25 October 2009

Summary of this week 18 Oct - 24 Oct

From my Diigo Bookmark this week. Please also feel free to follow me on twitter at http://twitter.com/Web_Evolution


 

[Learning]
http://www.oercommons.org/  
http://oerblogs.org/ 
http://p2pfoundation.net/Open_Educational_Resources#The_Wiki_Model


In a brave new world of learning, OER content is made free to use or share, and in some cases, to change and share again, made possible through licensing, so that both teachers and learners can share what they know.
OER Blogs is attempting to unite the world of Open Educational Resources
Vast amount of open educational resources mostly available in English.


http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/resources/publications/code_of_best_practices_in_fair_use_for_opencourseware1

This document is a code of best practices designed to help those preparing OpenCourseWare (OCW) to interpret and apply fair use under United States copyright law. The OCW movement, which is part of the larger Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, was pioneered in 2002, when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched its OpenCourseWare initiative, making course materials available in digital form on a free and open basis to all. In 2005, MIT helped to organize with the support of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation a group of not-for-profit organizations interested in following the OpenCourseWare model and standardizing the delivery of OCW material. This group of institutions, known as the OCW Consortium (OCWC), has grown into a concern of more than 200 universities worldwide promoting universal access to knowledge on a nonprofit basis. The mission of OCWC is “to advance formal and informal learning through the worldwide sharing and use of free, open, high-quality educational materials organized as courses.”


http://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/libraryintelligencer/2009/10/16/student-coalition-for-open-access-solidifies-now-represents-over-5-million-students-internationally/

Washington DC – The student Right to Research Coalition, a group of national, international, and local student associations that advocate for governments, universities, and researchers to adopt Open Access practices, has now grown to include some of the most prominent student organizations from the United States and across the world. The recent addition of 8 new organizations brings the number of students represented by the coalition to over 5 million, demonstrating the broad, passionate support Open Access enjoys from the student community.
Additions to the coalition since its launch this summer include: the United States Student Association (USSA), the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students (NAGPS), the National Graduate Council of the Canadian Federation of Students, the International Association of Political Science Students, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Graduate Student Council, the University of Minnesota Graduate and Professional Student Assembly, the University of Nebraska
- Lincoln Graduate Student Association, and the Student Government Association of St. Olaf College.

“Our core mission is to protect and enhance students’ access to education,” said Angela Peoples, USSA’s Legislative Director, noting her organization’s motivation for joining the coalition. “We believe Open Access plays a crucial role in ensuring that all students have access to the academic research on which their education depends.”
 More information on this can be available here



http://www.openculture.com/2009/06/intelligent_video_the_top_cultural_and_educational_video_sites.html

Looking for great cultural and educational video? Then you’ve come to the right place. Below, we have compiled a list of 46 sites that feature intelligent videos. This list was produced with the help of our faithful readers, and it will grow over time. If you find it useful, please share it as widely as you can. And if we’re missing good sites, please list them in the comments below.
A massive list of educational videos. 


[Science]
http://www.universetoday.com/carnival-of-space/
If you run a space/astronomy related blog, and would like to get more awareness, participate in the Carnival of Space. Every week, a different webmaster or blogger hosts the carnival, showcasing articles written on the topic of space.
There are currently 125 posts related to space/astronomy.  Most of them are quite thorough and it gives the impression that the day when science magazines are mostly replaced by individual/collective science blogs may not be so far. 


http://mathoverflow.net/
A place for mathematicians to ask and answer questions.
A good number of mathematical questions asked, viewed and answered.  A specific way to harness crowd sourced wisdom.


http://www.galaxyzooforum.org/
 Galaxy Zoo's very active forum. 


