The World, Filtered*

Thinking in Systems: A Primer
http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Primer-Donella-Meadows/dp/1603580557/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1229607540&sr=8-1
 
I just received this intriguing book last night from Amazon. So far this
is a great, easy to understand, introduction to the idea of systems
thinking. The author, who died in 2001 was a MacArthur "Genius" Award
recipient and nominee for the Pulitzer Prize. The book is from a
manuscript she was completing at the time of her death.
 
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How Did the Economy Go Bad - an Onion Infographic
http://www.theonion.com/content/infograph/how_did_the_economy_go_bad
 
"In 2007, the economy was extremely robust. Less than 12 months later, the
United States is facing a plunging stock market, record unemployment and
total credit collapse. How, specifically did this happen?"
 
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Send Money Through Twitter With Twitpay
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/17/send-cash-through-twitter-with-twitpay/
 
"Twitpay is a start-up that aims to allow people to send small payments
through Twitter. To do this they include the recipients' username in their
message. For example, posting the update "@johnsmith twitpay $10 for
lunch" would deliver the cash to that Twitterer's Twitpay account. The
company monitors the public stream of messages for the keyword "twitpay"
and facilitates the exchange. You replenish your Twitpay account using a
site like PayPal. Once recipients have accumulated more than $10 in their
accounts, the balance can be cashed out in the form of an Amazon gift
card. For all transfers exceeding $1, Twitpay will take a flat cut of five
cents."
 
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Staying Informed Without Drowning in Data
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/technology/personaltech/18basics.html?_r=1
 
"I'M a reporter and I write about the Internet. I write about its culture,
its latest developments and the people and companies involved. You may
think this means I spend a lot of time watching videos of
advice-dispensing ninjas and funny photographs of cats but that, sadly, is
not the case.
 
What I do spend a lot of time doing is scouring the Internet for
information and news. This is great because the Internet makes this easier
than ever. This is also a huge pain because the Internet makes this easier
than ever. There's a never-ending sea of news sources, and if I just
plunge in headfirst, I'll probably get overwhelmed in minutes. And yet to
be ahead of the news, I can't just read the big, mainstream publications -
I have to dig deeper and find more specialized sites and blogs that are
often closer to the action.
 
The key is to manage the information overflow. This can be done through
sites and services that filter and curate the online news-scape into
something I can actually digest. With a little time spent exploring and
tailoring these sites, you too can get better, deeper information on
subjects you care about - and it won't take you days to sort through it
all."
 
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Learning About the Backstory of the Clothes We Buy
http://www.psfk.com/2008/12/learning-about-the-backstory-of-the-clothes-we-buy.html
 
"Amsterdam-based MADE-BY recently launched a new program called
Track&Trace that gives shoppers the opportunity to learn about the rich
backstory of some of the products they buy. MADE-BY has partnered with
several Netherlands-based fashion brands to insert an added tag to their
products that comes with a code which "unlocks" the history of the item.
Shoppers enter the code on the MADE-BY site and are given a glimpse of the
product's long journey to the shop window - where the garment was
manufactured and by whom, who spun the yarn, who grew the cotton. Each
step in the process includes a picture of the worker(s) and a brief
interview about that stage of production and the labor that went into it.
 
The purchase-then-learn model might not directly help those looking to
make their shopping choices based on sustainability, but MADE-BY's
initiative promotes more informed consumption and serves as a nice
reminder of the many steps it takes to create the things we buy."
 
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Web-based Business Model Innovation Software and Working on the Wall
http://business-model-design.blogspot.com/2008/12/web-based-business-model-innovation.html
 
"Boris Fritscher, a brilliant masters student of HEC business school in
Lausanne, Switzerland, has picked up on using software to sketch out
business models under the guidance of my co-author, Professor Yves
Pigneur.
 
Yesterday he showcased the tool to me and Patrick van der Pijl, producer
of my business model book. Boris built a web-based tool that allows the
design and description of business models. But Boris didn't keep it there.
He extended the tool to allow designing business models live on a
projected image on the wall (see picture where Boris works on a business
model). How cool is that?"
 
