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Not very impressive, if these are the trends occupying the Facebook public mind. BTW (by the way) FML stands for (Fuck My Life). What can that be about? It’s #2 and I’ve never heard of it! It does not sound very positive. Is it the equivalent of whining? It’s a genuine question.Amplify’d from www.independent.co.ukTop Status Trends of 2009:1. Facebook ApplicationsSpecific words: Farmville, Farm Town, Social Living2. FMLSpecific word: FML3. Swine FluSpecific words: Flu, Swine Flu, H1N14. Celebrity DeathsSpecific words: Michael Jackson, Patrick Swayze, Billy Mays5. FamilySpecific words: Family, Mom, Dad, Son, Daughter, Kids6. MoviesSpecific words: New Moon, Transformers, Star Trek, The Hangover, Paranormal Activity and Harry Potter7. SportsSpecific words: Steelers, Yankees8. Health CareSpecific words: Health Care, No one should have to…9. FBSpecific words: FB, FB Friends, News Feed10. TwitterSpecific words: Twitter, RT11. YearsSpecific words: 2008, 2009, 201012. Lady GagaSpecific words: Gaga, Poker Face13. YardSpecific word: Yard14. ReligionSpecific words: Easter, Lord, God15. ISpecific words: I, isFacebook Memology ranks the most commonly used phrases or words in people’s status updates in 2009 and compares them to the trends seen in 2008.Read more at www.independent.co.uk

Social media could transform the NHS and other public services in the same way that file-sharing changed the music industry, a conference has heard.Growing use of tools, such as Facebook and Twitter, offered an opportunity to reinvent services, delegates heard. “It’s happened to the music and travel industries and it’s going to happen to public services,” said Dr Paul Hodgkin, founder of the Patient Opinion site that organised the MyPublicServices conference. He said that conversations about people’s experiences with public services were going on all over the web and needed to be taken into account.“This is about turning things upside down so the thing that looks like a deficit, your experience, becomes the gift you have to give to other people.” “I’m not sure that the government can re-engineer itself from the inside out,” he said. “It’s going to take the demands of people to force it into shape.” Read more at news.bbc.co.uk

To bypass the media this is what you need to do to apply the “10 New Rules of PR”  1. Think like they do:

Publish your press releases through a distribution service:

ection of the Larger Press Release Distribution Services BusinessWire www.businesswire.com PRWeb www.prweb.com PRNewswire www.prnewswire.com Market Wire  www.marketwire.com

Opportunities emerge from the deep semantic web

Economics is the science of incentives. While the promise of searching a huge store of databases may not sound like Saturday social night at the local drive in burger joint, it does by extension, introduce new incentives.  The new technology will drive people to build databases.  A new generation of entrepreneurs will collect, organize, analyze and create – not information – but data.Database of databases of databasesThe first things entrepreneurs will organize are human knowledge data – starting with their own, then relating it to others. Not unlike the human genome project, the vast human knowledge reservoir will be mapped. Entrepreneurs will enter their communities (on line, neighborhood, work, school, church, social networks) and create a database for what other people know and parse the data in any number of important and useful databases.The reason for this is simple; data are collections of human observations.This is the only thing people are willing to pay forRead more at www.conversationalcurrency.com

Use your meetings for decision making and exchange of ideas rather than routine updates. Instead, email or post the updates ahead of time so people can read through them prior to the meetingMeetings should be no longer than 90 minutes.  If meetings are longer than 90 minutes offer your team members a 10 minute breakBe realistic about how many agenda items can be covered in a meetingAt the end of each meeting discuss what worked, what did not work, what could be improvedIf possible, rotate roles-scribe, timekeeper and facilitatorHave multiple presenters. The change of voice and pitch can help keep people engagedAgree to start and end on timeRead more at virtualteambuilders.wordpress.com

IBM is opening a cloud computing laboratory in Singapore to help businesses, government and research institutions and institutes of higher learning to design, adopt and reap benefits of cloud technologies. The new lab housed at Changi business park is part of it’s expansion of its cloud computing capabilities, and puts Singapore and the ASEAN region on the map as the eleventh cloud computing lab. This new addition will be part of the network of labs in Hong Kong, Ireland, Vietnam, China, South Africa, Japan, Brazil, India, Korea and the US.Through briefings, technology deployment and development sessions, the Singapore lab will work closely with businesses, government and research institutions and institutes of higher learning to design and deploy their own cloud environments.Read more at www.info

