Ignite @ Google I/O; Submit Your Talk

Ignite is coming to Google I/O later this month. On May 27th, the first afternoon of the conference, I'll be hosting an Ignite at the Moscone Center. As with all Ignites each speaker will only get 20 slides that each auto-advance every 15 seconds for a total of five minutes. We'll be looking for talks that geeks will like.... http://ping.fm/WhXAG

Is Twitter making us stupider?

InformationWeek's Fritz Nelson ponders the question, and discusses it with me in a podcast. Nelson also points to a memorable video clip that I somehow missed, in which Stephen Colbert clears up the confusion about the proper perfect-tense form of the verb "to twitter": This may well be my most multimediatastic post ever.... http://ping.fm/7540D

Tim writes a book

Tim wrote a book. The title of Tim's book is The Twitter Book. Tim didn't use a pen to write his book. Tim didn't even use a word processor to write his book. Tim used PowerPoint to write his book. Tim wrote his book very fast, as fast, he says, as he writes "a new talk." There are pictures in Tim's book. Pictures, Tim says, "are a memorable, entertaining way to tell a story." Tim says he is "reinventing the book in the age of the web." Tim's book was a lot easier to write than an old-fashioned book would... http://ping.fm/yJt1h

Reinventing the Book in the Age of the Web

There's a lot of excitement about ebooks these days, and rightly so. While Amazon doesn't release sales figures for the Kindle, there's no question that it represents a turning point in the public perception of ebook devices. And of course, there's Stanza, an open ebook platform for the iPhone, which has been downloaded more than a million times (and now has been bought by Amazon.) But simply putting books onto electronic devices is only the beginning. http://ping.fm/8it4g

Jack Dangermond Interview 2 of 3: Sharing Government GIS Data

Jack Dangermond is the founder and CEO of ESRI. ESRI's software is used by every level of government around the world. You can see ESRI's influence in online mapping tools from Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! and FortiusOne. I had the opportunity to interview him over the phone on April 20, 2009. In this portion of the interview we discuss the history of GIS and online mapping. Jack will be speaking at Where 2.0 on May 20th in San Jose. You can use whr09rdr for 20% off at registration. http://tinyurl.com/c9c5cl

Four short links: 30 Apr 2009

Ypulse Conference -- conference on marketing to youth with technology, from the very savvy Anastasia Goodstein who runs the interesting Ypulse blog on youth culture that I've raved about before. Register with the code RADAR for a 10% discount (thanks, Anastasia!). Government in the Global Village -- departing post by the NZ CIO (and Kiwi Foo Camper) Laurence Millar.... http://tinyurl.com/czdhqh

Jack Dangermond Interview 1 of 3: Web Mapping

Jack Dangermond is the founder and CEO of ESRI. ESRI's software is used by every level of government around the world. You can see ESRI's influence in online mapping tools from Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! and FortiusOne. I had the opportunity to interview him over the phone on April 20, 2009. In this portion of the interview we discuss the history... http://ping.fm/Tv5jC

Forge.mil Update and DISA Hacks Public Domain

Progress of open source initiatives at DISA. http://ping.fm/6Xivp

The fickle Twitterer

The biggest crowd on the web today is the one streaming through Twitter's entryway. The second biggest crowd on the web today is the one streaming through Twitter's exit. Twitter's recent growth has been explosive, even by web standards. The number of Twitter users doubled last month, reaching an estimated 14 million. This month, with Ashton's Million Follower March and Oprah's First Tweet, the Twitter flock has almost certainly swelled even more quickly. Everybody who's anybody is giving Twitter a whirl. But a whirl does not a relationship make. According to a study out today from Nielsen, most people who... http://ping.fm/bAzAx

Ignite Seattle (and elsewhere) Tomorrow, 4/29

Ignite Seattle 6 is tomorrow, Wednesday 4/29, at the King Cat Theatre. Ignite Seattle is free. We've got a great line-up of speakers. Here's the evening's schedule: 7PM - Doors Open 7:30 PM - Paper Tower Contest Begins - Build the tallest tower you can out of just 5 sheets of paper and tape (See Details) 8:30 - First Set... http://ping.fm/tmHSM

