How do you improve on friendster?

Start with finding things to do. Finding people will follow. See how they do it the Nordic way via Forge. It gets technology support through barnraiser.org.

The future of education may simply depend on Web 2.0 (or whatever you wish to call it).

Here's more.

Funny how random thoughts could lead you to sequentially random results.

I wondered about desire lines and power law. Ran a search. Brought me to a German site which in turn took me to a French site. Just couldn't explain the mood I was in. BTW I googled in English.

Just a random thought.

How does one re-embed social relations in economics?

What do you think of this?

I'd like to call it "Making Sense of Disarray". How about this: "Coalition of Chaos". More about the foto here. Thanks to boingboing.net.

This just in (21).

Blow to big business, boost to bloggers.

A California appeals court sustained the position that bloggers cannot be enjoined to disclose their sources. In a case involving alleged leakage of trade secrets from Apple by an employee to a blogger, the court ruled that bloggers have as much right as traditional journalists to shield their sources. More here.

The Philippines has a poor record at collaboration...

... or something that sounded like that.

Two months ago, I had an online exchange with an executive of HotCity Wireless, a non-profit organization "established to promote the use of low-cost wireless technology as a media and tool for economic, social and educational advancement to underprivileged citizens in the Philippines."

The keyword "underprivileged" has always been on my radar, which partly explained why I wanted to find out more about what the people behind the organization are doing. In the course of our Skype chat, the gentleman made me realize how poorly Filipinos fare at precisely that - collaboration, cooperation. I offered no apologies, but thought perhaps the growing popularity of ICT tools could improve Filipinos behavior in community building situations.

Then I came upon a UN-sponsored article that echoes the same observation, in the context of Engaged Governance (a governance strategy that links citizens more directly into the decision-making process of the State in order to enable them toinfluence the public policies and programmes in a manner that impacts morepositively on their social and economic lives) .

Jeremy R. Barns states, that the country's experience:

"given the actual state of the country today, highlights questions as to [Engaged Governance's] ultimate efficacy in the presence of what has been observed to be the country’s poor record of institution-building, its unfortunate traditions of politicized bureaucracy and populist leaderships and, perhaps most significantly, long-standing political economy considerations involving deeply entrenched vested interests among the political and economic elite." (emphasis mine)

Nothing is lost. Otherwise, why would HotCity Wireless continue their initiative in a small barangay in Quezon. The thought that hope springs eternal is probably what drives such efforts.

But as a once popular song goes, we can start with the man in the mirror. On a lighter note, how about checking out this Collaboration Quotient (CQ) Worksheet. Should give us insights into our personal CQ.

I tried blogging using O2 xda ii ...

... to no avail. Got stuck at the "sign in" page.

There must be a way to blog in platforms other than desktop.

Quote of the day.

"'Twenty years from now, we'll look back and say this was the embryonic period,' said Tim Berners-Lee, 50, who established the programming language of the Web in 1989 with colleagues at CERN, the European science institute. "

This, at a time when people are all agog over Web 2.0. More of the story behind the statement here.

Here's a foto of MIT's Laptop for the masses.


Warning: Keep out of reach of "trapos" (traditional politicians).

Mash-up musings (1).

I am looking for a way to mash up the project/rottisserie features of H20 of Harvard Uni and the assignment/gradebook functionalities of chalksite. Anyone familiar with an existing implementation? You may find this x-posted on Pinoyweb2.0.

Web 2.0 is back to the future.

Jon Camfield seems to think so too here.

But I am more interested in his thoughts about Web 2.0 and Social Development.

Seen a vintage 2001 Wifi signal amplifier?

aka Antenna on the cheap; aka another use for Pringles can

Check details here.

Here's a perfect Web 2.0 tool for freecyclers.


Found someone's trash? Got phonecam? Get a snap shot, then post it via email. Should become someone else's treasure. Works only in NYC and SF. For now.

Here's the site.

How do you turn a search engine result into a piece of art?

Use dreamlines.

Here's part of what I got when I keyed in "da vinci code" (without quotes):


I call it "algorithmic art".

My observations: 1. Useful creativity tool. 2. Next generation Rorschach test. 3. Can be addictive. 4. Make sure you have a screen capture utility or you lose the serendipitous discovery forever.

Quote of the day (1).

"Open source is a business model, not a charitable contribution to mankind."

- Sunil Joshi
Senior vice president of design tools, performance and OpenAccess at Sun Microsystems' scaleable systems group


More here. Thanks Judy Breck of Smart Mobs.

The compelling power of mass media.

Everyone knows, actually feels this, unless "living under a rock", one has been. Examples, too many to mention. (sorry I felt Yodaish). See? I can't even resist that one. Who would deny the pervasive influence of S-Files, Pinoy Big Brother, and the infamous Wowowee, no less. And we are not even talking about Bollywood.

