NPR: High-Tech Pen Makes Note-Taking Easier

I have just tested the LiveScribe SmartPen and might be in love.

This pen is a digital audio recorder and camera built into a large ballpoint pen. It timestamps every note I take using the special spiral-bound notebook with almost imperceptible dot-matrixed paper.

After I finish taking notes, i click the pen on the part of the image or text and the audio recorder plays back whatever was being recorded at that time.

Now, if they can just come out with a 4' x 8' whiteboard version with multiple colors and a portable Aeron chair with lumbar support, I'd be set!

clipped from www.npr.org Morning Edition, April 21, 2008 · A California company has invented a new pen. It features a camera mounted on the nib and a microphone that records audio, along with a docking cradle that allows uploads to a computer. But some note-takers still prefer quiet, old-fashioned pens and paper.

Older Brain Really May Be a Wiser Brain

In working with many diverse groups of people, coming together to solve complex problems, I am absolutely flummoxed by this paradox: young minds struggle with complex, inter-related problems, while "more mature" minds struggle to learn new concepts.

Rather than throw both brains out with the bathwater (what a badly mixed metaphor!) how best do we design collaborative projects and discussions that accommodate all brains, whether wily, worldly or wise?

clipped from www.nytimes.com Yarek Waszul When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong. Instead, the research finds, the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit. The studies are analyzed in a new edition of a neurology book, “Progress in Brain Research.” For example, in studies where subjects are asked to read passages that are interrupted with unexpected words or phrases, adults 60 and older work much more slowly than college students. Although the students plow through the texts at a consistent speed regardless of what the out-of-place words mean, older people slow down even more when the words are related to the topic at hand. That indicates that they are not just stumbling over the extra information, but are taking it in and processing it.

ManBabies.com

I have a new baby. And I am a man. But this site makes me concerned about taking any photographs with my genetic off-spring that might make it on the interweb. ManBabies.com show us a truer side of fathers, and the children we embarrass.

GET MORE AT ManBabies.com!

( Spotted on Kevin Kelly's del.icio.us page!? )

MUTO: An Ambiguous Animation Painted on Public Walls

Imagine creating a 7 minute short animated film using hand drawn black-and-white line drawings. At 12 frames per second, you would have to create 5040 individual drawings.

Now image creating the same number of sequential images but with spray paint on public buildings. That is what this trippy video created in Argentina presents. It is hypnotizing. (Thanks to Matt Andrews)

clipped from blublu.org

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Meeting on the Right Side of the Brain

We've been preaching it for years, but I guess it is now news:

Creative work environments improve creative thinking!

Congrats to Leslie Marquard and Catalyst Ranch on leading the piece. Thanks for bringing "right-brained thinking" to a "left-brained" world. (Actually, working in creative environments and using multiple learning modalities inspires whole-brain thinking.)

clipped from www.nytimes.com Steve Kagan for The New York Times By ELAINE GLUSAC | Published: April 30, 2008 WHEN Leslie Marquard, an executive coach, holds strategy sessions for consulting firms or university administrators, she ushers her buttoned-up clientele into rooms full of Pogo sticks, ethnic art, hammocks, vintage furniture and a pillow “harem.” “They are surprised and also endeared by it,” said Ms. Marquard, a co-founder of Marble Leadership Partners in Chicago. The “it” she referred to is Catalyst Ranch, an independent alternative meeting space in a former sausage factory near the Loop in Chicago. “They’ll say, ‘That table looks just like one I grew up with.’ It subconsciously releases the mind.”

Design and the Elastic Mind

Photovoltaic cells grown like ivy, electricity cultivated from your corpse, computer-aided oragami, a pheronome dating agency apparatus,... these are some of the beautiful and bizarre designer objects on display at MOMA.

