Blogtalk Reloaded

I'm looking forward to Blogtalk Reloaded, "international conference on social software, networks, innovation, and collaboration for organizations, corporations and humble private users" (quote) on Oct. 2 and 3 in Vienna!

What's my own?

Here's a list of what the members of Zebo.com , a shoppers' platform and social networking site and "The World's Largest Repository of What People Own", possess:

dogs lol cute jeans bike boy well fish sunglasses football pen fun money sterio earrings flip body every school personality pictures nintendo system people about things television rings photos anything boots jewelry self basketball laptop nike eyes box mini bed xbox heart music life flat sister shirts boyfriend ps2 beautiful

And here's what they want or want to have:

watch see baby pet plasma pool shoes loads girls thing shirt video playstation digital life swimming cute sports partner dream mustang beach honest family come friendship any country real sony work cds better help wife cellphone chocolate room meet cd about sexy care find love dog jeans girlfriend heart cat

Interesting, what can be conceived by the notion of owning - apart from things that can be bought.

Dabawallas

Yesterday, I learned about dabawallas, and their most amazing system.

A dabawalla is a person in the Indian city of Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) whose job is to carry and deliver freshly made (often: homemade) food in lunch boxes to office workers.

So far, so simple. So why is it that some of the dabbawallas are invited to give guest lectures in top business schools although the trade involves no modern high technology? Because of their precise work! More than 175,000 or 200,000 lunches get moved every day by an estimated 4,500 to 5,000 dabbawalas, all with an extremely small nominal fee and with utmost punctuality. According to a recent survey, there is only one mistake in every 6,000,000 deliveries! Can you believe this? The American business magazine Forbes gave a Six Sigma performance rating for the precision of dabbawalas.

Their work ethics must be very strong - when Prince Charles visited India and wanted to meet the dabawallas,he had to fit in with their schedule, because of their precise timing.

It is assumed that the main reason for the dabawallas' popularity could be the Indian people's aversion to fast food.

From what can be seen in the streets over here, Europe is not yet ripe for the dabawallas. Way too much fast food.

Internet censorship in China

As Chinese leaders have intensified censorship with the
Golden Shield project, indirectly aided by Microsoft, Cisco, Google and Yahoo, the supporters of uncensored internet-acces strike back:

Companies like DIT (Dynamic Internet Technology) or Ultrareach have developped programmes that help to bypass censorship by offering links to software downloads that can give access to blocked sites through constant changing of the IP-addresses.

As the Chinese political scientist and democracy activist Erping Zhang told the Austrian daily "DerStandard" 20 million of the estimated 115 million Chinese Internet users would have to use those technologies to really break through the filters via spreading of the censored content.This could be reached by a rapid increase of personal computers.

Pictures that Lie

cnet shows "Pictures that lie" - doctored and manipulated images.
Useful stuff for media-education.The trust in the truthfulness of images is still enormous - despite the fact that everyone knows about digital picture editing.

10 Most Stressful Jobs

Ok, so a teacher's job is among the 10 most stressful professions - according to 33 News abc survy.

This information comes in real handy - right at the beginning of term.

But a teacher's stress is NOTHING compared to the stress suffered by IT-experts. One of the IT-people said:"I spend most of my day fielding calls from people who don’t even have a basic knowledge of computers and printers...It is amazing the amount of time I spend teaching people where the on-off button is..."

Guestblog: Dark and bright hours

It is the eleventh of September again. Without any doubt, it was one of the darkest hours in America's history when thousands of innocent people lost their lives.

But, what was the brightest moment in America's history?
IMHO, it was Joan Baez and Bob Dylan singing "God on our side" at the Newport Folk Festival in 1963. It can be seen in "No direction home", the Dylan movie made by Scorsese. And I cannot help myself: When I see them and hear their voices, I have to cry.

posted by Stevie on 9/11.

The Table of Free Voices

Dropping Knowledge: The Table of Free Voices
Originally uploaded by glueckauf.

I've just watched and listened - via internet - to a few of the questions submitted to Dropping Knowledge, a platform for social change, open to every citizen of the world. The first phase of this project is centered around questions, thousands of questions from all over the world, on all kinds of subjects. And yesterday was the "Table of Free Voices" (diameter: 33 metres) in Berlin where 112 "inspiring individuals" such as scientists, artists, writers, philosophers, e.g. Avi Primor, Wim Wenders, Giora Feidman tried to answer these questions. Everything was filmed. Some of the principles of "Dropping Knowledge" are "inclusiveness, sustainability, copyleft - as opposed to copyright, public ownership, transparency, independece, grassroots change". The answers should be the starting point for a global dialogue of the most important issues of mankind. Worth listening and reading, or participating even.

It's all in the brain, stupid

sea and berries
Originally uploaded by francessa_Rich.

There's new research which shows that the adolescent brain undergoes huge changes. They don't have "..yet the full mental hardware to see the world from someone else's point of view or predict the consequences of their actions".

As if the hormones weren't trouble enough..