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10 rules for making good design
http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2008/12/i-picked-up-a-book-recently-called-design-elements-a-graphic-style-manual-by-timothy-samara-that-is-quite-good-samara-start.html
 
"I picked up a book recently called Design Elements: A Graphic Style
Manual by Timothy Samara* that is quite good. Samara starts off his book -
after a short discussion on what is meant by design and graphic design -
with a list of "Twenty Rules for Making Good Design" which includes a
brief but good elaboration of each of the rules. Now, as Samara points
out, rules are important to understand but it's certainly permissible to
break the rules (he even shows how later in the book). What is not
permissible is to remain ignorant of the rules. Samara quotes Typographer
David Jury here: "Rules can be broken - but never ignored." I tend to
think in terms of Principles rather than Rules, though this is really just
a matter of semantics. This stuff is old hat for longtime designers, but
for the rest of us Samara's list of 20 Rules is a useful reminder. Here
are just Ten of Samara's twenty rules below just as he wrote them (though
not in this order). I chose the rules (principles) which I think are both
the most important and yet easiest to grasp without much or any
explanation. Keep these rules in mind when designing your next
presentation or website, poster, etc."
 
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Prezi = The Zooming Presentarion Software
http://prezi.com/
 
I highlighted this outfit before. They have a new domain and have
steadily been updating the software.

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How Comics Can Save Us From Scientific Ignorance
http://www.wired.com/culture/education/magazine/16-12/pl_print
 
"What's the solution to America's crisis in science education? More comic
books. In December comes The Stuff of Life: A Graphic Guide to Genetics
and DNA, a remarkably thorough explanation of the science of genetics,
from Mendel to Venter, with a strand of social urgency spliced in. "If
there was ever a time that we needed a push to make science a priority,
it's now," says Howard Zimmerman, the book's editor and, not
coincidentally, a former elementary-school science teacher. "Advances in
treatments for disease cannot take place in a society that shuns science."
Zimmerman works with the New York literary publishing house Hill and Wang,
which discovered Elie Weisel and has been creating a new niche for itself
as one of the premiere producers of major graphic "nonfiction novels" like
the war on terror primer After 9/11 and the bio-comic Ronald Reagan.
 
Stuff of Life is the first in a series dedicated to the hard sciences. The
author is Mark Schultz, a DC Comics veteran and creator of the
postapocalyptic classic Xenozoic Tales. The 160-page work, illustrated by
Kevin Cannon and Zander Cannon (improbably, no genetic relation), covers
the regenerative processes of DNA, human migratory patterns, cloned
apples, and stem cells. In a rapidly changing field, it's as up-to-date
and accurate as possible."
 
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Copper Thieves Threaten U.S. Infrastructure, FBI says
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/12/copper-thieves.html
 
Copper thieves, sometimes acting as "organized groups," are threatening
what the FBI said is "critical" U.S. infrastructure, from electrical
sub-stations, cellular towers, telephone land lines to railroads and
crops, the agency said in an unclassified report unveiled Wednesday.
The report, Copper Thefts Threaten US Critical Infrastructure, said
bandits are taking advantage of unprecedented high prices for copper, an
almost 500 percent increase since 2001 as measured earlier this year.
 
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Stores Clueless About Mobile Barcode Scanning Applications?
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/stores_clueless_about_mobile_barcode_scanning_applications.php
 
"With the rise of app-laden smartphones like the iPhone and Google's
Android OS, now on T-Mobile's G1, many penny-pinching shoppers have
downloaded barcode scanning applications onto their mobile devices. These
apps allow consumers to compare the prices of merchandise on a store's
shelf to competing stores in the area just by taking pictures with their
smartphone's camera. The prices are instantly retrieved and displayed on
the mobile phone so consumers can know before they buy if they're getting
a good deal."
 
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A Design-Oriented National Endowment for the Arts
http://www.designobserver.com/archives/entry.html?id=38859
 
"The National Endowment for the Arts should embrace design and innovation
as a means to fulfill the larger agendas and programs of the Obama
Administration. The choice of the NEA Chairman is an important opportunity
to shape the contribution of the NEA in coming years.
 
Impactful NEA initiatives already exist to support the literary and
performing arts: what's missing are solutions and innovations that could
come from additional emphasis on the arts in a troubled economy, a nation
struggling with environmental crisis, a country that needs its entire
infrastructure rebuilt (and the resultant jobs that would come with the
challenge).
 
These are precisely the times when a design-oriented NEA could most
effectively benefit the nation with practical solutions, progressive
thinking and citizen-oriented improvements affecting all aspects of civic,
cultural and artistic life."
 
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New York Cheat Sheets
http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/new-york-cheat-sheets/
 
Too Funny! This is Visual storytelling well done. I think every New
Yorker has these little cheat sheets rattling around in our heads. The
fact that two of his (Fairway supermarket & the Dumbo Playground) coincide
with my own makes me think a lot of us New Yorkers cope in similar ways.

