Vancouver Canucks v Chicago Blackhawks, April 26th 2011.



This video that I shot sort of went viral, locally in British Columbia anyway, after Vancouver won Game 7 of the 1st round of the NHL Stanley Cup Western Conference. It was picked up by the Georgia Straight, Global TV BC and Vancity Buzz as well as shared across blogs, twitter and facebook. I thought that I should blog it seeing as how I filmed it.

Vancouver scored the winning goal in overtime and put the Chicago Blackhawks out of the running to defend the Stanley Cup. Watch the video to hear what downtown Vancouver sounded like 30 seconds after winning the game. Here’s hoping that we’ll be hearing this sound again very soon. There’s blood in the water after game 3 in the NHL Stanley Cup Western Conference final series but it remains to be seen if it will be San Jose’s or Vancouver’s.

I knew nothing about hockey when I first moved here but now I’m definitely rooting for the home side. Go Canucks!

The HD version of the video is available on Vimeo.

The “Stanley Kubrick: Taming Light” website was launched last week. The exhibition runs until October 31st in the Lighthouse cinema. I was asked to design and develop the site, in keeping with Kubrick’s taste and style. Interestingly, I discovered that Kubrick’s favourite font was Futura. Although this is not too surprising as he used it for the posters and title sequences of “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Eyes Wide Shut”, as well as for the Kubrick collection DVD boxset. Tony Frewin, Kubrick’s long-standing assistant, stated in an article in the Guardian that Futura was indeed “Stanley’s favourite typeface. It’s sans serif. He liked Helvetica and Univers, too. Clean and elegant.” I also incorporated a number of social media networks and tools into the website’s design in order to help promote the show and keep people that were interested in attending updated. You can join the show’s Facebook group or follow @KubrickTaming on Twitter.

The website had to be turned around quite quickly and as is often the case there were delays with getting some of the artworks ready and content delivered for the site. However, it was launched in time for the opening night and to the curator’s satisfaction. I have still yet to attend the show but I am hoping to see it over the weekend while I check out some of this year’s Darklight events. I’ll also be collecting a specially commissioned limited edition poster 0f the main illustration from the website homepage, designed by Martin Ansin. Ansin’s hand-drawn retrospective of some of Kubrick’s classic characters is overseen by a portrait of the director and is available as a collector’s item as a high-quality print at the Light House Cinema or by e-mailing kubricktaming@gmail.com. The limited edition of 250 is available to buy for a very reasonable price of 50 euros. Read about the poster in Ansin’s own words.

The exhibition was curated by John Maguire, a film critic with the Irish Sunday Business Post newspaper and the Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show on 100-102 Today FM. Read about the show in John’s own words on his blog.

The show has received quite a bit of coverage including articles/ features on:

• Film Ireland
• Darklight
• Filmbase
• Cinematical
• Le Cool
• The Lighthouse Cinema
• IFTN (Irish Film and Television Network)
• Candy Collective
• The Irish Times
• The Sunday Tribune
• The Sunday Busines Post
• RTE’s “The View”
• Scamp
• Movies.ie
• Today FM’s “Ian Dempsey – Breakfat Show”
• Newstalk’s “Culture Shock”
• Kiersten Essenpreis ‘You Fail’ Blog
• QBN
• Entertainment.ie

I attended the advance/ member preview of the new Science Gallery exhibit yesterday evening – ‘What If…’.  The exhibition investigates where design meets science to explore the weird, wonderful and sometimes scary possibilities for future technology. The exhibition is curated by leading London based design duo Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby (www.dunneandraby.co.uk).

The project features some very visual and interesting design works, produced by twenty designers from around the world, as well as a range of thought-provoking questions. The exhibition is interesting to me on a number of levels. Firstly, as an interaction designer/ practitioner and interactive media professional, I was familiar with Dunne and Raby’s work – specifically their “Technological Dream Series: Number 1, Robots (2007)” piece. Dunne & Raby both spoke at the opening of the exhibition. The pair use design as a medium to stimulate discussion and debate amongst designers, industry and the public about the social, cultural and ethical implications of existing and emerging technologies. They use interaction design to ask questions rather than to solve problems. Their designs provoke people to consider implications and not necessarily applications – “critical design.”

