Click here to view the embedded video.

Maz is one of my favorite comedians. Found him on the The Axis of Evil Comedy Tour (iTunes Link) tour and have purchased his performances on iTunes (iTunes Link). So glad to see him perform at a TED event.

Tags: SUPERFreakonomics, Stephen Dubner, Steven Levitt, Economics, datasets, innovation, energy, population, poverty, technology, Sudir Venkatesh, terrorist, trends

Missed reading this when it was originally released?  Consider the following accolades for his writing:

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year
A Washington Post Best Book of the Year
A Businessweek Best Business Book of the Year
A Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year
A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year
A Business Week Best Business Book of the Year
A Christian Science Monitor Best Book of the Year
A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Best Book of the Year
A Booklist Editors’ Choice Best Book of the Year
Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize

Yet as of late I have been reading so much about Wall Street’s clusterf*ck that I missed his update Hot, Flat, and Crowded 2.0: Why We Need a Green Revolution–and How It Can Renew America.

An overview to the version 2.0 release:

Friedman explains how global warming, rapidly growing populations, and the astonishing expansion of the world’s middle class through globalization have produced a planet that is “hot, flat, and crowded.”  In this Release 2.0 edition, he also shows how the very habits that led us to ravage the natural world led to the meltdown of the financial markets and the Great Recession.  The challenge of a sustainable way of life presents the United States with an opportunity not only to rebuild its economy, but to lead the world in radically innovating toward cleaner energy.  And it could inspire Americans to something we haven’t seen in a long time—nation-building—by summoning the intelligence, creativity, and concern for the common good that are our greatest national resources.

In vivid, entertaining chapters, Friedman makes it clear that the green revolution the world needs is like no revolution before. It will be the biggest innovation project in American history; it will be hard, not easy; and it will change everything from what you put into your car to what you see on your electric bill. This is a great challenge, Friedman explains, but also a great opportunity, and one that America cannot afford to miss. Not only is American leadership the key to the healing of the earth; it is also our best strategy for the renewal of America.

Tags: Tom Friedman, Hot, Flat and Crowded, environment, globalization, Green revolution, First Solar, Toledo, education, Germany, population, offshoring, outsourcing, India, coal, manufacturing, technology, reading, trends

This is a great follow-up to his first book Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.  Shirky is right on target with engaging, connecting stories to share his ideas about our new ability today to share collective knowledge.

Over 1 trillion hours of TV is watched per year. Imagine what can happen when people turn TV off and begin contributing.  And Shirky elegantly shares the shifting nature of professionals vs. amateurs in the age of the internet.  Pretty amazing reading.

I believe there have been attempts to move in the direction he outlines but a tipping point has been the mass availability of consumer devices at very affordable price points.  I recall Peter Gabriel’s interview on the Today Show in 1988 talking about the efforts of Amnesty International and their attempts to videotape human rights abuses with large, analog cameras.
Today we know all to well from the murder of Oscar Grant that cameraphones have made their efforts real.

The Napster thing
IMHO Clay’s single oversight in the book surrounds Napster.  I think he was trying to communicate a holistic answer to why people (not just Gen Xers) were stealing music.  He called it sharing — it was stealing plain and simple.
He overlooked the availability of cheap recordable media (external hard drives and blank CDs) along with fast networks.  Clay addressed Napster’s explosive growth and outlined the reasons for its huge success:

1. digital data is infinitely and perfectly copyable at zero marginal cost.
2. people will share if sharing is simple enough; and we generally resist being spiteful under the same conditions
3. Fanning designed a system to link 1 to 2 via the right incentives.

“That’s is. That’s what turned the recording industry upside down.”

He simply overlooked the physical requirement that brought the solution to everyone’s computer. If a storage solution (blank CDs or Hard Drives) did not exist at very affordable price points people would not be sharing so much music….because they would have no abiliy to store all the files they were downloading.  Today with terabyte drives under $100 we forget the considerably higher costs for consumer electronics before Napster arrived in 1999.