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Zappos CEO: transparency helped employees during layoffs
http://blogs.zdnet.com/feeds/?p=309
 
Just under two weeks ago Zappos.com, the online shoe retailer, very
publicly laid off nearly 8 percent of its workforce. The truth is, the
company didn't intend for everything to be so public. It just was, due to
the social media darling's corporate culture of transparency.
 
Is this bad? Not according to Tony Hsieh, Zappos.com CEO.
"We've generally found it to be beneficial to be public online about
everything," he said. "And we will continue to do our best to be as
transparent as possible."
 
Even, sometimes, if transparency is hard. Zappos.com gained prominence on
the social media radar earlier this year when Hsieh, his executive team
and hundreds of the company's employees created a one-brand army on
Twitter. Those hundreds of employees reacted strongly to the news of the
layoffs - online - on the company's Twitter-focused feed. To some
companies, this might've created bit of a public relations nightmare or a
crisis to manage. For Hsieh and his team, it was something to embrace.
 
"We believe that transparency is important and have continued to encourage
our employees to Twitter," he said. "We also publicized on our blog the
email sent to employees within minutes of it being sent internally."
If you watched the Zappos employee Twitter feed post-layoff, you would've
seen a few things…
 
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Offshoring Patent Services to India
http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/08d9d4/offshoring_patent
 
Revenues from the Indian patent services offshoring industry are estimated
at $46 m for the calendar year 2007 and are expected to reach $206 m by
end 2012.
 
Typically catering to the international markets, patent services
outsourcing to India is still in its infancy with a history of only about
3 to 4 years behind it. There are about 50 vendors in the industry with an
estimated 1,550 professionals employed as of end 2007. While a few vendors
have been in this business longer, this industry has gained momentum only
in the last few years.
 
Patent services include a wide range of specific tasks or services. We
have divided these services into the following broad areas: Patent
searches, Patent illustration and proofreading, Patent drafting, Patent
analytics, Patent asset management, Patent litigation support and Patent
consulting.
 
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LIFE photo archive hosted by Google
http://images.google.com/hosted/life
 
Search millions of photographs from the LIFE photo archive, stretching
from the 1750s to today. Most were never published and are now available
for the first time through the joint work of LIFE and Google.
 
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HP Touchsmart TX2 Laptop is a 12-inch Multitouch Wonder
http://gizmodo.com/5092686/hp-touchsmart-tx2-laptop-is-a-12+inch-multitouch-wonder
 
HP's Touchsmart tx2 is awesome because its the first consumer-oriented
convertible notebook to feature a multitouch technology built into the
display. The 12.1-inch screen uses a capacitive touchpanel that can track
two points simultaneously, operates with fingers or a stylus, and comes
with the Mediasmart 2.0 interface customized for the notebook. While
Dell's oft-mentioned Latitude XT came out last year with the multitouch
power to simultaneously track all five fingers, the feature was kept
dormant until the middle of 2008 and lacks any realy mainstream software
to take advantage of the tech.
 
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Social Media vs. Knowledge Management: A Generational War
http://www.socialcomputingmagazine.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=621
 
You'd think Knowledge Management (KM), that venerable IT-based social
engineering discipline which came up with evocative phrases like
"community of practice," "expertise locater," and "knowledge capture,"
would be in the vanguard of the 2.0 revolution.
 
You'd be wrong. Inside organizations and at industry fora today, every
other conversation around social media (SM) and Enterprise 2.0 seems to
turn into a thinly-veiled skirmish within an industry-wide KM-SM shadow
war. I suppose I must be a little dense, because it took not one, not two,
but three separate incidents before I realized there was a war on. Here's
what's going on: KM and SM look very similar on the surface, but are
actually radically different at multiple levels, both cultural and
technical, and are locked in an undeclared cultural war for the soul of
Enterprise 2.0.
 
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Backpacker's Diary: Next Gen PC Design Competition
http://www.nextgendesigncomp.com/entrydetail.aspx?id=944
 
Backpacker's diary is a PC concept that integrate with the form of
traditional book, the target user is the enthusiastic travelling fans. In
this "book", different pages include different functions, like media
recording, solar recharging and EL illuminant. The approach of reading a
book takes the traditional way of operating computer, which encourage
those backpackers to experience and share more about their trips.

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Design by the Book video series
http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/bythebook/

The New York Public Library holds a wealth of unexpected sources of
inspiration for artists and designers, from vintage valentines and textile
patterns, to fabric samples and turn-of-the-century menus from around the
world. For this online-only miniseries, Design by the Book, the Library
partnered with the leading design blog Design*Sponge to invite five New
York City-based artists to sift through our collections in search of
inspiration. Stay tuned for future episodes as the artists, who range from
a glassblower to a letterpress printer, create unique works inspired by
what they found. Special guest Isaac Mizrahi will also join us to share
his sources of inspiration.

