MetaMagazine articles [Blog]

Open Source Civilization

2012-01-06T16:58:00.001+01:00

Open Source is in my world since Linux became known as an alternative OS and I use examples since I read Eric S. Raymond's book The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

My thing was (and is) open source education (see: open source curriculum), but looking for real life community solutions one must look beyond software and content alone. Looking for the ultimate DIY tool-box you can start your life and survive if possible with these modular (hardware) tools:

Starting with the open source Blueprints for civilization (modular hardware) by Marcin Jubowski: see Open Source Ecology

Open Source Education has a few angles in which it develops, looking at the available curriculum (content), the teaching methods and the used resources: Here are a few links:

Schoolforge: https://schoolforge.net/
Connections: http://cnx.org/
Open Source Initiative: http://www.opensource.org/
Open Educational Resources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_educational_resources
Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)-project tried to combine hardware and open source software for developing countries.
George Lucas founded an Educational Foundation to improve and stimulate education: Edutopia

Speaking of an open source knowledge ecosystem by Richard Baraniuk:

And as a guide for open source teams: How Open Source Projects survive poisonous people:

The above Google talk is aimed at coding projects, but useful for any non-profit or volunteer-based project.

Update january 2011

2011-01-24T02:20:00.005+01:00

Working on a temporary combined page due to heavy traffic and on metamagazine.com
Trying to put all my fragmented old Blog-pages in this open Blog.

My Book-collection of 550+ books is large and heavy on the server so if possible (exporting existing pictures etc) I will link that to the online version of Bookcollector (from Collectorz.com). An old (2008) incomplete booklist is available on LibraryThing.

Things that keep my busy lately:
* Global Economy and financial crisis: we need to develop a sustainable currency, I started with a pilot with time-based currency on tijdruilen.nl ; It needs some additional work on the backend (Cyclos software).
* Publishing my Meta-files and Meta-frameworks as meta-tool or handbook: "Metahandbook: Frames for Life". What systems and frameworks to include and what not to include.... Selection and narrowing of content is hard.
* Hosting Business - my idea was an automated business model (with Tim Ferris' 4 hour workweek as reference), but theory and reality don't match with my specific configuration.
* Hiring a Personal Assistant online for specific tasks, and JV with programmers for certain ideas and tasks.
* MetaLifecoaching: working on a set of tools related to coaching, Life-coaching and more specific Meta-Lifecoaching including Energy Psychology and Energy Medicine using biofeedback-tools.
* Some concerns about use and misuse of social media; which medium to use for what? At the moment I have a very fragmented reality online. I was trying GetGlue for a while with moderate success, but it's not complete yet since Facebook (and other networks like Hyves) uses it's own likes... I did activate sharing it on this Blog.
* Reading and studying books related to the Ascension-process and 2012, the Global Shift, consciousness, spirituality, enlightenment etc. Highly Sensitive People (HSP) play a key role regarding sensitivity and intuition.
* Organizing, GTD and LifeHacking (broad sense)

Omnigadgets iPhone 4 - iPhone 5 - iPad 2

2010-06-30T16:30:00.008+02:00

I am stil waiting for a good deal for the iPhone 4 : The iPad (large iPhone but without the camera's) broke the sales-record last year. The Android phones and devices filled the emptiness (Void) of over 10 week delivery-time of the iPhone 4 last summer. Also the antenna-problems (which obviously was a design flaw) didn't help much either. The new HTC (Desire Z) and Samsung Galaxy S (and Samsung Galaxy Tab) are good alternative candidates.

I now have a Kindle (3G + WiFi) for reading books and my PDF-documents, but the combination of listening to a specific audio-lesson in MP3 and reading the corresponding PDF does not work well. Searching through documents on my iPhone does not work as convenient as my desktop or laptop and (for what I heard the iPad does not do that either, unless you put these documents in Google Docs or a specific app). The fact that Flash is not supported feels a bit like cutting off a large part of the Internet-content. I could use a remote viewing app like Teamviewer to work on my desktop with my iPhone, but this is improvising. Rumors say the iPhone 5 might come out in april 2011 and the new iPad 2 (with camera's) even sooner in February 2011. Since the price of the iPhone 4 didn't drop (it even increased, the 32 GB model including 2 year telecom-services: T-Mobile now to €329 + €29,95 a month, was €269 + €29,95 a month when introduced).
Maybe I will buy the new iPad 2 instead of the iPhone 4 or even wait for the iPhone 5.
Picture and movie editing, visual and speech-recognition, streaming camera recording, stereo-audio recording and a longer battery-life (currently max. 8 hours continuous use) is what I'm aiming for.

Below my initial comments - in concept - of June 30, 2010:
Yes I will also comment about the new Apple iPhone 4. The long awaited new iPhone after the iPhone 3GS was announced just over one month ago and sales skyrocketed in the first days to almost 2 million pieces with the pre-orders.
OK I admit it: I really want one. But why? Mainly for the features I miss on my current iPhone 3G: Good quality pictures, videorecording + editing, multitasking, a compass (which was already included in the 3GS) and Blue-tooth Keyboard support.

I wonder how many people actually use these specific features, but we will find out soon:
Given the new video + editing possibilities on the iPhone 4, this should increase video-blogging: This feature will definitely increase the number of movies on YouTube.com (Although movies and clips can be recorded in HD(ready) quality it gives no guarantee about the value of the published content.
Quality pictures: pictures taken at workshops or seminars currently (with 3G) are often not acceptable enough for archive-use. The new 5 MP (low light support) camera will probably produce better quality pictures. I assume with multi-tasking background support there will be note-taking apps like Evernote that support recording, scribble note-taking and taking pictures at the same time (without interruption of the stereo(?) recording).

Multi-tasking: for what I have come to hear it's a low level multitasking-feature like music or streaming background sound but it's a good start. Background recording or better live Speech-recognition with Dragon Dictate (not yet available in EU) or Dragon Naturally Speaking on my iPhone would be nice.
Live sound analysis like Shazam or SoundHound now does for music with (con)textual information and recognition with GPS combined with personal preferences could be a new killer app. A location based genius-like app for suggested places to go to, attractions to visit and people to meet (a bit like aka-aki, but with live location-based feeds: sort of a "around me"+ app)

Trend Fusion Artist Lady Gaga

2010-05-26T15:59:00.008+02:00

At first I must have ignored Lady Gaga's popularity as an artist until it became obvious a few months ago she's one of the most influencial people in performance, music and fashion at the moment (even to the world according to Time May 2010 Time 100). At the moment many fans and artists use Lady Gaga as inspiration for creating their own style. For example: Lady Gaga combines several (known) styles in her performance art video's and clips: she dresses extravagant, sexy, uses all kinds of fashion accessories, Bling-bling (diamonds and sparkling jewelery), extreme makeup, masks, Gothic subculture, spiritual symbols, new wave, avant-garde and Electropop. On sites about Lady Gaga it is said she's influenced by Marc Bolan, David Bowie (both artist in the Glam Rock genre), also Queen, Madonna and Michael Jackson are mentioned as wel as Deepak Chopra in het Times interview, her dress-style is a tribute to Andy Warhol known from his pop-art.

OK this was only my introduction to my point: Lady Gaga to me is an example of an even bigger Fusion-trend in music and fashion using popular items and concepts from the past. The fact Lady Gaga is the most downloaded artist on YouTube (almost 213,000,000 times at the moment for the Bad Romance Video). This specific Lady Gaga video has some common elements with the classic 1982 Thriller videoclip by Michael jackson (13.42 min.); the supernatural, zombie-like creatures, the crawling dance, the world in a world, and struggle for power.

The interesting part about the designs is the link to cultural, cult and fashion-trends. It's very loose and therefore adaptive, which means anybody can join in and reuse the ideas to their own like. Lady Gaga created a movement, a tribal sphere of creatives who are inspired to create their own style. She's a catalist for style innovation and that's why she's setting a trend.

Update June 10:
I just watched the new Alejandro video (Also see YouTube) via the official Lady Gaga website. Well produced but maybe a bit too much erotic and less Gaga style what we know her for. Some interesting new dance-moves to say the least. The eroticism might just be interpreted as a selling tool like Madonna once did but with the difference that it had been done before: is she going for easy publicity? Sure sex sells but is she going mainstream and follow Madonna's path (Gaga even uses similar religious symbols) now that we can see her real face in the video? Is she testing her public? Suggestions and rumors about Lady Gaga posing nude for Playboy are getting heavier and Gaga seems to explore this medium as a way of expression. Below the quotes from Popcrunch.com:

“No-one wants her to do it. Her business people are trying to convince her that it could be seen as being a bit lowbrow and cheesy, and will alienate her fans who like her edgy appeal,” says a spying Bunny close to the rumored Playboy deal. “She thinks it will be an experience, and she’s always looking to grow as an artist. She doesn’t think there’s anything distasteful about it. She sees it as just another form of expression.”

The source squeals: “She’s been chatting with everyone about it all week. She’s always been a fan of Hugh Hefner’s, and his whole sex-as-art kind of thing. She’s always looking to shock and entertain, and something like this would be perfect for her. She wants her shoot to be like nothing Playboy has every seen before. If she doesn’t drop it, her nude shoot will be like nothing Playboy has ever seen!”

We shouldn't forget Lady Gaga is an artist trying to explore (and maybe exploit) every medium and channel to the fullest. The challenge is to continue and top the teasing-climax after publication. What is the next level after full exposure? What if Gaga's erotic videoclips are reduced (in the public minds eye) to a teaser for her posing nude for Playboy? Can she continue to make other (new) forms of visual satisfaction? What new performance dimensions will she explore or develop? Will her "little monsters" (as she calls her fans) stand by her and support her in her exploration at the edge, in nudity expression? Does she dissociate from her fans and cross a point of no return? She is playing with fire since the public expects something extraordinary; an ordinary nude beach-shoot for Lady Gaga would probably be considered artistic suicide.
I sincerely hope Lady Gaga will continue to explore her creative expression as an artist and not reduce herself to just another Playmate or Playboy-Bunny.
[Will probably be continued]

Life is a Game; and the rules are changing

2010-03-17T10:21:00.011+01:00

What if you could consider your Life as a Game?
What would be the Rules (general principals, norms & moral guidelines) and Goal of the game?
What kind of incentive and punishment are you giving yourself (You, the Player)?
What activities, interactions and accomplishments would you earn 'points' for?
What kind of points would you like to score?
Would you go for accumulation of Wealth (currently measured in a relative subjective form of Currency: Money) or maybe another value good like: Gold, Clean Water or Energy-units?
Also directly related: What kind of Bad (like waste and garbage) should you avoid or deal with?

On a more Psychological and Spiritual ground you could deal with- or eliminate 'mind'-things that are taking a lot of your time, like worries or unnecessary energy-leaks (resulting in stress): Humans tend to have energy-leaks towards the past or the future. These (often recurring) thoughts about certain people or events are an indication (and opportunity of awareness) that you are not being fully present in the now. You need to accept and forgive to give closure to these (often negative) energy-absorbing thoughts. For the future it is best to be positive (or at least neutral) toward anticipated events. If you sense fear in yourself, you can accept this fear as a signal that you need to prepare or even practice for the anticipated event, like a Fire-drill. As an alternative visualization exercise: If you can accept the worst-case scenario as a possibility you will feel relieved. A generic attitude (by default) with focus on a smooth and positive outcome is best for your body's energy-system and for your health. The stress-level can physically be measured as Heart Coherence (measuring the HRV: Heart Rhythm Variable) with a sensor attached to your finger or ear. This stress-variable can be measured with a portable device and added to your current Life-game.

[Related Biofeedback: Heartmath emWave, Game: The Wild Divine]

The interesting (self-reflecting) factor in your Life as a Game begins when you start thinking about your passions, the things you really like to do (normally: things that give you energy), your natural skills, and your success-variables.

[Changing Rules]
The New Economy, and life within this economy has new rules. The new consumers label themselves as Fans (Apple inc.) vs Customers (Microsoft) which adds a new dimension to Brands. People tend to be loyal to their personality patterns, or put differently: "people don't like to change their common behavior". Brand loyalty can be measured in real life (a tendency to buy one product over the other: ceteris paribus) but in a game-setting these Brand aspects might be described in product-context terms like "Popularity" (based on current sales), or product Quality terms "component or ingredient declaration and Quality" (which is most frequently used), "Industry Standard", "Connectivity & Usability", "Open vs Closed Source", and the Cradle to Cradle (C2C) "Product Lifespan & Lifecycle". I would not be surprised if sustainability and social accountability (like ecological fair trade & treatment of employees) as a Brand value become more important. As an example: the iPhone application (Goodguide.com) scans and checks barcodes with databases revealing the context and lifecycle aspects of the product and Brand. This way you are able to score all aspects of a product (energetic, ecological, ethical, political and sustainable). For example if you want specific info about your ecological footprint you can add these values to your Life-game and make a purchase choice on a product-level.

Web 2.0 (inter-connectivity (RSS), personalized pages, communities) and Web 3.0 (mobile contextual info, meta-tags, and P2P tribes) changes the way we communicate and interact with others. You can see online companies adding interactivity to their communication with terms like dialog-marketing sending personalized mail (harvested by a contest, web-form or social networks). Amazon's personalized and customized recommendations based on previous orders and similarities with other customers in the data-pool are probably the best example.

Given the fact we can communicate and interact relatively easy worldwide with other people on the Internet, a personal challenge with the right social networking coordination can immediately become a collaborative project, multipliable initiative or even a tribal movement. The implications of unlimited scalability through the available technology are enormous and we can only grasp the near future. The power and possibilities of Crowdsourcing, Crowdfunding, tribes, social networks (which are now very measurable) and mobile technology will definitely change our world-view and the way we live.

I hope we will create some real life contexts (domains / arena's) to play with this technology in sandboxes before all newbies and digitally impaired are broadcasting everywhere and (unintended) clogging or even destroy (by overloading) the system. Peer review (like on Wikipedia) might offer a solution, but I seriously see a need for Computer, Media and Internet (Communication Technology) education (Information Literacy) in non-invasive, limited impact controlled sandbox context.

Back to your Life-Game, some final thoughts:

What is your preferred Arena (playing field)?
What are your specific targets (within this context or arena)?
What resources will you use? (information, tools, materials, people, funding)

When have you reached your "level"?

How will you be awarded and how will you share your experience and accomplishments?

How can you document and model your accomplishments as a teaching for others?

Other related info: Game Theory, Moral Psychology, WikiHow: Make-Your-Life-a-Roleplaying-Game, Goalsetting community: 43 Things]

Development of an iPhone-aplication: XS Explorer

2010-01-06T23:07:00.000+01:00

Project Proposal: Accessibility Explorer or XS Explorer
Accessible Europe is a project of Toegankelijk Nederland.nl – draft 1.3

Summary
In order to collect user generated accessibility data about locations (buildings and travel destinations) and use the great potential of a potentially worldwide user database. I propose an iPhone application named Accessibility Explorer or XS Explorer (as a shortened name). With the Apple iPhone you can survey and take pictures of the location directly from inside the XS Explorer application and use it to visualize specific attention area’s. The iPhone touch screen can also be used to draw a sketch of a room or situation and you could link it as comment to a question. You can even record audio comments making this useful as a real reviewing tool. The build in GPS-receiver will be used to place the location on maps and link it to pda, mobile phones (smartphones) and other navigation devices through Points Of Interest (POI’s).

About Accessible Europe
Accessible Europe’s mission is to chart the accessibility and usability of public buildings, attractions and travel destinations. The primary focus is on people with specific disability challenges like being unable to walk (and therefore use a wheelchair), being unable to see (blind or short-sighted using tools to navigate and distinguish visual information), difficulty with hearing (using special hearing devices or totally deaf, meaning alternative means of communication other than audio or voice. Other specific challenges needed adaptations or requirements in buildings are asthma (COPD), obesity, baby-care and being short.

Accessible Europe collects and shares location based accessibility information about available public facilities (for specific disabilities) in and around buildings (objects) like restaurants, libraries, hotels and museums.

Example
If you’re planning a family reunion in a group facility it is vitally important to know beforehand if your aunt in a wheelchair can sit at the dining room table and if there is a wheelchair toilet where she can go to powder her nose. If the meetingroom is on the second floor you also need to know if there is an elevator and if the doors of the elevator are big enough for a standard-size or XL-sized wheelchair.

Become an Accessibility Explorer
With the proposed multilingual iPhone application all iPhone users can become instant Accessibility Explorers or XS Explorers. The idea is adding new objects on the go. Any (public) building or destination you visit can be added. Keep in mind we're looking for accessible locations. After registration (with username, password and email with confirmation) as an Accessibility Explorer you can use the Accessibility Explorer tool (or XS Explorer for short)

Steps:
1.   Stand before the main entrance of the object/location. Press “Add new object”, the current GPS location will be stored while typing in the name of the object. Select the function of the object from the rollbar: (for example Restaurant, Cinema, Public Toilet, Hotel, Retailstore)
2.   When the name and function are saved, the online database is checked if this location (300 meters) or if this name already exists in the database. If location and/or name exists you will be presented with the option to review and/or edit the existing data or add a new object. Used Object-ID's will be stored on the iPhone. Active Explorers will be reminded to review and comment visited locations / objects.
3.   Add general contact info or URL for the object (usually found on folders, brochures, businesscards found at the entrance or reception).
4.   Take a picture of the main-entrance or front of the object. (picture is automatically uploaded in background, after being resized to max. 1024 pixels if needed) Select the categories-types (logo’s) you want to review or chart (default = all); Wheelchair toilet, Wheelchair, Deaf (or bad hearing), Blind (visually impaired), Asthma (COPD), Obesity (extreme overweight), and baby-care (lactation-room and/or diaper changing facility).
5.   Fill in the category questions with a score +, +/-, -, unknown (default), not applicable. comment each question if needed. These scoring is based on the ITC (International Accessibility Codes which are in the contextual help on screen with examples to determine the score. Exact measurements (with / length / height in cm) (of doorways or elevators for example) can also be added if the Accessibility Explorer has a measuring-tool available for this.
6.   Take pictures or draw a sketch at each critical point (entrance, corridor, leverage angle, turning circles, etc.). Registered XS Explorers also have the ability to draw or sketch on top of a new or existing picture. The original pictures are stored in the archive.
7.   Fill in extra info at the notes section. Save all object info on the iPhone.
8.   Review the explored object and upload it to the server. (upload with pictures can also be done later when in WiFi-range). Personal comments and notes can be added to each of the questions, categories or rooms.
9.   Registered Accesibility Explorers could receive Explorer community points for each object they successfully upload. (The system keeps track of all submitted locations and feedback on the information-quality)

After internal checking of the submitted data the owner from the object will receive an automatic message:
Hi,
Your location "[Location name]" classified as "[object function]" on GPS mapped location [GPS object location] was visited by an Accessibility Explorer [XS Explorer Nickname] on [object visit date].
Please review the data online [XSexplorer object URL/Object ID]
If you feel this information is incorrect or incomplete, please register as Accessibility Explorer and edit the object.
You can also change or add more contact information, your opening hours and a description of 2000 characters.
If you score at least one + in the XS Explorer review you may add our "Visited by Accessibility Explorer" Logo and link to your homepage. If a visitor clicks the logo he will go to the review of your location on our webpage. You can choose copy and paste the code or banner from the MyXSexplorer page.
If you want more information on how to make your location more accessible please visit [Accessibility Explorer building tips URL]
Thanks for your support,

The XS Explorer team.

