Some late night linkage…
Dan Thornton | December 5, 2008
Just to end off the day, here’s some stuff that caught my eye from my Google Shared Items page.
Interesting interview on Venturebeat with futurist Paul Staffo. It’s about the 40th Anniversary of Doug Engelbart’s demonstration fo the first computer mouse (among other revolutionary ideas). And it’s got some great quotable ideas:
For instance, on why the mouse has lasted 40 years: ‘I hadn’t thought about it. There is an intrinsic conservatism behind our media devices. They last a lot longer than we think they ever will, once they are accepted.’
Or on what visionaries should do today: Someone like Doug would be working on exactly what he was working on in the 1960s. He didn’t set out to invent a mouse or a display for editing. His goal was to augment human intellect in the service of giving human beings tools that were the equal of the growing challenges humans were facing.
And it turns out Doug Engelbrat is still pursuing his goal today with the Doug Engelbart Institute.
From Gigom came the news: Brits get broadband bill of rights. It’s from Ofcom, and although it’s only a basic code, at least it’s a start. Now can someone please find a way to get cheap 20Mb+ broadband to every house in the UK, for an incredibly low cost so we can kickstart innovation and industry for the coming 100 years?
Tim Windsor references Martin Langeveld in writing about how ‘What it means to transform to a Digital Enterprise‘ – specifically if you’ve been putting daily news on dead trees for a while.
And in the midst of rolling out Google Friend Connect, a redesign for Youtube, a redesign for Google Reader, cutting back on data center investment, and killing Lively, it’s good to see someone is still pursuing the important things at Google. Such as tracking the eternal battle between pirates and ninjas.
My favourite piece of data?
Top Queries of 2008 related to “Ninjas Are…”
- ninjas are there
- ninjas are everywhere
- ninjas are better
- ninjas are awesome
- ninjas are sexy
Oh, and I don’t think I’ve done my usual cross promotion – my first report on the response to using Magpie advertising on my Twitter accounts is online over at www.140char.com, along with a review and interview with the man behind Twilert – a monitoring service for Twitter similar to Google Alerts.
