet.com/2009/11/getting-things-done-with-mind-maps#more-1503

"a webinar presentation to David Allen’s GTD Connect community.

It was great fun to both create and deliver. I mapped out everything that I had wanted to accomplish including the entire content of the presentation. Then, I built my PowerPoint presentation using my map as a guide.

For a full replay of the webinar and to view all the content, sign up for a free trial of GTD Connect or, if you’re already a member, view it here.

I’ve posted (via SlideShare) the highlights of the presentation below…

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Interesting Reading: 11/18

U.S. Charges Madoff Programmers
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703683804574533483600301134.html

“Federal prosecutors in Manhattan brought criminal charges Friday against two men for allegedly being the technological brains behind Bernard Madoff's multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, and suggested charges against others could follow.

The case against two former computer programmers, Jerome O'Hara and George Perez, may help fill in key blanks in the timeline of how Mr. Madoff, who pleaded guilty to fraud earlier this year, masterminded a scheme that has cost thousands of investors more than $20 billion. The complaint hints at other unnamed "co-conspirators" at the Madoff firm who are now being targeted by prosecutors.
Friday's charges shine a light on the kind of information being provided to prosecutors by Frank DiPascali, Mr. Madoff's top lieutenant in the investment business, who pleaded guilty to fraud charges in August. Mr. DiPascali is hoping to get a lighter prison sentence in exchange for his cooperation, his lawyer has said.”

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These Hobbyists Add to Calculators, Multiplying Their Fun
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125832581224549493.html

“Benjamin Moody got hooked on calculators the moment his father bought him one to help with his math homework when he was 15. He squirreled away with it and devoured the 19-chapter owners' manual.

Before long, he had written onto his Texas Instruments Inc. graphing calculator a program for his version of a Whac-A-Mole game. A few months later, he created one that mapped out star positions on its 1½-inch-by-2½-inch screen. He once made his calculator into a sort of e-book reader, although he could only read a couple lines at a time.
"Pushing the limits of what the hardware can do, that's where a lot of the fun is," said Mr. Moody, 23, a computer programmer who lives in Newton, Mass.
Calculator hackers are a small band of enthusiasts who revel in making their clunky devices perform sometimes oddball tasks. One has made his work like an Etch A Sketch. Another has programmed his calculator to play a version of the popular videogame Tetris. And another has turned it into a synthesizer.”

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10 Persistent Messaging Problems that Google Wave Solves
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Messaging-and-Collaboration/10-Persistent-Messaging-Problems-that-Google-Wave-Solves-243466/?kc=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RSS%2Feweek_messaging+%28eWEEK+Messaging+and+Collaboration%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

“Google Wave suffered something of a letdown when the company began rolling it our more broadly to the public. Pundits largely panned the real-time collaboration platform for squelching productivity. However, eWEEK believes these folks didn't spent enough time getting comfortable with the platform. Below are 10 work-related problems Wave solves, most of which come courtesy of Daniel Tenner, CTO and co-founder of Woobius, which makes a Web-based document sharing tool, bookended by some solutions from eWEEK. This is timed for the impending launch of Wave to more people, which Google CEO Eric Schmidt said is coming soon.”

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Barcode Revolution: Unique Japanese Barcode Designs

http://infosthetics.com/archives/2009/11/visually_designing_barcodes.html

“The firms Bar Code Revolution [barcoderevolution.com] and D-Barcode [d-barcode.com] use a unique process that allows for an original design element to be integrated into a traditional barcode. While retaining the functionality of the barcodes themselves, their visual appearence are augmented with beautiful iconography or outlined in larger graphic patterns.”

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Top Internet Trends of 2000-2009: Democratization of News Media

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/democratization_of_news_media.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

“It's November 2009 and we're nearing the end of a decade. It's been a tumultuous time of change for many industries, much of it driven by the Internet. The newspaper industry has been particularly affected by the Web. Over the past 10 years, news media has undergone a seachange akin to the invention of the printing press in 1440.

Just as Johannes Gutenberg's printing press brought books to the mainstream public in the 15th century, Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web brought commercial publishing to the people.

The Web has always been a medium where people could just as easily write as read (yes, the read/write Web), however it didn't reach its potential until blogging came along earlier this decade.”