How Big Data Impacts Analytics

Research for our just published report on Big Data management technologies, included conversations with teams who are at the forefront of analyzing massive data sets. We were particularly impressed with the work being produced by Linkedin's analytics team. [We have more details on Linkedin's analytics team, in an article in the upcoming issue of Release 2.0.] At the second Social... http://ping.fm/6lvfV

Four short links: 28 Apr 2009

Flickr Users' Traces Make Accidental Maps -- David Crandall and colleagues at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, analysed the data attached to 35 million photographs uploaded to the Flickr website to create accurate global and city maps and identify popular snapping sites. (via straup on delicious) MW 2009 Wrapup (Powerhouse Museum) -- summary of the Museums and the... http://ping.fm/xLXFk

Trying to Track Swine Flu Across Cities in Realtime

John Geraci is a guest blogger and heads up the DIY City movement. He will be speaking about DIY City at Where 2.0 in San Jose on 5/20. Since early last friday, when I got a tip about swine flu in Mexico City from a health researcher, the team that does SickCity has been working to make the system something... http://ping.fm/qEkhk

Your brain really is forgetting... a LOT

I'm currently reading Welcome to Your Brain: Why You Lose Your Car Keys but Never Forget How to Drive and Other Puzzles of Everyday Life by Dr. Sandra Aamodt and Dr. Sam Wang. The enormity of the title notwithstanding, I'm enjoying the book, and ran across this rather amazing quotation:

There is good evidence that we "erase" and "rewrite" our memories every time we call them, suggesting that if it were ever possible to erase specific content, playing it back first might be an essential component. http://ping.fm/2BIs2

Four short links: 27 Apr 2009

Google Server and Data Center Details -- Greg Linden reports on a Efficient Data Center Summit. Google uses single volt power and on-board uninterruptible power supply to raise efficiency at the motherboard from the norm of 65-85% to 99.99%. There is a picture of the board on slide 17. (and this is a 2005 board). Greg has left Microsoft... http://tinyurl.com/dhv7at

The unripened word

He was off by two centuries and a medium or two, but it was, nevertheless, the great French writer and bureaucrat Alphonse Marie Louis de Prat de Lamartine who, in an 1831 letter, foretold all: Before this century shall have run out, Journalism will be the whole press - the whole human thought. Since that prodigious multiplication art has given to speech - to be multiplied a thousand-fold yet - mankind will write their book day by day, hour by hour, page by page. Thought will spread abroad in the world with the rapidity of light; instantly conceived, instantly written,... http://ping.fm/k3NTg

Four short links: 24 Apr 2009

Data, fonts, transparency, and exceptions: Performance Comparison: Key/Value Stores for Language Model Counts (Brendan O'Connor) -- sort-of benchmarking for the various distributed key-value stores. One of the first efforts to systematically investigate in such a way that there can be informed comment on value and quality of the alternatives. (via mattb's delicious stream) Typographica's Favourite Fonts of 2008 -- what... http://ping.fm/ZCvDr

Locavore's Open Data

Buster McLeod is taking an "open data" policy towards his latest project, Locavore the iPhone app, by revealing the first month's stats. Locavore is a great app that helps you eat locally by showing you what produce is in season near you and what farmer's markets you can buy it at. It's a well-designed app that I look forward... http://ping.fm/FOuLf

Windows 7 Starter Pushes the Web and IE

I run XP on my netbook and I've been looking forward to running Windows 7 on it. So I've been watching news about Windows 7 with interest. There is much discussion this week that the low-priced Starter Edition will only let you run three apps at a time. If you want to run more then you'll have to pay... http://ping.fm/ROs8u

Ignite Show: Jonathan Kahan on Samurai Swords as Cutting Edge Technology

A katana (commonly called a samurai sword) is a marvel of art and technology. In this week's Ignite Episode, Jonathan Kahan walks us through its creation and usage. This was filmed at Ignite NYC 3. The next Ignite NYC will be held on 6/1. This week the show is introduced by Andrew Hyde of Ignite Boulder and Techstars. The... http://ping.fm/bjTKE

Building Bridges with the U.S. Intelligence Community

Guest blogger Jeffrey Carr is a cyber intelligence expert, Principal of GreyLogic, columnist for Symantec's Security Focus, and author who specializes in the investigation of cyber attacks against governments and infrastructures by State and Non-State hackers. Jeff is the Principal Investigator for Project Grey Goose, an Open Source intelligence investigation into the Russian cyber attacks on Georgia in August,... http://ping.fm/paTvb