Consider Napster’s timeframe in the summer of 1999.  You could download mp3 files from Usenet newsgroups like alt.binary.music but had no affordable solution to store the vast amounts of music available.  Apple’s original 5GB iPod was introduced a month after 9/11. Smaller mp3 players were shipping at the time but most did not offer significant storage or an iTunes experience to easily library the music for your iPod.  And Rio’s 1998 MP3player was just a measly 32 megabytes — yes megabytes.  The “iPod effect” had yet to taken hold a chokehold on the mp3 player marketplace.  So users had to store their music on their computer, blank CDs or an external drive.

Shirky also overlooked the key transit issue.  As Gen Xers connected to robust campus networks, they connected (and shared) globally compared to their home or High School dial-up, DSL or Cable services.  And here lies the true key – bandwidth made it worth their time and effort to steal music. Can you image running Napster on a 9200 baud modem?  With a bigger pipe on campus Gen Xers could steal music and burn more blank CDs.  And it only accelerated when traditional music stores were charging $20 for the same CD Napster was making available for free. It was a perfect storm for ripping off the music industry.

I have spent twenty years on multiple campus networks.  Honestly when I spoke to students about Napster….they were all about stealing.  The term “sharing” is the spin word. College kids are not wealthy. They invest in books, cars and beer.  Students heading out for class would leave their music drives connected on their dorm’s network allowing anyone connected to hijack as much as they wanted.  At some point it became more than just having a folder of your favorite band’s complete discography.  It became about stealing a complete music library from the six major labels (in the early to mid 90s).  And it was not just music.  There remains to this day P2P tools that share software, ebooks and full length movies.  Many universities shut down access to Napster and sent memorable emails to their university community describing Napster’s primary use: digital theft of copyrighted music.

Napster’s explosive growth is not just Shirky’s 2 steps (above) but rather the following:

A. Devices to store digital data (CDs and external drives) were finally affordable to consumers.
B. Robust digital networks (non-modem) became available at universities.
C. Music was shared on the campus network all day long.
D. People swapped discs/drives of music for friends off campus.
E. Napster peaked in February 2001 and the iPod was introduced 45 days after 9/11

If you think Napster is dead then your not aware of torrents.  Beleive it or not YouTube is even a more popular way to steal copyrighted music.  Today there are free recording applications that permit users to capture high quality audio playing from a computer.  Search YouTube for a popular artist and odds are you will find a ‘video’ of a song that has a static picture instead of a video clip.  Anyone can hit the record button on the audio software and then click YouTube’s play button, and (drum roll) they have stolen a new song and probably copied it onto their iPod.  Think that’s clever? Search for an artist and add ‘torrent’ to the search string (U2 torrent) and look at whats available to everyone today.  Take a look at how U2’s business manager tried to stop ISPs from permitting music piracy.
/end Napster rant

Overall Shirky’s stories of how the modern internet, creative minds and the opportunity for citizens to kill their television and contribute is a great introduction to social networking.

Tags: Clay Shirky, Cognitive Surplus, kill your television, Social Networking, Creative, Sharing, trends, reading

The device is rumored to be even thinner an updated refresh screen and enhanced imaging. The new Kindle will remain greyscale and will not support a touch screen….but may include apps.

Tags: Amazon, Kindle, ebook, price war, ebook sales, reading, trends

Steve Eisman, Michael Burry, and Howie Hubler all have interesting roles in the credit swap and collapse (among others) that combine to document how greed, pure greed and outright criminal theft led to the economic collapse of financial giants and ruined our country.

Steve Eisman was blunt — to say the least when insulting financial CEOs but he was right all along about the coming collapse.

Why didn’t others listen to him?  Maybe its how the game is stacked to reward the few and control the governing agencies.  Wall Street views S&P and Moody’s as the guys unable to survive at a brokerage so they work outside the real game.  Lewis has much more to show how the game is stacked for the wealthy and against middle America and especially the poor.

Maybe the best part was his explanation of how Wall Street actually pays S&P and Moody’s for their credit ratings….

Hubler made the worst trade in the history of Wall Street. He lost $9 Billion on a single trade for Morgan Stanley.  And yet he was permitted to leave with a $100 million bonus.  $9 B I L L I O N and he walks unscathed?  Lewis briefly touches on how his actions were covered up by Morgan Stanley and buried from the light of day.