Find accessible object
1. press "search from current location" to check for objects nearby (scalable in "Settings" from 1 km to 50km radius). All accessibility options are selected by default but can be unclicked. The results in unchecked categories will be grey and nearest results with checked criteria with show first. Options to search for object type, name, city, province or radius from current position.
2. Select your location to display Accessibility info and contact info.
3. Click call [name location] to call the specific location.
4. Click Show on map to show the location in the maps application
5. Click Navigate to location to start your navigation application

Extra software features:
·   Accessibility Warnings: A dangerous or critical notification about an object / location. (like Wikango speedcamera warnings app)
·   For larger outdoor objects like theme-parks you can add sub-objects like wheelchair-toilets and continue from step 4 with a new picture.

Database entries:
XS explorer username, object GPS location(s), object name, object function, date and time of initial data collection, date and time of submission (or mutation) [also: keep mutation history], contact information Location question categories: accessibility streetwalk path (bestrating), entrance, entry level (begane grond), elevator, toilet, wheelchair toilet, bathroom, corridor, primary room, hearing , blind / sighted, obesity and baby care questions.

Applications for other mobile platforms like Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Google Android should be added as soon as the basic iPhone app is running. The accessibility database website should have a mobile / pda-version for viewing on a small screen. Primary connections to Google-maps and augmented reality applications like Layar should be implemented from the start. Being an XS Explorer using Interactive augmented reality while answering questions about the object could a cutting edge application and fun thing to do. This could give the Accessibility Database a real boost.

History
ToegankelijkNederland started in 2001 with zipcode based location information using a paper questionnaire; the answers were transcribed on the input webpages connecting and storing it to the central database. The current database was setup with the presentation in mind and is not ideal for collection of GPS based object-data.

GPS
A few years ago pda’s and smartphones became more and more advanced with build-in camera’s and GPS. XS Explorer collects and charts location based information with GPS. GPS-info is used by mapping and navigation devices. For exchange and connectivity between systems it is more logical to use GPS as a general identifier than zipcodes. It is still highly recommended to also collect the formal address and object information like name and contactinfo (such as telephonenumber, email and URL). The iPhone app is focused on easy data collection and location based retrieval.

Costs & Investment
The initial XS Explorer application for charting Accessibility should be free from the Apple App store to promote the XS Explorers community. Advertising from featured Accessible locations could pay for the community. Integration with other applications or adding other personal location based info could be sold as a paid iPhone application XS Explorer Pro. Spin-offs or combinations with desktop-syncing applications like Evernote are ways to monetize this app.
This app can easily be modified and used for adding meta-info about any GPS-location (like an external addon for MotionX GPS) or object and any questions can be added.

Option 1: Low Budget: An initial investment with a programmer-auction site like Elance.com or rentacoder.com could be around EUR 3500 for the app, database and basic CMS with a monthly cost for hosting and maintenance of around EUR 200.
Option 2: Adaptation or sponsoring by a software-development company showing high valued real useful application of their technology. This is a win-win situation since the company created a new service for a potential group of 15-35% of all people who use one or more accessibility tags for objects. A wheelchair accessibility tag usually means strollers with babies or small children will most likely also fit.
The only condition for sponsoring or Joint Venture is that usage of the accessibility-database is non-exclusive and should be open to anyone. (Also for other application builders).

A new database and community website should be developed for this Accessibility Explorer application. An API for search, import / export and object-mutation requests could be made to facilitate synchronisation and connections between other databases and applications.

Context
AccessibleEurope (ToegankelijkNederland.NL) is currently (December 2009) in the final phase of testing a new accessibility website made in the CMS Joomla. Instructed volunteers from the different disability-organisations will visit specific object locations (like restaurants, hotels, public service buildings and theatres). These volunteers will measure and test accessibility and usability by answering a basic set of questions for their specific disability in all (or most crucial) functions (and/or room-types) in an object.

Data example
Normal wheelchair accessibility for example requires a minimum passage with of 80cm including enough space for a a turning circle of the wheelchair; this is scored as +/-. For an extra large wheelchair you should have a minimum of 100cm and a larger turning circle; these entries and passages are scored +. Examples of other measured aspects are height-differences (should be minimal), toilets, (bathrooms / showers), elevators (is it big enough and can it be operated from within the wheelchair?), reception or service-desks (can it be used from within the wheelchair?), lockers (within reach), usable table height, and available exits.

I need help setting this up. If you have experience with building iPhone apps or like this project please contact me for more info.

Toine Fennis.
toine@accessibilityexplorer.eu

Identify Roadblocks - Don't Give Up on Change

2009-09-20T23:12:00.001+02:00

I came across a good article by Marshall Goldsmith about roadblocks or traps you can fall into, and how to prepare for them. Very useful for the 4D NLP base-model (Current Situation, Wanted (changed) situation, Blocks and Resources) checking for congruence, future pace and especially realistic / SMART goalsetting.

Question for Ask the Coach:
Change is hard. It takes forever and I don't even know if it's working. Any tips for making this process easier?

Change takes longer than we think and the process is difficult. Acknowledging these facts can make your attempts more successful. My co-author Dr. Kelly Goldsmith, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, and I researched why people give up on their goals. We discovered that there are five common reasons. Understanding these roadblocks will help you apply some preventive medicine — and increase the odds that you won't fall into the same old traps.

1. Ownership
"I wasn't sure that this would work in the first place. I tried it out — it didn't do that much good. As I guessed, this was kind of a waste of time."
The classic mistake made in leadership development, coaching, and self-help books is the promise that "This will make you better!" After years of experience in helping real leaders change real behavior in the real world, I have learned a hard lesson. Only you will make you better.
To have a real chance of success, you have to take personal ownership and have the internal belief that "This will work if, and only if, I make it work. I am going to make this work."

2. Time
"I had no idea that this process would take so long. I'm not sure it's worth it."
Goal setters have a chronic tendency to underestimate the time needed to reach targets. In setting our goals for behavioral change, it's important to be realistic about the time we need to produce positive, lasting results. Habits that have taken years to develop won't go away in a week. Set time expectations that are 50% to 100% longer than you think you will need to see results — then add a little more.

3. Difficulty
"This is a lot harder than I thought it would be. It sounded so simple when we were starting out."
The optimism bias of goal setters applies to difficulty as well as time. Not only does everything take longer than we think it will, but it also requires more hard work than we anticipate.
In setting goals, it's important to accept the fact that real change requires real work. Acknowledging the price for success in the beginning of the change process will help prevent the disappointment that can occur when challenges arise later.

4. Distractions
"I would really like to work toward my goal, but I'm facing some unique challenges right now. It might be better if I just stopped and did this at a time when things weren't so crazy."
Goal setters have a tendency to underestimate the distractions and competing goals that will invariably appear throughout the year. A piece of advice that I give all of my coaching clients is: "I'm not sure what crisis will appear, but I'm almost positive that some crisis will appear."
Plan for distractions in advance. Assume that crazy is the new normal. You will probably be close to the reality that awaits.

5. Maintenance
"I think that I did actually try to change and get better, but I have let it slide since then. What am I supposed to do — work on this stuff the rest of my life?"
Once a goal setter has put in all of the effort needed to achieve a goal, it can be tough for him to face the reality of what's needed to maintain the new status quo. When one of my high-potential leaders asked his boss, the CEO, "Do I have to watch what I say and do for the rest of my career?" the CEO replied, "You do if you plan on ever becoming a CEO!"
Here are the cold, hard truths. Real change requires real effort. The "quick fix" is seldom a meaningful one. Distractions and things that compete for your attention are going to crop up — frequently. Changing any one type of behavior won't solve all of life's problems. And finally, any meaningful change will probably require a lifetime of effort.

[The original Ask The Coach article 'Don't Give Up on Change' by Marshall Goldsmith was copied from: Harvard Business.org]

47 Ways to Fine Tune Your Brain

2009-09-17T12:19:00.001+02:00

47 Ways to Fine Tune Your Brain (by Steven Aitchison)

Your brain is a complex organ. It is the controller of your body, your thoughts, your state of mind and your ultimately your life. There are some who abuse it, some who underuse it, and some who overuse it to the point of meltdown.

In this article we'll look at dozens of tactics that will help you maintain your brain into old age and help to increase your mental agility and cognitive development.

Don't try and multitask, it can't be done.
Our brains can only focus and concentrate on one thing at a time, this is a proven scientific fact. While you can most likely handle multiple menial tasks, anything that requires you to concentrate, reason, or decide deserves full focus.

Exercise your brain, not just your body.
A lot of us leave learning behind when we leave school, college or university. Keep the brain fit by learning something new, whether it be a language, a new skill or musical instrument.
The world is a mystery.
Use your brain to constantly ask questions and explore your surroundings. Continually exercise your brain by not accepting everything you see and hear: question it and free your sense of curiosity.
Use both hemispheres
Use the left hemisphere of your brain to practice logical, mathematical problems in your life. Use the right hemisphere to unleash your creativity. You will know what side is dominant so make it a point to practice using your non dominant hemisphere.
Get to know your sleeping pattern.
Your brain needs sleep as much as your body but everybody is different. I function on 5-6 hours you might work best on 8-9 hours.
Feed your brain decent information.
Your brain is learning throughout the night, so give it something worthwhile to feed it. Our brain is not restoring energy whilst we are sleeping it is cutting out the noise and going over the days events and processing it; give it some great material to process.

If you want to learn more whilst studying, start pacing.
If you are reading a book, start pacing. Movement gets the blood flowing and this helps oxygenate your brain. I walked my way through university and have taught my sons study walking to help them memorize information.
You've heard it before.
Exercise is probably the number 1 way to increase the brains capabilities in every way possible, from memory to creativity. There's no getting around it, we all need to exercise.
Keep Social
Staying socially active has been shown to keep your brain sharp well into old age.

Use the internet to keep your brain active.
A University of California Los Angeles team found searching the web stimulated centers in the brain that controlled decision-making and complex reasoning.

Eat dark chocolate.
Yes, eating dark chocolate has been shown to be beneficial for releasing an important brain chemical called dopamine. Dopamine aids in learning and memory.
Learn a song.
Learn the lyrics of some of your favorite songs to keep your listening skills and memory skills alive.

Watch brain stimulating movies.
Movies that make you think (such as mysteries) help keep your brain and mind active.
Play video games
This has been shown to increase cognitive abilities and can help fight Alzheimer's.

Practice doing things with your non-dominant hand.
This stimulates the brain in many areas and also can be quite fun.

Use meditation as a way to alleviate your stress.
There are thousands of studies about the beneficial effects of mediation and keeping your stress levels down is good for you. You lose brain cells the more stressed you feel, so controlling stress levels is important.

Laugh as often as possible.
Laughing out loud boosts the immune system and releases endorphins, the bodies feel good chemicals.
Think positive.
Thinking positively is a great way to keep your brain alive. Constant negative thinking depresses the mind and goes on to literally depress the immune system. Thinking more positive thoughts is a good way to keep stress down and spur you to take action for a better life.
Practice gratitude.
Practicing gratitude can increase your happiness level significantly which helps to alleviate stress which helps your whole brain and body.
Sex
Sex is another great way to keep your cardiovascular system healthy which means more oxygen to your brain which keeps the brain healthy.
Read a great book.
No matter what type of books you read, they are all beneficial in keeping your brain healthy and active and ward off the aging process.

Drink less alcohol.
Alcohol in moderation can actually be good for the brain, however too much alcohol can kill brain cells and your ability to be able to think and reason effectively.
Working.
A lot of people look forward to giving up work as we get older, however, working even in a part time job can keep the mind active. If you are retired you can do volunteer work to keep you active.

Keep up to date with current events and news.
Keeping your brain fit is about feeding your mind with new information. Watching current affairs programs can help with this so long as they don't stress you out.

Listen to music.
Listening to music that you wouldn't normally listen to is another good way to keep your brain active. Music has the ability to release positive emotions in you.
Dance.
Dancing is a great all around for both mind and body. Learning s a new dance helps your cognitive skills, your spatial awareness, your social skills, your motor skills and helps keeps your body healthy.
Throw a ball.
Throwing and catching a ball is great for sensory-guided movement. It can improve your brain’s visual, tactile and hand-eye coordination responses and keep them sharp well into old age.

Eat well.
Eating certain types of food can really be beneficial to your brains chemistry. Avoid fatty foods and eat more vegetables and fruit. This is sound advice for brain and body.

Drink plenty of water.
Drinking water helps the cells function properly and keeps you feeling hydrated from the inside out.
Have a cup of tea.
Drinking tea, hot or cold, can stimulate your brain in many ways. Tea contains caffeine which can be good for you if drunk in moderation.

Take a trip.
Have you always fancies traveling well it has been shown that traveling really does broaden your horizons.

Use your debating skills.
Having friendly debates with friends and family can improve your logical, thinking, reasoning and creativity skills.

Sleep a little longer.
Sleeping an extra few hours every now and again is good for rejuvenating your brain and help you learn faster.
Take naps.
Taking a nap throughout the day can help keep you from feeling tired and help stave off 'brain fog'. A ten minute nap will do to help you function throughout the day.
Turn down the TV.
If you watch a lot of TV turn it down to hone your listening and concentration skills.
Break the cycle.
If you tend to do the same thing day in day out, try and break the pattern of your activities. Your brain relies on doing something different to keep it active, break your normal routine to do this.

Learn a new word.
Learning anything new will help keep your brain healthy. Learning a new word each day is a simple way to accomplish this.
Look at old photographs.
This is a great way to keep your memories alive and to strengthen cell connections within the brain.
Do something outrageous.
Doing things we would normally never do like a bungee jump, a parachute jump, hill climbing, a helicopter ride, etc., will keep your brain alive, literally.

Train your brain.
The 'cogni-fit' industry is huge and is growing every year and for good reason. Start playing some of these 'cogni-fit' games to keep your brain healthy and active.
Take supplements.
Supplements like omega-3, folic acid with vitamin B-12, CoEnzyme Q10, Acetyl-L-Carnitine, and an all round strong multi-vitamin supplement, has been shown to slow down the aging process. Check with your doctor before taking supplements.
Mindfulness.
A simple mindfulness exercise is to just sit and relax and pay attention to your breathing. This helps to promote relaxation, keep your mind focused, helps with concentration and does the body a world of good.

Develop critical thinking skills.
Critical thinking involves you asking questions of yourself and the world around and looking for evidence of your assumptions.
Become a philosopher.
Not literally, but start thinking about the bigger questions in life. This develops your brain on many levels. More than likely you will never come up with a definitive answer to the big questions but it keeps your brain and mind active.
Make your own affirmations.
Affirmations are a great way to keep your mind focused on your life goals. When you use affirmations you are also using your imagination, and activating other regions in your brain which can help with memory, creativity and even releasing feel good chemicals.

Thinking outside the box.
I always thought this was a strange saying as you cannot really think outside the box when you are always living inside the box of knowledge. However over the years I have come to realize it really means thinking without using your reasoning skills to look for alternatives and it can be a great way to keep your mind active.
Sing out loud.
Singing is a great way to help you focus and get rid of stress. People who sing out loud feel happier as they are not internalizing thoughts but focusing on an ext renal action, their voice. It also aids memory.

Scientists now know that our brains continuously make new neurons throughout our lives and it does this in response to the what we do in our lives. Neurons are important for transmitting and making connections with other cells. If we lose the neurons, we lose the power to think properly, to use our creativity, to learn, to memorize effectively, basically our brains slowly die. Exercise and brain stimulation is one of the best ways to keep making these new neurons. Using some of the examples above you will keep your brain healthy and active for years to come.

[This Article was copied from another Blog: Dumblittleman.com]

Online sources for Geeks & Infoworkers

2009-09-04T20:56:00.009+02:00

In the past I may have resented the term 'Geek', but since it has become more mainstream I find myself using resources targeted at Geeks and informationworkers.
Here they are:

Geekbrief.tv - Shiny Happy Tech News. A very information rich, professionally produced vodcast by Cali Lewis. A must see for Gadget-geeks.
Bright.nl - Innovative (Dutch) Lifestyle Magazine. Good news articles and product review vodcasts.
Lifehacking.nl - Dutch Bloggers with useful articles about Lifehacking. Working smarter instead of harder. Lifehackers frequently use technology and systems to create shortcuts for redundant or unnecessary tasks in their life.
More about Lifehacking: Lifehacker.com and Life Hack (Wikipedia)
Wired.com - Wired Magazine is a strong brand for Geeks both online and offline. Wired reported and maybe even set many trends in the past. Sections include: Cars 2.0, Culture, Entertainment, Gadgets, Gaming, How-To, Med Tech, Multimedia, Politics, Product Reviews, Science, Software, Tech Biz, Tech Jobs, and Dual Perspectives.

And the review Blogs I came across looking for specific articles

Geek.com - Large Technology News and Reviews site divided into categories: Apple, Gadgets, Mobile, Games, Chips, Geek-cetera, Forums and a Shop. Geek.com also has a weekly podcast.
Geeksugar.com - Geek is chic. The female oriented GeekSugar Tech Community has lots of special interest groups and is following news and gadget trends.
Engadget.com - More in-depth reports about media-gadgets, Mobiles and HD-television.
ThinkGeek.com - Stuff for smart masses. Gadget webshop selling: T-shirts & apparel, Geek Toys, Gadgets, Home & Office supplies, Computer Stuff, Caffeine & Candy, Electronics, Geek stuff for Kids, and Books.
Corporategeek.info - a blog for sharing tips about project management and improving productivity at work, alongside practical advice for business communication and effective presentations.
IT-Geek.info - Info Tech, Reviews for Geeks. Coolest IT, hardware, software news for g33ks!
Twittergids Geek Top 100 - 100 Geek twitterers to follow (if you like)

Not really Geek but highly related and interesting to Geeks:

Mashable.com - The Social Media Guide. Mashable is the world's largest blog focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Media news. Mashable reviews new Web sites and services, publishing breaking news on what's new on the web and offering social media resources and guides.
TED.com - Ideas worth spreading - Strategic, tactical and practical information in videoformat (and audio) from inspirational leaders in the fields of Technology, Engineering, & Design. Also available trough YouTube and the TED iPhone app.
Dutchcowboys.nl - Popular Dutch Weblog about Web 2.0, social media and interactive marketing.
Techlicious.com - Tech made simple. Sections: Tips & How-Tos, Guides & Reviews, Fab Websites. Maintained by and targeted at women. (Practical stuff for Geek wannabees)

Holidays – My Danmark vacation with minimal Internet

2009-08-31T19:44:00.006+02:00

This was written on my final night in the family cabin in Heijlsminde, Danmark where we have been the first two weeks of july 2009.

Internet & iPhone

There is no Internet-connection here so I used my iPhone for checking my mail once a day for urgent messages. The mobile phone and dataconnection on the Telia DK telephone network is expensive (€ 2 / MB) so I had my iPhone in flightmode most of the time. Unfortunately, almost all but a few iPhone apps (38 items) need to be upgraded for OS3 and this needs to be downloaded. Some apps require a fast WiFi connection and iTunes connected to the Internet. I tried to download and upgrade apps when I found an open WiFi network in a shopping street in Fredericia. Since my wife and kids were walking ahead I finally had to catch up and loose the connection (I could upgrade 3 non-essential apps). A Danish student told me most McDonalds supposedly have WiFi hotspots but the two restaurants I visited had none.

Maybe If I really set my mind to it I would have been able to localize an open wifi network but I choose not to. No Twitter, no news, no downloads, no TV (there were 3 Danish free to Air channels). I did not even miss Twitter, even though I still get followers (Why if I’m not posting twits at all?)

As a precaution I was advised not to use Twitter during my vacation since this could alert unwanted visitors. Does anybody have experience with this?

Cultural impressions

We drove by large parts of the famous Marguerite route in Danmark which gives a good impression of the beautiful Danish scenery (just follow the flower on the boards).