Four short links: 22 Apr 2009

Government, Bayes, SMS, and distributed keystores: Government Projects the Agile Way -- Can It Be Done? (NZ Government) -- notes and audio from a workshop at the New Zealand State Services Commission looking to merge agile and government. The pullquotes are mostly generic about agile, but the important thing is that there are agile projects within government and their numbers... http://ping.fm/GjIwX

Writing for nonreaders in the postprint era

The syllabus. I'm particularly looking forward to Week Two.... http://ping.fm/b2XHy

Four short links: 21 Apr 2009

Space arrays, mobile hell, book scanners, and open source brains: Great Brazilian Sat-Hack Crackdown (Wired) -- Satellite hackers in Brazil are bouncing ham signals off a disused US military satellite array. Truck drivers love the birds because they provide better range and sound than ham radios. Rogue loggers in the Amazon use the satellites to transmit coded warnings when authorities... http://ping.fm/Fg6Bv

Clutter

Tim Bray, the software writer and self-professed "sicko deranged audiophile," is getting rid of his jewel cases. He's been ripping his large collection of CDs into digital files and tweaking his hifi setup to play music off hard drives rather than disks. "I can’t wait to shovel the disks into boxes or binders or whatever, and regain a few square feet of wall," he says. I'm with him there. The CD jewel case is the single worst technology ever invented by man. It defines, in a truly Platonic sense, the term "piece of crap." Now, Bray is looking forward to... http://ping.fm/YpREg

Where 2.0 Preview - DARPA's TIGR Project Helps Platoons Stay Alive

Soldiers on the ground need to know the territory they patrol like the back of their hand. Knowing where insurgents like to plant IEDs or that an important political leader lives in a certain house can prove the difference between success and failure. But what happens when a platoon transfers out of Baghdad and a brand new one moves in? All that experience used to go out the window. But thanks to TIGR, a map-based knowledge-base developed by DARPA, platoons can now document information they learn on patrol, as well as accessing the latest intelligence. In this interview, hear how TIGR was developed, how it is helping troops stay alive and perform their missions better, and what the realities of deploying a brand new technology into a war zone are. http://ping.fm/koqG3

The Lean Startup Talk From Web 2.0 Expo

View more presentations from Venture hacks One of our most popular talks at the Web 2.0 Expo SF was Eric Ries' The Lean Startup: a Disciplined Approach to Imagining, Designing, and Building New Products. I've embedded an audio version of his slides above. Eric recommends the talk for people who want to: Identify a profitable business model faster and... http://ping.fm/0T7Ph

Big iron: The ultimate cloud platform?

Get out your notepads and get ready for the mainframe resurgence. Tell your friends you heard it here. I'm not talking about a UNIVAC comeback, or Burroughs Large 2.0. I'm telling you, dear readers, that now's a good time to invest in the few remaining big iron dealers: IBM, Unisys, Hitachi, and Fujitsu, baby. Why, you ask? Because mainframes solve the cloud's impending challenges.

read more

http://ping.fm/hVnlI

Active Facebook Users By Country

Since I last posted numbers on Facebook's user base six week ago, the company has added close to 20 million active users. I've had a few requests for detailed numbers by country so I quickly assembled an update for each of the regions shown above.... http://ping.fm/4saHQ

Why Aneesh Chopra is a Great Choice for Federal CTO

The news has now been leaked that President Obama intends to nominate Aneesh Chopra as the nation's first Chief Technology Officer. The Federal CTO will be an assistant to the President, as well as the Associate Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. He will work closely with Vivek Kundra, the recently-named Federal CIO, to develop... http://ping.fm/lBIbI

Four Short Links: 17 Apr 2009

Twitter (not THAT story, though), semantics, gardening, and netbook supercomputers: Retweet Radar -- the phrases showing up in heavily retweeted posts. This is another feature that should be incorporated into desktop clients. Three of the top 10 terms as retweeted by the General Public are "Ashton", "CNN", "followers"; if I wanted to read this drivel, I'd buy US Magazine. The... http://ping.fm/F8FHH