Whats worse? A farm worker in California earning $14,000 is approved a subprime to purchase a house for $768,000.  A stripper in Vegas and full time baby sitter in Manhattan have been manipulated to hold multiple six-figure properties that neither could ever hope to pay off.  But their financial institutions pushed them down the rabbit hole with stories of easy, affordable financing…

While going through Stanford medical school Michael Burry discovered he had a better talent for bond market research. More importantly he understood how to bet against risky consumers suckered into “teaser rates” on subprime loans.  He dropped out of medical school and started his own investment company.  He just had to advise his clients to hold onto investments for more over two years as those subprime mortgage adjustments expired and skyrocketed Americans into default.  In betting against the success of them he won big….really big.

Maybe the best example of how criminal Wall Street is was how Goldman Sachs had someone selling credit default swaps to a company and then actually betting against that company’s ability to repay the swap back to Goldman.  He walked with a personal bonus of 1 BILLION dollars:

I’m impressed with Lewis’ storyline: Wall Street sold bullshit products to screw poor people – plain and simple.  Cannot see anyone reading this book actually taking a stand that Wall Street does NOT need serious reform.  Criminal insanity with a slice of reality over a ton of F-bombs.

His strongest writing are the 20 pages in the book’s Afterward, written one year after his departure from Treasury with the opportunity to look back and reflect upon the events and the solutions including TARP and the role of the G20.

Paulson was certainly the right type of person for the job having served as the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs.  He previously served in the Nixon administration as an assistant to John Ehrlichman during the Watergate scandal.

Although reluctant to accept the job as United States Treasury Secretary under George W. Bush, Paulson acknowledged upon his arrival in Washington a credit crisis was on the horizon.  Clearly Paulson notes he was naive of regulatory powers in Washington and any suggestions of financial reform in an election year were all dead on arrival.

It’s worth repeating that between March and September 2008, eight major US financial institutions failed — Bear Stearns, IndyMac, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, AIG, Washington Mutual and Wachovia.  Six of them in September alone.
Paulson jumps right out of the gate on page 1 as all Americans would have wanted:

Do they know it’s coming Hank? President Bush asked me.  “Mr. President we’re going to move quickly and take them by surprise.  The first sound they’ll hear is their heads hitting the floor….For the good of the country I proposed we seize control of the companies, fire their bosses and prepare to provide $100 billion of capital support for each.”

Regrettably its not Wall Street but rather Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government backed lending institutions (GSEs) that Paulson is addressing.  Paulson should could have done the same for Lehman, Bear Stearns.and ALL the other institutions since they received taxpayer money to keep them afloat….on their yachts.
–When you learn that someone at a financial company made a 1 Billion bonus (yes a billion for one person) you can see where the ship was heading…right into the rocks.

There is plenty of ammunition to show exactly how bad Wall Street was ’self managed’ that led to the crisis.  Paulson simply but it best “AIG’s incompetence was stunning” as he reveals how difficult it was for Treasury and the Fed to use outdated tools to save a company gone over the edge.

Keep your enemies closer indeed
I was not surprised with his notes from the Beijing Olympics.  With the financial crisis already underway (Fannie and Freddie) Paulson documents how China and Russia tried to squeeze the US over GSE holdings in Fannie and Freddie.  Nice.  It shows something about those ‘old’ communists running Russia today.

I actually think the book’s afterward is the most important section in the book.  IMHO this must should be required reading for every taxpayer and student.  His four critical lessons:

1. The structural economic imbalances among the major economies of the world that led to the massive cross-border capital flows are an important source of the justly criticized excesses in our financial system.

2. Our regulatory system remains a hopelessly outmoded patchwork quilt built for another day and age.

3. The financial system contained far too much leverage, as evidenced by inadequate cushions of other capital and liquidity.  Much of the leverage was embedded in largely opaque and highly complex financial products.

4. The largest financial institutions are so big and complex that the pose a dangerously large risk.

Clearly government needs resolution authority when putting down a financial institution.  It would also address the anger and outrage regarding bonuses and compensation levels given to Wall Street.  But the free market system created this mess and as a result their club was simply too big to fail.
Why does Goldman get all the breaks?  Could it be that many of its former executives are executing the government’s financial policies?

