Stumbled across a wonderful website yesterday with a lot of awseome and open source Flash applications that produce wonderful graphics, many of them fractal, complex. [http://levitated.net/ Check out Levitated.net]—a friendly company.
Category: smart software
Smart software that folds around human needs rather than the other way ’round.
Martijn van Steenbergen tipped me on The Storm Worm:
Some key points:
- Storm is designed like an ant colony
- Rather than having all hosts communicate to a central server or set of servers, Storm uses a peer-to-peer network for C2.
- And even if a C2 node is taken down, the system doesn’t suffer. Like a hydra with many heads, Storm’s C2 structure is distributed.
Reminds me of an experiment I did we did with Jini and RIO. Once started up on several computers, we just couldn’t get the system down. Kill one, and somewhere else a new one pops up. Thought of desigining in a “suicide pill” that would trigger on some special message spread across the net.
[http://www.semanticwave.com/blog/archives/000282.jsp SixApart: Opening the Social Graph]:
:We think that the best way for you to manage your network is to stop thinking about all of the little pieces and to start focusing on the big picture: you and the people who matter to you. We think relationships mean more than email addresses or which service you’re signed on to at the moment. So we’ve created an experimental demo based upon open technologies OpenID, the Microformats hCard and XFN, and FOAF that allow you to see your entire network of relationships in one place – across services, across platforms, across the entire Web.
How wonderful! I’ve been wanting this for ages! Even started the [http://wiki.aardrock.com/Campfire Campfire] experiment a couple of years ago to address exactly this issue. I fully endorse opening the social graph.
(Via [http://www.semanticwave.com/blog/ Semantic Wave].)
[http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/17/1724253&from=rss SwarmOS Demonstrated at Idea Festival]: “PacoCheezdom writes ‘Intelligent Life has short summary of a demonstration by MIT professor James McLurkin of his new group-minded robots, which run an operating system called ‘Swarm OS’.
The robots are able to work together as a group not by communicating with all members of the group at once, but by talking only to their neighbors, and model other similar behaviors performed by bees and ants. ‘[http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/17/1724253&from=rss Read more of this story] at Slashdot.
(Via [http://slashdot.org/ Slashdot].)
[http://www.groovyactors.org/ 
]
Refreshed my link with Gerald “[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensegrity tensegrity]” de Jong, triggered by a blog entry from TED titled [http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TEDBlog/~3/152990430/theo_jansen.php Creatures on the beach] from the Dutch sculptor Theo Jansen which instantly reminded me of Gerald’s [http://sourceforge.net/projects/fluidiom/ Fluidiom] and [http://www.darwinathome.org Darwin at Home] projects.
Gerald’s email signature also mentioned [http://www.groovyactors.org/ Groovy Actors]:
:In a nutshell it’s a natural next step, building further on object-oriented programming (OOP), where objects become active talkative peers.
:Imagine running thousands of concurrent programs on one computer where each program instance represents something or someone in the real world. Some things are passive and only react to events but lots of real world things also take initiative.
:That’s why parts of this kind of system can better be represented in software by “autonomous agents” or “actors” which frequently interact with each other.
And built using the Groovy language.
Just wondering why ”’Groovy Actors are limited to a single computer”’ rather than ”’autonomous peers distributed across thousands of computers”’. Love to have concepts from [[Erlang]] and [http://javaspace.org JavaSpaces] built in.
Love to see the Groovy Actors’ [http://www.groovyactors.org/examples/02.html Hello Storage] example implement the story of [http://wiki.aardrock.com/Wizard_Rabbit_Treasurer The Wizard, The Rabbit, and The Treasurer].
A new programming language? Well, at least one I never heard of until today. It’s called [http://www.erlang.org/ Erlang] and one of the interesting aspects are that it eases ”’concurrent programming”’ and ”’distributed processes”’.
Erlang is a programming language designed at the Ericsson Computer Science Laboratory. Open-source Erlang is being released to help encourage the spread of Erlang outside Ericsson.
