Kim Bach . Org

Jaiku can be very (understatement) inspirational, and this time I managed to inspire my favourite muse, Henriette, to write a great blog-post, despite her being sick.

Web avant-garde » Blog Archive » the pulsefrequency of the brain (and it’s effect on creativity and incubation)

I wrote this on Jaiku to thank her:

Thanks, very nice!!! It was sort of a “thank you”. Remember some months ago you asked about ideas on how to be creative, and I just started blogging like a madman… I’ll think of a worthy comment, but I do need to catch some alpha-waves - surfs up - ahem down…

First Henriette asks this question:

so what do YOU love to do ? and are you doing it when you are taking time off ?

Henriette loved this:

This weekend I took my favorite man and went on a mental training workshop by Susan Ekberg. It was a real mental kick and I got so much out of it. Among other things she talked about the pulsefrequency of the brain which I want to share with ya’ll.

So I promised her a “worthy” answer:

This is (one thing) that I love - when not catching Alpha Waves (which I try to practice Yoga Nidra to achieve), or walking and/or biking in nature.

I love to ponder the future, technology, and how it can finally help humanity evolve. Today it has mostly made us slaves - the production lines has never run faster than today, despite talk about a “spare-time society” - where you aren’t a slave.

So here goes “nothing“:

Henriette mentions “Collective Intelligence”, this is a subject I’ve been trying to brew up a blog-post on, since July. It’s, tentatively, titled “Building a framework for (online) knowledge sharing“.

(more…)

I just discovered that Apple has launched a new section of the iTunes Store, called iTunes U - the U must be short for University.

Promising and FREE

My first impression is that iTunes U looks very, very promising.

iTunes U features video and audio lectures, lecture notes etc. from major US universities, like MIT; for instance an entire course on “Electromagnetism” from MIT with titles like “What holds our world together?…”, all organised in the familiar iTunes Store.

And the best is that the content is FREE - yes FREE.

Where are the Danish Us?

So when will we get content from Danish Universities on iTunes U? I’m not optimistic!

The reason I’m pessimistic, is the ongoing debate over “e-Learning” in Denmark. As usually, when it comes to anything remotely related to ICT, the debate is mostly about technology and ICT-skills.

STOP TALKING! Get producing!

I say: STOP TALKING: Get the infrastructure in place, and you can immediately begin producing and distributing lecture notes, audio and video content. It requires almost no ICT-skills to use an application like iTunes - all students has the skills to do so today.

Later on, more advanced e-Learning applications could be made, even though I doubt that they’ll ever work - I’m a firm believer in the fact that you’ll never be able to replace the teacher, and with the infrastructure in place, we can all become teachers as well as students.

Benefits of partnering with a commercial infrastructure provider

A major benefit of partnering with a commercial infrastructure provider like iTunes Store, is that it removes the hassles of making the technology work from the institutions, leaving them to worry about what they do best, producing content.

I’m sure that the content offered on iTunes U is available elsewhere, and that there are downsides to trust Apple with distributing the content, most likely in their proprietary formats, but the convenience of having it all show up in iTunes, which makes it so easy to access the content, and have it synced to the iPod, means that I can live with it - for now.

Despite concerns iTunes U is a wake-up call

I realise that Apple also is doing this to draw traffic to the iTunes Store, and to sell more iPods, Macs and Apple TVs, iTunes U is actually one of the biggest selling points for Apple TV I’ve seen so far.

Despite my concerns over iTunes U, it remains a great initiative - they’re getting so many things right - and it’s my hope that it will serve as an inspiration to the Danish Educational System: WAKE UP!

As you might have noticed, I attended the reboot “(un)conference” in Copenhagen last week, and it was great.

I’d like to draw your attention to the feature “Rebooting the Web 2.0 age” on reboot 9 that BBC ran during the “(un)conference”.

Here’s a quote from the article:

The future of the web is being debated at Reboot 9.0, a leading European grassroots technology and design conference in Copenhagen.

But…”oh-my-two-dot-oh-NO” they’re using the “two-dot-O-M-G” dreaded “two-dot-oh-YEAH” word…

The big question here for the start-ups and opinion formers is how to use Web 2.0’s focus on community to build the next generation of web tools and become Europe’s Web 2.0 poster child.

