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Viewing entries tagged with 'brave new world'

Reinventing Your Inbox

It seems that Google is currently reinventing email.  According to the keynote the upcoming Google Wave indeed looks very promising. It has the potential to become an incredible innovation for the world wide web. I think what sums it up is probably the question that the Google developers asked themselves:

"What would email look like if it was invented today?" (email has been around for 40 years)

As I see it Google Wave could potentially replace email as we know and use it today. It is from the ground up designed to be collaborative (much more than e.g. Google Docs or Wikis etc). Think of it more of a 'conversation space' rather than an inbox with the 'traditional' concept to send and receive letters. It can also link into (or be embedded in) any web content.

One of the best decisions around that is that it's not proprietory to Google but will be an open source project with open standards.

You'll get the best idea if you watch the 1h 20mins keynote. Or if you wait a couple of months until it'll be released.

Rise and Fall

This is a 30 minute version of the movie I.O.U.S.A, a film about the rapidly growing national debt of the United States, the long-term ignorance of the problem and it's occurring and looming consequences.

Quite interesting in this regard is Arnold J. Toynbee's A Study of History about the rise and fall of human civilisations. According to a Wikipedia article Toynbee "argues that the breakdown of civilizations is not caused by loss of control over the environment, over the human environment, or attacks from outside. Rather, it comes from the deterioration of the 'Creative Minority,' which eventually ceases to be creative and degenerates into merely a 'Dominant Minority' (who forces the majority to obey without meriting obedience). He argues that creative minorities deteriorate due to a worship of their 'former self,' by which they become prideful, and fail to adequately address the next challenge they face."

Sounds familiar? You make up your own mind.

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More Stuff on Things

Banksy

British artist Banksy: great graffiti and other art. Silly, political, pop culture or a great comment on modern life. We need more of this!

Banksy

Banksy - Sale Ends Today

Sale Ends Today

Banksy - I am Your Father

... I am Your Father

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Mo Than Words Can Say

Burt Reynolds, hero

Now I truely missed this year's Movember, the month formerly known as November. Just as last year thousands of dedicated males have their mo (=mustache) grow to it's full glory within a month.

These are the rules: on Movember 1st you shave and then let your mo grow until the end of the mo-nth. Growing a beard and shaving it to a mo at the end of the month is considered as cheating. Instead it must be an honest mo through and through with a clean shaven chin. A mo with dignity, one that Burt Reynolds, His unapproachable Mo-ness, would be proud of.

For cowards: Grow a virtual mo!
For undecided ones: Study the mo!
For real men: Celebrate the mo!

Brilliant

Wow. Barack Obama's victory is a brilliant day in history. I am glad that he won with a significant lead which will hopefully keep the tensions between supporters of both parties lower. Obama will have to deal with a massive limitation of damage that his country suffered during the 'Bush era' in terms of it's international reputation – but to me he is the candidate with the by far biggest potential to give back credibility in the United States on an international stage. The only positive thing left to say about Bush is that his miserable leadership was probably necessary to make a victory like Obama's possible. It has been a long time since I could last say that I am looking forward to what will happen next in the US.

NZ Moodle Moot 2008

I just came back from an excellent Moodle Moot conference in beautiful Napier. Moodle is a free open source e-learning environment which is widely used and developed by a strong community. I particularly enjoyed that it was a really casual and friendly 3 day event. I am sure I can bring a lot that I learned at the conference back to my job. Getting to know other people involved also is a great motivation to actually contribute to this open source project. I am glad I did not miss out this year.

The Right Number

Scott McCloud - The Wrong Number

Chrome is the new browser developed by Google. I just tried it and well, it's really fast. It also promises to be very secure and to have a good memory usage/garbage collection model and to be better equipped for up-to-date web applications using Javascript and Ajax (such as Google Mail).

A very good (yet still very geeky) introduction to the Chrome browser was done in comic book form by Scott McCloud, better known for his awesome comic books Understanding ComicsReinventing Comics and Making Comics. I read the first two, the last one is now on my list of books to read. He also made some online comics, based on his own suggestions in Reinventing Comics about using comics in a different medium in an appropriate way. The Right Number looks pretty good.

Selling My Soul

It seems that I sold my soul to Google yesterday - on a trial basis. I signed up to Google Apps. I pushed this step for quite a while because I was (and am still) not sure if it is a good idea to have Google handle so much of my stuff, but eventually the comfort of Google Mail and other applications just overpowered my resistance.

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