CHI'S

From the iPhone 3g

Hola
I bought myself a great gb'day present.

update: typing still challenging...

The Big Think or the Big Hype?

TED Talks are popular videos from the 15-20 minute presentations given by elite speakers at its annual event. They usually bring well-argumented and/or funny messages accross and TED's visual flair helps to make these videos inspirational and exciting to watch.

Now Big Think joins the fun with short 3 minute video interviews of public intellectuals in areas such as politics, law, science etc. Big Think is positioning itself as the ''Youtube of ideas'' and aims to trigger debates about issues that matter in this world. It claims to take a more bottom-up approach compared to TED. Another site offering intellectual videos is Fora TV. It is comparable with Big Think, though their videos are longer. All sites aim to implement social networking features, though I'm not sure if that is something to be so happy about...

Big think is not short of coverage upon its launch in part because former Harvard President Larry Summers is a minority investor. Click the links below for more on Big Think and other players in the intellectual video arena.

NYT
Deanstalk
Techcrunch

I checked out the site and thought I'd try and find a video related to something light: life and death. Unfortunately, there are no experts in this field yet?! I watched a video interview with Richard Branson on ''giving back to society'', but was quite disappointed. I think 3 minutes is very short to really say something and the speakers don't really seem comfortable either. Moreover, the added value of video becomes less when the message is so short without any backgrounds or slides to show. So great ''IDEA'' with potential but still poorly executed in in my opinion.

Cannibilism 2.0: Google Will Eat Itself (GWEI)

Via We Make Money Not Art

GWEI is an artistic project that uses Google Adsense revenues to buy Google shares. They currently own 523 Google shares.

Cannibalism 2.0...

From the GWEI website:

We generate money by serving Google text advertisments on a network of hidden Websites. With this money we automatically buy Google shares. We buy Google via their own advertisment! Google eats itself - but in the end "we" own it!             

By establishing this autocannibalistic model we deconstruct the new global advertisment mechanisms by rendering them into a surreal click-based economic model.

After this process we hand over the common ownership of "our" Google Shares to the GTTP Ltd. [Google To The People Public Company] which distributes them back to the users (clickers) / public.''

Click on image to enlarge (taken from GWEI's website)

Bill Gates Exit

Via Engadget

Engadget's Ryan Block interviewed Bill Gates for the last time in his role as Microsoft Chief.
Bill is going to leave Microsoft mid-2008 and concentrate on his work for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Here's the full interview.

The video below is his rather geeky and funny retiring video shown at CES over the weekend.

Video: Bill Gates @ CES 2008

The Long Tail of Publishing

Via Wired

On-demand publishing via Lulu, Blurb and now also from Amazon's CreateSpace.
Release the writer in you...