All-inclusive Randomness

For all the web explorers too lazy/busy to spend much time exploring, there’s a great site that has all sorts of “how do I?” links. Besides being interesting it’s also pretty useful. In the limited amount of my morning procrastination time I checked out some of the links. I liked the idea behind Writely, a document publishing and sharing tool, as well as Dropload — which lets you upload files you want to share with people (!) and leaves them on the server for 7 days. Num Sum lets you share spreadsheets — interesting idea, but haven’t had time to test how well it works. I bet you’re not able to upload spreadsheets you already have. A promising one is H2O — “playlists” of reading and notes on an “intellectual topic” for nerds who want to share.

And finally, two more random things: a funny take on search; and a site that generates a colored map of all the countries you’ve visited. Mine looks O.K., but there’s still a lot to cover

create your own visited country map

A genius idea for picking up geeky boys: Where else if not at TagCamp???? No, seriously, I love the low-key business culture of Silicon Valley.

Yummy, a Google RSS reader. I also heard something somewhere about someone somehow (i’m being annoying, i know) searching RSS feeds. But I’m too lazy to google it right now. You can do it yourself.

Two cool webtoys - by way of lacunae, Douglas Wolk’s blog. Both by Richard McGuire.

Willing to Try.

not4long. (move your mouse around the page.)

also probably the last person to not know about icerocket.

i am very tempted to comment on their logo. i don’t want to have to say it. where is gohar when you need her?

This is so deja-vu. “Wild” ideas of local wireless LANs and such ARE being implemented out there. Project PlaceSite, based at SIMS at Berkeley, introduces a new way of using wireless networks — to create digital community services by, for and about people who are together in the same physical place. When you are somewhere with wireless, the page that loads when you open your browser is a PlaceSite page that tells you where you are and shows you all the other people in that location, who can choose to share as much or as little information about themselves as they want. It doesn’t require special software or hardware, it’s been tested in a coffee shop in Berkeley, it will launch in cafes around the Bay Area soon (?), and then the code will be released as an open source project. And I have a (geek) crush on all three founders. All in all, sounds like a great project.

On a more academic level:
- they’re asking some interesting questions, like ->What information, if any, would people like to share digitally with others in the same public place? How will the introduction of a digital information service by, for and about people in a physical café affect social interactions in that café? All in the context of larger questions about the effects of pervasive computing, aiming to use it to “strengthen community” and to maximize its social benefit…
- they’re working with interesting key concepts such as the “zombie effect” or “the third place”. my eyes hurt, need to print and read over coffee.

Oh, and the “related work” link on the page is now sending me off on an A.D.D. trip, wanting to look into this all RIGHT NOW instead of doing whatever it is I am supposed to. I don’t even remember.

Google now has a specialized search for blogs. Oh, life is getting easy.

theslovak is my primary/only audience, which is good because she and I are the only two left on the internet who haven’t seen this rigorous scientific experiment where Vladimir™ thru Brita™ made Ketel One™. Or something like that.

Ephemera is a journal writing on all aspects of organization, both theory and practice. Their latest issue is devoted to ‘The Organisation and Politics of Social Forums”.

Interesting sites are popping up that try to put a finger on the buzz in diferent areas. The whole concept of “buzz” itself it pretty interesting. I didn’t find any super-thrilling ones yet, but they all seem useful if you’re interested in what people are buzzing about these days. For example, daypop offers a view into the blogs and news as well as a neat feature on Amazon wishlists. SourceForge is more techie, ranking open-source project in progress. Blogdex shows “most contagious information currently spreading in the weblog community” and Google Zeitgeist features most popular searches etc (the list makes you wonder about the state of the world though). I know, we’re all unique individuals and we’re not supposed to follow the herd, but it’s interesting to see what’s going on out there, non?

First two are a courtesy of Dan, who “researches” these sites for work. Engadget features cool geeky products and so does MocoLoco, but with more of a design obsession. And, We Make Money Not Art is a classic…

SideStep is by far the neatest search engine for flights. It seems to work on a princple very similar to Oodle. Specialized search engines may really be the way to go. I swear there’s no professrional bias here.

On Monday, July 18 at SRI — seminar abstract: Advances in repository technology have not “solved the problem of knowledge sharing.” The problem does not arise from the “noun-like” properties of “knowledge” but a failure to grasp the “verb-like” qualities of “sharing.” This distinction is related to that between product-centric and process-centric approaches to knowledge management; but the characteristics of a verb-based strategy have origins that precede knowledge management and reach back to the time of Aristotle. Furthermore, they are based not in Aristotle’s investigations of logic but in the principles of his “Poetics.” It is demonstrated how this study provides instructions for making knowledge sharable; and the lessons of those instructions are shown to apply to both work practices and technologies that support those work practices. Keywords: knowledge sharing, imitation, work practices, narrative, Eureka, distributed cognition, learning, innovation, communication, Web-based communities

more info…

Part of an ongoing search effort, defined more as accidental stumbling-upon — the internet really wants you to publish your shtuff. For xample on First Monday, “a peer-reviewed journal on the internet”, or CTHEORY, “an international peer-reviewed journal of theory, technology, and culture.” Ideas?