web meetings on my iPhone

Image via Wikipedia

I just got a new iPhone - and my first use will be a Virtual Visuals test using the Webex meeting app. View the video for a taste.

to Tweet or not to Tweet

Image via CrunchBase

I am not a Twitterer and I have resisted the pressure to join the mob - since I was first introduced to Twitter over two years ago by the biggest Twit of them all - Robert Scoble Thoughts Illustrated: Lunching with Scoble and by my then working colleague Critt Jarvis.

So I was enlightened by this recent "study" Twitter Study Reveals Interesting Results - 40% is "Pointless Babble" | Pear Analytics and downloaded the Pear Analytics White Paper pdf from this link. If you are the least bit interested in Twitter - get the White Paper for yourself.

This all started up again this morning by a tweet from Critt, whom I have been mostly out of contact with, and a link to his blog Why Scoble's Twitter valuation is correct... | Critt Jarvis where I get Critt's "i told you so!" treatment.

The upshot of all this Twittering is the recognition, seldom revealed to infrequent Twitter users, that the combination of a tweet with a link to a more in-depth post of some consequence to the recipient of the tweet does have value - as I mentioned here a year ago Thoughts Illustrated: from twitter to youtube - nice segue from Garr Reynolds

All of which once againn proves that you can eat up a lot of time on Twitter even if you rarely use it. Preparing this post which resulted from Critt's tweet has taken me back to my TI archives and an elapsed time of 23 minutes stolen from my continuous partial attention stream this morning.

Did I learn anything useful in reading the Twitter Study? Did you? Was it Pointless Babble or a weird extension of a dangling conversation that started more than two years ago? What it did do is make me review my blog "memory" to recall the thread on Twitter started in March of 2007 during my lunch with Scoble.

Scoble, Critt and I have gone our separate ways since then, but this morning's tweet brought it all back - and presented me with a reason to reconsider Twitter as a social media tool of value.

Visual Gisting - How to Improve your Return on Attention (ROA).

The theme of this blog: Thoughts Illustrated -- is based on the old adage that "a picture is worth a thousand words"

In this post, I will give you an example of the value of that old adage.

If you listen to a standard speech with no long pauses it would be about 70 words per minute
( source WikiAnswers)


click on the image for a bigger version.



Yesterday I listened to a 45 minute YiTan call-in conference conversation between Jerry Michalski and Doug Rushkoff , author of Life Inc. (Estimated word count 3150 words, elapsed time 2700 seconds)

The image above is a "visual gist" created by my partner Joe Sterling as he listened in to the call. IMO it contains the essence of the conversation and can be scanned in less than 10 seconds to get the gist. ( 3150 words= 270o seconds, gist =10 seconds - ROA 270X) Also, you can select
certain "objects" from the visual gist , and , in the very near future we will enable"hot spots" on these images so that when you "mouse over" an object or text item in the visual gist, you will be linked directly to a brief snippet from the full audio track saved in the YiTan archive, and if you find the snippet(s) interesting, you can then download the full audio podcast into your iTunes playlist for later listening as a part of your personal knowledge library.

OR, you can learn more about Doug's book from from Amazon and.......

• watch a 9 minute video of Doug promoting his bookAmazon.com : Entertainment : Douglas Rushkoff on "Life Inc."
• Buy the book in hard copy form Amazon.com: Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back (9781400066896): Douglas Rushkoff: Books
• Download it to your kindle Amazon.com: Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back: Douglas Rushkoff: The Kindle Store
• or, order an audio version from Audible .com Download Life Inc. (Unabridged) | Douglas Rushkoff | Life Inc. (Unabridged) Audio Book unabridged | Audible Audiobooks | Audible.com

ROA analysis:

1. The visual gist can be scanned in 10 seconds, and you can ( when we have it activated) link directly to the snippet of the audio podcast from YiTan and listen just to that snippet( 30 -60 seconds) So far: Total elapsed time 40 seconds.
   
2. You can continue the snippet process from #1 above to link to other audio clips related to objects on the image, or you can save the full podcast to your audio library on iTunes (30 seconds)
   
3. The visual gist can be "played back" in synchrony with the podcast, so that you will SEE the visual unfolding along with the audio stream. Or you can turn off the sound and just watch the picture play forward. (This is not a great ROA, but it might suit your viewing/listening style)
4. You can share the visual gist with any one and soon you will be able to annotate the image with tags and hotspot links of your own, including other resources on the internet that relate to the visual gist
5. By saving your visual gists into a gallery of images, you can easily scan your collection of visuals quickly and link from the gallery to the full multimedia archive of your knowledge library.
   