http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.3926
Abstract: The Hales-Jewett theorem asserts that for every r and every k there exists n such that every r-colouring of the n-dimensional grid {1,...,k}^n contains a combinatorial line. This result is a generalization of van der Waerden's theorem, and it is one of the fundamental results of Ramsey theory. The theorem of van der Waerden has a famous density version, conjectured by Erdos and Turan in 1936, proved by Szemeredi in 1975, and given a different proof by Furstenberg in 1977. The Hales-Jewett theorem has a density version as well, proved by Furstenberg and Katznelson in 1991 by means of a significant extension of the ergodic techniques that had been pioneered by Furstenberg in his proof of Szemeredi's theorem. In this paper, we give the first elementary proof of the theorem of Furstenberg and Katznelson, and the first to provide a quantitative bound on how large n needs to be. In particular, we show that a subset of {1,2,3}^n of density delta contains a combinatorial line if n is at least a tower of 2's of height O(1/delta^3). Our proof is reasonably simple: indeed, it gives what is arguably the simplest known proof of Szemeredi's theorem.
 The first formaly published paper born through the polymath project


[Mobile]
http://thefinanser.co.uk/fsclub/2009/10/numbers-part-17-mobile-money.html

  • The market for mobile applications, or apps, will become "as big as the internet", peaking at 10 million apps in 2020 according to Symbian.
  • CGAP produced a recent survey on Financial Access and found that there are 6.2 billion bank accounts worldwide - more than one for every person on the planet - except that 70% of adults in developing countries do not use formal financial services, or are unbanked, compared to 20% of those in developed countries.
  • Of the 139 countries that CGAP surveyed, only 40 reported that they encourage or mandate government transfers through the banking system; 14 of these are high-income countries and 10 countries in Latin America. Few countries in other regions are promoting such transfers.
  • The survey predicts that the mobile payments market could be worth as much as £365 billion by 2013, with 110 million users in Europe alone by 2014.
  • By the year 2012 CGAP and GSMA estimate there will be 1.7 billion people with a mobile phone but not a bank account and as many as 364 million unbanked people could be reached by agent-networked banking through mobile phones.
  • CGAP estimate that mobile financial services to poor people in emerging economies will increase from nothing to $5 billion in 2012.
  • 40% of Kenyan households have used M-PESA as of late 2008, a figure announced by Caroline Pulver of FSD Kenya as she unveiled the findings of their survey (see pdf)
  • Electronic payments deliver cost savings of at least 1% of a country’s GDP when compared to paper, according to Visa.
  • Monitise, the mobile money network, has just signed up their millionth customer and are processing 25 million transactions per annum.
Some useful stats on mobile money in the future.  More information available here




[Open Access]
 http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Events_celebrating_Open_Access_Week
http://www.openaccessweek.org/
Information on open access week (19 Oct-23 Oct, 2009) celebrated worldwide. 



http://www.openaccessweek.org/2009/10/19/harnessing-openness-to-improve-research-committee-on-economic-development-report/
The Committee on Economic Development, which is dedicated to policy research on major economic and social issues and represents senior corporate executives and university leaders, will soon release a new report entitled, “Harnessing openness to improve research, teaching and learning in higher education.” The report analyzes how the institutions and processes of higher education can benefit from the application of greater openness through digital technologies.

 The report can be obtained here.


http://yaleisp.org/publications/a2kresearch/
Open access in developing countries, where the dissemination of cheaply available educational resources is crucial for healthy social development.




[Google]
 http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/10/20/google-envisions-10-million-servers/
Google never says how many servers are running in its data centers. But a recent presentation by a Google engineer shows that the company is preparing to manage as many as 10 million servers in the future.
In his presentation (link via James Hamilton), Dean also discussed a new storage and computation system called Spanner, which will seek to automate management of Google services across multiple data centers. That includes automated allocation of resources across “entire fleets of machines.”

Dean says Spanner will be designed for a future scale of “106 to 107 machines,” meaning 1 million to 10 million machines. The goal will be “automatic, dynamic world-wide placement of data & computation to minimize latency or cost.”

http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/19/android-google-military-technology-wireless-raytheon.html?partner=technology_newsletter
Google's mobile operating system Android has won plenty of adherents among cellphone makers and gadget manufacturers since its 2007 debut. Now defense contractor Raytheon is preparing it for a more urgent mission: saving lives in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Using Android software tools, Raytheon ( RTN - news - people ) engineers built a basic application for military personnel that combines maps with a buddy list. Raytheon calls the entire framework the Raytheon Android Tactical System, or RATS for short. Mark Bigham, a vice president of business development in Raytheon's Intelligence and Information Systems unit, says the company selected Android because its open-source nature made developing applications easy.
Raytheon's support adds a new dimension to the recent Android hype. In early October, researcher Gartner said Android could be the second-largest smartphone platform--overtaking Apple ( AAPL - news - people ) and its iPhone--by 2012.


http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/rt-google-tweets-and-updates-and-search.html
Given this new type of information and its value to search, we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you'll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.
 Google's new social search feature was also annouced at Web2.0 Summit.  



