Making Social Media a Tool, Not a Distraction

It’s becoming clearer and clearer that social media can be an incredible tool for everything from enterprise research to customer service. And as many companies are finding out, social media can help improve your bottom line too.

However, there is a flip side, especially for employees sitting in front of computers at their desks or cubicles: it can also become a distraction. For some entrepreneurs, it’s tough to see how interrupting coding sessions with tweets or browsing the Facebook News Feed can be productive to business.

http://mashable.com/2009/11/23/avoiding-social-media-distraction/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+(Mashable)

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Twitter Co-Founder: We’re Definitely Not For Sale

[...]no one ever seems to say publicly that they are trying to sell their company, but much of the talk around Twitter right now seems to be about the impending launch of various revenue models, including advertising and paid accounts. The company also recently saw its first significant revenue via deals with Google (Google) and Microsoft to put tweets in search results.

http://mashable.com/2009/11/23/twitter-not-for-sale-2/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+(Mashable)

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The Bauhaus at MoMA

Having known the word in my youth — first as the moniker of the big-haired 1980s proto-goth punk band from the UK, then as a shorthand term for certain modernist architecture — I was thoroughly shocked the first time I encountered images of the Bauhaus School complex, taken during the 30-year period of East German decay following World War II. That vast swaths of culture had been left to languish under hard-line regimes throughout the Eastern Bloc was no surprise (many towns in the former East Germany had a derelict appearance until only recently). But that the Dessau campus of an institution so renowned and of such significance across all disciplines of art and design had been left to crumble was jolting.

http://observatory.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=11807

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Internet Intercedes to Make Solar Cheaper

While researchers have struggled for half a century to push down the cost of solar photovoltaic modules, an innovative web service is creating communities of customers who pay less for solar panels through collective bargaining with installers.

One Block Off the Grid collects groups of would-be solar purchasers in cities with good solar access and brokers a deal between them and a local installer. It’s internet-based environmental organizing, and it appears to be working.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/11/one-block-off-grid-solar-installation/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+(Wired%3A+Index+3+(Top+Stories+2))

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The smartphone wars, one year later

It’s been a year since Google (GOOG) released Android OS, the open-source smartphone operating system widely perceived as the most likely to overtake Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone in the long run.

As it happens, Google this month also purchased AdMob, the world’s largest purveyor of mobile phone advertising. So this seemed as good a time as any to take a snapshot of the changing smartphone marketplace, as measured by ad requests to AdMob’s network.

http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/11/24/the-smartphone-wars-one-year-later/?section=money_technology&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fmoney_technology+(Technology)

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Google’s gift: Free WiFi in 47 airports

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Google is planning to foot the bill for WiFi at 47 of the nation’s airports for the rest of the year, beginning Tuesday.

With some travelers spending more time on the ground in airports than on planes during the busy flying season, now seemed an especially fitting time to offer up the perk, Google said.

The list includes the international airports in Miami and Orlando, which are among the world’s 30 busiest airports, as well as five others in Florida. Travelers through smaller airports, such as Montana’s Billings and Bozeman, will also benefit.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/11/10/technology/Google_free_wifi_airports/index.htm?section=money_technology&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fmoney_technology+(Technology)

MAP to Offer $200,000 Annually For Early Creative Research Among Its Grantees

New York, NY (February 2, 2009) The MAP Fund http://mapfund.org , a program of Creative Capital supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation announced today the establishment of a new pilot program to benefit individual artists in the early stages of research and development of new creative concepts.

The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Creative Exploration Fund at MAP will award $10,000 to individual artists who received two or more MAP grants in a five-year period, beginning with 2003-2008, and rolling forward through 2010. The grant was inspired by a recent report by author Edward Martenson, entitled The Impact of the MAP Fund from the Artists Perspective http://mapfund.org/about_report.html , which surveyed 250 MAP grantees from the past decade. In interviews and through questionnaires, many artists spoke of the frustration of having to financially “start from zero” with each new work, despite the demonstrable success of past efforts.

In response, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation is underwriting a 3-year pilot program that aims to help proven artists sustain the momentum of success by moving seamlessly from a completed project to the exploration of new concepts that may need time to incubate, cohere or be discarded. Grantees are encouraged to pursue their most passionately held ideas, those that might, without such support, be deemed too risky.

Ben Cameron, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Program Director for the Arts stated: “Helping artists undertake necessary research, find reflective time, or embark on artistic exploration—explorations which may not lead to a fully blown project—has always been a challenge. We hope that the Creative Exploration Fund will afford artists such time and opportunity. The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation salutes both MAP and Creative Capital for embarking on this journey and looks forward to what we can learn together about the value of such an approach.”