The language syntax reminds me a bit of Prolog. And I wonder what the power would be if something like Erlang is combined with the elegant concepts of [http://javaspaces.org/ JavaSpaces].
I’m still longing for an elegant platform neutral programming language that has mechanisms for ”'”effortless” peer-to-peer”’ built in. In fact, our new social and wisdom fabric cries out for a new “programming” language (and perhaps OS) that catalyses p2p development on all layers, from information to human to social to wisdom and that fuels the noosphere.
One of the first things I’d do with it is create an evolutionary prototype of [http://wiki.aardrock.com/Armillaria Armillaria] with [http://wiki.aardrock.com/Wizard_Rabbit_Treasurer The Wizard, The Rabbit and The Treasurer] as an example. [http://www.google.com/search?q=stigmergence Stigmergence].
:[http://bradfitz.com/social-graph-problem/ LiveJournal Creator Maps the Long Road to Open Social Networks]: “People are growing weary of registering and re-declaring their friends on every new social networking site. But Brad Fitzpatrick, creator of LiveJournal and OpenID, says that the tools to build a decentralized social network don’t yet exist. (Source: [http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/topheadlines/~3/146726716/brad-fitzpatric.html Wired])
Wow. About time. Since long I cherish the desire for a ”’scale-free distributed social network”’. Both [http://wiki.aardrock.com/Campfire Campfire] and [http://wiki.aardrock.com/Cheetah_Project_Proposal Cheetah] work in that direction, the latter for diabetics.
When will we have opened up our databases so you can update your personal information in a single action and everyone you want to are up to date too?
Talk about ”’trust”’. [http://wiki.aardrock.com/Armillaria Armillaria] can help to grow a ”’fully distributed social reputation system”’ to do just that. The [http://wiki.aardrock.com/Wizard_Rabbit_Treasurer Wizard Rabbit Treasurer] tells a small story of how this might work for the underlying data.
Love to work on a project like this. I’ll keep an eye on
(Via [http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml”>Wired News].)
[http://zicht.com Harry van der Velde] will like this one…
[http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/topheadlines/~3/141716831/building-better.html The Future of Bridges: Self-Replicating, Irregular Designs]: “Self-replicating bridges might be more robust, but also weirder looking, than the nearly magical pieces of civil engineering that human beings come up with.
(Via [http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml Wired News].)
[http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheLongTail/~3/141612509/the-coolest-new.html The coolest new feature on BookTour: Auto-favorites]:
Like any other startup, we’ve adding new feature nearly every day on [http://booktour.com BookTour]. But my favorite is one that we added last week. You know the music services, such as [http://www.sonicliving.com Sonic Living], that’can scan your iTunes or LastFM’libraries and then automatically tell you (via emails or RSS feeds) when’your favorite’bands are coming to your town? We wanted to do the same for books and authors.
So now if you go to your Profile page on BookTour.com, you can enter your Amazon login info and we’ll automatically look up all the books you’ve ever bought and add those authors to the list you’re tracking. If any of them are coming to your area to give talks or other appearances, we’ll send you an email or include it in your RSS feed. And you can always use the service to ping those authors and ask them to come speak to your company, organization or just book club while they’re in town.
[http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/WindowsLiveWriter/bt.png 
]
How cool is that?!
(BTW, we don’t keep your Amazon info. The site just opens a secure connection to Amazon, fetches the books from your order history, and then closes the connection and discards the login info. That means you have to enter’the login’again when you want to refresh your favorites list in a few months, but it also ensures that your login information can never be compromised.)
(Via [http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/ The Long Tail].
[http://weblog.oomph.nl/ Sanne Roemen] en [http://danalog.nl Daan Kortenbach] doen een oproep om een [http://www.naamlooz.nl/2007/07/briljante-progr.html coöp van ”’briljante programmeurs”’] op te zetten. Wat mij betreft breiden ze dat uit naar ”’briljante ontwerpers, designers, architecten en projectleiders”’. En dan lekker agile aan de slag.
