Month: November 2003

Accidental wearables

i made a very geeky discovery on the commute today. if i put something between the lids of my notebook while carrying it in my bag, i can keep the notebook on while walking. instant ipod at no additional cost. since i rarely part from my bag, this could be described as my first wearable. now, for some interesting applications:

  • listening to chris lydon interviews
  • give text-to-speech software a run for its money
  • eventually receive location-aware annotations

Zazie

released under the free art license

With this Free Art License, you are authorized to copy, distribute and freely transform the work of art while respecting the rights of the originator.
Far from ignoring the author’s rights, this license recognizes them and protects them. It reformulates their principle while making it possible for the public to make creative use of the works of art. Whereas current literary and artistic property rights result in restriction of the public’s access to works of art, the goal of the Free Art License is to encourage such access.
The intention is to make work accessible and to authorize the use of its resources by the greatest number of people: to use it in order to increase its use, to create new conditions for creation in order to multiply the possibilities of creation, while respecting the originators in according them recognition and defending their moral rights.
In fact, with the arrival of the digital age, the invention of the Internet and free software, a new approach to creation and production has made its appearance. It also encourages a continuation of the process of experimentation undertaken by many contemporary artists.
Knowledge and creativity are resources which, to be true to themselves, must remain free, i.e. remain a fundamental search which is not directly related to a concrete application. Creating means discovering the unknown, means inventing a reality without any heed to realism. Thus, the object(ive) of art is not equivalent to the finished and defined art object. This is the basic aim of this Free Art License: to promote and protect artistic practice freed from the rules of the market economy.

Global library card

i travel light. i love books. never the twain shall meet?
i’d pull an erdos if i could. having all my possessions in a carry-on strikes me as incredibly liberating. less clutter, more flexibility is more good, hence better.
with all my data either in the cloud or on my thinkpad, that leaves only books in the brain food department. while owning books is great, and building a library an accomplishment (never mind the photo opportunities that a well-stocked study affords), books are heavy, bulky travel hindrances.
yet figuring out the customs at the local library, and working your way towards a coveted library card is too much of a burden. library cards should be as federated as the catalogs, ideally with a single global database of the digerati. move over, tired visa. make room for the knowledge card.

google number

As 1 consultant finished listing some of his Fortune 100 clients, I said, That’s nice, but what’s your Google number? Puzzled looks soon overcame everyone in the room. Google number? What’s that? I quickly explained that it was a rough-order measure of your reputation and influence as a thought-leader – it is how much buzz, or word-of-mouth, you have as an expert.

If your Google Number is around …

  • 100 or less – keep your day job and start publishing
  • 400 – do a nice web site and publish more
  • 800 – it is probably safe to hang out your shingle
  • 1000 – you are getting some real attention
  • 2000 – you are well known in your field
  • 5000 – you are an often quoted expert in your field – a thought-leader
  • 10000 – Dave Ulrich
  • 23500 – Gregor J. Rothfuss
  • 50000 – Tom Peters
  • 100000 – Peter Drucker

too much fun, via seb

OMG

i had lunch with richard m. soley, OMG chairman, on tuesday. he took me to a great chinese place in cambridge, and started to explain how he had built up OMG as a non-profit company that has reinvented itself around objects, CORBA, UML and most recently MDA. OMG organizes conferences and workshops as a means to drive adoption and consensus around areas ripe for standardization. i very much enjoyed richards insights into the conference circuit, and his advice for OSCOM. maybe there is some common ground in the future?
richard also was one of the first developers of emacs, shares the RMS initials with the other richard, and was at MIT at the same time.

Subcutane subsistence

A Florida company has announced plans to develop a service that would allow consumers to pay for merchandise using microchips implanted under their skin, and has attracted scorn from some fundamentalist Christians, who believe that VeriChip is the fabled “mark of the beast” of biblical lore. Satan will someday force people to “receive a mark” on their hands or foreheads in order to buy or sell.

classic future shock level problem. sign me up.