Cool article from Scott Adams on how to tax the rich. One has to love the quote:"Likely outcome: Your next home will be the box that your laser printer came in. I hope that you kept it."

Rhapsody stopped working on my networked audio device today.

Have you set up 2 way verification for your Google account? Would help you sleep better...

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Oh the Swiss, they just want to have a good time:

http://holykaw.alltop.com/guinness-crowns-new-blob-jumping-champion-vid

Blob jumping is a good metaphor for entrepreneurship: You can be sitting there all happy about your position and boom, you get displaced...

One of the most special culinary memories was dinner at El Bulli some 9 years ago. Sad to see it close.

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Hey, maybe we should do the next digitalSTROM hackerday online?

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I've been told that the most compelling argument for energy metering reducing your energy consumption is the fact that you get to see where you are wasting it. Want to share an example of my home use.
While we spend extra money to buy the fridge with the highest energy star rating, at least in my case it was clear to me that it is in the light bulbs. An example that the usual suspects are not always the right ones to address.

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Good to know, gives business sometime to get their act together. Interesting is the yellow video icon...

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I think businesses are going to be thrilled with what they get on Google+

There has been so much turmoil about the business pages, but I sure think businesses are going to be thrilled with what they get - albeit after a wait, but a tiny wait- if they get Google's full awesome analytics treatment as is described below.

I helped a friend make more of Google+ with a few suggestions:
1) Google+ is not like Facebook where you have to wait until your friends post something. You can actively look for people posting a la Twitter.
http://www.quora.com/I-already-use-Facebook-and-even-Twitter-Why-do-I-need-Google+?srid=7nn
2) The next question was: Who are interesting people to follow. There are many lists, but I like Pluserati, because it lets you preview the posts in the streams and find if they are interesting to you.
http://pluserati.alltop.com/
3) And how can you import your buddies/address book quickly?. The best way, believe it or not is to export them to Yahoo (From Facebook, LinkedIn, Outlook) and then import them into Google+ (Interesting that a third party is necessary)
4) The last question was: how did you do your banner? Try this web site:
http://gpluspic.com/banner
And a final note: you cant post into a friends wall (there is no such thing), but you can share something with just one person (a circle of one).

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Holidays getting closer and closer

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This guy takes the most amazing, dangerous, gorgeous wave pictures in Hawaii!

http://yourbadneighbor.posterous.com/fw-waves-of-hawaii-amazing-photos

Have you ever seen anything like this?

Found this interesting Google doc with many tips for G+. The best suggestions are:
1) create empty circles for bookmarks and to read: And then add the posts you want to read later into them.
2) shortcuts such as space to move down a page, <shift> space to move up._j_ and k to move to the previous and next posts
3) The advance trick on how to search within G+ by adding a search engine to Google and using {google:baseURL}search?q=site:plus.google.com inurl:posts/* %s for it.

Have fun

Nice demo of the capabilities of 3D graphs using HTML5 WebGL.

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Remember your calculus classes?

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Batman equation:

http://i.imgur.com/CNy9J.jpg

Click on the link to see the plot of this formula.

Another earth One of the best films I've seen this year. Saw it in Locarno where there was also a Q&A with him and the main actress.
- In the soundtrack, there are instruments assigned to the main actress(Cello) and main actor (Piano). You can hear that through the movie.
- Colors accentuate the mood changes through time. Full colors in the beginning, blues in the middle and colors towards the end again.
- They had actually no idea about the parallel universes theory in physics when writing the argument. An incredible serendipity that the physics behind match the current status of the theory.

All in all I highly recommend this film if you like philosophical/sci-fi films

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Interesting cost breakdown of the iPhone. Fits the 1/3-2/3's rule. Note that the graph does not include engineering costs, nor margin for resellers.

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(13.Sat) Interesting breakdown on the costs of an iPhone:

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/infographic-how-much-does-each-piece-of-apples-iphone-cost/243709/

That said, how much something costs doesn't matter as much as how much people will pay for it! :-)

I read the book "the most human human" over the holidays with several interesting ideas on how close are the bots to becoming truly human. The article below talks about similar ideas.

There will be a time where we can not distinguish if our conversation partner is a computer or a human, the question is only how long will it take?

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/pr_levy_socialbot/

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Found this quite interesting collection of pictures of unorthodox buildings, some look surreal...

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50 Strange Buildings of the World

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I love this picture from Midori. It reminds me of an old cartoon with the caption "Never give up" that a good friend of mine had in his cubicle. In the cartoon the frog was trying to strangle the bird.
A special moment captured by a skilled photographer. Check all of her work, some amazing pics of Japan.

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Great ideas for the future. Love the large workplace where you can display the data from your mobile device, and the kitchen counter where to get the calls from the mother in law :-)

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The "Interface future" imagined. Do you think we'll live to see all these applications of this technology shown in this video? Which ones already exist?

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Tried this little tool from Korean and Japanese and it worked good enough. It even romanizes japanese words :-)

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Hi everyone!

We've heard from a lot of Google+ users wanting an easier way to understand posts written in other languages. I'm an engineer on Google Translate and thought we could do something about that.

That's why I'm happy to announce our Chrome extension, Google Translate for Google+, that using the power of Google Translate, can automatically translate any post or comment into more than 50 languages.