Anthony Dunne is the head of the Design Interactions department at the Royal College of Art in London and was recently awarded the Sir Misha Black Award for Innovation in Design Education in 2009. He previously studied Industrial Design and completed a PhD in Computer Related Design. Fiona Raby was a founding member of the CRD Research Studio where she worked as a Senior Research Fellow leading externally funded research projects, and she taught in Architecture for over 10 years before teaching in Design Interactions. Dunne’s and Raby’s professional and academic backgrounds are evident in the exhibition. While certainly provocative (read the “Greyhounds are not medical devices. Don’t let this happen” article on Indymedia) but not quite shocking, Dunne and Raby do succeed in getting people to question possible decisions society might have to make in the future if/ when science and technology meet design in more extreme ways. Gallery director Michael John Gorman said in an article in the Irish Independent that the exhibit examines “possible future scenarios through products you might buy in the future.”

I particularly liked the following works:

WHAT IF…Our emotions were read by machines? - Belief Systems, 2009 by Bernhard Hopfengärtner

“Facial micro-expressions last less than a second and are almost impossible to control. They are hard wired to the emotional activity in the brain which can be easily captured using specially developed technological devices. Free will is now in question as science exposes decision-making as an emotional process rather than a rational one.This ability to read emotions technologically could result in a society obsessed with emotional reactions. Emotions, convictions and beliefs, which usually remain hidden, now become a public matter. ‘Belief systems’ is a video scenario about a society that responds to the challenges of modern neuroscience by embracing these technological possibilities to read, evaluate and alter people’s behaviours and emotions.” Twitter hashtag: #beliefSG

WHAT IF… Probability could be 100% guaranteed? – Coin Flipper, 2009 by Dot Samsen
“We often use randomness and fate to help us make decisions. Some decisions are so hard to make that we leave the responsibility completely to fate or randomness-by flipping a coin. This can make us feel less guilty or believe we’ve reached the ‘right’ decision, but what are our true intentions behind these decisions? The Coin Flipper aims to challenge this apparent randomness to reveal our true intentions.” Twitter hashtag: #coinSG

WHAT IF… We could modify clouds to snow ice cream? – The Cloud Project, 2009 by Zoe Papadopoulou & Cathrine Kramer
“Developments in nanotechnology and planetary scale engineering point to new possibilities for us to conform the global environment to our needs. These advances combined with a dream to make clouds snow ice cream inspired a series of experiments that look at ways to alter the composition of clouds to make new and delicious sensory experiences. Using ice cream as a catalyst for dialogue, the project’s focus is to welcome people into a nano ice cream van and allow new audiences to experience and imagine emerging scientific developments and their consequences. The nano ice cream van will visit Science Gallery from 12th November-4th December 2009.” Twitter hashtag:#icecreamSG

WHAT IF… We had to rent trees to offset our carbon footprint? – BuyProduct, 2009 by Dot Samsen
“Carbon credit brings the ‘convenience’ back to the ‘inconvenient truth’. Global warming has been driven by capitalism. Now we are trying to solve global warming through capitalism. Is this possible? From an ecological perspective, CO2 is a by-product of the living, either directly or indirectly. From the economic perspective, CO2 may become the world’s largest commodity market. What do we consider the price of our own by-products? This project aims to criticize the carbon trading system as well as raise awareness of how good we are at destroying the planet.” Twitter hashtag: #treeSG

