SoundClips is an occasional series from All Things Considered that collects the sounds that fascinate our listeners. From antique hit and miss engines (left) and large overhead cranes to defective ceiling fans and noisy dryers, we are interested in hearing what you are hearing.

On the first anniversary of our series, SoundClips, we present — for those who may have missed any of them or all of them — a compilation of all of the sounds from the series in alphabetical order.

NPR : A Year's Montage of SoundClips

Onboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the HiRISE camera offers unprecedented image quality, giving us a view of the Red Planet in a way never before seen. It’s the most powerful camera ever to leave Earth’s orbit.

HiRISE | High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment

The Photosynth Technology Preview is a taste of the newest - and, we hope, most exciting - way to view photos on a computer. Our software takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how each one relates to the next.

In our collections, you can access gigabytes of photos in seconds, view a scene from nearly any angle, find similar photos with a single click, and zoom in to make the smallest detail as big as your monitor.

To see it in action, you can watch a TED presentation:

Using photos of oft-snapped subjects (like Notre Dame) scraped from around the Web, Photosynth creates breathtaking multidimensional spaces with zoom and navigation features that outstrip all expectation. Its architect, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, shows it off in this standing-ovation demo. Curious about that speck in corner? Dive into a freefall and watch as the speck becomes a gargoyle. With an unpleasant grimace. And an ant-sized chip in its lower left molar. "Perhaps the most amazing demo I've seen this year," wrote Ethan Zuckerman, after TED2007. Indeed, Photosynth might utterly transform the way we manipulate and experience digital images.

Microsoft Live Labs: Photosynth

“The average full-time worker doesn’t even start doing real work until 11:00 a.m.,” he writes, “and begins to wind down around 3:30 p.m.”

The Microsoft survey pointed to worthless meetings.

What appears to be wasted time is really jell time.

Time Wasted? Perhaps It’s Well Spent

"This morning, somebody called and said, 'Is it really free?' Yes it's really free," said cofounder Jacqueline Taylor. "Some people can't believe it."

... He was free to be less than perfect, which is more interesting than perfect.

Free music? Priceless.

No wonder Apple never built a radio tuner in the iPod: it's scared of the competition.

Also check out this NPR story, Music Sites Fight Higher Royalty Fees:

Tim Westergren's Pandora Radio site and others like it allow users to determine musical programming tailored to their tastes. Music companies want to charge such sites higher royalties. Westergren says that's a major threat to Internet radio.

Here's an older NPR story about Pandora more generally.

Also consider:

Amber and Leo interview Tim Westergren from the Music Genome Project and Pandora, a streaming radio service that introduces you to new music based on your preferences.

And if there's one thing that Tim Westergren learned from 10 years on the road playing keyboards in rock bands, it's that there are a lot of talented groups out there that you've probably never heard of.

At one point, he was hopeful:

"If we keep going as we are, I think the music industry is going to look very different down the road, and I think we'll be able to say that we were a significant part of it."

Late last year, he was at Stanford:

People thought that, by lowering distribution costs, the Internet would reduce the power of the big labels. This has not happened -- because the promotion aspect turned out to be critical as well. I don't know if Pandora will ever become big enough to act as a promotion engine that eclipses the labels' marketing muscle.

Learning to Love Radio Again | TIME

BE YOURSELF
Desktop gizmos and lava lamps express Google's laid-back ethos.

ASK THE HELP DESK
Laptop on the fritz? Google keeps experts on site to fix computers and other digital gadgets.

GOOGLER WITH GOGGLES
A lifeguard sits on duty as an employee works out in one of two swim-in-place pools at Google's headquarters.

GOOGLE GRAFFITI
Two employees break for coffee beside the "idea board," a canvas for playfully grand designs like Google spaceships.

HANGING OUT
Googlers can shoot pool while taking a break in one of several employee lounges.

GOOD-HAIR DAYS
Google contracts with stylists to give its employees cut-rate haircuts.

RULING THE NET
Google employees take an afternoon volley ball break. The corporation's Mountain View campus is at once a flurry of playful activity and creative technological innovation.

MARCHING ON ITS STOMACH
Google is obsessive about food, offering its employees three free gourmet meals a day that can be eaten in a cafeteria adorned by artwork created by Google employees.

KIDS' PLAY
There are toys for employees' children and for the young-at-heart Googlers like this one.

HANDS-ON CARE
The work-weary can unwind with a Google-subsidized professional massage.

DOGS ALLOWED
Googlers are permitted to bring their dogs (but not cats) to the workplace.

It's all roses at Google! Join today!

Life in the Googleplex | TIME

First, from Afghanistan:

Three-year-old Said is an opium addict. Without it, he becomes restless.

His mother Zarbibi shares her child's condition. She herself is a user and has been one for the past four years.

Zarbibi routinely blows opium into Said's face to keep him quiet. It is the only way she knows how to free herself so that she can work.

She said: "Whenever I have chores or work at home, I give my son opium so he would stay calm.

"I also give him opium so he can sleep. When I realised he became an addict, I regretted it."

Second, from Egypt:

It exists in all strata of society, as well as in our minds and our tradition. In my opinion, it is a very barbaric act. Let's see, first of all, what people think in simple villages. Why? How come, after all that's been said in the media, and after doctors and religious scholars have met with you, you still insist upon it?

...

Interviewer: In these villages, a woman can do something behind her husband's back?
Sheik: In the villages, the women are the men.
Interviewer: Sheik, how can you say such a thing?
Sheik: We are simple people, and nobody says: I am the man, and that's it...

Compendium is a software tool providing a flexible visual interface for managing the connections between information and ideas.

It places few constraints on how you organise material, though many have found that it provides support for structured working for instance, following a methodology or modelling technique. Our own particular interest is in visualizing the connections between people, ideas and information at multiple levels, in mapping discussions and debates, and what skills are needed to do so in a participatory manner that engages all stakeholders.

Compendium

Collective intelligence is a natural property of socially shared cognition, a natural enabler of collaboration. But there are also natural forces that challenge collective intelligence, forces that doom projects and make collaboration difficult or impossible. These are forces of fragmentation.

The antidote to fragmentation is shared understanding and shared commitment. This book is about a new way to create shared understanding, and this chapter sets the stage by exploring specific ways that the forces of fragmentation work in organizations and projects.

This is the first chapter of Dialogue Mapping: Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems.

Wicked Problems & Social Complexity