Ben Shoemate's Notebook

pixelbits via Pixel Bits shared by 5 people

"high dive"

Duncan Riley via The Inquisitr shared by 4 people

The internet has become a great enabler in democratizing information. The elitism of paid information easily accessible by a rich few has been replaced by a wealth of knowledge accessible via a few mouse clicks in our own homes. And yet, for all the positives the internet provides, our own sub-cultural biases steer us to content that often reinforces our own ignorance, as opposed to enlightening our understanding of the world and the people in it.

I sat opposite Amber Case, a cyborg anthropologist at dinner last night. As much as I struggled to understand much of what she was saying, it none the less challenged me in ways I didn’t think possible. She spoke of dimensional space, what we can and cannot see, and asked whether the internet was the 4th dimension. Eric Rice sitting beside me said in response that he finds himself considering what is behind an object or person in seeking to understand the full picture. I’ve since tried visualizing things from the perspective of what I can’t see; I have no solid idea what the purpose of doing so is, but the lateral thinking involved may, with time, help me develop a broader sense of looking at the larger picture in any situation as opposed to what Case describes as a two dimensional view.

I cannot honestly provide a fair assessment of this wisdom having true validity, and some one else that night suggested that there was way too many drugs being taken by those at the table, a call which in the past I probably would have agreed with, and yet I know that in part by chance (I was invited to the table at the last minute) I had discovered notions that I was not previously aware of, a wisdom that was foreign to my own.

There are other stories I could use from my week in Seattle, but I purposely picked the extreme case in terms of thought as a challenge to our understanding of collective wisdom. That knowledge exists, and that we as humans continue our long march towards understanding is a given proven throughout history, but how do we better tap the collective wisdom, and what role does the internet play?

We’ve covered the echochamber of the Crunchmemeosphere previously on The Inquisitr, and yet it is only one particularly small part of the collective echo. Conferences like Gnomedex go some way in sharing wisdom that may not be as well understood or explained, and yet it is the domain of a select few with the money or foresight to attended. The age of Barcamps and Podcamps and unconferences is upon us, and yet like Gnomedex they often suffer from a collective echo imposed upon them by geography. Ross Dawson’s Future of Media Summit drew an audience in Silicon Valley and Sydney together to share and discuss media, but in reaching across continents it still did not open its doors to a broader wisdom to those without the presence, or finances to attend. We have comments on blogs, or discussion threads in video on Seesmic, but do they truly allow us to yet fully tap the collective wisdom?

The answer may not have been invented, nor even technologically feasible, but there must be a better way. Could it be the next generation of virtual spaces, technology that will allow us to fully emerge ourselves into a shared space of reality based sharing where we can collaborate no matter where we are on the globe as if we were actually there? Or is it something else machine enabled that will allow our 2.0 tech world to emerge into 3.0 or 4.0 as a movement of global enlightenment that delivers the collective wisdom as a force for good. Ask yourself that if we are all so smart today why we still have wars, or why people starve, why Armageddon is still a red button away, and we continue to look at our own problems in a narrow perspective when as Scott Maxwell noted when he showed the first picture of Earth taken from another planet, we are but a small spec in the universe.

We may not have the answers, but we can start the movement for change. Listen to opinions and voices different to your own, accept that you do not know everything, and develop your own knowledge further, leading by example. It’s a small thing, but it may be a start.

"no description"

Kevin Purdy via Lifehacker shared by 9 people

If you've got weak defenses against Starbucks' frillier fare like frappuccinos, chai lattes, or even the ubiquitous pound cake, the Coffee Fair blog has an appealing weekend recipe project for you. Amongst 32 pages of free Starbucks-derived recipes, you'll find recipes for those sweet treats, amongst lots of other cloning attempts. We've previously put up a DIY frappuccino recipe, so if you've made that version or the one in this PDF, let us know which turns out closer to the real deal in the comments. Photo by basheertome.

louisgray@gmail.com (louisgray) via louisgray.com shared by 6 people

There's no question the lifestreaming space has just exploded over the last year, with services like Plaxo Pulse and FriendFeed leading the way, accompanied by MyBlogLog, SocialThing, Profilactic and others. Practically all services aggregate your social activity across networks and let you display it in one area, with the option to follow friends and interact with their activity. One of the newest in this space is Strands, which bills itself as a destination site for people to discover new recommended items around the Web from friends. The service, currently in private beta, has some very interesting features, but also has a lot of room to go to supplant one of the bigger names.


