How many sites can you spend time on? How many YouTube videos and Facebook friends can you fit into a reasonable time online? Currently Norway is swept into a social networking frenzy, first by "Nettby" - from the largest paper (and the largest online site) VG. In a short span it grew from nothing into 150 000 users and high profile coverage during the captial markets day for Schibsted. And now Facebook has apparently passed 170 000 Norwegian users, up from 3000 in January.
I'm reading "Linked" (or for the full explanatory tagline title; "How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means") It is a book from late 2002 and at one point Barabási talks about the "six degrees" phenomenon and how "we don't have a social search engine so we may never know the real number". And now just a few years down the line we are pretty close. At least if it was easy (or feasible) to map the online part of the world by mixing MySpace, WOW, LinkedIn, blogs and comments (Technorati) into one large cloud of interconnected "metaverses". Something for Yahoo Pipes to do as their next proof of concept?
Second Life has also been in the news quite a bit, but it seems to have more value as a marketing buzz word than as a destination (send out a release about doing something in SL and get coverage, rather than getting the attention in SL itself). Like this post from 3point on Bunnies in bits... more than a month before the (possible/plausible) event or entrance kicking off.
too cute
Moving over too pure toys - and buzz machines - the Pleo robot dino just looks way to nice! It was covered in Wired and PC Mag has a interesting hands-on. The choice of dino species was adapted based on the need for all his new high tech innards - so stubby legs and a thick neck is a perfect match. Not to mention that it makes for a cute little critter. (Image from Ugobe, creators of Pleo)
Also in the cute category is the story of robot chicklets from NXTbot - coming from Sega (who needs to make a game console when you can get this kind of attention?)
NXT is the new version of the Mindstorms "make your own robot" kit from Lego - which at $250 is best suited for the slightly older geek. With the more "regular" pieces there is no problem making fanciful mech style creations - like this APU from the Matrix movies, or the Lego IP mecha setting called Exo Force. And here the power of the net as both a source for off line activities and for stealing time is quite visible; building instructions or browsing 30,790 creations?
As for NXT- it would be fun to pick up a set and make a small robot, but I just don’t see the time for delving into it properly on the horizon - too many other options and ideas. Like building that Exo Force combination model ;D
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...and the sun is a postcard from tomorrow...