WHAT IF… We tried to make a toaster from scratch? – The Toaster Project, 2009 by Thomas Thwaites
“Thwaites went on a quest to build an electric toaster from scratch, seeking iron, copper, mica, nickel and crude oil (for the plastic case) from disused mines in Britain, then attempting to process the materials at home. This nine-month process to make a simple toaster is absurd, but so too is the massive industrial activity we pursue to achieve additional comforts at ever lower prices. The laboriousness of producing even the most basic material from the ground up exposes the fallacy of returning to some romantic ideal of a pre-industrialised time. But at this moment in time when the effects of industry are no longer trivial for the environment, the throwaway toasters of today seem unreasonable.” Twitter hashtag: #toasterSG

WHAT IF…Domestic robots could be self-sufficient? – Carnivorous Domestic Entertainment Robots, 2008 by James Auger & Jimmy Loizeau. Engineered by Alex Zivanovic.
“This project approaches the subject of robots from an alternative perspective. Inspired by methods of survival in nature this series of robots references strategies of adaptation and bio-mimetics in their design. Developed for the home, they avoid the stereotypical forms normally associated with robots and adopt a contemporary fashionable design aesthetic. The robots utilise a microbial fuel cell to power themselves, generating energy from biomass in the form of common household pests. This gives them autonomy and to a degree they become living entities existing in a similar way to an exotic pet such as a snake or a lizard, where we provide living prey and become voyeurs in a synthesized, contrived microcosm.” Twitter Hashtag: #robotsSG

WHAT IF…Jimmy Carter had been re-elected, would the world be greener? – The Golden Institute, 2009 by Sascha Pohflepp
“In an alternate United States set in the 1980s, where Ronald Reagan never happened, the Golden Institute for Energy was the world’s premier think tank for alternative energies. From weather modification and lightning harvesting to using the freeway system as a source of power, the Institute’s ambitions were grand and their impact on American life significant. How might its legacy offer a fresh perspective on our present challenges in regard to the environment?” Twitter hashtag: #goldenSG

WHAT IF…We could evaluate the genetic potential of lovers? – Evidence Dolls, 2005 by Dunne & Raby
“Evidence Dolls consists of one hundred plastic dolls used to provoke discussion amongst a group of young single women about the impact of genetic technology on their lifestyle. How will dating change when DNA analysis can reveal the presence of undesirable genes? Evidence Dolls come in three versions based on penis size (small, medium and large). A black indelible marker is provided to note down any characteristics on the dolls body. Hair, toenail clippings, saliva, and sperm can be stored in the penis drawer.” Twitter hashtag: #evidenceSG

WHAT IF…Robots were designed from an emotional point of view? – Technological Dreams Series: No.1, Robots, 2007 by Dunne & Raby
“It’s a dream that refuses to go away. Robots are destined to play a significant part in our daily lives-not as super smart, functional machines, nor as pseudo life forms, but as technological cohabitants. But how will we interact with them? What new interdependencies and relationships might emerge in relation to different levels of robot intelligence and capability: intimate, subservient, dependent, equal?

Robot 1: This one is very independent. It needs to avoid strong electromagnetic fields as these might cause it to malfunction.Robot 2: This robot is very nervous. It analyses everything with its many eyes. If a person approaches too close it becomes extremely agitated and even hysterical.Robot 3: This robot uses retinal scanning technology to decide who accesses our data. It demands that you stare into its eyes for a long time. It needs to be sure it is you.
Robot 4: This one is very needy. Although extremely smart it is trapped in an underdeveloped body and depends on its owner to move about.” Twitter hashtag #emorobotSG

The exhibition was also interesting to me on a purely visual level. As a designer, occasional film-maker and keen photographer, the imagery both in the exhibition and the staging of the works is really interesting. I took quite a few photographs of the exhibit, which are on Flickr. Lastly, as a user of social media, I was interested to see that visitors to the Science Gallery are able to post their opinions about each of the displays on the social networking site Twitter, via hashtags that accompany the description of each piece.

The exhibition is free (although a small donation is requested in order to cover costs for running these exhibitions in the Science Gallery) and open to the public until December 13th 2009. Further details are at the end of this post and on the Science Gallery’s website.

