Here's a nice piece about mutual aid, social networks, and the 9/11 attack.
Note that most of the positive social behavior that saved so many lives was not organized by any formal agency, much less by any command-and-control mechanism. People saved themselves. Other people converged from all over the city to help.
Cambridge University is changing its copyright policy. Formerly most creative work done at the university belonged to the creators. Now it will belong to the university. Dissenting faculty have launched a web site explaining how the new policy will harm academic freedom, faculty, students, and industry. (Thanks to Red Rock Eater.) [FOS News]
I don't like the sound of this at all. Universities behaving more and more like companies... where are we headed?
For a well baked blog, add topics. Michael DeMaria over at Network Computing wants weblogs to have topical lists of posts. He points out that the time-based format isn't the easiest thing to use when looking for specific posts on selected topics. There are obviously two ways find posts contain a specific topic:
1) Use a search engine. This is the best approach to use when people are resistant to entering metadata.
2) Use a metadata tool like LiveTopics by Matt Mower. Matt has built a tool for Radio that makes it easy for authors to enter in metadata with each post. This makes it easy to provide directories that list post by topic (through use of the outliner). Basically, Livetopics can create a simple list of topical links to posts, or a complex hierarchy of topical links. Matt has a complex hierarchy on his site.
Clearly I think Mike makes a very valid point. Weblogs make great diaries, but the by-date navigation structure sucks for locating topical information. More information about liveTopics can be had by either clicking the liveTopics see-also reference under this post, or going to the liveTopics page on the Novissio website.
What kind of learning skills do we teach most students? None. We have teachers who can’t teach teaching students who do not know how to learn. In this Darwinian process, those students best able to excel under these strange circumstances go on to get their Ph.D.s and become the next generation of teachers. Students are not taught how to take notes, how to get organized, and how to deal with the universe of data that obscures the information they actually need to understand. At some universities students have access to millions of books and everyone has access to billions of Web pages, but most have no idea how to use either effectively.
Tapping customer knowledge. Yet another example of organizations refusing to take advantage of knowledge sitting around available for them just for the effort to reach down and pick it up.
While we are spending endless hours and resources trolling the often unwilling and uninformed public for "the next big idea" relevant to our business, something very interesting is happening. Our own customers are contacting us through our Interaction Centers (via Web, phone, VoIP, email, etc.). And these customers are more eager than ever to offer us as much feedback as we want. All that our agents need to do is listen. We must capture it, analyze it and use it for business intelligence. But almost none of us do. We continue to view our Interaction Centers as a must-have expense designed to handle customer complaints.
Imagine how much faster an organization can learn if it properly exploits its customers' intelligences. Actually, smaller organizations have an edge there, because they have better ears and a more personal contact with customers. Weblog software developers are the luckiest of the lot: their tool provides a natural way for customers to support one another.
Actually the same can be said of education providers. A virtuous cycle arises when learners are able to support one another: the service grows in usefulness and demand rises.
I heard "Hello, Chicago!!!". I wonder if the signal will degrade with further syndication... Phil, next time why not give it a surrealistic spin: "Ceci n'est pas un audioblog"?