Once you've installed the extension, refresh Google+ and you'll see Translate links next to posts and comments. Click the links to instantly see translations.

You can get the extension here:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jfppgkomfopklagggkjiaddgndkgopgl

We hope you'll give it a try and let us know what you think!

Thanks!

Going to buy the second book from Rands, the software engineering manager that blogs about our daily work. I loved the first one, which was actually created from his blog posts. One of my favorites is:
http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2005/11/21/saying_no.html

The guy destillates the main principles of leading a team in a fun an easy to read way. I recommend it to all of you on the SW development area.

While on holidays in San Sebastian, Spain we found a great tapas bar
http://www.barzeruko.com/barzeruko_elbar.html
They combine the traditional tapas with the molecular cooking that was made famous by El Bulli. I can only recommend this gourmet palace. If you go make sure to ask for "Menu degustacion", where you get to try 7 different tapas or Pintxos as the locals call them plus dessert.

My son went into a school trip at this rollerbahn (toboggan run). Hey, I don't remember school trips beeing so much fun when I was in school.
http://www.flumserberg.ch/floomzer/de/home
It leaves me no choice but to go there and check the ride :-)

Got this video link from an old friend on dancers and merge sort. Great music as background.
Merge-sort with Transylvanian-saxon (German) folk dance
Showed it to the kids and they loved it :-)

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Interesting piece on time. Good to know why we feel time go by faster when we are older, and why our memories might not be what we believe they were.

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I hope this blows your mind, it blew mine.

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Interesting video showing how we gladly accept a computer interface but would freak out at a human helping us the same way...

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The Perfect Boyfriend! GMale by Google

Watch this video on the new user interfaces they are working at at Microsoft. Would love to have that interactive table. Looks like they are using the same technology as in Kinect.
Microsoft LightSpace from MSR

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Great geeky cartoon to refresh your SQL skills. Made my morning :-)

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I wonder if Google+ would accept Little Bobby tables as a valid name ?

've been listening to the new album from Lindsey Buckingham (Ex Fleetwoodmac), great music. Relaxing but powerful.

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This post reminded me of the T-Shirt of a friend of mine which had in the front: "The cat is alive" and in the back "The cat is dead". It was the winner of our office geeky TShirts contest.

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Wanted
http://www.snorgtees.com/t-shirts/wanted-dead-and-alive

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Wonder how the map would look from the Swiss and the Spanish point of view...

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Oooh, this is just hilarious!

Where are the smelly people?

Or how Europe is seen by different nationalities...

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If you have ever seen a map of the earth at night you probably noticed that the Nile river in Egypt can be clearly seen.
Here is part of the answer, all these villages along the river. it seems like there is nothing else left and right from them...

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Egypt's river of light

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This cartoon is so true. Made me realize I have a personality split in 3 :-)
Credit to +Miki Stanculescu for finding this

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Hahahaha.

Google Transparency traffic graph. An interesting site showing the internet traffic patterns of different countries by time. You can clearly see countries where people only surf at work (China, Cuba), or where they surf more at home in the evenings (USA, Mexico), or the twin peaks(Home and Work) like Switzerland. Check how traffic in Cuba drops over the weekend. And how traffic is normalizing in Lybia after the war.
http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/traffic/

Interesting concept the one being used by Virgin Galactic for their spaceship. Check the video to see how the mothership puts the spaceship in the air, drops it and how the rocket then takes it into space.
Their goal is to make space travel affordable. How much would you pay for a tour?
http://www.virgingalactic.com/news/item/spaceshiptwos-first-feathered-flight/

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Interesting article going to the heart of the consciousness question. How can you determine if something is conscious if all you have is your own. And how can we prove that in the future the robots we build will be conscious per se, and not just repeating to us what we tell them?

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14886421

Quite an interesting research of communicating and controlling computers with our brains. Would you insert yourself a receptor in the brain? I have read of a different idea implanting something in the nerve cells of your arm.
Somebody posted this article in my stream, worth a read.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/magazine/the-cyborg-in-us-all.html

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Great site that uses the API to get stats for your profile. Mine is:
https://www.foldedsoft.at/+/allmy+/#115970504272079730559

You can find your profile ID by pointing at your profile picture, right mouse click and select copy link address.

thanks to +Jaana Nyström for the link

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Some pretty cool stats for Google+

Check out yours at https://www.foldedsoft.at/+/allmy+/

(brought to you by +Gerwin Sturm)

Google+ made me discover HDR fotography. I found a HDR photo app for the iPhone. It works quite simply by taking 2 fotos one after the other. It allows you to select the light and dark areas and merges both pics. Great for a free tool (Eval period): HDR Foto from Duan Baoping

Of course, this does not match any real photographer's work, but as the saying goes: The best camera is the one you always have with you :-)

Facebook is bringing music streaming sites into the spotlight. These are great news. I believe the streaming sites that will win are the ones that let the users keep the ownership of their playlists, the ones that help users discover new music based on what they like and the ones that keep their music collections stable.

http://networkedaudio.blogspot.com/2009/03/what-makes-music-subscription-site.html

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Well written article making a case for the earth being sentient based on all the feedback loops that humankind has created to control physical phenomena.

Will we in the future be able to apply this concept to an automated house. Note that sentient does not mean it is conscious.

