Experience shows that the first wave of Internet-enabled change was tainted by irrational exuberance. A sober analysis of today's trends reveals that this new participation is both a blessing and a curse. Mass collaboration can empower a growing cohort of connected individuals and organizations to create extraordinary wealth and reach unprecedented heights in learning and scientific discovery... (but) the new participation will also cause great upheaval, dislocation, and danger for societies, corporations, and individuals that fail to keep up with the relentless change.
- Don Tapscott & Anthony Williams, Wikinomics, page 15.
Let me preface this post with a warning - rockets are dangerous. Please be extra careful if you even think about experimenting with them. Now onto the fun stuff…
With the exception of solid fuel model rockets, actual rocket engines have been out of the reach (and budget) of most DIY’s. However, there’s an older rocket technology called a pulse jet engine which is making a comeback amongst do it yourselvers. It was first invented by Germany and used in their notorious V-1 rockets (buzz bombs) in WWII. They can be built with no moving parts (also a bit of info on how they work). One of the simplest possible pulse jet engines can be made out of a simple jam jar. Make magazine (if you don’t already have a subcription I highly recommend it) has a great article on how to make one of these out of easy-to-find parts. Here’s a video of the jam jar project:
Others are creating rockets which use a combination of tar and oxygen for fuel. These rockets tend to be quite powerful and this video of gives an example of exactly what not to do with regards to safety equipment (or actually the lack of it):
For those who’d rather avoid the danger of fire and explosions. I suggest trying a water bottle rocket instead - basically, a 2L pop bottle pumped up to 70psi+ that can go about 80-100ft in the air. Here a video of the bottle rocket in action
Yesterday, The Globe and Mail had a piece about a new company that’s trying to change the way we search online:
SAN FRANCISCO — Powerset on Sunday unveiled tools for searching Wikipedia that use conversational phrasing instead of keywords, marking the first step of its challenge to established Web search services such as Google.
Powerset’s technology breaks down the meaning of words and sentences into related concepts, freeing users from always needing to type the exact words they want to find. Read More »
Click on the Dilbert tag below to see past mash ups on this site… or go to Dilbert.com to see the original and all the other mash ups that have been done.
In the GTA game players navigate around a ‘fictional’ city (based on NY in the latest edition) and complete a variety of tasks. In the past the one of the challenges of GTA, outside of the traditional story line, has been discovering all of the little tricks and secret missions in the game. For GTA IV however the latter has become infinitely easier. The reason being there has been an an explosion of activity on the GTA IV “google powered wiki mashup” or Grand Theft Auto Hood. IGN has created a site that allows gamers to do a number of things which include navigate Liberty City using google maps, tag points of interest, missions, vehicles, secrets etc…, collaboratively develop a gaming guide in a wiki and interact with other gamers in the forums. Top contributers are identified by the number of edits the make to the site and the number of things they ‘discover’ in the game.
The discoveries range in value and can be anything from critical information you need to complete a mission to my personal favourite, where to find the “Little cart that pulls the luggage carts”. It’s a model that could easily be leveraged by other games in the future and is great way to create both excitement and a sense of community around a video game. Had the game developer come up with the idea (instead of IGN) they probably could have got some great customer feedback and ideas for improvements and future games.
“We think our brand is going to be different because we want people to feel there’s a real person they’re connecting with, whether it’s when they call us or through Twitter or any way they come in contact with us” - Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos, and probably the only CEO who gave away shoes via Twitter this week.
“All we do is try to respond to what users are asking for. That’s how we set our priorities. Users aren’t asking us to run ads, so it doesn’t come onto our radar.” - Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist
“By choosing to invest in consumers over advertising, Google is a living example of a deeper truth: The future of communications as advantage lies in talking less and listening more.” - Umair Haque, Havas Media Lab Director. Check out the bubblegeneration blog.
As part of my research on next generation customer experiences, I was re-reading a great book by Pine and Gilmore called The Experience Economy. It was chapter seven that particularly piqued my interest, notably the section on the four forms of theatre - platform, matching, street and improv as they laid out in figure 7.1 (I have quickly re-created it in the link below).
The basic idea I am building towards is that wikinomics and collaborative experiences is about moving more and more of the business away from platform theatre and into improv - with street and matching theatre being steps along the way. But before getting there, some background on each is required.
The event was organized by Lev Gonick, Case Western’s CIO and a trailblazer in educational innovation. Check out Lev’s blog for an amazing compendium of breakthrough projects. Among other things, Lev and his team are introducing the use of QR codes across the campus — to the best of my knowledge they are the first North American college or university to do so. According to Lev, “The codes are found everywhere from transit stops, where students can scan them to see when the next bus would arrive, to applications on Facebook and MySpace, to the student newspaper where QVC recently began rolling out its own marketing campaign with Mobile Discovery.”
The symposium featured many other impressive guests and speakers, but I’ll quickly point out two. Casey Green moderated an impressive closing panel and presented what appears to be the most comprehensive database on the use of technology in higher education. The Campus Computing Project has data going back to 1994.
While I cannot yet comment in-depth on the quality of Bauerlein’s research or the content of his book, I want to highlight the book’s launch this Thursday (I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy), and I also want to give our Wikinomics readers the opportunity to weigh-in with their opinions on Bauerlein’s thesis here. Bauerlein will also be addressing your questions here, this Wednesday at noon. Read More »
Next week, I’m delighted to moderate a panel that includes some of my favourite bloggers…and Denis. Also featured on the panel are Mathew Ingram, Anastasia Goodstein, Leigh Himel, and Sean Moffitt. I’ve added all the links to the blogroll on the bottom right of this page.