The Change We Need: DIY on a Civic Scale

I've been working a lot lately to imagine what Government 2.0 might look like. One of the most inspiring and thought-provoking stories I've read recently might not look like a Gov 2.0 story, but it is: Island DIY: Kauai residents don't wait for state to repair road. Their livelihood was being threatened, and they were tired of waiting for government... http://ping.fm/fQwIa

Hashmobs

Forget flashmobs. The new thing is the hashmob. A flashmob is, in case it's slipped your mind, "a large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual action for a brief time, then quickly disperse." The term is, as Wikipedia continues, "generally applied only to gatherings organized via social media or viral emails, rather than those organized by public relations firms or for a publicity stunt." Flashmobs had their moment of near-fame back in the middle years of this decade. I believe they were particularly popular in Finland. Flashmobs were okay, but they had a... http://ping.fm/c05Bd

Does the cloud really need a manifesto?

The open cloud manifesto sparked debate and speculation in just about every corner of the Internet.

read more

http://ping.fm/oGAwp

A Telling Map of Job Losses

Slate's Moneybox has an interactive map that shows job creation and loss throughout the US for the past two years. Watching it flow through each month's up and down definitely made the employment situation in the country clearer to me. Like any great visualization image and the legend make it very clear what's happening. Here's how Slate explains how... http://ping.fm/oypkd

Waiting for the Billionth Download

Over the next week, the iTunes App Store is set to record its billionth download, an impressive milestone given that it launched less than a year ago. Granted the actual usage of most apps is spotty. To mark the event, I'm updating a few charts that I produced for previous posts. Slightly over 35,000 apps have appeared in the U.S. app store. Over 31,000 were available in the last week alone, about 78% of which were PAID apps. http://tinyurl.com/dguuws

Where 2.0 Preview - Building the SENSEable City

A lot of information we have about cities comes through direct and intentioned observation and study, but could a lot of the time and expense spent on this research be garnered just as well by mining the data that citizens generate in their day-to-day lives through cell phone traffic and internet usage? That's one of the questions that Andrea Vaccari, a research associate at the MIT SENSEable City Lab, is trying to find out. Andrea will be speaking at the Where 2.0 Conference in May on the research that the SENSEable City Project is doing. http://ping.fm/khvCT

Ignite Show: Monica Guzman on Being an Awesome News Commenter

This week's Ignite Show features Seattle PI reporter Monica Guzman. She's spent most of her career writing for online properties and she's been able to watch learn what makes for a good conversation around a news item. As someone who also spends a lot of time publishing content online I can appreciate Monica's thoughts on good commenters and hearing... http://ping.fm/DbJOI

Practical Tips for Government Web Sites (And Everyone Else!) To Improve Their Findability in Search

In an earlier post, I said that key to government opening its data to citizens, being more transparent, and improving the relationship between citizens and government in light of our web 2.0 world was ensuring content on government sites could be easily found in search engines. Architecting sites to be search engine friendly, particularly sites with as much content and... http://ping.fm/WTzYu

Four short links: 15 Apr 2009

Computer archaeology, Unix, mad science, and data mining: NASA Images Saved By Volunteers -- Pictures from the mid-1960s Lunar Orbiter program lay forgotten for decades. But one woman was determined to see them restored. One woman and some keen hardware hackers who built Frankenstein's tape reader to recover the images. Not just a reminder of how ephemeral our media, but... http://ping.fm/lMmuG

. . . - - - . . .

On its homepage, Twitter cycles various blurbs about Twitter. One of them - "Twitter is the telegraph system of Web 2.0" - is attributed to me. I have absolutely no memory of writing that, but I've no doubt that I did. Well, a correspondent today pointed me to one of my ancient posts, from early 2007, in which that line appears. What was most amazing to me, though, is how neatly that old post fits into my current "The Realtime Chronicles" series. I even mention Baudrillard! It seems like an affront to the whole notion of realtime to recycle a... http://ping.fm/sijkU

Ignite Seattle Line-up

Ignite Seattle 6 will take place on 4/29 at the King Cat Theatre. Doors will open at 7PM and talk will start at 8:30PM. We are very grateful to be getting sponsorship from Google and Biznik. We'll feature 16 speakers doing great 5 minute talks and geek contest to kick off the night. We're still looking for 8 more... http://ping.fm/SSXCn

