I read about this 'net radio service on Liz Lawley's blog,
She broadened the nature of the riff to include the social computing aspect, "...systems where the communication is implicit, where the social component is the emergent information that comes from multiple users...". Last FM provides a listening experience that, frankly, blows satellite radio out of the sky. The aural application of a concept that Peter Merholz mentioned in his article about meta-tagging by the masses. A similar conceptualization of socially engineered selection is put to effective use in the Snap search engine. Thousands of users input data about data by just going about their business as usual. The ramifications are exciting. The painpoints of indexing (controlled vocabularies, metatags, and thesauri) have a new champion, an accupuncturist whose needle is an amorphous network of machine enabled end-users.

Think about A9.com, they capture search terms and bookmarks from hundreds of thousands of folk. How long before the clever minions at Amazon draw the dashed line between search term and "best" match that all those users have selected. It's all there on one server, waiting to be culled.

This is my only New Year's prognostication: A9 will be the next big thing in social networking.

Oh, and BTW Last FM is the BOMB

lastfm lawley snap.com folksonomy

Can't say I'm keen on exposure gigs, but if we have to expose ourselves it might as well be a place as groovy as the American Visonary Arts Museum

1. Expand the definition of a worthwhile life.
   
2. Engender respect for and delight in the gift of others.
   
3. Encourage each individual to build upon his or her own special knowledge and inner strengths.
   
4. Confirm the great hunger for finding out just what each of us can do best, in our own voice, at any age.
   
5. Empower the individual to choose to do that something really, really well.

We were deluged by art of the curious kind. A chevy station wagon with blue amyl nitrate bottles glued to every inch of its panels. A 4 foot tall mirror encrusted egg. Swirling mobiles of men on motorbikes. And this...
Larry grabs the ass of "Wire Man", "...really, really well."

After many too many Daily Crisis Pale Ales from Red Brick Station, I staggered into a room occupied by an exotic blond. Mates tell me I tried my best to make a good first impression, but she gave me the cold shoulder and nearly poked my eye out ;-)

We played the Annual Wisp TUBES OF FIRE Mountain
Reggae Fest on February 22. ,br>

This benefit for the Special
Olympics was held in a frigid barn on the grounds of the Wisp Ski
resort. Two toaster sized heaters kept one shoe per member cozy and warm.

Good show, will recieved, great cause. But that's not the
point.
The next morning I took my 6 year old, Zach, to the slopes for a
follow-up to his first ski lesson. My youngest was in a ski-rental line
with Achille and Zoe (our guitar player and his daughter). It was Saturday
afternoon as snowboarders and skiers streaked across the mountain side
in various states of controlled chaos. Z was doing quite well so I told
him to stay on the beginners' hill while I retrieved my own skis and
his brother. 15 minutes later I returned and found a lone orange glove
sticking out of the snow like a five-fingered dahlia.

Zach was no where
in site.
The big dog in me howled like a St. Bernard "ZAAAACH".

I trudged the hillside back and forth looking for the one-gloved boy
lost in the snow. With each loop of the resort my panic became a palpable
force as my imaginations' worst fears played like a 24-hour horror film
festival. One frantic hour later I ran into Achille who calmly suggested
I check the lost and found. Duhhhh, why hadn't I thought of that?

"Excuse me, is this the lost and found," I tried to hide the
panic in my voice. "My son is lost on the beginners' slope."
"Come around the desk please." said the gracious attendant.
When I opend the door Zach was watching Animal Planet, his face painted
with chocolate ice cream, a half-eaten burrito in one hand a Sprite
in the other, and on his lap a bowl of hard candy. He had gotten cold
when he lost his glove and wandered towards the lodge crying. A ski
instructor spotted the child and brought him inside for a little R&R.

I stayed cool. I didn't fall to my knees and blubber. I didn't
wring his burrito chomping neck. I calmly told him, "OK, Zach,
let's go, your new parents are expecting you home for dinner."

I marvel at how we humans tolerate each other. The twisted strands of DNA that help forge our personalities make us all free-spirited snowflakes, no two alike, and yet from sandbox to conference room we manage to avoid kicking sand at each other...most of the time. Our genetic yearning for individuality seems tempered by an equally strong, mitigating need for social interaction.

And so….

A quick tutorial on the collaboration phenom "wiki", culled from the most fruitful example of wikidom, "wikipedia:

Philosophical meat has been added to wiki bones by shoe-horning a bit of zen into the practice:

Wabi - Sabi is the beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.
It is the beauty of things modest and humble.
It is the beauty of things unconventional.
It is the essence of wiki.

Have you thought “So what”, yet?

Here’s an imperfect balance of wiki form and bibliographic function called “Wikindx”. If your team periodically publishes web and hard-copy bibliographies, Wikindx can provide a shared space for compilation.

Maternally nestled in the laurel and pine

cleavage of an Allegheny Mountain valley is

man-made Lake Westmoreland.

Locals host an annual arts and crafts festival.

The menu at the food kiosks reads like a Klingon brunch:

* pieorgies
* halupki
* haluski
* kolbassi

We're staying at a nearby Knights Inn.

The only motel in America with 4 ft. ceilings.

I guess folks were shorter in medieval time.

My room has a plaque.

It reads, "Guenivere slept here".

No surprise,

I've heard she was bedded just about everywhere.