We visited Legoland Billund two days which was fun for the kids. I had a personal record of waiting 40 minutes in line for hotdogs. Fransk hotdogs seem to be the favourite fastfood snack here (being a round bread with a hole in it for the sauce and hotdog. (Traditional hotdogs are 'risted' with dry baked onions). Also we had our first lakritz (licorice / drop) salty icecream, probably a variation of the famous Smorredrop. The Danish bread and sweet bakery products are really a specialty. Every supermarket and most gasstations have a large selection of freshly baked Danish products. We have seen second hand shops in almost every town or city we visited. Sales of used products seems to be more common in Danmark than in the Netherlands given the many second-hand shops and flea markets we have seen.

We visited Kolding on several days with its large swimming & wellness center. The last thursday we went to the Legepark in Kolding with the kids. This park is build and run by unemployed (according to the brochure) and is free to visit. There is a large playground with moonbikes, a pond with rowingboats and waterbikes. We played minigolf and my daughter wanted to play chess with large pieces (I need to teach her the rules of the game first). I highly recommend the Kolding Legepark if you want a relaxed afternoon with your kids. Earlier this week we had a tour to Ribe, climbed the stairs of the Church to the top. Esbjerg city center and Harbour. We went to Haderslev, Fredericia with a waterstream running through the streets, Vejle, Odense with the large railway museum and Fyns Hoved (the top of the island) with the beautiful scenery and many Rocks.

On our way home we visited Tonder where they just had a cultural festival where people were dressed up for in antique clothing. We made a carriage horse-ride with our family. We waited 3 hours at the Elbefahre (boat) but we had a good vacation in Danmark.

Technology on the move - a personal history

2009-05-28T09:08:00.020+02:00

Most technological inventions need some time to get acquainted to and settle in. Although I consider myself an early adopter for general technology and gadgets, at the current rate new technology and systems are being introduced it is a real challenge to keep up tacit knowledge by using and adopting all the available technology. In this short personal history I will review some changes in technology (related to games, music and available networks) I experienced in the last 25 years.

Around 1984 I had my first walkman (for playing my home-recorded cassette-tapes with music) that I used in the early mornings on my newspaper delivery route. We had a Commodore 64 computer (64 kByte that is) with a cassette tapedrive for external memory that I used for loading games. Before turboloader a large game could take up to 45 minutes to load (possibly limited by the maximum lenght of a tape?), later an application called 'turboloader' brought it back to a minute.
Back then you had friends at school who introduced and helped with using new gadgets and technologies. Handheld pocket games like Donkey Kong (from Nintendo) and PacMan were a real rage back then, to the point that it was forbidden to take it to school. Surprisingly these games are still very popular today on several gaming platforms. Parents now would probably call it peer group pressure since the result of playing with a technologically privileged schoolfriend was also getting or begging for one yourself.

In 1985 I got introduced to 27 MC (CB) and bought one 22 channel (0.5 watt), in 1986 I started buying and experimenting with larger CB (4 x 80 + more lineair power), FM transmitters (building them) and pirate stations (with a few CB friends) since I was inspired by the story of Radio Veronica. My vinyl recordcollection grew these years from 3 to more than 800 12 inch album records mostly from Koninginnedag (Dutch Queensday) and fleamarket sales. In the early 90's I added some more to my current 1200+ vinyl record collection (about 80% various artists albums). The reason I bought second hand LP's on fleamarkets initially was that it was affordable. An average between € 0.50 - 1.50 per record. An interesting observation for me is that the perceived value of a secondhand Compact Disc (CD) is still much higher (€ 1.00 - 5.00) than that of an LP even if it is the same album. Same is true for secondhand and even more supprisingly new VHS-tapes (low price) and DVD's (high price), it is even more interesting because the productioncosts of a DVD's are less than 25% than that of anVHS-tape. Yes of course do I know VHS is phased out in favor of DVD-R and memorycards but my point is it seems to follow a common trend when substituting old with new technology.

Around 1987 I bought myself an autoreverse walkman with external mic-recorder and FM radio-receiver. There was no music-station on the Dutch radio during my early morning paperroute, so I had my personal FM music broadcasting station (Radio GoGo) in Hilversum during my paperroute. The whole idea of creating a music compilation on tape as my personal radiostation with jingles and then broadcasting it to myself appealed to me. The radio broadcast was fulfilling my personal need for early morning uptempo music but possibly serving a much larger audience of spontaneous listeners who just happened to scan for radiostations from 5:30 to 7:30 a.m.

In 1988 the media-laws in the Netherlands changed and commercial radiostations were permitted to broadcast the ether, including these early hours. There was no explicit need anymore and of course no way I (or any of my friends) could compete with these commercial stations. The RCD (Radio Control Service) also became more strict and held frequent coordinated razzia terminating all amateur pirate radiostations. Some larger / professional pirate stations applied for FM-frequencies and continued legally. Radiolegends Adam Curry and Jeroen van Inkel have their roots in the Amsterdam radio-piracy scene.

I continued making thematic cassette-tape compilations from my record- and growing CD-collection untill I went to college in 1992. To me it is still a real art to compile a lineair 90 minute tape (or CD for that matter) with a fixed moodsetting or theme and still have an interesting but balanced set of songs. You're searching for a good complete experience, like a composer. You need a strong beginning and end, variation in vocal vs. musical, man vs. woman, solo vs. group, fast vs. slow, rhytm-compatibility, and familiar (popular) songs vs. unknown jewels. Creating a playlist on an iPod (CD / MP3-player) is much easier because it is shuffled automatically and you can skip a song with one click.

In 1991 I bought a secondhand 80-286 PC with MS DOS on 2 720 Kb floppy-diskdrives from my school and used a spreadsheet (Lotus 123) and database (dBase) for the first time. That's when I understood the real potential of computers. In 1994 I created my first free mailaccount from DDS (a so called 'digital city' or virtual community) which I could read twice a week from the University Library computerroom. I also made my first homepage in DDS. Software was shared through BBS. For messaging (me) I had a Seiko Message Watch a 16 character pager, the prequel of SMS. My roommate had a computer running windows 3.1 a 80486DX50 with 8 MB RAM and a 4 speed CD-Rom with a 15" monitor. Around that time we played all the levels of Lemmings and Wolfenstein3D.
I bought my first greyscale handheld scanner to scan pictures and OCR textpages from books for college and my first 16 bit Gravis Ultrasound (full duplex) soundcard with wavetable and oncard memory. Although clipart in documents was very hot, printing real (greyscale) pictures was not very common then. Around 1995 I assembled my first PC, a 80486 DX 66, all the components were bought on a computer fair. Unfortunately the intel processor was dead (I had traveled to the supplier of the motherboard, that board was tested OK and he sold me a new processor after which my PC worked). Months later I went to another computerfair and located the supplier of the original defective (DOA) processor who gave me my money back, the price had dropped 30% in 3 months. Moore's law still seems valid. The 56k6 baud modem was introduced (for a faster dial-up connection to the Internet). Storage devices also became larger. I have used the portable iomega Zipdrive (with 100 MB disks instead of 1.44 MB floppydisks) for several years untill I had my own CD-burner. Nowadays most people use USB-flashdrives. Interestingly not all input devices change: I still use my single line OCR penscanner from 1996 occasionally; I did needed to upgrade the driver and OCR software from Irislink so I also bought a USB version. A pen scanner is still recommended for students and researchers quoting lines from (paper) books and magazines.

In 1996 CD-burners (CD-ROM) and inkjet color printers became popular. The new operating system Windows 95 boosted sales and multitasking (more than 1 program open and working on your computer desktop) became common use. Wordprocessor WordPerfect 6 became ancient and MS Word became the new standard in the computer room. Midi and Mod audio-files were replaced by .wav and MP3 after ripping whole CD-collections using CDDB for track info. In 1997 I bought a Sony MiniDisc-player/recorder with optical I/O and USB as a possible non-lineair (random-access) replacement for my cassette-tapes. Since transferring MiniDisc recordings to a computer took a lot of time (only real time single speed transfer, meaning a recording of 80 minutes takes 80 minutes to transfer) and some optical output limitations for consumers probably resulted in the fact that MiniDisc didn't make it as a new audio-medium. I really liked the ability to edit MiniDisc tracks and recordings with a portable recorder and add track info (Text) to an audio-track. Unfortunately it was not possible to tranfer this MiniDisc trackinfo directly to the audio-track on the PC or to CD-text when burning it on a CD-Rom. MP3 as an alternative did have the ability to add track info like: artist, title, album, genre, tracknumber and comment (read: Meta-information) to a file with the ID3-tag preferably added automaticly through CDDB.

I'm still using MP3 as my primary audio storage-format today. Since 1987 I ripped most of my CD-collection to MP3. I stored it by putting it on CD-Rom, later on DVD-Rom and now I have an audio collection of more than 300 GB. At first only PC's and some DVD-players could play MP3-files but nowadays almost all audio-hardware can play MP3. Portable MP3-players became popular around 1999. I know that around the year 2000 I bought a portable NAPA MP3/CD/VideoCD player with ID3-display. This player definitely substituted my walkman and tapes, the MiniDisc was only used for recording.

I had my first portable GSM cellphone around 1998: A large Motorola 8800 with only a day of standby time, but what a freedom feeling being able to call while riding a bike. Before my gsm I had a portable housephone with large (extended) range around the house (approximately 2 km range, somewhat illegal but effective). After the pocket-pagers hype around 1995 with short text-codes, GSM introduced text messaging to the masses with SMS.

Currently (june 2009) Twitter (on twitter.com) is the hottest trend introducing gps tagged broadcast messaging by cellphones, smartphones or pda's connected to the Internet. Twitter is mostly used as a micro-Blog (with only 140 characters in 1 message) but also as a social networking application. Twitter is a logical follow up of instant messaging or chat (irc) which was a popular application from the early 90's on the Internet.
Other popular Internet applications from around 2000 were ICQ, MSN. and peer-to-peer MP3 filesharing Napster (P2P filesharing later evolved to Kazaa and torrent-sites). Videochat or videoconferencing became more popular when broadband Internet (by ISDN, Cable and ADSL) and webcams became affordable. Skype (introduced in 2003) set a standard (by reaching a critical mass of users) for connecting Internet-telephony to normal PSTN telephone-lines. Voice over IP (VOIP) is now offered by ISPs as an acceptable alternative or substitution of the (old) analog PSTN telephone system.

Mobile phones became more advanced, starting with WAP (only textbased) and and specially designed WML Internet pages. After my 2 relatively cheap Motorola phones I invested in a (more advanced) Nokia 6210 with build in 9k6 modem so I could fax and email with a laptop. A bit later around 2003 the pocketPC with Windows mobile became the new standard for handhelds. Personally I used an HP iPaq 4350 with wireless connectivity: bluetooth & wifi and a seperate (bluetooth) gps receiver for use with the TomTom Navigation Software.

Portable music became a new lifestyle with the Apple iPod. I personally ignored and even rejected the overhyped adoration of the early iPod adopters for a long time but I got more acquinted to the idea of thematic playlists. And lists based on specific ID3 metatags. USB-stick MP3-players were only able to shuffle and play folders (usually an album). Also Apple Inc. introduced a music marketing and purchase model through iTunes. The popularity and maybe also the acceptance of iTunes as a music store and library environment on Mac and PC was hugely enhanced by the easy way to find and subscribe to (free) podcasts. FYI: A (current) comparison of online music stores.
The iTunes musicstore introduced $0,99 per song in the USA, frustratingly this was copied to the European countries to €0,99 (with the current exchange rate Europeans pay more than 40% extra!). It was not until 2007 that I bought an 80 GB iPod video, now referred to as iPod classic (the 5th generation) which makes me late mayority in gadget marketing and innovation adoption terms. My main motivation for buying one was the long playing time (over 20 hours) and the fact that iPod is the industry standard (a leading example for others) which means several accessories are made specially for- or compatible with the iPod like docking stations, speakers and microphones (this is my favorite mic for recording with iPod:griffins italk pro).

When Apple marketed (and hyped) the long awaited iPhone in the summer of 2007 I was even more sceptical than with the iPod. I decided to wait and see. That fall of 2007 I did buy a new HTC P3300 smartphone running Windows Mobile with 2 MegaPixel camera, wifi, touchscreen, and build-in-gps to replace my Nokia 6210 (after almost 8 years).

And yes, I finally bought an iPhone 3G 16 GB with a T-Mobile business package deal in march 2009 and I must say: I really like the iPhone. I am a great fan of the App-store (more than 50.000 apps available in less than 2 years on the market). The intelligent use of the build in sensors and features makes the iPhone so unique. Somebody just thought of the idea that a Multitouch-screen feature creates the opportunity of playing multi-finger piano on the iPhone. That is creativity and brings back the fun to technology.

Personally I am not a gamer but throughout the years I have played some PC based computergames. My favorite game was a turn based strategy game named Civilization 2. I was not really into shooters like Doom and DukeNukem 3D although I liked the idea (concept) of modifying and creating your own levels and putting your own pictures on top of the monsters. The adventure shooter TombRaider had nicer graphics but I never took the time to play the whole game. Black & White was the last big (God)game I spend serious time on. I liked this game for originality and for the AI-features in the game. About two years ago we bought two DDR dancepads which I liked for fitness and interactivity (this gaminggenre is now referred to as Exergames). Recently we got the handheld Nintendo DS (now mostly used by my 6 year old daughter) and the interactive Nintendo Wii using the Wii-remote and Nunchuck with build-in 3-axle motion-sensors. I extended our Wii-system after a few weeks with the Wii Fit + balanceboard. My wife uses the Wii mostly for fitness and training.
[On the side: A really thought provoking TED-talk about the history and future of games]

Skipping to conclusion:
What I think we need is a gadgetized playground or sandbox to get acquinted to gadgets and new technology first before we use them as new tools, but what we get is a mass marketed, overhyped, interconnected network of electronic stuff with unpredictable spinn-offs and possibly unwanted symptoms like information stress. Too much info and stuff without a real (physical) context or place to put it. Don't get me wrong, I like gadgets and technology a lot, but we need to put things in perspective. Aim for ideals and goals that really matter. Use technology as a tool and not as a target. I'm trying to make a point here but I am unclear about the form. I will stop here and leave this writing as is. Later I will write more about connectivity, technology and the iPhone as a technological milestone in particular.

Extra: Just a Meta-Idea
While writing this piece I realized a personal gadget history (or going through your past by telling stories about your stuff) could be an interesting cultural or sociological perspective indicating (technology driven) changes.

If you publish(ed) your own technological or gadget (toy)-driven personal history just put the link in the comment.
Thanks, Toine.

Alternative Money Systems

2009-03-12T00:15:00.005+01:00

At the moment I am researching some alternative Money Systems for use as an online software system for a LETS job agency in Groningen in the Netherlands (Dutch: LETS uitzendbureau). We will work under the name LETSwerk.nl

Looking at the following softwarelist (http://www.complementarycurrency.org/software.html).

The system should be able to have multiple currencies. We will use time (like time-banks), LETS (local barter units) and conventional money (Euro).
After lots of research we will begin to use Cyclos as our main banking and administration software. Before this I tried CuroMuto.com as a test environment but I could not get this barternetwork to work.

Just before this post I joined http://stroomgeld.ning.com/ (dutch) aiming at an ecosophical approach using Bernard Lietaer's book 'The Future of Money'. A good portal-page about complementary economics in the Netherlands (including international links) is: http://complementaire-economie.startpagina.nl/

There are many web sites dealing with alternative money systems and related issues. The following are some of the most interesting (list from: http://www.ces.org.za/misc/links.htm)

Alternative Money Systems

Access Foundation (Alliance of Complementary Currencies Enabling Sustainable Societies)
Alliance of Complementary Currencies Enabling Sustainable Societies
Alternative Money Systems
Altruists International
CC Information Technologies WorldWide (CCIT)
ccPedia - an open collective knowledge centre on complementary currency systems
Crom Alternative Payment System
Local Exchange Systems in Asia, Africa and Latin America
Community Information Resource Center (CIRC)
Complementary Currency Resource Centre
Creating Community Currency
EF Schumacher Society
Forum for Stable Currencies
Ithaca HOURs Online
International Journal of Community Currency Research
Letslink UK
LETS-Linkup
LETS.net
Living Economies
Local and Interest-Free Currencies, Social Credit and Microcredit
The Money Fix
Online Database of Complementary Currencies Worldwide
The Open Money Project
P2P Foundation
Reinventing Money.com
Community Exchange System
Strohalm for a change
The Terra - Trade Reference Currency (TRC)
Time Dollar Institute
Transaction Net - Enabling Markets Online
The Transitioner - TheTransitioner.org brings together those who want to marry the economy and Collective Intelligence in order to build a fair world.
UniteDiversity Wiki
Workgroup on Solidarity Socio-Economy - Social Money

The following resources are to help you understand the nature of money-as-we-know-it and why we need a new money system.

Documents, Books and Articles

Altruists International Money-Related Downloads
Bibliography of Community Currency Research
Community Currency Materials, Information and Resources, compiled by Appropriate Economics
Complementary Currency Bookstore
Complementary Currency and Exchange - The Movement to Reinvent Money, by Thomas H Greco, Jr. [HTML] [PDF] [PowerPoint]
Community Currency Guide by Bernard Lietaer and Gwendolyn Hallsmith
Flight from Inflation, the Monetary Alternative, by E.C Riegel. A posthumous compilation of his essays, Los Angeles, CA, The Heather Foundation, 1978 (PDF 488K)
Interest and Inflation Free Money, by Margrit Kennedy
History of the CES, by Tim Jenkin, June 2004
I Want the Earth Plus 5% - the story of money
Money and its Alternatives - Strohalm Foundation (PDF 575K)
Money, Bona Fide or Non-Bona Fide, by Dr. Edward E Popp, 1970 (PDF 685K)
Money and the Crisis of Civilization by Charles Eisenstein, March 2008
Money: A New Beginning by Charles Eisenstein, April 2008
Money - Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender, by Thomas H Greco, Jr. (PDF 893K)
The New Approach to Freedom. Together with Essays on the Separation of Money and State, by E.C. Riegel, 1949 (PDF 244K)
The New Approach to Freedom, web site hosting the writings of E.C. Riegel
Poor Because of Money - Strohalm Foundation (PDF 941K)
Private Enterprise Money. A Non-Political Money System, by E.C. Riegel (PDF 537K)
Reinventing Money. The emergent path toward peace, harmony, and equity.
Presentation by Thomas H Greco, Jr. [HTML] [PDF] [PowerPoint]
The Great Cookie Jar - Taking the Mysteries Out of the Money System, by Dr Edward E Popp, 1978 (PDF 774K). HTML Version
The Monetary Philosophy of E.C. Riegel, by Thomas H. Greco, Jr. (MS PowerPoint 35K)
The Money Myth Exploded - The Financial Enigma Resolved, by Louis Even
The Natural Economic Order, by Silvio Gesell
The Nature of Money, by John Kutyn, 5 March 2000
The Nature of Money, by John Kutyn, 16 March 2005
The Nature of Wealth, by Fred Lundgren, August 2002
The New Money Text Book - Economics Made Simple, by Doctor Edward C Hamlyn, May 2007
The Politics of Money, by EC Riegel
Private Enterprise Money: A Non-Political Money System, by E. C. Riegel, 1944.
The Credit Theory of Money by A Mitchell Innes, The Banking Law Journal, 1914
What is Money? A history of credit by A Mitchell Innes, The Banking Law Journal, May 1913

Monetary Reform

The American Monetary Act and the Monetary Transparency Act, 21 September 2006, American Monetary Institute
The American Monetary Institute
British Association for Monetary Reform
COMER - The Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform
Forum for Stable Currencies
Foundation for the Advancement of Monetary Education (FAME)
FAME is a not-for-profit educational organization whose sole mission is to educate people about the benefits of honest monetary weights and measures and the harm caused by our current fraudulent fiat money monetary system
Global Research.ca. Centre for Research on Globalization
James Roberston, working for a sane alternative
The Money Reform Party
People for Mathematically Perfected Economy
Prosperity. Freedom from Debt Slavery
Prosperity is a monthly Money Reform journal based in Glasgow, Scotland, which is dedicated to spreading understanding about the nature of our debt-based money system, and campaigning for publicly-created debt-free money.