Refresh Dublin – running in conjunction with the ‘What If’ exhibition:

I am delighted to announce that the first Refresh Dublin event will be held in the Science Gallery on Thursday October 29th, running in conjunction with the ‘What If’ exhibition. More information on Refresh Dublin is available on the website: http://www.refreshdublin.org. The speaker line-up for the first event will be announced next week. You can sign-up for updates via the website, follow us on Twitter or join the Facebook group.

—-

08:10:09-13:12:09

WHAT IF…
FUTURE FORM, FUTURE FUNCTION?
Science Gallery,
Dublin.
Website

“WHAT IF…insects could diagnose illness? WHAT IF…clouds were modified to snow ice cream? WHAT IF… we lived in a society where our every thought was public? These are just some of the questions asked in the upcoming exhibition at Science Gallery which probes the space between reality and the impossible and where designers meet scientists to explore the future.

WHAT IF… has been curated by leading London based design duo Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby and features a range of works by designers who have explored everything from using animals as life support machines, through to what happens in a society where machines can read your every emotion.

On show in the gallery will be a diverse range of work including The Race by Michael Burton which looks at how people and their non-human cells can coexists and scrutinizes our inadvertent creation of superbugs like mRSA through the misuse of antibiotics and James King’s Dressing the Meat of Tomorrow looks at recent advances in tissue engineering which enable us to grow meat without the expense, cruelty and traditions of rearing the whole animal.
We want your comments and thoughts on the pieces on show. Each individual exhibit has its own Twitter hashtag – if you comment on this exhibition please use this hashtag.”

At the beginning of September, I was invited (via Twitter) to take part in a photowalk for Jap-Fest, a festival of Japanese motorsport and motoring, at Mondello Park. While I am more of a motorbike enthusiast, I have always liked motor-sports cars and racing as well, so I was looking forward to photographing the event.

I shot with a Sony DSC T-700 and a Fuji Finepix S7000, slightly more humble pieces of equipment in comparison to a lot of the other photographers! While the camera doesn’t make the photographer, there is a visible difference in my photos in comparison with some of the others. For one, I felt that it wasn’t worth for me to try to get really good action shots or close-ups because I simply didn’t have the equipment to do this with. Secondly, I tend to prefer to shoot photos as they are, with very little or no photoshopping/ re-touching in post-production (blame my occupation if you like, I like to leave PhotoShop at the office.)

Below is a selection of some of my images, and the entire set can be viewed on Flickr or Pix.ie. It was a challenge shooting in the wet weather but nonetheless an enjoyable day.

* Check out the guys in the left background of this photo – pity the lighting was bad in that area, I think they make the image interesting.

Thanks Mondello for the invite, namely John, Corporate Sales & Marketing Manager for Mondello and a photoblogger himself, and Fergus. Mondello Park have have a number of race events throughout the year, as well as a driving school. Thanks to Stephen Holmes and Treasa Lynch for the lifts out to Kildare and back! Also, thanks to the other photographers (links to their own websites/ twitter accounts are listed below) – it was nice to meet you all in person:

Jennifer Farley (Jennifer, I hi-jacked your list of photographers below – hope that is ok!)

Elliott Tucker

Stephen Holmes

John Williams

Treasa Lynch

Ryan Whalley

Claire Wilson

Kyle Tunney

Kate Southall

Julie

Rory Wallace

Davy Mac

Redmum

Derek McAuley

Gillian McEnteggart

Emmet

Al Higgins

Mike Patterson

Shane Murphy

- Niamh.

Are you a user of Facebook and Twitter? Finding it difficult and/ or quite time consuming to manage your digital presence? Then why not consolidate your digital life stream by letting Twitter do all the work for you and use it as a Facebook status management tool?