Als we dat nou eens naadloos kunnen samenvoegen met grote bedrijven op dit gebied. Een organisatievorm vinden waarbij beiden elkaar versterken. De ”’groten”’ zijn ”’zeldzaam, veerkrachtig, geworteld en enorm”’. De ”’eenpitters”’, tweepitters en gasstellen zijn met ”’velen, klein, wendbaar en innovatief”’. Hoe kunnen ze elkaar versterken?!
Hey Sanne, Daan, ”’Ik wil meedoen!”’ Gaan we in augsutus om de tafel om dit verder vorm te geven?
Mijn gedicht “[http://wiki.aardrock.com/Wanneer_dan Wanneer Dan]” vat het geheel samen.
Categories
Aarde tag cloud
Using [[ScriptCloud for your tag cloud|ScriptCloud]]’s output, I created a tag cloud for the text in the [http://wiki.aardsource.org/Bus_Tour/Vision/Central_Station Aarde Vision Bus Tour]. Had to fiddle around with the style sheet a bit. The links do nothing, though. Here it is…
aims architects architecture billions blogs blossoms broadcasted buzzing challenges collaborate combining cooperate ecology economic economy education emerge enterprises enters environmental etc exalting expand facilitating fact flock free fuel fundamental funding generates germination global healing hosts infrastructural inhabitant innovation investments leverage media monetary monitored online passionate phones pioneers renowned replicating scripts seeks sites software space spirituality sustainably unfolding unprecedented value van viewers virtual visits web
Here’s what I did:
#Include ScriptCloud’s tagline.css into style.css of weblog theme.
#Save all text into a plain and simple text file.
#Upload it to ScriptCloud.
#View generated tag cloud, and open HTML source.
#Copy just the tag cloud HTML and strip it from all the color settings.
#Paste result into body of blog entry.
Categories
The long tail of software
[http://www.thelongtail.com/ 
For extremely profitable price/quality ratios, aim to ”’maximize evolvability”’ for all stakeholders by:
*minimizing the efforts to develop, release and maintain your product;
*maximizing scalability;
*maximizing innovation to happen elsewhere—make it open source and use [[Crowdsourcing Directory|crowd sourcing]];
*maximizing adopting & setting open standards for quality, processes and technology.
*using a tolerant development process
*being open and responsive to easy changes as project progresses
The ”’evolvability”’ quality requirement ”’transcends and includes all other “ilities””’ like performance, scalability, maintanability, reliability, resilience, and security.
adaptive agile aligned ambition architecture attendees blending brand builds chairing challenging clients collaboration compiler connects consecutive consultants corporate delegates etc excel executing externally facilitate focusing gap graphic het hosting implemented infrastructure ingredients initiated innovation inspiration interface links logo margin moderating networking organizational partners pipeline predictable presentations quarterly ranged realizing revenue scratch semantic seminars software solutions spendings unfolding upside user utilization values van web worldwide
Browsing [http://net-savvy.com/executive/tools/visual-text-analysis.html visual text analysis] led me to [http://eagereyes.org/blog/visualization-sets-information-free.html Visualizations Sets Information Free] which in turn made me stumble over [http://scriptcloud.screenplayanalytics.com/ ScriptCloud] lets you create content clouds (like a ”’tag cloud”’) from your screenplay.
[http://scriptcloud.screenplayanalytics.com/ 
] If a tag cloud means nothing to you, [http://scriptcloud.screenplayanalytics.com/faq.php check out the FAQs] to find out more. Scriptcloud is intended for screenplays but you can upload any kind of text file.
And so I did. Picked my CV, saved as plain text and fed it ti Scriptcloud. The result is obvious. Too bad you can’t click on the tags.
[http://tagcrowd.com/ TagCrowd] is another interesting similar tool.
Want this to work at (subsets of) my wiki or forum; and select my own font; and set the rectangular area to render it in; and have it as a plug-in or extension to any CMS.