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Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Wanna follow Belgian politics from the inside?

Check out this new tool that aggregates blogpostings from politicians and/or civil servants and basically means to present an overview of ongoing political communication. It's a Web 2.0 tool: it enables you to create your own page and can be personalised by filtering on a person, a party, a theme, a region, language, local community, ... It also allows for some eParticipation: visitors can leave comments or ask questions. Clearly based on some of the more interesting initiatives in e.g. the US of A with the Obama campaign. It's called Agorati and I sincerely hope it will reach enough body to become as interesting as it's potential promises.

Monday, September 28, 2009

next generation poken pops up


Too weird, too unprofessional, too limited capacity ... these are some of the reasons for creating a new Poken line that should solve all these arguments. Now you don't have to pull out some weird plastic zombie (Poken called it 'cute' and 'a creature we like' but apparantly 'we 'didn't follow)to exchange data. I talked about it in an earlier post and I haven't seen any reason to change my mind: the biggest problem is that nobody uses this. What's the point of walking around with one if no-one else does? If the reason why nobody else does is because it looks weird well, .... I'll rest my case in a couple of months when everyone suddenly pokens like crazy and effectively calls it a digital business card (yawn).

Friday, September 18, 2009

Completely forgot to post it

Two days ago I went to the 16th (already) edition of the BrusselsGirlGeekDinners, which interestingly was about books. Famous blogster ImkeDielen has signed a book deal: a collection of 50 of her blogpostings have been published. Food for a philosophical discussion! Why bother, I would think. Even if blogpostings actually treat stuff that's happening, it's like reading old newspapers. Publishing blogs on the other hand, might just be the beginning of something like publishing auto-biographies. Some blogs really are interesting and cool and have some added value that transcends the here and now. In which case I really would be more interested in reading a blog that spans a more consistent period of time. After all: it would be just like publishing letters or diaries. So ... maybe it is the start of someting greater.

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Creepy Stuff by Converse


Brrrr .... creepy stuff, these mutated animals wearing Converse ... And why does this dogboypic remind me of a local, Flemish, out-dated Important Local Personality?

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Ahoy!


Some things are really amazing. When the first calls were made by phone (approx 1870) someone had to invent a greeting! It had to be a greeting that didn't rely on visual clues, nor on formal introduction of a handshake. There was no way to tell you were connected to someone else. According to history, AG Bell used "ahoy, ahoy" to answer the phone but it would be "hello" ("invented" by the dreaded competitor Edison) that would survive. With thanks to Wired.

A car in one piece


And we can take that literally. The McLaren MP4-12C has been build from a single piece of molded carbon fiber and most of the controls in the interior are integrated in a touch-sensitive screen ... This is a real Top Gear Car: environmentally UNfriendly and way too expensive ($250K) but hey! This car has been designed by the same guy who reinvented the Fiat 500 and the Mini. He's done his share of politically-correct cardesigning, wouldn't you say ? BTW: I prefer this one in red.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Forgetful By Design

With thanx to Clive Thomson. Some Harvard Professor has written a book (due out one of these days) in which he argues that technology has inverted our millenia-old relationship with memory. And I quote: "For most of human history, almost everything people did was forgotten, simply because it was so hard to record and retrieve things. But there was a benefit: 'social forgetting' allowed everyone to move on from embarrassing or ill-conceived moments in their lives. Digital tools have eliminated that amnesty."

I must admit I hadn't looked @ it this way. The book is called 'Delete: the Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age' by V. Mayer-Schönberger.

whatever happened to ... old movies?


57 channels and nothing on. This weekend I was in a nostalgic mood. Remember those days when you had an old movie on the telly every Saturday afternoon? Or those very late Sunday nights when one of the French tv-channels (I'm pretty sure it was TF1) would broadcast an oldie, in original version if the movie wasn't French. My mother used to watch them and when i was old enough to stay up so late (never on a school night :-))we would really make a big thing out of it. Or the returning 'White Christmas' movie every Christmas: in those days we'd say 'oh no, not again' but now it's like all those old movies have simply vanished into thin air. No more Jean Gabin, Simonne Signoret, Lauren Bacall, Gene Kelly, or countless others... no more great films noirs, no more tough PI's, no more femmes fatales. All gone with the wind.

Friday, September 11, 2009

why not use the web for this?

It's a bit like those 'spoorloos' programs on tv where people try to find long lost friends, lovers, familymembers ... Except here it's a gorgeous Danish single mom who got pregnant and is now trying to find the father. Well ... I suppose if it gets posted enough everywhere she might even get lucky. Hope she foresaw some security measures concerning her privacy and her whereabouts but otherwise ... why not indeed? With thanx to Nodesktophero for tweeting about it.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

let's goooooooooooogle

Goooooooogle has made its search box loooooooooooonger (with thanx to Mashable for talking about it) it's not the first time the homepage is tweaked. Check out this timeline! I had completely missed out on the fact that Google has patented its minimalistic homepage - didn't even know you could do that.

not so boring after all


Don't you find these classic games boring when they are to be played electronicaly? When I play backgammon with my love, i want to hear the wooden pieces and feel the dice. Or scrabble online! (yawn)But this one looks cute but maybe that's because i haven't played it for a long time and when i did it was a fun Star Wars version. Check out this Monopoly that uses Google maps. Amazing stuff.

Friday, September 4, 2009

Business and Web 2.0

Mc Kinsey's interactive(!) report on the use of Web2.0 in a busines context. Great stuff.

The Zen-like pearls of wisdom from Daniel EK

Co founder of Spotify (who just won Apple's approval for a Spotify I-Phone app) does keep his cool on his twitter

But maybe you really need to be Zen when your Spotify is going straight into battle with .. i-Tunes.