I guess I can forgive the BBC, since the feature is “more than decent” ;-), and they capture some of the spirit of reboot in this quote:

This year’s conference theme is Human? with many speakers grappling with such deep philosophical queries as what it means to be human. One session was called Humanism 101.

Understanding human behaviour and how to adapt those behaviours to technology and the web rather than the reverse is rare for technology devotees.

And Last.fm deserves all the love in the world, iTunes might never know what hit them.

However, it is no surprise as the big subject in the bars and on the grass outside was this week’s sale of London social software music service Last.fm.

Its creator Martin Stiskel, explaining why US broadcaster CBS would want to buy a music preference tool said: “They want to move from a content company to an audience company, giving the audiences control and learning from this and that’s why Last.fm was their choice.”

I’m nominating Last.fm for the price of being the “greatest service on the planet”, even though it makes it look like I have absolutely no taste in music - is it about time to get more discriminating, and start “acting my age, not my shoesize” - nah some people have actually expressed love for my personal radiostation ;-), and I get shouts like this:

Du er på alder med min far, men jeres musiksmag ligger usandsynligt langt fra hinanden. Det er meget godt klaret! Respekt herfra

(translation from Danish: You’re the age of my father, but your taste in music is unbelievably far from each others. That’s well done! Respect :)).

I just joined the new google groups (e.g. mailinglist), called rebooters.

The purpose of the group, is to have a “permanent backchannel” for the reboot (un)conference, since backchannels, like the Jaiku backchannel from reboot9, has a tendency to “die”.

The mailing list has the following description:

Missing the brainshift experienced from talking to all the brilliant rebooters? Keep the conversation going between reboots here…

It’s a good idea - that would have been even better, if it was set up, officially, through the reboot website, but because website technologies change all the time, the use of a relatively low-tech solution, like a mailing-list, is a not as bad an idea as it sounds - e-mail still is “the lowest common denominator”.

This might help to avoid the frustrations I experienced, when I learned that the “reboot 8” site had it’s URLs changed, making it appear that a lot of information from 2006, had either been lost, or, at best, made (too) difficult to locate.

“I want my Permalinks”, and I’m looking forward to the continued discussions and next year, where I suggest that the organisers make away with the “Wired style dot-oh-NO” numbering scheme, and just calls the event “reboot”!

Some background

“Reboot” is, according to the website:

[...]a community event for the practical visionaries who are at the intersection of digital technology and change all around us[...]

Reboot usually takes place end May/start June, in Copenhagen Denmark.

Der er oprør i Danmark. Det skyldes at en række unge - og “lidt” ældre - mener at de fortsat skal have adgang til en bygning der blev stillet til rådighed af Købehavns Kommune i begyndelsen af 80erne. Takken til politikerne var dengang BUKSEVAND (seriøst Egon Weidekamp fik BUKSEVAND).

Nu står politikerne og velmenende aldrende sympatisører med dybe lommer i kø for at skaffe et alternativt sted, fordi de har solgt huset til nogle mennesker der HADER ideer.

Kære automonotome:
‘Ungeren’…Er en idé! IKKE et hus!
Deltag dog i det “mindst dårlige” demokrati i verden - HEY DET ER “VORES” - lav frivilligt arbejde, start foreninger, “indfiltrer” forvaltningnen der er ret vindunderlige mennesker (ja’ ve’ d’ ja’ har set d’).

I får faktisk lov til at passe jer selv, og jeg glæder mig til at se FLERE af jer f.eks. i min frivilliggruppe, Netværksgruppen i Mjølnerparken, nogle af jer har faktisk allerede fundet vej.

Huse er KONTROL mekanismer! Og det mest tåbelige ville da være hvis Ruth og hendes fundamentalistiske slæng fik deres kamp mod fritænkning og ideer finansieret af “Halal hippier”.

Og så må vi ikke glemme at Jagtvej 69 var et af de steder en af de vigtigeste projekter i menneskeheden var med til at blive startet, “Kvindebevægelsen”. Men huset der står der, er ikke et værdigt monument for kvindebevægelsen. Så riv huset ned, hey det er “os selv” det har misligeholdt det så det er ved at falde sammen, og byg et passende monument til kvinden og kvindesagen i stedet!