(Note: This will mean that the tweets that you post on Twitter will automatically update your Facebook status but not vice versa – i.e. If you update your Facebook status directly in Facebook it will not update your Twitter page. If you want to send your Facebook status updates to Twitter automatically, try fb2twitter.com or Twitterfeed instead. If you are looking for a tool that will update all of your social networking channels, try Ping.fm)

How to sync your Twitter updates with your Facebook status:

• Install the Twitter application for Facebook (You can also access this application by searching for “twitter” within Facebook – it will be the first application on the list, developed by Twitter.)
• Add the application to your Facebook profile
• Log into your Twitter account (via the Twitter application within Facebook)
• Click on “Allow Twitter to Update Your Facebook Status”

You should start to see your tweets update your Facebook status within 30 minutes. If you don’t see the updates try clicking here to ensure that you are allowing status updates from Twitter.

That’s it!

Some other useful applications for managing your Twitter updates:

• Recommended desktop Twitter client: TweetDeck, my personal favourite
• iPhone/ iPod Touch Twitter clients: Twitterrific / Twinkle / Tweetie / Twitterfon

Related links:

• A list of Twitter apps on the Twitter Fan Wiki

Connect with me:

If we are working in the same industry or share similar interests, why not follow me on Twitter or connect with me on Facebook?

- Niamh.

Social networking is not exactly new to politics but as the web has evolved so have the strategies and tactics of political campaign teams and the online profiles of politicians. One thing that has struck me as very interesting throughout the U.S. presidential campaign this year was the overall design factor behind each candidate’s brand, graphic identity and website. A topic that I will be looking at in greater detail in a later post but for now I want to focus on the way in which Obama in particular has utilised the web and social media to promote his campaign.

Obama is everywhere. He was the first candidate to start using widgets to make it easy for anyone to donate to the campaign through his social media tools and networking sites (see the screenshot above).  He was the first candidate to have a LinkedIn group and the first candidate with a profile on BlackPlanet.com, MiGente.com and GLEE.com. You can connect with Obama on all of the usual suspects too, of course -  Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter. The Washington Post have called Obama the “King of Social Networking”, the New York Times have labelled him the first “wiki-candidate”, there is even an official Obama iPhone application and a website, Barack 2.0, dedicated to analysing the Obama campaign’s use of social media from a small business perspective.

In previous political campaigns the online strategy seemed to be to get as many visitors to a candidates website as possible, a strategy not limited to politics, however, as many sites took a tunnel-vision approach to website hits. Since the web is a much busier, interactive, diverse, on-demand and collaborative world now, and while these social networking sites are still somewhat in their infancy, their value in reaching and engaging with people is another important performance metric. Not only does Obama’s web strategy reach people though, it calls them to action. All of Obama’s networking tools serve as extensions of interaction and user involvement centered around a clear call to action – get involved, volunteer and/ or donate.

I wasn’t expecting to receive an e-mail like the above.

And I was not expecting to be a 2nd LinkedIn connection to Obama either. But the question remains, regardless of the means what will the outcome be? Could the wiki-candidate be a wiki-President? We will find out very soon.

To be continued…

- Niamh

Last week, both the Irish Times and the Guardian Newspapers had articles about this topic. Facebook, with 59 million active users, has a current growth rate of over 2 million new users a week. There are daily news items about the website; last week alone saw journalists discussing issues such as debating the privacy security of the website (related to this post but nonetheless deserves it’s own post if not an entire article at a later date!) and the websites possibility of copyright infringement of Hasbro and Mattel’s Scrabble game (Facebook’s online version “Scrabulous”). However, I would like to focus on one issue in this post – will Facebook prevent you getting hired for a job or cause you not to get a place in college?

