Zeitgeist

Just a few links:

The video archives from Matrix: Fini/Bertinotti, Berlusconi/Diliberto - Read more at www.matrix.mediaset.it/...

The Italian Political compass: Voi Seiete Qui

And the cool bunch of people behind it: OpenPolis - these guys are setting up a mechanism to monitor politics, politicians and the movements in opinions and values.

Tintadirosso is a beautiful beautiful place in the heart of Napoli

Read more at www.tintadirosso.it/

How to monitor the censors.. sweet!

Read more at www.theglobeandmail.com...

Here is the Melog Blog!

Read more at www.golem.ilcannocchial...

This is great great stuff.

Gianluca Nicoletti gives a truly fresh new perspective on things.

I found out he is also the mind behind my beloved rai-click service!

Read more at www.radio24.ilsole24ore...

LITTLE BOXES

Words and music by Malvina Reynolds

Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes all the same,
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses
All went to the university
Where they were put in boxes
And they came out all the same
And there's doctors and lawyers
And business executives
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course
And drink their martinis dry
And they all have pretty children
And the children go to school,
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university
Where they are put in boxes
And they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business
And marry and raise a family
In boxes made of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same,
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same.

Words and music by Malvina Reynolds.
Copyright 1962, Schroder Music Company

Read more at www.sisterschoice.com/e...

Just for once, this makes me proud of Italy.

Check out the wealth of the archives of the Istituto Luce.

Read more at www.archivioluce.com/

A friend recently called me up asking my help to enhance the ties of some activist groups he is touch with, by using the web.

I have been reading a bit about the web2.0, I had a quick brush with Ning and I mused on philosophical issues.

Now, it is the right time to act.

I am pretty certain that what I want to do is to not start some kind of website project from scratch.

The group already has a small website, acting as a web frontend for the organization, but I would rather go for existing services or a mush-up rather then trying to run the infrastructure on our own.The other point is that, while I am very willing to spend time to create new stuff and put ideas together, I am not willing to put much effort into the maintenance.

I also believe this is a chore that the community itself should take care of, learning how to live their own spaces and take care of them.I can see that on the web there are plenty of web2.0 apps, but what I see missing is some kind of glue to put together what I need into a single mushup.

The lack of a single sign-on is particularly critical.

We could go around this, by gathering user subscription requests through the main site and then automate subscriptions to all the different sites of the mush-up, making sure the usernames and passwords are unique.

However this is both labour intensive and it raises some doubts from a privacy point of view. What I am doing now is to look for a all-in-one community container.

Something that provides single sign on to a number of basic services, which allows html customization and enhancements, and that allows easy administration of the system.

These are some promising links that I have found:

• TechSoup
• VolunteerNet
• Online Community Toolkit (?)

Simple to the point web site downloader.

I looked at several website copiers and I installed and uninstalled 7 of them before settling for HTTrack.

Read more at www.httrack.com/

This might look like a silly fashion story, but in my opinion it's an important first.  When Levi's maes jeans explicitly shaped so that they can house an iPod, it means that that the virtual is taking more and more mindshare.

In true millenarist style I could say that This is a Sign of the Impending TechnoRapture .

You might have already read about the PriceRitePhoto episode .

To make a long story short, this camera dealer in NY was trying a cheap scam on people and when a guy confronted him he started becoming seriously abusive.   Now, this guy was also a blogger and he denounced what had happened on his blog.

News of the event went out to digg and within hours the 'people of the web' started taking action.  Mostly they started talking about it.  Within a month the story of the event has gone on the NY Times and PriceRitePhoto seems to have gone out of business.

To me this event represents the first sign of a shift of power  to the community.  For the first time people have the communication resources to coordinate their efforts and act together for what they believe it.  Even more important, abuses can be denounced and made clearly visible.

Platial is the beginning of the Manyfold, one facet of the emerging GeoWeb.

Imagine if you could tag the physical world with text, pictures and voice, as you are there experiencing it. Imagine if you could surf the soul of a place from the impressions of people that have experienced it on the web. The 'real' world will merge with the noosphere, as information and material objects start interleaving.

You don't like the service in a cafè? As soon as you leave it you give it a negative rate. The next customer approaching the place will see your negative review overlayed to the place, if she is tuned on your layer of broadcasting, on your 'fold'.

You will be able to leave poems hanging from the branches of a tree under the window of your loved one, and the tree will sing them to her in the morning, as she walks in front of it.

You can see battles raging in the streets of french medieval towns, and you can follow legionnaires from old movies along the streets of rome.

You can see people in the park coloured according to their interest groups or according to the topics they would like to discuss. Maybe an engine will suggest that two of you have an interest in common and will gently suggest to introduce you to each other.

Complex systems and emergent behaviours in the management of a 'natural' park

Read more about Fear, Complexity, Environmental Management in the 21st Century at www.michaelcrichton.com...