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http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/hansen20110919

Have you heard about the Loebner price? It is a contest based on the Turing test, where a jury tries to select the most human computer and the most human human. Until now we humans are still winning the price, wonder how long will it take for a machine to fool the jury.

This year's contest will be held on the 19th of October in Exter.

http://www.loebner.net/Prizef/loebner-prize.html

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LOL, watch it until the end. Needs to be seen in the PC since it is an animated GIF.

Feel free to mute the post if the infinite loop annoys you.

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Contra Vs Tetris... hahaha LOL

Add +Bilal Akber to your circle for More

Tips and tricks for using Google +

I've written below a few hints that have worked for me for all new users showing up after Google made + available to the general public. It is important to understand that G+ is not a Facebook replacement. To truly enjoy G+ you need to find people that post in the areas that interest you and follow them. Take part in the discussions, it is worth it.

1) Discovering interesting people: Use the Search tab to enter your interest, select the posts that interest you and follow their authors. There are also some interesting anchors here like +Guy Kawasaki and +Robert Scoble. Note that I have created a special circle: testing where I put all new authors. This allows me to purge it often.

2) Once you have found people with like minded interests move them to a following circle. This on top of the circles that most people create: Family, Friends, Work friends, School friends.

3) Dont let your stream get clogged. Mute all the posts that dont interest you. If you want to tag a post for later use the +1 button, you can later look into your +1 list for them. If you are using chrome you might want to check the http://huyz.us/google-plus-me/ app.

4) A nice utility for translating posts is Google translate for G+ https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jfppgkomfopklagggkjiaddgndkgopgl
I follow some great Japanese photographers and can always follow what is being written.

5) After you start posting, you might want to check the All my + site for the stats of your activities. It is helpful locating that post you commented on, or just watching your activity https://www.foldedsoft.at/+/allmy+/

Also remember to check the help sites by Google. A great collection can be found here:
https://plus.google.com/114424163811716070551/posts/QXJGeE55sHG?hl=en

Have fun with Google +

This is what I call news. Particles traveling faster than the speed of light. Hope it is not a hoax.
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/science_technology/Particles_recorded_moving_faster_than_light.html?cid=31198370

You can enable the facebook timeline using the instructions here:
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/22/how-to-enable-facebook-timeline/

The interface looks impressive. Have fun

Hat tip to +Gerwin Sturm for the link.

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Watch the effects in this pool table. Reminds me of the interactive table of microsoft research. Probably something that can be done using the new Kinect SDK.
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/kinectsdk/

Now we just need to find a pool club that has them.

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きれい。

これは凄い！ハイテク技術で幻想的な効果を表現するビリヤード台 - Hiroiro
http://www.hiroiro.com/movie/7677.html

Cuelight - obscuradigital
http://www.obscuradigital.com/work/detail/cuelight/

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A couple of interesting points from the article:
- “The purpose of life is to hydrogenate carbon dioxide.”


- An organism’s lifespan is proportional to the 1/4 power of its mass, its heart rate goes as the –1/4 power of its mass, so the total number of heart beats is independent of mass—a universal value of about a billion beats for all of us. Use them wisely.

- People really do walk faster in cities—the walking speed scales with city size.

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How Life Arose on Earth, and How a Singularity Might Bring It Down

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Jaana put a nice guide on when to use the +1, the comments and sharing.
It is good to know that you can look at all that you have +1, it is kind of a global bookmarking. There are also nice tools to list all comments that you have done:
https://www.foldedsoft.at/+/allmy+/

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Hello all the new people here on G+!

A few words on Google+ etiquette:

Important views on commenting

When you comment on someone's post, please try to think what you are doing.
Especially when it's a celebrity or a high profile user with tons of followers:

When people are trying to make intelligent conversation on post threads, please don't go and spam trying to sell your wares or ideas if they are not relevant to that post. You'll get blocked very fast and reported to the bargain.

When +Tom Anderson writes a thoughtful and long post about something but adds a funny picture, you can just +1 the post without making a "LOL" or "Funny" comment, to show you appreciate.
Why? Because the maximum replies to a thread is 500 and if the comments consist of 400 x LOL there is not much space for real ideas or thoughts. And it takes a lot of time to delete those 400 nonsense comments.
Many power users take part in their discussions and actually interact with other quite ordinary folks, but for how long will they do that if the thread is full of crap, I don't know.

If +Robert Scoble posts a controversial story and you don't agree,*don't be a troll* with derogatory (bad) remarks but explain why you disagree. No need to get personal, we are all entitled to our own opinion. Respect that, please.

+Guy Kawasaki was recently annoyed because of all the inappropriate comments and threatened to block all and sundry immediately for being a jerk.

The Google+ community is very special and we welcome all newcomers with open arms. As long as you behave! :-)
The best way to get more followers is NOT by commenting "Just saying Hi" but to write your opinion or thoughts on the original post.

Remember also when sharing a post from someone else to mention the previous sharer (if not original post) by +name name and thanks.

So forget the short "nice" or "awesome" from comments and +1 instead, okay?
Unless you have something more insightful to add to the discussion.