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Amazon CloudFront: Outlook for CDN Is Cloudy (and That's Good)
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/amazon_cloudfront_outlook_for.php

Two months ago, Amazon - which has taken to sharing some of its massive
computing power with mere mortals as a means of developing additional
revenue streams - announced that they were developing a content-delivery
network (CDN) to complement their existing Amazon Simple Storage Service
(S3) offering. Today, they unveiled the beta version of that service,
named Amazon CloudFront. Boasting a now-familiar, pay-as-you-go pricing
model, Amazon CloudFront promises to make CDN an affordable addition for
any site looking to gain more efficient content delivery.

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Storyboarding in IBM Rational Requirements Composer
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational/library/08/1118_zhou/index.html?ca=drs-

A storyboard is a logical and conceptual description of system
functionality for a specific scenario, including the interaction required
between the system users and the system.

In IBM® Rational® Requirements Composer, a storyboard is represented as a
frame-by-frame depiction of a usage scenario, where each frame has a
description of the actions that lead to the next frame. It contains an
in-depth walkthrough of a linear story, represented as graphical frames on
a timeline with sample data. In essence, a storyboard is a sequence of
frames that elaborates the user experience. It includes a frame list,
timeline viewer, and frames. Frames are basically instances of sketches
within a storyboard.

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Barcode Your Clothes to Get Web Traffic
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/magazine/16-11/st_cuecat

Don't talk to strangers - scan them instead. That's the idea behind the
so-called ShotCodes on clothing by W-41, a Netherlands-based online
apparel company. If you spot one of these unique logos in the wild (bar,
club, methadone clinic, DMV), you surreptitiously snap a photo of it with
your phonecam and a tiny app directs you to the wearer's LinkedIn,
Facebook, or MySpace profile. You can then decide whether a "Hello" is in
order. To get in on the action, simply visit W-41.com, download a free
mobile app, select a ShotCode, and purchase gear from the online store
($50 to $57 a pop). Owners can connect their symbol to any Web site. Beats
having to dust off lines like "If you were a phaser, you'd be set on
'stunning.'"*

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A Decentralized, Distributed Social Web
http://threeminds.organic.com/2008/11/a_decentralized_distributed_so.html

With movements like Data Portability, the social web is moving to a more
open platform. The big networks are joining or building service offerings
to take content, user data, social graphs, and technology out to the wider
web. Facebook has Connect, MySpace and Ning are part of OpenSocial, and
smaller players like Twitter and Friendfeed were built on an open platform
from the start.

The walls of the garden are breaking down, and it begs the question: What
will this new social world look like? Where will we be socializing in the
future and how?

We are seeing the start of this next generation social web with the
emergence of social browsing applications. These projects range from
browser extensions like Headup and Glue to actual full-on browser
offerings like Flock. These tools help bring social conversation and
content directly into the browsing experience. While each offers its
unique flavor, not all of these start-ups will survive.

The ultimate winner will be the one that follows these two rules:
- reduce, don't create, social noise and
- leverage existing social data and connections

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A Computing Pioneer Has a New Idea
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/technology/businesscomputing/17machine.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

Steven J. Wallach is completing the soul of his newest machine.

Mr. Wallach had a new idea. He had long been fascinated with a chip
technology called Field Programmable Gate Arrays. These chips are widely
used to make prototype computer systems because they can be easily
reprogrammed and yet offer the pure speed of computer hardware. There have
been a number of start-ups and large supercomputer companies that have
already tried to design systems based on the chips, but Mr. Wallach
thought that he could do a better job.

The right way to use them, he decided, was to couple them so tightly to
the microprocessor chip that it would appear they were simply a small set
of additional instructions to give a programmer an easy way to turbocharge
a program. Everything had to look exactly like the standard programming
environment. In contrast, many supercomputers today require programmers to
be "heroic."

……The Convey computer will be based around Intel's microprocessors. It
will perform like a shape-shifter, reconfiguring with different hardware
"personalities" to compute problems for different industries, initially
aiming at bioinformatics, computer-aided design, financial services and
oil and gas exploration.

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Stay Focused, Citigroup Chief Tells Employees
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/stay-focused-citigroup-chief-tells-employees/

Amid all the slides, graphs and figures in Citigroup's "town hall"
meeting, the news of additional job cuts — more than 50,000 of them, many
through attrition and asset sales - was likely what employees were
dwelling on Monday.