Tags: Henry Paulson, On the Brink, Bear Stearns, Wall Street, Lehman, AIG, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, recession, crisis, trends

To no surprise BMW’s controller is called the iDrive….a perfect fit for Apple’s iProducts.  Drivers will be able to control music playback and browse playlists, podcasts, and Genius mixes.

Tags: BMW, Apple iOS4, innovation, product launch, interface, ideas, business, trends

Tags: experimental network, Google, Network, internet access, Research, Internet2, Broadbandt, gigabit, high speed, trends,

Most would agree Bear Stearns was the “perfect storm” in hilighting whats wrong with Wall Street.  Trusted executives who cannot lead their company or explain products they are selling.

Author William Cohan even points out as Bear Stearns was collapsing two executives were in Nashville playing in a bridge card game tournament.

I was rather amused that with their ‘tough guy’ reputation on Wall Street, in the end the executives at Bear Stearns, facing the closure of their firm were actually considering filing chapter 11 to force a major collapse of the Western financial marketplace.

Known as their “nuclear option” Bear Stearns actually considered triggering the collapse of the US economy because they were unable to secure their quickly falling stock price at an “acceptable” price during negotiations with the Federal Reserve and JPMorgan Chase in their final hours of operations.  And in the end, many of those tough guys ended up crying at their desks.

Cohan also reveals how in the end Bear Stearns simply cooked the books, played with massive egos and was actually surprised when JPMorgan Chase did not actually help them out after working with The Fed to set up a 29 day transition with JPMorgan Chase.  But after years of bad blood and pompous actions, in the end Bear Stearns got exactly what they deserved….they drove their firm into the ditch while looking the other way and “rewarding” executives with multi-million dollar retirement plans.

House of Cards and Too Big to Fail both make me think it may be a great time to have the Government get into the financial marketplace.  If implemented correctly (that’s a big IF) a Government run investment bank, securities trading and brokerage could generate enough profit to stop taxing Americans.  Think its crazy?  Read how all those trusted financial “wizards” acted while driving Wall Street and the global economy off the cliff.

And you think the best way to repair the financial economy is to give them back the keys to drive the car?

Tags: William Cohan, House of Cards, Bear Stearns, Wall Street, Morgan Stanley, Lehman, JPMorgan, Federal Reserve, recession, AIG, trends

Annual costs to support a legacy back-end email server, software licensing and required related services (anti-spam, anti-virus, filtering and backup) must also run 24/7 while “people” costs include training and technical support.

Some legacy email solutions actually require a dedicated server to cannibalize a CPU — not virtualization friendly.  Think OpenText’s WorstClass FirstClass email server.

The green financial picture.
What’s an overlooked annual cost by IT and financial managers?  Electricity.  The cost to power all your school servers 24/7 can be rather shocking….sorry.

The first time I collaborated on a college’s annual budget, I was surprised energy costs for just three buildings on a small campus ran above $260,000/year.  Same probably applies for K12 district buildings.

Server costs and email requirements
If your school is running real industrial servers (1U or even 3U units) there are significant annual costs, regardless of rack, blade or tower servers.  Many schools on tight budgets re-purpose Pentium desktops to be “servers” along with those old, energy sucking CRT monitors.  Not a good idea.  And don’t be so moved by the marketing and PR efforts for “green” servers, they run all day and still cost a surprising amount over a three to five year lease.
…you do lease your school’s servers?

How to fight the power
So how much does your school’s servers cost to power year-round?  Gather total watts for EVERY computer in your server room which includes KVM/SAN/DNS/RTSP/CIPA filter and spam/virus systems along with all attached monitors and run the numbers.

Don’t overlook HVAC costs too.  Even small server rooms required large HVAC.  Is there a large server room at your school?   You should be looking at a rather BIG number. Hopefully your school has negotiated an acceptable rate from your regional electrical conglomerate.  For many small schools this is reasonably accurate:

Monday – Friday:
7:00am to 7:00pm 5 cents / kilowatt hour
7:00pm to 7:00am 3.5 cents / kilowatt hour
Weekends:
7:00am to 7:00pm 3.5 cents / kilowatt hour
7:00pm to 7:00am 3.5 cents / kilowatt hour

Remember servers run weekends, holiday breaks AND all summer long — even though K12 districts mostly sit empty.  Yes empty….lights are on but nobody’s home and your still burning your energy budget.