If you need more help in using Google+, here's my webmag:
http://www.scoop.it/t/googleplus-help


This is a real discussion thread and how it should be:
See the post from +Ahmed Zeeshan and +A.V. Flox which is a very good example of good behavior: https://plus.google.com/103030116155431184588/posts/PaRoiin4cyu
The comments are very enlightening.
Please share this to your circles!

Sunday walk in Halbinsel AU

HDR iphone photography from the Halbinsel Au in the lake of Zürich during our weekly sunday walk.

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It did not take long for jokes about neutrinos to make the rounds. My favorite:

Neutrino
Bartender: We don't get many neutrinos around here.
A neutrino walks into a bar.

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I met a neutrino named flyte.
Which traveled much faster than light.
It departed one day
In the usual way
And arrived on the previous night.

An excelent book on understanding music. Daniel Levitin is a musician turned out neuroscientist, and takes you in this book through a quest for understanding how music is digested by our brain. He will have you looking for all the songs that he mentions in the book and understand why some songs are stickier than others. As it states in the cover: you will never hear music in the same way again

http://www.yourbrainonmusic.com/

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Beautiful picture of thunder.

And a link to a great chrome extension that allows you to view the pictures larger by pointing at them:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/oadickpipbiodolpmnhnfkloanjmjbjn

via +Anne-Marie Clark

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I want to welcome all the new folks following me with a list of chrome extensions that help me enjoy Google+. If you have any additional suggestions let me know and I'll add them to the list:

1) G+me: allows you to collapse the G+ stream in sections. You can list all entries only, or hide the comments. Find it here: http://huyz.us/google-plus-me/

2) Google translate for G+. It translates inline text written in different languages. Cool to understand what our colleagues as japan are writting :-) https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jfppgkomfopklagggkjiaddgndkgopgl

3) Google +1 button. Many posts in G+ take you to external links. One way to bookmark them is using the +1 button, but not all sites have one. This app helps you by always being where you want it.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jgoepmocgafhnchmokaimcmlojpnlkhp

4) Every now and then you get an image, maybe a cartoon that can not be read. The G+ images hoover zoom saves that extra click, all you need is to hover your mouse over the image and it gets enlarged
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/oadickpipbiodolpmnhnfkloanjmjbjn

5) The Fireshot app allows you to take screen shots and anotations from Chrome. The interesting detail is that it can capture the whole HTML page. Good for reading articles off line for example.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mcbpblocgmgfnpjjppndjkmgjaogfceg

Have fun

Take a look at the OpenCog project page, an open source project that aims to create artificial general intelligence. They have a challenging roadmap and development is in C++, so a good thing for those of us who want to participate.

Found this link thanks to a post by +Andrea Kuszewski

http://opencog.org/

Third party cookies

Tonight I was discussing with some friends how can FB and other sites track when you are not logged in. The easy answer is they use third party cookies in their facebook likes and +1's. My friend was telling me about all the Google analytic cookies (Open your cookie folder and look for all those __umta, __umtz etc. a brief description can be found here: http://www.morevisibility.com/analyticsblog/from-__utma-to-__utmz-google-analytics-cookies.html) The analytics cookies are first party cookies, and since most sites want to get analysis of their traffic for free, they are widely used.

The main issue with the Facebook cookie debacle was that cookies were kept even if you logged out. So "liking" a page while you were out would still identify you as doing the liking. Read a great technical post here: https://nikcub.appspot.com/logging-out-of-facebook-is-not-enough

The funny thing is that this is freaking out lots of digital marketeers, since many companies do not want anything to do with third party cookies.
http://www.mrmworldwide.com/mrmlive/writing/google-1-facebook-like-and-third-party-cookies

So getting the big brothers worried should be a good thing right?

We had a roadmap meeting at the office where we were sorting out the priorities of our backlog. During the meeting I kept remembering about this bubble sort dancing video:
Bubble-sort with Hungarian ("Csángó") folk dance

Are your priority sorting meetings as fun?

Gals, Guys: Some reading material for your non geeky significant other to understand us better. Share it with them so that they also get something from G+

http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2007/11/11/the_nerd_handbook.html

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Sharing with you the power of a smile

One of the comments in the original post stated that Einstein explained the difference between radio and the telegraph this way:
The telegraph is a like a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and he meows in Los Angeles. Radio operates the same way, except there is no cat. (Credit to +Barry Kort )

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;-)))

Report this post options you wish you could have :-)

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Good laugh

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Confucius says:
"If you are in a bookshop and cannot find the book
For which you search,
You are obviously in the . . .

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I like his definition of health: _ "Health is a state of balance and wholeness that allows you to move through the world and not get sick. You're exposed to toxins, but they don't cause cancer. You're exposed to germs but don't get ill. You're surrounded by allergens but have no allergies. More than anything, it's about an inner quality of springy-ness and resilience - like a child's knockdown toy that won't stay down."_

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Make your home smart using the IFTTT event driven programming cloud service
I have a home automation system from digitalSTROM that allows me to expose over a network interface home events such as when someone rings the door bell, when I leave home or when I come back. I just came across a new cloud application called ifttt, short for If This Then That (http://ifttt.com).