[Finance]
 http://www.wikinvest.com/
http://www.tracked.com/
http://clanglois.blogs.com/internet_banking/2009/10/finovate-2009-wrap-up.html
http://clanglois.blogs.com/internet_banking/2009/10/visible-banking-advanta-finovate09-interview-ami-kassar.html
Some examples of newly emerging financial tools harnessing the power of the web.




[Media]
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1004022708
NEW YORK Yahoo, CNN and MSNBC still topped the chart, but in one surprising shift The Huffington Post surpassed Washingtonpost.com in unique users in the month of September, new data from Nielsen Online reveals. 
Traditional media being replaced by new generation media. 


http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/10/new-york-times-still-uncertain-on-charging-sets-seven-digital-priorities/
  1. the future role of Times Topics and other “living articles”
  2. openness of Times content, integration of non-Times content, and social media
  3. integration of print and digital operations, particularly for department heads
  4. improved collaboration between technologists and the newsroom
  5. thinking “web first”
  6. a stronger strategy for cell phones and other mobile devices
  7. redesigning Times article pages to create “an engine of engagement”
One of the largest newspaper companies has readmitted that going against the web would be a bad move.


[Health]
http://jopm.org/index.php/jpm

Our mission is to transform the culture of medicine to be more participatory. This special introductory issue is a collection of essays that will serve as the 'launch pad' from which the journal will grow. We invite you to participate as we create a robust journal to empower and connect patients, caregivers, and health professionals.

[Micro Payment]
 http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/paypal-hopes-open-platform-will-spur-innovation/?partner=rss&emc=rss
PayPal imagines a future in which cash is obsolete, as are wallets. We will buy movie tickets by touching a movie poster on the street and order drinks from a touchscreen embedded in the bar.


In PayPal’s futuristic world, software developers outside the company will create these alternate ways to pay using PayPal’s technology. That future could come as soon as Nov. 3, when PayPal will open its platform to developers who want to build payment applications.
PayPal has been working with software developers at start-ups, mobile-device manufacturers and huge business software and hardware companies, Mr. Thompson said. “Payment innovation needs to move from the hands of a few big entities to the hands of many,” he said. 
During the pilot period, Research in Motion has been using PayPal technology to collect payments from BlackBerry users when they make purchases from the app store, and Twitpay has been using it to to run its service, which lets people transfer money using Twitter. 
Mobile payment/money is not only important for people in developed nations in that it facilitates payment and make their lives more convenient, but also for people in economically less developed countries by possibly enabling them to skip the physical money phase and jump straight onto the same ground as the West. It might further advance globalization.


http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/designing-obama-few-dollars-time

Reflections upon the Obama campaign's design work? A crowdsourced fundraising effort? Total techPres bait, but Obama campaign design director Scott Thomas is involved in an intriguing quest. Wanting to chronicle the art and design that both was created by the Obama for America campaign and developed organically by supporters, but to put out a book with considerable production values, Thomas decided to avoid traditional publisher, go DIY, and fundraise himself for the production of Designing Obama -- using Kickstarter, what Thomas calls an "Obama-like fundraising model."

Think few people would prepay $10 for a digital version, or $50 or more for a print version of a book they haven't seen yet? With 13 days to go, 883 backers have contributed $57,000 of the $65,000 target Thomas set for the first run of the book.
This is so Obama-way to collect money. 93% has already been funded at the moment.