Huse kan dog være nødvendige: Det var altså pænt syret at se Björk til Oscar festen for et par år siden, specielt når jeg tænker på hvor jeg så hende første gang: I ‘Ungeren’, da hun var 16 og med i KUKL!

Bilal Ameen . Info
Bilal fra Bilal Ameen . Info vil gerne have en Mac, jeg syntes faktisk han har fortjent en…

“Ej spiser du honning? Det er ordentlig sødt!”
“Nej, det smager fornuftigt!”

Linuxforum BoF dag 2006

I løbet af Birds of a Feather sessionen om Åbne standarder på Linuxforum 2006 tog jeg nogle få noter.

Generelt var der en god debat, og man må jo gang på gang understrege at der er STOR forskel på åbne standarder og åben og fri software (open source software).

Jeg fangede følgende kommentarer mod slutningen af debatten:

• DKUUG har en mailing liste og en arbejdsgruppe indenfor standarder, den hedder std@dkuug.dk…Som der blev skrevet: “Også mig…”, så meld dig til denne liste
• Vi har faktisk en åben implementering af dokumentstandarderne, det er den STØRSTE styrke
• eAftale, som er Microsofts storkunde aftale med det offentlige er pt. til genforhandlig. Der er også forhandlinger om eneleverandør aftaler, eAftale skulle være 3 årig. Der er et notat i et ministerium der antyder at der kan spares 100 millioner ved at terminere eAftale.

Vi diskuterede også forhindringer for udbredelsen af OpenOffice og Open Document

• Svært at få support og uddannelse
• Svært at opdatere og installere
• Dårligt integreret

Jeg kom til at tænke på Simon Phipps og Suaraz-Potts opfordring fra Linuxforum til at se at komme i gang med at lave små konsulent firmaer der tilbyder at løse den slags problemer, vi er vist ikke kommet så langt endnu.

Hvordan kommer vi videre:

Det er NU der skal rykkes!

• Lav en rapport som ikke er afhængig af snævre industri interesser, men fremhøver de langsigtede fordele ved at vælge den åbne og fri vej, det handler IKKE om teknologi det her
• OpenOffice skal godkendes af IT chefen i det offentlige, det kræver benarbejde
• Vi skal “tæppebombe” IT-afdelingerne med “rigtige” standarder Begynd f.eks. at sende dokumenter til dem i Open Document formaterne, og hvis de ikke kan læse dem så henvis dem til B103, at de bare kan åbne det i Google apps eller hente og installere OpenOffice, det har de fleste da råd til. :DOC er IKKE en rigtig standard!
• De nye tilgælgelighedskrav er en “Trojansk”, der kan bruges til at påpege at de offentlige myndigheder kan få store gevinster ved at anvende åbne standarder og open source

Debatten fortsætter på min wiki side (WiKim: Linuxforum_BoF_2006:Åbne standarder), kig forbi, du skal være så hjerteligt velkommen. Wikien kræver ikke registrering, og indholdet er udgivet under en fri dokumentations licens (FDL), men hvis du skriver noget, så registrer venligst, det gør det lettere at følge med i hvem der skriver hvad, og at afgøre at der ikke er tale om “spam”.

Her er et tip til alle Firefox brugere som ikke gider lukke sine faneblade fra en af mine kreative venner.

Jeg har brugt Firefox et par uger, det har været en sjov oplevelse, det kedelige var at jeg ikke kunne få mine faneblade tilbage, når jeg havde slukket for min computer. Men i mellemtiden hørte jeg at der var kommet en ny version af Firefox, og den har jeg lige hentet ned til min computer. Jeg har ikke haft lyst til at lukke mine faneblade, men så ved et uheld gik min strøm mens jeg sad og arbejdede med min midt i min arbejdstid, så jeg var helt ude af den, men heldigvis havde jeg husket at gemme dokumenterne, men hvad skete der med min Internet browser. Så startede jeg min computer årh heldigvis spurgte Firefox mig om jeg vil gendanne den gamle session eller starte en ny session, så kom smilet tilbage i mit ansigte.

Tak til Bilal fra http://www.bilalameen.info.

For andre eksempler på kreativ problemløsning kig her: Barometerhistorien.

Sprogkirkegården - WiKim

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