Now for a bit of trivia: The phrase "lock and load" should have been more logically "load and lock" - in reference to the M1 mechanism- from 1941.

Enters the Duke, in Sands of Iwo Jima, sometime in 1949. And the illogical "lock and load"* made "more" sense since. Thanks to Hollywood.

Talk of the old mass media. Would "mas media" have been more meaningful? Time to look elsewhere. Care for a serving of youtube?

* BTW I got that from word origins.

Now they are moving forward and shaking the ground.

Here's a press release on the "Event on Web 2.0 for Social Change Features Tech and Social Visionaries; TechSoup NetSquared Conference to Drive Global Nonprofit Web Innovation" at a "Conference (hosted by Cisco Systems on May 30-31, 2006 in San Jose, CA), [when] early adopters, technologists, corporations, nonprofit and non-governmental leaders, and philanthropists will convene and take concrete steps towards making the Internet a tool for social change using blogging, vlogging, tagging, and other Social Web technologies." (emphasis mine)

Just one of the things I wanted to happen when I started sensing the value of Social Software for Folk Knowledge Management in September 2005. Now is Web 2.0 social empowerment a stretch or not?

This just in (20).

The top 100 websites in the Philippines are listed here.

The foto below gives you an idea.


Make your own conclusions.

Now there is relief from patent trolls.

At least in the US. Boingboing reports that the Supreme Court makes it harder to be [a] patent predator. Good for the rest of the economy. Don't know about the Philippines, where businessmen eat injunctions for breakfast. Read more here.

I suddenly felt funny so I thought of sharing this.

boingboing.net calls it Web zen. Here is the link.

Just toyed around with a pair of keywords on Google trends.

... and voila!

Indeed, the value of publicity.

Dichotomy of Management/Leadership Studies

Implications of these Polar Opposites?

• Seems like we are in a Post post-modern world.
• A more balanced approach is required.

Now in light of Thomas Friedman’s Brief History of the 21^st Century where he detailed his 10 theses about what makes the world flat, at no other time is the following statement more true: We live in a world where change is indeed the only thing that is constant.

What about the organized chaos of the Internet? Perhaps we could use a lesson or two about the integration of all the basic elements to produce some sort of harmonious yin-yang. I am not preaching a new world order or new religion, but it seems that we are now in the real age of Aquarius.

Now, look at this robotic garage.


More here. Again via boingboing.net. Makes me wonder if SM would consider incorporating this into their malls.

What makes mobs wise?

James Surowiecki says (in effect) that under the right conditions, the following ingredients would make a good recipe.

1. Diversity
2. Independence
3. Decentralization
4. Aggregation

Read more here. Take note of the responses. You may also post your thoughts there.

What's the buzz about Social Software and Web 2.0?

Google Trends provides some graphical answers.

I posed a question almost 4 months ago.

... about a red and black seed that reminded me of my childhood.

Then recently ran into wild seeds in a pod on a vine by a footpath in a beach front.

Took some of them as samples.


Google returned the following link. They are called abrus precatorius. Turns out to be also called the rosary bean, one of the most beautiful but deadly seeds on earth.

I will be away for 3 days.

And this item on Social Software seems timely though not necessarily relevant:

David Tebbutt poses a question thus: "How do you cope when you return from holiday and realise that you have weeks of backlog to wade through? " More to me a question of missed opportunities to blog. Just when I thought I didn't need a PLDT WeRoam account.

Anyway, I will post as soon as I hit an internet connection.

Now how about invisible bookshelves?

I want to make this load faster. So let me just point you to the link here.

How about this for a fruit of a Folk Knowledge Management initiative.


More of the universal peanut sheller here.

Makes me think of an economic model that looks like this:

FK + social software+ invention + auction = monetized social capital

Ever heard of flying beds?

Never mind hearing about it. Fotos are here.

Thanks Phillip Torrone of Makezine.com.

The value of cooperation via Web 2.0. (x-posted)

Here's a list (assembled by Jon Collins) of 18 laws on how people's participation (the higher form being collaboration) can create value for any endeavor, but more particularly in these dog years of Web 2.0. Excerpts follow:

"Laws of connection

1. Connectedness is about joining in "

xxx

Laws of participation

8. Communities form as a natural consequence of connectedness

xxx

Laws of collaboration

14. Collaboration is the achievement of goals by a connected community"

For a full list, go here. You may comment on this freely. I hope the shoe fits.

State of Blogging in the Philippines

Doesn't prove much except that Personal blogging enjoys the top spot. Photography and Politics tie in second place. Technology and Entertainment come in third together.

Note: Needs more rigorous research.

Ran into wayfaring.com. A social software app for collaboration using googlemaps.

