Date archives "January 2007"

P2P Video and Micro Knowledge Transfer

Visuarios is not another “funny videos” site – their tagline “broadcast your skills” is also a clever variation of the more general YouTube one “broadcast yourself”: Visuarios lets you “share your videos about everyday knowledge with everyday people.” Obviously a service like this is only as good as the user submitted content and probably needs… Continue reading

P2P Subjectivity and the Practice of Friending in boyd’s “Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8”

One of the clearest signs of the depth to which online social networks have enmeshed themselves into our culture is demonstrated in the acceptance of the verb “to friend.” danah boyd tackles the practice of “friending” in these networks (MySpace in particular) in her piece “Friends, friendsters, and top 8: Writing community into being on… Continue reading

Bitmunk – P2P distribution?

Bitmunk has an interesting business model for distributing music and other digital content. It has some important features that could make it successful: Bitmunk provides a secure base for the business of exchanging digital goods and money. All users are authenticated. Artists can register their work directly and set their own prices. Others are encouraged… Continue reading

P2P as a guidepost for cultural institutions: The effects of culture

The term ‘culture’ is a big word. It is frequently disputed and differentiated by researchers locating culture in institutions (think organisational culture), national culture (societies such as the American culture that is distinct from all other societies), and for cultural institutions, there is the cultural phenonema – such as the collective cultures of museums. This… Continue reading

How does the world change? Through networks and emergence.

The following is from a remarkable essay by Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze, which I consider a must read. It is entitled: Using Emergence to Take Social Innovation to Scale The starting quote is right of the mark: Despite current ads and slogans, the world doesn’t change one person at a time. It changes when… Continue reading

The Long Tail of Control: can we realistically accept an Enterprise 2.0 model?

Interesting posting by Dion Hitchcliffe which reviews the debate between Andrew MacAfee and conservative Nicholas Carr about the potential of the Web 2.0 to transform the enterprise. It also carries an interesting graphic on the Long Tail as it affects power and control. Here is the conclusion: “And this is where this shift of control… Continue reading

Are free software licences obsolete in an age of open networked applications?

This is certainly not a new issue for the free software community, but for our general readers, I recommend the following blog article. It starts by noting that as most of applications are now on the web, rather than running on our own computers, the free software protection of public code becomes less useful. Rather… Continue reading

Skype Founder’s Joost/Venice Project

Via: Hands On with Skypes Joost/Venice Project – AppScout The founders of Skype have announced the “Joost” project/product. I have not yet had a chance to actually try the beta (windows only) version of Joost, but it apparently is an attempt to bring high quality television-type experience to the internet. (Playfuls has a great overview… Continue reading

Structured self-organization in Curitiba, Brazil

Charles Leadbeater’s new book, We Think, which will shortly be featured as Book of the Week, promises to be an extraordinary interesting book, full of concrete real-life examples of mass creativity at work. Chapter 11 for example, features the experience in a city in Brazil, which I recommend reading in full. Here’s the crux of… Continue reading