The World, Filtered*

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.

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!

Ray Ozzie: Reflections on Azure - Channel 9 Interview
http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Charles/Ray-Ozzie-Reflections-on-Azure/

Microsoft CSA Ray Ozzie joins us for a quick chat (you can imagine how
busy he is...) about the complexities of designing and implementing the
Azure Services Platform, his key take-aways from the past two days at PDC
and his guiding architectural principles for Azure (for those who know
Ray, he is a staunch advocate for simplicity and adherence to protocols
that already exist and are widely used).

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What Ray Ozzie sees in Azure's cloud
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10076765-56.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

In 2005, Ray Ozzie talked about the coming Live services push and what it
would mean. He sent a big memo and held an event in San Francisco. Then he
set to work and got pretty darn quiet.

Sure, we got some hints along the way, especially earlier this year when
Microsoft launched a preview of Live Mesh.

On Monday, Ozzie finally talked about what he's been up to. Microsoft
launched Windows Azure, essentially its long-rumored Cloud OS.
In an interview after his keynote on Monday, Ozzie talked about what Azure
means for developers, businesses, and even the everyman.
Here's an edited transcript...

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Map of Newspaper Endorsements in the 2008 US Presidential Election
http://infochimps.org/static/gallery/politics/endorsements_map/endorsements_map.html

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Idee
http://www.ideeinc.com/

TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image
identification technology. Given an image to search for, TinEye tells you
where and how that image appears all over the web - even if it has been
modified.

Just as you are familiar with entering text in a regular search engine
such as Google to find web pages that contain that text, TinEye lets you
submit an image to find web pages that contain that image.