Simply put, no. You yourself, however, can utilise any social networking website, or any communication medium for that matter, to publish information about yourself, your attitudes, lifestyle or opinions that may not give a prospective employer or admissions tutor that great an impression of you as a working professional or as a prospective student. It is afterall not illegal to google someone, regardless of whether you are an employer or not. I don’t see why people can’t either set their Facebook profiles to private and take care in adding ‘friends’ to their profile (call me niave but I used to think that it was quality over quantity that mattered most in friendships) or else why can’t they set up two profiles; a personal profile for their friends (which is set to private) and a professional profile for their work colleagues, career networks and so forth? Yes, of course there will be times in your professional life when you may encounter situations where social and business obligations overlap and the same can be true of social networking. For example, most people surely will build up friendships with the people that they were in college with and similarly with work colleagues but the old adage has to be true in any working environment; don’t mix business with pleasure. It is possible to keep your professional and private lives intact all while having some fun with social networking websites such as FaceBook, MySpace, and Bebo. I don’t think it is that hard to be able to be yourself while letting common sense guide you.

Losing face:

— Photographs of Amy Polumbo, Miss New Jersey, posing with pumpkins held to her chest led to an alleged blackmail, and the national Miss America organisation reviewing whether she was fit to hold her crown. The pictures, from her Facebook profile, were splashed across American newspapers

— A survey of 600 British companies revealed that one in five had logged on to Facebook and other networking websites to vet potential employees. Jacqueline Thomson, from public relations firm Brands2Life, said that she had turned down one applicant after learning that he had used Facebook “to criticise previous employers and discuss company information”

— In Toronto, Canada, five students were banned from a school trip after disparaging remarks about teachers were found on Facebook

— Brad Karsh, a US career consultant, turned down a job applicant after reading on Facebook that his interests were “smokin’ blunts with the homies” and “shooting caps into whitie”

— A university in Pennsylvania denied a 27-year-old woman a teaching degree on the grounds that she was promoting under-age drinking, after she posted a photo of herself on Facebook, titled “Drunken Pirate”

— Several students at DePauw University, Indiana, were disciplined after college authorities used Facebook to trace those responsible for vandalising a sculpture of a deer

Source: Times database.

Related Links:

• “Caught on camera – and found on Facebook” by Patrick Foster, The Times
• “Would-be students checked on Facebook” by Jessica Shepherd and David Shariatmadari, The Guardian
• “To Blog or Not to Blog?” by Alison Doyle, About.com
• “How to Blog Safely.“ by Electronic Frontier Foundation
• “Facebook, MySpace et al. ” by Evil HR Lady
• “Facebook and employment: an equal opportunity information trap” by Denise Howell, ZDnet
• “How to use Facebook without Losing Your Job over it” on internet-duct-tape
• “How to Avoid Getting Fired by Facebook” by lifehack.org
• “Hire profile” by Hazel Davis, The Guardian

• Niamh Redmond on Twitter
• Niamh Redmond on Flickr
• Niamh Redmond on LinkedIn
• Niamh Redmond on Facebook

I’m planning to keep all of these for professional/ industry related purposes (within reason!). In other words, you won’t find embarrasing photos of me getting drunk or on holiday (you wouldn’t find them anywhere though!). I’m using LinkedIn and Facebook for career and industry networking, I’m using Twitter for less formal networking (and as an outlet to add my two cents worth, to sometimes vent and to ‘twitter’) and Im using Flickr to display my photography.

I think that that makes me sufficiently connected!

I have no idea how I first heard/ read about/ came across Twitter but I am on it!

If you’re on it to and would like to follow me, I’m here:
http://twitter.com/nredmond

So, what is ‘Wikinomics’?

Well, according to Wikipaedia (my first port of call for information on a such a similar name-sake!), wikinomics is the term that was coined to describe how “some companies in the early 21st century used mass collaboration and open-source technology such as wikis to be successful.” So “some” companies would include the likes of YouTube, eBay, MySpace, Bebo, Facebook and of course, Wikipaedia itself then? Wrong. Yes, it is true that these companies have indeed used open-source technology to gain popularity, encourage open communications and indeed be successful but that’s not necessarily wikinomics. Well, it’ s not wikinomics according to Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams. Tapscott and Williams wrote a book about this very topic in December 2006, titled ‘Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything‘ (http://www.wikinomics.com). According to Tapscott, wikinomics is based on four ideas: Openness, Peering, Sharing, and Acting Globally.

