Category: Resources

Free Science, Engineering and Medical Books Online. I am not lying. The National Academies Press which was created by the National Academies to publish the reports issued by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council, all operating under a charter granted by the Congress of the United States, has more than 2,500 free, searchable, high quality books online. Some random examples: The Genomic Revolution: Unveiling the Unity of Life Strange Matters: Undiscovered Ideas at the Frontiers of Space and Time Who Goes There?: Authentication Through the Lens of Privacy Microbial Threats to Health: Emergence, Detection, and Response [kuro5hin.org]

A useful resource to have handy BUT see this post from Terry Frazier on limitations of this.

Rettig: Interaction Design. A History of Interaction Design, by Marc Rettig. A tour de force that takes you from hand tools to social… [Internet Time Blog]

An excellent review of design. Just to name drop a tiny bit, I've worked with Marc a number of times. I learned a great deal from him about how people and technology interact. We met inj 1996 when Marc was head of design for a start up called Digital Knowledge Assets. DKA was developing software for helping experts share knowledge and that was something we wanted to have at Diamond. In retrospect, I see the work done at DKA as one of the precursors of what evolved into weblogs. Enough namedropping, go read what Marc has to say.

Doug Engelbart Documentary Website.

Have you ever used a mouse? Have you followed a link on a web page? Sent an email? Used a window on a computer? Used video teleconferencing? Then you live in Doug's world.

Back in November I posted some links to videos of Doug Engelbart's incredible work in the 1960s with technologies that I wouldn't use daily almost for another 3 decades: the mouse, windows, networking, email and more. It was awe-inspiring to see video of the birth of these literally world-changing technologies. Really incredible stuff.

There's a new website called Doug Engelbart's Invisible Revolution which has been created to track the progress on a new documentary about Doug and his effect on the computer industry (world?) as we know it. As they're planning on interviews with just about everyone in Silicon Valley, they're blogging about it (!) and putting clips online for viewing. Pretty rocking if you ask me. Right now, in addition to Doug himself there's also a clip from our favorite SmartMobber, Howard Rheingold who met Engelbart 20 years ago while writing Tools For Thought. Very cool stuff…

In addition to the neat stuff about Doug we're learning on the site (that he's still around and still interested in everything) you get to see a little behind-the-scenes about the process of making a documentary. I don't know if all documentaries are made this way, but its quite the shoe-string operation with the producers doing a lot of their work in Starbucks. 😉 Having gone to college New Hampshire and knowing several people who interned for Kevin Burns before he was the PBS superstar we all know now, I've got a general idea of what it's like (it's not Hollywood). This site is pretty interesting, if just for that.

Check it out… hopefully they'll put up a PayPal link or something up so we can help make sure the documentary sees the light of day, hey?

-Russ

Comment

[Russell Beattie Notebook]

Not only are we still feeding off the seminal work of Engelbart, we're still barely learning to listen to his deeper message, which was that we need to invest not only in the tools but in learning how to use them to good effect. Engelbart assumed that it would take time and effort to learn how to think better with these tools. That's certainly not a message we're going to hear from software marketers.

My wife is a photographer. If you want to piss her off, here's what to do. After admiring one of her pictures, ask her what kind of camera she uses. It's along the same lines as asking a writer what kind of pencil they use or what kind of keyboard.

Tools are important, but investing in learning how to take advantage of the tools is more important. There are two critical elements of in this learning. One of these is time, the other is play. Both are hard to come by in today's work environment.

Michael Fagan's Absolutely Fantastic, Really Cool, Just Plain Excellent RSS Resource.

Michael Fagan's Absolutely Fantastic, Really Cool, Just Plain Excellent RSS Resource

Wow. Michael Fagan just emailed me about his new RSS resources page and asked me for comments.  I don't even know where to start — and that's not because its bad — its just plain excellent.  I'm sure in time I can come up with comments but for now run, don't walk over to his site.  Recommended.

[The FuzzyBlog!]

Let me add my endorsement. Definitlely an excellent resource.

Just discovered that the Daily Princetonian has an RSS feed. It's now in my subscriptions list. Stumbled across it courtesy of another feed in my subscriptions – JD Lasica's New Media Musings. Granted it's a bit limited in terms of general interest, but it's one more illustration of the value of RSS.

Implementing VisiCalc [SATN]

A fascinating bit of the early history of personal computing. Bob Frankston's recollections on how he and Dan Bricklin implemented the original Apple ][ version of Visicalc. I still wish that Bricklin had been more than one year ahead of me at business school. I had to do Finance by hand just like he did. While I was simply suffering, they were implementing a solution to the pain they experienced and launching the first killer app of the PC generation. I did buy my first PC, an Apple ][ shortly after graduating from business school, but sure wished I had been able to have it while I was there. My other regret from that era was selling the Osborne I “portable” computer I bought after the Apple ][. I sold it to a colleague who went back to business school after I did. I think that old Apple ][ is still in my parents basement somewhere, but the Osborne is gone.

I'VE MOVED. This blog is at a new URL. Please change your bookmarks and blogrolls to http://www.dynamist.com/weblog/. Thanks…. [Dynamist Blog]

Virginia Postrel's blog has moved and is now running with Moveable Type. Better yet, it now has a lovely RSS feed, although it took a little bit of digging to find it. The RSS auto-discovery isn't quite configured correctly.  But it's there and now I can follow it in my aggregator.

Learning by doing and sharing… at age nine.

I have reflected a couple times on building communities of inventive kids. This post by Mark Szpakowski describes the kind of thing I believe could get kids hooked on learning and sharing:

I've been watching how my 9-year-old son is making use of the Lego Mindstorms community and associated sites: he's self-educating himself, making use of both books and online resources. The lego robotics forums let him see what builders all over the world are constructing, complete with digital photos of construction details. He refers to these in his own building projects, always with variations due to different parts, etc.

In the Mindstorms forums you can find dozens of kids exchanging tips and undertaking all kinds of cool projects. Makes me wish I'd had something like that when I was their age.

[Seb's Open Research]

Hewlett-Packard discovers communities of practice by analysing intenal e-mail exchange.

E-mail reveals real leaders [via Column Two]: how Hewlett-Packard discovers communities of practice by analysing intenal e-mail exchange. Contains reference to the paper, which describes the algorithm in more details:

Tyler, J. R., Wilkinson, D. M. & Huberman, B. A. Email as spectroscopy: automated discovery of community structure within organizations. Preprint http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/cond-mat/0303264, (2003).

[Mathemagenic]

Looks like an interesting idea. Something to get back to and read in detail