Monetary History

American Monetary History
FX Micheloud Monetary History
Gold: prices, facts, figures & research. Monetary episodes from history
Monetary history documents
Money - Past, Present & Future, Information on Monetary History, Contemporary Developments, and Electronic Money
Money, Value, and Monetary History after Milton Friedman

Miscellaneous

Money, Banking and Credit. This site is devoted to the issues of money, banking, fiscal, and monetary policy and their impacts on families and the nation as a whole
The People vs The Banks - Class action suit on behalf of the people of Canada alleging that financial institutions are illegally creating money.

Peak Oil

Video

CC Video. Collection of videos on complementary currency systems
Money as Debt [Google video]
Paul Grignon's 47-minute animated presentation of "Money as Debt" tells in very simple and effective graphic terms what money is and how it is being created. It is an entertaining way to get the message out. The Cowichan Citizens Coalition and its "Duncan Initiative" received high praise from those who previewed it. I recommend it as a painless but hard-hitting educational tool and encourage the widest distribution and use by all groups concerned with the present unsustainable monetary system in Canada and the United States.
The Money Masters [Google video]
How International Bankers Gained Control of America
Monopoly Men - Federal Reserve Fraud (1999)
Suzao Media
A good collection of videos on money and debt

[this post was updated on december 3, 2009.]

Online presence and awareness

2009-03-09T23:26:00.009+01:00

Going for an online presence with a steady track record is a bit of a challenge. Personality and entertainment-values aside: When does one reach a new awareness, a new Eureka? Discoveries, innovations and inventions that one did not have before and are now emerging.
Can I really use my Blog as a personal inspiration Journal, subjectively reflecting on external and internal input? Or could it be compared to the Captain's log (without the personal log) like Jean Luc Picard in Startrek?

Awareness as a whole is a pretty big issue and I have collected and read many books and articles about this subject. Recently I noticed the great overlap of David R. Hawkins' work regarding the calibrated consciousness scale (the map of consciousness) using applied kinesiology with the inspiring channelled work of Esther & Jerry Hicks (also featured in the movie 'The Secret' about the Law of Attraction).
Hawkins calles it calibration levels and Esther Hicks called it frequencies or vibrational interpretation (this jargon or terminology is also used in therapeutics and NLP). Eckhart Tolle, author of 'A New Earth', featured on Oprah's website probably calls it identification with a certain form and at the lower levels (Hawkins Scale: above 200=Truth / below 200= Falshood) identification with the (collective) painbody. Caroline Myss, medical intuitive & author of 'anatomy of the spirit' also identifies the collective tribal energy circuit (First Chakra in eastern terminology). Myss greatest methaphor is the analogy of your bodies energy system with a bank-account and identify where your energy flows. Stop the leaks or you become energetically bankrupt which causes illness in your body. My association when watching Caroline Myss explaining this Energetic Bankaccount concept was with Robert Kiyosaki, author of the book 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad' in which he explaines the flow of money of the poor, the middle class and rich people [video] identifying assets (puts money in my pocket, will feed me) and liabilities (takes money out of my pocket, will eat me). The comparison of the importance of educating Financial Literacy and educating personal Energetic Literacy is rather interesting.

Back to awareness: When I meditate using only the Silva Method I am tuned in the Akasha field somewhat (Zero Point Field for scientists but what's in a name), but when I also use the Heartmath (HeartCoherence) techniques I unlock and release creativity and new potential.
Burt Goldman, an 81 year old (retired) Silva instructor also known as the American Monk created a course named Quantum Jumping where you go to parallel dimensions when meditating using the Silva Method. In Silva you just go to your Lab and you meet your 2 advisors, but what if you just create a board of advisors, a mindteam if you will, and check the outcome in a parallel dimension immediately after your consult or brainstorm. Even if you only imagine it or visualize it: This is very powerful stuff and I haven't even mentioned ESP or remote viewing.

I am aware that everyone chooses his or her own path in life, but although a skeptical approach is custom when dealing with these claims, one cannot ignore the impact experiences like these ideas have, even if it is just imagination and overwhelming evidence is pure luck according to witnesses. I'd like to end this personal awareness piece positive: Suspend (your thinking) & Hang in There, (free interpretation of Peter Senge's Presence) and close with the wonderful affirmation:
"Everyday in every way, it is getting better and better!"

Online Collaboration

2009-02-18T13:47:00.005+01:00

Looking for online collaboration tools I came across the following info from the Mashable Blog:

Business Productivity

37Signals.com - Maker of collaboration tools including Basecamp (others listed below).

8apps.com - A mixture of social network and productivity applications.

BlueTie.com - Online collaboration directed towards small and medium sized businesses.

Businessitonline.com - Centralized cash flow, documents, calendars and more for a team or small business.

CentralDesktop.com - A full work suite for project teams including spreadsheets, file sharing, calendar and more.

Colligo.com - Allows you to work on projects off-line and then sync them when you can login.

ConceptShare.com - Share concept designs and allow invited workers to mark-up, comment, and give feedback.

Confluence - An enterprise-class wiki with features such as PDF exporting.

ContactOffice.com - Allows groups to share documents, calandars, contacts, and files. They can then access them from a number of different mobile devices.

Coventi.com - Upload your documents, share, and allow others to highlight portions or edit.

Copperproject.com - Share projects, tasks, documents and timelines with your entire team.

CrossLoop.com - Allows two computers to connect securely to share their desktops for collaborative work and transfer of files.

Eloops.com - Share files, calenders, projects, and then create RSS feeds to share your public ones.

Foldera.com - Allows for communication over projects, and centralizes work to make sure version is always current.

Glide - Facilitates group meetings to review projects together.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets - From the behemoth known as Google, collaborative documents and spreadsheets.

GroupSharp.com - Allows you to share lists, databases, file sharing, and wikis for your team.

Huddle.net - Designed for collaborative work in the fields of PR, advertising, marketing, design and more.

Instacoll.com - Allows real-time sharing of documents to work on them with colleagues.

Joyent.com - Get collaborative software and backup services in one package.

Longjump.com - Offers standard collaboration, but also the ability to build new applications for your team to use and even market.

Mindquarry.com - Work on projects online or off-line, then synchronize as soon as you are back.

Near-Time.net - Build wikis, blogs,create documents for your team to work on, and have the ability to sell your content and expertise.

Nexo.com - Share files and notes amongst your company, or even with other companies you invite.

Octopz.com - Allows your team to work a wide range of documents including video, audio, and flash animations.

OpenTeams.com - Allows your team to create cPages of your project.

QuickBase.com - A collaborative tool from Intuit, the makers of Quicken.

PlanHQ.com - Specifically for groups working on business plans.

ProjectSpaces.com - Share and work on documents, notify team members via RSS and email.

Solodox.com - Create, access, edit, share, and collaborate on documents & projects.

TeamWorkLive.com - Track tasks, centralize communication, share documents and files, then collaborate with clients and remote teams.

TheOpenDoc.com - Create multiple workspaces with multiple documents, then share them for group editing.

Thinkature.com - Collaborative workspace with voice chat and numerous drawing tools.

Tracbac.com - Workspace for your group that features versioning, IM, VoIP ad more.

Uhroo.com - Focuses on working on goals, estimates, client feedback and more.

Vyew.com - Your team can work on a project and then publish it directly to where you choose on the web.

WebOffice.com - Work on documents and more with live web meetings.

Wrike.com - Project management that allows you to assign tasks and then let people work in teams on them.

Writewith.com - Create documents and invite others to edit and chat while you do so.

Yugma.com - A catch-all collaboration site for files, tech support, presentations and more.

Zimbra.com - Email service with collaboration tools.

Zoho.com - Create documents and grant permissions for others to work on an entire page or just one portion or object.

Creative Collaboration

Kalabo.net - Site for musicians to collaborate on compositions together.

Freepository.com - Specifically for computer program development and allows storage of code to be worked on from anywhere.

Glypho.com - Site for group writing of fictional stories.

Novlet.com - Collaborative writing of non-linear stories in any language.

WebBrush - Focuses more on graphical sharing and includes drawing tools.

Writeboard.com - From 37signals, perfect for collaborative writing, journalists, bloggers and more.

WriteMaps.com - Designed specifically for creating and sharing sitemaps amongst web teams.

Family and Social Collaboration

Cozi.com - Helps families organize and communicate in a web based method.

Famundo.com - Built for families or small groups to organize and share contacts, calendars, and projects.

Grouptivity.com - Uses email to start a group discussion on any subject of your choice.

LooseStitch.com - Create to do lists and share them with whomever you choose.

Mecanbe.com - Post your goals in life, get suggestions on how to achieve them.

Stixy.com - Share documents, photos, to do lists and more with family and friends.

Wamily - For teams, families, clubs and everything in-between. Share photos, run a wiki, have conversations.

Mindmapping

Bubbl.us -Create and share your mind map with your team, also embed in to your website or blog.

Comapping.com - Mind mapping for everyone from students working together to project management.

Gliffy.com - Draw & share mind mapping diagrams.

Kayuda.com - Mind mapping for individuals or organizations.

Mind42.com - Mind mapping for one, or multiple users.

Mindomo.com - Has both free and premium accounts for mind mapping.

Mindmeister.com - A mind mapping tool you can share with an unlimited number of simultaneous users.

[Source Mashable Blog]

Getting things done isn’t easy. In fact, it’s incredibly tough. In this article, we look at four ways to get through your work faster: running your life online, mastering RSS news feeds, aggregating your social networks and using keyboard shortcuts to save precious seconds.

When it comes to getting things done, the web can be a real distraction. But thanks to the many new applications springing up online, it also provides invaluable ways to keep your life in order. To start, we look at the web-based apps that can help you most.

Word Processing Services

Online word processing provides you with ways to manage and write documents without a download - great for collaboration or those using multiple computers.

Google Docs - A way to create your documents and share them too.

Zoho Writer - Serious competition to Google Docs. There are some options present that Google Docs lacks and of course vice-versa.

ThinkFree - Think Microsoft Office, except this is the online equivalent.

Buzzword - A recently discovered service that is still in private beta. It has many offerings and a slick interface to boot! (Private Beta)

Web Portals

You have the potential to be productive the moment you turn on your computer and fire up that web browser. You can have all the information you want and need accessible to you immediately by using one of the following services.

Netvibes - Generally considered to be the first successful, independent startpage.

Pageflakes - Pageflakes could be considered the brother-in-law to Netvibes and both have very similar offerings in customization and content.

iGoogle - If you have a Google account, then the iGoogle comes part of the package deal, and since many of us have Google as our home page anyways, why not give iGoogle a trial?
My Yahoo - The offerings are somewhat more customizable than iGoogle, but essentially the same concept from a different provider.

Calendar Services

Let’s say you have your parent’s anniversary, project deadlines, and finally taking the family pet to the vet all coming up this week. Having all these things on a calendar is undoubtedly the way to go for keeping track of these events. Unless you prefer writing it on your hand…

Google Calendar - I personally use Google Calendar on a daily basis. It is just that freaking awesome!
Yahoo! Calendar - Yahoo provides a pretty good, but basic, calendar application for organizing your life
30 Boxes - Has a lightning fast interface that is really easy to navigate makes this a good contender.
Kiko - A very nice calendar application with a drag & drop interface.

Contact Management Services

Your cell phone and e-mail program are likely your primary sources for keeping information about your contacts. This is fine. You must ask yourself though, what happens if your cell phone is lost, your webmail account goes down or you lose all the data on your computer? You are pretty much screwed. Time to rethink the way we do contact management.

Plaxo - One of the best known services which allow you to keep track of contacts. Other services that can tap into your Plaxo account and utilize your contacts with your permission.
Tabber - was created with the notion of linking together friends from many social sites and services, but it still serves very well as an address book and contact management application.
Highrise - A premium option to manage your business contacts. If you are more serious about keeping your contacts and have hundreds of them, this could be a cost efficient solution depending on your needs.
HyperOffice - Another premium service that offers control of your contacts. This is for more serious contact management.

Communication Services

Stickam - If live video conversations are your thing, then Stickam provides you an excellent opportunity to mingle with friends, coworkers, or just random people if you so desire. We wouldn’t use it for business calls, though.
Google 411 - This service from Google is likely something you have never tried before, but once you do, you might use it for a long time coming. A good 411 replacement. (US Only)
Meebo - If you prefer to communicate with friends and colleagues through IM, then Meebo is the site for you to do it all in one easy to use program.
Gmail - The king of e-mail? We think so. Much more efficient at handling large volumes of email than rival services.

Charting & Diagram Services

Ever heard of brainstorming? Of course you have! Well, the following applications follow the same line of thought, but now you can throw your ideas in charts and diagrams often referred to as “mind maps” to plan any future project you may attempt. I personally use these types of applications very often.

Flowchart.com - The title says it all really. Flowchart allows you to create charts and diagrams in a nice drag & drop interface. (Private Beta)
MindMeister - Offering both a free and premium version, MindMeister focuses on collaboration in an easy to use “mind mapping”environment.
Mind42 - Yet another “mind mapping” web app that allows you to collaborate with others. This one is completely free.
Gliffy - Likely the most technical and detailed option on this list. It has many more options available than the others.

Mapping Services

If you need to find out where you are going, and how to get there, these tools can help prevent (or at least reduce) the amount of times you get lost on those long road trips.

Google Maps - Recently has taken over as one of the best mapping tools out there. Not only does it have streets, but you can get an insane amount of data displayed on Google Maps through other services like StreetAdvisor.
Yahoo Maps - Google has obviously driven Yahoo to improve its mapping services, and it shows here.
Mapquest - A very reliable source for getting you from point A to point B.

File Storage Services

Box.net - A very nice solution to uploading and backing up your files, as well as sharing them. You can sign up for free and get a gig of space, or you can have additional storage with the premium options.
MediaMax - Another powerful and useful service to regularly back-up all your important data.

Networking

OK, so social networking isn’t often productive, unless you’re rubbing virtual shoulders with a potential employer. But if you must use all these sites (and most people do), how about saving time by aggregating all your profiles and updates in one place? These services do just that.

Profilactic

Profilactic has very recently been upgraded to version 2, which brought a decent amount of new features - a new look, support for Pownce, LinkedIn, Shelfari, and the ability to add more than one account for the same site. At its core, Profilactic still does the same two things: it displays your personal lifestream, which consists of your social networking activity, and a group lifestream from your friends. What it does, it does well; however, we’d still like to see more options to interact with the items in your streams. There’s also the option to create clippings - bits and pieces of information from the web; but this option is not really connected to the rest of the features on the site.

Minggl

Minggl is a browser toolbar that works with Firefox, IE and Flock and promises to “put you in control of your social web universe”. The idea behind Minggl is to “attach” social networking profiles to Minggl and then control them all from one place. You can see an overview of the main features in this video tutorial.

iStalkr

Another application that’s based on the concept of group lifestreaming, iStalkr perhaps chooses the most logical route of all the applications on this list. It enables you to follow your own and your friends’ social networking activities on a timeline, and to act on it directly from iStalkr’s interface. Working with iStalkr, we’ve noticed that the updates aren’t coming that fast; but we’re not sure if this is due to the limitations of various APIs involved or iStalkr itself.

Correlate.us

Correlate.us doesn’t really give you the ability to do much with your social networks, it merely gives you a nice overview of your activities on them. While the application is quite simple, it’s done well, and we think that it could be a good basis for a bigger project.

Explode.us

Instead of aggregating social networking information, Explode.us lets you search all the social networks with one form. For each found user you can see tags, friends, comments, as well as the latest content this user posted. Explode.us supports, among others, LiveJournal, Flickr, Twitter, Jaiku and 43Things.

Spokeo

Spokeo is a social network tracker which enables you to track what your friends are doing on various social networks from Spokeo’s interface. It aims to be the simplest of the aggregators, offering a kind of “RSS reader for social networks”. Our longer review of the newly launched Spokeo is here.

Profilefly

Create a profile with your personal information, clippings from the web and your personal social networking lifestream. Profilefly works as a widget or as a Facebook application, and it supports a huge number of social networks, including MySpace, Digg, Hi5, Facebook, Last.FM, Second Life and many others. The actual profile is a bit bland, with the lifestream - which should be the center of such an application - offering very limited options; for example, time stamps and any kind of interactivity is lacking.

PeopleAggregator

PeopleAggregator aims to become a social identity hub. It works through a desktop software application which currently runs only on Linux, and although we applaud its reliance on OpenID and open standards in general, the decision to start a service that aims to connect social networking users and their profiles, on a Linux platform, seems like a suicide. The official FAQ which is at the moment a bunch of spam links doesn’t help. Look at the presentation of the service in HTML form here.

SocialURL

SocialURL helps you organize your online identity and get back in touch with all of your friends and classmates. It’s a unified profile with support for photo galleries and videos, as well as a central portal with links pointing out to all your other social network profiles. It’s all spiced up with lots of additional features, like on-site email, reminders and bookmarks.

Socialstream

We’ve already said quite a lot about Social Stream considering that it’s not even in beta stage yet - all that’s available at this point is a vidcast presentation of what Social Stream can do. However, the huge amount of attention that Social Stream got is a clear indicator that some pieces of the puzzle are still missing in the social network aggregator space.

Tabber

Tabber is a personal profile page, which displays some information about you together with your latest activity on Digg, del.icio.us, your blog, Twitter, or any RSS feed. It’s very similar in concept to ProfileFly, and just like it, it lacks any possibility to interact with your lifestream.

Naymz

Naymz is another personal profile site, which goes a step further than services like Tabber or ProfileFly by giving you the possibility to actively monitor certain sites for mention of your name. Naymz also actively promotes your profile by trying to make it more visible on Google.

8hands

In contrast to the majority of the other services described here, 8hands is a desktop application which currently works on Windows XP and Vista. It allows you to access your profiles on social networks (currently supported are Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter and many more) from a single IM-like interface. The idea is to have an overview of what’s happening on your social networks, and send instant messages to other users. 8hands software is currently in alpha (I guess we’re lucky alpha is the first letter of Greek alphabet, otherwise we’d have even more unstable software dubbed with a name that signifies even earlier stages of development), so expect some instability.

Second Brain

Second Brain takes a radically different approach to aggregation than other apps on this list. You organize your data - this includes data from your social network profiles, like Flickr photos or YouTube videos - into collections. A collection is basically a bunch of links, photos, or other bits and pieces of data thrown onto a dashboard; you can create your own collections or explore what others have collected. While the concept seems powerful, I’ve found myself trying to find something to do with it all. In any case, Second Brain is currently in invite-only beta stage and there will probably be some changes in the service until it goes public.

UpScoop

UpScoop lets you upload the contacts from your address book (Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail and AOL are supported) and it lets you discover which of your friends are active on social networks like Hi5, MySpace and others. Unfortunately, at the time of this writing UpScoop didn’t work with my perfectly valid Gmail address, so I couldn’t properly test it out. Hopefully, it’s just a temporary glitch.

ProfileOMat

ProfileOMat advertises itself as the last profile we’ll ever need - if only things were that simple! ProfileOMat doesn’t really aggregate your social networking profiles; it merely creates a profile from which you can reach all of your other profiles on social network. It does have a couple of nifty features, for example, you can set up your geographical location with the help of Google Maps.

