ouroboros

Betaworks' Borthwick on Flow

"Think" blog author John Borthwick, CEO of Betaworks, wrote a fascinating piece entitled "Distribution...now", about the emergence of the "Now" web - an interactive experience fed by the flow (or streams) of real time data.  It's well worth the read, and here's some bits:

"Dave Winer put it this way: 'think about Twitter as a rope of information — at the outset you assume you can hold on to the rope.  That you can read all the posts, handle all the replies and use Twitter as a communications tool, similar to IM — then at some point, as the number of people you follow and  [that] follow you rises — your hands begin to burn. You realize you can't hold the rope you need to just let go and observe'  

...[data stream] context is provided mostly via social interactions and gestures.    People send out a message...[their] network pick up from there.   The message is re-tweeted, favorite’d,  liked or re-blogged, appropriated with attribution to creator or the source message...it spins, picking up velocity and more context as it swirls." 

Cell Fatwas

[found @ textually.org]

Fatwa Issued Answering Cell Phone during Aayat

A Muslim organization has issued a fatwa over using verses from the Koran as ringtones, saying that answering the call while the aayat (verses from the Koran) is going on is a sin. It argues that people answer calls midway through the aayat, leave the verse incomplete. TechTree reports via Channel 4.

"The panel of clerics in Kanpur India, also said that taking a cellphone to the toilet as it rings is a sin because aayat cannot be heard in a toilet."

Other cell phone related Fatwas:

-- A Fatwa Against Ringtones - An imam at a Mosque in Saudi Arabia issued a fatwa against mobile phones after one rang during prayers on Saturday, playing Arabic pop music.

Mentalists cover MGMT with iPhones

[via Pitchfork]

And if you know MGMT, it's not a half-bad cover.

Social Media Personality Types

for design - via Adrian Chan's SxD blog - thnx to @karllong!

Social Media Personality Types

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: sxd ixd)

Mobility at the Youth Ball

and this image via Adam Frucci @ Gizmodo:

 

What's the sound of one hand clapping?  Ask Barack.

I'm loving Guarvanomics today

"With even the farmer in rural India able to “follow” other viewers around the globe through micro-blogging vehicles like Twitter, that website’s co-founder, Biz Stone, says we can expect “the first two- or even three-screen” inauguration”.  WTF! First, Twitter is so niche that only geeks (or wannabe geeks) use it, not only in India, but also in United States. Second, farmers in India aren’t going to watch Barack Obama’s inauguration on three screens, or even one, because there’s no electricity in their villages"

Mobile drama

[via mobile marketing magazine]

"20:20 London, Incentivated and the COI (Central Office of Information) have collaborated to launch ‘THMBNLS’, an interactive, ad-funded mobile soap opera for the Department of Children, Schools and Families. THMBNLS follows the lives of six teenagers and raises awareness of sexual wellbeing. The 22 weekly episodes will be available exclusively via the mobile Internet, and will be free to download. 

Viewers register online via their mobile browser at: www.thmbnls.mobi Traffic is being driven to the site via mobile banner ads placed across the six operator portals; 3, O2, Orange, T-Mobile, Virgin and Vodafone. The first of the weekly 30-second episodes was  released at 7pm on Friday 9 January, with viewers reminded to watch the next episode by text message or vCalendar entries they have previously downloaded to their phone thereafter. The ‘vCalendar’ can be downloaded to activate the handset’s alarm function, thereby avoiding the cost of additional SMS reminders."

I like the interface they've built to replicate the mobile experience online.

NIN Rules

Yes, I know.  Fanboy.  Still willing to thrash to vertebral incapacity to 'Head Like a Hole'.  Mobile 'phon-tography' and 'Qik'-ing my way through 'Lights in the Sky'.  Fine.

Harbringers of 'MP3 sales cannibalizing album sales' doom:  Ghosts I-IV, available through '08 as a free download was also the year's best selling album.

The 'Music Industry' got kneecapped, outflanked, outfoxed, outdistributed.  But Musicians may well be back. 