This site allows the user to define tasks based on a given set of channels as inputs. These channels can be network events, such as e-mail, Twitter posts, Facebook posts or post on similar services. But they can also be either timers or weather events. To define a task the user first selects the triggering event. For e-mail it allows to scan the mail text for some keyword. The action can also be using one of these channels. For example you can define an event that will send you an e-mail once the temperature in your area drops under a given temperature. The use case that I want to program is to get an e-mail every time someone rings the bell in at my house and I am not home.
http://networkedaudio.blogspot.com/

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Useful next time you need to know how to classify your audience :-)

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http://sociologicalimagination.org/archives/5868

Another video showing that you can make music with anything

http://vimeo.com/6111739

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Well written article explaining communication protocols. Love the error handling description:
Possible failure modes include getting ignored (Server Time-out), getting slapped in the face after a failed pick-up line (Connection Closed By Host) or interrupted by the girl’s muscular boyfriend (Connection Reset By Peer), as well as addressing the wrong person (Connection Denied).

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Article I just wrote on how to design your own communication protocol. It's aimed at beginners and intermediate programmers. Advanced programmers may get a chuckle out of it :)

Those of you following "Google a day" learned yesterday that the fastest rollercoaster in the world is in Abu Dhabi. Check out this video of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa in the ride.
Felipe Massa e Fernando Alonso arrepiando na Formula Rossa.

Interesting how they made it go so fast, no wonder you need extra glasses in the front row.

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A great amount of work went into making this video. A nice "guy meets girl" story made out of sand and snow.

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such a strange video...but quite creative.

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Great visualization of Chopin. Quite a simple idea, nice to look at. And good to get you to want to go to bed. Good nite :-)

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This is absolutely hypnotic. Check out the rest of the videos by this guy, especially the ones animated (like this one) with circles. You can just stare at them forever.

(This one's a personal favorite because I enjoy playing this nocturne so much...)

h/t to +Aaron Wood for the link!

And now I am awake with this one:
Mozart, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, 1st movement, Allegro
The author has many of them. The visualization helps you understand the character of the music better

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Would you like a second pair of hands?

This research definitely gives the phrase "a new pair of hands" a new meaning. We will be seeing these kind of interfaces in the future not only to help people with disabilities, but also to enhance our habilities.

What would you use a second pair of hands for?

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This is what I call a Wednesday pic :-)

How to set up your circles on Google+

I suggest using People, Topic, Following and utility circles to organize your stream and posts.

The defining feature of Google+ is the ability to group your stream in multiple circles. In this article I want to share with you some ideas on how to organize them. Once you start following enough people you need a way to organize yourself to avoid feeling like a stranded passenger in a train station watching the wagons speed by you.

Before we get into the details of the circle names lets take a look at the kind of activities that you might want to do in Google+:

1) People circles are for keeping in touch with your family and friends. This basically allows you to recreate the Facebook atmosphere with the benefits that you don't just shotgun your comments to everyone. You can create circles for your family, school friends or work friends.

2) Topic circles. You have many different interests and some of your friends share those interests, but not all share all interests. Creating topic based circles allows you to post to circles of people that you know would be happy to receive news on a given area. You might have friends who like to see your pictures, others that share the same sport interests as you, and yet others that love kittens (Yep, we all have weaknesses)

3) Following circles. Google+ is a place where you meet new people that share similar interests to yours. Some of these people will have broad interests that you might want to keep in touch and can not fit into a topic. These can be kept on your favorite circles. Or you might want to add new people to a discovery circle and watch their posting before deciding to move them into your favorites

4) Utility circles. These would help you organize yourself better. For example, you might want to keep a copy of all your outgoing conversations. No problem, share it to an outgoing folder. Or you might need to edit and view your posts before committing them. Or maybe you just want to bookmark some post for later viewing. Here is where you can create empty circles that are not shared with anyone but you.

While the “People” and “Topic” circles are self explanatory, lets dig into some details on the Following and Utility circles. Lets assume you are interested in Artificial Intelligence topics, and have found several shared circles on that or related topics. You would like to analyze the content that is being posted in these circles before adding the persons to your favorites circles. There are several ways to do this:
- Import that circle and start browsing the content filtering the folks that interest you or
- Create a Discovery circle where you place all the new curators and listen to it a few days. You can then start removing content posters that does not fit your interests. The benefit of this approach is that it allows you to add people to this ever source of content as you find them.

Another great way to get content for a Following circle going is to save a search in Google+ based on your topic of interest. Note that Google+ will sort the search results putting what the people that you are already following write, but it will also add new relevant posts. Once you’ve found someone whose posts you like just add them into the Discovery circle

The utility circles have several purposes. Google plus has no current way to easily find posts shared only to one or a few users. You can create a Personal Outbox circle to cover this need. It is correct that posting to few users could be replaced with just mailing them. But often you want to share with them content you found in Google+, and heck you are already logged in, why copy the URL and mail it?

And while you can always edit a post, you might want to check how it will look like before posting it. This is important if you need to resolve bold italics or other formatted text. You can use a Drafts circle for this with the additional benefit that you can keep non finished drafts in there. Just remember that after you are happy with what you see, you can not just re share it to Public. Google+ will not allow you to post a private post into Public. You can copy-paste the content into a new post.

There are several ways of bookmarking posts in Google+, like using the +1 button. However the easiest way I have found is to post content that you find to an empty private circle that I call “Bookmark”. This allows you to go back to the items you wanted to show someone else later.

