Tweet Trove 5 (13-20 December, 2009)

Arts, Culture, Literature

OPEN Magazine | Silent Bestsellers (Indian Writings in English) : http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/books/silent-bestsellers

Fantasy & Sci-Fi Magazine Art: http://www.life.com/image/first/in-gallery/36092/fantasy--sci-fi-magazine-art

Travel - 25 Authentic Asian Experiences: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1934455,00.html

10 worst phrases to use at office: http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/worklife/12/16/cb.worst.phrases.work/index.html?eref=rss_latest

Education, e-Learning

@thoughts: My Learning 2009: http://simply-speaking.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-learning-2009.html

What Matters Now: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/12/what-matters-now-get-the-free-ebook.html. Free e-book of ideas from 70 thinkers.

Humor

Google confirms the loneliest number: http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2009/12/17/google-confirm-1-loneliest-number/

The most frequently asked question in webinars and workshops: http://brandon-hall.com/janetclarey/?p=1623

Internet, Science and Technology

Top 10 Astronomy Pictures of 2009: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2009/12/15/top-ten-astronomy-pictures-of-2009/

The many uses of Twitter (+ The Six Twitter Types): http://www.ngonlinenews.com/news/many-users-of-twitter/

The idiot's guide to Google Wave: http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/the-idiot-s-guide-to-google-wave-655127

Five Technologies That Will Keep Shaping the Web in 2010: http://sixrevisions.com/web-development/five-technologies-that-will-keep-shaping-the-web-in-2010/

100 Incredible Lectures from the World’s Top Scientists: http://www.bestcollegesonline.com/blog/2009/06/18/100-incredible-lectures-from-the-worlds-top-scientists/

Tweet Trove 4 (6-12 December, 2009)

Apologies for the delay in posting this one - No connectivity for most of yesterday and when finally I could access the Internet, data seemed to be percolating through thick molasses.

Arts, Culture, Literature

Classic Twitterature - University of Chicago students reinterpret great works of literature into Twitter-speak: http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local-beat/Classic-Twitterature-78848847.html

When bad covers happen to good books: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/books/review/Queenan-t.html?_r=4&ref=books

Are Writers Using TMA (Too Many Acronyms)? : http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=78&aid=173933

Business and Economics

The wonderful world of Walt Disney (infographic) : http://www.busmanagement.com/news/walt-disney-productions/

Education, e-Learning

How iPhone Could Reboot Education - Abilene Christian University has a go: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/iphone-university-abilene/

Top 125 Workplace eLearning Posts of 2009: http://www.elearninglearning.com/wpblog/top-elearning-posts-2009/

Humor

Parenthood be not proud: http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2009/12/04/traister_parenting_makes_me_dumb/index.html

Facebook suggestions (ahem) : http://xkcd.com/672/

Internet, Science and Technology

In the Brain, Seven Is A Magic Number: http://www.physorg.com/news178220995.html#top

Gallery: The Year's Most Amazing Scientific Images | Popular Science: http://www.popsci.com/science/gallery/2009-12/gallery-years-most-amazing-scientific-images

BusinessWeek -Beware Social Media Snake Oil: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_50/b4159048693735.htm?chan=magazine+channel_top+stories

11 Google Chrome Extensions, For Starters: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/05/11-chrome-extensions-for-starters/?utm_source=feedburner

Etcetera

"Can you break your culture of silence?" - Sunitha Krishnan's fight against sex slavery: http://on.ted.com/287S

If you can save some trees, why not save some lettuce? http://cafehayek.com/2009/12/save-the-spinach.html

Tweet Trove 3 (29 November-5 December, 2009)

Arts, Culture, Literature

Top Words of 2009: http://www.languagemonitor.com/news/top-words-of-2009

Business and Economics

Do prostitutes want prostitution to be legal? Is a pimp no different than a corporate manager? More Q&A: http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/01/superfreakonomics-book-club-sudhir-venkatesh-answers-your-prostitution-questions/#more-22489

The dark side of Dubai: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html

Education, e-Learning

The Psychology of Achievement In Playing Games: http://www.pixelpoppers.com/2009/11/awesome-by-proxy-addicted-to-fake.html

e-book: Theory and Practice of Online Learning (caution: 484 pages; pdf): http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/99Z_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf

Discursive Learning:Knowing "What is missing in educational curriculum is this sense of play, this sense of tinkering." http://discursive-learning.blogspot.com/2009/11/knowing.html

EnerCities - The First Serious Game On Facebook: http://seriousgamesmarket.blogspot.com/2009/12/enercities-first-serious-game-on.html

Humor

Elementary My Dear Watson: http://www.thedoghousediaries.com/?p=1096

Why Twitter? http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-11-24/

If the Bible was magazines: http://www.collegehumor.com/article:1795235

Internet, Science and Technology

Is slavery the new green energy? http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/03/cycling-energy-slavery

How our brains build social worlds: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427370.500-how-our-brains-build-social-worlds.html?full=true

TwHistory: http://www.twhistory.com/?page_id=2. Intriguing use of Twitter.

