Off the Top: Genius Entries

Structured Blogging has (Re)Launched

Structured Blogging has launched and it may be one of the brightest ideas of 2005. This has the capability to pull web services into nearly every page and to aggregate information more seamlessly across the web. The semantic components help pull all of this together so services can be built around them.

This fits wonderfully in the Model of Attraction framework by allowing people and tools to attract the information they want, in this case from all around the web far more easily than ever before.

[Update] A heads-up from Ryan pointed out this is a relaunch. Indeed, Structured Blogging is pointing out all of the groups that are supporting and integrating the effort. The newest version is of Structured Blogging is now microformat friendly (insanely important).

Oakland's education angel sees first college graduate

The best thing I have read in the news in months is about the graduation of Oral Lee Brown's promisses. Sixteen years ago Oral Lee Brown promissed 25 first graders she would pay for their college education should they have the ability and desire to go to college. Oral Lee believed and offered hope. This past weekend LaTosha Hunter graduated from Alcorn State.

In a school not known for hope, Oral Lee offered hope and believed in the kids. Out of the 25 first graders 19 went off to college four years ago. This is in a school district that sees three out of four high school freshman drop out.

Molly wants to discuss SXSW and flow of ideas

Molly asks what one gets from SXSW? I did not make it this year as I am somewhat burried with work, reviews for a great conference in June, and preparing for Portland. I get a great amout from SXSW Interactive infact part of why I am burried is because of a confluence at SXSW last year. The Model of Attraction solution to the failure of navigation as our metaphor of building interfaces to information on the Web. I have been whittling down over 5 pages of single spaced outline on MoA for the last 6 weeks trying to fit a solid understanding of it into 30 to 45 minutes.

Much of what can make SXSW great is the bright passionate people it draws in. The inspiration and spark from SXSW can last a year. I do agree there is a need for a higher level conference as a place to think and bounce ideas around to keep the growth horomones for design, research, and technology fresh. Some of that may come and I really want to be there. This is not to say that SXSW does not offer this, it does as follow on conversations after the panels. It would be great to have these discussions as small groups or as the panels.

Cities of Ideas

Today's New York Times provides Creative Cities and Their New Elite, which theorizes that cities with higher than normal gay and bohemian populations are fertile grounds for economic sustainability, innovation, and technical growth. There seems to be a strong correlation between open accepting environments that recognize the importance of creativity and intelligence and the other measures of successful city cores that are economically viable. The article focuses on Robert Florida's "The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life", which fully fleshes out these discussions. The Austin American-Statesman expounds on the Cities of Ideas in their series. The core of growth is based on knowledge and ideas that provide the fuel for the local economy. The precept seems to account for the cities I truly enjoy, including Amsterdam and Paris.

Emerging tech review

Good coverage of Emerging Technology Conference, which provides links to those that noted what happened at many of the sessions. Nice presentation too.

Emerging Tech Conference coverage

There is a lot of amazing things that have happened at the Emerging Tech Conference 2002. Great minds discussing great things, what could be better.

5k Contest is live again

Yes, it is that time of the year for the 5k Contest. Yes, 5kb of wholesome goodness with which to work. That is graphics, HTML, scripting, and all the the ones and zeros you can pack in.

The mind is functioning and also completely blown from watching and listening to Josh Davis. The world of visual, digital, mathematical, and relational information has broken more synapses than I new were functioning today and seemed to have spawned new channels for information to flow and be processed. In other words, my mind and concept of the world has just been altered again. Not only do I know have an understanding of what somebody means when they say the words that comprise the name Josh Davis, but I have a whole new way to look at information and human responses.

One of the items presented was a visual and audio presentation of network activity. Not only could one visually watch the activity and interaction of those on the network and watching what activities the users on the network were performing and showing their IP address. This visual presentation was augmented with audio that dynamically corresponded to the actions. A sys admin could sit and monitor a network aurally and not watch a monitor. Like a mother and a child, a sys admin could emotively interact with the sounds of the network. A user on the network has saturated the bandwidth the downloads, and the sounds emitted could trigger and emotive response from the sys admin to nurse the network back to a healthy state for all users. As many of us hear our cars and listen to the pitch the subway train makes pulling into the station, which indicates how full the train is so we know where to position our selves on the platform (usually lower tone>es indicate fuller trains and the lowest rumble on a seemingly empty train is the money car on the money train).

I found Zoomify to be an insanely cool application. The clarity of the zoomed image was stellar. It reminds me of some of the LuraTech graphic compression applications I tried a couple years ago, when I was looking to build a document repository for Web based use that allowed quick loading snapshots of the documents prior to downloading. Zoomify would be a great application to inspect photos and painting details while keeping the image weight relatively low. Genius.

We always find time to present the bright and ambitious so here are the Newest Rhodes Scholarship Winners.

Glish Returns. Wahoo!!

Lawrence Lessig has a new book, The Future of Ideas, in which he discusses the freedom of information flow that drive innovation and commerce. He also discusses the hinderance that some industries try to place on this flow of information and the direct and indirect effects this has on growth of ideas and expanding markets.