Your CFO will think its outrageous believe me, followed by a call to auto-shut down idle office and lab computers.   By the way, run the numbers for ALL computers at your school campus-wide:  computing labs along with Library, business offices and dedicated computing studios.

Re-coop costs
It helps if your IT staff embed energy-saving measures in their system configurations.  This means computers are configured to power off, dictated by your school’s traffic patterns of actual use.  Configuring monitors to “dim” is NOT energy savings (guys, the monitor still requires power in “dim” mode) so just power it off.  Believe me the time it takes a student to push the power-on button is worth the green effort.  Present the modified numbers by your CFO….it will become mandatory in the default configuration.

Can you believe lab computers are configured to NEVER sleep?  Yep – power consumption is burning money 24/7/365.  Stranger than fiction to watch a school’s budget burn up right in-front of your eyes.  Irresponsible and outdated attitudes are simply passed-on in the way of increased tuition or higher taxes for a K12 school district.

Obsolete Certification
Ironic that email administrators have been known to use established certifications as an excuse to continue running an expensive, legacy system.  Remember your school (tuition or taxpayer) is paying for certifications, some approaching $1,000 to re-enforce legacy email solutions.

I have watched the use of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) while addressing alternative email solutions with a college email administrator…a true “deer in the headlights” moment.  And of course the issue of being certified was part of the reaction.  It scares the hell out of them. Discussions about changing email become a threat to some or political firestorm for others.   In the end you need to convey that shifts in the computer marketplace continue to accelerate, and email is now apart of that discussion.

Conduct an energy audit.
After partnering with a regional energy conglomerate to implement a college’s first-ever energy audit, I learned much about implementing efficient measures directly impacting the organization’s IT carbon footprint while reducing annual energy costs.

Today’s students are more aware of their need to reduce carbon footprints while junior faculty are embracing green energy savings at home and at school so there is real momentum despite an IT team’s outdated approach to let everything run all day and all night.

At one operations meeting with College executives I learned the school was going to partner with the energy conglomerate for a financial gift.  I simply asked to consider negotiating a $0.15 shaving off our kilowatt/hour costs….the school did not recognize that avenue of thinking.  Remember that $260,000 annual energy bill.  One would hope a-quarter-of-a-million-dollars would change the way people think.

Google Apps for Education
By migrating from an internal email server (and associated services mentioned above) to Google Apps for Education (GAE) schools eliminate ALL server related AND energy costs.  And maybe, just maybe if your school is forward thinking you can reduce expensive Microsoft site licensing with GAE’s bundled suite.
Yesterday Google announced two more states have adopted GAE for 3,000 schools across Colorado and Iowa.  I see lots of financial and energy savings as well.

Its all about change and I know change is hard.  May I recommend Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.  At the same time I believe sharing the spreadsheet energy cost saving should be enough for most decision makers.

Tags: Google, Google Apps for Education, email server, Postini, technology budget, increased tuition, taxpayer, tipping point, carbon footprint, K12, trends

As budgets have been cut across the country for education, this is a smart move for many financially strapped school districts.  Does it pay for a District to force taxpayers to pay for expensive, legacy email programs like FirstClass and Novell when cloud based solutions with robust feature sets are being embraced by K12 and Colleges around the country.

Source article

Tags: Google, Google Apps for Education, education, Postini, anti-virus, K12, trends

Clearly the business model for ANY publisher to develop a tablet is a mistake with the marketplace is its infancy.  The internet forced computer companies to move faster in transforming their business.  Its simply smarter to drop SI into the iPad Store inside iTunes.  The RIO is much better.

And just six months later….SI has announced its coming to the iPad for the same price as the print version.  So much for their own hardware eh?

Time Inc, holds major content providers in business/finance, international, luxury/portfolio, lifestyle and style/entertainment media categories and with the initial wave of eBook publishing just beginning to hit a business sweet spot it should not be long before popular titles begin to appear alongside SI.

Tags: Sports Illustrated, Time, Inc., iPad, Tablet, design, wireless, magazine, trends

It appears that Apple has produced a product that consumers have been wanting and are willing to pay quite a premium.  But at the same time Apple has cut into Amazon’s ownership of eBook sales.  The problem with both of the above devices – they are not color.  Think about purchasing a dedicated eReader that cannot produce color, and is only available for, well….reading….despite Amazon’s attempts to open the Kindle platform with an API and goals of an iTunes-like store.