An alternate oral history of the last decade - If Al Gore had won: http://2010.newsweek.com/essay/if-gore-had-won.html

The journey of a tweet -- How 'tweets' become worldwide news within a matter of minutes? http://www.ngonlinenews.com/news/the-journey-of-a-tweet/

Periodic table - social media elements: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eyecube/3302969531/sizes/l/, Internet: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dullhunk/2053007240/sizes/l/, 28 more periodic tables: http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/redeye/2009/12/not-your-grandmothers-periodic-tables-30-charts-that-have-nothing-to-do-with-chemicals.html

The Seattle Times is using Google Wave to catching a killer: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/30/google-wave-manhunt/

Etcetera

The World's 18 Strangest Roads: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/transportation/4338387.html?page=1

What TED didn’t get about India: http://www.financialexpress.com/news/column-what-ted-didnt-get-about-india/539729/0

Rectangles Vs. Triangles: The Great Sandwich Debate : http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120914097

Top 100 global thinkers: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/11/30/the_fp_top_100_global_thinkers?page=full

Tweet Trove 2 (21-28 November, 2009)

Arts, Culture, Literature

"Publishing is changing. I’m ready to see what it turns into and change my expectations with it." http://bit.ly/1weHjv

How Twitter Makes You A Better Writer: http://www.copyblogger.com/twitter-writing/

Business and Economics

The amazing world of Coca-Cola (infographic): http://www.busmanagement.com/news/coca-cola/

Education, e-Learning

Educational games and interactivities from National Geographic: http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/games

2009-2014 forecasts of the US market for e-learning: http://tinyurl.com/ydypry8. (Caution: pdf)

A Quick Guide to Social Learning - 100+ examples of the use of social media in learning: http://c4lpt.co.uk/handbook/examples.html

Humor

Top 20 Unfortunate Lessons Girls Learn From Twilight: http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/11/twilight-lessons-girls-learn/

Internet vices: Twitter is crack cocaine? Facebook = cranberry vodka? http://www.patrickmoberg.com/internet-vices/

The Chronicles of Narnia? http://xkcd.com/665/

8 ways to kill an idea: http://www.samiviitamaki.com/?p=336

Internet, Science and Technology

Evolution of storage (infographic) : http://www.flickr.com/photos/7979419@N02/4131812966/sizes/l/

The story of the Titanic Gulp - big *is* beautiful: check out this lovely piece on how whales dine: http://bit.ly/6aBfh6

"Wikipedia is now part of the establishment" Fears over future of Wikipedia as 49,000 volunteers leave site: http://bit.ly/6PnDHN

A useful compendium: Jane Hart's Guide to Social Learning: http://icio.us/db40th

Evolution vs. Intelligent Design: 6 Bones of Contention: http://bit.ly/6mpg6N

Google Image Search meets the Visual Thesaurus: Google Image Swirl -- http://image-swirl.googlelabs.com/

Top 5 Misconceptions About The LHC : http://bit.ly/8tBx8G

Silence! The Last of the Giant Radio Telescopes Is Listening to the Universe http://bit.ly/1x4wzo

SETI: Building a Better Alien-Calling Code -- http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/11/better-seti-code/

My Twitter Tweets on Ink Scrawl

I have been on Twitter for sometime now: You can follow me on Twitter at Ink Scrawl. It started as a curiosity — I wanted to explore microblogging and check first hand how it works and if it can be used in my work as a part of any e-Learning/training solutions. Off late I think I have settled on how I could use Twitter: to post the links that I find of interest to me and occasionally to post an observation or a comment. I have now added a Twitter app of my account to this blog in the sidebar on the right. That way there will be something "fresh" for you to read when you visit the blog. I hope to be much more regular with my Twitter updates than I have been on my blog lately.

I also plan to filter the most interesting of my tweets (links) for a week and post it to this blog every weekend. That gives me a standardized post every week. Hopefully. :)

The Pursuit of Unhappyness . . .

. . . can actually be fun. Geetha Krishnan shows how to attempt Twittering for Sadness (or tries to. He is having way too much fun to be sad).

Is Social Media the New Opium for the Masses?

. . . It depends. The e-learning maven explains.

Social Networking and Religion

People are considering "Facebook Fasts"  —  giving up Facebook for the 40 days of Lent  —  and joining groups like "Giving up Facebook for Lent" . And some are listing tips on how to go about surviving all this social networking deprivation.

What next? Just imagine the possibilities: Giving up Facebook for Navratri, Giving up Facebook for Shravan (or the token, Giving up Facebook for Shravan Mondays), Giving up Facebook for Muharram . . .

My parents (if they knew how to use computers, were Internet savvy, had Facebook accounts, and were caught up in this "social fasting") would probably start the group  — "Giving up Facebook for all Tuesdays, Thursdays, Ganesh Chaturthis, Ekadashis . . ."

Would you observe a Facebook fast for religious reasons? Which occasions?

