] Scientists are wrestling with individual atoms to develop
] molecule-sized computers, tiny cancer-fighting robots
] that travel the bloodstream ... and stain-resistant
] trousers.

Wired News: Get Ready for New 'Nano' Products

] "You can get crackerjack Java programmers in India right
] out of college for $5,000 a year versus $60,000 here,"
] said Stephanie Moore, vice president for outsourcing at
] Forrester Research. "The technology is such, why be in
] New York City when you can be 9,000 miles away with far
] less expense?"

Ick ... someone else blogged a similar story a few weeks ago...

I.B.M. Explores Shift of White-Collar Jobs Overseas

] MADRID, Spain, July 22 %u2014 For a glimpse of
] Europe%u2019s young generation on the move and the future
] of the borderless continent, head to the late-partying
] Spanish capital, drink a strong shot of coffee and try to
] keep up with Stina Lunden, a 25-year-old Swedish
] transplant.

A generation on the move in Europe

A unit of Playboy Enterprises Inc. has said it plans to develop a new animated television series starring Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy magazine, and his famed centerfold girls in another move to introduce the Playboy brand to younger generations.

Hefner, an icon of the American sexual revolution, will be the mastermind behind a sexy, sophisticated squad of Playmates that will fight the "enemies of the democracy" in "Hef's Superbunnies," the cartoon series to be developed by Stan Lee.

Lee, the godfather of comics, created all-time best-seller comics such as Spiderman, The Incredible Hulk, Daredevil and The X-Men. All of these characters were recently taken to the big screen and became box-office hits.

read more...

CNN.com - TV cartoon for Hef's Superbunnies - Jul. 21, 2003

] R. Michael Young, an assistant professor of computer
] science at N.C. State University, is working on research
] that might one day make video games more enjoyable.
] Young, 41, is studying ways to build artificial
] intelligence -- the ability of computers to act like
] humans -- into games so that users get movielike stories.
] With such technology, for example, a game could adjust to
] a player's actions and provide a different experience
] every time it is played.

newsobserver.com - Games of infinite possibilities

So I've been crunching on this for months. Actually since Terrence first told me about what Tom was trying to do, and even more so since I saw Tom demo Memestreams at PhreakNIC in October of 02. We've had numerous discussions about the potential for reputation systems in general, and Memestreams specifically. But I could never figure out a model that a) made money unequivocably and b) didn't smack of dot.com funk. But now I think I've found one that fits.

I just recently started working at a healthcare company that is growing very rapidly and is becoming very successful. Yay! for me to not be unemployed anymore. But one of the tasks I have in front of me is looking at knowledge management (KM) systems and processes. Part of this is due to the rapid growth of the company, who's core product is 'knowledge' about how to treat a person who has serious chronic illness. The other part is related to some organizational development changes within the company.

I'm a big fan of KM. I've preached it for about a decade. It's definitely helped my career out. I've even tried applying it in one of my companies, to much intangible success. It's a Good Thing(tm) to use as our workforce populace becomes more and more comfortable with technology's pervasivness, and the importance of sharing information and expertise electronically.

One of the biggest challenges with implementing KM into an organization is getting people to utilize it. If you've never had any KM process or tools, then you probably think that you can live without them. Why change? Change is hard and painful and I'm doing my job just fine thank you cuz my performance eval from last quarter says so. Besides, we don't need no stinking message boards to talk to each other.

Typically, businesses will try and 'incentivize' (dot.com word) employees to utilize the systems in place. In some cases, they can get as Nazi as requiring you to put certain reports or follow a certain process. But this is hit or miss at best because as we all know, some managers will dismiss the KM process as 'fluff' and circumvent it. They won't require their reports to utilize it, and may even punish those that do. Another key challenge here is how do you incentivize it? You could say that the employee who contributes the most to the KM systems gets a bigger bonus than those who don't. But you could just keep ringing up posts of nonsense and still win that battle. And that got me thinking....

What's sorely needed in KM is reputation. And this could be the catalyst that incents utilization. If you had a reputation system in place, then it would be very easy to determine who was contributing the most USEFUL knowledge into the system, and bonuses and other incentives could be based on reputation capital. This could very easily motivate people to deposit info into the KM systems, and really motivate them to partake of that knowledge, because it would be required to increase one's reputation.

Of course the normal social network issues would apply, such as all your friends banding together to increase eachother's reputation capital regardless of quality. But I think there is adequate work in that area to minimize 'fixing' the system.

So the bottomline here is that Memestreams could easily plug into a lot of toolsets used in the KM universe (mailing lists, BBS's, content management, change management, etc) as a reputation engine to help drive up utilization. You get the benefit of working with a B2B market, in a very legitimate and hot sector, and you're solving a very real problem with adoption of that sector. Bling Bling!

A business model for Memestreams

] As devices get smarter, they can identify and adapt to
] individual users in a household, potentially making
] suggestions on everything from what to eat to how to
] dress. "Think of it as the electronic equivalent of an
] English butler," says Emile Aarts, vice-president and
] scientific program director at Philips Research
] Laboratories in Eindhoven. Those concepts may seem
] pie-in-the-sky now, but many are being tested in
] corporate labs -- and some are nearing commercialization.

Let's hope the telecom service providers don't screw this up.

Digital Homes

] Wozniak said he set out trying to solve problems people
] encounter in their everyday lives. In his case, he wanted
] an inexpensive way to know if his dog crossed over the
] electronic fencing around his home without having to tag
] the pet with an expensive device like a cell phone or
] Global Positioning System receiver.
]
] Rifredi said he's interested in having a way to track and
] instantly locate his 2-year-old son, "who's just getting
] mobile now."

Highly hyped WoZ net could be orwellian nightmare

Music Industry Wins 871 Subpoenas Against Internet Users.

...and they are not just going after people offering large amounts of mp3s either...

Notice the slightly conflicting statements:

" The trade group for the largest music labels, the Washington-based RIAA, previously indicated its lawyers would target Internet users who offer substantial collections of MP3 song files but declined to say how many songs might qualify for a lawsuit."

"We are identifying substantial infringers and we're going to whatever entity is providing (Internet) service for that potential infringer,"

[Brain21]So from these statements we think that, as the RIAA said a few weeks ago, they are only going after people who have huge mp3 collections online. However, other statements in the article show that this may not be true:

"In some cases, subpoenas cite as few as five songs as "representative recordings" of music files available for downloading from these users."

"the RIAA asked Depaul on July 2 to track down a user known as "anon39023" who was allegedly offering at least eight songs."

FOXNews.com

] Dockers recently came out with a new brand of pants, the
] Go Khakis, which promise to keep your legs stain-free
] using revolutionary nanotechnology.
]
] We couldn't help thinking that Dockers might be using the
] word "nanotechnology" more for marketing muscle than for
] true scientific purposes, so we called its customer
] service line to ask a few pointed questions. Here's a
] slice of the conversation.

Bahahahahahahahahahahahahaa!

CNN.com - Little robots in your pants - Jul. 18, 2003