MyLifeBrand

MyLifeBrand tries to go a step further by really integrating various social network sites within a MyLifeBrand frame. While this approach brings a far more streamlined experience, it’s unlikely that social network users will want to open their favorite website within some other website; also, there’s always the possibility of unexpected errors with this approach. At this time MyLifeBrand is in invite-only beta, so if you don’t have an invitation code, you won’t be able to try it out.

ProfileLinker

Amongst the rounded corners and reflections that have become the usual visual identity for Web 2.0 ProfileLinker stands out by looking very Web 1.0-ish. After registration, you can add your various social network profiles and your contacts, and all this activity will be shown on your ProfileLinker profile. The look and feel of the interface leaves a lot to be desired; for one thing, I’d like to be able to remove random information about ProfileLinker’s history that shows up on my profile; in general, the options for personalization are quite limited.

Snag

Snag takes a no-nonsense approach: no registration required; just enter some of your social network credentials (Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, Friendster and LinkedIn are supported) and you get a group lifestream of your activity on these networks. The application needs much polishing, though; for example, entering the wrong credentials won’t result in an error; instead, your lifestream will consist of login errors retrieved from that particular network. At this point, Snag looks more like proof-of-concept than a full-fledged app.

Socialnetwork.in

Besides aggregating your social network profiles, Socialnetwork.in spices things up with ratings. Perhaps I’m just unlucky, but testing the service resulted in numerous errors which pretty much prevented me to do any serious analysis. To see some basic features check out the screencast here.

MyMashable

OK, a free bonus for the 21st: Mashable also aggregates your social networking links in one place, with video, photo sharing, Flickr import and other features. It’s worth disclosing at least.

[Mashable Source Blog]

Sales Triggers

2008-10-13T00:13:00.004+02:00

Copywriting Persuasive Ads, what's the secret?

Have general knowledge: be creative, experience the world.

Know specific knowledge about the product or service, be an expert.

Practice writing, write a lot, every moment you can, letters, etc.

Copywriting is a mental process, the successful execution of of which reflects the sum total of all your experiences, your specific knowledge and your ability to mentally process that information and eventually transfer this to a piece of paper all for the purpose of communicating an idea.

The purpose is to reach out in your pocket and buy the product.

The format
First line: lead-sentence, a few words, second sentence getting you to read the rest.

Use the next aspects as a checklist for your copy:

What's the best environment to sell the product?

Harmonize with the prospect / reader (rapport, get the prospect to say yes, make compliments, harmonize with the environment and product

Selling books; based on curiosity, suggestion, a secret in the book

Slippery slide in the copy of an ad (over the edge, pitch and tempo)

Seeds of curiosity (later I'll tell you something I never told anyone else, but there's more, wait till you read what I just discovered, getting interest)

Sell with emotion, use logic to justify the purchase (sell the concept with emotion, example: challenging the buyer)

Technical explanation; it shows and proves you're an expert

Service; raise and solve the issue if you're product needs service

Trial period; courteous refund?

Price comparison; good value

Ask for the order, close the deal

Summary

Product explanation

Sexual orientation; be careful not to be too sexist

Raising objections and resolve it

New feature; highlight them

Ease of ordering

Clear copy; write for yourself (bigger for upscale audience

Rhythm in an add (short and long sentences)

Paragraph headings / subheadings (makes the copy look less intimidating; in direct mail: making statements, attention getting)

Type face; legible language, clear Seriff style type

Physical Facts, mention all facts, size, weight, price

Name the price

Testimonials

Avoid saying too much

Conversational tone: First person: I want to..., me, we, our ... to a person individual

Tell a story in the copy

How to structure the content

Inquiry generator: first call then sales or direct sales: test!

Contest in the add: challenge the reader

Branding start up: informative

Copy should be long enough to cause the reader to take the action you request.

Every communication should be a personal one from the writer to the recipient regardless of the medium used

The ideas presented in your copy should flow in a logical fashion as if you were face to face with your prospect anticipating and raising every question and answering them as if these questions were indeed asked

In the editing process you reduce the copy to express exactly to what you want to express with the least amounts of words

Selling the cure is a lot easier than selling a preventative, unless the preventative is perceived as a cure or the cure would have aspects of the preventative or is emphasized.

Telling a story can effectively sell your product, create the environment or get your reader well into your copy as you create an emotional bonding with your prospect.

Use the slippery slide; your reader should be so compelled to read your copy that they cannot stop reading until they read all of it.

Keep the copy interesting and keep the reader interested by the power of curiosity

The incubation process is the power of your subconscious mind to use all of your knowledge and experiences to solve a specific problem the efficiency of which is dedicated or dictated by time orientation, environment and ego. (take a break)

Never sell a product or service, always sell a concept.

The mindstretch-effect; the more the mind must work to reach a conclusion, which it eventually successfully reaches, the more positive, enjoyable and stimulating the experience.

Psychological Triggers

The feeling of involvement and ownership (also visualizing using the product)

Honesty (truthful statements, tell all the good and bad things about the product)

Integrity (trustworthy

Credibility (if price is too low or high)

Prove of value for comparison purposes

Justify the purpose (compare to similar product, for business tax deductible)

Greed

Establish authority

Satisfaction conviction; I'm so convinced that you're going to like this product that I'm offering you... the consumer feels the public is going to rip you off (refund the money not used, not used in two years etc.)

Nature of the product (perceive the need of the product: burglar alarm, insurance)

Current Fads (in the beginning, at peak or slightly past nothing lasts forever) Timing

Desire to belong (to special group who own a ..., the smartest people own ...)

The desire to collect (scarcity, several models

Curiosity (most powerful element in campaign) in retail: immediate gratification go

Sense of urgency; limited supplies (needs prove) (also: example extra offer if the response is within few hours)

Instant gratification

Exclusivity, rarity or uniqueness

Simplicity; is the key to sell any product; test out your ads (dotted line around the coupon)

Human relationships (relate to the human using it, good looking people)

Reciprocity; if you do a favor, they will want to do a favor back (guilt)

This overview is based on Joe Sugarman’s E-book Psychological Triggers

[Reposted from MetaMagazine 2002]

Secrets of Sales

2008-10-12T23:59:00.003+02:00

1. A tightly scheduled 12-hour day.
2. Have contacting goals.
3. Systematic communication.
4. Know your subject.
5. Learn from questions you are asked: Don't get caught twice.
6. Always have an active prospect list that you contact regularly.
7. Respond fast.
8. Keep your name in front of the customer.
9. Develop innovative strategies for yourself and your customers.
10. Impressive preparation.
11. Finding a niche.
12. Weekly targets.
13. Show people their strengths.
14. Use 80/20 rule.
15. Each day write down 2 things on the job you did that you enjoyed or found satisfying.
16. React to problems promptly.
17. Honesty.
18. It's all or nothing for the customer.
19. Thorough planning.
20. Verify key points after meetings in writing.
21. Start meetings with a review.
22. Bring, show or discuss one positive they are not expecting.
23. Tried and true case studies.
24. Develop a system that allows you to find info in 15 seconds.
25. Respect deadlines on promises made.
26. Use flexibility to break into new markets.
27. Perfect your communication.
28. Mentally walk with them.
29. Put features and benefits into layers of pyramid and focus on best layer.
30. Mind-emptying exercises.
31. Structured follow-up
32. See how success works and copy, copy, copy.
33. Don't get tired of service.
34. Flair
35. Anticipate questions and know the answers.
36. Believe in your product.
37. Know exactly where you're going to start the next day.
38. Have high daily targets and when you achieve them--quit.
39. Set up definite rules to get over each hurdle and on to the next.
40. Know competitors products.
41. Create pride of ownership.
42. Have a structured selling answer to "What do you do? & a handout.
43. State your price as a benefit.
44. Answer, "What do you do?"
45. Spend 90% of your time either prospecting or on appointments.
46. Develop solid closing questions.
47. Know your product--shoot the answer.
48. List the benefits of your product.
49. Look as if you've operated the product all your life.
50 Full-scale mock-up. Prototype.
51. Be there when you're needed.
52. Never, ever forget one single thing you've promised to do,
no matter how trivial it seems.
53. Respect the client for what he is and for what he has accomplished in life.
54. Verbalize respect.
55. Reliability, responsiveness, tangibles, assurance, empathy.
56. Know your case and their case.
57. Put enormous thought and energy into reconfiguring your world so that when emergencies happen you have exactly what you need to do the job.
58. Know their history when you arrive.
59. Always know and communicate the next step.
60. 3 Steps: Previous, Current, Next.
61. Way of the gull: Work like hell and go after every scrap.
62. Leverage time and effort.
63. Analyze, measure, identify my selling, marketing, advertising and operations.
64. In a minute, describe what it is about your business that gives
greater advantage, greater benefit, and greater result to your client.
65. How can I test one way against another?
66. What is my clear, accurate distinct vision of my business?
67. How many better, other additional ways could I be doing?
68. How can I get the highest and best use of my time and opportunity.
69. Who could recommend me?
70. What do my clients pre-do and post-do that I can leverage.
71. Do one good thing consistently well.
72. If something works, experiment with a copy.
73. Never create the same routine twice.
74. Trial and error but debrief.
75. Rise before dawn.
76. Be willing to be consumed by a task as long as it takes.
77. Practice the basics endlessly.
78. Your core investment must be in understanding your customers.
79. Stress high quality relationships
80. Be a perpetual prospecting machine.
81. Lose the no's.
82. Have a strategic plan and a relentless application of the plan.
83. Document everything. Always know what happened.

The above list was taken from Dale Kirby's Meta-Web. Mostly compiled from the book "The Secrets of the World's Top Sales Performers by Christine Harvey" and other sources.

[Reposted from MetaMagazine website 2002]

Exchange Economics

2008-10-12T16:35:00.008+02:00

Most ways humans have of organizing are adaptations to scarcity and want. Each way carries with it different ways of gaining social status.

The simplest way is the command hierarchy. In command hierarchies, allocation of scarce goods is done by one central authority and backed up by force. Command hierarchies scale very poorly [Mal]; they become increasingly brutal and inefficient as they get larger. For this reason, command hierarchies above the size of an extended family are almost always parasites on a larger economy of a different type. In command hierarchies, social status is primarily determined by access to coercive power.

Our society is predominantly an exchange economy. This is a sophisticated adaptation to scarcity that, unlike the command model, scales quite well. Allocation of scarce goods is done in a decentralized way through trade and voluntary cooperation (and in fact, the dominating effect of competitive desire is to produce cooperative behavior). In an exchange economy, social status is primarily determined by having control of things (not necessarily material things) to use or trade.

Most people have implicit mental models for both of the above, and how they interact with each other.
Government, the military, and organized crime (for example) are command hierarchies parasitic on the broader exchange economy we call ‘the free market’. There’s a third model, however, that is radically different from either and not generally recognized except by anthropologists; the gift culture.
Gift cultures are adaptations not to scarcity but to abundance. They arise in populations that do not have significant material-scarcity problems with survival goods. We can observe gift cultures in action among aboriginal cultures living in ecozones with mild climates and abundant food. We can also observe them in certain strata of our own society, especially in show business and among the very wealthy.

Abundance makes command relationships difficult to sustain and exchange relationships an almost pointless game. In gift cultures, social status is determined not by what you control but by what you give away.

Used source: Homesteading the Noosphere by Eric Steven Raymond\

[Reposted MetaMagazine 2001]

Local Echange Communities
Local Exchange Economies are formed locally worldwide with a Local Exchange Trading System (LETS) which often use their own local currency unit. It is a barter-like network but not only for businesses; also individuals can join. I am member of Keerkring Groningen which is one of the many LETS groups in the Netherlands. See also Letscontact.nl (Dutch).
Another bartering network I joined (aiming at sustainable economy) is Qoin.com.

Solving Financial Problems & Money Affirmations

2008-10-12T16:03:00.003+02:00

Loose the negative associations with Money allowing yourself to own money (see Money Affirmations below)

Practically there are basically only three ways to solve financial problems:

	increase income,
	decrease expenses, or
	adjust credit debt payments.

Several options exist for increasing income but all may not be alternatives for a particular situation. These possibilities include upgrading a present job to one that pays more; switching jobs to a better-paying one; working overtime; having someone additional in the household seek and find employment where more money is made than spent; qualifying for assistance, either public or private such as food stamps, child support, grants or subsidies; and renting or selling assets that are no longer needed and/or used.

Temporary adjustments in expenses may provide temporary income increases. Stop payroll deductions for retirement, savings, or education funds. Adjust tax withholding so that enough is being withheld but a large tax refund will not be coming next spring. Do more home production; garden or sew if you already have the skill and equipment needed. Use community resources for recreation. Pay insurance premiums monthly instead.

To decrease expenses either CUT DOWN or CUT OUT. For most people going "cold turkey" or cutting out entirely may not be possible. Above all, to cut expenses, go to a cash-only basis; put all credit cards out of reach.

Certain expenses cannot be cut out entirely because of health or safety concerns such as utilities, food, health, recreation, and insurance.

[Reference (renewed) source: Solve Financial Problems]

Management Roles

2008-10-12T15:39:00.002+02:00

The primary role of management is to make it possible for teams to work. They also provide guidance and direction to work effort.

The role of management in an organization is purely functional. It is not a role any more or less prestigious than any other role in the company. It is similar to the difference between marketing personnel and engineering personnel. The function of management is:

Set up a plan (vision) for the company, group, or team being managed.
Ensure that the management personnel can do their jobs with the up most efficiency.
Resolve any disputes that arise.
Act as an interface between employees and upper management
- Track resource use and report costs to higher management.
- Present new ideas for the company to upper management.
- Track project progress and revise estimates or make adjustments.
- Deal with problems and shield employees from them as much as possible to allow them to concentrate on their jobs.

One important difference between managers and other functional positions in the company lies in the fact that decisions made by the manager will affect more people either in a positive or negative way.

Skills Required

Communication - Learn to listen and be observant.
Experience - At least 10 years working in a field similar to those being managed. A broad background is helpful.
Leadership - Leadership is really a mix of many other skills and in many ways is intangible. A true leader, however, is willing to do any task necessary to complete the job. That means, they are willing to do the same work as other employees and get their hands dirty when required.
Delegation - Good managers must be willing to trust their staff and delegate responsibility and authority.
Organizational - Being able to organize teams, roles and projects is important. Some organizational requirements can be delegated, however. Having a messy desk does not necessarily mean a manager is unorganized.

Not all individuals have all these skills in abundance, but essential skills require communications and getting along with others.

What to do

Trust your team and expect professionalism unless proven otherwise.
Base project estimates using employee estimates times the observed load factor of the team. The load factor can be calculated when iterative development is used. It is calculated based on how long the iteration would have actually taken vs the original time estimated.
Make sure all team members are heard with regard to ideas and project input when applicable.
Make sure all confidential meetings with employees stay confidential.

What not to do

Force schedules upon employees. This is dependent on the project or problem. If there is a major problem such as a network being down it needs to be fixed as soon as possible. For these types of problems or mission critical problems, everything else is stopped until it is fixed. Therefore this is as much a setting of priority, but is normally a short term problem where overtime is justified.
Be bureaucratic with employees that show initiative.
Fail to reward desired behavior.
Fail to resolve problems when they occur.

Management Roles

Management must:

Keep focused on requirements
Shield the team from distractions
Resolve conflicts

Serious project risks that can be caused, allowed, or influenced by management are:

Excessive schedule pressure
Creeping requirements
Poor estimates
Low quality
Low productivity
Inadequate measurement

Source: CTDP Management Guide

Mintzberg's 10 Managerial Roles

INTERPERSONAL	Figurehead	Performs ceremonial and symbolic duties such as greeting visitors, signing legal documents
	Leader	Direct and motivate subordinates, training, counseling, and communicating with subordinates
	Liaison	Maintain information links both inside and outside organization; use mail, phone calls, meetings
INFORMATIONAL	Monitor	Seek and receive information, scan periodicals and reports, maintain personal contacts
	Disseminator	Forward information to other organization members; send memos and reports, make phone calls
	Spokesperson	Transmit information to outsiders through speeches, reports, memos
DECISIONAL	Entrepreneur	Initiate improvement projects, identify new ideas, delegate idea responsibility to others
	Disturbance Handler	Take corrective action during disputes or crises; resolve conflicts among subordinates; adapt to environmental crises
	Resource Allocator	Decide who gets resources, scheduling, budgeting, setting priorities
	Negotiator	Represent department during negotiation of union contracts, sales, purchases, budgets; represent departmental interests

Original source: Henry Mintzberg - The Nature of Managerial Work

Visualization Tools

2008-09-15T00:47:00.008+02:00

Looking for ways to visualize information and meta-levels I found the following websites:

A visual exploration on mapping complex networks:
http://www.visualcomplexity.com/vc/
Interactive Knowledge Maps of Tools, Books, Researchers, Success Factors, and Methods in the Visualization Field
http://www.visual-literacy.org/pages/documents.htm
Periodic Table of Visualization Methods
http://www.visual-literacy.org/periodic_table/periodic_table.html
Visualization Methods from the Periodic Table:
http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/xmldb/rest/db/Visualization/showAll.xql
Information Visualization (methods and software)
http://infoviz.pnl.gov/technologies.html
Data Visualization: Modern Approaches
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/08/02/data-visualization-modern-approaches/

Accelerated Learning Techniques

2008-09-01T01:42:00.007+02:00

For more than 10 years I have been interested in education and the systems used for education. My primary focus and intention was to satisfy my personal curiosity and because of that I have been a strong supporter of student oriented modular education which is now also known as the ' cafetaria' model, education a la carte or pick and mix education.
As a student I wrote a paper (thesis) about developments and possibilities of education using the Internet. When you study didactic material about learning and teaching you will come across learning preferences in the form of learning styles: auditory (learning by hearing), visual (learning by seeing) and kinesthetic (learning by doing). But also the Theory of Multiple Intelligences (MI) originally developed by Howard Gardner. The intelligences are:

Linguistic intelligence ("word smart"):
Logical-mathematical intelligence ("number/reasoning smart")
Spatial intelligence ("picture smart")
Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence ("body smart")
Musical intelligence ("music smart")
Interpersonal intelligence ("people smart")
Intrapersonal intelligence ("self smart")
Naturalist intelligence ("nature smart")

As a coach and entrepreneur I encourage on the general concept of Life Long Learning: one must continue to improve him or herself, not only because of external force by an employer or professional peer group, but especially because of personal motivation and interest in a changing technological, economical and social environment.

In todays Information Society we also have to look into enhanced forms of literacy, not only the ability to read and write, the conventional or functional Literacy but also Computer Literacy (the ability to use computers for writing and E-mail communication), Information Literacy and Media Literacy.

Accelerated Learning Techniques have been investigated for several years. I found really good resources at Win Wenger's Project Renaissance. Following the recommended links I found a generations overview of Accelerated Learning Techniques:

The First Generation – Tricks And Tools That Really Work

Memory Systems Creativity Strategies	\|

Speed Reading	\|	Math Strategies

The Second Generation – Tapping The Unconscious

Freenoting	\|	Image Streaming

Improvitaping	\|	Photoreading

The Third Generation – Aligning The Unconscious

Hypnosis	\|	Energy

Modeling	\|	Hypnosis

Although this is a preview (dated 2004?) by Matthew Turco; this accelerated learning overview offers me a nice opportunity to combine and position tricks, creativity, NLP, Psychology and Energy work.
Any other overviews on the subject are really welcome.....

