Nice Fish Films | Michael Sean Wright

Scott Maxwell has a vision- remove the walls that prevent us from being engaged in Space Exploration. Maxwell drives the Mars Rovers, and wants you to have a turn at the joystick. During his presentation at Gnomedex, he explained what Mars 3.0 means to him. Please take a moment and watch this amazing moment from Gnomedex.

Live streaming video by Ustream

Scott Maxwell at work
Scott Maxwell at Twitter

This is one great ride WE are on.

msw

Oh sure Twitter is that quirky micro-blogging, mini-messaging service that some love to rip, but there’s been a lot of interesting developments in Twitterland lately. For those who still haven’t jumped into the 140 character village, a couple of quick reads for you- Newbie Guide and How Twitter Works.

I knew that Twitter had entered my regular routine when, during the recent earthquake in California, the first thing I thought of was twittering through the tremor.

Once you’ve signed up the next step is connecting your friends and discovering interesting people to follow. Of course, the big tech celebs are there- Robert Scoble, Louis Gray, Leo Laporte, Guy Kawasaki, John C. Dvorak, Jason Calacanis, Chris Pirillo and Michael Arrington. But for something completely different in Twitterville, check out the twits from John Cleese who lets it rip from his really big brain. Take a trip back to the world of Mad Magazine with the punny posts from Alfred E Neuman himself.

Want to know what’s happening in politics before it’s news? Check out Martina Stewart, a producer from CNN’s political unit. Even some in our Government are getting into it like Congressman John Culberson.

Get a little spacey with NASA or their current superstar Phoenix Mars Lander. See the future of human-robotic systems for lunar exploration. You can even take a peek under the hood of the Universe with a Bad Astronomer.

There are plenty of really big thinkers in twittown like Dave Winer the father of blogging and RSS.

Care for some liberal arts? Kottke Org doesn’t disappoint. The great conceptual artist Jenny Holzer is a true pioneer of words and ideas in public spaces so it’s only natural that she would be twitting.

For perfectly pithy posts, you can’t go wrong with Andy Ihnatko, Merlin Mann or heavy breather Darth Vader.

The magnificent mavens of social media musing on machines- Amber MacArthur, Molly Woods, Mona N and Corvida are all twitter-ers.

Weezer proved their geekness with the ultimate video tribute to the net but it’s their drummer Patrick Wilson twittapping away at the keyboard.

You can get your film fix with Spout, see what’s breaking and buzzing with Buzztter_en or set a reminder to Remember the Milk.

(Update: 08.27.08- AMC allows fan driven Mad Men Twitter accounts to continue) The best in TV come to life like the downright debonair Don Draper, the beautiful but profoundly sad Mrs. Betty Draper, the heavenly Joan Hollway and the precious Peggy Olson from Mad Men. Never miss an episode though with the timely tweets from TV Guide.

To get the most out of Twitter, you’ll want one of the many great API’s available that make tweets really chirp:

Tweet Deck- group the people you follow, search across the entire network, use the built-in url clipper and much more.

Twitterrific- works great for mobile mac users.

Twittervision- see all the tweets from a 3d globe.

Have fun traveling down the info tunnel of Twitter but please be a good Tweeter and practice good etiquette by using Twittering politely.

This is just a tiny picture of the Twitter Universe, I’m keeping a running log of interesting Twitter related articles here. I hope by now your are getting a little snap shot of how useful, informative and fun Twitting is.

Nice Fish Films @ Twitter

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silly fish image here

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So what do you do if you're one of the most famous, richest men in the world? Why you jump into an old truck and trek down Route 66. Sir Paul McCartney recently decided to get away for awhile with a friend, he journeyed down the historic Route 66 to discover something new.

I have been in the Chicagoland area visiting family and discovering the wealth of joy. We move so fast in our worlds, speeding towards the next discoveries. Sometimes you just need to pull off the superhighways of life to find what really matters.

msw


(historic Beatles photo found here)

The Greek Philosopher Empedocles was among the first to ponder light. He wanted to know what light is and sought to understand how we perceive it. He spent his life trying to see it all. Unfortunately, this quest may have led him to believe that he was a god and to prove to his followers that he was immortal, flung himself into a volcano.

Seeing too much can be almost as damaging as seeing too little. I have written about my love of FriendFeed in the past but almost threw it aside due to the rush of information that was becoming too noisy for me. I started to see too many pictures of funny cats, bacon, and shiny objects. Instead of just walking away I took the advice of Louis Gray and tried a few of his "hiding" tips. After adjusting the filters I started to re-see wonders that first brought me to FF. I started to look a little closer at the people sharing the aforementioned photos and discovered a science student who is at work learning new programming languages, really fascinating writers, thinkers and people full of marvel. There hasn't been a day when I haven't found something that makes me say 'WOW' from this group of friends.

When you first arrive on the FriendFeed scene you will see Robert Scoble, a prolific blogger, photographer and hyper connector. He seems to be everywhere with comments on posts, shares, likes and blurbs. There is much written about Robert and some even question his motives for being such an enthusiastic engager. The more I encounter him, the more I come to admire the sheer joy of his thirst for knowledge and connection. His passion is infectious. I posted a YouTube Video of the Hadron Collider Rap done by the staff of CERN to which Scoble "shared" the fantastic video of his tour of the facility itself.



Each day is a wonder when you're careful of what you SEE.

msw

My planned blog for today will have to wait. I read a post on "How To Split An Atom" by Steve Spalding, that made me stop what I was doing, and helped re-focus my day. Please do yourself a BIG favor and read- "The Internet, Information And Changing The World"


msw

(image found at: Wooster Collective)

I was really enjoying last.fm until the "new" version of the service was unveiled yesterday, and I'm not alone.

