Jaron Lanier is skeptical about lots of Educational Technology. At school, Standardized Test-ing rules. Outside school, something similar happens. Students spend a lot of time acting as trivialized relays in giant schemes designed for the purposes of advertising and other revenue-minded manipulations. They are prompted to create databases about themselves and then trust algorithms to assemble streams of songs and movies and stories for their consumption (Consumer). Shared Curation is possibly the lowest level of Creativity, but it's something. The key is for parents and teachers to nudge them through curation. (more)

Mobile phone so big it's almost a Tablet (more)

Orson Scott Card book (more)

Built To Last? (more)

Founder of ArsDigita. (more)

Peter Shallard has been the ShrinkForEntrepreneurs (one client is Michael Ellsberg). (more)

accomplish AweSome things (more)

*Tor is a system intended to enable online Anonymity, composed of client software and a network of servers which can hide information about users' locations and other factors which might identify them. Use of this system makes it more difficult to trace internet traffic to the user, including visits to Web sites, online posts, instant messages, and other communication forms.[5] It is intended to protect users' personal Freedom, Privacy, and ability to conduct confidential business, by keeping their internet activities from being monitored.[6] The software is open-source and the network is free of charge to use. (more)

Fear (more)

Kathy Sierra on motivating your customers (Motivation). What do we want our users to do? And no, we don't get to say, "know more." That's not an action (Actionable, Real World). "Like us more" is not an action. Even my favorite, "KickAss" is not an action. How many people take a course in Design Patterns and then go right back to work and write the same clunky code, reinventing the flat tire? How many customers interact with a WebApp and then... just leave? How many people say they care deeply about a cause, but do nothing beyond bumper-sticker activism? How many people listen to a lecture on the dangers of smoking, but keep smoking? There is nearly always an action (or set of actions) you're hoping users will take, and most of you already know what that is. But we also know that this sometimes involves a change in behavior, something that's extremely hard to do. (more)

A content site inspired by FuckedCompany. (more)

Content Management System built on top of Word Press that makes it easy to collaborate with an editorial team, and to generate clean, well-formatted EBook-s in multiple outputs: EPub, print-ready PDF, In Design-ready XML, and of course HTML. (more)

*OpenGL (Open Graphics Library)[3][4][5] is a cross-language, multi-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardware-accelerated rendering. (more)

see Virtual Reality

Siri /ˈsɪri/ is an intelligent personal assistant (Intelligent Software Assistant) and knowledge navigator which works as an application for Apple Inc.'s IOS. The application uses a Natural Language (Voice Recognition) user interface to answer questions, make recommendations, and perform actions by delegating requests to a set of Web services. Apple claims that the software adapts to the user's individual preferences over time and personalizes results. Siri was originally introduced as an iOS application available in the App Store by Siri, Inc., which was acquired by Apple on April 28, 2010.[4] Siri, Inc. had announced that their software would be available for Blackberry and for phones running Android, but all development efforts for non-Apple platforms were cancelled after the acquisition by Apple.[5] Siri has been an integral part of iOS since iOS 5[6] and was introduced as a feature of the iPhone 4S.[7] Siri was added to the iPad (third generation) with the release of iOS 6, and has been included on all iOS devices since Fall 2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siri_(software) (more)

Physical Fitness guru (more)

WW at The Economist thinks there's something that bothers me slightly about this whole "JobCreation" discussion. The implicit idea seems to be that policy should aim to increase employer demand for employees. But it occurs to me that perhaps some of the long-term unemployed want remunerative work, but are a bit sick of "employment"... I am convinced that autonomy is profoundly important to most of us, and that the sort of self-rental involved in the employment relation is regularly experienced as a lamentable loss of autonomy, if not humiliating subjection. I think a lot of us would rather not work for somebody else. It's not necessarily that we're burgeoning entrepreneurs eager to start small businesses. It just sucks to have a boss... It could be that an economic shock like the one we've recently suffered will lead to a resurgence of the sort of economic Insecurity behind our grandparents' comparatively materialist values. But it could also be that our culture's transition to post-materialism has been sufficiently thorough to have altered how even relatively low-skilled workers are inclined to respond to UnEmployment... We need to stimulate the prospects for employment, but we also need to make it easier for people to just work in ways that may not show up in the official unemployment stats. You can think of this as tearing down barriers to "SelfEmployment", if you must. (Free Agent)

WalMart has received government Subsidy (Corporate Welfare) to the tune of $1B (insert pinky in mouth) over the past 20 years. ... free or reduced-priced land, Job Training funds, Sales Tax rebates, tax credits and infrastructure assistance, including investment in roads... low-cost financing... Does the local Small Retail-er get those deals?

The Department Of Labor and the Department Of Education today announced a new education fund that will grant $2 billion to create OER (Open Education resources) materials for career training programs in Community College-s. According to Secretary of Labor HildaLSolis and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grant Program (TAACCCT) will invest $2 billion over the next four years into grants that will “provide community colleges and other eligible institutions of higher education with funds to expand and improve their ability to deliver education and Career Training programs.”... Cathy Casserly, incoming CEO of Creative Commons, said, “This exciting program signifies a massive leap forward in the sharing of education and training materials. Resources licensed under CC BY can be freely used, remixed, translated, and built upon, and will enable collaboration between states, organizations, and businesses to create high quality OER. This announcement also communicates a commitment to international sharing and cooperation, as the materials will be available to audiences worldwide via the CC license.” (more)

Clive Thompson interviews Vaclav Smil (one of Bill Gates' favorite authors). His nearly three dozen books have analyzed the world’s biggest challenges—the future of energy, food production, and manufacturing—with nuance and detail. They’re among the most data-heavy books you’ll find, with a remarkable way of framing basic facts. (more)