9.6 Trillion dollars was spent to educate every American. Just because a “corporation” does not exist to employ them and utilize their talents to the highest productivity level, does not mean that the talent and value does not exist. According to the 1:1000 rule, The GDP of the US in Social Currency is a minimum of 9,600 Trillion. What deficit?The dollar has a 1:1000 control leverage over social currency. It is not at all surprising to see social media expand at the rate proportional to that which the doom-gloom crowd predicts that the financial system will collapse. They are related, they hedge each other. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwisethe dollar will no longer control the value; that is, the social value wedged between people’s ears is free to be capitalized and securitized directly. We need to capture social currency in a new financial paradigm.Read more at www.ingenesist.com

So I think that one of the biggest problems that Google has, taking Google as probably the best example of someone trying to build a reputation currency, is that as soon as Google gives you any insight into how they are building their reputation system it ceases to be very good as a reputation system. As soon as Google stops measuring something you created by accident and starts measuring something you created on purpose, it stops being something that they want to measure. And this is joined by the twin problem that what Google fundamentally has is a security problem; they have hackers who are trying to undermine the integrity of the system. And the natural response to a problem that arises when attackers know how your system works is to try to keep the details of your system secret—but keeping the details of Google’s system secret is also not very good because it means that we don’t have any reason to trust it. All we know when we search Google is that we get a result that seems like a good result; but we don’t know that there isn’t a much better result that Google has either deliberately or accidentally excluded from its listings for reasons that are attributable to either malice or incompetence. So they’re really trapped between a rock and a hard place: if they publish how their system works, people will game their system; if they don’t publish how their system works it becomes less useful and trustworthy and good. It suffers from the problem of alchemy; if alchemists don’t tell people what they learned, then every alchemist needs to discover for themselves that drinking mercury is a bad idea, and alchemy stagnates. When you start to publishing, you get science—but Google can’t publish or they’ll also get more attacks.Read more at craphound.com

Currency: A formal system for shaping, enabling, and measuring currents (or flows)Currencies involve a number of functions, each of which can be modified independently: unit of measure, store of value, token of status, medium of exchange, etc. Monetary Currency or Money is just a common way of bundling those functions as a medium of exchange for a commercial economy. It is a minuscule part of the full spectrum of possible currencies. In this expanded sense, currencies are tools for seeing and changing flows.One specific way we use them is to create collective intelligence at the level of our social entities and institutions. At the individual level, we see humans born, growing, learning, walking around and dying. However, the state “sees” humans created through birth certificates, their activities and accounts woven together by social security numbers, their communication patterns via cell phone bills, and their discorporation via death certificates.Read more at newcurrencyfrontiers.com 

Now that Twitter is making it easy to embed tweets in any website using a standard pullquote format, those 140-character comments may become more weighty. URL:  www.technewsworld.com

Described as a location-based, real-time commerce platform that “makes the buying and selling of g

How Zaarly Works • According to the company, consumers can post what they're looking for on Zaarly, describe how much they're willing to pay for it, and announce how soon they need it. • Zaarly will immediately share that request in the local community through the Zaarly platform. Users may also use Facebook, Twitter and other social media channels to find what they're looking for. • Nearby people or businesses will see what you want and connect to Zaarly to fulfill your request. • Zaarly allows buyers and sellers to “anonymously message and talk on the phone to facilitate the logistics of a transaction, enabling an in-person or virtual meeting to complete the transaction,” the company says.

• To pay for the transaction, Zaarly features an integrated credit card payment system, “all within a safe and secure platform.” Users can also pay with cash

While tablet computing may in future transform the whole computer industry, it is already changing the way we look at augmented reality. And this is not only because of the big display. More and more different devices for multiple OS platforms are expected to appear on the market, equipped with advanced sensors such as high-resolution cameras. The cost of data roaming is likely to drop and considering the millions of people expected to buy such a device in the next few years, there are incentives enough for optimizing augmented reality (AR) tablet software and to start creating really useful and fascinating applications taking full advantage of the promising, new capabilities. metaio, with its junaio 2.6 release, a junaio plug-in for third party app integration, and the revised mobile AR SDK Unifeye 2.5, is well prepared and ready to go for the next generation of AR applications. If you want to learn more about mobile AR in general and on tablets, everything is summed up here: http://www.metaio.com/specials/augmented-reality-on-tablets/ And here you can find a movie with almost everything we´re working on: 3D tracking, markerless 2D tracking and image processing, virtual manuals, interactive TV, smart packaging, advertising as a service, context sensitive product visualization, AR gaming and so on. By the way: to my knowledge it´s the first AR demos running on the Android 3.0 based Xoom!

Metaio thinks that tablets will become increasingly important devices for AR, describing them as "the perfect enabler for augmented reality" as it published a video showcasing its Junaio AR technology running on slate devices.

Metaio's bullishness is about more than just the iPad: the company thinks the new wave of tablets running Google's Android 3.0 operating system – starting with the Motorola Xoom – will create new opportunities for innovative AR applications.