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Casio unveils EX-G1 rugged compact camera
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0911/09111801casioexg1.asp

“Casio has unveiled the world's slimmest 'rugged' compact in the shape of Exliim EX-G1 - its thinnest side measures just 20mm (0.78"). The first in the company's new 'Exilim G' series of weatherproof cameras, named in reference to the company's well-known G-Shock series of watches. The G1 is designed to be dustproof, waterproof up to 3 meters for an hour, coldproof up to 14 °F and shock-resistant for drops of up to 2.13 meters. It incorporates a 38-114mm equivalent lens, 2.5" LCD, 12.1MP sensor and includes features such as Intelligent AF, Best Shot shooting mode and Interval shooting. Priced at $299, the camera will start shipping from December 2009.”

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Times Square Back in the Day

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Interesting Reading: 11/11


TED and Others to Unveil Charter for Compassion

http://designmind.frogdesign.com/blog/ted-and-others-to-unveil-charter-for-compassion.html

 “On November 12, 2009, TED and others will be unveiling the Charter for Compassion, a document about the core shared values and moral code of every world religion, the “Golden Rule.” The Charter is the result of 2008 TED Prize winner Karen Armstrong’s “wish” (if you haven’t read Armstrong’s latest book, The Case for God, I highly recommend it – even, or especially, if you consider yourself an atheist and usually side with Richard Dawkins et al).

More than 75 events are currently planned around the globe to launch the Charter for Compassion on November 12. Everyone can become a part of it by attending one of these events or hosting their own; by emailing, blogging, writing, broadcasting, or offering media space for Charter banners, widgets, and videos. TED says it hopes that in the week following the launch, “thousands of sermons on the nature of compassion will be preached all over the world ... thousands of discussions will be held around dinner tables ... thousands of ideas will be shared.” Because, at the end of the day, “compassion is the best idea humanity ever had.”
 
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Wine Search Engine Uses Animation to Portray Aromas

http://springwise.com/food_beverage/aromicon/

 “Billed as a 'virtual taste search engine', Aromicon lists thousands of wines categorised by every imaginable detail. Wines can be browsed by region, grape variety or food pairing, as well as searched by keyword. There's also the option to browse according to taste, featuring a huge range of subtleties to satisfy the requirements of the most practiced palette—everything from 'kiwi' and 'butter', to peculiarities like 'animal' and 'blood' (luckily you can opt to exclude those).

Although the site is in German, it's almost navigable by its icons alone—hence the name. And in a visually innovative twist, a short animation graphically displays a wine's unique blend of flavours, showing berries, chocolate, pipes, etc swirling around in a glass. The concept is a spin-off from the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design, and features a vintage revenue model: the site essentially functions as a fully-featured affiliate sales portal linking to several German wine merchants. One to serve up for wine-lovers who don't speak German, or to partner with if you're in the wine business?”
 
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Esquire's Augmented Reality Issue: Going Beyond Digital Print

http://threeminds.organic.com/2009/11/esquires_augmented_reality_iss.html

 “This month, Esquire Magazine launched their anticipated Augmented Reality issue. The issue features an AR cover, where Robert Downey Jr. performs an intro and also a pitch for his upcoming Sherlock Holmes movie. In addition, there is other content, such as a fashion supplement where the weather changes based on the way the user tilts the magazine and the time of day they access the site.

An augmented reality cover isn't necessarily new. GE and Popular Science paired up back in February for the first ever interactive 3-D cover (Threeminds' "Augmented Reality is a Marketing Reality). But the level to which they have integrated it and in a fun, playful way is something for other traditional magazines to pay attention to, especially in a time where they are desperate for print readership.”
 
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What’s the Value of Visual Thinking?
http://blog.mindjet.com/2009/11/whats-the-value-of-visual-thinking

 “Here’s a great presentation from the recent BlogWorld 2009 conference in Las Vegas.
It’s a fast but worthwhile journey, exploring how to Get Visual in 4 M’s and six steps to Getting Visual…
Dave starts your journey with The 4 M’s to Get Visual…”
 
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Singularity University seasons executives for the future
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10394876-52.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

 “Earlier this year, Singularity University (SU) ran its inaugural summer session, a nine-week program based at NASA's Ames Research Center here in the heart of Silicon Valley, aimed at giving the best 40 of more than 1,200 applicants a highly concentrated education in a series of exponentially growing technologies like biotechnology and bioinformatics; nanotechnology; AI, robotics, and cognitive computing.