EFT as complementary Health Powertool

2008-08-19T03:23:00.005+02:00

Tapping Techniques
About two years ago someone in my network mailed me about a book he was reading "Tapping The Healer Within" by Roger J. Callahan. In this book Thought Field Therapy (TFT) is introduced as healing technique which uses tapping on specific (meridian) points on the body. When I was investigating this TFT therapy online I came across another 'tapping' therapy named EFT which stands for Emotional Freedom Techniques developed by Gary Graig. The EFT technique is based on the TFT-techniques but is easier and does not use diagnosis. Instead it has a basic tapping routine which is like a total overhaul which can be used for all possible issues. You start by giving your issue a SUD score from 0 to 10 (10 being very strong feelings or emotions) normally after a round or 2 of tapping you have a much lower SUD score on this specific issue or it could even be gone forever.

From the emofree.com FAQ:

[How does EFT differ from Thought Field Therapy (TFT)?]
TFT uses similar principles as EFT but asks the student to learn 10 or 15 different tapping routines (called algorithms), each of which is designed to cover a specific issue such as trauma, phobias, depression, etc . Anything not covered by those individual routines (e.g. insomnia, TMJ, dyslexia, etc.) requires a diagnostic process. EFT, by contrast, uses only one comprehensive tapping routine to cover all issues (not just 10 or 15) and doesn't require diagnosis.

What is EFT?
EFT is a psychological version of acupuncture, EFT is a simple tapping procedure that gently realigns the body’s energy system, without the discomfort of needles.
The EFT Discovery Statement (premise):

"The cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body's energy system."

And because our physical pains and diseases often appear to be connected with our emotions the following statement has also shown merit...

"Our unresolved negative emotions are major contributors to most physical pains and diseases."

This common sense approach draws its power from (1) time-honored Eastern discoveries that have been around for over 5,000 years and (2) Albert Einstein, who told us back in the 1920's that everything (including our bodies) is composed of energy. These ideas have been largely ignored by Western Healing Practices and that is why EFT can work where nothing else does.

EFT has a very large community and has lots of cases and information available on the website and in the newsletter. The EFT Manual can be downloaded for Free and you can get started immediately. If you are autodidact like me, you can order one or more DVD sets from seminars and live sessions to learn and even become an EFT professional yourself.
You can use EFT as a complementary technique in your practice (Coach, teacher, health-professional). EFT can be applied to just about anything which is also encouraged.

I haven't seen a therapy yet which has such profound and powerful results so quickly.
Why am I convinced about the integrity and positive intentions of Gary Graig? First, the manual is free, and the DVD-sets are very cheap [see EFT Store], especially if you buy more sets. Also, you are allowed to copy and give it away to 100 people.

What really convinced me is that even coaches (like Carol Ann Rowland from ZenSight) who developed their own therapy or intervention style still acknowledge the value of EFT. EFT is highly recommended for personal and professional use. Since this has a lot of potential I'm sure we will see and hear a lot more from these emotional freedom techniques.

In the meantime I have studied most of the EFT series DVD's (it takes some discipline and a long time watching) and I practiced the techniques a lot. Now it feels much more comfortable using and sharing EFT with others. The only remarkable thing is that I fall back to English (instead of Dutch) for the Basic affirmation: 'Even Though I have this [...] I deeply and completely accept myself'.

I am planning to make a compilation DVD with EFT material to watch and learn the basics.
Fortunately even with only 'the basic EFT recipe' most people get results. Just contact me if you have a specific issue you want solved with EFT; EFT can work even if I talk you through it over the phone or with Skype. Great tool for anybody. [Toine Fennis]

Libraries and our information society

2008-08-14T13:37:00.015+02:00

Libraries are the cornerstones of our information society. It is very important to have accessible independent information resources available to preserve our knowledge. National Libraries like the Dutch Koninklijke Bibiotheek have an important task in the long-term preservation of national cultural heritage. Internationally (for English-oriented resources) does the the US Library of Congress have a good record; for example the facts for 2007:

Total of 138,313,427 items in the collections, including:

20,854,810 cataloged books in the Library of Congress classification system
11,478,022 books in large type and raised characters, incunabula (books printed before 1501), monographs and serials, music, bound newspapers, pamphlets, technical reports, and other printed material
105,980,595 items in the nonclassified (special) collections. These included:
- 2,955,493 audio materials, such as discs, tapes, talking books, and other recorded formats
- 61,432,879 total manuscripts
- 5,317,279 maps
- 14,833,797 microforms
- 5,517,882 pieces of sheet music
- 14,364,982 visual materials, including:
  - 1,204,781 moving images
  - 12,520,442 photographs
  - 92,960 posters
  - 544,142 prints and drawings

The Budget is the largest wordwide (to my knowledge). They operated with a total fiscal 2007 appropriation of $600,417,000, including authority to spend $42,108,000 in receipts. In comparison: The Koninklijke Bibliotheek in the Netherlands spend about €53,871,000 in 2007 according to their annual financial report. Some facts about The Koninklijke Bibliotheek:
Holdings
3,5 million items = more than 68 km of library materials, including 49 km of books (2.5 million), 18 km of periodicals (including 15,000 current periodicals) and more than 1 km of microforms
Acquisition
The deposit collection grows by an average of 40,000 books and 120.000 electronic publications annually. The research collection grows by an average of 19,000 items annually
Special collections
The KB also houses some 30 special collections including: medieval and modern manuscripts, old and rare books, pamphlets, book bindings, marbled papers and books on the history of paper, chess- and draughts, newspapers, cookery books and children's books

Personally I have always had a thing with libraries and bookstores. The wealth of potential information is immense. Knowledge and wisdom stored in all those books and media.
The last 10-15 years Internet has been filled (or better: connected to webservers) with websites containing documents, pages and data from several sources including unreliable ones. The need to find good reliable information becomes higher and higher. Truth and reality becomes popularized and personalized in Blogs as Truthiness ("the quality by which one purports to know something emotionally or instinctively, without regard to evidence or intellectual examination.") and Wikiality ("together we can create a reality that we all agree on — the reality we just agreed on."). See more discussion about the Truth on Internet in the VPRO documentary Wiki's Waarheid (Dutch subtitles).
Besides the trustworthiness issues, strictly speaking, searchengines like Google and Yahoo have taken over the initial information exploration function of conventional libraries and may as such be considered a fully digitized library. In this new situation does not the content itself, but the way this content (within a automatically interpreted context) is linked, indexed and categorized defines how it shows up in search results.

Google also made an effort to scan, OCR and index books from libraries to make full text search possible, this is what conventional libraries until recently couldn't do. This service is called Google Book Search. An extension of that is starting your own Google library.
I already have a selection of my library online as an exported list: Toine Fennis Bookcollection with currently 521 books. I just looked into importing my library into My Google Booklibrary [my example] to enhance searching possibilities within my books which gives many benefits for research.
From the 521 books on my list, 51 were not recognized, so I guess it is safe to say roughly 10% gets lost. This might be due to the fact that a large part of the list is in Dutch but since I can find the info elsewhere on the Internet through library catalog's and my catalog software MyGoogle Library still needs some tweaking.

I made my initial booklist with Collectorz.com Bookcollector Pro which supports the Flic barcode-reader (now sold as ROV) and other barcodereaders, to scan the ISBN on the back of most books. The program automatically searches in online libraries and bookstores and downloads most meta-data including the cover (if you use Amazon as a source). I did have to classify the Categories and Subjects from most books, it would be nice to also have the UDC or other classification or subject oriented keywords (automated) added to these books.

Since information becomes more and more important in our network-economy, online libraries (and of course searchengines) will become our guides in finding reliable data and resources. For the future innovation is to be expected as full-text searching and content-analyzing within books becomes available through services like Google Book Search. Optimizing connections between databases of conventional libraries with loads of meta-data stored and search-engines will not take long. New Internet applications including community created content is to be expected for searching and finding books and documents. Personal reviews, ranking and keywords combined with Web 2.0 namely Tagclouds, semantic webs, and shared booklists within a community setting including data mining (find similar books, related books, and booksuggestions) will become common practice.

Online Bookshelf's
On the low end you will have pure commercial initiatives like Shelfari* which has some nice Gadget-plugins with Networking sites like Hyves with a business model based on Google Ads and Amazon affiliate sales. Shelfari only imported 226 of 521 books, = 43% from my original booklist (due to the fact they only use Amazon [upd. aug. 28 2008 Shelfari was acquired by Amazon] ). Other online bookshelf's are Goodreads.com with only 214 books imported in my Goodreads library (sorry, this is not good enough). I got pleasantly surprized by aNobii.com with 451 imported books [see My Collection] (same number as Google!?). aNobii is more community oriented and does good suggestions about new books to investigate, it is also about what books you are reading at the moment.
On the high-end (very promising) you have Librarything.com which imported 471 books [my Librarything booklist]. Librarything is free till 200 books or membership based; I bought myself a lifetime membership for $25. Librarything is really about the love of books and libraries and it shows: lots of community features like comparing booklists, interestgroups, and lots of external connectivity. There is even a keyword tagmirror based on keywords others gave to the books in my list (it's like a 360 degrees keyword feedback based on my booklist). In the near future I would like to see a combination / connection of the features seen in MyGoogle Library, Google Book Search and of course Librarything, if the full-text search and keyword features of these online library webservices synergize this would make my research library heaven....

Finally some general resources about libraries for librarians or information professionals:

http://www.libraryspot.com/librariesonline.htm
LibWeb Library Servers through WWW http://lists.webjunction.org/libweb/
over 30.000 Free Books http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
Resources about Library http://www.ipl.org/div/subject/browse/hum45.00.00/
The European Library Portal http://search.theeuropeanlibrary.org/portal/en/index.html

Improve Social Intelligence and Relations

2008-08-13T15:58:00.005+02:00

Individual

The quality of your relationships is the quality of your life. This advice is primarily meant for you and the relationship with your Significant Other (SO).

You get into a relationship to give something rather than to go to get something out.
Empowering Question: How can I give more to this relationship?

Avoid anchoring your negative emotions to the people you are with

Keep arguments / discussions short and resolve them as soon as possible

Be playful and adventurous in the growth of your relationship

Show you love and care in the way that fits the need of the person involved. How does this person know someone loves them? Say it, show it, touch in a specific way. (find out the primary representation system) How do you know you are most loved by me? Is is absolutely necessary that I show you that I love you by buying you thing, taking you places or looking a certain way? (visual) Is is absolutely necessary that I say it (auditory) Is it absolutely necessary that I touch you in a certain way (kinesthetic)

Create key-moments that are fun or special

Enjoy where you are right now, do not fear the (possible) end. Act as if the relationship is going to last forever. Mutual commitment is the identity of every lasting relationship.

Identify exactly what you want in a relationship and what you don't want.
What do you want your relationship to be about?
What unique things can you do to enhance the relationship?

Resolving Conflicts

International Online Training Program On Intractable Conflict Many problemcategories and reflections on several wordwide conflicts.
Conflict Research Consortium, University of Colorado, USA.

General Social Problems

SIMPOS: Netherlands foundation for information on social problems and occult tendencies. A somewhat critical view on social themes related to New Age, religious cults, etc.
Although it may seem contradictory to refer to critics about information I presented earlier in articles and books but I feel it is your personal responsibility to be fully informed about people, systems and methods presented on MetaMagazine. Just keep an open (positive) mind...

[Toine Fennis]

Information problem-solving

2008-08-13T15:50:00.002+02:00

Successful information problem-solving encompasses six stages with two sub-stages under each:

1. Task Definition
1.1 Define the information problem
1.2 Identify information needed in order to complete the task (to solve the information problem)

2. Information Seeking Strategies
2.1 Determine the range of possible sources (brainstorm)
2.2 Evaluate the different possible sources to determine priorities (select the best sources)

3. Location and Access
3.1 Locate sources (intellectually and physically)
3.2 Find information within sources

4. Use of Information
4.1 Engage (e.g., read, hear, view, touch) the information in a source
4.2 Extract relevant information from a source

5. Synthesis
5.1 Organize information from multiple sources
5.2 Present the information

6. Evaluation
6.1 Judge the product (effectiveness)
6.2 Judge the information problem-solving process (efficiency)

This method is used by Big6™ to teach information literacy in schools.

Applied to Information Literacy: [Virtual Library Source]

	1. Defining your problem and asking the good questions What is my thesis or problem? What information do I need? What do I already know? What more do I need to find out? Remember: Try to make the most out of any research problem. The better your question, the more you will learn. For more information about defining a problem and asking good questions, read http://www.joycevalenza.com/questions.html and Dr. Jamie McKenzie's Questioning.org
	2. Information seeking strategies? Where can I find the information I need? Which are the best possible sources? Which databases are the best choices? Which types of sources will best help me solve my information problem? Which sources do I already have? Do I need help to find the resources or to make sure I haven't overlooked any critical sources? Follow these links more information on searching and appropriate internet search tools and our catalog and licensed databases.
	3. Selecting and evaluating your resources How can I search these sources effectively? After reading, can I identify better keywords or subject headings to refine my electronic search? Do the resources I found really answer my questions or offer evidence to support my thesis? Have I carefully examined my selected sources for significant details and concepts? Have I examined my sources for currency, relevance, accuracy, credibility, appropriateness and and bias? Can I defend all of the resources I am considering for inclusion in my works consulted page? Does the scope, depth and quality of my research meet my teacher's and my own expectations? How will I credit my sources? (For more information about citing sources check out our online MLA stylesheet. For more information on evaluating your sources, take a look at Evaluating Sources of Information and How to Critically Analyze Information Sources)
	4. Organizing and restructuring information How much of the information I collected is truly relevant? Do I see any patterns emerging in the information I collected? How can I organize this information so that it makes sense to myself and others? Do I have a strategy for notetaking? Can I construct a visual tool or written outline to help me structure my work? Have I solved my information problem and answered the related questions? Do I have enough information? (Check out the Graphic Organizer Index, NCREL's Graphic Organizers, and SCORE's Graphic Organizers for ideas on organizing the information you collect.)
	5. Communicating the results of your research Who is my audience? How can I most effectively share this information with this audience? Which would be the best format for communicating the results of my information? PowerPoint? video? essay? debate? speech? traditional paper? What do I need to do this presentation? Equipment? Software? Have I included everything I want to share? Have I proofread, edited and truly finished my project? (Purdue's Online Writing Lab has a variety of resources that will help you create a finished product. Here's a list of sites that will help improve your presentation skills.)
	6. Evaluating your work The product: Am I proud of the product? Was it effective? Did I meet the guidelines or follow the rubric for the project? Am I sure I did not plagiarize from any of my sources? Is the best work I could have done? The process: Did I explore the full scope of available resources and select the best? Did I approach the research process energetically? Did I search electronic resources (the Web and licensed databases) using effective, efficient, strategic search strategies? (Check the research rubric before submitting your final product.)

MetaMagazine Reading Instruction

2008-08-13T15:32:00.003+02:00

Exploration and context
	The way these texts and pages of my research-process are presented are more or less a logical construction of following thoughts which may help to understand it better. Your personal way of reading or the hyper textual (non-linear) order might be totally different. Feel free to do so. When you read a text or notice a concept that interests or triggers you, you associate that with your previous experiences. Wandering off in your mind and creatively combining new thoughts creating knowledge, or the eureka-experiences as I like to call them. These pages are intentionally multipurpose: to explain concepts, to share experience and especially to inspire and motivate you in finding your life's goal. What you do in the context could be a personal way of doing research. For example: I usually play some background music or listen to the radio, eat some fruit, or drink some tea. While reading books I sometimes burn flavored candles or incense. When I see a specific word or concept I think is worth looking at I write it down and frequently look for other references through search-engines on the Internet (in a different browser-window) or I might check a dictionary or encyclopedia. This is a personal context-example for doing research which works for me. Just a comfortable chair might be your necessary context-condition for learning. Use and experiment or at least pay attention to context conditions as long as your senses and curiosity are satisfied....
Tools & Sources for exploration
	Life lessons are learned by practice; any mistake you make (or action you classify as mistake) is an opportunity to learn and change habits or behaviors. Sometimes just looking at a situation or position from a different perspective is revealing. Several (science- & labor-) disciplines have techniques for analyzing and solving practical problems. Most disciplines use the conventional systematic approach but creativity- and conceptual solution techniques can also be very resourceful, especially for visualizing unwanted or hidden patterns. The interaction and communication with others makes it possible to reflect upon personal beliefs through dialogues. The pure content of multi-reflected dialogues (sometimes over several generations) and multi-reflected visions results in the form of wisdom-concepts and 'general' rules for life.
Research Procedure
	I started my research with the origin of knowledge. With a philosophical basis researching several subjects: - Education (Learning, E-learning, Open Source education, Information and Communication Technology & higher education) - Development of a vision - Spiritual paths - Classification systems - Problem-Solving (Models, Techniques, Training & Workshops) - Communication The thing most texts have in common is that it is related to empowerment, growth and balance within areas of life. Although some pages are more theoretical and knowledge oriented, I try to keep focused on adding value to you, the reader. Please make suggestions on how to improve this site or give me personal feedback by mail: toine (at) metamagazine.com [NB. Most articles on this blog were originally published in 2001-2002 on MetaMagazine.com]

Meaning of Life - Existential Questions

2008-08-13T13:54:00.009+02:00

Life is not making a living, but designing your life

Every problem is a challenge and an opportunity to learn. Do you accept it or leave it?

The meaning of life is a philosophical subject and can be interpreted in many ways. If you ask many people the answers can be classified on a META-level. Look at the existential questions section for the elements and some questions to explore your meaning in life. Using metaphors from nature can be powerful and inspirational for creating a mission or identity.

Having a personal Mission helps setting the course of your life. To help formulate a personal mission statement based on values, qualities and talents visit the Missionbuilder (from Franklin Covey).

Another way to positively investigate possibilities within an organization is by the method's and interviewing techniques of Appreciative Inquiry.

Manifestation Formula
The Manifestation formula is build up as follows:
Purpose +
Thought +
Vision +
Affirmation +
Feeling +
Writing in Time and Space +
Action with Energy on Matter +
Gratitude +
Perseverance =
Manifestation

[Twelve secrets for manifesting your vision, inspiration & purpose: how to make your dreams come true, 1999, by Dr. D. Richard Bellamy]

Meaningful Life
The meaning of life and meaning can be broken down to the following elements:

Relationships; involvement with family, partner or friends.
Work; commitment with a job, school or primary occupation.
Personal well-being; an individualistic orientation with emphasis on experiencing meaning by enjoyment of life, having fun, and maintaining physical and mental health.
Self-realization; an orientation on- and reaching of tangible or non-tangible goals and psychological skills.
Helpfulness; an altruistic orientation on helping people in general.
Faith; dedication and practice of religious-spiritual or social-political beliefs.
Materialism; meaning coming from aiming at materialistic goals and satisfactions.
Future / Hope; focus and expectation.

In essence these above elements should be in balance. Very strong emotions related to one or more of these elements or focused dedication to only one aspect may suggest an imbalance.

Questions to find your meaning in life

RELATIONSHIPS
I belong to ....., When I'm with ... I...., People who are most important to me are.... because... ,I like ... (name person / people) most because ...., people like me because...., I classify myself as ....
WORK
My occupation is.... because..., What I do is.... because ..., What I like about it is..., what I dislike about it is..., What is the importance of these activities?... Things I do well are...., In my work I add value to people's lives by...., My colleagues value me most for....
PERSONAL WELL-BEING
I love to ...., I'm extremely happy when I...., The nicest thing what could happen to me is.... because...., things I enjoy doing are ...., I feel healthy when I ..., things that take much of my energy are... and I prefer.....
SELF REALIZATION
I want to ....because....., My goal in life is...., I know I can ..... , the things I want to be remembered for are...., I'm proud of myself when I ..... because...., things I am good at are...., I feel best when I......
HELPFULNESS
I help .....with.... because....., I gladly give advice to...., people I'd love to help most are ...., When I help I feel...., helping others makes me....., I want to be helped with....because....
FAITH
I believe in...., the best society or system is....because...., when I die ...., I have to...because...., I know my belief is valid because...., I trust....because... ,Things that are most important to me are...
MATERIALISM
I want to have....because...., if I won the jackpot of the lottery I would...., My most valuable possession is...., My life becomes better if I have ....., the first next big thing to buy is...., If I lost everything I would.... The possession which represents me most is....
FUTURE / HOPE
Someday I hope to...., At the end of my life (when I look back) I ...., The future holds...., I wish...., I dream about..., My vision is...., In time I will....., If I could change the future I would....because...., If I could change the past.....