It also cites dual-core processors as a key factor enabling tablets to be used for AR applications including instructional guides; product information; e-commerce; entertainment and gaming

Azavea announced the publication of a free white paper that summarizes their research on the use of mobile augmented reality techniques for enhancing digital access to historical and cultural resources

the Philadelphia Department of Records was awarded an NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant to develop innovative techniques for leveraging the sensors in contemporary smart phones to expand public access to historical data in novel ways. 

The new Augmented Reality by PhillyHistory.org application provides point-and-view access to 500 historic photographs of selected sites around Philadelphia.  Users are able to automatically access and view the historic photographs by simply pointing the camera of a smart phone at the contemporary site and selecting an available image.  The historic photos then appear as an overlay on the current urban landscape, enabling viewers to compare the past to the present.

University scientists are seeking to take virtual reality to a new level – with a view to helping sick people who cannot get access to the outside world. The researchers in Birmingham plan their new worlds to be “sensorily rich”.They are using large screen TVs, video projectors and head mounted displays to create virtual versions of soothing rural and coastal scenes. The initial development is re-creating a stretch of the coastline of south Devon and an area within Dartmoor National Park.The developers say there is research evidence that exposure to greenery, such as trees, can improve patient recovery and reduce pain levels. Tests on volunteers are due to start later this summer. Birmingham University has become involved because its local hospital provides specialist defence medical facilities and has a large number of trauma victims.Developer Professor Bob Stone, a multimedia specialist, said: “This technology could be made available to anyone who, for whatever reason, is in hospital, bed-bound or cannot get outside.  They will be able to get the benefits of the countryside and seaside by viewing the virtual scenario on screen. Patients will be free to choose areas that they want to spend time in; they can take a walk along coastal footpaths, sit on a beach, listen to the waves and birdsong, watch the sun go down and – in due course – even experience the smells of the land-and seascapes almost as if they were experiencing the outdoors for real.”

Developed for McGraw Hill Higher Education Education UK, PRACTICE Marketing is a 3D turn-based Serious Game intended to teach college kids the principles of product marketing and competition. In the game, players are able to fully experience the seven underlying principles upon which to base marketing strategy and efforts: Image, Differentiation, Repeat Business, Ease of Doing Business, Networking, Likeability, and Emotion. Gameplay You’ve been selected to manage a company’s new entry into the backpack market. Your first step in the game is to create a strong product that appeals to a specific market segment and price it appropriately.

You are upfront presented with the info you need to analyze the market, provided by market research, who has narrowed the backpack market down to five potential segments for you to consider targeting, selecting the one that looks the most promising.

Once you have selected a target market, you can use the backpack builder to design a pack that meets the needs of its particular demographic.

Literacy has evolved beyond the definition of the ability to read and write. Literacy now includes the ability to seamlessly interpret on-screen information, such as the graphics in a videogame, and the ability to rapidly decode symbols. To be effective, gamers must be able to quickly decipher each game’s symbols and conventions, which is essentially what good readers have to do in terms of deciphering the alphabetic code.

Serious Games are not replacing literacy activities, they ARE literacy activities.

Literacy specialists are just beginning to investigate how reading on the Internet affects reading skills. Students are developing new reading skills that are neither taught nor evaluated in school.

Researchers Sean Gustafson, Christian Holz and Patrick Baudisch of the Hasso-Plattner Institute have created a working prototype of a touch interface

A wearable depth camera tracks the user's movements on the surface of the palm of his or hand, corresponding to specific commands for an iPhone or other touchscreen phone, such as sliding to unlock and time settings.

Imaginary Phone allows users to control their mobile devices without taking it out of their pocket. Instead, users mimic the interaction on the palm of their hand. The interaction is tracked by a wearable depth camera which sends input events to the actual physical device. By mimicking the layout of the physical device, here an iPhone, users can operate the device based on spatial memory built up while using the physical device.

IDC’s Q1 scorecard for smartphones in western Europe is out. Nokia’s sales are sliding 10% year-on-year in a market for all phones growing at 5%, while the smartphone sector grew 76% (how long before we stop using the word smartphone, you might well ask). Nokia’s smartphone market share has gone from 57% to 19.6% in two years. Europe’s biggest handset maker is now Samsung and the fastest growing is HTC. The biggest platform is Android, with 35.7%, followed by Apple iOS on 20%, and then Symbian and BlackBerry OS.

4 out of those 5 companies are heavily committed to Android, and two are also committed to Windows Phone,

In the Android sphere, Sony Ericsson has announced the latest lot of Xperia phones. They’re keeping the Xperia Mini brand from the hit X10, and the Mini Pro gets a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Both run Android 2.3/Gingerbread and get a new Facebook app.