Hamlet (the Facebook Edition)

Hamlet wonders if he should continue to exist. Or not.

Hamlet thinks Ophelia might be happier in a convent.

Ophelia removed "moody princes" from her interests.

Hamlet—Facebook News, Feed Edition by Sarah Schmelling.

Ever Wonder why . . .

. . . such applications are created?

Exhibit 1 — answer.im: Instant messaging answering service

Exhibit 2 — bedpost ("It's business time") : A personal web application that will give you some insight into your sex life. (Alas, no social networking features. Just imagine — a mashup that pulls this into your Facebook profile. Or posts to Twitter.)

What next?

Links via: Geetha Krishnan

Virtual Shakespeare

Shakespeare has a very rich lore and fantasy environment second only to Tolkien, . . . Both have elves.

Professor Edward Castronova and colleagues in the Synthetic Worlds Institute at the University of Indiana have built a virtual gameworld - Arden - around the Shakespeare's plays.

Lest you mistake Arden for just another virtual game:

An economist by training, Prof Castronova has led attempts to quantify the economic activity and impact of virtual worlds - be that in the games themselves or in the real world when people pay cold cash for virtual goods.

Arden, said Prof Castronova, was an attempt to go much further than this after the fact analysis. It will give social scientists an entire populated world on which to perform experiments - something always lacking in the real world.

"We're interested in social dynamics and economics," he said.

Read: The Bard Helps Digital Experiment

Tourist Map of Literature

Here's a new way to pick up recommendations for the kind of authors and books you like to read.

Enter the name of an author at Literature-Map and the website provides you with a "map" of similar authors.

Some of my searches: J. K. Rowling, Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Ursula Le Guin, Iain Banks, and (just for the heck of it) William Shakespeare.


Link Via: India Uncut.

People are Reading This Blog to . . .

Some desperate soul sought some information from Google.

And was directed by the god of search to read this on my blog.

Wot to say? Gods are like that only. God tries us in ways that we cannot comprehend. All we can do is to keep the faith and continue our quest for answers.

Related posts here and here.

International Book Idol

Now an online contest to decide what (and who) to publish.

Amazon is joining hands with Penguin and Hewlett Packard for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. The contest which kicked off on October 1, 2007 will allow contestants from 20 countries (including India) to submit unpublished manuscripts of English-language novels to Amazon till 5 November, 2007. Following this Amazon will ask a group of its top online reviewers to assess 5000 word excerpts and choose a 1000 participants who will go on to the next round. The full manuscripts of the chosen 1000 will be sent to Publishers Weekly, which will assign reviewers to each. These reviews will then be posted online, along with excerpts and thrown open to Amazon's customers for comments. Using these online comments along with the Publishers Weekly reviews, Penguin will narrow the field to a 100 "finalists." Penguin editors will then cut the number down to 10 and send the manuscripts to an expert panel. The panel's comments will be posted on Amazon and the readers can then vote on the winner.

The winner gets a publishing contract and an advance of $25000 from Penguin.

Details of the contest here. Contest rules and FAQs.

The Dying Art of Browsing Books

Buying books online may be very convenient but however hard an online bookstore may try it cannot replicate the “serendipity” of discovering something in a bookshop.

Bookshops, Margaret Atwood rightly believes, are missing out on “the sales that they wouldn’t expect to make, but make because somebody sees this beautiful cover and they pick it up and read the front flap."

How internet booksellers are killing art of browsing.

Are we Tiring of the Printed Word?

A Poynter Institute study finds online readers finish news stories more often than those who read in print.

The Golden Age of Access to Books

The web is profoundly changing the way books are found, read, and talked about, and in almost every case, Victor Keegan feels, the change is for the good.

Economics of Attention

Because of this information explosion, we no longer read - we skim. The news that used to last a day now lasts just a few hours, simply because we need to pay attention to the new news. So it is becoming increasingly difficult to juggle all the news sources and keep on top of things. [. . .]

Things get more interesting when we realize that our attention crisis is not only our problem. It is also a big problem for news sites, blogs, search engines and online retailers. Our scarcity of attention hurts their economics. The web sites that contain content relevant to us have a big incentive to make sure that we find it. [. . .]

The basic ideas behind the Attention Economy are simple. Such an economy facilitates a marketplace where consumers agree to receives services in exchange for their attention. The ultimate purpose is of course to sell something to the consumer, but the selling does not need to be direct and does not need to be instant. For example news feeds illustrate the point well, since they ask for consumers attention in exchange for the opportunity to show him/her advertising. The Search engines are similar in that respect, because they show ads in exchange for helping users find answers online.

It is important to realize that the key ingredient in the attention game is relevancy. As long as a consumer sees relevant content, he/she is going to stick around - and that creates more opportunities to sell. [. . .]

The Read/Write Web analyses The Attention Economy and how the web is affecting our "attention space."

We Are the Web

A neat video that traces the evolution of the web: from hypertext links to linking people.



Link via Geetha Krishnan

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