Social networks and video-sharing sites don’t always bring people closer together.

“NATION shall speak peace unto nation.” Eighty years ago, Britain’s state broadcasters adopted that motto to signal their hope that modern communications would establish new bonds of friendship between people divided by culture, political boundaries and distance.

For those who still cling to that ideal, the latest trends on the internet are depressing. Of course, as anyone would expect, governments use their official websites to boast about their achievements and to argue their corner—usually rather clunkily—in disputes about territory, symbols or historical rights and wrongs.

This article in the Economist on Cyber-nationalisme in short: It has never been easier to propagate hatred and lies.

Dutch engineers have built the third generation of the DelFly autonomous air vehicle. The DelFly Micro made its first public flight earlier today in Delft. This micro air vehicle weighs only 3 grams and has a wingspan of 10 centimeters. This very small remote-controlled aircraft carries a 0.4 gram camera. The DelFly Micro, which looks like a dragonfly, can fly for 3 minutes at a maximum speed of 5 meters/second. It could be used for observation flights in difficult-to-reach or dangerous areas. But read more…

Links: ZDNet, Primidi

(Thank you, Lee!)

Ever since he started to use video in his ethnography classes, and turned his students into coproducers, the university professor known to millions on Youtube as mwesch has been brilliantly demonstrating how Web 2.0 tools can be used to turn the entire old knowledge delivery paradigm of the classoom inside out. I am also provoked to change my way of teaching, in reaction to the very deeply sadly wrong institutionalization inherent in the question “will that be on the test?” Now, he’s come up with The World Simulation. Go Michael Wesch!

The World Simulation is a radical experiment in learning that is the centerpiece of the Introduction to Cultural Anthropology course at Kansas State University, created in a fit of frustration with the large lecture hall format which seems inevitable in a classroom of 200-400 students. Of utmost concern to me, was the nature of questions I was hearing from students, which tended to be administrative and procedural rather than penetrative, critical, and insightful. My least favorite question was also the most common: “What do we need to know for this test?” Something had to be done, so I set to work creating the World Simulation.

via Yosem and the liberationtech mailing list at Stanford

Citysense has given smart mobs another way of finding each other without sending a single message. The theory is the more people, the greater the likelihood that there is something interesting going on.

How does it work?

‘uses advanced machine learning techniques to number crunch vast amounts of data emanating from thousands of cell-phones, GPS-equipped cabs and other data devices to paint live pictures of where people are gathering.’

An application does have to be installed in order for the software to work for you and it doesn’t work with iPhones just yet. The other downside is that it seems to be only on for San Francisco so far, but Citysense is expected to add more cities soon. It’s quite a neat little service that allows you to find (or avoid) crowds.

Instant nightlife, no plans needed.

New search engine Cuil takes aim at Google

There’s a big new search engine launching Monday: Cuil. Developed and run by the husband-and-wife team of Stanford professor Tom Costello and former Google search architect Anna Patterson, it’s pitched as bigger, faster, and better than Google’s flagship search engine in pretty much every way.
[Note: my personal tests were disappointing: let's wait for some weeks before concluding if this search engine is a good one.]
Source: Rafe Needleman, CNET’s Webware, July 27, 2008

Putting a virtual doctor in the ambulance

Diagnosing and treating a critically ill or injured patient as early as possible can mean the difference between life and death. A new communications system between a moving ambulance and its hospital base allows the simultaneous transmission of bandwidth-hungry video and ultra-sonic images, telephone communications and patient data, all at the same time.
Source: ICT Results, July 29, 2008

George Orwell diaries to be published as blog

The diaries of the novelist George Orwell are to published online as a daily blog. The first entry will be posted on August 9, exactly 70 years to the day since the author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four wrote it.
[Note: Check The Orwell Prize next week to discover these diaries.]
Source: Nicole Martin, The Telegraph, UK, July 30, 2008

Radar Networks readies new release of Twine

In March, Radar Networks launched Twine, an application that organizes information and connects people, places, companies, products, Web pages, videos, and photos. Along with Metaweb’s Freebase, Powerset (sold to Microsoft), Hakia, Reuters’ Calias, AdaptiveBlue and a few other start-ups, Radar Networks is trying to crack the code on building a piece of the semantic Web. [...] A major new release of the Twine platform is slated for release in the fall to address shortcomings and introduce new features.
Source: Dan Farber, CNET’s Outside the Lines, July 31, 2008