[Government]
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/open-city-new-york-an-update-by-matt-cooperrider/2009/10/24
The Open Planning Project (TOPP), one of the organizations mentioned in Ms. Chen’s article, has been a major driver of the open data movement. They have produced useful one-off applications, such as FixCity.org, which crowdsources potential locations for new bike racks thus speeding their installation. They have also acted as stewards of open standards in the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) community and, more recently, the Open 311 community. Mayor Bloomberg pioneered the 311 non-emergency telephone-based citizen information service, but has been slow to open up the data for mashups by eager civic hackers. Washington D.C. was the first to move on this, and TOPP is now stewarding the effort at Open311.org to create a standard for all Open311 APIs in any city.
On how the NewYorkCity, one of the largest mega cities in the world, is now trying to incorporate the power of the web into their city management.







[Others]
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/16/2009-state-of-the-blogosphere-the-full-blogworld-presentation/
Some stats on blog by Technorati.


http://sharek961.org/
Sharek961 empowers Lebanese citizens to promote transparency by sending in eyewitness reports on all election-related incidents or issues. People across Lebanon can send in reports through SMS, email, and the web.
Sharek961 is intended to improve transparency and accountability through civic participation. Information you send in is made available to all citizens, media outlets, and organizations to view publicly online.
An example of social media being used to bring transformation into politics in the middle east.


http://www.web2summit.com/web2009/public/content/news-coverage
Web2.0 Summit News and Coverage.


http://digital.venturebeat.com/2009/10/22/web-20-teens-love-facebook-and-apple-confused-by-twitter/
This may be obvious to many of you, but I was also struck by how isolated the teens seemed from all the cool new tech that Silicon Valley nerds are excited about. None of them owned an iPhone, or any of the newer smartphones. They still used Google for all their web searches and only seemed vaguely aware of Microsoft’s search engine Bing. And while almost everyone I know uses Gmail for their personal email, one teen (a boy) declared, “Hot girls use Hotmail.”
So how seriously should we take all these comments? Do they represent the future of the web? Well, maybe not — beyond the obvious caveat that these are just five teens, The New York Times has noted that many of the most popular sites on the web have become hits through an adult audience, so the importance of teens may be overstated.
 This cannot be more true. Few non-geeky young people are excited about what many adults are so enthusiastic about.

18 October 2009

Summary of this week 12 Oct - 17 Oct

From my Diigo bookmarks this week.


[Government] 
http://ogdisdk.cloudapp.net/

The Open Government Data Initiative (OGDI) is an initiative led by Microsoft Public Sector Developer Evangelism teamExternal Link. OGDI uses the Azure Services PlatformExternal Link to make it easier to publish and use a wide variety of public data from government agencies. OGDI is also a free, open source ‘starter kit’ (coming soon) with code that can be used to publish data on the Internet in a Web-friendly format with easy-to-use, open API's. OGDI-based web API’s can be accessed from a variety of client technologies such as Silverlight, Flash, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, mapping web sites, etc.
The government's data has become more open, transparent and accessible for developers. Participation by such a huge player as Microsoft in OGDI will add more significance to this already widely embraced and hotly debated initiative.


http://thedextrousweb.com/2009/10/the-wraps-come-off-data-gov-uk/
The site is a blend of the US’s equivalent, data.gov, and Directgov | Innovate. It’s got a listing of available data packages, powered by the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network, and user-generated lists of apps and new ideas. This is just right: the data you need, combined with a way to promote the things you make and a place to get ideas if you’ve got itchy typing fingers but lack inspiration.
The UK government has also jumped into the open government initiative. Will it keep successfully spreading into other countries at this rapid space, or is there still more to consider as Lawrence Lassig argues there is in his rather controversial article.


[Law]
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/10/lawgov-americas-operating-syst.html
http://public.resource.org/law.gov/

Law.Gov is an effort to create a report documenting exactly what it would take to create a distributed registry and repository of all primary legal materials in the United States.
Law.Gov would be similar to Data.Gov, providing bulk data and feeds to commercial, non-commercial, and governmental organizations wishing to build web sites, operate legal information services, or otherwise use the raw materials of our democracy.
A similar attempt to Data.Gov in the law field, advocated by the founder of the Public.Resource.Org.