In an e-mail sent to Citi workers after the presentation, Vikram Pandit,
Citi's chief executive, told workers that "all of you have done an
outstanding job in the last 11 months" and urged them to "maintain your
focus" on serving clients and customers. He also said, in various ways,
that banking giant is well positioned to navigate the ongoing financial
crisis, declaring that "we will be the long-term winner in the industry."

DealBook has the internal memo; read it after the jump.

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Why Canada's Banks Don't Need Help
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1855317,00.html

In the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression,
Canada has joined the ranks of governments that in recent weeks stepped up
to help banks cope with more fallout from bad U.S. subprime mortgages. In
Canada's case, however, the reason for the assistance is a little
different from some of its G-7 partners. Unlike banks in the U.S., Britain
and Germany, which needed to be bailed out with hundreds of billions of
dollars in new capital, Canada's major banks are solid and solvent. They
don't need any help to work through their subprime exposure.

So why did Ottawa agree to insure the money they routinely borrow from
other banks, a practice that keeps their credit operations liquid?
Ironically, the troubled non-Canadian institutions that received capital
injections and loan guarantees in other countries now carry a government
seal of approval that tilts the playing field in their favor when it comes
to borrowing. That leaves Canada's big banks, including Scotiabank, TD
Bank Financial Group, RBC Royal Bank and CIBC, at a competitive
disadvantage. So the government acted to level the field, not to aid
troubled banks.

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RED Monster Announcement: Modular Cameras, a DSLR, 3D and 28k
http://gizmodo.com/5085242/red-monster-announcement-modular-cameras-a-dslr-3d-and-28k

Rumors of a RED DSLR had been confirmed a long time ago, but what of the
Scarlet and EPIC übercamcorders? On the REDUser forums, RED CEO Jim
Jannard has explained it all: Scarlet and EPIC are the DSLR - all cameras
are "part of the same DSMC system", so each and every camera will be part
of a modular, build-your-own, still and video product line based on the
Scarlet and EPIC 'Brains'. To do this, RED has furnished an insanely
diverse new collection of components, with sensors ranging from the $2500
3k Scarlet to the $55,000, 28k EPIC 617 Mysterium Monstro.

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Entrepreneurs Who Rose From The Ashes
http://www.forbes.com/entrepreneurs/2008/11/10/recession-depression-entrepreneurs-ent-manage-cx_ml_1110upfromashes.html

A word of encouragement for all the entrepreneurs (and every other working
stiff, for that matter) scrapping it out in the latest downturn:
Recessions--for all the havoc they wreak--can also sow the seeds of
serious fortunes.

"At a basic level, there is an important job or problem that customers
can't do or solve for themselves," says Scott Anthony, president of
Innosight, a Watertown, Mass.-based innovation strategy consultancy. "The
best chance of creating something powerfully profitable is starting with
an important, unsatisfied problem."

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Using Design to Crack Society's Problems
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/130/mission-critical.html

…Participle isn't a conventional bunch of social workers or do-gooders.
It's a design team. Participle's interdisciplinary crew includes
anthropologists, economists, entrepreneurs, psychologists, social
scientists, and a military-logistics expert, but it is driven by design
techniques and headed by Cottam, 42, who also has used such strategies to
tackle the shortcomings of Britain's school and health systems. "Hilary's
-- and my -- favorite kind of design has to do with making people's lives
better, often taking account of their mundane daily concerns," says Paola
Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at the Museum of
Modern Art in New York. "Her projects not only work, they give people a
sense of hope and strength."

Cottam is one of a new wave of design evangelists who are trying to change
the world for the better. They believe that many of the institutions and
systems set up in the 20th century are failing and that design can help us
to build new ones better suited to the demands of this century. Some of
these innovators are helping poor people to help themselves by fostering
design in developing economies. Others see design as a tool to stave off
ecological catastrophe. Then there are the box-breaking thinkers like
Cottam, who disregard design's traditional bounds and apply it to social
and political problems. Her mission, she says, is "to crack the
intractable social issues of our time."

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Jane McGonigal's Brave New Worlds
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/nov2008/id20081110_453173.htm?campaign_id=rss_innovate

Major corporations, including Procter & Gamble (PG), Electronic Arts
(ERTS), and National Semiconductor (NSM), have given some of their
employees an unusual assignment: play a free online game.

Admittedly, it's not a typical entertainment video game, with
sophisticated 3D graphics, fantastical characters, or shoot-'em-up plots.
And the corporations aren't just allowing workers to have fun on the job.
Instead, the game, called Superstruct, asks players to imagine the world
in 2019.

