Enterprise dashboards and work visualizations

Via Johndan, a blog on how businesspeople visualize work.

The Dashboard Spy on Enterprise Dashboards

technorati tags:work, visualizations

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Amanda Marcotte on quitting the Edwards campaign

The blurb says:

During my brief tenure as blogmaster for a Democratic presidential contender, I experienced the right-wing smear machine firsthand.

The word "smear" is unfortunate here, given the post that stirred up this trouble in the first place. Marcotte hasn't come to grips with the fact that arguments that work well in bounded networks of activity can and do alienate allies in less bounded networks. When Christians on the left react poorly to questions such as "What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?", you don't have to invent a conspiracy to explain why.

Why I had to quit the John Edwards campaign | Salon News

technorati tags:marcotte, edwards

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"We gave him a moustache so that we didn't need to draw a mouth."

Shigeru Miyamoto talks about designing Mario and the other Nintendo characters, as well as the ethics and future of game design.

Shigeru Miyamoto Talk Asia Interview - CNN.com

technorati tags:shigeru, miyamoto, mario, nintendo, wii

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Gina Trapani is lifehacking Yahoo Pipes

In case you're still trying to figure out how to use the thing:
Geek to Live: Create your master feed with Yahoo! Pipes - Lifehacker

technorati tags:yahoo-pipes

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UCD smackdown

Peter Merholtz of Adaptive Path savages usability guru Jakob Nielsen.

peterme.com :: Jakob Jumps The Shark

technorati tags:jakob, nielsen

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John Edwards campaign is in SecondLife, sort of

techPresident has a nice short article about John Edwards' campaign headquarters in SL. Like most SL places without an event happening, the headquarters is largely deserted. I liked this observation:

You can also put on an Edwards t-shirt and "Ed-head" shoes, send John a "letter," and there's a podium presumably waiting to be used by the Senator himself.

Except that in SL, it's impossible to tell if the candidate him/herself is the one animating that avatar. Wouldn't you want someone who's experienced in SL navigating your avatar, and a fast typist delivering the speech your speechwriters wrote based on the campaign themes identified by your demographers and focus groups? And, really, if they're doing all that, why not get a little sleep? After all, you've been driving hard on the campaign trail, and in this event you're not really needed!

What a great metaphor for the modern presidential campaign, in which the "candidate" is a sort of simulation animated by a smart but limited human being and her or his campaign team.

No, we'll be able to tell how involved the candidate actually is -- for this election, anyway -- because campaign speeches in SL are rare enough that someone will send a camera crew to Edwards' physical spot to record him operating the computer.

techPresident – How the candidates are using the web, and how the web is using them.

technorati tags:secondlife, edwards

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Lawrence Lessig at UT

If you're in Austin, lucky you: Lawrence Lessig will be in town Tuesday to discuss his book Free Culture, which is being read by all of our first-year composition students this year. Blogging Pedagogy has started a discussion for those whose students will attend.

Lessig appearance meme | Blogging Pedagogy

technorati tags:lessig, composition, writing, free-culture

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Military social networking

Surfacing the tacit knowledge and workarounds that experienced soldiers have accumulated:

Boing Boing: New gadgets blog aimed at enlisted military: Kit Up

technorati tags:netwar

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"'Since we don't have a computer, we know a lot more about what's here,' said Spinuzzi."

Sorry, but the juxtaposition was just so startling.

Web 4.0

If you are sick of Web 2.0, you might be startled to find out that even Web 3.0 is a little passe and we're talking about Web 4.0 now. Well, it's predicted for 2020-2030, so don't feel like you're too far behind. The article is short on details, but it includes an obligatory Ray Kurzweil quote.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this article is how I came to it: GMail helpfully showed it in the sidebar under "related links" as I was reading a colleague's email. It sort of makes me feel like I did when I dropped my insulated cup on the bus once, and a teenager two rows back lunged forward to pick it up for me: helpful, but a little too helpful, if you know what I mean.

» From semantic Web (3.0) to the WebOS (4.0) | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

technorati tags:web4.0, web3.0, web2.0, google-suggestions-are-a-little-creepy

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What would you think of lowjacking guest workers?

VeriChip is pushing this idea, and "they've persuaded a former Bush Health Secretary to get himself chipped."

Slashdot | VeriChip Implants 222 People With RFID

technorati tags:lowjacking, verichip

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International Journal of Communication

Via KairosNews, the International Journal of Communication is

an online, multi-media, academic journal that adheres to the highest standards of peer review and engages established and emerging scholars from anywhere in the world. The International Journal of Communication is an interdisciplinary journal that, while centered in communication, is open and welcoming to contributions from the many disciplines and approaches that meet at the crossroads that is communication study.