Where 2.0 Preview - Tyler Bell on Yahoo's Open Location Project

Location can be a vague concept to pin down. To a surveyor, location means latitude and longitude accurate to a few millimeters, while to a cab driver, a street address would be much more useful. If you're German, I can tell you that I live in the United States. To a Californian, I live in New Hampshire. And to someone from Manchester, I live in Derry. Unfortunately, the way that location is currently stored and presented online is both non-uniform and frequently at a level of precision inappropriate for the end-user. That's part of what Open Location is trying to fix. Tyler Bell, who took his doctorate from Oxford to Yahoo, is currently the product lead for the Yahoo Geo Technology Group. At O'Reilly's Where 2.0 Conference, he'll be discussing Open Location. http://ping.fm/kmXcM

Four short links: 14 Apr 2009

Open data, lean startups, RSS-as-newspaper, and a design call to arms: OpenSecrets Goes Open Data -- The following data sets, along with a user guide, resource tables and other documentation, are now available in CSV format (comma-separated values, for easy importing) through OpenSecrets.org's Action Center [...] : CAMPAIGN FINANCE: 195 million records dating to the 1989-1990 election cycle, tracking campaign... http://ping.fm/FctrM

Four short links: 13 Apr 2009

Worms, sorting, languages, and infrastructure: Twitter XSS Attacks (Lynne Pope) -- several incarnations of a worm spread quickly across Twitter this weekend. Twitter profiles are generated by themes, whose parameters users can change. The user-supplied value for the colour was used directly in the CSS color field without filtering, which the original worm strain used to end the CSS and... http://ping.fm/ujZg2

Tweenbots: Cute Beats Smart

If you wanted to build a robot that could go from one end of Washington Square Park to the other without your help how would you do it? How expensive in time and money would it be? Would you build or buy a navigation system? Construct a sensing system to detect obstacles? Or would you decide to take a... http://ping.fm/R1zHN

Four quick posts: 11 April 2009

[I love Nat's "Four short links" format and am ripping it off to try to get myself blogging again. Instead of links, these are four blog posts I've been meaning to write but haven't.] It turns out Facebook is not completely useless if you're married! And no, I'm not talking about the world's most overvalued Scrabble platform, and I don't... http://ping.fm/wdlIu

Revolution 2.0: Moldova and beyond

Evgeny Morozov, in blog posts for Foreign Policy, has helped spread the word about how anti-government protesters in Moldova last week used Twitter and Facebook to help coordinate their efforts. In his first post, titled Moldova's Twitter Revolution, he reported: If you asked me about the prospects of a Twitter-driven revolution in a low-tech country like Moldova a week ago, my answer would probably be a qualified "no". Today, however, I am no longer as certain ... Technology is playing an important role in facilitating [the current] protests, [with] huge mobilization eforts both on Twitter and Facebook ... All in... http://ping.fm/mxJ68

Becoming Location Aware: Where 2.0 Early Registration Ending 4/13

Despite the downturn the geolocation space is still active. This year's Where 2.0 conference will be highlighting the companies, technologies and people that make the industry go. Where 2.0 is happening in San Jose at the Fairmount Hotel from 5/19-21(the first day is workshops; the next two are all mainstage talks). Early registration ends this Tuesday, 4/13. You can... http://ping.fm/hapm9

Google in the middle

Three truths: 1. Google is a middleman made of software. It's a very, very large middleman made of software. Think of what Goliath or the Cyclops or Godzilla would look like if they were made of software. That's Google. 2. The middleman acts in the middleman's interest. 3. The broader the span of the middleman's control over the exchanges that take place in a market, the greater the middleman's power and the lesser the power of the suppliers. For much of the first decade of the Web's existence, we were told that the Web, by efficiently connecting buyer and seller,... http://ping.fm/Ifb0u

Where 2.0 Preview - Pelago's Jeff Holden on Creating Stories Out of Your Life

Tools like Twitter and Facebook have let people share in near real-time what they are doing. Now with a new generation of location aware mobile devices, you can tell your friends or the entire world where you're doing it. Jeff Holden's company, Pelago, is one of many trying to come up with a killer application that blends location, images, text and social networking to create a new kind of group awareness. Before starting Pelago, Jeff had a long career as the Senior Vice President of Consumer Websites for Amazon and before that, the Director of Supply Chain Optimization Systems. In this preview of his talk at Where 2.0, Jeff talks about creating stories through location-tagged information, distributing software through Apple's App Store, his work at Amazon, and the privacy implications of location becoming ubiquitous. http://ping.fm/v6Sg4

