Brain Blenders

Get organized

The coolest tool I have seen in weeks is NeatReceipts. This portable scanner not only captures all your receipts, accurately accounts for the amounts, and drops them into a usable/customizable spreadsheet, it also has a business card scanner. Did I mention - IT'S PORTABLE?

My boy has one and he takes it on all his road trips, tallies the expenses as he goes, throws the paper away and emails in the results. If you spend the amount of time I do trying to account for all the money you spend on the road then this would be worth the cost.

pandora on BrainBlenders

Just in case you haven't seen it yet...I have loaded some of my Pandora stations on the lower right hand side of BrainBlenders. The program is a widget offered by Typepad, and I couldn't be more delighted to have it there. Already some regular readers have responded in kind tones about the program.

Please let me know if you enjoy it.

Finger Ring

From the MIT Media lab, this is the best answer to cell phone interruptions during meetings that I have ever seen. Even though it is very obviously in prototype now, this would be a great way to handle incoming calls for collective group endeavors. I would be glad to have my own calls filtered by a group if we all had the ability to do so to everyone in the room. Here is how it works:

"Finger Ring is a system in which a cell phone decides whether to ring by accepting votes from the others in a conversation with the called party. When a call comes in, the phone first determines who is in the user's conversation (see Conversation Finder project). It then vibrates all participants' wireless finger rings. Although the alerted people do not know if it is their own cellphones that are about to interrupt, each of them has the possibility to veto the call anonymously by touching his/her finger ring. If no one vetoes, the phone rings. Since no one knows which mobile communication device is about to interrupt, this system of 'social polling' fosters collective responsibility for controlling interruption by communication devices. I have found empirical evidence that significantly more vetoes occur during a collaborative group-focused setting than during a less group oriented setting. This system is a component of my PhD work on Autonomous Interactive Intermediaries, a large research project in context-aware computer-mediated call control."

link

CES

My dream has come true...I am at CES in Vegas this weekend and all my people are here. And by my people I mean "nerds". Kidding, not just a gaggle of nerds but some super-smart engineers and sales people.

Motivated - you bet. Informed - like none others. Shoulder to shoulder - uhmmm yes.

I loaded fifteen pictures to a photo album on the right of BrainBlenders. Or just click here.

More to come.

Pandora

My new favorite window on my desktop is Pandora. This little gem is running all the time now on my system. I even went as far as to subscribe to the service, just because I fell in love with it so fast.

What is it? It's a radio station (on the net) that plays what you like. Seriously I know you've heard all about this from a thousand other radio stations before; "You're listening to KDUD playing your music, your way, your day...all day...from the early morning light to the late, late night. KDUD plays YOUUUUR tunes."

Sorry, lapsed into my DJ days. Pandora uses a software called the Music Genome Project to decipher why you like the music you like. Then it presents you with other artists that have similar styles. Is it the bare bones beats of a Dr. Dre rap, a heavy guitar from The White Stripes, or the earthy feel of Digable Planets that attracted you to them? Pandora will dive deep into it's library and come back with some sounds that are similar from artists you might not be aware of. You can even help the process along by deciding if a particular song fits. From the site:

"Can you help me discover more music that I'll like?

Those questions often evolved into great conversations. Each friend told us their favorite artists and songs, explored the music we suggested, gave us feedback, and we in turn made new suggestions. Everybody started joking that we were now their personal DJs.

We created Pandora so that we can have that same kind of conversation with you."

Bottom line, if you like new music but don't have time to go discover it...Pandora is for you.

 

wiki love...almost

Well, I had posted an article about a wiki that a regular reader had done on brainblenders for wikipedia.org last night. But, when I came in this morning and read my post and checked the link, the page had been deleted by someone. So I promptly deleted my article thanking "PSP" for posting an article about brainblenders. However, I was lucky enough to copy the article in it's entirety and have posted it here for your reading pleasure. Would love to have brainblenders in wikipedia...due to the fact that I love the site! But, if it doesn't happen, it's cool just to have been mentioned...sorta. By the way, if you want to get wikipedia on your WAP enabled phone, check this out. And if you want to download a widget for your desktop, look here. Thanks anyway PSP.

BrainBlenders.com, http://brainblenders.blogs.com/ ,is a blog started in the Fall of 2003 by one “a.brain” of parts unknown. The site specializes in documenting “what's next” in four distinct categories; Design, Technology, Entertainment, and Well Being. When asked about why he just had four categories a.brain commented,

“These four categories cover life. You can take any subject in wikipedia and place it under one of these four headings. Wikipedia is itself under Technology. The wiki about red-butted monkeys could be placed under Well-Being, unless they start flinging fecal matter, then I’d definitely place it under entertainment…but, that’s just me.”