Editors are Manuel Castells and Larry Gross. Looks really interesting. No RSS feed.

International Journal of Communication

technorati tags:communication, journal, networks, castells

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What do you actually DO with Yahoo Pipes??

Some ideas.

5 cool ways to use Yahoo! Pipes - franticindustries.

technorati tags:yahoo-pipes

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What presidential candidates are purchasing Google keywords?

Democratic presidential candidates are way ahead in terms of social networking, but the Republican candidates are farther ahead in terms of buying keywords to make sure they top search results.

techPresident – How the candidates are using the web, and how the web is using them.

technorati tags:campaign, search, keywords

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More on Google Maps and Iraq

I mentioned a while back that insurgents in Iraq were apparently using Google Maps. According to the article below, so are civilians: they use it and Google Earth to plan escape routes. Web services are becoming a taken-for-granted part of our information landscape.

Smart Mobs: Survival in Iraq

technorati tags:google-maps, iraq

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The dutch accessibility law ...

... is apparently "awesome."

The Dutch accessibility law is awesome | 456 Berea Street

technorati tags:accessibility

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Thoughts on Edwards' ex-bloggers

We've all been following the story in which Presidential candidate John Edwards' campaign blogger Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon resigned after some arguments on her personal blog came to light, arguments that had played well with her regular readers but had positioned Edwards' campaign poorly in relation to Catholics in particular and Christians in general. In the Q&A last night, I argued that blogs like Marcotte's -- and other means of self -publication, such as MySpace and Facebook -- had exposed how poorly some arguments circulate by increasing the points to which they could circulate. Remarks that we could once make and closely delineate -- in our clubs or places of worship or other private spaces -- can leak into radically different contexts.

Now Edwards' part-time technical advisor Melissa McEwan of Shakespeare's Sister, has also resigned. She cites harassment:

the focus of sustained ideological attacks was inevitably making me a liability to the campaign, and making me increasingly uncomfortablewith my and my family's level of exposure.

This sort of harassment is a growing problem and we have to find ways to deal with it. But we also have to come to grips with the fact that arguments can circulate more broadly and can quickly make the jump from a small circle of readers to a national circle of critics. Just as argumentation changed in the shift from declamation to printed form, it will have to change again.

Shakespeare's Sister

technorati tags:argumentation, edwards-campaign

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How easy is it to find candidates' events?

When I lived in Ames, IA, you couldn't throw a rock without hitting a presidential candidate in the lead-up to the straw polls. I remember once attending a pancake breakfast with a candidate on a lark (and because I was hungry). But if you don't live in Iowa or New Hampshire, it's harder to find events with your selected candidate. Presumably the campaigns' websites would make this easier ... right? Wrong:

techPresident – How the candidates are using the web, and how the web is using them.

technorati tags:candidates, networking

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Romney: The television president

Roger Simon on Mitt Romney:

Mitt Romney is so good he is almost too good.Candidates want people to come away from their events thinking “presidential,” not “slick.”But Romney is so polished and looks so much like a president would look if television picked our presidents (and it does) that sometimes you have to ask yourself if you are watching the real deal or a careful construction.

Now I find this to be fascinating. We have had an actor in the White House, and some people are pushing for another one to throw his hat in the ring. (Both had political experience as well, of course.) And I seem to remember Robert Redford's name being kicked around as a candidate a few years ago, which would have been dizzying given his filmography. But we don't want an actual politician who seems too much like a simulation.

The Politico

technorati tags:actors, politics

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Illinois to ban social networking sites?

In my talk last night, one point I made was that we had to further engage with, study, and leverage new literacies, particularly the ones we see at play on social networking sites. And this morning I read that an Illinois bill proposes cutting off access to social networking from public libraries and schools.

Slashdot | Illinois Bill Would Ban Social Networking Sites

technorati tags:social, networking

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Scobleizer asks: How do we keep up?

I got up at 5:10 and this is nearly the first thing I read:

I got up early to read feeds and do email. I started at 5:45 a.m. and it’s now 7:26 a.m. and I still didn’t get through all my feeds. But, worse, is what I did find: dozens of new products, new companies, new phones (Gizmodo and Engadget are going crazy posting phone news, I’ve kept most of that off of my link blog).

How do we keep up? « Scobleizer - Tech Geek Blogger

technorati tags:information, overload

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Stalking via mobile phone

SmartMobs points to an article about teens who are harassed by their boyfriends or girlfriends via phones and computers:

nearly 25 per cent of teens in a relationship had received hourly text messages or phone calls to check up on them between midnight and 5 a.m. One out of six said they had received messages 10 or more times an hour overnight.