So, to summarize,visual gisting is a powerful way to gain Return on Attention. To bring this powerful visual capability to anyone, anywhere, any time, we are training a cadre of master visualizers to use new digital tools that can link them to any webmeeting, or audio conference to do what Joe did during yesterday's YiTan call.

If you want to know more about how you can employ visual gisting in your webmeetings or conference calls, please leave a comment or visit Home Page

Tom Wujec - BigViz Revizited

In this brief TED talk, Tom Wujec shows how the brain works visually to create and share meaning. The video track segment from 2:00 to 4:30 provides the gist of his talk. Click below to play.



For related posts click on BIGVIZ in the left sidebar list of tags.

The Future Internet from the European Union

Anticipating that every idea, thing, person, process in the world is becoming linked on the net 24/7, the EU is investing in the Semantic Web as a solution for the overwhelming flood of data.

This short, animated whiteboard video clip offers a timely look into the what the EU calls the Future Internet.

Hat tip to Rob Kruse of Venlogic for the link

Click below to play

"He's Barack Obama" --a cool "sendable"from JibJab

JibJab leverages the Obama "brand" to promote its e-card Sendables and offers a behind the scenes look at how they produced this cooool Sendable.

I am going "backstage" to see how JibJab does it and will post my findings on their "secret sauce".



Click on the arrow to play and enjoy!

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

Semantic Web Marketing explained - by Scott Brinker -

Here's a sneak preview of a presentation that Scott Brinker, an SEO marketing guru will be presenting at the Semantic Technology Conference on June 16 in San Jose.

I post it here for 3 reasons:

1. It exemplifies the best practices of Garr Reynolds Presentation Zen Thoughts Illustrated: Ah So! PresentationZen - a book every presenter must read
   
2. It describes a difficult concept ( Semantic Marketing) in a simple, powerful way
3. It defines an early adopter business model for "semantic savvy" devolopers.

Kudos to Scott and to Rob Kruse of Venlogic for the link.

You may want to click on the slideshare logo to get a full screen version of the presentation which is embedded below:

Data Web Marketing

View more OpenOffice presentations from sjbrinker.

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Game Web 2.Over? - "crossing out" the Web 2.0 dropouts

a neat way to show the dropout rate of previous Web 2.0 companies - cross out their logos. For the full article click here:

Game Web 2.Over? - meish dot org: life, unfolding

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Creating a New MInd - a visualization

This from Francesco Mungai's Photostream on Flickr.



Click for a larger image to see if it affects you as much as it does me.

and if it does then visit Francesco's website to scroll through a great collection of infographics.

50 great examples of infographics - FrancescoMugnai.com

Obama's inauguration speech - Two ways of looking at it.

The New York Times Visualization Lab produced this "wordle" of President Obama's inauguration speech.



The image below is how Graphic Muralizer Stephanie Crowley "pictured" the speech.



Click on each image to get a better view. Which image do you prefer? I vote for Stephanie's.

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Mike Arauz | Blog: Spectrum of Online Friendship

From a David Armano Tweet -

click on the image for a better view.

High "chunk" visualization - nice job Mike arauz - link below:

Mike Arauz | Blog: Spectrum of Online Friendship

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Armano on the move - to Austin and a new career

Anyone who has followed my scribblings has recognized my appreciation for David Armano's work and his generous contributions to the creative commons of impactful visuals to explain the reach and power of social media. David epitomizes the values of the Creative Commons.

Here's a quote from his blog announcing a major change in David's life and work:

"There has to be a systematic bottoms up and tops down transformation starting with strategy and supported by the right types of technology which can enable more effective human and system interactions. This is the place we hope to play in.

I look forward to playing with David in that same place.

Logic Emotion: And Now For Something Completely Different:

WOM -Word of Mouth Marketing and a free e-book for you

Take a glance at this from

Word of Mouth Marketing | Intersection Consulting Marketing Blog

alan watts and the journey

I have always admired Alan Watts and used his books way in the distant past to help me understand life's journey. Here in a brief (2min) video Alan narrates a cartoon titled Music and Life. enjoy!

Michael Jordan - on Failure

This puts another twist on the old proverb:

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again."

