Facebook's role in helping Myanmar protesters

Internet a battleground in protests against Myanmar's repressive regime

If you are a member of Facebook, you can read about the protests at the public group: Myanmar (Burma) Uprising: Worldwide support

clipped from www.msnbc.msn.com LONDON - An Internet group backing the monk-led protests in Myanmar has attracted more than 100,000 members in less than 10 days as Internet users around the world try to harness the power of the Web to support the protest movement. The Internet has been a key battleground in the wave of protests that erupted a month ago against Myanmar's repressive regime. Authorities have cut off the country's two Internet service providers in a bid to stop accounts and images of the protests, and the military crackdown, reaching the outside world. The Myanmar government's tight media restrictions mean "citizen journalist" accounts have been vital for journalists trying to track the events of recent days. Reporters have relied on social networking sites like Facebook and blogs like that of London-based Burmese blogger Ko Htike for firsthand accounts and images.

Fast Comapany's 2007 Masters of Design

clipped from www.fastcompany.com Innovation and inspiration. Management and creativity. This is our fourth annual report on the intersection of business and design. Online we feature a video interview with Yves Behar and a video tour of R/GA's best interactive work. Yves Behar Not long ago, Yves Béhar was a self-described "slumlord" to cover his rent. Now he's a superstar. Bob Greenberg The phrase "interactive advertising" is everywhere. Bob Greenberg actually makes it. Sam Lucente Sam Lucente's business is corporate design. Persuasion is his game.

Blurb: As reviewed by Kevin Kelly

Kevin is a film buff, Senior Maverick for WIRED, photographer and self-proclaimed Geek Dad.

With and without kids, he has traveled the globe (Afghanistan, Vietnam, China, Europe); he has launched publications (The Whole Earth Catalog, Wired); and, he continues to redefine how we think about technology and biology (Out of Control, Encyclopedia of Life, The Long Now Foundation ). And, in case you haven't guessed, he's one of my heroes.

He is also an avid self-publisher of personal projects.

Check out his reviews of the various on-line in the blooming print-on-demand market.

clipped from www.kk.org My recommendation for the best personal color book printer is Blurb. Blurb produces color books very similar to the iPhoto books you can order from Apple. Using iPhoto Books is slightly easier than using Blurb's software, particularly if all your photos happen to already be in iPhoto, but it works well enough. The idea is that you can drag images (photos or illustrations) into template book pages, add text or captions where you want to, then hit a button and have the finished book mailed to you. (all these systems work with PCs and Macs) The results from both Apple and Blurb are marvelous. In fact, these books are astounding. That's because they both use the same back-room engine, the HP Indigo 5000 (as do the other color book makers like Snapfish and MyPublisher). The Indigio is essentially a high-speed, high-quality liquid-toner printer that will print your photo book several pages across. Blurb Photobook $19 base price Available from Blurb Blurb's How to Make a Book

What Chimpanzees Can Teach Us About Economics

(By the way, the experiment described in this article--involving struggles over fruit bars and chocolate--works on three-year-old humans and management consultants, too.)

clipped from www.vanderbilt.edu In a long standing enigma of economics and psychology, humans tend to immediately value an item they’ve just received more than the maximum amount they would have paid to get it to begin with. This tendency, known as the endowment effect, is something some economists consider a fluke, but new research finds that humans aren’t the only ones exhibiting an endowment effect. A new study co-authored by Vanderbilt professor Owen Jones, who is one of the nation’s few professors of both law and biology, uncovered the first evidence that chimpanzees exhibit an endowment effect similar to people. Specifically, the study showed that chimpanzees favor items they just received more than items they normally prefer that they could get through exchange. “Our results support the conclusion that the frequent failure to exchange a less-favored food for a more-preferred food was an active choice and is similar to the endowment effect behavior seen in humans,” said Jones.

The Metacognitive Anti-Complaint Campaign

Will Bowen, a Kansas City minister recognized that word choice determines thought choice, which determines emotions and actions.designed a solution in the form of a simple purple bracelet, which he offered to his congregation with a challenge: go 21 days without complaining.