Note that sharing allows you to use any intersection of circles you want. You can for example post a picture to:- Work friends, Photography, and Outgoing at the same time.

A comment on how this might evolve. You have probably seen people already using Twitter like hashtags in their posts. Combining this with the search facility will definitely prove powerful, assuming you can keep up with the tags being used. Also the ability to save searches allows you to filter your main stream using keywords.

I hope this set of ideas might ease your life in the cicleverse, and look forward to any comments or new ideas you might want to share with us on how you have organized yourself.
Special thanks to +Kol Tregaskes for the initial ideas on this topic, and to +Jaana Nyström, +James Fierce and +Grace O'Malley (the folks at Media Tapper) for their valuable feedback

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Your G+ stream in blog format

If you are used to posting in a personal blog, you might be missing the history view of your posts that a blog system provides. +Daniel Treadwell did just that using the Google+ API. Check this URL that formats all your posts in a Blog looking format.

To generate yours:
+ Get your googleID by right clicking on your name in the top left page of G+ and select "copy link address".
+ Paste the numeric ID with the URL http://www.minimali.se/ <your ID here>


As an example, mine looks so:
http://www.minimali.se/115970504272079730559/

And now I am re-posting the original as it should be done :-) Thanks to +Jennifer Bailey for the link.

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Google+ as your Blog (Concept using the G+ API)

UPDATE: This has really taken off more than I expected. If you experience any problems creating your own profile, check back the next day when the Google+ API quota has reset.

There has been a lot of talk by bloggers on Google+ about potentially moving a lot of their blogging across to this social media platform. Whilst there is (for some) a much more engaging audience here, it does not really double as a landing page for writers to onsell their services or to display talent (other than writing/photography). It is for this reason that most will probably still continue to post to their blog as well as Google+.

I know many are holding out for the API to allow writing directly to Google+ but this seems quite a while off based on comments made by Googlers. What I am showing you now is a concept where Google+ is used as your content management system, and your blog is a mirror of it. The site is still customisable in every way that a normal websites allows, yet it pulls all of it's data for the blog from Google+ saving on rewriting/formatting. You can see all comments, and stats on +1s and reshares, shared photographs and video.

This is something I would LOVE to see Google integrate into Blogger.

Example

You can see my own public posts as a blog here:

http://www.minimali.se/

Or see what your own blog would look like by putting your profile ID in the URL.

http://www.minimali.se/Profile ID/
(eg. http://www.minimali.se/103697821787469756035)

Please note that because API calls a limited at the moment, once they are used up for the day new profiles will not be created.

This is just a concept - let me know your thoughts

+Jordanna Chord +Ade Oshineye +Louis Gray +Ryan Crowe +Christina Trapolino +Natalie Villalobos +Colby Brown +Dave Cohen +Chris Messina +Johnathan Chung +DeWitt Clinton +Will Norris +Ahmed Zeeshan +Chris Chabot

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Want to hang out with the Dalai Lama?
You can do it tomorrow 9:30 AM, if you happen to live in Europe :-)
(Via +Kevin Mathis )

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His Holiness the Dalai Lama will have a conversation with Archbishop Desmond Tutu by live video over a Hangout (Google+'s video conferencing platform) as part of the Inaugural Desmond Tutu Peace Lecture in Cape Town, South Africa, on October 8, 2011, starting at 10:30am South African time (GMT+2.00). A link to the Google+ Hangout will be available approximately 20-30 minutes before the event begins.

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Had he not been a Buddhist :-)

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Music game based on Simcity as alternative for kids in school

My son in 9. On the weekends he gets to play 2 hours of computer games. There are many sites out there, I found one where I feel good at him playing. It is called Isle of Tune
http://isleoftune.com/
Similar to SimCity in that you get to build roads, and put houses. The trees and flowers are musical, and you can set the tone they should play to. We ended up playing longer than the 2 allocated hours :-)

Will there not be enough work for all of us?

Josh Hunt wrote a thought inspiring article on the fact that technology is replacing the need for humans in the work place. This is nothing new, it has been happening since we mechanized agriculture and robotized manufacturing. It is already getting its share in services and it is already making all forms of R&D and engineering more productive.

The question is what can we do? Shall we reduce our working hours to ensure more people get an occupation? It is partially what is happening in the US, where the number of partially employed has increased since the last crisis.

I remember reading a proposal from some socialist party here in Europe that everyone should get a minimum wage paid to cover basic existential needs. Somehow it is already happening with all the unemployment programs for those who remain unemployed for a long time.

I truly think that work is what keeps us human beings sane. I don't believe in a Disneyland like future where robots do everything for us and we just live our life like monkeys in the zoo.

What are your thoughts?


(Via +Andrew Carpenter, could not reshare public since it was posted to a limited circle)
http://thefuturist.co/technological-unemployment

Matching Yearly goals with Scrum development using the Mastery, Autonomy and Purpose concepts from Daniel Pink's book Drive

Those of you familiar with the Scrum development process know that it is all about empowering the team, and have it organize itself. All of us working in a medium or large organization know about the famous yearly goals and bonus. Scrum development and yearly goals are actually conflicting goals. I want to share with you how we are trying to get yearly goals that make sense by borrowing the Autonomy , Mastery and Purpose concepts from Daniel Pink's book Drive.

