2012 Olympics showpiece: Big bubbles in the sky | Planetary Gear - CNET News

Google just never stops. Fascinating.
2012 Olympics showpiece: Big bubbles in the sky | Planetary Gear - CNET News: "Carlo Ratti, head of the Senseable City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is a team leader on the project that includes experts from across the world and Google as a partner. Ratti is known for his work on a textualizing waterfall at the Zaragoza World's Fair in 2008, the Real Time Rome population-tracking project, and the EyeStop bus shelters throughout Florence, Italy."

Google "good's" better than Microsoft

Note today Dec. 1, 09 Google's home page and compare it with Microhard's. Doing "good" is simply not in Microsoft's genetic code.
Google: World AIDS Day: Learn more about how you can help; Microhard? Business as usual.
Kudos to Google's effort that goes beyond "image" to being "useful," i.e., reminding people and leading them to more info on Aids.
Microhard doesn't "get it" because they' lack and will never have "it," a sense of the common good. Yeeaaaa, Google! (And no I don't own stock in it, darn it!)

in reference to: Microsoft Corporation (view on Google Sidewiki)

NYT reviewer of Googled

Appears the author of the Googled review did not know about Auletta's discourse on the book at Google with intro by CEO Eric Schmidt. No animosity detected, but he didn't pull any punches either. Can be seen on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHE5ynGcSPc

in reference to: Book Review - 'Googled - The End of the World as We Know It,' by Ken Auletta - Review - NYTimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Well done, Fareed

Re US education. Here's hoping that your well-placed boot will help our country's leadership realize that they have to constantly encourage parents, teachers and neighbors to themselves encourage, push and cajole young people to accomplish in life.

Studying, thinking, creating, inventing, innovating must be seen as stimulating, inviting and ultimately rewarding both personally and economically for us to maintain the extraordinary standard of living that we have.

in reference to:

"The seed capital from past decades was strong enough to carry us for decades. We got talent from abroad to mask the erosion at home. We used financial engineering to substitute for the real thing. We borrowed to the hilt and sold each other our homes in an ascending spiral that made us all feel rich. And we kicked all the real problems we face down the road, hoping that someone else would solve them. This too has become part of American culture, a culture that desperately needs to change if we are to preserve American innovation and rekindle the real American Dream."
- Is America Losing Its Mojo? | Print Article | Newsweek.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Peru: a thought

The idea that bosses can treat people well only works if the worker bees are not out to do in the boss or otherwise lie, cheat, steal, to get something from the company. The leader here who believes that s/he can change a people's habits can change the culture into one attractive not just to investors but to the people living in it!

Habits spread wider and wider and eventually define a national characteristic. Therefore a culture's propensity towards an evil can be changed in the same way, replicating a good habit, spreading it ever farther in gently outward flowing concentric circles.

Solidarity groups make perfect cores of positive influence. It can be done.

News Phoenix rising?

NYT story about the Texas Tribune, a non-profit 12-person startup heralds what is probably the future of journalism under the First Amendment, i.e. to help citizens better exercise their franchise, with facts, knowledge and opinion. Worth keeping an eye on.

in reference to:

"On Thursday afternoon, when word came about the shootings that left 13 people dead at Fort Hood, just up the road from Austin, it seemed like a made-to-order test for The Texas Tribune, a brand new 12-person Web-based newsroom. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Erich Schlegel for The New York Times Evan Smith, left, and John Thornton at the Texas Capitol. They scrambled the jets, made plans, and then — stayed put."
- The Media Equation - Nonprofit Site, Texas Tribune, Begins as Big News Hits State - NYTimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Google's Schmidt - stronger quote

Carr quotes Schmidt on p2. but he expressed the stronger sentiment on Oct 1, to Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land. "Well-funded, targeted professionally managed investigative journalism is a necessary precondition in my view to a functioning democracy. And so that’s what we worry about. And as you know, that was always subsidized in the newspaper model by the other things that they did. You know, the story about the scandal in Iraq or Afghanistan was difficult to advertise against. But there was enough revenue that it allowed the newspaper to fulfill its mission." Amen!

in reference to: The Media Equation - What Would It Take to Support a Newsroom? - NYTimes.com (view on Google Sidewiki)