Hell - I'm going to have to add NIN as a tag on this site, the way Reznor keeps racking up the firsts.

[Nod to Chris Anderson via Phillip Torrone]

Cybergeddon reaches #3, after Nukes and WMD

[via Yahoo]

Sebastian Smith wrote today for the AFP on the possibility of a "Cybergeddon" like assault on the US tech infrastructure (e.g. the alleged Russian vs. Estonia and Georgia hackfests gone super-size) as a clear and present danger to the nation.

Interesting quote from Donald Codling, the FBI's cyber unit liaison with the Department of Homeland Security:

"What the Internet has allowed you to do is make all the human frailities like greed, avarice and all those lovely things much more efficient."

Which meeting does this most remind you of?

thanks to Mark Frauenfelder, via twitter

Google Earth and Mumbai

[from PC World] 

"The terrorists...used digital maps from Google Earth to learn their way around, according to officials investigating the attacks...Google Earth has previously come in for criticism in India, including from the country's former President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.  Kalam warned in a 2005 lecture that the easy availability online ofdetailed maps of countries from services such as Google Earth could be misused by terrorists."

but before you shut down Google Earth,

"The information available to the terrorists on Google Earth about the locations they attacked is also available on printed tourism maps of Mumbai."

AHA Moment

Brilliant.  Dustin McClean's Literal Video, via Oxyweb. 

Product Haiku

 Heidi Cody rules.  I mean, c'mon.  Product haiku?  Seriously.  Sweeeeet.  5-7-5, holmes.  Check it.

May 2008: 592 MM of China's 1.3B have mobile phones

Wow.  Not only is that huge from an ownership, personal use and network effect standpoint, consider "China's Mobile Revolution", by Michael Sheridanin, from the UK's 8 June Sunday Times.

"The mobile phone came of age in China...when [the] earthquake ripped through Sichuan province...victims used their phones to call for rescue, soldiers used civilian networks to organize supplies, families used text messages to exchange news of survival or loss and an increasingly angry group of citizens spread word of protests against corruption and lax building standards. The national conversation kept going thanks to a military-style logistics operation by the rival phone companies.

So integrated is the mobile communications device into Chinese society that the authorities have been puzzling for ages over the best way to channel investment for the future...[but] the government may soon discover that regulating the telecoms providers is a minor challenge compared with controlling the citizens who will ultimately use their services to communicate with each other."

In a January post Emily Turrettini noted ABCnet.au's report on "the ability of the Chinese Government to spy on the country's 500 million mobile phone users."  According to ABCnet, "Wang Jianzhou, head of China Mobile, stunned delegates [to the World Economic Forum in Davos] by revealing that the company had unlimited access to the personal data of its [300MM] customers and handed it over to Chinese security officials when demanded. 'We know who you are, but also where you are,' said the CEO."

Thank goodness OUR government and telco operators would never compromise our privacy like that...oh heck.

Neil Perkin's Rocking Presentation on the Changing Physics of Media. Please watch it.

If you haven't seen it yet, you probably didn't catch Charlie the Unicorn before it got 20MM views.

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"Karp Rocks", or "The Innovator's Dilemma", or "My Shiny New Mantra"

Thank you, Publishing 2.0.  Scott Karp's "Google AdWords: A Brief History of Online Advertising Innovation" is a post well worth the read for a look back to when Google's global supremacy was not a foregone conclusion.  In it, Karp lays out the historical context and decisions that set Skynet on their current trajectory.

At the article's conclusion, Karp says this:

"The challenge of innovation is that we are all boxed in by what we know, by our assumptions about how things work...The next Google-like innovation is right in front of us — we just need to see past our own assumptions."

"Forget what you know."

A life philosophy in four words.

Kids Books go Mobile...sweeeet

from TokyoMango via Textually.org: New in Japan: Cell Phone Picture Books

Mobile phone novels were hot last year. But reading an entire novel on your cell phone scrEen, no matter how cool it sounds, can be really tasking. That's why, in March, a Japanese printing company debuted its first cell phone picture book. 

