Starbucks Union

In yesterday’s first panel of iSummit 06, Larry Lessig welcomed the iSummiters with announcements of new Creative Commons rollouts, including a new range of CC icons. He reported that the number of CC linked licenses has reached 140 million — an increase of 100 million just since December 2005. Joi Ito, chairman of the iCommons board explained that the “amazing diversity” which has been generated by Creative Commons led to the new iCommons whose seminal leadership is gathered over this weekend in Rio de Janeiro. Forty-nine countries are represented by 260 attenders at the iSummit, where I am participating as a panelist and blogger. The above image is iSummiters creating a SecondLife project in the conference computer lab. My sense of iSummit 06 is that what is being created here is very big: it will echo down the open channels of our new digital world for a very long time. An iCommons that belongs to us all is being born.

Just read about this story from B.L. Ochman who I interviewed in at Search Engine Strategies in NYC earlier this year. A Beluga whale at an aquarium in western Japan has learned a new trick. One of them has learned how to blow bubble rings. "AIIya" the whale has been charming the crowds. In the wild, some dolphins and whales blow bubble rings by inhaling air through their blowholes and releasing it through their mouths underwater. But thanks to scuba diving equipment, AIIya can do it anytime. AIIya clearly loves interacting with her audience. She aims the bubbles at spectators as they peer in through the glass. Her new skill was displayed to the public last December and since then, her fame has spread. Locals even believe that those who are the target of AIIya's "happy bubble ring kisses" will have happiness bestowed upon them.

CLICK - staring Adam Sandler is a movie that explores our online video life, where we can sequence things the way we want it, and puts in the the 3D real world. Since so much of our life is going online - and is sequenced in ways we can directly control - it's interesting to see what happens when you can sequence your own life (and I guess, by extension, the lives of people around you). I watched Adam Sandler on the Daily Show Thursday and did not realize he was there to plug CLICK, which looks like a classic even though I haven't see it yet.

The Senate Commerce Committee Thursday adjourned without making any decisions about whether to pass a so-called "Net neutrality" law that would prohibit Internet service providers from discriminating against some Web publishers, either by refusing to transmit their content or charging them higher prices for faster transmission. MediaPost Publications reports via Mobile Crunch. The committee will take up proposals again Tuesday, when it resumes consideration of a telecom overhaul passed by the House of Representatives earlier this month. When the bill was in the House, neutrality advocates unsuccessfully attempted to pass an amendment prohibiting Internet service providers from discriminating against Web publishers. Instead, the House version gives the Federal Communications Commission authority to enforce net neutrality principles and to fine companies up to $500,000 for offenses.

Seth Godin tackles neophilia, the unhealthy love of the new, as profiled in Media Life Magazine. Actually, Japanese scientists have fingered an enzyme in the "disorder". "...Neophiliacs are people who love everything new or novel. While most people have some element of this trait in their personality, there are some folks who have an almost unstoppable draw to every whizzy new electronic gizmo. Or maybe they just have to have the latest combination of strappy sandals and hip-hugging jeans. "...people produce different variations of a mitochondrial enzyme called monoamine oxidase A. That’s according to research from the Yamagata University School of Medicine in Japan, which was recently published in the scientific journal Psychiatric Genetics and mentioned in the New Scientist magazine. The researchers found that one form of this enzyme was “significantly associated with higher scores of novelty seeking.” In other words, people who produce that form of the enzyme are more likely to have novelty-seeking traits in their personality than others. So, one of these days, i'll go for my next Doctor's visit and ask for a blood test for Neophiliacism!

Head on over to Rudy de Waele's m-trends for this week's “L’âge du Christ” edition of the Carnival of the Mobilists. Rudy's done an excellent hosting job and there's some very interesting stuff contributed by quite a few newbies, lots of women, which is cool, and some old hands too. Your must-read of the week.

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the worldwide web, is concerned that a lack of net neutrality could threaten internet innovation. Vnunet reports. "In a post on his blog titled Net Neutrality: This is serious, Berners-Lee explained his worry that, without net neutrality, legislation-free use of the internet by millions in the US could come to an end. " "When I invented the web, I didn't have to ask anyone's permission. Now, hundreds of millions of people are using it freely. I am worried that this is going end in the USA", Berners-Lee wrote. ... Yes, regulation to keep the Internet open is regulation. And mostly, the Internet thrives on lack of regulation. But some basic values have to be preserved. For example, the market system depends on the rule that you can't photocopy money. Democracy depends on freedom of speech. Freedom of connection, with any application, to any party, is the fundamental social basis of the Internet, and, now, the society based on it. Let's see whether the United States is capable as acting according to its important values, or whether it is, as so many people are saying, run by the misguided short-term interested of large corporations.