As with the many other alternatives out there, you start your activity on Strands by adding your many services around the Web, starting with the most well-known services, like Twitter, Google Reader and Delicious, but the service also supports several other sites not commonly found elsewhere, including Webshots, BlockBuster, Hype Machine and Meneame.


When you add these services, as with other competitors, Strands creates a feed for you, which can then be subscribed to by other users.

As you currently can only get into Strands by being invited, you will start out with at least one friend, but you can find more users by seeing who your friends follow, or by clicking the people button at the top of the page. Strands, as far as I know, has the best array of ways to discover new followers, showing you who is the most followed, who's new to the site, or who is the top by a specific category, like Blogs, Images, Music or Bookmarks. Each person's profile is displayed with their avatar, gender, age and location. You can also search by name or e-mail.

Once you have subscribed to a few people, you can see their activity on Strands' Home screen, which displays, chronologically, the item posted, who added it, the service it originated from. You can then take action on those items with a simple Like or Dislike, indicated by thumbs up or thumbs down, you can comment on the item, click a pushpin to indicate an item is saved, or click an arrow to forward the item to those who follow you. (The equivalent of resharing on FriendFeed)

The interface for Strands if both cluttered and spartan at the same time, if that makes any sense.

Unlike FriendFeed, which offers a clean white background, soft gray text for comments, but little else, except a top navigation bar, Strands offers a wide array of ways to sift through the noise and find specific items. You can filter your feed by people who just follow you, you can show your own feed, or show subgroups of your friends. For example, I started a group called "Digerati", that includes Chris Brogan, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Corvida and others on the site.

You can also filter by category, including Blogs & Notes, Images, Music, Movies & TV, Bookmarks and others. FriendFeed offers this functionality by service by clicking on the service icon, but it's not spelled out, nor does it group similar services (like Delicious and Magnolia for instance). On top of filters, you also have "Hot Posts" which show items popular with your friends, marked by likes and comments, and the ability to have granularity, so you don't share all services with all people. For example, you may want to share some items with friends, but not family or coworkers.

The many different options on Strands make it useful to find things fast, but it also shoehorns the Home feed into a small center position. Arguably, this is the most important part of the site, so its power is greatly diminished. Strands also doesn't auto-refresh, asking you to click a refresh icon on the page, or in your browser. This gives the site more of a static feeling than other sites which do autorefresh, where it seems new data is constantly coming in.

Also, like most good services today, Strands offers a desktop alternative to the Web site with an Adobe AIR application, which keeps you updated on your friends' activity and watches your iTunes to capture what you're listening to, as well as a bookmarklet.

Does the world need another lifestreaming service? With so many on the market, it's interesting to see what aspects one site will get right or what they'll miss. Strands doesn't have the feeling of community today that FriendFeed does, given its newness and obscurity. And like many engineering-driven services, it can be seen at times to have sacrificed the user experience for more features. I've said previously that "the feature war is the wrong war" for social media, which needs to find new ways to connect people, their likes and their activity. Strands does a good job letting me drill down into specific areas, or in helping find new folks, but I'm hoping they can reduce some of the site clutter, and make the site really come to life.

As the service is in private beta, I have a very small number of invites, so leave your e-mail in the comments if you are interested, and I'll see what I can do.

DISCLOSURE: I was introduced to Strands by Drew Olanoff, the Community Manager at Strands, who started there in July. Drew is also the CTO of ReadBurner, where I am an advisor, and hold a small equity position. While Drew gave me an account to test Strands, he did not request an article, nor review this in any way.

Adam Pash via Lifehacker shared by 4 people

Weblog Apartment Therapy Re-Nest shows how to repurpose a pile of old magazines or vintage books into a small table in just about 10 minutes. Pulling it off is a simple matter of tucking every 10 pages or so back into the spine of the magazine—you don't even need glue or any additional supplies. As the post points out, the concept is very similar to cardboard furniture, like previously mentioned Blox, counting on folds and layers for strength. The folks at Apartment Therapy used the magazine tables as a plant holder, but you can put it to use for whatever you need (at the very least they're a cool decoration).

via http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/greenpeace_economy?size=_original

via http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/fashion/06photo.html?_r=1&8dpc&oref=slogin

via http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/greenpeace_oil?size=_original