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The Simplicity Cycle by Dan Ward

Most cliches find their origin in truth, and 'less is more' is one that rings true to me.

Dan Ward succinctly shows us that increased complexity does not inherently equal increased goodness and instructs us on how to walk that fine line while still innovating.

Thoughts Illustrated: The Simplicity Cycle - A manifesto

Now the manifesto has been published as an ebook( free)and a paperback($9.95)

Dan's version 1.0 is shown here



And version 2.0 was in the manifesto.



I have downloaded the ebook and will also buy the paperback for my library and I encourage you to do the same. To get the book link below:

The Simplicity Cycle by Dan Ward (Book) in Engineering:

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Armano again - This time on the Passion Files.

This slideshare audiocast illustrates the use of SlideShare audio casting and David's unique ability to use his Library of visuals to support his responses to interviewer Sean's questions.

I will be subscribing to both David's blog and Sean Howard's Passion Files to keep my passion for visual thinking up to speed and up to date.

Take a look - 11 minutes and worth it.

The Passion Files Ep1 David Armano

View more presentations from Sean Howard. (tags: passion passionfiles)

Concept Workers - Visual Thinkers?

From Tony Karrer's blog:

"That's why I'm liking the idea of referring to work that involves figuring out unknowns as concept work and the people doing this work as concept workers."

Concept Worker : eLearning Technology

Concept workers need visuality. ( a term coined by Kevin Kelly here Thoughts Illustrated: Kevin Kelley on Visuality ( NYT)

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A new take on a famous optical illusion

Here's a new way to visualize this famous optical illusion - Youtube it!

The Innovation Economy - INGENESIST

IN this slide deck (embedded below) , Daniel Robles explains his unique vision for an Innovation Economy. His concepts of information, knowledge and innovation shown in the slide above are the driving forces for his Open Source project : Ingenesist - . You can view his presentation on this page or see a larger size version by clicking on the slideshare logo at the bottom right of the presentation .

I had run across Dan's vision over a year ago and posted on it here Thoughts Illustrated: The Great Train Wreck of Social Networks - can we be saved?

Here's the slide deck:

Innovation Economics Next

View more presentations from ingenesist. (tags: innovation economics)

Barack, Inc. - leveraging the President's brand

In very clever play on Obama's use of social networking to catapult him into the presidency, and trading on the popularity of the Obama "brand", Barry Libert and Rick Faulk (Chairman and CEO respectively of Mzinga- a social networking service) have rushed an Obama book into publication that is a not-too-subtle promotion for Mzinga services.

This link to Mzinga is on the landing page of the Barack, Inc blog:



Barack, Inc. blog

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Kevin Kelley - the next 5,000 days of the Web

These are the last two slides in a 20 minute presentation by Kevin Kelley - IMO a person who articulates our web experience now and in the future better than anyone.

I think his whole talk ( from TED Talks) is worth listening to so you will understand what Kevin means by "ONE".

Kevin Kelly on the next 5,000 days of the web | Video on TED.com

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The Fast Company 50 - 2009: Team Obama is Number 1

"The year's most successful startup took a skinny kid with a funny name and turned him into the most powerful new national brand in a generation."

The infographic shown above features an animated timeline chart of key news clips of the Obama campaign.(To see the animation click on the link below.)

The Fast Company 50 - 2009: Team Obama | Fast Company




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Generation WE - Yes we can!

I have 12 grandchildren ages 8 - 26 who are all part of Generation WE, and I am really enthused about the potential they and their generational cohorts have to effect the important changes they need to achieve a sustainable future.

They have already made their political clout evident as they turned out in massive numbers to vote for Obama - and they now have a taste of what it is like to play an active role in making our world a better place.

My primary purpose in life is to help Generation WE to design and implement an audacious project: Project Free: Generation WE: A Generation 95 Million People Strong

The Visual Repertoire of Obama’s Run for the White House

I've been quiescent on this blog for several months due to radiation therapy which sapped my energy and interest in things visual - so, as a restart to my visual journal, i have clipped just a couple of images from a remarkable visual overview of Obama's run for the White House. Published by the Parson's Institute for Information Mapping and originally compiled by the Information Design Studio in Amsterdam.