In the words of the senior curator, Paola Antonelli: "Designers they know that their role is to enable revolution. They are constructive by definition."

clipped from www.coolhunting.com To document MoMA's wonderful, monumental exhibit spanning design, science and technology, "Design and the Elastic Mind," we enlisted the help of the show's esteemed curator, Paola Antonelli. Paola speaks in detail about several of the exhibits, including "The Afterlife," a system for turning corpses into batteries, robots that act as personal climatizers and DNA origami. She also weighs in on her curatorial approach, addressing the role of the designer, her mission to shift public perception of design and how design revolutionizes our lives. As always, but especially in this case, we hope CH inspires you to experience this show firsthand. It's up through May 2008, see details below. If you absolutely can't make it in person, the website, designed by the renowned Yugo Nakamura, is full of information organized into an extremely pleasing UI and the book (available online from the MoMA store) is a must-have resource for designers, educators and the curious.

Quieting the Demons and Giving Art a Voice

Two new books highlight the writing of authors with mental illness.

clipped from www.nytimes.com In Madness: A Bipolar Life, Marya Hornbacher brings to the discussion more than the usual pairing of disturbed brain and talented mind. Her talent has created a third self, an appealing, rueful narrator (read excerpt) who can look back on three decades of manic-depressive illness, much of it untreated, and spin a story that is almost impossible to put down. In the same way that the psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison experienced, recorded and then analyzed her own case in the 1995 classic “An Unquiet Mind,” Ms. Hornbacher provides the perfect trifecta of perspectives. More reflections on the same subject can be found in Poets on Prozac: Mental Illness, Treatment, and the Creative Process. This collection of essays solicited from published poets with psychiatric illness. Most of the 16 contributors are decades older than Ms. Hornbacher, but while they may lack her vivid prose style, they do supply a long-term perspective on the terrain. With problems ranging from mild unmedicated depression to schizophrenia treated with an unorthodox megavitamin technique, these writers also focus on trapping the words — and all agree that the sick brain often spells catastrophe for the creative mind. While mental illness may form a part of the creative cycle, if untreated its own cycles invariably take over. “Depression steals the voice,” writes Liza Porter. “Silence breeds depression. Depression breeds silence.”

Once Again, Moustache Madness sweeps Germany

What makes this video from Reuters even more unnerving is the absolute stoic seriousness of the participants in this contest.

(I also enjoy the information graphic consulted by the judges. Sort of like a menu of mustaches!)

clipped from www.reuters.com German beard and moustache championship draws more than 100 men from various countries to compete for most extravagant look. Organized by the Eastern Bavarian Beard and Moustache Club, the event drew competitors from many countries including Britain, Germany and Switzerland.

From Idea Sandbox: The Prioritizer

Prioritizer is the way to prioritize three or more items! Get yourself in order. If you like Prioritizer, you may also enjoy using Big Dig problem solving tool, also from Idea Sandbox.

I have wasted so many man hours (or monkeyman hours!) researching GTD and Zen Habits and Flylady techniques. In the end. All I need to know is what to do next, based on what is most important.

The pulsing brain behind Idea Sandbox, Paul Williams, has provided another simple on-line tool that helps get me set to tackle my to-do list... in order of priority!

(Believe me, that is a huge change!)

The Point: Web 2.0 tool for creating your own change

The Point brings together problems, people, and the pressure of collective action. The site allows users to create campaigns and encourage other people to join anonymously.

Using the principles of Gladwell's Tipping Point, once the number of members reaches a certain critical mass (10, 50, 2000) and action is triggered: a sale, a press release, a protest.

Campaigns are tools for people to organize a group action that occurs only when enough people join to make participation worthwhile. Campaigns can be used for any situation where people want safety in numbers, from planning a party to boycotting a corporation to saving chickens.

Check out the simple, clever animations used to demonstrate the types of people, the problems they want to tackle, and the resulting campaigns--that can use The Point to catalyze change.

clipped from www.thepoint.com

Make Something Happen.

The Point is a platform for group action, helping you make things happen that you couldn't accomplish alone.

View an Animated Introduction. See some different ways you can use The Point:

• The Frustrated Consumer
• The Unappreciated Employee
• The Loving Parent
• The Concerned Citizen
• The Smart Shopper

Example Campaign: Scrabulous Don't Go!

Hasbro, Inc. must continue to allow us to play Scrabulous for free or else we will stop buying Hasbro products if 500,000 people join Learn more.