SmartMobs subtitles the article "Always-On Panopticon," but as I argued last night in my talk, it's less like a Panopticon (which assumes centralized, hierarchical control) and more like Michel Serres' description of the agora, in which everyone knows everyone else's business. Not pervasive surveillance by authorities, but pervasive surveillance by anyone.

Smart Mobs: Jealous teenagers

technorati tags:panopticon, agora, surveillance

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Catching up with GMail

The author of this story apparently doesn't know that Yahoo is copying GMail's GTalk feature.

Update: As Ryan points out in the comments, I apparently don't know how to glean the details from an article. The author does acknowledge Google's similar service.

Yahoo Mail offers instant messaging inside e-mail | Tech&Sci | Internet | Reuters.com

technorati tags:gmail, yahoo-chat, yahoo-mail

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Upcoming lecture on the future of computers and writing

If you're in the Austin area, why don't you swing by the CWRL at 5pm tonight. I'll be reprising my plenary session from C&W 2006, "Texts as Tech." We'll talk about football, warfare, telecommunications, computers and writing, and we'll discuss what the trends in each of these mean for how we read, write, and investigate with technology. Plus there will be refreshments.

CWRL Lecture Series: Dr. Clay Spinuzzi | Computer Writing and Research Lab

technorati tags:spinuzzi, writing, technology

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Firefox 3 to support offline apps

Via TechMeme, this post suggests that the Firefox-Google relationship will further address the issue of routing around operating systems to support common apps.

Firefox 3 To Support Offline Apps

technorati tags:firefox, offline, apps, apollo

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Solar power could fuel job growth -- but is that a feature or a bug?

In the middle of a long and mostly convincing post on how Texans should pursue solar power, this sentence jumped out at me:

A 2001 review of thirteen different studies found that, on average, photovoltaics produce seven to ten more jobs per megawatt of capacity than coal does.

So it takes more people and more labor to produce the same amount of capacity? Wouldn't that make solar power less efficient and more expensive in terms of labor?

Burnt Orange Report: Our Eyes Are Upon You, Texas.

technorati tags:solar, texas

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Highrise

37Signals is prepping CRM software.

Preview 1: An introduction to Highrise (the product previously known as Sunrise) - (37signals)

technorati tags:37signals, highrise, crm

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"I suspect they're going to spend a lot of time managing this system"

Democrats and Republicans alike are encountering a problem with running social networking sites to support their candidates. The lede talks about a group name on Barak Obama's site that I find unprintable, but you get the gist from this paragraph:

The big problem with creating a truly open system is the fact that openness automatically devolves to the lowest common denominator. Open systems attract community, but they also attract nuts. Republicans are constantly plagued with people creating bogus "Klansmen for Whoever" groups and clever login names like "David Duke" and "F**kGeorgeBush". Such is the nature of the beast.

techPresident – How the candidates are using the web, and how the web is using them.

technorati tags:politics, social, networking

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TechPresident

TechPresident is a new group blog from Personal Democracy Forum that covers how the 2008 presidential candidates are using the web, and vice versa, how content generated by voters is affecting the campaign.The 2008 election will be the first where the Internet will play a central role, not only in terms of how the campaigns use technology, but also in how voter-generated content affects its course. TechPresident.com plans to track all these changes in real-time, covering everything from campaign websites, online advertising and email lists to the postings on YouTube and who's got the fastest growing group of friends on Facebook.

techPresident – How the candidates are using the web, and how the web is using them.

technorati tags:elections, social, networking

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Social media will be a bigger deal in '08

Taking notes from the Dean campaign, Barak Obama launches his own social network. Meanwhile, Jeff Jarvis explains how YouTube will affect campaigns, particularly McCain's, warning candidates that "you will choke on your forked tongues."

Don't forget that terrorism is also a political act. Extremists -- not the people we so often label "extremest" in our ridiculously overheated political discourse, but the kind that behead people -- are now using YouTube to post propaganda. One prosecutor warns: "we are going to see real-time executions with higher production values."

technorati tags:politics, youtube, social-networking, propaganda, netwar

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Agility v. Pentagon

Slashdot links to a WSJ story about how a Marine officer connected with others to develop and produce an insurgent-identification handheld in 30 days -- beating a Pentagon development project that had been going on for two years.

Slashdot | Army of Davids Beats Pentagon Procurement

technorati tags:agility, netwar

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