They're asked to consider a series of future scenarios, including a
respiratory disease pandemic, a global food shortage, or a refugee crisis.
Then they write blog posts, upload videos, and enter discussions on social
networking sites such as Facebook to paint a picture of life in those
conditions. For the players, it's an exercise of the imagination. For the
supporting firms, it's an experiment with the idea of future-scenario
planning using the game as a collaboration tool.

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The Crisis Last Time
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/books/review/Parker-t.html?_r=1&ref=books&oref=slogin

For writers who seek to influence public affairs, timing plays a paramount
role. And few writers have had better timing than Adolf Augustus Berle.

In the summer of 1932, with America trapped in the greatest financial
crisis in its history, Berle published "The Modern Corporation and Private
Property," a scholarly yet readable analysis of America's largest
companies and their managers. Berle is largely forgotten today, yet with
that book he succeeded in persuading Americans to see their economic
system in a new way - and helped set the stage for the most fundamental
realignment of power since abolition.

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Design Thinking and Marketing
http://designmind.frogdesign.com/blog/design-thinking-and-marketing.html

"I was interviewed by BrandWeek the other day for a story on the recent
hype around "Design Thinking" in marketing. They were looking for a
skeptic and found me. First of all, it is worth noting that the term
"design thinking" is of course a clever marketing buzzword. It's ironic
that marketers themselves embrace it as the next big thing as it doesn't
create a new marketing paradigm so much as it proves that marketers are
prone to being persuaded by their very own tricks. "Design Thinking" has
become a brand, and brands are all the more powerful when they present
themselves as memes.

But what does "design thinking" actually mean? Let's rely on the wisdom of
crowds and see how Wikipedia defines it:  "Design thinking is a process for
practical, creative resolution of problems or issues that looks for an
improved future result."  Wow. Isn't that what every single task in
business is about? Or, for that matter, every single action in life? The
rest of the paragraph adds some more specifics: "Unlike analytical
thinking, design thinking is a creative process based around the "building
up" of ideas. There are no judgments in design thinking. This eliminates
the fear of failure and encourages maximum input and participation.
Outside the box thinking is encouraged in this process since this can
often lead to creative solutions." Hmm…ok.

Some Design Thinkers herald Design Thinking as the ultimate problem solver
for business, social, and political challenges. The current financial
meltdown? A lack of design thinking. Our health care sytem? Design
Thinking can fix it. The HIV crisis in Africa? Make sure to apply Design
Thinking. Granted, design is a fundamental responsibility for
organizations in all sectors of our society, and it is absolutely critical
in addressing problems of all kinds. But the quest that everybody should
think like a designer is not the non plus ultra formula. Or, as Raymond
Loewy, the famous industrial designer, pointed out wryly: "Design is too
important to be left to designers."

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World's most efficient solar cells created
http://www.sciencealert.com.au/news/20082410-18340-2.html

"The University of New South Wales: ARC Photovoltaic Centre of Excellence
has reported the first silicon solar cell to achieve the milestone of 25
per cent efficiency.

The UNSW ARC Photovoltaic Centre of Excellence already held the world
record of 24.7 per cent for silicon solar cell efficiency. Now a revision
of the international standard by which solar cells are measured, has
delivered the significant 25 per cent record to the team led by Professors
Martin Green and Stuart Wenham and widened their lead on the rest of the
world.

Centre Executive Research Director, Scientia Professor Martin Green, said
the new world mark in converting incident sunlight into electricity was
one of six new world records claimed by UNSW for its silicon solar
technologies."

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Time Magazine - 50 Best Inventions of 2008
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,,1852747,00.html

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How the Netbook Will Convert the Anti-Cloud Computing Crowd
http://mashable.com/2008/11/01/netbook-cloud-computing/

"Don't think cloud computing is a wonderful thing? Wait until everyone and
their mother has a netbook in hand.

Yeah, you know, those small Wi-Fi-happy machines sporting 8-13” screens,
flash-based storage drives, Intel Atom central processors, etcetera,
etcetera.

For a large portion of the global population, even those in well-developed
regions, this might seem like really loose premise. Netbooks for everyone?
Why not get an full-on laptop? You can do more with your dollar! And any
simple tasks on the Web can be done with some of the smartphones making
the rounds on hardware review sites, right? Well, I'm not so sure….

…Not so much bigger, though. We recently shared a few notes on the netbook
space and how things are progressing in the field, both in hardware and
software. It's safe to say that in recent months, apart from the requisite
dotage on Apple's lineup of philosophically conventional MacBook and
MacBook Pro products, the market of netbooks has transferred to a
semi-front burner position in terms of attention grabbed and attention
earned.


