From 3pointD…
Very, very neat.
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March 2007
Monthly Archive
Myths about the developing world.
Brilliant use of data analysis and visualization to examine the issues of the developing world. A TED talk by Hans Rosling.
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A blog post about the first month of public access for the IBM Research project called "Many Eyes" (mentioned at Lotusphere)
Many Eyes was launched a little more than a month ago. By the way, the original Read/Write Web article listed "Fernanda and Martin" as the developers - in fact everyone in the IBM Visual Communication Lab has worked on the site, and probably the two of us did less of the actual development than anyone else!
So what has happened? Was our hypothesis about the social use of visualizations correct? It’s too early for any scientific conclusions, but that won’t stop us from giving some anecdotal evidence 
Here are three anecdotes:
[More...]
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If you haven’t tried Qumana yet, you need to. It is by far the best blog editor that I have found. Many thanks to Luis (aka Captain KM) for his suggestion.
One of my favorite features is the droppad. I keep mine in the lower right hand corner of the screen. It’s great for cliping little quotes or images that I want to blog about, but more importantly it serves as a little reminder to keep my blog fresh.
And while I’m at it, I’d also give a nod to FastStone Image Capture as one of the best screen capture / editing programs I’ve use.
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An article on liveblogging from the Wall Street Journal.
Obvious LLC’s nine-month-old Twitter.com is dedicated to the question, "What are you doing?" People send in their answers (up to 140 characters) by cellphone, by instant messenger or on the Web, which are posted on their personal page for viewing by a limited group of friends or anyone on the site. The site has received more than one million real-time posts, including one sent in via cellphone by Peter Kruse while he was sitting in the back of the church at his former pastor’s funeral in September. "It did distract me for about 30 seconds," says Mr. Kruse, 25, an aide to adults with disabilities in Elgin, Ill.
Many agree that it’s hard to fully participate in an event if you’re trying to compose pithy, thoughtful notes at the same time. Some academics say the live posts are the latest twist in the decades-old conflict between living in the moment and memorializing it from behind a camera lens, only worse. "People who are live-blogging are psychologically more distant from the event," says Clay Shirky, a professor of social software at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program.
After doing some Live Blogging myself at Lotusphere my experience is less one of distance from the event and more of an alternate form of note taking. I do suspect that live blogging from a conference vastly different from doing the same at a child’s birth 
I like the comparison to ‘memorialzing from behind the camera lens’ as that is something that I had struggled with in the past. I used to consider taking pictures a very "meta event" and as a result have about 2 or 3 pictures from all of my 5 trips to the Turks and Caicos islands. After getting a small Cannon Elph with long battery life a year or so ago I realize that my previous experience had more to do with the cost of operation of the picture taking experience overall, not the general activity. Now I’m much more likely to take a picture when I just have to pull the camera out of the bag to catch the scene. Having a flickr account doesn’t hurt either b/c it is a low cost way to organize and share all of the photos.
I’ve recently started thinking about how much more I would capture if the cost of operation was even lower - if I blinked my eyes and decent quality picture was saved. I think that I would not only take more pictures, but would also feel less distant from the event. I imagine there is a very close analogy for live blogging. The cost of operation, even with t9, is high enough for me at the moment to use my mobile phone as a frequent input device, and my laptop is unweildy in most situations. But if the cost of operation were lowered with respect to entry of my thoughts, I suspect I would (and could) live blog more often, with a greater feeling of emersion in the experience.
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I suspect most have heard of the Cisco acquisition of Five Across (the parent company of tribe.net). The NY Times has a short write-up:
"But along with the recent purchase of a social network design firm, Five Across, the deal will give Cisco the technology to help large corporate clients create services resembling MySpace or YouTube to bring their customers together online. And that ambition highlights a significant shift in the way companies and entrepreneurs are thinking about social networks."
Analyst Mike Gotta has some thoughts on the acquisition that bode well for IBM, particularly the comments about required partner model, and professional services:
As I mentioned in an earlier post on the Five Across acquisition by Cisco, there are many factors ranging from brand (what people associate with Cisco), professional services (building out any type of community-oriented strategy requires more than technology competencies), and partner model (Cisco may not attract partners that it might normally have been able to do business with since they are not competing with vendors at the application layer) and so on. Unless one of these acquisitions delivers credibility outside the technology aspect of social networking, I remain skeptical that these moves will amount to anything.
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