Amazon left their newer Kindle DX at $500.00

Tags: iPad, Kindle, Nook, price war, ebook sales, reading, trends

Sorkin’s revelations about those so called financial titans are more accurately described as clueless.  Ego was their chief reason for making so many horrible financial decisions.

I cannot think of a more striking example as Sorkin described the board members of Bear Stearns, voting to send the firm into Chapter 11 bankruptcy with one member choosing not to participate….he was in Detroit playing in a professional card game tournament.

Titans? Sorkin paints a more accurate picture of these guys closer to the attitudes of the out-of-touch imperialist British monarchy.  Defined by The Dictionary of Human Geography, Imperialism is “the creation and maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination.”  Sorkin’s reinforces this definition about the failed Wall Street Empire.

I was amused to learn of a photograph of Mitsubishi’s $9Billion check for Morgan Stanley….yea NINE zeros making it probably the biggest check ever written.  Simply amazing.

Sorkin outlines the US Treasury’s secret plan to save the banking system 5 MONTHS before TARP was introduced!

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke developed a “Break the Glass” recapitalization plan, however by that time the panic was well underway.  So the Goldman Sachs alumni running the Fed and Treasury put Wall Street’s financial responsibility on the backs of the American taxpayer?  Why not call in the emerging banks in China?  Well, they were talking to them too.

Andrew Ross Sorkin has written a fascinating, scene-by-scene, saga of the eyeless trying to march the clueless through Great Depression II.
Tom Wolfe on TBTF:

Hard to believe Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehman, AIG and Bear Stearns could conduct business in such a way that set up the financial crisis.  The underlying message in a globalized world is simply how any local organization can place money into funds that teeter of the efforts of banks half way around the world.

Welcome to financial globalization 4.0  Its too good to put down.
Author’s website

Tags: Andrew Ross Sorkin, Too Big to Fail, Bear Stearns, Wall Street, Morgan Stanley, Lehman, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, recession, AIG, trends

Friedman’s background provides a true global, military view of the world’s future and his role at Stratfor, a global intelligence service provides direction to his book.

Yet I could not help but think twice about some of the aspects of his work.  I agree with his points that in the future countries including Poland can become a superpower, but at the same time to predict in 40 years America will be at war with Mexico after fighting Japan and Turkey are a bit…on the surface, a stretch.

For the strangest reason Friedman seems to be able to tie some of his predication today.  Following the fall of the USSR and the Orange Revolution not many would predict that Ukraine and Russia would sign a joint agreement in April 2010 to keep Russian Naval forces in their former communist republic in Sevastopol.

At the same time his prediction of Poland’s coming success as a global power could not have taken into account the April 2010 tragedy in Katyn. I do not believe this will stop Poland from gaining power in the future, but it appears to be slowing down (potentially) the process by a decade.
I do feel the first half of the book hold chapters that are solid and well written:

Chapter 1: The Dawn of the American Age
Chapter 2: Earthquake: The US – Jihadist War
Chapter 3: Population, Computers and Culture Wars
Chapter 4: The New Fault Lines
Chapter 5: China 2020: The Paper Tiger

However Chapters 6 – 13 layout the world order from 2020 to 2080.  Again the further out the more difficult to predict IMHO.  Interesting reading for sure since most today would never foresee Mexico winning a war against America.

Tags: The Next 100 years, George Friedman, 21st Century, America, Japan, Turkey, Mexico, future, reading, trends

Tags: Google Wave, beta software, Collaboration, real-time, communication, test audience, limited preview, trends

Laszlo Barabasi will be releasing a new book Bursts: The Hidden Pattern Behind Everything We Do at the end of April and if its anything like Linked it will become another best seller.

At the same time Laszlo Barabasi has released a social networking exercise (cool) called BuRSTS “that is a performance in human dynamics, a game of cooperation and prediction, that will gradually unveil the full text of Bursts.”  Talk about hitting a social networking home run!  Now if everyone will start grabbing text…

Linked demonstrated that patterns in space (How Everything is Connected to Everything Else and What It means for Business, Science, and Everyday Life) while Bursts will focus on patterns in time.

