Alla Gringaus

Wikipedia and Emergence – Happy Birthday!

The State of Wikipedia

From Wikipedia: In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, EMERGENCE is the way complex systemsmultiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Emergence is central to the theories of integrative levels and of complex systems. and patterns arise out of a

The early draft of Emergence book by Steven Johnson, the American Popular Science author, had subtitle: “Emergence: What the New Science Can Teach Us About Our Minds, Our Communities, and Ourselves.” changing it later to “Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software.” The book was published in 2001, and so the Wikipedia project, a free web-based, collaborative online reference. Both are Ten-Year Old Babies this year!

Wikipedia Brand via visual storytelling

http://www.thestateofwikipedia.com/media/wiki/img/infographic-lg.jpg

Which is Which? Wapplications

Great excerpts from Keynote Benchmark on The Mobile Dilemma

Which is Which? Which is the app, and which the mobile website? The New York Times app (left) gives users an extra headline or so, and navigation/function options at the bottom, but the mobile Website (right) offers more types of information such as stock quotes and weather.

Which is Which? The YouTube “wapplication” an HTML5 website, actually delivers better design than the native iPhone app (left), and more closely mimics the functionality of the main YouTube Web site.

Which is Which? The app (left) is a little more colorful, but the content is virtually identical, and the wapplication/mobile Website delivers a little more functionality such as texting.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee launches site for British gov

He invented a technology that has transformed the world into a more transparent and much more productive environment. in 2001 he’s published The Semantic Web. His recent work included launching British government site http://data.gov.uk/ that’s based on the Semantic Web and consists of many brilliant mashups, “the main product of collaboration brings structure to the meaningful content of Web pages“. At TED’s Sir is explaining the Semantic Web, and much more. Very interesting.

Brilliant Transportation Crowdsourcing

Ushahidi – Social Crisis Management – The initial deployment of Ushahidi had 45,000 users in Kenya, and was the catalyst for a platform which is now used by others around the world. You can use GitHub open source community to develop iPhone apps.

Survivors Connect – is an organization that works to build global advocacy & support networks of survivors and activists working to end modern-day slavery and human trafficking. They use social media and connective technologies to empower and enhance protection, prosecution and prevention efforts. Within that, Freedom GeoMap is a collaborative mapping project to gather all these artifacts and connect it with the geo data.

ExitStrategy – Exit Strategy will really really really reduce your subway ride.Where to stand on the platform, you can board the train at the right position to arrive directly in front of the exit at your destination station. You’ll beat the crowds and avoid walking several city blocks underground. Some people call it ‘pre-walking’.