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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Automake Makes
http://www.fabbaloo.com/2008/12/automake-makes.html
 
"What do they make? Objects you design, or at least "co-design".
 
It's a very interesting concept, somewhat reminiscent of the approaches
used by Shapeways, Ponoko and other consumer-oriented 3D print services.
 
Here's the issue: printers can produce objects from 3D models, but where
do the models come from? It turns out that you need quite a few skills to
use complex 3D software to produce useful 3D models from scratch. Skills
few consumers have, and even if they do, they probably don't have time to
use them.
 
The emerging solution seems to be to assist the consumer by partially
building the model. New services provide software to select a base model
and then the consumer customizes it by selecting colors, materials, size
and shape variations, etc.
 
Automake is similar. Their software allows you to either select a "mould"
or generate one using mathematical techniques. Then you select
combinations of sub-shapes to "fill" the mold. The resulting artifacts are
quite interesting.
 
While Automake appears to be a research project, it's an intriguing idea
that could possibly be made into a commercial consumer-oriented 3D print
service. Imagine a vast library of moulds and "fills", with the ability to
combine all together into a variety of wild objects."
 
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Culture Jamming Google Street View
http://threeminds.organic.com/2008/12/culture_jamming_google_street.html
 
"...A group of people living on Sampsonia Way, located in the North of
Pittsburgh, decided to bring to the street to life when the Google Street
View cameras came by. Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley, the people behind the
project, gathered neighbors and other participants to create staged scenes
including a sword fight, parade, marathon, band practice, and more. The
Street View cameras captured the activity via 360-degree photographs, as
the snapshots became forever preserved in Google Maps."
 
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Top 10 Enterprise Web Products of 2008
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_10_enterprise_web_products_2008.php
 
"Enterprise adoption of cloud computing, SaaS, and social media (whatever
you want to call it) is accelerating. This is a healthy market, in which
vendors are doing well in a tough economy. As we near the end of a year
that will go down in history with the words "meltdown," "panic," "crisis,"
and "depression" attached, it is time to celebrate the winners in this
market, enterprise-focused web products that are already doing well and
poised for even greater success in 2009."
 
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2008's Best Books on Innovation
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/dec2008/id20081215_635136.htm?campaign_id=rss_innovate
 
Old-fashioned ink and paper may have been supplemented with blogs, wikis,
and YouTube (GOOG) videos, but many of the top thinkers who focus on
innovation published high-profile books in 2008. Our editors and staff
writers read and reviewed most of them, interviewing their authors, and
often asking, "Why write this book now?"
 
With highly anticipated titles - including four co-authored by Harvard
Business School Professor Clayton Christensen - we had our hands full. But
in distilling the year's books into a top-10 of innovation-related titles,
we didn't want to include every obvious business-press offering, or simply
opt for publications with the word "innovation" displayed prominently in
their titles. Nor did we want to choose something simply because it
carried the imprimatur of a reputable press or the byline of a star
author.
 
Instead, we asked ourselves whether a book had an original thesis, tapped
into a trend that seemed clearly part of the zeitgeist, or simply provoked
us, making us think differently about the world or how better to monetize,
mix, or manage fresh ideas. Our goal was to offer a selection that in
itself might seem unexpected and forward-thinking. Together, they make for
a well-rounded (and heavy) bookshelf that provides a smart approach to
defining and executing innovation today."
 
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What is Design Thinking
http://metacool.typepad.com/metacool/2008/10/roger.html
 
"Here's a great interview with Roger Martin, Dean of Rotman.
 
He provides a very crisp definition of what design thinking is about. Design thinking is about creating better things, while traditional
analytic thinking is about choosing between things. We need both, but
surely the world would be in a better place if there was a bit more design
thinking in play out there. Which is why we now have places like Rotman
and the d.school and the entire design thinking movement.
 
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The Discipline of Content Strategy
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/thedisciplineofcontentstrategy
 
"We, the people who make websites, have been talking for fifteen years
about user experience, information architecture, content management
systems, coding, metadata, visual design, user research, and all the other
disciplines that facilitate our users -  abilities to find and consume
content.
 
Weirdly, though, we haven't been talking about the meat of the matter. We
haven't been talking about the content itself.
 
Yeah, yeah. We know how to write for online readers. We know bullet lists
pwn.
 
But who among us is asking the scary, important questions about content,
such as "What's the point?" or "Who cares?" Who's talking about the
time-intensive, complicated, messy content development process? Who's
overseeing the care and feeding of content once it's out there, clogging
up the tubes and dragging down our search engines?
 
As a community, we're rather quiet on the matter of content. In fact, we
appear to have collectively, silently come to the conclusion that content
is really somebody else's problem - "the client can do it," "the users will
generate it" - so we, the people who make websites, shouldn't have to worry
about it in the first place."
 
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What's All the Fighting For?
http://www.good.is/?p=14054
 
A "Good" infographic highlighting major civil and international conflicts.
 
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Mind Mapping: Best Tools To Draw Your Own MindMaps - Sharewood Guide
http://www.masternewmedia.org/mind-mapping-best-tools-to-draw-your-own-mindmaps/
 
"Are you looking for an effective way to collaborate and organize ideas
with other people? If you're still into voice and text chat, you might
want to give mind mapping a try. Mind mapping is a cool way to share your
ideas in total freedom, without the need to follow a structured approach,
but just shooting your best thoughts as they come out of your head. And
the good news is that there are many tools online that let you draw your
own mindmaps. Today, I scouted the Web to suggest you the best ones."

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