And its quite clear why that is. The class of gadgets led by the Asus EEE
PC has performed in ways that would not be the case two or three years
ago, and it's mark as something of a phenomenon largely comes down to
price. Consumers can grab a fairly well-equipped netbook from the current
crop of options for an average of $300-500. (According to recent news,
Asus may launch a $200 offering next year.)

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The Lincoln Highway Association
http://www.lincolnhighwayassoc.org/info/

&

A Ride Along the Lincoln Highway - A Rick Seback documentary
http://www.wqed.org/tv/sebak/lincoln_hwy/

"The idea of the Lincoln Highway came from the fertile mind of Carl
Fisher, the man also responsible for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and
Miami Beach. With help from fellow industrialists Frank Seiberling and
Henry Joy, an improved, hard-surfaced road was envisioned that would
stretch almost 3400 miles from coast to coast, New York to San Francisco,
over the shortest practical route.

The Lincoln Highway Association was created in 1913 to promote the road
using private and corporate donations. The idea was embraced by an
enthusiastic public, and many other named roads across the country
followed.

Americans' enthusiasm for good roads led to the involvement of the federal
government in building roads and the creation of numbered U.S. routes in
the 1920s. The Federal Highway Administration and the Interstate Highway
System is the culmination of these efforts."

AC: I just learned of the Lincoln Highway this weekend via Rick Seback's
documentary broadcast on Public Television. A fascinating part of
American history, made even more personal considering that Frank
Sieberling, referenced above, was my wife's great grandfather!

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A Better World By Design - Upcoming Conference
http://www.abetterworldbydesign.com/

Design is a powerful tool. It makes technology accessible to the masses.
It sets apart innovative companies from also-rans. It is the single
leading force in the modern creative economy. But a growing number of
designers, engineers, and economists are suddenly realizing design's
massive potential to make the world a better place.

Of the 6.7 billion people on planet earth, half live on less than $2 a
day. One third lacks access to basic sanitation. This is a problem of
massive proportions. But most shocking is the realization that the design
solution is simpler and cheaper than any product designed for the
developed world.

At the same time, we notice with increasing alarm the rapidity of
environmental degradation. Climate change, deforestation, and pollution
challenge designers to consider sustainability at the core of their
practice. When approached with careful consideration, ecological design
has generated some of the most elegant works of our time.

What are designers doing to address these critical issues facing today's
world? How are engineers developing new technologies to improve life on
earth? Where are entrepreneurs finding surprising opportunities in this
mess? A Better World by Design will attempt to address these questions by
demonstrating what professionals and academics are doing to promote
sustainable development and change the world for the better.

Over three days, you will hear from dozens of industry leaders about novel
approaches and solutions to extreme poverty, access to basic resources,
and environmental degradation. Workshops will put theory to practice in
the spirit of engineering. And at night, get ready to let loose at our
mixer and gala!

Design for a better world is often user-centered, affordable, and simple.
As E.F. Schumacher famously put it, "small is beautiful." The urgency of
today's global crises is making this approach to appropriate technology
more relevant than ever.

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Microsoft Goes Far Afield to Study Emerging Markets
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/27/technology/companies/27microsoft.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin

Some of Microsoft's top researchers spend their time thinking about
complex software, algorithms and security systems. Others contemplate
azolla - an aquatic fern fed to cattle in the hopes of increasing milk
production.

The azolla experts are part of a nine-person team at Microsoft Research
India that approaches the technology of emerging markets in unconventional
ways. These computer scientists say they have the freedom to forget about
PCs and software altogether as they tackle problems. Most often, they rely
on a mix of sociology and empirical testing to see whether quirky ideas
can make technology useful to those who have heretofore lived without it.
A project called Digital Green, for instance, flourished only after
Microsoft tried a "Farmer Idol" approach - a rather rustic take on the
"American Idol" singing contest featuring local farmers.

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A Workbook on Doing Disruptive Innovation Effectively
http://www.fastforwardblog.com/2008/10/23/a-workbook-on-doing-disruptive-innovation-effectively/

The Innovator's Guide to Growth is the newest installment in a series of
books articulating and explicating Prof. Clay Christensen's theory of
disruptive innovation. This hands on guide packages some of the insights
developed as an outgrowth of the consulting work of Innosight, LLC, the
consulting firm founded by Christensen to pursue the practical insights
from his research at the Harvard Business School. If innovation is part of
your current or prospective job description, this needs to be on your
shelf (after you've read it, of course).

