I Love Word Clouds

Ever since the tag cloud became part of the UI existence, I’ve been fascinated with the visual representation of ideas via dynamic word interfaces. I just like words.

With Wordle.net you can create interesting word visualizations from a few simple inputs.

Input options include:
1. Entering a group of words that you hand pick
2. Entering an ATOM or RSS URL
3. Providing your Delicious.com username

It took seconds to create these clouds:

Me on Delicious.com

The Web 2.0 Expo

I can see myself using this simple tool when creating presentations or posting online.

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Social Weavers - How Do You Define Attention?

We interweave every day, application to application, to web page, etc. Yet we don’t just VISIT something, we DO something, we have intent, purpose, machinations even.

We can track certain aspects of this weaving, we can try to label that tracking as “attention”, but it’s not really. Attention involves more than the process of weaving our lives together, we have a mind with synapses that form on new concepts and apply thought to determine a desired outcome.

Interestingly, attention can be defined as a courteous act indicating affection; “she tried to win his heart with her many attentions”

In many ways this applies to the landscape created by the disparate parts of our online social interaction.

We try to influence the external world of people places and things by our presence; when online our digital ghost provides an influencing framework through a continually contextual presence interacting with our social wake and bow wave. Our acts of attempted influence is our attention, just as much as our attention, when speaking in the language of quantum physics, creates our reality.

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Google Blog Alerts can defeat Live Journal’s privacy settings?

Today I was reviewing my Google Blog Alerts and spotted a posting that surprised me. I was surprised because the post obviously may have an impact on the person who posted it because it contains some sensitive information that could have negative ramifications if it were made public.

I was curious, so I clicked to visit the Live Journal page that Google had obviously crawled. I logged in using my OpenId, but was stopped from viewing the post via Live Journals privacy settings on the post.

Now I’m wondering how Google was able to see the post, why they would crawl private posts at all and how this might impact users if it were made public. So I’m making it public. What do you think of this revelation?

Filed under Google, OpenID | Comments (7)

Posting is one of those things you just need to do

Be thankful that I’ve not been vociferous on this site…

I try to maintain a high quality here, adding quality ideas as they arrive. I don’t always get as much time to write as I’d like, but as work is subsuming my attention these days I thought I’d post an experiment here. This image was loaded, then Twittered recently. It was sent using an experimental process that we’re developing.

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New Years Pledge 2008

I will post here more often.

I will not save my best observations for Twitter, but I may begin them there and expand on the subject here.

I will go outside and breathe fresh air more often.

I will visit 2-3 new countries in 2008. I will experience these countries as the local culture does as much as possible.

I will organize my RSS feeds for speed and breadth of information access.

I will capture more photos, in a more meaningful way, be more professional in their composition and will post them here more often.

I will be part of something most amazing in 2008. Just wait for it.

I will not regret the past any longer. History will not repeat itself in the same way as the 90’s.

I will embrace the Internetawebatron and it will embrace me. Especially the Tron part.

Happy New Year everyone.

Filed under Brian Caldwell | Comments (2)

Pandora Scores a Hit with Classical Music Addition

Last night Pandora officially introduced their new Classical music genre.

After hundreds of hours of music analysis by the highly trained staff at Pandora, based in Oakland, CA, the company best known for the free play approach to music streaming, announced the availability of a Classical music genre into their public music discovery engine.

Held at The Regency Center on Sutter Street in SF, tonights event was a skit/performance including cast of Tim Westergren, an on-command orchestra, individual performances by an artist with an alto? recorder, an opera singer and a totally fantastic trumpet/brass artist. Open bar and Bose as sponsors rounded out the night. Bose does have some fantastic products for computer originated sound.

Pandora knows how to throw a good party, that’s certain. With ambient red and blue light party atmosphere, roving waiters, interesting people, the evening was entertaining, interesting and a wonderful chance to salute a revolutionary company.

Pandora continues to help me find the most interesting new bands, but also now let’s me discover different older, original masters of the audio arts.

Now, enjoy a few photos.

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