The site boasts several thousand unique visitors each week with a regular opt-in email going out to several hundred readers. The irreverent attitude with which a.brain and the commentors contribute combined with the ahead of the curve trend introductions and analysis makes this site a must read on your daily RSS. As a.brain’s email signature closes, “Come get some.”

Wiki and CC

I recently received an email inquiring about Creative Commons and Wiki. Here is my take...

CC and wiki - the short of it is..."We the Media"

Wiki - is an online open-ended database. Any user, any browser - can become an editor. The simplest way to share information and evolve web usage. Two extreme contrasts are wikipedia.org and urbandictionary.com. Both allow for user-defined content, one will kill the encyclopedia; the other will kill brain cells.

CC is in short, sharing information. Original copyright laws limit the building upon of content, the Creative Commons organization formed to try to return to what they think our founding fathers intended to do with Copyright.

An interesting guy to look at is Cory Doctorow. His latest work "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town" was published in CC and actually launched in several electronic formats including the iPod and PSP. Cory believes that the more he gives away the more he will earn, and actually has created a model that backs up his theory, apparently. He is using a version of the CC called iCommons, which has been adopted by something like 21 countries since late 2004. What this means is that you can download the book in the states, but you can actually print that thing for profit in other countries. This is essentially a utopian belief that by giving your work away to underprivileged countries for their gain will bring them up to the lifestyle we enjoy here in North America, and therefore we all win. Good book if you like science fiction, I read it on my PSP- for free!

Speech he gave about Creative Commons - http://craphound.com/ebooksneitherenorbooks.txt

Then of course, there is copyleft, the idea is that every person who receives a version of the software, music, document, or art can adapt it change it, and re-purpose the item from it's original version. And then they must ensure that they copyleft the work so that the circle can be repeated. Very ideological in it's very nature.

This list of email accounts suck...

The good news is...BrainMail readership is at an all time high, thank you for signing up for the free service. The bad news is that last night I spent quite a while going through my email list and validating addy's...after the jump is a list of emails that did not validate, and therefor suck! Welcome to my bad side oh ye who spam. If, by the way one of these emails is yours - get a new email address cause yours is jacked up.

Podcast - Behind the Scenes

This podcast is a recorded conversation between the Pilot of the JetBlue that had to emergency land at LAX a couple of weeks ago, maintenance and some other airline types. The conversation is remarkably calm, even dull at times for a guy who's about to touch the nose of a flying gas can to asphalt. But it intrigued me enough to listen to most of it. This could be the future of podcasting, the behind-the-scenes show. Joepodcaster And here is his main page - this is a well done podcast, especially if you like to geek-out on commercial aviation.

I think we need more pods like this. Give me more behind the scenes, beyond the velvet rope, insiders look at what's the word on the street, so to speak. How about behind the curtain at the Grammy's, major news networks, hell - the DMV if it's a unique experience.

So many podcasts just stink up the place, it would be nice to have one that tells a compelling story, one that I can't hear on the radio, or listen to it on iTunes, or watch it on some gossip show.

I'm just saying...I should make a reality show out of my work. With the sheer mass of characters that I come in contact with on a given day...it would be the most compelling podcast on the planet.

You can get it your way...as long as it's our way too.

Do you read much? I read a lot, well comics count don't they? But I like to read my stuff in "unconventional" forms. It's still actual words I'm reading, I'm not drinking books, or having them translated into the songs of dolphins, but I don't get a kick from actual paper anymore. No...I like to download books to my computers or my PDA, or my PSP...even audibly sent to the iPod is awesome - I realize that's not really reading - but it is conventional in my world. And you can thank people like me for the innovation that will eventually lead to us injecting the work right in to our bodies. That will be a happy day when I can finally get some boring poetry in me. Anyway, I find it completely ironic that B. Joseph Pine II's (slightly pretentious right?) book about Mass Customization is only available for purchase in bound edition.

The book that SHOULD be available in the most consumerific of ways is only available in actual print? Wow. Even if they sent it to me...I'm not reading it now. It probably extols the Etch-n-Sketch for it's advances in technology, and Pony for keeping ahead of the curve in their shoe design and connection to the consumer.

On this note...I realize that many consumers loves complete control over their purchasing - and companies are struggling mightily with the notion of offering more and more control, but at the same time - I would like to see the leaders of industry offer "one choice".

"Here is what we have...it comes in black. Hope you like it, it's the best possible product we have ever made, and we concentrated so hard on the design, function, and deliverables that we decided if you didn't want it in black you just didn't want it - period." Enjoy