And since Tessa and I are planning to take the kids to La Luz in San Juan Batangas for a beach getaway, I thought I could fiddle around with this newfound Web 2.0 site. Below is the result of my effort "mov[ing] [my] hands and fingers restlessy or in busy idleness".

What is chindogu?

According to "the nonist" it is "the not-so-ancient Japanese art of inventing ingenious everyday gadgets that, on the face of it, seem like an ideal solution to a particular problem. " Actual use of the gadget however spawns fresh problems. Good to use chindogu for the fun of doing it. Forget about patenting. Here's a site showcasing some samples. Prepare to be entertained, enlightened or entertained (in no particular order).

This almost slipped under the radar.

Were it not for Brice Le Blevennec who blogged about Songbird.

The site says: "Songbird is a Web player built from Firefox's browser engine. Songbird is open source, will run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux and supports user contributed, cross-platform extensions."

Still in beta, but you can look forward to publishing playlists and transfering MP3s into Songbird to run:

• digital music stores ala eMusic
• music subscription services in the style of Yahoo! Music Unlimited
• virtual jamming services like Ninjam
• playlist sharing services in WebJay fashion.

Neat.

Now they are also turning the task of uploading into wikis.

Wikiupload is aiming to "build the largest library of open-content video clips, music and media files, and shareware in the world."

So the owners are raising a clarion call for help: "We encourage all visitors to share their free resources. " I already did by uploading my ppt presentation of "Blogging for Mere Mortals" at the 2nd Philippine Blogging Summit. They promise to keep the file in their servers "forever" provided it gets downloaded at least once within 30 days. Here is the download link. Those who wish to comment on the file may follow this other link.

Web2.0 - extended mindcloudmap

Web2.0 - extended mindcloudmap
Originally uploaded by kosmar.

I like the way flickr incorporated the notes functionality (aka image maps) in its site. This mindcloudmap is ca. November 2005. I wonder when version 2 will come around.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

How can thoughts and symbols representing thoughts become Social System? Redux

Perhaps through tags and folksonomies.

Adrian Chan thinks so too. More here.

BTW his bottom line statement

"just as we recognize the value in the diversity of cultures and ecosystems, diversity in tag cultures, as vernaculars of a sort, might help to preserve value. Preserving the state of a culture, also, might be worth looking into, if only to lay down time capsules!"

sounded like "Meanwhile, culture as we know it now may no longer be the same as our children will know it tomorrow. Whatever direction it will ultimately take, preserving culture is a good place to start."

For a blog on tags, you may even want to go here.

Old School: New School ca. 2006

• bricks: clicks
• top down: bottom up
• big brother: grassroots
  
• eagle: ants
• blockbuster: long tail
  
• attention: intention
• marketing: market

Thanks to James F. Moore, Ross Mayfield, Doc Searls for collective inspiration.

This just in (19).

"New blog search engine Sphere launched just moments ago and has also announced a $3.75 million round of venture financing." This according to Michael Arrington.

Some fresh features:

• relevance based on:
  

1. links in/out of blog
2. meta data around the blog (e.g. average length of posts, post frequency)
3. semantic analysis of the posts themselves

• custom date search
• featured results
• other media (e.g. pictures, news, books, podcasts)

I like the metadata-around-the-blog relevance feature. Should make my short posts appealing to those suffering from ADHD.

Moment of Search Engine Social Software zen never felt so good. Must be truly so for the owners of Sphere.

Shape of things to come.

Should have been "This just in (19)", but this has deeper implications, I think.

Yes, Fox Snaps Up More Web 2.0 according to Nicholas Carlson .

"[The] News Corporation who bought Myspace.com for $580 million in 2004 dipped back into its $2 billion war chest to buy Newroo (realtime news aggregator) and kSolo.com (the ultimate karaoke experience), two sites that specialize in user-generated content."

"Big numbers are floating around because old media has big fears about its future. The desirable 18-34 year-old market is moving online for its entertainment and advertisers are following. Last year, Internet ad revenues went up 30 percent. (emphasis supplied). "

This just in (18).

"Amiglia.com is launching this month (actually last month) promising a truly amazing photo and social software technology for families. Amiglia is focused on family networks, tying a visual and interactive family tree with an elegant online photo album."

Features:

• visual and interactive family tree
• elegant online photo album.
• a family calendar,
• birthday email reminders,
• family facebook
• mp3 uploads for slideshows
• video uploads,
• favorite recipes,
• family stories and bios,
• trip/vacation maps
• powerful photo tagging
• search engine
• kids section with games
  

Promises to pack a wallop. You can see more here.

And according to Richard MacManus,

[Morfik] is described as 'a specialized IDE for building web-based applications'. The apps that people are beginning to build with Morfik are pushing the edges of what can run on current browsers.

More here.