If you are not familiar with Daniel Pink's book there is an excelent RSA animation here: RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us (Thanks to +Christa Laser for mentioning it in an earlier post).

Basically what we have done is to define the personal goals of all the development team around the Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose principles. These goals live in the same set as the company goals on revenue, quality, and the department goals of keeping the budget and finishing products on time. This is an example of how we have worded them:

Autonomy : Freedom to do work your own way to achieve the goals set. Have the choice of technique and direct your own tasks. Come up with suggestions on technologies, tools, process and other activities for our project work. Look for ways to improve our ability as a team.

Mastery : Extend and expand your abilities and capabilities. Try to achieve flow in your work: the point where the relationship between the person and the task is perfect. Improvement is the goal. Adjust your work tasks to ensure you have clear goals, you can get immediate feedback, and the challenges are well matched to your abilities.

Purpose : Work in purpose of some greater objective. How can our team give back to society through work?. How is the world a better place as a result from our work?. How can you give back to our team? Is what we do ethical? Do something that matters, do it well and do it in the service of a cause larger than ourselves.

All team members are given these goals and are judged at the end of year on all 3 concepts. Now, you might think that this goes against the rule set by Pink in Drive that remuneration can backfire. Well, fact is that most engineers see the bonus as part of their promised salary and having this tied to their personal development gives them skin in the game. Besides you save the discussions at the end of the year when the goals of the company made the original goals set in the beginning of the year obsolete.

Do you have any other ways you use to manage Scrum teams and stick to the yearly goals principles of companies? I would love to hear them.

Thanks to +James O'Sullivan for getting me writing about Scrum in G+

Our mobile devices are technosocial wormholes

Amber Case has some fresh ways to look at how our mobile devices are improving the way we communicate with each other. She raises an important point of why we need time away from our devices to engage in self reflection. She mentions that When we have no external input, it is the time when we do the creation of our self, when we can do long term planning, when we figure out who we really are

Amber Case: We are all cyborgs now

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Good thoughts before going to sleep :-)

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My article on how I got introduced to HDR photography by Google+ was published this morning on Mediatapper. HDR stands for High Dynamic Range imaging, and it basically consists of taking several shots of the subject at different light exposures, and then merging the results. You dont need expensive special equipment to do this.

Google Plus has improved my photography life. I am now taking more photos, looking into more detail at the angles and getting better shots with the smart-phone camera that I always carry along. I hope this article will also help you improve your photography life too.

Special thanks to +midori chan and +Kol Tregaskes for the inspiration and the helpful links they published. Also thanks to +Grace O'Malley and +James Fierce for the review.

http://mediatapper.com/my-introduction-to-hdr-photography-on-google-plus/

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I think this book is the best answer for those people who do not get what is Google+. This book was created in Google+ asking people to share their stories. Some of the stories are moving, and I'm sure you'll see yourself on some of them. But the most important thing is that this kind of work could only have been done in Google+. Google + is the only platform that allows you to have intelligent conversations with like minded people from the whole planet

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Family, friends, all:

Today, Nina Pelletier and Drew Nicholson are proud to announce the very first e-book published by Scriptorum Tantillum, "Letters To My
Ten Year Old Self."

If you could write a letter to your 10-year-old self, what advice would you give? Which lessons do you wish you didn’t have to learn the hard way? What message do you feel would have made the greatest impact on your life?

Find out at "Letters To My Ten Year Old Self."

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/95604

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I will ask my son tomorrow if he would like to have one. I think it is more a toy for us grown ups. But as the saying goes: The difference between a man and a boy is the price of the toys...

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The prototype 3D printer under development by Artur Tchoukanov and Joris Peels allows children aged ten and up to design figurines and shapes on a computer, and then print them out to play with

Sharing with you yesterday's dessert.

How much do you trust the quality of the work of your team?

Luckly in my case if something goes wrong the worst that can happen is that I'll need to light candles :-)

Intel, Sponsors of Tomorrow - Team players

This is real timelapse stuff

Imagine if they had taken a picture of you every day since birth. It is cool to see how she grows up.

Natalie Time Lapse: Birth to 10 years old in 1 minute 25 sec

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The 3D printer selected by my son

Yesterday I posted about a 3D printer aimed to kids coming to market. My son told me that this is the 3D printer he would like to build. They have the instructions online. Good project for long winter weekends :-)

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MakerLegoBot: Lego Mindstorms NXT 3D Lego Printer

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And this time lapse video that shows Dubai from several different angles.

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timelapse of the day :)

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It is time lapse movie day today. Lets start with this amazing view of the ALMA radio wave observatory in Chile

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Clear Desert Nights
I previously posted about the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile's high Atacama Desert, which is designed to capture radio waves from space since that wavelength of radiation is able to penetrate matter more easily
https://plus.google.com/106176762220398854458/posts/BWqankckhWH

In this beautiful time lapse you can see ALMA in action as four of its 22 antennae point themselves towards the night sky.

ESO ALMA Antenna Time Lapse #1 [720p]

How far can an automatic translator go?

