ProductiveWise

I really love items (articles, lectures) that talk about a certain topic, but actually if you were to replace the topic with another one you would still learn the same insight or knowledge. Gregory V. Wilson talks about processes, decisions and methods in software development. He talks about common beliefs in that area, but the lessons learned are applicable to many other fields: you should take decisions and get to conclusions based on data, not opinions. 

 What We Actually Know About Software Development, and Why We Believe It's True

You can read here a summery of the talk.

Something about this lecture makes people say 'wow' when they watch it. I think it's a combination of a great technical demonstration and an inspirational, thought provoking lecturer.

Some reactions:

• "Holy crap, that was a good talk. Thanks a lot."
• "Brilliant."
• "Just the best ever. Go go go."

Watch it.

Bret Victor – Inventing on Principle from CUSEC on Vimeo.

In this one hour talk, two Google employees tell about Internet tools developed at Google and by other organizations to help manage crisis situations. When earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and other disasters occur, tools like People Finder and Ushahidi are deployed. These tools are used for data collection and retrieval about missing persons, visualization of places in which help and rescue is needed, better communication, and and so on.

Other tools and resources for crowdsourcing of emergency and disaster relief:

• CrisisCommons and CrisisCommons Wiki - "CrisisCommons seeks to advance and support the use of open data and volunteer technology communities to catalyze innovation in crisis management and global development."
• InSTEDD - "InSTEDD has a unique niche — we design and use open source technology tools to help partners enhance collaboration and improve information flow and knowledge sharing to better deliver critical services to vulnerable populations."
• Ushahidi - "We built the Ushahidi platform as a tool to easily crowdsource information using multiple channels, including SMS, email, Twitter and the web."

Video - Google I/O 2011: Crisis Response 2.0 – Empowering Developers in Times of Crisis

Professor James Boyle tracks back the origins of a song ("George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People") to show how each song and musical style relies on previous work. Boyle uses this exmaple to explore and hypnotize how copyright law effects, or might effect, the development of culture.

Schema.org is a new initiative by the three major search engines (Google, Bing and Yahoo!) to make websites more readable for machines. It was announced a few days ago, accompanied by the Schema.org website, aimed at web developers.

Continue reading “The web gets smarter with Schema.org – how will you be affected?” »