Say goodbye to virtual bureaucracy

Getting tired of filling in endless forms on the internet when you just want to make a simple purchase or find some information? Had enough of receiving a barrage of emails from companies after shopping with them online? The EUREKA project FIDELITY may have the answer.
Source: The EUREKA project, July 29, 2008

CSIRO develops technology that goes where GPS can’t

The CSIRO has developed a new wireless localisation system with the ability to track, sense and communicate in areas where GPS and other wireless technologies cannot work. [...] The [new] technology would allow first response emergency workers to be tracked in dangerous environments such as in building collapses or underground mines where other tracking technologies will not work.
Source: Andrew Hendry, Computerworld Australia, July 31, 2008

If You Run a Red Light, Will Everyone Know?

Want to vet a baby sitter? Need to peek into the background of a prospective employee? Curious about the past of a potential date? Last month, PeopleFinders, a 20-year-old company based in Sacramento, introduced CriminalSearches.com, a free service to satisfy those common impulses. The site, which is supported by ads, lets people search by name through criminal archives of all 50 states and 3,500 counties in the United States. In the process, it just might upset a sensitive social balance once preserved by the difficulty of obtaining public documents like criminal records.
Source: Brad Stone, The New York Times, August 3, 2008

An article in today’s Washington Post describes recent confirmation of the reality of a major underlying smart mobs principle. With a main title hyping the popular Kevin Bacon Game illustration, the article’s subtitle tells us: Microsoft Study Supports Small World Theory. Some excerpts from the WP article:

Turns out, it is a small world.

The “small world theory,” embodied in the old saw that there are just “six degrees of separation” between any two strangers on Earth, has been largely corroborated by a massive study of electronic communication. . . .

For the purposes of their experiment, two people were considered to be acquaintances if they had sent one another a text message. The researchers looked at the minimum chain lengths it would take to connect 180 billion different pairs of users in the database. They found that the average length was 6.6 steps and that 78 percent of the pairs could be connected in seven hops or less.

Some pairs, however, were separated by as many as 29 hops.

“Via the lens provided on the world by Messenger, we find that there are about ‘7 degrees of separation’ among people,” they wrote. . . .

It also means that, strictly speaking, six degrees of separation might be just a bit off. It’s closer to seven, at least in their study.

“For a piece of folklore, it wasn’t bad,” said Duncan J. Watts, one of the Columbia researchers, now at Yahoo Research. “It was off only in its detail.”

DutchCowboy Maarten Lens-FitzGerald announced via Twitter that Google engineer Jyri Engströms Nodal Point key note video of is on the SPRX blog

In 40 minutes Jyri Engström builds upon his ideas of social objects and social peripheral vision. He adds the idea of nodal points.

Jyri is co-founder of Jaiku, a microblogging service acquired by Google in 2007. Before he was Senior Product Manager at Nokia. He runs the Aula conference.

The registration of Jyri’s keynote was made with minimal tools. Recorded in Amsterdam at the CHI conference: The Web and Beyond 2008: Mobility in Amsterdam in may 2008

Sarah Perez published on ReadWriteWeb an interesting post about how SRI’s iLink technology changes the future of Social Media in the Military.

iLink, a social network analytics technology from SRI International has recently been integrated into three online communities used by the military: Platoon Leader, Company Command, and the Family Readiness Group. The iLink technology improves the way the military community members share critical information across several different interest areas - from battlefield problem solving to supporting military families. Here, we take a look at the technology the military is using and how it can impact the future of social networking.

“Sous-veillance” will see video sharing sites such as YouTube used by citizens to shine a spotlight on things such as deadly hygiene lapses in hospital wards and uncollected rubbish, according to the European Information Society Group (Eurim).

The vision of the “public monitoring the state” and shaming them into action using cameraphones is one of several key ways that Eurim says technology can be used to transform government and empower the public.

“Sous-veillance might transform political engagement due to its ease of use, by engaging even the time-poor majority and extending citizenship beyond the usual special interest groups.”

read more at Silicon.com in Nick Heath post on the public sector

The following upcoming workshops at the Mobile HCI Conference in Amsterdam may be of interest to the Smart Mobs community.
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