Life's Morality....

In ethics there a three kinds of moral:

Intention of doing (what is the purpose or goal / why?)
Procedure of doing (how or what is the best way of doing it?)
Effect (what are the results of an action?)

Giving meaning to one's life and reflect upon existence on earth means this individual has awareness of the ability to change perspective.

This Meta-awareness with the necessity to constantly classify and put things in new perspective is essential for learning and growth. This thought-process was initiated by use of the senses. This primary philosophy also creates borders between self, matter, others and world. Being in it's most enlightened state all this may be experienced as being one.

Appreciative Inquiry (AI)

2008-08-13T13:23:00.002+02:00

Introduction

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) was developed by Dr. David Cooperrider and his colleagues as a new paradigm with the potential to replace the conventional problem-solving methods of organization development.

In everyday life, most people and organizations are constrained by the perception that their resources, and hence their horizons, are limited. This perception -- that we must "face realities" -- is without a doubt the greatest single constraint on human imagination, vision and enterprise.

Appreciative inquiry begins with a different set of assumptions. We begin with the belief that we have a choice -- that we can consciously choose (in the Gestalt sense) what we "see" and act upon. In both the personal and social realms, we can choose to focus on problems, needs and deficits -- the traditional problem-solving approach. Or we can choose to see possibilities, capabilities and assets -- the basis of appreciative inquiry.

By focusing on what's right, rather than what's wrong with an organization, an individual or even a society, AI gives us access to the kind of energy that can be transformative. Having that kind of energy to work with gives us the confidence to develop and pursue a new image of the future.

A key question: If you want to inspire, mobilize and sustain human energy which is the most effective way -- by focusing on problems or pursuing possibilities?

AI is a generative process that gives us a way to bring possibilities to life and develop our capacities. Through a carefully developed set of questions and a process of dialogue, we uncover stories of our "peak experiences" -- those moments in our lives when we felt most effective, most connected, most alive.

These stories provide irrefutable proof of our actual capabilities. They give rise to new images of what the future could be. They raise our sights, energize us and give us the courage to dream and act boldly.

Rather than "accepting reality," we see that what we call "reality" is defined by what we choose to see, what we choose to think and talk about, what we choose to act upon. It follows that we have the capacity to create the kind of future we desire.

Description taken from: http://www.appreciative-inquiry.org/

Problem solving versus appreciative Inquiry

Problem Solving

	What to fix
	Underlying grammar = problem, symptoms, causes, solutions, action plan, intervention
	Breaks things into pieces & specialties, guaranteeing fragmented responses
	Slow! Takes a lot of positive emotion to make real change.
	Assumes organizations are constellations of problems to be overcome

Appreciative Inquiry (AI)

	What to grow
	New grammar of the true, good, better, possible
	“Problem focus” implies that there is an ideal. AI breaks open the box of what the ideal is first.
	Expands vision of preferred future. Creates new energy fast.
	Assumes organizations are sources of infinite capacity and imagination

How does it work?

First, understand the positive core of a living system. What makes it most effective and vital, in economic, ecological and human terms?
- We move in the direction of our deepest and most frequently asked questions.
- Positive guiding images of the future trigger action in the present.
- Images are found in our dialogue with each other.
- Ratio of positive to negative statements is a success factor for change.
Individuals & groups can then weave the best of what is into formal and informal practices. This new approach to change, based on the power of the positive question, has emerged from revolutions in many fields.

Organizations work best when they are vibrant, alive and fun. You know, when the "joint is jumping!" You can sense that the spirit of the organization is vital and healthy and that people feel pride in their work. Everyone builds on each other's successes, a positive can do attitude is infectious and the glow of success is shared. What's more, this positive energy is appreciated and celebrated so it deepens and lasts.

Tell me about a time when you experienced positive energy that was infectious. What was the situation? What created the positive energy? How did it feel to be a part of it? What did you learn?
If positive energy were the flame of the organization, how would you spark it? How would you fuel it to keep it burning bright?

4 Generic Questions to start the process:

Best experience. A time when…
What do you value about… yourself, work, organization.
What do you think is the core life-giving factor or value of your organization –that which if it did not exist would make your organization totally different than it currently is?
If you had three wishes for this organization, what would it be?

Typical Project Start-up

	Choose the topic: combine themes from generic interviews with research questions.
	Agree on desired outcomes & CSF;
	Agree on how to get there
	Develop draft interview protocol
	Practice interviews; develop interview guidelines
	Plan for collecting & “analyzing” the data
	Plan for how the process will drive change.

Why it works

	Doesn’t focus on changing people => Relief that the message isn’t about what they’ve done wrong or have to stop doing.
	Invites people to engage in building the kinds of organizations and communities that they want to live in.
	Helps everyone see the need for change, explore new possibilities, and contribute to solutions.
	Through alignment of formal and informal structures with purpose and principles, it translates shared vision into reality and belief into practice.
	Assumptions => conversation => dominant images => individual acts at both conscious and unconscious levels => organizational infrastructure.
	Organizations manifest human imagination. Learnings that surface through AI shift collective image.
	Process responds to three truths about human nature: * Exceptionality: We’re all exceptions. We respond best when this is noticed & conditions for exceptional performance are enhanced. * Essentiality: We each need to be seen as essential to the group. If we “lift up” meaningful contributions, it creates a compelling guiding image for others * Equality: Creates a way for the organization to be in “full voice” about the true, good, better, possible.

Summary

A high-participation, full-voice process targeted at organizational innovation
A learning process to identify and disseminate best practices
A way of managing and working that fosters positive communication and can result in the formation of deep and meaningful relationships
Can be used to radically redesign the governance structures and processes of an organization.
Mobilizes strategic change by focusing on the core strengths of an organization, then using those strengths to reshape the future.

More tools and resources are found at: http://appreciativeinquiry.cwru.edu/
(Most information on this page is taken from sources available here)

Application Areas

	Leadership & Management Development
	Work Process Redesign
	Team Development
	Organization Culture
	Change Employee Development
	HR Practices: Staffing, Orientation,
	Performance Management
	Communications
	Collaborative alliances & joint ventures
	Community & customer relations
	Diversity initiatives
	Strategic Planning
	Focus Groups
	Benchmarking
	Surveys
	Evaluation to Valuation

Mastering Emotional Problems

2008-08-13T12:43:00.006+02:00

The goal is to learn from the emotions and utilize them.

Identify the signal of your emotion (which most fits)
Appreciate the message this emotion has

Emotion	What's the signal / message	Solution / Action
*Uncomfortable*	Change your state	1. Change your state; 2. clarify what you want, and 3. take action into that direction
*Fear* (concern, worry, anxiety)	You need to prepare	Be prepared to deal with negative consequences, be confident about possibilities.
*Hurt*	An expectation is not met and you have a sense of loss	Change your perception or your procedure. Is this expectation justified or how you interact
*Anger* (irritation, enraged)	You have a standard (value) and it is not met (by another or not by yourself)	Change your perception or procedure. The way you look at this or how you communicate or how you behave / interact. Communicate your standards.
*Frustration*	You keep doing the same thing without wanted result	You need to change your approach to achieve your goal.
*Disappointment*	You need to realize an expectation you had or an outcome you wanted is probably not going to happen.	Change your expectation to a more appropriate outcome for the situation at hand. Example: period is too short.
*Guilt / Regret*	You violated one of your own standards.	You need to do something about it immediately to insure you won't violate it again in the future. Don't deny the guilt, it's coming back. Make things right when you screw up. This emotion keeps you on track and makes you a better person.
*Inadequacy* (unworthy)	You need to do something to get better in this category.	Practice. Q: Is this emotion appropriate? Maybe you have to change your perception or procedures. Maybe your rules are too harsh.
*Overloaded* (overwhelmed, hopeless, depressed)	Change your state	1. Change your state. You need to reevaluate what is most important to you in this situation. What is an absolute necessity to you versus a desire. 2. Write down all the things that are most important for you to accomplish. 3. Put them in order of priority. 4. Take the first thing on the list en do something about it. When you do something about it you are in control.
*Lonely*	You need a connection with people.	1. Identify what kind of connection you want. (friendship, intimate, someone to listen or talk to, someone to laugh with) 2. In what way do you want this to be? 3. Take action into that direction.

	What is an empowering way to look at this?
	What else could this mean?
	Choose meanings that empower you in life.

[Source: NLP, Anthony Robbins]

A good way to neutralize or ease Emotions or Feelings that bother you is with Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) an easy to do and learn tapping method created by Gary Graig.
Emofree.com

Watch the promo-video:

Getting Organized; what to do about unwanted chaos

2008-08-13T04:27:00.000+02:00

Chaos is paradoxical; you need a certain amount of chaos to be creative but not to the point that you feel overwhelmed by the amount of stuff.

Getting organized is helpful for people in offices and at home. Unwanted chaos is non-productive; there are several systems, tools and principles for this. Getting organized is a general topic within problem solving which is said to be most effective to clarify feelings because it is primarily aimed at the physical environmental level. The clean desk feeling, nice labeled folders, knowing where your stuff is stored and where to put it (back) when done.

Usually the problem of increasing unwanted chaos is that new stuff doesn't have a place to store it.

A nice helpful diagram to process "stuff" from your in-basket to a destination from David Allen's Book "Getting things done" :

The level of accepted chaos may vary from person to person. In my experience the tolerance level of chaos for men tends to be higher than it is for women. If the values of cleanliness and order differ within a household this may cause tension. For example a woman might feel uncomfortable with dirty laundry on the floor or a pile of used dishes in the kitchen long before a man finally does. Even within a emancipated society this might be one of the reasons women still do more of the household tasks than men... (It might be interesting to use the value-system as a variable for social science research)

Order is the reshuffling of Chaos using sets of Rules. These rules don't have to be logical, reasonable or even sane, but they do have to be internally consistent, and most of the things or people involved must fit or be made to fit the resulting Pattern. Sweeping unwanted facts under the Rug usually includes those who found them. In Reality, order exists in a sea of Chaos, for Order must be be recognized as such so that Meaning can be attached to it.

[Toine Fennis, metamagazine.com 2001]

Problem Solving & Brainstorming

2008-08-13T04:09:00.002+02:00

Problem Analysis
No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. (Albert Einstein)

The art of problem solving
Although problem solving is something people have a natural tendency to do, giving this process the status of an Art also suggests more complexity to this subject. Problem-solving goes beyond physical, cultural, science or language. Everybody can solve problems, in fact we practically do it all the time. Every thought and every decision is in a way solving part of a problem. At the same time one might suggest by those decisions and actions following this (personal) problem solving process, new problems of another kind arise. Most of our economy is based on solving and creating new problems in some form. Then why bother analyzing and describing this process you might ask. Because when you know the underlying principles, your processes of solving problems become easier, more fun, and it helps you grow as an individual giving your environment a positive influence. Most interesting about solving problems are the processes themselves, not primarily the result. I might reframe that to enjoying the process of getting what you want.

Like other Art-studies, problem solving has several components: history, practices, theories, models, concepts, references in other arts, sciences and spiritually. There can be no final consensus on a best way to present it because describing the Art of problem solving is in itself a problem solving process, which is never finished.

Problem Classification
To define your problem-solving strategy it is important to classify problems first into one of the three following categories.

Level 1: Urgent & Important - Highest Priority
Level 2: Important / not so urgent - Medium Priority
Level 3: Minor importance / no urgency - Low Priority

If you have more than one problem choose the one with the highest priority.

Essentially, there are two types of problems: analytic and divergent. An analytic problem is convergent in nature, that is, it has a single correct answer. Divergent problems allow for many possible solutions.

Phases in formulating a solution
Problem-development

1. formulating the problem (what and how did it get your attention, perceived facts)
2. acceptation (accept the problem as is)
3. reformulating (problem description, datasheet, examples, theories, references)

Idea-development
Questions which could be asked in this phase:
- what is good about this problem or situation?
- how can I use this problem or situation?
- what is not yet perfect?
- what am I willing to do to improve this situation?
- what will I stop doing to improve the situation?
- what is funny about it, that I didn't notice before?
- how will I enjoy when I reach my goal and this problem is solved?

4. analyze and purge (effort to find logical solutions)
5. exhaustion / frustration
6. relaxation / incubation
7. creative sidestep
8. Eureka!

Idea judgment

9. working out the plan (critical phase)
10. planning the approach

Who?
Who are the people involved in a problem-solution team?
- Problem-owner (Who's problem is it?)
- Fellow Problem owner or involved persons (participants in solving the problem)
- Generalists
- Specialists
- Outsiders
- Secretary (notes everything what is being said)
- Facilitator or coach (is not involved with the content, only the process)

Session rules:

1. postpone judgment
2. you are allowed to lie
3. privacy to the outside, openness to the inside
4. Extra attention to negative questions or remarks
5. No hierarchy, no arrogance
6. Critical phase afterwards

Brainstorming
Many people, when trying to solve a problem, develop a mental block. This may be a result of 'thinking too hard'. Then, later, without conscious effort, a solution comes to mind. One way to overcome a mental block in the problem-solving process is to hold a brainstorming session.

The purpose of brainstorming is to generate as many ideas as possible. The more ideas a team has to choose from, the greater the chances are of finding one that is successful. Ideas are generated rapidly, which prevents individuals from dwelling on why an idea might not work. Evaluation of the ideas comes at a later stage of solution development.

General guidelines for holding brainstorming sessions:
1. Allow no criticism. Some people become self-conscious when they feel they may be criticized, which inhibits them from offering ideas. For this reason, it is important that ideas are not judged at this time.
2. Encourage outrageous ideas. This often results in team members going beyond the normal thought process.
3. Encourage piggybacking of other ideas. One idea often stimulates a better one.
4. Evaluate the ideas at the end of the session or after a day or two. Eliminate those that are not feasible.

Any criticism of ideas must be constructive. The team should know that it is okay to laugh at and have fun discussing the ideas. Keep in mind that decisions made at this time are not always final; ideation is an ongoing process.

Besides the coach as moderator, each brainstorming group should select a leader to direct the discussion. If a leveling off of ideas occurs, the leader should encourage new ideas by asking questions such as:

"By altering the materials how could we . . . ?"
"What might happen if we changed its shape?"
"How could we adapt it to make it move faster?"
"How can we make it smaller, lighter, etc.?"

One team member (or the secretary) should record all ideas and useful comments.

The Four Temperament Learning Styles

2008-08-13T03:29:00.000+02:00


What's Your Learning Style?
	Most of us start (or started) back to school each year full of enthusiasm and ambition. This year, we say, I will buckle down, stay on top of things, and get good grades. How often does that promise become a reality? Understanding your personality, and how it affects your learning style can lead you to more feasible resolutions, greater academic success, less guilt, and more fun!
Artisans
	Artisans like their schoolwork to be fun and also practical, directly applicable to their personal aims. Hands-on, active learning is preferred to sitting in a chair and listening to a teacher talk. They prefer focus on details to leaping from thought to thought or concept to concept. In high school and college, Artisans choose courses and majors that will teach a skill they will use, whether that's business administration, diesel mechanics, or chiropractic.
Guardians
	Guardians respect their teachers' decisions about what the content of their learning should be. They need and appreciate logical presentation of facts and ideas, and clear expectations for assignments -- what is demanded of them and what the standards are. Teachers who leap from concept to concept will frustrate their Guardian students. Like Artisans, Guardians are likely to choose practical courses of study that will lead to secure careers.
Idealists
	Idealists are excited and motivated by ideas, particularly those relating to people and relationships or an understanding of "Life." Incorporating new learning into their guiding value system is critical for Idealists. They prefer teachers who act as coaches -- who provide broad concepts, set up a launching pad for independent thinking, group discussion, and extrapolation, and then fill in the facts and information that support the concepts. Idealists often choose majors in the fine arts or literature, psychology, or the humanities.
Rationals
	Like Idealists, Rationals are self-directed learners. They want to be challenged and provided with the means to pursue the ideas that are important to them. They are highly autonomous, and so don't generally seek discussion. Teachers can support Rationals by sharing expertise and resources for learning and by giving them honest feedback as the students' knowledge and expertise grows. Rationals often choose majors in science, mathematics, philosophy, or technology.

[Source: Newsletter from Advisorteam.com]

Education & Learning

2008-08-13T03:22:00.000+02:00

A wise system of education will at least teach us how little man yet knows, how much he has still to learn. J Lubbock, The pleasure of life.

Why do we learn?

We learn to shape our various intelligences. A general definition of intelligence is the ability to create useful products and solve daily problems.

In history the only necessary learning was done on the job to provide a living. Craftsmen passed their skills, knowledge and wisdom on to their offspring and pupils. Today we need to learn to function in a high complex post-industrial western society with the emphasis on information. Education is institutionalized and offered in schools. Schools are generally differentiated between three phases (this might differ from country to country)

Primary school (basic language skills as reading and writing, mathematics and emotional intelligence),

Secondary school (advanced language and math-skills or algebra, second language, and sciences like chemistry, biology, history, geography, economics, some schools also include social science, sports or gymnastics, music, drama and skill-based classed like first aid, typing, and driving. These last are mostly facultative.

Trade-school or Higher education choosing a profession or a specific science.

We assume that between the second and third phase one makes a good choice and that there is a job or profession that fits the education at the end of these three phases. Nowadays we know we have to "update" our knowledge frequently throughout our lives because of changed technology. This continuous learning effort is called life-long-learning. In politics this needed learning might be reduced to an employability-policy which gives the concept a somewhat negative connotation.

Intelligence

We have several intelligences to learn and develop (according to Howard Gardner / Collin Rose); these intelligences are:

	Linguistic (reading / writing)
	Mathematical / Logical (numbers, charts, reasoning)
	Visual / Spatial (visualizing, direction / navigation)
	Musical (rhythm / melody)
	Bodily / Physical (arts / crafts / sports)
	Interpersonal / Social (read emotions / parenting / teaching)
	Intrapersonal / Quiet control (self-knowledge)

In 1996 Gardner added an eighth intelligence – Naturalistic – or nature smart. This intelligence deals with sensing patterns in and making connections to elements in nature – observing, collecting, categorizing and analyzing.

Charles Handy (1998) also identifies at least nine forms of intelligence which align with and enhance Gardner’s multiple intelligences (Factual, Analytical, Linguistic, Spatial, Musical, Practical, Physical, Intuitive, and Interpersonal)

When a range of intelligences are involved the learning ability is greatly enhanced. Each type of intelligence represents a different way to explore the subject and provides a different ability to call on when faced with a problem-solving task.

[Source: Brian Tracy Tapes & News article: The Future belongs to the competent]

Learning Systems

The learning-systems we use are based on old traditions and the way society of interaction. The conventional system could generally be described as supply-based linear learning with a clear beginning and end.

New systems should be more flexible and more modular demand-based because of the high differences in experience, backgrounds and different preparatory training which must fit in non-linear learning scenarios which is common today.

In my vision education on all levels should be available to everyone, everywhere, and at any time. My ideal would be a worldwide open-source e-educational system, instantly bilateral translation of all structured meta and content-information (including multimedia) needed for comprehension of a subject.

