Freeman Dyson, I love you!
:…the rules of ”’Open Source sharing”’ will be extended from the exchange of software to the exchange of genes. Then the evolution of life will once again be communal, as it was in the good old days before separate species and intellectual property were invented.
[http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/30/1927205&from=rss Read more of this story] at [http://slashdot.org/ Shashdot].
Now that the world is heating up, so are the discussions and debates on reducing resources required for computing. Reduced power, reduced heating, sleeping and suspending processors and processes.
Effective and efficient handling of our computing needs at minimal resource consumption in the complete life cycle of a network of computers has become the focus of attention. I call this ”’conscious computing”’ across the board—and my dream is to have a ”’Conscious Computing Award”’ for those solutions, projects and companies that will startle our view in this area and provide unprecedented breakthroughs in the area of smart spiritual software.
I will start tracking ideas, initiatives, programs, projects and inspirational sources on this topic. Here are the first two:
#[http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/power-plays.ars Power Plays: How power consumption will shape the future of computing] on how Intel is using smart self-organizing principles on chip-level to maximize the performance/power ratio in favour of green or ”’conscious computing”’.
#Sun’s Jonathan Schwartz on [http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/size_matters Switching Subjects] to drastically simplify cabling and reducing power and cooling requirements in massive data centers in their ”’Project Magnum”’ and ”'[http://www.sun.com/servers/hpc/SunConstellationPreview.jsp Constellation System]”’. Good that Sun has ”’Andy Bechtolsheim”’ back on board. Do you know that [[Andy missed his plane and changed his name]]?
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…
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.
[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.
Just one day after my regestration at [[Cambrian House, Home of Crowdsourcing]], Carl at [http://creativecrowds.com Creative Crowds] tipped me on the [http://www.crowdsourcingdirectory.com/ Crowdsourcing Directory].
Uhmpf… awful lot of creative crowd work going on. A sheer infinite flurry of innovation sources. Howcome I only see this now? Wonderful! Diving into it because I will find the fertile ground where my, sometimes wild and big ideas, are valued and will flourish.
Thanks for the pointer Carl!
P.S. Appears that Carl sends email from the [http://innovationfactory.nl/ Innovation Factory]. Another interesting company that I only now discoverd.
P.S. 2 Seems they’re working hard to realize [http://creativecrowds.com Creative Crowds] and [http://creativecapitals.org/ Creative Capitals]
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.
[http://www.cambrianhouse.com/?ref=Martien 
]
[http://harryvandervelde.nl/ Harry van der Velde] tipped me on [http://www.cambrianhouse.com/?ref=Martien Cambrian House] some time ago. What a wonderful [http://wiki.aardrock.com/holacracy holacratic] way of [[Totally Unique Thoughts|turning thoughts into things]]. Community-owned—so “[http://wiki.aardrock.com/One_From_Many Dee Hock]” in its chaorganization. So co-creative.
While preparing a proposal for [http://andarr.nl/ Andarr] this morning, I decided to sign up. Looking forward to participation.
Just a quick note so I can find it back later: [http://www.projectconnections.com/knowhow/papers_list/index.html#networked-tools-for-teams Check out Networked Tools for Teams] at [http://www.projectconnections.com/ ProjectConnections].
Serendipitied over this while reading EEK’s blog on [http://www.eekim.com/blog/collaboration/tools/networkedtoolsemail.html Networked Tools and the Email Bottleneck].
Thanks Eugene.
[http://blogs.sun.com/erickustarz/ Eric Kustarz]’s excellent point in favour of using [http://blogs.sun.com/erickustarz/entry/zfs_on_a_laptop ZFS for your laptop] to create a ”’extremely reliable store for all your personal data”’.
Sun Microsystems is really making a change here. Wish for ZFS to become abuntantly ubiquitous.
Next: swap a disk a day with your friend to have a copy of your data at a remote place when you’re house burns down or someone drops a bomb.
Beyond that: the [http://wiki.aardrock.com/Wizard_Rabbit_Treasurer Wizard, Rabbit and Treasurer] keep all your data safe in sync in a fully distributed self-organizing and self-healing peer-to-peer network.
Worryfree and effortless data.
Jim Highsmith on [http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/CutterConsortiumEnterpriseSuite/~3/127107226/apm070621.html Innovation and Agility]: I have always maintained that one characteristic of a good agile leader is the ability to balance: up-front planning with on-going planning, early architecture with evolutionary architecture, and innovation with efficiency. It is a difficult balancing act. If CEOs can’t seem to get the balancing right, how can a project manager or development manager?
(Via [http://www.cutter.com/welcome.html Cutter Consortium: Enterprise Suite].)
[http://www.checkoutapp.com/ 
]
[http://www.versionsapp.com/ 
]
Via [http://developer.apple.com/business/macmarket/checkout.html Apple Developer Connection]:
:The team of young developers at Amsterdam-based Madebysofa were frustrated as customers of a difficult point-of-sale (POS) application and a shortage of usable and affordable alternatives. So they decided to turn a problem into an opportunity, and set out to create their own application that worked the way they wanted. Their product is Checkout, is a powerful, friendly, and affordable POS system capable of running a small- to medium-size store, and is written exclusively for Mac OS X.
They also create a neat Mac OS X Subversion client.
[http://www.eekim.com/blog/collaboration/tools/networkedtoolsemail.html Eek speaks] about [http://www.freecycle.org/ freecycling]. A wonderful grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns using a simple mailinglist.
Freecyclers have only one rule:
:Everything posted must be free, legal, and appropriate for all ages.
An excellent way to get rid of stuff of value to another but not to you. And reduces waste in the process.
My son [http://martijn.van.steenbergen.nl/ Martijn] recently started working for [http://q42.nl/ Q42]. One of his new colleagues pointed him to [http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/continuous_partial_attention.php Continuous Partial Attention] on whether or not to unplug from the ever increasing flow of interruptions of the grid and focus on getting some work done.
Becoming ever more agile—do some yoga.
Thanks Martijn & colleague!