I've read some comments on how some users are disappointed on the results they get with the translation extension from Google plus that +Josh Estelle and his team have made available for us:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jfppgkomfopklagggkjiaddgndkgopgl

I think it is important to understand the difference between translating the language and translating the culture. The best example I know of this difference is Japanese. Japanese is a very vague language. A very important goal for Japanese people when communicating is to "save face" and ensure their counterpart also "Saves face".

An american boss will tell her employees: "Clean up the office" while the Japanese counterpart would say something like "As we have some important visitors coming in the afternoon and since we wish them to get the best impression, perhaps we could improve the order around here."

When you read a text translated from Japanese, you need to understand this difference and fill in the blanks. There is an excellent book that covers these topics if you want to learn more about it. When cultures collide by Richard Lewis
http://www.amazon.com/When-Cultures-Collide-3rd-Leading/dp/1904838022

Hope this helps you appreciate better what you are getting using the translator, and enhance your multicultural IQ.

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via +Bura QT

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Did you know that saved shares get shown in your stream?

Read the details on the new article by Grace. She explains how to use saved shares to get content in your stream.

http://mediatapper.com/my-g-journey-%E2%80%93-searching-high-and-low/

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The things people ask... I wonder if they are using the same approach than the chatboots that compete at the Loebner price

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loebner_Prize

And if they will keep updating the answer database..

via +Chris Kim A

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This is WAAAAY better than autocorrect.

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Beautiful timelapse filmed in London. Note the use of out of focus and changing timing from slow motion to full timelapse.

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timelapse of the day :)

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Thy shall only post when thy are happy with quality

Wise words from Stacie. My sentiments exactly. Prefer to post less but good stuff, not spam you.

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My G+ Conundrum

The post tone on G+ has changed since it went public. It's is getting harder and harder to find good conversations about ideas and interests. I am following over 1700 people and I wonder if a lot of it has to do with poor circle management. Although, most of the stuff coming across what I thought were pretty tight circles are re-shares of quick, 5-10 second attention grabbers.

This week, I have been guilty of cluttering my stream with some cheap nonsense. I wanted to contribute to my stream ideas and photos that caught my attention, but with the fast moving bits of info, I feel like I need to do something pretty big to grab your attention. This was giving me anxiety, because I got a taste of the pressure that mainstream media must feel to keep viewers on their station when there are so many outlets vying for a few seconds of your time, your very valuable time.

I was fishing with my dad this morning on the Clinch River. It was dead slow. Nothing was biting, and a little boy and his French father were sitting on the bank next to us. The boy was fidgety. He walked over to my father, who was nodding to sleep off and on since the day was indescribably beautiful, and asked him, "How many fish have you caught?"

Dad said, "Only two."

"When do you think the fish will start biting again?" asked the little boy.

"Well, son, you have to be patient. They will bite when they are hungry, and waiting for them to bite is part of fishing. If you are using the right bait, they will bite when they are hungry, I promise. " Dad answered.

The little boy took in what my Dad said, walked back over to his five gallon bucket and sat there, holding his pole, talking to his father about school and we all waited.

Now, I listened to what Dad said and took it in, too. I thought about what his statement about fishing meant about my G+ stream that I tend to here at home, and realized that what Dad said to that little boy made a lot of sense for my conundrum.

I need to be patient with my G+ stream, and seriously look at the bait I am throwing out there in the fast moving water. Am I using the right bait to get any bites? What are people hungry for as they watch all of that bait float by as they are sitting on their side of the great bank?

Many of us may be using the right bait, but the people just aren't hungry for it right now. That is the nature of G+, just like fishing. So, I decided today that I want to focus on finding out just what it is that people want to engage in here, and if I don't have anything that I think is quality bait, I am not going to throw junk in anyway to assuage that feeling of pressure to keep something in front of you all of the time.

I am going to be patient with G+. If I am not throwing in any bait, I am going to watch and enjoy what I see around me, interacting with you all when I find something that moves me. And leave it at that. Now that the pressure is off...I feel like when I do throw something in, I will try and be thoughtful about it, but not panic when I don't get a bite.

I may just take a nap.

Will Google+ increase the IQ of humanity?

When I joined Google+ it became soon clear that this was not the place to stay in touch with old friends but a place to find new interest based acquaintances. Basically once you circle someone who has interests similar to yours, doors open in form of meeting other like-minded people. In my case one thing that happened was that several of my new friends were telling me about this online AI course being offered at Stanford.


I think Google+ is helping increase the IQ of the entire world by making learning opportunities as this known to a larger pool of people. Also the amount of interaction in Google+ by fellow students helps you keep true to your goal, simply because you are reading about it often. It is good peer pressure.

Do you have any learning experiences to share that started in Google +?

Check the full article at Mediatapper
http://mediatapper.com/google-will-increase-the-iq-of-humanity/

Anyone organizing or joining the global Hackaton in December?

If you are let me know, I am trying to create a Hackaton Rhok's circle

http://www.rhok.org/event/rhok-global-december-2011

Understanding the difference between translating the language and translating the culture.

The best example I know of this cultural difference is Japanese. Japanese is a very vague language. A very important goal for Japanese people when communicating is to “save face” and ensure their counterpart also “saves face”. They achieve this by not communicating directly what they want, but by hinting at it

I write about Google translate for G+,developed by +Josh Estelle and his team, on my newest Mediatapper article, .

http://mediatapper.com/translating-posts-in-google/