Click here to scroll through the visual history of Obama's campaign:

The Visual Repertoire of Obama’s Run for the White House

Kevin Kelley on Visuality ( NYT)

An insightful glimpse into the new potential for visuality - as we become "people of the screen" Here are a few clips from Kevin's NYT article which can be found in its entirety Here: Idea Lab - Becoming Screen Literate - NYTimes.com

"The fluid and fleeting symbols on a screen pull us away from the classical notions of monumental authors and authority. On the screen, the subjective again trumps the objective. The past is a rush of data streams cut and rearranged into a new mashup, while truth is something you assemble yourself on your own screen as you jump from link to link. We are now in the middle of a second Gutenberg shift — from book fluency to screen fluency, from literacy to visuality."

"Take, for example, the problem of browsing a feature-length movie. One way to scan a movie would be to super-fast-forward through the two hours in a few minutes. Another way would be to digest it into an abbreviated version in the way a theatrical-movie trailer might. Both these methods can compress the time from hours to minutes. But is there a way to reduce the contents of a movie into imagery that could be grasped quickly, as we might see in a table of contents for a book?"

Powers of Ten-like view of the neurons of the brain

Everyone has probably seen the Powers of Ten Movie -- If you haven't, this short video visualizes a "zooming out" at the neuronal level of a single neuron, simulated in a collaboration between IBM and the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne using the largest IBM supercomputer.

So that's where thought occurs!!!

EPFLTV: EPFL's video portal

Me to We - how to score in the social world

A slick slideshow pointing out the value of WE

Me to WE: How to SCORE in a Social World

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: score community)

The world is Flat - take 3 - or more if you want

Here are three views of The World is Flat. The first is a visual mural created by a visioneer listening to Charlie Rose interviewing Tom Friedman on The Charlie Rose show.. click on the mural for a larger,sharper image



The second is the Charlie Rose interview on You Tube

The third is a selection from Slideshare where the same information is conveyed in a powerpoint presentation produced by consultant Andi Boediman (credits at the end of the preso) you can watch the preso right here or click on the slideshare logo at the bottom right of the embedded slides to go to a full screen version for better viewing.

The World Is Flat

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: insourcing education)

Take the tour from the mural to the video to the slideshow - eventually I will edit the video and provide clickable links from the mural to the related short video clips that provide the narrative background - and perhaps I will do this also with the slideshare deck, providing my own voice over narration and hopefully making it possible for viewers/listeners to switch back and forth between the different media.

Of course there should also be a clickable button for ordering Tom'sbook from Amazon or maybe even better his revised version. like this Amazon.com: The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century: Thomas L. Friedman: Books which takes you to Amazon where you have these choices:

Guy Kawasaki and Dan Roam - the art of visual thinking

(Click on the images to get a larger view.)

Guy provides another gem to promote Alltop Innovation by teaming up with Dan Roam Thoughts Illustrated: Back of the Napkin -visual thinking - you can do it!

Here's a link to the original article
The Art of Visual Thinking | AlwaysOn

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Be Grateful for your day.

this is from Claudia Welss blog and will open your eyes to how beautiful your day really is and why you should share your gratefulness with the rest of the world. - the video will help you do this and will give you a sense of the beauty and the gifts that life gives us every day.

Brother David Stendl Last is the narrator from GRATEFULNESS.ORG - A Network for Grateful Living

Telepresence on "House"

Pretty good promo for Telepresence (and some nice product placements for Apple: First clip( 44 seconds) is a SuperBowl commercial trailer for the House episode Frozen showing Dr. House and his medical staff collaborating with a patient to diagnose and treat her symptoms "a world away" at the South Pole.




This sceond clip (2:34) has key trailers from the Frozen episode showing more detail of the Telepresence interaction between House and his distant patient. Happy ending.

ManyOne Survives - The New ManyOne Portal Network

I served as an advisor to Joe Firmage at ManyOne during their early years and left for other projects feeling that the original business model of ManyOne had fatal flaws.

Their latest incarnation may be the right model and I intend to try the new beta that has just been released and perhaps reconnect with the Company.

Here is one of their earlier articles on Portal Networks,
Emergence of Portal Networks

and here is a link to the new beta site

Home

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Painting Tom Sawyer's Fence

Professor BJ Fogg at Stanford is co-creating a new book Psychology of Facebook - Dr. BJ Fogg which will be published this Fall. 435 folks ( I am one of them) have volunteered to review the rough drafts of the book's chapters which have, (you got it!) been contributed free of charge by a cadre of eager Facebookers. The primary themes of the book are:

* Why is FACEBOOK so compelling, even ADDICTIVE?
* What motivates MILLIONS to spend time each day on Facebook?
* How do FRIENDS persuade friends to use Facebook more?

