open textbook

textbook: "openly
copyrighted (copylefted) textbooks" - a nice idea, information wants to be free, but how will this impact authors? At least in Norway a lot of the local books are written by the professors, partially as a way to supplement their salary, partially to adapt the material based on their actual experiences with students - how to present the difficult subjects, how to create suitable examples..... would probably be good as a basis - add local variations, excercizes and so on.

Darwin Mag

What Makes Some Startups Succeed?: "venture investing is a long, hard road" - isn't that the truth.

"In 93 percent of the cases, the strategy that a company emerges with (at exit) is completely different from the strategy it set out to implement" - now if THAT isn't a valid argument for Mintzbergs [lots of pdf, do google] "emergent strategy" concept, I don't know what is... you can plan, but then you have to adapt/evolve or you are just so many pages dusting down in a binder!

Give Food for Free

The Hunger Site : 5,2 million cups by clicks in 2003- not too bad, but there is still room for more

building Blocks -- small and large

lego animation still playing, chris salt was featured - a brilliant mix of star wars and monty python... nobody expects the joke... his site was apparently hit so hard by the coverage that he had to scale down quality and dl versions! And I can understand it - the link or the movie is hitting the mails later.


first one and now lexus using both traditional combustion and electrical power [with incentives - the future is all mixed up?]

hafnium 178 m2 - something radioactive? but what? and why???? "control rods of nuclear reactors" [1]
discovered by a Dane. nice one!

...and the sun is here for another 4 minutes today - 6h 26m of "daylight"...

Innovation on demand

Innovation Network - 9 by 4 matrix of pictures and somewhat related quotes... good fun i guess

other mentioned in the poynter story include a real old one at ron reason - held in 1998! way... and then there is the almost overwhelming selection at about now all you need is some time to explore it?

(digression: kudoz to hotmail for adding Delete at the bottom of their new design - which was otherwise rather pleasing)

Winter falling down

Been snowing for a couple of days now. After a rainy and bleak xmas, it is once again white and postcard-ish outside.

"They connected with me because I looked like them" - doesn't take much, does it? Is he an artist? Definetly. A poet? Probably, but not in the old classic sense. But a journalsit? Well, maybe a columnist... putting his opinions out there, pushing it to the limit and donning different hats (Slim, E, MM) to put a different spin on the big picture.

[Listening to: White America - Eminem - The Eminem Show]

"till the fire inside dies and expires at thirty" - never trust anyone over thirty was the old hippie slogan in the sixties... are we still old at the big 3.0 ? Or do we refuse to grow up - even if we have to? With teens becoming parents, and 35 year olds working for half the year in order to backpack - how will the society keep it up?


But then there is the issue of online connectivity again, been a while since it has been a problem, but obviously it is back................. aaargh.... so much to check out today.... (yep, been burrowing through wired again)


regarding the music - just love the look of those Harman multimedia speakers, the jbl seee-through stuffffff.... maybe need to splurge on them? Or just connect this blackbox to the regular surround system - and get some proper "legs" for the speakers? Hmmm
then i could kick back with gorillaz and Kid Koala- the sketching dj... a real web "page".


Oh well, there is always fantasy - or scifi anyway, with Robota looking really cool
[note to self: when is the time right to watch the animatrix shorts downloaded.... or the rest of Broken Saints? maybe if or when (?) we get an Epson projector - Reallllly slow link, read something else while it builds the page...]

[filling my head with the beats of: The way I am - Eminem ]

- and boom outside, another rocket went off. Nope, not a warzone, just leftovers from New Years Eve... when it started at eight in the evening and went total blanket coverage for 25 minutes - a we have a quite good view over a large expanse of the city burbs. Is it the best way to spend millions? Is it the bang or the beauty they want? And how much do you really see when you're (totaly sober yeah right) lighting it up? Ba-boom... probably just as good to wait a week (been three ++ every night since), at least then you see which one is yours and can enjoy it a bit.

Another note - wrote about it some time ago - but heard it again tonight (written last night offline, posted this morning) Westside Connection with "Bow Down", part of the NWA legacy - a dobule cd. Kickin' beats and catchy ref. BOW down - feel the bass, softer each of the three times. Then there is the contrasting views but similar bases of Mack 10 (Only in Cali.) and 2PAC (Cali. Love). Modern classics and sign of the times.

Strategic?

Kaplan and Norton (of Balanced Scorecard fame) are moving on - their new new thing is strat map, with a book coming early next year. Interesting Q&A article on their view, and made me think - since it after all "my" subject (did my paper on different methods and framework, spent a couple of years consulting related to it - but not "pure" enough)

"Norton: A strategy map is a model of how an organization creates value." Making a structure - and "maspping" it to other terms, ie level 1 = mision, level 2 = vision... sound a lot like the work by Hax & Majluf (amazon and used by Sloan/MIT) - putting a bigger framework on the varying operational strategies and buzzes

"75 % of a company's value is in intangible assets that cannot be measured by financial systems.
Things like people, data, processes, brand, customer relationships, innovation and culture"

- and how large a share of the total market cap is based on percived and potential future value? Oh yes, you see it every time there is a "warning" issued - stock plunge because the lucky number didn't come up (this time anyway)


...and the sun isn't up yet - dark in winter up north...

Google groping?

Google funk: so now google creeps out of the browser, and into the taskbar. three keys and off you go searching whenever whatever... nifty... have been using a Mac a lot this fall and the intergrated search in Safari (along with tabbed windows) was a beauty. But - the (updated) toolbar is even better. Instant blogging and blocked pop-ups. On the other hand - I do understand why some say it is going to far, .net ran a story [1, 2] called Google Power. Bottom line?

When ever a company gets big - people feel that it is changing, and maybe not exactly like they think it should. For better or worse? Too soon to tell - not everyone has to end up a nasty monopoly just becuase they grow and enhance their offering step by step!