Tyranny in Kiev (Maidan, Yanukovich) – Translation of Vladimir Gromov’s Post

Dear Friends!

I am addressing, first and foremost, those who are in Russia, since for those of us in Ukraine already know and understand everything that’s going on with respect to what I am about to write. I decided to write this after I received, from Moscow, a number of nonsensical messages and questions. I am completely convinced that nobody actually understands what is going on in Kiev and want to clarify my position. I think I have a right to do so, because, despite being a Russian born in Moscow, I’ve lived in Ukraine for seven years, I have two kids, a job and I teach.

Moby Dick Project/Future of Media/Rapid Brainstorming

Last Friday I was flown out by the Knight Foundation (big thanks) to the Moby Dick Project at Stanford, a working session about future of media organized by Ben Huh.  Ben basically got a bunch of people in the room and told us something along the lines of “Brainstorm on problems with news consumption and come up with solutions”.  All this happened in about a total of 4 hours of work.  Some things that I’ve learned:

Crowdsourcing Disaster Relief

A good article on Crowdsourcing Disaster Relief on TechCrunch.

Been doing lots of thinking about effective crowdsourcing.  What bothers me about coverage above is that it doesn’t seem to generate revenue for participants and is thus questionably sustainable.

Anyway, will discuss this later.

News: Jumo – connecting people and causes

http://philanthropy.com/article/Facebook-Co-Founder-Starts/64754/

A new thing from one of the Facebook guys.  Good idea, although I am not quite sure I understand why it’s not just done under the FB umbrella.

Wired: Anonymous vs. Scientology – Political Activism

Great wired article on Anonymous vs. Scientology.  Occasionally hilarious with things like: “Just inside the doorway, he found church materials loaded onto a cart, which he mounted for a few seconds of simulated man-cart love before fleeing into the city’s streets.”

Seriously though, this could be a major direction for political activism – a dangerous mini-mob counteracting centralized governmental structures.

Students paid to learn – it works.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-stuhl15-2008oct15,0,5060228.story

Very cool concept that’s working…

Video: Lifelike animation heralds new era for computer games – Times Online

Very cool.

Video: Lifelike animation heralds new era for computer games – Times Online

Nikita’s LJ Tags: interesting news, technology, graphics

NOVA | scienceNOW | Of Mice and Memory | PBS

This is very very cool – moral of the story: we should all have a lot of fun and then we’ll be smarter 🙂

NOVA | scienceNOW | Of Mice and Memory | PBS