[Cloud Computing]
http://www.infoworld.com/print/95266
[ For more on Google's long-term cloud play, see "Google at 11: Taking the battle to Microsoft [5]" and "Google set to take on collaboration giants [6]." | Is our Internet future in danger? [7] See InfoWorld's special report on whether the Net's infrastructure can handle projected demand. ]
What got my attention this week was a study to be formally presented on Oct. 19 of Internet usage by Arbor Networks, which found that just 100 ASNs (autonomous system numbers) out of about 35,000 account for some 60 percent of traffic on the public Internet. Put another way, out of the 40,000 routed sites in the Internet, 30 large companies now generate and consume a disproportionate 30 percent of all Internet traffic, according to the two-year study.
These days, networks are far more likely to be interconnected. On one hand, these networks are more efficient and generally more robust. However, because many are interconnected -- McPherson calls that a "flattening of the Internet" -- when a big one goes down, lots and lots of sites are affected. The results can be far-reaching.
This concentration of power on the internet on a small number of (commercial) players can turn out to be highly problematic. Will cloud computing be still achievable and should it still be what the future web is like after the Sidekick fiasco and intermittently occuring Gmail outages?


[Global]
・http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/oct/14/finland-broadband
The Finnish government has become the first in the world to make broadband internet access a legal right.
According to local reports, the Ministry of Transport and Communications in Helsinki has pushed through a law that will force telecommunications providers to offer high speed internet connections to all of the country's 5.3 million citizens.
Will other countries follow Finland's suit, enabling far broader populations than ever before to have access to the web? This right might become on of the most fundamental ones in the further developing knowledge economy.


http://mohamedn.com/node/596
We've just flipped the switch on Al Jazeera Blogs (http://blogs.aljazeera.net). This is the first new product I've launched since taking over the Al Jazeera English website, so am reasonably excited about it (just reasonably, since we're fashionably late to the party but the fantastic content will make up for it).
Another example of a local web narrowing the gap between the global web.


[Micro Payment]
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/09/mobile-banks-in-the-developing-world-prove-simpler-is-better.html
Recent initiatives designed to make U.S. consumer financial products simpler and intelligible to customers, reminds me of a study we did on Mobile Banks in the developing world. Designed to work on the simplest mobile devices and originally targeting the unbanked, mobile banks evolved from simple services (transfer of mobile air time) to become widely used money-transfer and mobile payment systems. In the Philippines, over $100M flows through the GCASH system daily. GCASH and rival SmartMoney are accepted in establishments that take credit cards, giving the unbanked the ability to conduct cashless transactions, a benefit previously limited to credit card customers. In Kenya, the number of transactions that flow through M-PESA is comparable to the number of all ATM transactions in the country.
A key observation we gleaned when we studied Mobile Banks in the developing world is that the most successful services not only have easy-to-use products with low transaction fees, the terms and fees involved are spelled out clearly. The financial products they offer are by design easy for consumers to understand. A recent CGAP survey found that 1 in 6 mobile banking users in the Philippines previously had traditional bank accounts, and 7 in 10 viewed mobile banking services as easy to use.
Many examples of micro payment initiatives. Micro + a large number of participants = something. Historically, a lot of similar projects emerged and failed, but with mobile phones having more prevalent globally as ever before, even possessed by the most economically deprived in African countries, this time "something" can be of real significance.


http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/06/mechanical-turk-best-practices.html
Many examples of how Amazon Mechanical Turks is being used.


http://crowdflower.com/
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/10/mechanical-turk-on-iphone-provides-work-for-refugees.html
Mechanical Turk service provider CrowdFlower and microwork non-profit Samasource have teamed up to make their services available to iPhone users. Users of CrowdFlower's mechanical turk platform can now opt to send their tasks to iPhone users. Previously, CrowdFlower users could choose between Amazon mechanical turks or CrowdFlower's stable of turks.
Another example of good Amazon Mechanical Turks use.


[Google]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/15/google-editions-google-to_n_321997.html

FRANKFURT -- Google Inc. is launching a new service for booksellers next year called Google Editions, which will let readers buy books and read them anywhere on gadgets ranging from cell phones to possibly e-book devices.
What will happen to Google's already shaky relationship with stakeholders in the publishing industry and law enforcement parties.