“Our work with artists has taught us the value of time in the development of new work and the importance of letting the trajectory of the creative process unfold at its own pace,” added Ruby Lerner, founding executive director and president of Creative Capital. “This addition to MAP’s program provides artists with the precious resource of time, giving them the opportunity to truly nurture new ideas.”

Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Creative Exploration Fund Inaugural Grantees:
Richard Alger Tina Kronis: Los Angeles
Marc Bamuthi Joseph: Oakland
Ann Carlson: Boston
Mary Ellen Childs: Minneapolis
DD Dorvillier: New York
Erik Ehn: Los Angeles
Guillermo Gómez-Peña: San Francisco
Neil Greenberg: New York
John Jasperse: Brooklyn
Noémi Lafrance: Brooklyn
Sarah Michelson: New York
Jennifer Monson: Urbana, IL
Linda Parris-Bailey: Knoxville, TN
Phil Soltanoff: New York
Donna Uchizono: New York

About the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation

The mission of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation is to improve the quality of people’s lives through grants supporting the performing arts, environmental conservation, medical research and the prevention of child maltreatment, and through preservation of the cultural and environmental legacy of Doris Duke’s properties

About Creative Capital

Supporting artists nationally since 1999

Ten years ago, Creative Capital reinvented arts philanthropy, constructing a new paradigm to fulfill the specific needs of the country’s most innovative artists. Today, it is the premier national artist support organization, committed to the principle that time and advisory services are as crucial to artistic success as funding. Over the lives of its funded projects, Creative Capital provides artists with a flexible program of multi-faceted support and partners with them to determine how targeted funds and services can best work in concert to progress towards the grantees’ own goals. Since its founding in 1999, the organization has committed more than $14 million in financial support and services to 324 projects representing 411 artists. A complete list of Creative Capital artists and projects is available online at creative-capital.org .

Sustaining support for Creative Capital is currently provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, The TOBY Fund, The William Flora Hewlett Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The James Irvine Foundation, The Nathan Cummings Foundation, The Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, and more than 370 other foundations and individuals.

Available on Delicious: http://delicious.com/newmediaFIX

Is YouTube the next Google? – International Herald Tribune

SAN FRANCISCO: Faced with writing a school report on an Australian animal, Tyler Kennedy began where many students begin these days: by searching the Internet. But Tyler did not use Google or Yahoo. He searched for information about the platypus on YouTube.

“I found some videos that gave me pretty good information about how it mates, how it survives, what it eats,” Tyler said.

Similarly, when Tyler gets stuck in one of his favorite games on the Wii, he searches YouTube for tips on how to move forward.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/18/technology/ping.1-409468.php

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Can CNN, the Go-to Site, Get You to Stay? – NYTimes.com

While traffic to the home page of CNN.com is higher than ever, “my hunch is that people go to it more out of habit than they do out of love,” he says. Love, in fact, is exactly what Mr. Estenson is pursuing.

Online ardor will get a test on Tuesday, with the inauguration of Barack Obama. Because millions of Americans will be at their desks for the noon-hour swearing-in, the event is expected to set new records for live Web video watching — a moment that CNN.com is well positioned to exploit.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/18/business/media/18web.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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On Facebook, Sicilian Mafia Is a Hot Topic – NYTimes.com

Some people in Sicily who know a few things about networking.

In recent weeks, the Italian authorities have begun investigating Facebook discussion groups devoted to convicted Mafiosi, concerned that some members might be more than fans.

At the same time, a campaign calling on Facebook to remove pro-Mafia pages has been gaining momentum, while thousands of Facebook members have joined new anti-Mafia groups.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/world/
europe/20italy.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

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Obama’s new BlackBerry: The NSA’s secure PDA? | Tech News on ZDNet

“Without more details I would have to say that putting sensitive or classified information on a BlackBerry is a risky proposition,” said Greg Shipley, chief technology officer at Neohapsis, a governance, risk, and compliance consultancy.

Fortunately for an enthusiastic e-mailer-in-chief, some handheld devices have been officially blessed as secure enough to handle even classified documents, e-mail, and Web browsing.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-262060.html

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NASA hacker pleads to Bush for pardon | Tech News on ZDNet

Self-confessed NASA hacker Gary McKinnon is appealing to outgoing president George W Bush to halt McKinnon’s extradition from Britain to the United States.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-262547.html

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Bush leaves behind a mixed technology legacy | Tech News on ZDNet

The Bush White House got off to a strong start by revamping Whitehouse.gov and launching the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology in 2001.

Yet even with the new White House Council, the lack of technology expertise within the administration was apparent from the beginning, said Black, who is listed as giving money to Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson, and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, but no Republicans.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-262935.html