A couple of quotes about this upcoming release:

“In Linked, Barabasi showed us how complex networks unfold in space. In Bursts, he shows us how they unfold in time. Your life may look random to you, but everything from your visits to a web page to your visits to the doctor are predictable, and happen in bursts.”
-Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody

“Barabasi is one of the few people in the world who understand the deep structure of empirical reality.”
-Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan

I think Bursts is going to take us on a new ride.  I’m looking forward to the journey.

Tags: Bursts, Albert-Lasziò Barabàsi, Network, Power Hubs, reading, trends, relationships, reading

Triple Cross critiques issues addressed as errors in the reporting by the authors John Miller and Michael Stone.  Miller is a noted former investigative journalist with ABC News.
There was much attention drawn to The Cell for two reasons: The ABC movie The Path to 9/11 which was America’s first network movie behind the attack on 9/11 was based upon the book.  Second, it was Miller’s famous 1998 interview with Osama bin Laden.

At that interview Miller learned bin Laden was well on his way to leading al-Qaeda’s war on America.  The only problem was it was too early for most law enforcement agencies to act upon.

The interview was interesting enough to see how Al was protecting bin Laden and Miller’s recollection of how 15 years old boys were shooting AK-47s next to his ears (as a way to intimidate him) repeatedly as bin Laden arrived for his interview.

Miller shared how he even initially met with bin Laden’s right hand man Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri.  It was quite an interview for Miller and helped establish him as a strong source on terrorism for ABC even before the 9/11 attack.

Kinda worth reading Chapter 12: Meeting bin Laden alone, but the book offers many noted failures by US intelligence to capture terrorists….including the FBI’s long surveillance of Muslim extremists in NYC pictured on the book’s cover during firearms training in upstate New York.  It shows that US law enforcement could not connect the dots.

Miller and Stone provide good background on Mohamed Atta in Chapter 16:  Atta and his ties to the cell in Hamburg.  We paid a steep price as a result of the inaction of US law enforcement.  As Triple Cross and The Commission suggest the FBI needs to re-organized for the 21st Century global world.  And again like Triple Cross and The Commission — hard book to put down.

John Miller on The Charlie Rose show regarding his Osama bin Laden interview

Tags: The Cell, John Miller, 9/11, ABC News, Al Qaeda, Ayman al Zawahiri, FBI, CIA, reading

I found Carter’s book similar in nature to Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason (review here) in finding a calming, rational leader who is looking to re-establish America’s global leadership through the core values our country was founded upon.

Carter simply lays out his personal, Christian and Presidential arguments for positive leadership reaching from Washington to a global audience.

The opening chapters focus on America’s traditional beliefs, Carter’s own traditional Christian faith, the rise of religious fundamentalism and the growing conflicts among religious people.  He accurately addressed the entwining of Church and State from 1970 to 9/11.

Carter also challenges traditional religious organizations in the South.  The issues of divorce, homosexuality, abortion and the death penalty.  These are emotional issues that reinforce many voters’ shift to the GOP and the Southern Baptist Convention.

An issue that continues to restrain Baptist and GOP leaders is the role of Subservient women in their church. This issue eventually lead to Carter’s exit from the Southern Baptist Convention.

It was interesting to see how his religious upbringing and service to our country as a navy submarine officer shaped his military, global and Presidential views.  Stories of positions on nuclear weapons, the aggressive Soviet Union and China along with the early movement in our country toward a safe environment are all reviewed with great detail.  He remains our country’s elder statesman with good reason stitched into the binding of his book.

Tags: Jimmy Carter, Our Endangered Values, reason, politics, reading, moral crisis, values, America, , religious fundamentalism, southern baptist convention, traditional beliefs, traditional christian faith, trends

From Google:

A better document editor
We’ve brought the responsive, real-time editing experience you’ve come to expect from our spreadsheets over to documents, which means you can now see character-by-character changes as other collaborators make edits. We also added another popular feature from spreadsheets: sidebar chat, so you can discuss documents as you work on them with colleagues.

The new technical foundation also helped us improve document formatting, which means better import/export fidelity, a revamped comment system, real margins and tab stops, and improved image layout within documents. These improvements have been highly requested, but previously impossible to create with the older documents editor on older browsers.