[Science]
http://michaelnielsen.org/polymath1/index.php?title=Polymath1
A guideline for a polymath collaborative science project.


http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7266/full/461879a.html
On 27 January 2009, one of us — Gowers — used his blog to announce an unusual experiment. The Polymath Project had a conventional scientific goal: to attack an unsolved problem in mathematics. But it also had the more ambitious goal of doing mathematical research in a new way. Inspired by open-source enterprises such as Linux and Wikipedia, it used blogs and a wiki to mediate a fully open collaboration. Anyone in the world could follow along and, if they wished, make a contribution. The blogs and wiki functioned as a collective short-term working memory, a conversational commons for the rapid-fire exchange and improvement of ideas. 

The project began with Gowers posting a description of the problem, pointers to background materials and a preliminary list of rules for collaboration (see http://go.nature.com/DrCmnC). These rules helped to create a polite, respectful atmosphere, and encouraged people to share a single idea in each comment, even if the idea was not fully developed. This lowered the barrier to contribution and kept the conversation informal.
Over the next 37 days, 27 people contributed approximately 800 substantive comments, containing 170,000 words. No one was specifically invited to participate: anybody, from graduate student to professional mathematician, could provide input on any aspect. Nielsen set up the wiki to distil notable insights from the blog discussions. The project received commentary on at least 16 blogs, reached the front page of the Slashdot technology-news aggregator, and spawned a closely related project on Tao's blog.
The process raises questions about authorship: it is difficult to set a hard-and-fast bar for authorship without causing contention or discouraging participation. What credit should be given to contributors with just a single insightful contribution, or to a contributor who is prolific but not insightful? As a provisional solution, the project is signing papers with a group pseudonym, 'DHJ Polymath', and a link to the full working record. One advantage of Polymath-style collaborations is that because all contributions are out in the open, it is transparent what any given person contributed. If it is necessary to assess the achievements of a Polymath contributor, then this may be done primarily through letters of recommendation, as is done already in particle physics, where papers can have hundreds of authors.
The project also raises questions about preservation. The main working record of the Polymath Project is spread across two blogs and a wiki, leaving it vulnerable should any of those sites disappear. In 2007, the US Library of Congress implemented a programme to preserve blogs by people in the legal profession; a similar but broader programme is needed to preserve research blogs and wikis.
Outside mathematics, open-source approaches have only slowly been adopted by scientists. One area in which they are being used is synthetic biology. DNA for the design of living organisms is specified digitally and uploaded to an online repository such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Registry of Standard Biological Parts. Other groups may use those designs in their laboratories and, if they wish, contribute improved designs back to the registry. The registry contains more than 3,200 parts, deposited by more than 100 groups. Discoveries have led to many scientific papers, including a 2008 study showing that most parts are not primitive but rather build on simpler parts (J. Peccoud et al. PLoS ONE 3, e2671; 2008). Open-source biology and open-source mathematics thus both show how science can be done using a gradual aggregation of insights from people with diverse expertise.
Similar open-source techniques could be applied in fields such as theoretical physics and computer science, where the raw materials are informational and can be freely shared online. The application of open-source techniques to experimental work is more constrained, because control of experimental equipment is often difficult to share. But open sharing of experimental data does at least allow open data analysis. The widespread adoption of such open-source techniques will require significant cultural changes in science, as well as the development of new online tools. We believe that this will lead to the widespread use of mass collaboration in many fields of science, and that mass collaboration will extend the limits of human problem-solving ability.

An Nature article on how collaborative science (especially observable in mathematics at the moment) can be as viable as or even more efficient than conventional science. Blog, Wiki, open scientific journals are most favorably being used.

http://www.jove.com/
Good resources of scientific experiments.


