Getting light outside: Twittories #1

I'm one of the contributors to the first output of Twittories, a collaborative fiction project using www.twitter.com as the collaboration engine by Cameron Reilly the Elvis-like King of Podcasts.

It's been an interesting learning experience. It's no small feat; picking up someone else's narrative thread wherever it's been been dropped at the one hundred and fortieth character, keeping some kind of story line going, and leaving the next collaborator an interesting starting point, all in the text length limits of Twitter.

Twittory #2 is still open for a few more collaborators. Get in there!

clipped from twittories.wikispaces.com "I have this rule," she said, colder than the dark side of the moon. "We only talk using public channels from now on."

pseudodictionary accepted my new word: marvin

pseudodictionary accepted my new word, w00t
Originally uploaded by thatjonesboy.

kk, not a completely new word in the conventional sense of "new", more in the marketing sense of "new", meaning "revised, different, tweaked" etc.

A "marvin" is my new word for someone with the brain of a planet driven to depression by being condemned to forever answer stupid questions from people with little or no brain. From the character of the same name in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Fortunately, they're extremely rare. I'm definitely not one myself.

Merry Christmas from the sweatshop!

At last, an xmas ecard I'm actually keen to send to my friends. The copy reads:

"Here's a piece of festive charm, a little christmas bear

He has a little santa hat and santa boots to wear

His little christmas present has been sewn on to his paws

In a sweatshop in Manila where they lock the fire-doors"

Crikey! It's Christmas!

Display ad for maps.google.com.au

display ad for maps.google.com.au
Originally uploaded by thatjonesboy.

I knew they were serious about eating Sensis' lunch, and I'd seen Google AdWords house ads before, but i didn't know Google was doing display advertising now for their products.

This little flash anim was advertising restaurant reviews. Came across it in an Australian motoring blog.

Watch out yellowpages.com.au, here come the geeks...

[thinks: lolz, picture armies of sensis drones rushing to prepare themselves for an invasion by the Greeks. "no, i said 'geeks' you idiots!"]

live-documents.com announces: automatic truth resolution!

live-documents.com announces: automatic truth resolution!
Originally uploaded by thatjonesboy.

How has this remained so quiet for so long? Sabeer Bhatia's new startup office suite isn't just going to sync up your online and offline docs, oh no.

It's going to create "...a single version of the truth"!

Wow, I can't wait to try that on a few internal reports I receive each week at the office. And on my Nielsen vs HBX traffic stats. And on my mate's fishing stories. And on the occasional International War Crimes Tribunal hearing...

Climate change solution: stop measuring it!

Oh, those whacky physicists! Who can really expect to entirely understand what they're on about most of the time? Perhaps we should satisfy ourselves with establishing what variety of psylocibin they've been taking.

But if I'm getting this New Scientist story even half right, then one pair of Heisenbergian blackboard-scribblers is suggesting we're affecting the state of the universe by observing it.

Just like the ole 'cat in the box uncertainty principle' (which for me always seemed like much more fun than setting the cat's tail on fire the way I did when I was a kid, and much more explainable to mum as 'a physics experiment mum, honest!')

So taking this nonsense and applying it to some problems more pressing than the ultimate demise of the universe, can we simply solve the climate change crisis by not measuring it any more?

Is the solution to the AIDS epidemic just to stop counting the dying people?

Is the solution to my personal financial situation just to shove all my bills in the bottom drawer without reading them?

...no, wait, I already know the answer to that...

clipped from www.newscientist.com Have we hastened the demise of the universe by looking at it? That's the startling question posed by a pair of physicists, who suggest that we may have accidentally nudged the universe closer to its death by observing dark energy, which is thought to be speeding up cosmic expansion.

The Bubble 2.0

This video will be huge. "Bubble 2.0" describes the current Web 2.0 situation precisely and with much humour. Can't wait to watch it on the AppleTV at home ;-)

The song's a remake of "We didn't start the fire" from Billy Joel's album 'Storm Front' released in 1989. I wonder what percentage of the 20-something Bubble 2.0 kidz had never heard the original tune before? lolz.

Google adds a new Australian public holiday!

Google adds a new Australian public holiday!
Originally uploaded by thatjonesboy.

Hooray for Google: they've announced a new Australian public holiday on the 27th! Let's call it Google Day.

Oh wait, it doesn't officially exist...