It may have been a long time since you read Mark Twain's remarkable account of his character Tom Sawyer and painting his fence. So I thought you might like to look it over one more time.

Tom Sawyer And The Fence

I think Mark Twain understood the Psychology of Facebook and his story Painting Tom
Sawyer's Fence deserves a chapter or at least a footnote/link in BJ's forthcoming book.

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Metcalfe's Law is Wrong?

A more reasoned argument for valuing network connections as they scale, challenging both Metcalfe's Law of exponential growth of network value, and Reed's Law of the value of Group Forming networks like Ning, Facebook, MySpace and YouTube.

What does this say about BJ Fogg's exploration of Massive Interpersonal Persuasion on Facebook? Does Facebook's virality challenge the author's views of the returns to scale of networks. BJ seems to argue that Facebook follows Reed's law.


Lots of money was lost in the dotcom bust when entrepreneurs and venture capitalists overvalued network scale effects - the concept of "the more eyeballs, the more potential value" proved to be fool's gold.

Link from John Maloney on the ValueNetworks google group. Illustrations by Serge Bloch.

IEEE Spectrum: Metcalfe's Law is Wrong

visual resumes - bringing the CV to life

I first posted Karen Bennett(nee Storer) visual resume over 18 months ago Thoughts Illustrated: A Visual Resume - from a TI commentor - and just got a commment from Saran whose visual resume is shown below(from Slideshare)

Combining these visual CV's with social networking tools brings the person to "life". Saranyans' slideshow could be a short video with his voice overdubbed ( this can be done in Slideshare) With his voice the CV would be even more personal.

| View | Upload your own

from twitter to youtube - nice segue from Garr Reynolds

I am not a fan of twitter, but a twit from Scoble in my inbox led me to one from Garr Reynolds the author of Presentation Zen.

Because I like Garr's world view of presentations and zen,Thoughts Illustrated: Ah So! PresentationZen - a book every presenter must read I clicked on the twitter url on Garr's twitter page and found this very personal postcard on YouTube (short 1:14m and I think you'll like it.)



Make you want to go to Cannon Beach in Oregon?

Make me understand how twitter can serve as a microblogging link to videos like the one Garr produced?

Maybe there is a role for twitter in my digital LifeStream.

Obama's 'Cybergenic' Edge - Paul Saffo on ABC News

Paul Saffo is a genius at translating his meta-insights into quotable memes.

Here is his take on how Obama stacks up against McCain ABC News: Obama's 'Cybergenic' Edge

I recall a YiTan teleconference call in May of 2007 when Facebook was just emerging as the social network platform. I put the question to the over 80 conferees " is anyone using Facebook?" Only one person said "yes" - and it turned out he was an Obama staffer honing his Cybergenic edge.

As Paul says in concluding his essay:

"I'll bet we will look back from the other side of Nov. 4 and conclude that the single most important factor in this election was the winner's cybergenic edge.

We might even see a Kennedy-Nixon moment before the race is over. But even if we don't, I'll be very surprised if Obama isn't our next president. And when he wins, let us hope that Obama's cybergenic instincts enable the first cybergenic president to govern as effectively as he ran."

Right on, Paul!

telepresence -

check out slide 14 for Cisco apps data.

| View | Upload your own

Randy's Last Lecture- lessons for living from a dying man

Randy Pausch is dying of pancreatic cancer and his last lecture at Carnegie Mellon appears in this abbreviated version on the the Oprah show. Watch as this remarkable teacher reveals his lessons for your life.Click over to Youtube for a full screen version.

Noise Creep?

I have been watching the rising tide of concern for the increase in the garbage quotient in the blogosphere and the declining quality of the content of online conversations. Just the other day it was Scoble who admittd to being inundated with Twits from his followers(it's his own fault IMO) and today Seth Godin, another A-list blogger, sounds off on the same theme:

Seth's Blog: Signal to noise:

"Lately, I’m feeling noise creep.

Lately, the noise seems to be increasing and the signal is fading in comparison. Too much spam, too many posts, too little insight leaking through. I don’t use Twitter, but I know a lot of Twitter users are feeling this. So are folks who go to too many conferences. And don’t get me started on victims of Blackberry cc: disease.

I wish I could tell you the easy answer. I can’t. I just know that the faltering signal is a problem."