[Health]
http://participatorymedicine.org/journal/
http://e-patients.net/archives/2009/10/why-the-journal-of-participatory-medicine.html
The Journal of Participatory Medicine, slated to launch in fall 2009, will explore the extent to which shared decision-making in health care, and deep patient engagement, affect outcomes.  Our mission is to transform the culture of medicine to be more participatory. We  believe that doing so, as the saying goes, will take a village - perhaps even a large metropolitan area! JPM constitutes a major investment of time and talent in community development. White Paper e-Patients: How TheyCan Help Us Heal Healthcare (PDF, 977 Kb)
There is a thorough review on Health2.0 in the PDF form available.


[Language]
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/google-translator-toolkit-and-minority.html
  Today, we've added 285 new languages to Google Translator Toolkit, bringing the total number of languages supported by this product to 345 — and making it possible to translate between 10,664 language pairs. Google Translator Toolkit is a language translation service for professional and amateur translators that builds on Google Translate and makes translation faster and easier.

In addition, we've made the Translator Toolkit interface available in 35 languages, so that more people can access the service in their own language.
Translation memories and glossaries, when shared across members of a language community, can help unify the language’s written form, increasing translation speed and quality of documents published in that language and preserving the language in the long run.
Because computer-aided translation can improve translation speed and quality, translators become more productive. When automatic translation is available, as it is for 87 of Google Translator Toolkit's 345 languages, it increases speed further by producing instant translations that people can use as a starting point for their work. And at Google, we use these human translations to improve the translation algorithm of Google Translate over time, creating a virtuous cycle that benefits both human translators and machine translation.
Online presence of small languages keeps languages relevant in the age of the Internet and globalization, encouraging minority language use by children, who are ultimately responsible for bringing the language to future generations.
Will it ever become possible to make machine translation between two (or more) languages so sophisticated as to make us feel as though we're communicating with each other in the same language? Some insights about the (new) science behind Google can be found here.

[Learning]
http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=ddnm32rw_292hs7r3m29
An example of how freely available online learning resources are being used in real highschool class activities.


[Others]
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/10/wolframalpha-api-to-be-release.html
We've just been told that the public API for Wolfram Alpha will be made available later today. The API documentation will be available at http://products.wolframalpha.com/api .

http://spreadsheets.google.com/lv?key=pjGlYH-8AK8ffDa6o2bYlXg&toomany=true
A complete list of TEDTalks, created by a volunteer and shared by everyone.


http://www.we-magazine.net/we-volume-02/the-emergence-of-open-design-and-open-manufacturing/
An example fo the core notions of open source being applied to other fields.


http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_accounts_for_6_of_all_internet_traffic.php
Five years ago, Internet traffic was, for the most part, managed by tier 1 providers like AT&T, Verizon, Level 3 Communications and Global Crossing, all of which connected to thousands of tier 2 networks and regional providers. Today, that has changed. Now, instead of traffic being distributed among tens of thousands of networks, only 150 networks control some 50% of all online traffic. Among these new Internet superpowers, it's no surprise to find Google listed. In fact, the search giant accounts for the largest source (6%) of all Internet traffic worldwide.
Again, is it really a good idea for one company to have such huge influence over the web, where there are an infinite number of stakeholders? We will need to articulate the answer to this before it gets too late.

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12 October 2009

Summary of this week

The main focus of this blog is on studying how the Internet is being used for the purpose of solving world's most difficult problems. Below are the articles I found particularly interesting this week, categorically sorted. You can find much more articles at http://www.diigo.com/user/web-evolution.


[Government]
http://personaldemocracy.com/node/14557
OpenID and government. It's still a tentative project but might have significant impact in the future.

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS139396+09-Sep-2009+BW20090909
Some major internet companies are collaborating with government to support an open ID initiative.

http://personaldemocracy.com/node/14616
An insightful and informative summary of various government2.0 movements. Links to other articles are also availabe, which is quite useful.

http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/10/07/crowd-sourced-initiatives-to-create-a-more-livable-new-york-city/
Open government initiative by the N.Y.C government. If the U.S. gov and the N.Y.C gov, most complex organizations of all, could succeed in their initiatives, why would it be impossible for others to follow them?