What ‘Wikinomics’ is not, according to Tapscott and Williams:

(taken from the ‘Beginners Guide to Wikinomics’ http://www.eu.socialtext.net/wikinomics/index.cgi?beginners_guide)

• Wiki is not like email. – You may write things, but in a wiki your words don’t belong to you, or even stay where you put them.
• Wiki is not like a discussion board. – It is not about everyone speaking in turn. Be like a DJ and remix words that others have created. Yes you can. Yes you can. . . . . Yes. You. Can!
• Wiki is not like a blog – Your point of view matters, but mostly as grist for the mill. Spend the majority of time reshaping the ideas of others – then you are on the way to being a wiki gardener.
• You can’t mess it up – no matter how badly you mess up a page, somebody else can revert it in 15 seconds. So relax.

Where did all this start?

In 1937, economist Ronald Coase determined that companies existed because of transaction costs. Doing business by assembling the right people and the right resources within an establishment would be more efficient than trying to outsource. For this, Coarse won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science. In recent years, however, businesses are increasingly outsourcing for specialist staff and/ or resouces. Wikinomics, can now be seen as an extension of the trend in business to outsource. The difference, however, is that mass collaboration relies on individuals to come together and freely cooperate to improve a given operation, share their knowledge or solve a problem.

Some are concerned about the increased power that such technology brings to the individual, fearing that it could be adopted for crimes such as terrorism and other heinous acts. When Finnish student, Linus Torvalds developed Linux in 1991, most companies were horrifically opposed to the idea of “open-source” technology. The attitude towards open-source today is very different. IBM now spends over 75 million euros a year in this area. Wikinomics, which uses this open-source technology is certainly subject to criticism and anxious speculation. However, it will almost certainly see the same adoption by the masses that open-source did, and an even greater increase in interest over the next few years.

What does the future hold?

MySpace, for example, is continuing to grow at approximately 2 million members a week, there’s a new blog published every second and Time Magazine chose ‘You – the Internet content generator’ as it’s person of the year, 2006.

Furthermore, programmers are changing the economy by combining services and creating innovative environments based on the open-source concept. For example, Housingmaps, (www.housingmaps.com) is a service, which shows houses for rent by combining two other services; information from Craigslist and technology from Google Maps. Combining services in this way is known as a mash-up. Housingmaps was described by Tim O’Reilly as “the first true Web 2.0 application.” Housingmaps creator, Paul Rademacher, could have been sued by Google, instead he now works for them! Another example of how wikinomics is changing the economy is that Architects are now using Second Life to experiment with their ideas.

However, could wikinomics change more than the way we do business? Could it save the world?! Tapscott argues, it is indeed a power for good: “For the first time, we have a worldwide movement to fight global warming. The stake, survival of the planet, is worth the risk.”

Related Links:

• Wikipaedia – Wikinomics
• The official ‘Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything‘ Book’s Website: http://www.wikinomics.com
• Download the first chapter of the book above for free: http://www.newparadigm.com/media/IntroAndOne.pdf
• Mass collaboration could change way companies operate, article in USA Today.
• Website for the public to create the “unwritten chapter”
• Make Room, Wikipedia: Internet-based Collaboration Could Change the Way We Do Business February 21, 2007, Knowledge@Wharton article (with a brief discussion of the controversy of including the term “Wikinomics” in Wikipedia.) Requires membership.
• Up is down and black is white as Wikinomics changes the business world, article on [PCWorld.ca]
• The Cult of the Amateur, New York Times’ Book Review on Andrew Keen’s criticism of Web 2.0 philosophy’
• A Book Review of Wikinomics

Videos:

• 2007-02-26 Don Tapscott 82 minute presentation on Wikinomics, hosted on Google Video and Internet Archive (mpeg4 and Windows Media Player)
• 2006-11-08 Don Tapscott 3 minute preview of Wikinomics to ZDNet.