The Fête de la Musique was held yesterday, with thousands and thousands of concerts all around the world. Today, I have a bonus for you. MechaBonham is a Japanese musical robot based on the classic Kondo KHR-1 humanoid robot design. But even if the creators of this robot are fans of Led Zeppelin in general and of John Bonham, its drummer who died in 1980, in particular, MechaBonham, who can play guitar or piano, I doubt you will like to hear it everyday. Links: Primidi, ZDNet

The MIT Advertising Lab blog posts "the Guardian is launching a new service providing readers with a rapid overview of news that will be updated every 15 minutes.G24 will be a free service featuring news content from the Guardian Unlimited website across five areas:general news,international,economics,sport and media.Users will be able to log on to Guardian Unlimited and download an eight to 12-page A4 pdf document,which can then be printed off".Further,"and then they will insert ads,dynamically generated to fit readers profiles and perhaps past behavior,the ads that people will print out and read on their ride home". Guardian:Print Your Own Newspaper

This RFID in Japan post says "less than two weeks ago,NEC announced that they developed a system that combines rfid and surveillance camera.The system can continuously track people or vehicles.The system uses a camera and RFID in a complementary fashion.When a camera recognizes a moving entity,the system reads information from an RFID tag (carried by a person or a vehicle).Also,it uses RFID to track rough positions of moving entities when they cannot be detected by a camera.The system automatically switches between camera-based and RFID-based tracking". NEC developed system that combines rfid and surveillance camera

You can get a blog cloud of any website and make a teeshirt out of it or display the image online. Here's the blog cloud for www.webmetricsguru.com. What's interesting - you can see topical analysis in the blog cloud - and people appear in the blog cloud as well. You can see "moblile mobs" and "smart technology" are two important (and common) phrases used in SmartMobs.com.

This NPR story says "Americans' telephone records,secretly gathered by tricking telephone companies into revealing private billing information,are often bought by businesses,and sometimes law enforcement agencies. That's the testimony of data-broker witnesses grilled by members of the House Energy and Commerce committee". U.S. Phone Records Sold to Firms,Govt. Agencies

At this evening's NYC Podcasting Group someone told me about holding conferences in SECOND LIFE and even making a living in this life by providing services in SECOND LIFE (like clothing for your Avatars). Harvard Business Review Senior Editor Paul Hemp wrote an article called "Avatar-Based Marketing" speculating on the future of advertising and promoting real products and services in online worlds and MMOs. The discussion about promoting real life products in online worlds will happen in SECOND LIFE (that's right); the discussion will happen from within the online world itself. In order to attend you need to sign up for SECOND LIFE which is free to join.

Culture Jams, Culture Preserves a post on crowdsourcing, fan-created Star Trek videos, and culture jamming, on Paul B. Hartzog's blog.

In the mode of the Mac widgets, these new little mobile critters are said to let you use web services straight from your phone: WidSets takes the hassle out of staying up-to-date, by delivering the very latest information that you are interested in, directly to your fingertips. WidSets is all about enjoying web content on the go through widgets, tiny-apps that bring services and information you normally use on the web, to your mobile phone. Create a widget set and enjoy the freshest news, comments to your blog, or newest posts in your favorite discussion group as soon as they're published, without having to visit each site every day. via Joi Ito

Today's NYT take an in-depth look at Wikipendia. A major topic is the methodology for monitoring content: The administrators are all volunteers, most of them in their 20's. They are in constant communication — in real-time online chats, on "talk" pages connected to each entry and via Internet mailing lists. The volunteers share the job of watching for vandalism, or what Mr. Wales called "drive-by nonsense." Customized software — written by volunteers — also monitors changes to articles. Mr. Wales calls vandalism to the encyclopedia "a minimal problem, a dull roar in the background." Yet early this year, amid heightened publicity about false information on the site, the community decided to introduce semi-protection of some articles. The four-day waiting period is meant to function something like the one imposed on gun buyers. update (June 21, 2006): Jimmy Wales responds to the article: The New York Times gets it exactly backwards

a collaborative project on the history and future of the Internet, including surveys, predictions from then and now, and video interviews: The Elon University/Pew Internet Project site Imagining the Internet: A History and Forecast is a multi-section resource containing thousands of pages. It exposes future possibilities while simultaneously providing a peek back at the past. In it, you will find the words of thousands of people from every corner of the world, from today and from yesterday, making thousands of predictive pronouncements about the future of humankind.

The Fête de la Musique -- also known as World Music Day -- takes place all around the world now, but it is its 25th birthday in France. And the official French site is using Google maps to locate concerts. Here is a link to this mashup. The interface is in French, but I'm sure you can manage it -- and find music you want to listen to.

This article says "Boston has become the latest,and largest U.S. city to launch a crime alert system designed to get the word out about murders,bank robberies and other crimes to residents and businesses via e-mail,text messaging and fax".Alerts "are sent not only about various violent crimes,but also about trends,such as car break-ins.Specific types of businesses,such as pizza shops,can be warned of robberies.Alerts also can be sent about fugitives and missing persons.The program is designed to both disseminate and solicit information,at a time when prosecutors complain that witnesses too often remain quiet.The program allows anonymous tips". Crime alerts at your fingertips in Boston

New Scientist reports "a silicon-based microprocessor has been accelerated to a record speed of 500 billion operations per second (500 gigahertz) in an experiment that raises hopes for super-fast,yet cost-effective,electronic devices.Researchers from Georgia Institute of Technology and IBM's microelectronics laboratory in New York,US,constructed the microchip from an alloy of silicon and germanium.Electrons flow through this material more easily than through silicon alone,especially when the alloy is cooled.The researchers used liquid helium to cool their chip to -268.65°C,just a few degrees above absolute zero,before cranking up its operating speed to more than 500GHz.Even at room temperatures,though, the microchip operated at around 300GHz". Microchip pushed to record operating speeds