It sure is, Seth. We're caught in a death spiral of Twittering, Facebooking, Texting, and IM-ing, which Professor BJ Fogg, at the Stanford Center for Persuasive Technologies admiringly calls Massive Interpersonal Persuasion (MIP). As it becomes increasingly difficult to filter out the signal from the rising tide of noise, we are squandering our most precious asset ....Attention!

The Human Network - Cisco

This video is short and to the point and reinforces the message of my previous post ( see link below)



Thoughts Illustrated: Shift Happens - Did you Know?

Shift Happens - Did you Know?

Over 5 million people have seen this video in some form or other - the original was created by Carl Fisch, a teacher at Centennial High School in Arapahoe, Colorado as a PowerPoint presentation . You can download the PPT deck from Carl's blog site but I wouldn't recommend it. The content is the original, but the deck is all text slides.

Here is what Carl said on his blog The Fischbowl: Did You Know? about the presentation :

"I was very nervous about showing this and how it would go over, but it seemed to have its intended effect (at least initially - we'll see if it really helps generate the on-going conversations we need to have). I would be interested in feedback from anybody who decides to download it."

And download it they did - with a wide variety of design takes on the original. Here are two I like the best - worth your time to watch both, because the same message gets to you differently.

Here's the first remix with updated information produced by Scott McCleod and Xplane.



Michael Arnold, with permission from Carl Fisch added his narration and a new set of supporting images. Same story different treatment.




With assistance from Xplane, Carl has created a wiki shifthappens � Suggestions for Using the Presentationfor Shift Happens where you can find research, resource links and a lot more.

TED BIGVIZ - Behind the scenes

I can't embed this informative video by David Sibbet(inset above) so you will have to click on the link below to take you to the video which explains how BIGVIZ was produced in real time and visualized on the PerceptivePixel touch screen displays at the TED conference.


David Sibbet: TED2008-BIG VIZ Production

The Long Tail of David Armano

This image is from David Armano's Visual Thinking Archive shown in Slideshare form below. This archive is available to anyone on the net for free and contains 50 unique images that are as useful as the one shown above.

To get the best view of this image archive click on the slideshare logo to be taken to a larger size version. ( click "full" in the lower right hand corner of the slideshare version to get the full size.

Thanks, David!

| View | Upload your own

Thoughts Illustrated: BIGVIZ - an ebook of sketches from TED2008

Thoughts Illustrated: BIGVIZ - an ebook of sketches from TED2008

Back of the Napkin -visual thinking - you can do it!

Here is Dan Roam's blog on visual thinking. Back of the Napkin
which is worth visiting to see how his blog complements his new book which he talks about in the video below.

Watch the interview with Dan to get the gist of the book - I'm buying it today!

How Many Earth Days Do We Have Left? | AlterNet

How Many Earth Days Do We Have Left? | AlterNet

Ah So! PresentationZen - a book every presenter must read

A unique forward by Guy Kawasaki launches this most valuable of how-to books for presenters - After 30 years in the presentation business, I am hard to impress - but Garr Reynolds has put it all into a visually stunning and practical guide. Learn how to bring your presentations to the level of the pros in both design and delivery. Go get it now !

Amazon.com: PresentationZen:.

googleforce.com - cloud computing partners

A 3 minute interview with Eric Schmidt CEO of Google describing their partnership with SalesForce.com. A harbinger of an explosive adoption of SAAS and Cloud Computing that will give Microsoft something to think about, and could lead to a merger of google and SalesForce over time.

Wii Multitouch Wows TED

Johnny Lee of Carnegie Mellon graduates to the TED2008 platform to show off his Wii-based interactive whiteboard and give a strong plug for the use of YouTube in democratizing the process of technology research. ( 5 min video from TED Talks).

I posted earlier on Thoughts Illustrated: WiiMote multitouch from CynergyLabs on Johnny's simple, very cheap method ($40) for using the Wiimote IR sensors to provide multitouch interactivity in large "mural" size format brings the price point of these displays within the reach of anyone wanting to integrate the user with the display of visual information. Since I first learned of Lee's innovation, he has reached over a 500,000 people who have downloaded his code to explore the use of the Wiimote and has made a business deal with Electronic Arts the giant game producer to incorporate his 3D "glasses" into interactive games ( shown in the second segment of the video)

This dramatic reduction in the cost of interactive whiteboards presages an explosion of the use of this powerful form of user interface with images and data. Every classroom and business meeting room should have one.