Four short links: 9 Apr 2009

Scifi, audiences, transparency, and the peril of public life. No links tomorrow, as I'll be preparing for our village fete: The Fantastic That Denies It's Fantastic: Science Fiction Talk at the Royal Institution -- Matt Jones's fascinating notes from this talk by two academics make thought-provoking reading. “SF is a response to the cultural shock of discovering our marginal place... http://ping.fm/m8lAq

The stream

"Controlling the stream" is not just one of the major life-challenges facing elderly gentlemen; it is the center of industrial competition on the realtime social network that we once termed "Web 2.0." Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, gave a speech yesterday before a group of advertising executives in New York in which she argued, as the Wall Street Journal reported, that "banner and text ads are old news." Today, "the new tactic is to blur the lines between marketing and social networking" by introducing commercial messages into "the stream" of realtime status updates exchanged among friends. Intimacy, whether real... http://ping.fm/tiqd8

Deriving real value from the social graph

As the physical presences formerly known as "human beings" undergo transmutation into electronic avatars on the realtime social network, the ability to automatically track and analyze their "movements" and "relationships" becomes an increasingly attractive value-mining opportunity. This opportunity exists today, but what's required to exploit it is the connection of the rich data collected on avatars' online activities with data collected on various salient economic variables. Such a connection of datasets would allow much more precise estimates of the economic value of, for instance, "friends" and "followers" in the context of both consumer markets and labor markets and, in turn,... http://ping.fm/jNLhM

PhoneGap, the Mobile Platform Democratizer

Phonegap is an opensource development framework for mobile platforms. It allows developers to build native apps in HTML and JavaScript. Currently PhoneGap works for the iPhone and Android, but Blackberry and other OSs are on the way. You can get PhoneGap from Github or Google Code. There are eighteen iPhone apps listed on the PhoneGap site. Though the apps... http://ping.fm/cvVu3

You ain't gonna need what?

One of the defining characteristics of the Rails movement has been its willingness to throw out the rules by which software developers and consultants have typically worked. Those rules typically produce big, overblown projects laden with features that no one ever uses--but which sounded good during the project specification phase. Build the simplest thing that could possibly work, and... http://ping.fm/N2Cgr

It's Really Just a Series of Tubes

Molly Wright Steenson hit the Ignite jackpot at Etech this year with her explanation of the steam powered network of pneumatic tubes of the 1800s. If you're someone that, like me, has a [somewhat obsessive relationship with Internet Infrastructure](http://ping.fm/fsSse), you must watch this talk. http://ping.fm/TcjRH

Four short links: 7 Apr 2009

Maps, meaning, makers, and orphaned works: Lens Tools and Fisheye Map Browsing -- a summary of magnification in maps through history, culminating in use of the fisheye/lens as a way to explore layers and data in thematic maps. (via Titine's delicious stream) Socially Relevant Computing -- frustrated by the meaningless examples and work in computer science classes, Mike Buckley started... http://ping.fm/50SMn

W. David Stephenson on the Federal CIO: Vivek Kundra

W David Stephenson discusses his upcoming book "Democratizing Data", and his experiences with the new Federal CIO: Vivek Kundra. Stephenson talks about his experiences working as a consultant for Kundra in the DC government and he outlines what we can expect from Kundra during his tenure as Federal CIO in the OMB. http://ping.fm/1z4fS

Ignite Seattle Returns! Submit a Talk

After a year-long hiatus Ignite Seattle is returning to a bigger and better venue. We'll feature 16 speakers doing great 5 minute talks and geek contest to kick off the night. Ignite Seattle 6 will take place on 4/29. Doors will open at 7PM and talk will start at 8:30PM. We are very grateful to be getting sponsorship from... http://ping.fm/m4z6B