Here are some interesting recent posts from each. Mathew teaches us an important lesson about “accepting changes” before sending your business plan to a VC. You know, to avoid the people you want money from to read stuff like:
“Segal used to work for Microsoft so skip the name dropping, save it for the afternoon meeting, they are clueless about Redmond.”
“When you talk through this point on your slides, make Chanukah jokes, he is Jewish and will get them”
“I’d delete this section since we don’t have these features on the roadmap and haven’t figured out how to code this unless you believe the investors won’t catch this.”
“VCs are typically stupid when it comes to this section so be prepared for a dumb question blizzard.”
Ok, personal banking information is about as private as it gets right? Wrong. Turns out, bloggers like this, this, this, this , this, this, this, and this are sharing their personal finances and net worth with anyone who cares to read about it. For example, the author of the The Money Blog posts a bar chart of their net worth on every page of their site ($257,939 as of May 9th, 2009 in case anyone was curious).
It’s one thing to share information about what music you’re listening to via a widget, but would people really use a widget to display financial information? Well, 23% of people are apparently interested in having a widget that could display the current balance from their bank account.
Jwaala is leading the charge when it comes to socializing financial information - here’s some great examples and screenshots. They have widgets that can do everything from sharing your most recent costco purchases to charting your most recent automobile expenditures. Here’s a few example widgets below (sample data drawn from their site):
A few of the places where wikinomics is popping up in the blogosphere:
Would you hire a social media strategist? Part 3. This is a really great report from Kevin Lim, a doctoral student at the University of Buffalo. Just take a trip around his site, it’s worth it.
Hagai mentioned the new Dilbert Mash up tool a couple of weeks ago, and I thought I’d take a shot at one along the lines of wikinomics+Dilbert. Here goes…
Notably, there’s a 92% chance your life will improve if you go to the Dilbert site and vote for it… the original is on the main page (May 8th).
(Note: I’m becoming addicted to this thing. Here’s a go at May 9th)
A while ago I wrote a blog post on Wal-Mart and its failed social networking endeavours. Many comments I’ve received regarding that post pointed out that Wal-Mart, in general, is not a very well liked brand. Therefore, regardless of what they do, they would never succeed in that type of open environment.
Although I understand that point and agree with it to a certain extent, I do not believe that it’s impossible for companies who don’t have the best reputation offline to do well in an online environment such as social networking. Through my research I’ve come across a surprising example of one company that has done incredibly well online; a company whose success is quite unexpected. Read More »
When looking at traditional economic models, there is perfect competition at one end of the spectrum and monopoly at the other. Many economists love the idea of perfect competition, and consider it to enable the efficient allocation of resources and the maximization of social welfare. The rub is that in the perfectly competitive model it is impossible for firms to earn abnormal profits in the long-run - everyone ends up with zero economic profit (or “normal” profit if you prefer). In turn, the strategic objective of many leaders is to get their organization as close to being a monopoly provider as possible without going to jail within the boundaries of a healthy, competitive marketplace (i.e. leverage differentation, economies of scale, barriers to entry, etc.).
This can make the concept of wikinomics a scary thing, as it is far more closely associated with abundance than scarcity, and by extension far more with perfect competition than monopoly. Rather than seeing an opportunity for expansion, many business leaders simply see an explosion of potential competition and margin erosion as new technology (among other things) erodes pillars that have traditionally held barriers to entry in place - so they fight it tooth and nail. But there is definitely an alternative perspective. To quote a good read recently posted on the long tail blog:
The Government of Canada recently released a study on “New Technologies (the Web 2.0) and government communications” that seeks to frame the opportunities and challenges of Web 2.0 deployment by government agencies. There’s nothing earth-shattering in these results but nonetheless it provides some support to agencies trying to implement these technologies for citizen engagement while highlighting some sobering stats about public awareness of the Web 2.0. In particular, only 30% of those polled were familiar with the term “Web 2.0.” Of those polled online, actual usage topped out at 30% for social networking, with blogs and wikis utilitized by just 14 and 8% respectively.
Those numbers nothwithstanding, here are some of the highlights that showcase where and why government agencies may want to add Web 2.0 apps to their communications agenda:
Avid blogger and frequent Wikinomics reader Venkat has developed an interesting visualization that shows how various pieces of “2.0” literature fit together to form a cohesive view of the world to come. It provides a fairly good “must read” list for enterprises, scholars, futurists, and anyone interested in new paradigms and next generation thinking. An explanation of the diagram can be found here.
Facebook and other social networks can and should be a valuable tool for our political leaders to engage with their constituents, allowing them access to timely information, and giving them the ability to ask questions and voice concerns from the comfort of their home. In particular, it could be a key factor in reversing the Net Generation’s cynicism towards government. Instead, the presence of politicians on Facebook is only contributing to this cynicism by reaffirming the conception of politicians as product pushers.
My name is Caleb. I am another new guy here at nGenera aka (New Paradigm). This post is about a bone that I, and many other students, have to pick with the current education system.
In college, everyone has those professors that can really get under your skin. It drives us crazy because, when they look at you, you can almost see their mind weighing the value of your comments and opinions upon the number of degrees you have. If you’re a freshman, you might as well be five years old. This attitude could be one reason why many frustrated people view school as being “just another hoop to jump through.”
This message is not a shot at professors…well, maybe some professors (the kind nobody likes, that get the frowny faces on ratemyprofessors.com), but more a shot at the way many universities see their students. Are students assets or liabilities to administrators? Read More »
The Dumbest Generation? Have your say. I must first acknowledge my personal bias on this topic...
As a member of the Net Generation research team at nGenera (and a member of said generation myself), I am a firm believer in the tremendous accomplishments and potential of the Net Generation (those born between 1977 and 1997). So, I must say that when I [...]
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