[Science]
 http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2009/09/dramatic-growth-of-open-access.html
Some statistical data of open science publications. You can see how rapidly this movement is growing.

http://hul.harvard.edu/news/2009_0914_compact.html
http://www.oacompact.org/
http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1000165
Several prominent universities, including Harvard, MIT and UC Berkeley, joined forces to put forward the open access publication movement.

http://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2009/09/frameworks-and-lessons-from-public.html
An interesting model of participatory science and how these participation models are actually being used in various scientific researches.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0410/p14s01-sten.htm?print=true
Some examples of citizen science and insightful analysis on them.


http://www.scienceonline2010.com/index.php/wiki/Program_Finalization
A Wiki-draft of science online 2010 conference. Some important information is also available here.

http://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/Online+Resources
An exhaustive list of scientific blogs. A great number of prominent scientists, especially mathematicians, have started experimenting on blogs, which shows the strong compatibility between mathematics and blog.


[Health]
http://blog.kruresearch.com/2009/08/video-patient-revolution/
A video of health2.0 activity and a list of those featured in the video. The most optimistic end of this movement.

http://www.fastcompany.com/future-of-health-care?page=0%2C0
What the future of health care might look like.


[Learning]
 http://travelinedman.blogspot.com/2009/08/20-quick-points-from-world-is-open-how.html
http://www.amazon.co.jp/World-Open-Technology-Revolutionizing-Education/dp/0470461306
How the web might change the landscape of learning and education. Useful outline.

http://www.openculture.com/2007/07/freeonlinecourses.html
A list of online learinng resources.


[Global]
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/14/where-google-is-really-big-india-and-china/?partner=rss&emc=rss
How BRICs countries are using the web to improve their lives and roles Google plays there.

http://connect.state.gov/
Run by a governemtn bureau and it seems the participants are quite active. Might serve as a platform for grass-root democracy trying to solve difficult diplomatic issues in a bottom-up manner.

http://www.betterplace.org/projects
Use of the Internet to financially and socially help those in need.

http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/charity-waters-lessons-winning-twitter
http://twitter.com/charityWater
A dollar, with which people in developed nations can hardly buy a sandwitch, can save many lives in the most impoverished areas. Global arbitrage in terms of wealth and knowledge, is one of the greatest things made possible by the Internet.

http://rconversation.blogs.com/rconversation/2009/10/happy-internet-human-rights-day.html
Declaration of Internet Human Rights by 15 Chinese intellectuals.


[Finance]
 http://www.finovate.com/flagship09/index.html
A list of companies and participants who are trying to change the status quo of the finance industry using (mainly) now mature social web technologies.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/19/AR2009091900124.html
Growing impact of peer to peer lending (borrowing) in developing countries. Some statistics available.

 
[CrowdSourcing]
http://www.letsdoitworld.org/
Crowd source initiatives to clean up the globe. The most significant event happened in Estonia this summer, where more than 500,000 people got organized 'crowd sourcingly' and cleaned up the country, which would've cost the country millions of dollars if initiated by the government.


[Media]
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/10/eight-public-media-20-projects-that-are-doing-it-right279.html
Some examples of successful media initiatives while most others are failing.


[Language]
http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/the-polyglot-internet/
http://www.worldwidelexicon.org/s/essay.html
http://www.plansphere.com/blog/?p=607
Collaborative translation. Will the language barriers, one of the biggest obstacles for a truly globalized world, ever be overcome?


[Others]
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/magazine/17-09/ff_goodenough?currentPage=all
On a new type of consumers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/20/business/20amazon.html
Amazon meets retails business.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/system/topicRoot/The_End_of_Lawyers/
On how the Internet might affect lawyers' lives and how law practices are conducted. Many related articles available.

http://www.redefinegod.com/
http://www.mahalo.com/open-source-religion-religion-2-0
Open source religion movements.

http://www.themobilecity.nl/2009/10/09/593/
How the internet can improve cities.

http://earth2tech.com/greennet-09-presentations/bob-metcalfe/
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/enernet-the-internet-of-energy/2009/10/11
The internet and energy. Will what happend to the Internet at its early age happen to the energy industry by Bob Metcalfe, advocate of Metcalfe's law?

http://www.mindmeister.com/28717702/everything-open-and-free
A very informative tree map on open access movements.


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