Four short links: 6 Apr 2009

Baby nerds, evil URL shorteners, reasoned discussion, and the Government straps its Web 2.0 on: Books for Wee Nerds -- Forget Pat the Bunny -- your baby wants to Pat Schrodinger's Kitty! Help baby search for subatomic particles and explore the universe. (via Tim's tweets) On URL Shorteners -- Joshua Schachter and Maciej Ceglowski on the downsides of URL shortening... http://ping.fm/btPs8

The Future of Our Cities: Open, Crowdsourced, and Participatory

Guest blogger John Geraci has spent the last six years making life in cities better with the use of web technologies. His latest project, DIYcity.org, has web developers and urban planners all over the world teaming up to create open source tools for residents of cities everywhere. Prior to DIYcity, Geraci co-founded the hyperlocal news network Outside.in. Back in... http://ping.fm/Q8M2x

U. of Phoenix nixes Twitter U.

Wendy Paul, executive director of public relations for the University of Phoenix, offers an official response to my April Fools post: “University of Phoenix is not going to deliver courses via Twitter. With the limited characters you can post on Twitter, this wouldn’t be a feasible platform for a robust and quality academic curriculum.” Typical ivory-tower elitist.... http://ping.fm/zwM1i

Savory: Native Kindle epub and PDF Converter

In an editorial for Forbes, Tim called for the the opening of the Kindle, else it will slowly turn obsolete. Since I love my Kindle, I am happy that my friend, Jesse Vincent, a long time open source contributor and OSCON speaker, is trying to open the Kindle. (You might remember him as the guy who discovered Amazon's USB-network easter-egg... http://ping.fm/gm5Yc

Four short links: 3 Apr 2009

Servers, artifacts, browsers, and embedded Python: Google's Data Centers -- Silicon Valley's version of a celebrity nookie video, where we get to answer the question, "are they really as good as we imagine?" Everyone's raving about each server having its own 12v battery. My eye was caught by the way the speaker attributed the efficiency to metrics: "Early on, there... http://ping.fm/KgPQE

Where 2.0 Preview: Eric Gunderson of Development Seed on the Promise of Open Data

When we think about how government uses geographic information, we tend to think about USGS maps or census data, very centralized and preplanned projects meant to produce a very specific set of products. But Development Seed believes that there are a lot more that could be done if these types of data could be mashed up easily with each other as well as with alternate sources such as social networks. Eric Gunderson, President of Development Seed, will speaking at O'Reilly's Where 2.0 Conference in June, and he recently took some time to speak to us about the potential benefits that open access to government data brings. http://ping.fm/F9iLj

Four short links: 2 Apr 2009

Predictions, PDF, source code control, and recommendation engines: Wrong Tomorrow -- track pundits predictions and see how accurate they really are. From the ever-awesome Maciej Ceglowski. PDFMiner -- Unlike other PDF-related tools, it allows to obtain the exact location of texts in a page, as well as other layout information such as font size or font name, which could be... http://ping.fm/zmimi

Google lifts its skirts

Yesterday was a remarkable day for the small, slightly obsessed band of Google data-center watchers of which I am one. Around each of the company's sprawling server farms is a high metal fence patrolled by a particularly devoted squad of rent-a-cops, who may or may not be cyborgian in nature. Ordinary humans seeking a peek at the farms have been required to stand at the fence and gaze at the serene exteriors of the buildings, perhaps admiring the way the eponymous clouds of steam rise off the cooling towers in the morning: [photo by Toshihiko Katsuda] Everything inside the buildings... http://ping.fm/M9gNH

Four short links: 1 Apr 2009

No April Fools jokes because I'm a Grinch. Instead you get architecture, research, visualization, and pain: Stacks, Readers, Staff--Building the British Library is an overview of what a momentous accomplishment the British Library was. And a reminder that no matter how gorgeous, loved, and inevitable the final product seems, there's always a pitched battle to get it made. Architect Sir... http://ping.fm/MWCfJ

Twitter U.

Realtime is going to college. The University of Phoenix, having pioneered web-based learning and built one of the largest "virtual campuses" in Second Life, is now looking to become the dominant higher-education institution on Twitter. The biggest for-profit university in the world, UoP will roll out this fall a curriculum of courses delivered almost entirely through the microblogging service, according to an article in the new issue of Rolling Stone (not yet posted online). The first set of courses will be in the school's Business and Management, Technology, and Human Services programs and will allow students to earn "certificates." But... http://ping.fm/emC5x