For those students, who were chosen based on having demonstrated top-level academic rigor, entrepreneurial and leadership skills, an interest in global issues and who were seen as already being at the top of their chosen fields, the nine weeks were a marathon of long days and nights of lectures from world-leading thinkers, workshops in the technologies that could shape the future and group projects centered on coming up with ways to positively impact a billion people. Already, four start-ups have emerged from the summer session.

But now the first of SU's nine-day executive program is in full swing, and according to co-founder, X Prize Chairman and CEO Peter Diamandis, the goal now is to distill the best parts of the nine-week SU version and present them to the new students in a way that will be of the most use to them.”
 
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Google Offers A 16 Terabyte Cloud Drive For $4,096 A Year
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/11/google-offers-a-16-terabyte-cloud-drive-for-4096-a-year/

 “Well, it’s not the mythical Google Drive, but it’s close. For a price. And assuming you only want to store pictures and emails.
Google tonight announced that it was drastically slashing prices while at the same time offering more storage pricing options for users of its services. Specifically, while Gmail users currently get about 7 gigabytes for free and Picasa users get about 1 gigabyte for free, both can now upgrade to 20 GB for just $5 a year. Previously, it cost $20 to get just 10 GB of additional service.

But what’s really pretty incredible is that Google has an option for you to buy up to 16 terabytes, yes, terabytes, of storage from them. As Google notes, that enough to store 8 million very high resolution photos. Considering that most consumers probably still have south of 500 gigabytes of storage in their home, that’s pretty massive.”
 
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Leading Innovation: 21 Things that Great Bosses Believe and Do
http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2009/11/leading-innovation-21-things-that-great-bosses-believe-and-do.html

 “Huggy Rao and I kicked off yesterday morning by doing case discussions and a bit of lecture on the hallmarks of innovative organizations. As part of that session, I put together the list below for the executives. I've also included links for anyone who wants to dig into the subject a bit further. I will add a few more ideas and links during the course of the week.  I would love to hear some additional ways that great bosses spark innovation and comments -- and extensions -- on the ideas below.”
 
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IdeaAid: the worldwide brainstorm
http://povertynewsblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/ideaaid-worldwide-brainstorm.html

 “Set to launch on Nov. 14, the first Idea Aid™ challenge seeks to find novel ways to raise $1 billion annually to help eradicate global hunger and poverty. Ideas will come from people all over the world who will brainstorm online and share their best thinking with Heifer International, a global nonprofit dedicated to ending world hunger and poverty.

“We believe the time is right for Idea Aid,” said Mensa Process Managing Director David Wynett. “It’s a revolutionary way to identify potential solutions to problems, and it’s especially relevant in today’s economic climate, when people may not be able to donate money, but still want to give back.”

Idea Aid is sponsored by Mensa Process, a brain trust that helps its corporate clients solve complex problems and identify new growth opportunities. Mensa Process works with some of the world’s brightest minds — members of Mensa, an international organization of 100,000+ people, open to the top 2 percent in intelligence.”

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Interesting Reading: 11/10

How Bernie Made Basket Cases of His Customers' Accounts

http://www.securitiesindustry.com/issues/19_107/-24168-1.html

“As a project manager, he always felt like an odd duck at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Services (BLMIS), an outfit which seemed to lack standards and procedures routine at former employers of his such as the International Securities Exchange and CheckFree Investment Services (now Fiserv, Inc.). Little was documented and the company seemed to be overwhelmed keeping the older systems from breaking down.
"I immediately recognized there was massive institutional chaos in the way the place was managed. No one found value in participating in project management meetings or in writing things down. There was no documentation," says McMahon, today an operational performance consultant for Standard & Poors. “

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Congo Plan Is A Dirty Cocktail of Climate Destruction Projects


http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/11/congo-plan-palm-tar-sands.php?dtc=th_rss

“Riddle me this. What do you get when you combine rainforest destruction, tar sands, and palm oil plantations in one project? You guessed it, an environmental nightmare. This perfect storm of climate disruption badness can all be found in oil company Eni's plans to develop tar sands and oil palm in the Congo Basin, one of the most biodiverse places on earth. This would be the first tar sands exploration in Africa and one of the largest palm oil plantations, which produce the oil used in thousands of household products from detergents to Pringles.”

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Socializers: A New Breed of Online Information Hunters

http://threeminds.organic.com/2009/11/socializers_a_new_breed_of_onl.html

 “18% of people start their search for new information online via social sites.

