Category Archives: Lemonisms

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It’s really not about Instant Messaging …
I just wanted to rant a little here about the big talk about Instant Messaging … it’s not about Instant Messaging! IMHO, it’s about communications, and people wanting to communicate effectivly and efficiently. Remember folks … this is all about meme transfers and replication! All of this relates to our personal identity, and the fact that our identity is created by the conversations that we are a part of. If we evaluate the roots of personal identity, identity becomes the attributes of ourselves that we accumulate to describe ourselves, to ourselves and others. So there are several steps in personal identity which layer on top of each other.

The first of these is the accumulation of our personal identity. This accumulation then includes the people that we have in our lives … our families, friends, co-workers, and other ‘buddies’. This list of ‘contacts’ or ‘buddies’ then becomes our ‘address book’ … the list of people that we converse with. What’s powerful about AIM and ICQ is that we have this list, and also have their ‘presence’ information … or their availability. This presence and availability is what really drives Instant Messaging. I could be launching e-mail, video conferencing, or any form of communication once I have located the ‘presence’ of the other person … Instant Messaging is just one of these forms of communciations. Heck, Instant Messaging isn’t much different from what SMTP mail protocols used to be!

I am a huge fan of Jabber … it is a leading contenter in my mind, and provides a very flexible architecture for presence and communciations … including Instant Messaging. This is a good article and Jabber continues to gain ground …

Jabber As The Coming IM Standard? [Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters]

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The BabySmasher meme …
Ok … some people might think this is a sick idea, but it is a powerful meme! These guys are putting out a sticker that can be placed on the “baby changing stations” that are seen in airports and various public places. They’ve created a potentially funny web site, and they are even offering rewards for photos being sent to them of where these are stickers are placed. Some might think this is sick, but I suspect that we’ll see these popping up elsewhere. I wonder what other common and well known signs will be “hacked” like this?

BabySmasher.com tells you the truth about baby changing stations. [Memepool]

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Very good post on privacy and identity in the digital world …
In our work on digitalme, we have done considerable research into digital identity, centralized storage, and various tracking techniques. This is a really good article which discusses some cool points. Mr. Smith has got it right … must making people aware of the possibilities …

digitalMASS: Preserving privacy. Data privacy has always been a topic that left me completely cold. Honestly, I just couldn’t get my bile riled over the notion that someone was tracking what I do online, where I buy gas with my Mobil Speedpass, or what I listen to with my RealNetworks software. Then I met Richard M. Smith. [Tomalak’s Realm]

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A very cool article about teaching ‘ethics’ in school …
I really liked this CNN article about teaching ethics in schools. What is impressive to me is that people are starting to truly examine the role of teaching the ability to “distinguish” in schools. What I mean by this is that we could potentially teach children to really distinguish who they are being, and distinguish their behavior. Where I believe that the article, and the educators get sidetracked is when they attempt to define absolute right and wrong. Instead, IMHO, if they were to focus on distinguishing, and then consequences of actions, the rest would simply occur …

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Great Interview with Dave Winer … and great philosophy …
I am thoroughly impressed by this interview, and the philosophy presented within. Dave always seems to have a great grasp of the possibility that conversations and communication are the root of all creation. He also understands the differences between centralized systems, and the distributed nature of the net. He has some good, IMHO, observations of the recent Microsoft announcements, and many of the new and developing standards. A good read!

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Interview with Microsoft Exec …
I have to say that I am really impressed with this interview. Although he might be accused of saying some very controversial things, I can see that he has a very good philosophy, and I believe that this is the consistant way that Microsoft continues to succeed.

Read it here on the Slashdot post …