The picture book will be read page by page, like a kamishibai—no scrolling, just clicking from page to page. It will include both popular children's titles and original content. You can buy them online for 100-200 yen each. The company hopes to have 50 titles and 10,000 downloads by September.

:-( Despair

LHC 'Doomsday' Suit

file under 'Sweeeeeet'.

slashdot pops this one:

Mar 27, 2008 22:38:00 GMT smooth wombat writes "a former nuclear safety officer and others are suing the U.S. Department of Energy, Fermilab, the National Science Foundation and CERN to stop the use of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) until its safety is reassessed. The plaintiffs cite three possible 'doomsday' scenarios which might occur if the LHC becomes operational: the creation of microscopic black holes which would grow and swallow matter, the creation of strangelets which, if they touch other matter, would convert that matter into strangelets or the creation of magnetic monopoles which could start a chain reaction and convert atoms to other forms of matter. CERN will hold a public open house meeting on April 6 with word having been spread to some researchers to be prepared to answer questions on microscopic black holes and strangelets if asked."

I'm checking into direct flights right now.  Where the hell is CERN?

PHONES TO OUTSELL TV SETS IN 2008

[shamelessly lifted from textually.org]

Consumers worldwide will buy more multimedia mobile phones than TV sets this year, according to a new report from Research and Markets. [via The Hollywood Reporter]

"The Dublin, Ireland-based firm predicts that 300 million such phones that can play audio and video and browse the Internet will be sold in 2008. Its new report, "Mobile Media 2008: The Third Screen for Entertainment," also found that half the world's population, or 3.3 billion people, now have a mobile phone subscription. "

***Sob***

Thank you, Icanhascheezburger.com, for understanding my pain.

Nokia + Trolltech - OpenSource goodness?

Nokia's making big waves in the OpenSource, app dev and social networking front. 

This Trolltech bit torn shamelessly from Engadget Mobile - (love that graphic)

"In a move meant to bolster its software development prowess, Nokia just announced the acquisition Trolltech. Who's Trolltech? Well, its software can be found in some 10 million devices. In fact, Trolltech's Qt is used by such familiar applications as Skype, Google Earth, and Photoshop Elements while their Qtopia was spotted on a hacked Archos 5 series earlier this month. By acquiring Trolltech's software development frameworks and application platforms, Nokia hopes to help developers create Internet applications that work on PCs and across Nokia devices.  Specifically, Nokia claims that the move will "further increase the competitiveness of S60 and Series 40."

In other words, this helps Nokia connect you and your applications across PC's, mobile devices, etc. - and it gives a ray of hope to folks who've waited a long time for a Symbian overhaul/upgrade.  But wait - there's more - beyond the acquisition of Jaiku and NavTeq, now there are the Facebook rumors.  Finns rock.

Anything that creates a simplified cross platform mobile development landscape is interesting to marketers and will ultimately be for consumers. 

Anything that makes mobile UI better is, well, better.

Heffernan calls it like she sees it

Late, I know, but still worth the pop. In last Sunday's 'The Medium', Virginia Heffernan, wrote a killer column entitled "Art in the Age of Franchising".

I'll quote briefly:

"An author’s work can no longer exist in a vacuum, independent of hardy online extensions...Artists must now embrace the cultural theorists’ beloved model of the rhizome and think of their work as a horizontal stem for numberless roots and shoots — as many entry and exit points as fans can devise.

This is an enormous social shift that coincides with the changeover from analog to digital modes of communication, the rise of the Internet and the new raucousness of fans. It’s a mistake to see this imperative to branch out as a simple coarsening of culture. In fact, rhizome art is both lower-brow (“American Idol,” Derek Waters’s “Drunk History”) and more avant-garde (“Battlestar Galactica,” Ryan Trecartin’s “I-Be Area”) than linear, author-controlled narrative, which takes its cues from the middle-class form of the novel."

So you aren't just retrograde if you aren't thinking interactively when it comes to storytelling - you are bourgeoise. I'm not saying - I'm just saying.