It's one of those statistics that takes a minute to sink in, and then a whole bevy of new questions rolls out. We don't blink twice when people mention that they start their hunt for new information via search engines, or even portal sites. But is social media really starting to become the primary vehicle for content discovery?

The Nielsen study is vague, and had many of us scratching our heads as to what the implications were and whether the stat was over-representative or even under-representative of reality. And... ultimately, WHAT are these people using social media to search for?”

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Personal Data Storage with Emergency Access

http://springwise.com/life_hacks/orggit/

 “Orggit offers a new take on web-based information storage. We've already seen this service in a several guises: from ultra-secure 'memory' storage inside a Swiss mountain, to an online locker for loved ones to open after the user's death. Orggit's unique selling point is the In Case of Emergency (ICE) card that it supplies with every subscription. Using the card, medical personnel can call a dedicated helpline and quote the member's ID code to gain access to all of their medical vitals, which could be a lifesaver. In case of a lost wallet, the good samaritan who finds it can also call the helpline and Orggit will arrange an owner-wallet reunion.”

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The Importance of Forgetting

http://www.psfk.com/2009/11/the-importance-of-forgetting.html

Researchers at Vanderbilt University have suggested a system of value assignment and selective forgetting is one way to cope with information overload.

The aspects of human memory considered for their research include time-based decay (memories disappearing over time), and interference (multiple memories vying for the same information whether they’re correct or incorrect). To test out their theory, they created algorithms for robots to use different methods of gathering and retaining information.

The best performing  software, ActSimple, assigns value to gathered data based on how frequently it’s used and its relation to other data pieces. As a robot roamed through a virtual environment seeking Wi-Fi signals, it assigned values from 1-100 considering strength of signal and different levels of noise. Then it would try to create from memory a map of the signals. Other algorithms used to create these maps either considered all the data gathered (including errors) or disregarded the oldest data points. On average, ActSimple created the most accurate maps.

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Banking on the future of mobile financial transactions
http://www.emergingfutureslab.com/perspective_20/2009/11/banking-on-the-future-of-mobile-financial-transactions-.html

 “Bo Harald of Tieto Corporation shared a vision of the future that his company has been working on along with many other stakehholders. They are already in the process of implementating eInvoicing, part of something they call the Real Time Economy of financial transactions around the world. And they're making the basic part of this executable by a basic mobile phone. That means that even Ramu the teawallah, if he has to collect his accounts receivable from the MNC employees every month, they could eventually conceivably simply transfer it to his account. From what I could gather there is a finnish bank involved with the prototype and the Finns have been asked to set the standards for the EU wide system.”

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Nov. 10, 1983: Computer ‘Virus’ Is Born

http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/11/1110fred-cohen-first-computer-virus

“1983: Fred Cohen, a University of Southern California graduate student, gives a prescient peek at the digital future when he demonstrates a computer virus during a security seminar at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. A quarter-century later, computer viruses have become a pandemic for which there’s no inoculation.

Cohen inserted his proof-of-concept code into a Unix command, and within five minutes of launching it onto a mainframe computer, had gained control of the system. In four other demonstrations, the code managed to seize control within half an hour on average, bypassing all of the security mechanisms current at the time. It was Cohen’s academic adviser, Len Adleman (the A in RSA Security), who likened the self-replicating program to a virus, thus coining the term.”

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Lessons for the Design of Mobile Money Services

http://www.janchipchase.com/blog/archives/2009/11/essay-designing-mobile-money-services.html

“Who benefits more from the introduction of mobile money services - a white-collar worker in New York City or a migrant manual labourer living out of a dormitory in Xi'an? For many access to mobile money services is a game-changer.

The slides from last week's Dubai presentation on Designing Services for Financial Inclusion can be viewed above:”

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Ricoh GXR interchangeable unit camera, previewed
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0911/09111001ricohgxr.asp

 “After several weeks of rumors Ricoh has unveiled its first digital system camera, the GRX. The system takes a novel approach by offering interchangeable slide mount 'lens units' - sealed modules containing both optics and sensor, meaning it can switch from a large (APS-C) 12 MP CMOS with a fast prime lens to a tiny 10 MP CCD (with a 24-70mm lens). We've had a pre-production GXR system in the office for a week and have produced an in-depth hands-on preview which you'll find after the link. We've also taken lots of pictures with both lens modules so look out a little later today for an extensive gallery of samples.”

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