Wolfram explained

I confess that Wolfram’s New Kind of Science has been gathering dust on one of my shelves. But it continues to intrigue me. Here’s some material courtesy of David Weinberger that may help when I do get around to finally reading it.

Wolfram explained. I just came across a Forbes article by Michael S. Malone, dated 11.27.00, called “God, Stephen Wolfram and Everything Else.” It’s a good, non-technical introduction to Wolfram. Nicely done. Critics of Wolfram won’t find much to like in it, and I still think Ray Kurzweil’s piece is the best analysis/intro I’ve read, but Malone puts Wolfram into a useful perspective…. [Joho the Blog]

From the tarmac at Logan airport

Now here’s a first for me. I’m sitting on the tarmac at Boston’s Logan airport in a United 737. Chicago is on a groundstop and we won’t hear anything new for awhile. They’ve let us turn on laptops, cellphones, etc while we wait.

Turns out I have connectivity via wi-fi somewhere over in the D terminal off to my right. I figured I had to post something just because I could. Ain’t technology grand?

Tangled Up in Glue

Redefining the notion of stickiness? Looks like a useful reference to know about

Tangled Up in Glue.

IDFuel has nice introduction to those substance most often needed after dropping a gadget to the floor (as opposed to the substance that caused you to drop it): glue. The trick to glue, of course, is to discover what types of surfaces you will be adhering together; after that, all you need is some deft swearing and some luck. I would also toss in to the mix a favorite link of mine, “This to That.com,” a simple webform that helps you pick what adhesive to use to glue two different (or the same, I guess) surfaces together.
Read – Stuck on You [IDFuel]
Read – This to That (Glue Advice) [ThisToThat]

[Gizmodo]

Your Personal Data, Out of Control.

It may be a bit over the top but it’s worth thinking about anyway. I suspect the most unrealistic aspect of this animation is the attentiveness and friendliness of the customer service rep.

Your Personal Data, Out of Control. The American Civil Liberties Union has created a clever animation about how personal data is spreading via linked databases to create the most detailed dossiers on all of us. The scenario, a call to a pizza-delivery service, is exaggerated. But it’s clearly the direction in which we’re heading. The ACLU offers specific suggestions on how to slow this rampaging privacy invasion. [Dan Gillmor’s eJournal]

MBA Student Suvey Project: The Blog as a Meaningful Business Tool

More efforts to dig into the connections between blogs and organizations.

MBA Student Suvey Project: The Blog as a Meaningful Business Tool.

Matthew Lin wrote me and asked to help publicize his survey. If you leave your email addy at the end, he’ll share his report. Here is his email:

Dear Nancy,

My name is Matthew Lin, an MBA candidate at University of New Brunswick at Saint John, Canada. I am currently conducting a research on how weblogs are being used as business tools, and their particular implication for small and medium enterprises. I have designed a questionnaire in order to survey individuals who publish weblogs or can describe the reasoning behind their company’s weblog. The survey will be posted online for one month, starting next week. I am seeking your assistance to promote this survey to your readers, in hope of gathering a good cross-section of business weblogs. Please spread the word!

The survey is available at: http://business.unbsj.ca/bblog/

Additional information about this project (e.g., objectives, hypotheses) are available upon request.

Thank you for your consideration. If you are aware of others who might also be
interested in posting this questionnaire URL, please feel free to forward this email to them.

Sincerely,

Matthew Lin

[Full Circle Associates Online Interaction & Community Blog]

Want Lookout? Get it today

Several people I trust have been recommending LookOut and its availability after Microsoft purchased the company may become an issue. I’ve grabbed a copy.

Want Lookout? Get it today..

Lookout 1.2 (the current version with the new license agreement) is available today until 12:00 PM PST at this link. After that time, you ll need to either find a friend who has the installer or wait until Microsoft decides what it s stratgey for the Outlook add-in will be.

There s been a lot of speculation that the fact that purchase was made through the MSN group (where founder and developer Mike Belshe is joining the Advanced Search Technology group) may mean that we won t see Lookout re-released as an add-in for the Outlook application.

Others are predicting that Lookout search capability will be incorporated into the next version of Outlook (but who knows when that will be?).

As the old song goes get it while you can .

[The Office Weblog]

Martin Roell on Improving Knowledge Workers’ Productivity

Martin has put together a nice synthesis of thinking about weblogs and knowledge worker productivity.

Improving Knowledge Workers’ Productivity and Organisational Knowledge Sharing with Weblog-based Personal Publishing.

In case you wonder what to read this weekend: Martin Roell published 0.9 version of the paper for his BlogTalk presentation – Distributed KM – Improving Knowledge Workers’ Productivity and Organisational Knowledge Sharing with Weblog-based Personal Publishing.

This paper briefly explores the failure of traditional knowledge management to adress the problem of knowledge worker productivity and argues that a deeper understanding of knowledge work is necessary to improve it. It then explores knowledge work and how it is supported with information technology tools today, focussing specially on the email client as a knowledge work tool.

The paper introduces weblogs as personal publishing tools for knowledge workers and shows how personal publishing supports knowledg work processes, is personally beneficial to the knowledge worker and helps the dissemination of knowledge through an organisation.

Martin intergrates lots of thinking on “blogs in KM”, so, next to an interesting read by itself, this paper is a good starting point to discover follow-up reading.

[Mathemagenic]

“Yes, And” and Uplift Improvs

Knowledge work is increasingly about learning to think and act on your feet. The notion of scripted responses is an outmoded response appropriate to industrial settings that no longer exist. Improv teaches that you can prepare for the unexpected in more useful ways that standing around with your mouth agape. “Yes, and” is one of those fundamental tricks of the improv trade. Scripts may be obsolete but rehearsal still can help. Tom provides a nice summary of improv and pointers to some useful improv resources.

“Yes, And” and Uplift Improvs. I was at a retreat last week at which the leader spoke of a “Yes, And” dialog model. A group… [Tom Munnecke]