A faster spreadsheet editor
With the new spreadsheets editor, you’ll see significant speed and performance improvements — spreadsheets load faster, are more responsive and scroll more seamlessly. We’ve also added a host of often requested features, like a formula bar for cell editing, auto-complete, drag and drop columns, and simpler navigation between sheets. And as always, real-time collaboration in spreadsheets is easy with sidebar chat and the ability to see which cell each person is editing.

A new collaborative drawing editor
In the year since we launched the Insert drawing tool, we’ve received many requests for the ability to collaborate on drawings and make them accessible directly from the docs list. The new standalone drawings editor lets you collaborate in real time on flow charts, designs, diagrams and other fun or business graphics. Copy these drawings into documents, spreadsheets and presentations using the web clipboard, or share and publish drawings just like other Google Docs.

Tags: Google Docs, performance improvements, Network, trends,

Their only “failure” is the current lack of a wider test audience. Wave has a lot of promise but during it’s current limited preview its simply not as widely available to the average Google user.

Google Maps was a different type of beta release.  Anyone could login and test their mapping features.  Wave is an initial different product and audience.

I know PLENTY of people who want to kick the tires and engage Wave but they do not have an account.

If your not a Google user (Gmail, Docs, Analytics) then you may feel like you must extend your “Yahoo life” in order to test Wave. The same can be said for those who want to test Wave within an organization or company.

Google has been more relaxed about giving away invites.  In early 2009 it was extremely difficult to find an invite.  I noticed that this process turned into a “power struggle” for some who where begging for Wave invites on twitter.

This also makes me wonder if all those tweets about Wave’s failure belong to people who really do not understand the limitations of beta software.

A simple query at amazon.com reveals a number of Wave books are not even shipping yet.  Another Wave book that I’m interested in is also not shipping yet.

Are there any Wave Wave torrents?  So to all those on the cutting bleeding edge: how well do you actually know Wave?  If you need a book to read check out The Complete Guide to Google Wave.

Tags: Google Wave, beta software, Collaboration, email, IM, test audience, limited preview, trends

Click here to view the embedded video.

Tags: Apple, Inc., design, iPad, Penguin, eBook, education, trends

I have been following Larry Lessig’s work on copyright and our digital culture for some time, reading his positions online, previous books and keynote addresses at TED, Wired and last week to Italy’s Parliament among others.  His work on Creative Commons is a direct action from the creative limitations of copyright.

His latest book Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy is a very easy read for anyone who has also known his work.  He tells an important story about how new technology is clashing with old money.

Lessig illustrates how copyright’s old money (the big media empires) are clashing with today’s society and technology.  Old money is winning financial amounts here and there, but ultimately they are cutting their own throat as they can no longer control content.  Their motto: since we cannot have it our way anymore (due to the easy distribution of digital content) we are going to sue as many people as we can and take outrageous amounts of money along the way.

Lessig simply points out the two different camps: Read-only versus Read-Write.  Look at popular consumer phones and computers.  Today anyone can create a short video and post it to YouTube.  And by today’s “standard” in social networking — your somewhat expected to post multimedia content on Facebook and YouTube for example.

But post a 29 second video of a baby dancing to Prince’s Lets Go Crazy and Universal Music (they own Prince and his music) files a lawsuit claiming copyright violations.  Its old money trying to control society and Lessig points out it clearly no longer works.

He acknowledges great opportunities that permit art and commerce to thrive in our new hybrid economy.  Yet the RIAA continues to litigate, suing  individuals for monetary gain. YouTube is being forced to alter posted videos due to old-money ideas and their lawyers.

But with the unprecedented growth of the internet and YouTube which serves over 1 BILLION videos each day all the lawyers in the world will not be able to keep up to date.  In the US alone over 12 billion are watched everyday.  And after all the lawyers for the RIAA would rather sue wealthy people in America than say 1 BILLION poor people in China.  Its no wonder some internet media companies have their physical servers outside the US – since copyright is not equal under the law of every nation with a fast ISP.

Tags: Larry Lessig, Remix, art and commerce, copyright, creative commons, ReadWrite Culture, old money, Media Empires, YouTube, Change, control, trends