According to their blog, "We’ve been listening hard, trying out new ideas, and making tons of changes in response to your feedback. Today we’ve taken the next step in this process, bringing the new Last.fm to everyone." The next step is a huge step backward. What was once an easy to read and interact with service is now so unmanageable it's unusable. It didn't take long for the voices of the users to swell into a cacophony of screams.

I truly hope that they listen to their community and restore the service so I can actually "listen" to my music.

msw

I love knowledge, discovering new information and sharing ideas that stimulate OUR imagination. Lately, I've been on a bender of sorts, absorbing new streams of information and it is just an exhilarating experience. In some ways I've unplugged from conventional information sources that have become pablum (bland or insipid intellectual fare) to me like cable news, some talk radio and the so-called news sites. I have been tapping into a stream of collective thought from minds that are trying to reach above the noise of what passes for popular culture. I'm thankful for connections, grateful that we live in an age where we control OUR input.

Recently I was reading a post from Louis Grey, one of the great early adopters/ bloggers regarding the increasingly difficult task of finding the original source of an idea, comment or article. I had been reading How to Write With Style by Kurt Vonnegut and it dawned on me that reading and sharing should be done with some consideration as well. I began to think of my daily info habits and the wonder of it all. Last weekend Robert Scoble started a great conversation thread on his FriendFeed regarding the nature of intelligence which led me to discovering the room Highfalutin on FF. From there I found a parade of interesting sources including Harper's Magazine which I've enjoyed for many years but somehow got out of the "habit" of reading. But thanks to my new friends, they helped me discover a true literary master- Lamed Shapiro (1878–1948). I'm touched by his style, his complete control of the craft of writing.

My style is defined by my journey, the joy of expanding my Universe with you.

"Style has nothing to do with embellishment, as some people think; it’s not even a matter of technique.
Like the color sense in some painters, it’s a quality of vision, the revelation of the particular universe
that each of us sees and that no one else sees. The pleasure an artist offers us is to convey another universe to us."

Proust
(Trans. Roger Shattuck) from an Interview with Elle- Joseph Bois, 1913

Large image of "Universe" found- here

msw

Who says BIG media isn't hip? LA's number one station (and I might add, most stimulating) KFI dropped a Twiiter shout out last night.

mp3 also here- KFI Twitter

For all the talk of Twitter going down, I still see this as a service that people will stick with, there's just something about it that's charming in a small-town kind of way. Despite the downtime frustration we all have with Twitter, Jason Kincaid @ TechCrunch reports that most of us are staying, and more come everyday- read it here. While FriendFeed is quickly becoming my mini-blog, Twitter still has a place in my heart for micro-blogging!

msw

Special Thanks to @ilvdbch for the heads up!

As we grow more connected through technologies, we are empowered to discover, learn and celebrate the human achievement. Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web are the progressive results of the "human" touch to the net. We are learning from each other how we want the net to respond to our information requests and how to share information more efficiently.

We are seeing communities adapt technologies faster than ever before thanks to the ability to discuss desires and ideas. When Twitter hit the scene, there were some who said 'that's great, but what if...' The latest collaborative efforts to adapt good ideas into a better reality include TweetDeck and the RSS reader Feedly. Both of these adaptations allow us to share our discovered information with our social communities.

Nelson Mandela states it best, "A traveler through a country would stop at a village and he didn't have to ask for food or for water. Once he stops, the people give him food, entertain him. That is one aspect of Ubuntu but it will have various aspects. Ubuntu does not mean that people should not address themselves. The question therefore is: Are you going to do so in order to enable the community around you be able to improve?"

Share your knowledge of life today, dance with the hope that we are growing together!


Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

msw

Feel free to jump into the conversation at- FriendFeed



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It is quite understandable that back in 1776 big news took a few days to reach the Colonies including the momentous signing of the Declaration of Independence. On July 2, 1776, John Adams wrote to his beloved wife Abigale the following, “The Second of July 1776 will be a memorable epoch in the history of America. It will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance … It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever.” Of course we celebrate the day the Declaration was adopted- July 4th. The breath taking revolutionary news took a few days to reach George Washington and the rest of the Colonies. But the news changed the world, the citizens were energized to action. They did something, they sacrificed for the concept of Freedom. They united behind this wonderful ideal of Democracy, this thought that had only existed in their imagination and might not ever come to be.

Can you picture the early Americans huddled in town squares anxiously awaiting news from Philadelphia? Seems hard to believe that news took so long to reach the masses. 232 years later- some information still takes days to reach our consciousness even in this glorious information age. Perhaps we are relying too much on old messengers and delivery methods. We do, however, now have the power to collect the information in real-time and share it with our world. Yet many of us are still relying on the old media gatekeepers to feed us the news they feel is relevant. What if some editor decided that the Declaration wasn't important enough to cover that day? Thankfully, it was the "We the People" who decided to listen intently then disseminate the information to their fellow citizens.

It is truly up to us to listen intently, become more informed citizens and to share our knowledge with our communities. Our forefathers imagined this to be, they sacrificed everything to make it so. Go forth into your virtual town circles and celebrate knowledge, information and your free voice.

The tools are in OUR hands- use a news reader, gather your rss feeds, listen to the debate in real-time, share ideas, excite one another with bold ideas. Connect yourself with BIG thinkers, don't be afraid to converse, blog, twitter, friendfeed or share.

Celebrate the greatness of the past, the wonder of the future and the hope that our imaginations are constantly alive with possibilities- it's a Revolutionary way of thinking.

Read- The Declaration of Independence

Debate or Comment- here

msw

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