Christensen's theories of disruptive innovation appeared first with the
publication of The Innovator's Dilemma in 1997. During the worst excesses
of the dotcom boom, every start up business plan including an obligatory
head nod to Christensen and an assertion that their business model was
truly disruptive. Who doesn't want to be innovative; ideally disruptively
so. Christensen and his colleagues have continued to develop his theories
in The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth,
Seeing What's Next: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry
Change, and now The Innovator's Guide to Growth.

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What is a Design Attitude and Why Would a Manager Care?
http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/fred-collopy/manage-designing/what-design-attitude-and-why-would-manager-care

Becoming a professional includes cultivating certain attitudes. And part
of what it means for managers to be designers in addition to being
analysts, leaders, and deciders is to cultivate an attitude that
complements the attitudes they have developed in those other roles. In the
opening chapter of Managing as Designing (Stanford University Press 2004),
Dick Boland and I summarized Nobel laureate Herbert Simon's arguments for
cultivating such an attitude.

"To summarize Simon's argument very briefly, humans have a limited
cognitive capacity for reasoning when searching for a solution within a
problem space. Given the relatively small size of our brain's working
memory, we can only consider a few aspects of any situation and can only
analyze them in a few ways. This is also true of computers, although the
constraints are less obvious. The problem space that a manager deals with
in her mind or in her computer is dependent on the way she represents the
situation that she faces. The first step in any problem-solving episode is
representing the problem, and to a large extent, that representation has
the solution hidden within it (pp. 8-9)."

In an article recently published in Organization Studies ("Uncovering
Design Attitude: Inside the Culture of Designers," 2008, pp. 373-392),
Kamil Michlewski reports on interviews that he did with 14 people at IDEO,
Philips Design, Nissan Design and Wolff Olins. His interview subjects had
training in industrial and interaction design (nine of them) and
management (three); one studied experimental psychology and computer
science and another was an historian and entrepreneur. The goal of the
interviews was to ascertain the characteristics of a design attitude. In
coding the interviews he came up with five core categories or themes.
Taken together they provide an interesting picture of what it means to
take on a design attitude.

The first theme is related to the role that designers play in
consolidating and reconciling contradictory meanings and objectives. This
includes blending the analytic and synthetic or balancing deep humanistic
understandings with technical considerations…

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Icharts - Public Beta Release
http://www.icharts.net/

I have previously mentioned ICharts. These are flash-based embeddable
charts that can be manipulated by users. The beta is now available where
you can view and manipulated sample charts.

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Tech Knowledge Key in Today's Workplace
http://www.creativeclass.com/creative_class/2008/10/27/technology-knowledge-key-in-todays-workplace/

New technologies have been the main catalyst for workplace changes since
2005. Demographic change (including a talent crunch) and the rise of the
knowledge economy are also key components but it was not until mobile
technology became powerful that major changes became more commonplace.
Technology enables workplaces to be flexible and workers to be mobile.
Demographic change and the rise of the creative economy makes this
desirable as maximizing the productivity and creative process of every
worker is essential - even or especially during economic slow down.
The International Association of Administrative Professionals offers tips
that actually apply to almost anyone working in a creative of
knowledge-based industry today. Everyone needs to understand the
technologies in the office, the tools and information available on the
Internet, and how to harness all of this.

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Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria Announced
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008885.html

A coalition of environmental organizations and travel businesses is
forming a global sustainability standard for tourism.

More travelers are desiring sustainable vacations and more destinations
are seeking to lessen the impacts of rising visitor numbers. But tourists
who want to leave a lighter footprint must currently choose among some 300
different sustainable tourism standards, members of the Partnership for
Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria said Monday at the launch of their
criteria at the World Conservation Union (IUCN) World Congress in
Barcelona.

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Idea Paint
http://www.ideapaint.com/

IdeaPaint is a patent-pending single-coat roller-applied paint that
transforms any smooth surface into a high performance dry-erase writing
surface. IdeaPaint is perfect for the conference room, creative spaces,
classrooms, home offices, kids rooms, playrooms… or any other spaces.

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Metadata fundamentals for intranets and websites
http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_metadata/index.html

Metadata is a topic that almost invariably comes up when creating or
refreshing a website or intranet.

While basic metadata is routinely captured by most publishing tools,
including content management systems and portals, there is still
widespread confusion about its uses and limits.

Common questions include:

• How important is metadata?
• What metadata should we be capturing? 
• How is it created? 
• Where and when is it used? 
• Should we be implementing simple or complex metadata?

This article explores the fundamentals of metadata, as it relates to
common intranet and website needs.

Standard metadata fields will be explored, and advice given on how to use
metadata successfully, within typical organizational environments.

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