Open source-education as a concept has many similarities to open source-software. The development of Linux, the most known (and popular) open-source alternative operating system, is therefore interesting in more ways than the related software-products alone.
Open-source software is the process of systematically harnessing open development and decentralized peer review to lower costs and improve software quality. The idea is simple: When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, people fix bugs. And this can happen at a speed that, if one is used to the slow pace of conventional software development, seems astonishing.
[Open Source Initiative]

Because the source-codes or program-instructions are available with the distribution, everyone can change and add functionality to the distributed program, or write its own programs with parts of available distributed content. Because of our current use of information and communication technology this concept of sharing, adapting and improving content (and I also refer to education) may well be the constructive principle of our new information society.

The challenge is to create new ways of combining formal and informal learning processes and worldwide collective agreement on the funding and public use of educational information. Initiatives like open source for the ICT-infrastructure and Transcopyright for the information content could bring mondial educational information exchange within closer reach.

What is learning?

Learning as a psychological concept can be defined in more than one way. The most popular definitions are:

	Learning: To gain knowledge, comprehension, or mastery through experience or study.
	Learning is a relatively permanent change in behavior or in behavioral potentiality that results from experience and cannot be attributed to temporary body states such as those induced by illness, fatigue or drugs. (Kimble)

A science requires an observable, measurable subject matter, and within the science of psychology, that subject matter is behavior. The qualification "relatively permanent" in the definition of learning means sensitization and habituation are examples of behavior modifications that results from experience in a relatively short period of time. Sensitization is the process whereby an organism is made more responsive to certain aspects of its environment. Habituation is the process whereby an organism becomes less responsive to its environment.

What is learned may not be utilized immediately. This is a very important distinction between learning and performance. Learning refers to a change in behavior potentiality; and performance refers to the translation of this potentiality into behavior. Not all behavior is learned. Much simple behavior is reflexive. A reflex can be defined as an unlearned response in reaction to a specific class of stimuli. Complex behavior can also be unlearned. When complex behavior patterns seem to be genetically determined, they are generally referred to as instinctive. Instinctive behavior includes such activities as nest building, migration, hibernation and mating behavior. This is also classified as species-specific-behavior. Research supports the contention that species-specific-behavior is both learned and unlearned. A newly hatched duckling would form an attachment to any kind of moving object and follow it as its mother, provided the object was presented at just the right moment in the duckling's life. (Lorenz) The formation of an attachment between an organism and an environmental object is called imprinting. Imprinting was found to occur only during a critical period, after which it was difficult, if not impossible to imprint the duckling to anything. Imprinting is a combination of learned and instinctive behavior.

Learning is a general term used to describe changes in behavior potentiality resulting from experience. Conditioning (classical or instrumental) is more specifically used as a term to describe actual procedures that can modify behavior.

[Source: B.R. Hergenhahn, An introduction to theories of learning. ISBN 0134988744]

[Toine Fennis, MetaMagazine.com 2001]

Introduction to knowledge

2008-08-13T03:13:00.000+02:00

General knowledge system

All our human knowledge comes from experience perceived by our senses. Seeing with our eyes (visual), hearing with our ears (auditory), feeling with our hands, body and internally (kinesthetically), smell with our nose (olfactory) and taste with our mouth and tongue (gustatory). In the past this gathered data and information was classified and determined. Eventually this must have resulted into a language-system by which communication was possible. Preserved knowledge from ancient civilizations is mostly visual in the form of wall-paintings or carvings and later recorded as codified symbols now interpreted as written texts. Archeologists also expose the physical trails and objects of past civilizations and interpret these findings which gives us information about systems they have used.

Most of our currently used knowledge and culture was originated in the old Greek and Roman society. Philosophy is said to be the mother of all (liberal) arts or sciences. Artes liberales is the Latin for liberal arts. The canon of the seven liberal arts dates from the fifth century AD and has its roots in Roman times. The first three sciences, grammatica, rhetorica and dialectica or logics are called the trivium which is the path that leads to wisdom. The remaining four were arithmetica, geometria, astronomia and musica, usually referred to as the quadrivium, the fourfold way. Until around 1200 AD these sciences were the foundation of any study at a university.

The library classification systems (i.e. UDC) and educational systems today still have many similarities and comparisons to these 'original' arts. Although our educational focus has shifted to more pragmatic, and specialized forms related to service professions taught in classical form, there are still craftsmen who learn their trade by tradition from a master.

In general I distinguish three kinds of learning-contexts:

Collective, classical group-presentation, from within an educational system

Individual, (mostly one to one) adaptive learning of crafts or skills, from professional or educational background.

Individual, autodidact learning from personal reading, practice and/or experience, inspired by personal motives.

In the ideal form, al learning is initiated by individual demand and personal motives (in contrast to our conventional linear educational system). Maybe not everyone could handle the needed responsibility and self-activation in today's high-tech information-society. We need to be tremendously curious, perceptive, and on top of that aware of manipulation-techniques of (mass-)media and be able to select and abstract from enormous amounts of (un)wanted audio-visual input. We can distinguish three kinds of literacy:

Language-literacy (spoken and written);

Media-literacy (what kinds of manipulation techniques are used)

Computer-literacy (the ability to work with and use computers)

The most basic didactical distinction in general learning is Benjamin Bloom's three domains:

	Cognitive learning (thoughts), such as teaching someone to add fractions.
	Affective learning (feelings, values), such as teaching someone to not want to smoke.
	Physical or motor learning (actions), such as teaching someone to touch type.

As an underlying principle I would like to add Intentional Learning, or intrinsic manifested curiosity, the really wanting to know, and asking for more as a (auto)didactical principle. By dedicated use of this principle, we create a positive empowered knowledge system in the mind and body. Cognitive learning is the primary focus as everything has to start with a thought.

The major levels of cognitive learning can be classified as memorizing, understanding, and applying. Most content can be learned at any of these three levels of learning.
Memorization; This is rote learning. It entails learners encoding facts or information in the form of an association between a stimulus and a response, such as a name, date, event, place or symbol. The behavior that indicates that this kind of learning has occurred is stating (or "regurgitating"), usually verbatim.
Understanding; This is meaningful learning. It entails learners relating a new idea to relevant prior knowledge. The behaviors that indicate that this kind of learning has occurred include comparing and contrasting, making analogies, making inferences, elaborating, and analyzing (as to parts and/or kinds), among others.
Application; This is learning to generalize to new situations, or transfer learning. It entails learners identifying critical commonalities across situations, such as predicting the effects of price increases. The behavior that indicates that this kind of learning has occurred is successfully applying a generality (the critical commonalities) to a diversity of previously unencountered situations.

It is useful to identify three types of content that can be learned on the application level:

	Concepts
	Procedures
	Principles

A concept is a group or class of particulars which have something in common. A procedure is an ordered sequence of steps for accomplishing some goal. A principle is a relationship between two or more changes. It can be a causal, correlational, or natural-order relationship. A good rule for identifying these kinds of content:

	Concepts are concerned with grouping things into categories. What?
	Procedures are concerned with how to do something. How?
	Principles are concerned with predictions and explanations. Why?

It is also helpful to keep in mind that these three types of content can be learned at any of the three levels of learning.

(Source: Methods of instruction by Charles M. Reigeluth)

Education and learning has been one of my primary themes in the past years. With the growing use of Information & Communication Technology (ICT) and new media in education numerous possibilities arise: once the learning-module is produced and digitalized the distribution-costs and multiplication-cost could be theoretically brought down to zero by the use of Internet. Although this is a slightly different subject, thinking about these place- and time-independent opportunities with Internet, and not only related to education!, might just be one of the things to clear away some of our past burdens of the industrial society.

Knowing how we can learn, and using a supportive system of thought strengthening in our environment will bring us closer to fulfilling our dreams. Aspects of manifesting your personal dream is cooping with obstacles and solving 'problems' between the current situation and the (visualized) wanted situation.
It is my intention to provide methods (including reflections and techniques) for these necessary steps to take. The first step of this ambitious plan is my personal research. By publishing and sharing this research and findings in raw form on the Internet I start the process of presenting these ideas in a more tangible form. I hope you (reader) enjoy this and I'm looking forward to see your feedback.

Some Quotes:

There do exist enquiring minds, which long for the truth of the heart, seek it, strive to solve the problems set by life, try to penetrate to the essence of things and phenomena and to penetrate into themselves. If a man reasons and thinks soundly, no matter which path he follows in solving these problems, he must inevitably arrive back at himself, and begin with the solution of the problem of what he is himself and what his place is in the world around him. For without this knowledge, he will have no focal point in his search. Socrates’ words, “Know thyself” remain for all those who seek true knowledge and being. [Gurdjieff]

"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."
- George Bernard Shaw

"The marble not yet carved can hold the form of every thought the greatest artist has."
- Michelangelo

"A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one."
- Mary Kay Ash

"If you can dream it, you can do it."
- Walt Disney

"The place to improve the world is first in one's own heart and head and hands."
- Robert M. Pirsig

[Toine Fennis, MetaMagazine.com 2001]

Googol and Googolplex

2008-08-12T21:59:00.000+02:00

My kids (from 3 and 5 years old) use the large number word Googolplex frequently in their conversations. I mistakenly explained a Googolplex as a 1 with 100 zero's (which I now know is only a Googol). To set the record and their education straight I thought it would be nice to actually look-up the origin and explanation of this intriguing word which baffles anyone trying to name a large number (just try to name a larger number from the top of your mind...). [Toine]

Googol and Googolplex

Some time before 1940, mathematician Edward Kasner asked his (at the time) nine-year-old nephew to name the number 10¹⁰⁰, and the nephew invented the name googol. Kasner then named 10^googol with the name googolplex.

googol is a class-2 number, and is reasonably easy to comprehend. You can even write it out:

10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

The number of particles (protons, electrons, photons, etc.) in the universe has been estimated as 10⁸⁰, so while a googol is an awful lot bigger, it's still roughly the same idea.

Googolplex on the other hand, is 10^googol, or:

10^{10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000}

and that's a number far too big to relate to anything physical — or is it?

This description comes from Don Page, and is highly paraphrased:

In quantum physics one talks about distinct and indistinct states, overlapping wave functions and many other things, and one of the important principles that comes out of it the concept of how much time it takes for a system with many possible states to spontaneously assume a certain, given state. For simplicity it is imagined that the system is inside an impermeable, rigid box (which thus prevents anything from going in or out and thus isolates the system). If you're outside the box you have no idea what's inside, and any state can spontaneously occur (even a higher-energy state). For example, if the system is a proton and a neutron, the possible states include: A hydrogen atom, a hydrogen atom with the electron in a higher "shell", a separate proton and electron, a neutron, or many other things. The amount of time you might have to wait for one of these states to occur depends on the number of possible states, which depends on the number of particles inside.

Cosmologists and physicists often use these concepts to discuss what might happen inside black holes. The inside of a black hole is isolated from us (nothing can get out) and so one can talk about all the possible states that might exist inside the black hole and how long it might take for a certain state to arise. In theory, if left inside a rigid nonpermeable box for long enough (so that nothing new can go into the black hole) the contents of the box will at some point in the future cease to be a black hole and instead be real matter.

The formula for the number of possible states is a really big exponential function with Planck constants in it and other such things. I don't have the exact formula but we do know that if the black hole had a mass equal to the Milky Way Galaxy, plus the Andromeda galaxy, and Magellanic clouds, and a few other similar globular clusters in our region, then the number of states, and the amount of time you'd have to wait, is somewhere around a googolplex. Its such a big number that there's no way to distinguish what units should be used. It could be a googolplex seconds or a googolplex millenia. Whatever the units, thats the amount of time you'd have to wait for the contents of an impermeable, rigid box containing a black hole with the mass of the local galactic neighborhood to spontaneously become identical to the local galactic neighborhood as we know it.

The original (and much better) description is below.

Reference:

Edward Kasner and James Newman, Mathematics and the Imagination, Penguin, 1940.
[Source: http://www.mrob.com/pub/math/ln-notes1.html#googol ]

How to Get A Googolplex
So I finally convinced you that you cannot imagine something close to Googolplex? This was my belief, too, until I was taught a lesson by Don Page, don@page.phys.ualberta.ca, a gravitational physicist. But beware, it's deep into physics.

Stephen Hawking, Nature 248 (1974), pp. 30-31, and Communications of Mathematical Physics 43 (1975), p. 199ff, found that the dimensionless entropy (i.e., the entropy after dividing by Boltzmann's constant k) of a black hole is 1/4 its area in Planck units, or 4*pi times its mass squared in Planck units for a Schwarzschild (i.e., uncharged and nonrotating) black hole.

Planck units are those one gets when one multiplies the appropriate powers of Planck's reduced constant h-bar=h/(2*pi), the speed of light c, and Newton's gravitational constant G to get a quantity of whatever dimension one wants.

E.g., the Planck unit of area, or simply the Planck area, is (h-bar*G)/(c^3)=2.612x10^{-70} square meters, the Planck length is the square root of this, or 1.616x10^{-35} meters, the Planck time is the Planck length divided by the speed of light, or Sqrt[h-bar*G/c^5]=5.391x10^{-44} seconds, and the Planck mass is Sqrt[h-bar*c/G]=2.177x10^{-8} kilograms.) Thus one would need a Schwarzschild black hole of mass Sqrt[10^{100}/(4*pi)]=2.821x10^{49} Planck masses, or 6.140x10^{41} kg, to have an entropy of one Googol. Since the sun has a mass of about 1.989x10^{30} kg or 9.137x10^{37} Planck masses, one needs about 3.087x10^{11} solar masses to give a black hole with an entropy of one Googol.

If the entropy of a black hole represents the (natural) logarithm of the number of states of similar macroscopic configurations (as it does for other thermal systems, and as I shall assume is also true for black holes, though there is some controversy about this), then a black hole with an entropy of one Googol would have e^{googol}=10^{googol/(ln10)} states. To get a Googolplex of states, the entropy needs to be larger than a Googol by a factor of ln10, and so the mass of the black hole needs to be larger by the square root of ln10, or about 4.685x10^{11} solar masses to give a Googolplex of macroscopically similar states. This is a bit more than three times the 1.4x10^{11} solar masses that C. W. Allen, Astrophysical Quantities, Third Edition (The Athlone Press, University of London, 1976), p. 282, attributes to our Galaxy, but Allen, p. 287, attributes 10^{11.5} solar masses to the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), so if one adds that, and perhaps one or more smaller galaxies in our Local Group, such the Large Magellanic Cloud, the Small Magellanic Cloud, M32, etc. (each of which are a few percent of the mass of our Galaxy), one should get to a mass such that the corresponding black hole would have a Googolplex of states with similar macroscopic configurations. Certainly adding the Maffei Galaxy, with a mass of 10^{11.3} solar masses according to Allen, would put one over what is needed for this, unless Allen's numbers are significantly overestimated. (I would guess that dark matter would make the actual masses rather larger than the estimates Allen quotes, but I don't know the latest figures on the masses of components of our Local Group.)

Thus if one takes some (probably moderately large) fraction of the mass of our Local Group of galaxies, puts it into a black hole, and asks how many states there are with a similar macroscopic appearance, one would get a Googolplex.

Obviously, Mr. Page is into big numbers, too. "The number of states in a black hole with a mass roughly equivalent to the Andromeda Galaxy". And you've got a Googolplex. Couldn't be simpler, could it?

However, after a user's complaint that it is a little too technical even for an advanced physics student,

Huh? I took physics for two years, and calculus for two years, but your
explanation that there is indeed enough matter in the
universe to comprise a Googolplex floored me.

Mr. Page decided to add another paragraph.

This result, plus the assumption that a black hole is a nearly ideal mixer of macroscopic information, would imply that if one put this black hole into a hypothetical rigid nonpermeable box, a few million light years in size, and looked at the contents once a year, it would look like our present Local Group for the first time again after roughly a Googolplex of years. In other words, a Googolplex is a quantitative measure of an extension (to a much larger system) of the temporal periods expressed by such colloquial phrases as "until the cows come home," which would give recurrence times that would presumably be long in human terms but much shorter than a Googolplex if these smaller systems (e.g., of cows and their home) would actually last long enough.

You might be amused to note that in Information Loss in Black Holes and/or Conscious Beings? to be published in Heat Kernel Techniques and Quantum Gravity, edited by S. A. Fulling (Discourses in Mathematics and Its Applications, No. 4, Texas A&M University Department of Mathematics, College Station, Texas, 1995) (University of Alberta report Alberta-Thy-36-94, Nov. 25, 1994), hep-th/9411193, I estimated a quantum Poincare recurrence time for the quantum state of an extremely hypothetical rigid nonpermeable box containing a black hole with the mass of what may be the entire universe in one of Andrei Linde's stachastic inflationary models and got 10^(10^{10^[10^(10^1.1)]}) Planck times, millenia, or whatever. As I wrote in the following line, "So far as I know, these are the longest finite times that have so far been explicitly calculated by any physicist."

Don Page
[Source: http://www.fpx.de/fp/Fun/Googolplex/GetAGoogol.html]

Dont mistake Googolplex with Googleplex which is searchengine Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, (USA). I assume they liked the alliteration and reference to this large number when naming the complex. [Toine Fennis]

MetaMagazine articles (collect & share)

2008-08-12T13:44:00.001+02:00

This MetaMagazine Blog is my effort of collecting and sharing articles and resources I find useful or interesting. These articles are used as background for MetaBook.
My personal (related) websites:

MetaMagazine.com (Personal Research Magazine)
MetaMagazine.nl (Dutch MetaMagazine & META Method)
MetaBook.nl / MetaBoek.nl (Publishing)
MetaBooks.info (Ebooks, Software and webmaster resources)
MetaHelpdesk.com (Articles categorized under subjects)

These are just some of the websites I am using. [Toine Fennis]

MetaMagazine articles [Blog]

Open Source Civilization

Update january 2011

Omnigadgets iPhone 4 - iPhone 5 - iPad 2

Trend Fusion Artist Lady Gaga

Life is a Game; and the rules are changing

Development of an iPhone-aplication: XS Explorer

Identify Roadblocks - Don't Give Up on Change

Question for Ask the Coach:Change is hard. It takes forever and I don't even know if it's working. Any tips for making this process easier?

47 Ways to Fine Tune Your Brain

47 Ways to Fine Tune Your Brain (by Steven Aitchison)

Online sources for Geeks & Infoworkers

Holidays – My Danmark vacation with minimal Internet

Technology on the move - a personal history

Alternative Money Systems

Online presence and awareness

Online Collaboration

Word Processing Services

Web Portals

Calendar Services

Contact Management Services

Communication Services

Charting & Diagram Services

Mapping Services

File Storage Services

Sales Triggers

Secrets of Sales

Exchange Economics

Solving Financial Problems & Money Affirmations

Management Roles

Skills Required

What to do

What not to do

Management Roles

Mintzberg's 10 Managerial Roles

Visualization Tools

Accelerated Learning Techniques

EFT as complementary Health Powertool

Libraries and our information society

Improve Social Intelligence and Relations

Individual

Resolving Conflicts

General Social Problems

Information problem-solving

MetaMagazine Reading Instruction

Meaning of Life - Existential Questions

Life is not making a living, but designing your life

Appreciative Inquiry (AI)

Mastering Emotional Problems

Getting Organized; what to do about unwanted chaos

Problem Solving & Brainstorming

The Four Temperament Learning Styles

Education & Learning

Introduction to knowledge

Googol and Googolplex

MetaMagazine articles (collect & share)

Question for Ask the Coach:
Change is hard. It takes forever and I don't even know if it's working. Any tips for making this process easier?