Reflections along the way.
Or at least the door is cracked! A couple years ago I wrote a post about online software and pointed to Boing Boing’s piece on Open Office running ads on the buses back and forth to the evil empire.
NY Times reports that the the intense ad war may just have worked! Microsoft is releasing an open document format in the updated Office 2007.
In another experiment with online interactivity, Jeep and Marvel comics are creating a user generated comic book. While its not really open source, it still offers a sense of community participation by inviting users to submit story panels that may be translated into a developing comic book. Joe B informs me this is a variation of an idea by comics theorist Scott McCloud.
Strawberry Frog offers some interesting ideas on the notion of the Global Soul. How we’re influencing one another:
From Mono- to Multi- to Transculturalism. First, it takes the form of exposure to another culture. Then, a ‘tossed salad.’ From there, multiculturalism evolves. From a Canadian’s perspective who has lived during the melting pot era of politics in that country, the melting pot simply assumes too much. A mosaic is a better metaphor, but only a snapshot in time, which ultimately led to the Benetton cliché—assimilated transculture. An ‘active mosaic’ best explains the phenomenon. Existing culture meets emerging culture, they exchange and mutate characteristics – creating an ever-evolving mosaic of global, organic living culture. Some examples of this are Remixes and hybrids: design, arts, media, social. Musical genre-blending. Film allusion and homage. TV remakes and exports. Food and drink fusions.
Great thoughts. Take time to read the whole thing. While I think it is the West primarily mashing into smaller weaker cultures, there is a coming shift and mosaic will probably take on more shades of Indian, African, Latin and Asian cultures in the years to come. He seems to be envisioning a mashup across space, but there is also a mashup across time taking place, and a new world is being formed in our midst (but that’s another post for another day).
No I don’t mean a strong sining voice. Everyone (okay not everyone but a handful of geeks) keeps talking about Yahoo Pipes. I thinking about the possible E-Commerce possiblities.
if you’re like me, you’d rather leech onto someone else’s brainpower, than try to do too much figuring out yourself. Some when it comes to technology that allows me to create quite painlessly (from a mental sense), I’m on board! Like ning, openkracow is a open source site that shares code and make creating applications fairly simply. This site is focused on craiting masup. Pretty cool.
Built on a from Mozilla cross-platform, Songbird offers a great media alternative for pc, mac and linux alike. I’m testing the .2 preview today, and take a test drive yourself.
(via Make)
Update: I’m lovin’ it!!! It’s a music player and a browser: not to mention a media search center, social networking portal and a floor wax!
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