See an interview with Rev. Bowen on ABC Today

Each time one of them complained, they had to switch the bracelet to their other wrist and start again from day 0. It was simple but effective metacognitive awareness training.

clipped from www.fourhourworkweek.com Here are a few of the changes I noticed then and am noticing again now: 1) My lazier thinking evolved from counterproductive commiserating to reflexive systems thinking. Each description of a problem forced me to ask and answer: What policy can I create to avoid this in the future? 2) I was able to turn off negative events—because the tentative solution had be offered—instead of giving them indefinite mental shelf-life (and “open loop” in GTD parlance), resulting in better sleep and more pleasant conversations with both friends and business partners. 3) People want to be around action-oriented problem solvers. Training yourself to offer solutions on-the-spot attracts people and resources.

Unplanned Obsolescence

Grameen's famous Village Phone Program lifted thousands out of poverty-- and helped Muhammad Yunus win the Nobel Peace Prize. The problem: It's not working anymore.

clipped from www.fastcompany.com On March 26, 1997--chosen because that day was the anniversary of Bangladesh's independence from Pakistan--Begum became the first participant in GrameenPhone's Village Phone Program. Now widely known, the plan offers small loans, or microcredit, that enable people in one of the world's most impoverished countries to buy cell phones and rent them, call by call, to neighbors who can't afford telephones of their own. A decade later, instead of begging on the streets and sleeping with cattle as she once had done, Begum shares a two-room brick house with her husband, two sons, a daughter, a television set, and a refrigerator. Next door, she has built a barn, shops, and temporary housing that she rents to five poor families. Today, her banker estimates her net worth at $145,000, which may be more than everyone else in her village combined. In Bangladesh today, the only one making real money on GrameenPhone's wireless service is … GrameenPhone.

Sale on Rain Forests, Aisle 24

Oh what an strange turn of events looking back over the last 5 years of sustainability and the board room.

clipped from www.fastcompany.com Environmental Activist Adam Werbach Used To Call Wal-Mart Toxic, But Now He Works For Them Once the youngest president of the Sierra Club, Adam Werbach used to call Wal-Mart toxic. Now the company is his biggest client. Does the path to a greener future run through Bentonville? By Danielle Sacks How Green is Wal-Mart? In October 2005, Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott outlined audacious environmental and sustainability goals for the company. Here's the status of some of the company's major initiatives. By Charles Fishman Wal-Mart's Personal Sustainability Project The Personal Sustainability Project, or PSP, that Werbach and his firm, Act Now, are running for Wal-Mart is intended to help the company's 1.3 million employees see how sustainability--defined very broadly as "having enough for now, while not harming the future"--relates to their own lives. Here's the strategy. By Fast Company Staff

Pentel Pocket Brush Pen

clipped from www.kk.org Leave it to the Japanese to create a brush pen. This pocketable pen has a super fine brush tip of actual bristles, perfect for tiny Kanji characters, or of course, doodling in your journal, or sketching in your Moleskine. While it's hugely popular with comic book folks and cartoonists, artists of all stripes have picked one up for their paper work. The feel is incredibly tactile and lovely. It works like a fountain pen, with replaceable rich ink cartridges. Once capped it doesn't leak as far as I can tell. (There's a moment of panic when you first assemble it since the instructions are 100% in Japanese, but just insert the ball-bearing end of the ink capsule into the tip.) You can purchase other color inks as well. Pentel Pocket Brush Pen $18 Available from Wet Paint Artists' Materials

Reading Comics

More on the most universal of art forms.

clipped from www.kk.org Comic books, comics, graphic novels, or whatever you call them are not a genre, they're a medium. Wolk emphasizes this from the outset of this vivid examination of the form and many of the geniuses and misfits of the American mainstream and avante-garde. Always frank, always insightful, Wolk, a former comic book store clerk, covers a lot of ground: pregnant moments, metacomics, parallel Earths, disposable Sunday strips, and, of course, how the world of comics can be "annoyingly male." The first half of the book tackles history along with an overall assessment of what comics mean and how to read them. There are great bits about what makes a "superreader" and how the form blossomed despite the economics of limited shelf space. The second half is a series of precise essays on specific artists, including Chris Ware, Alison Bechdel, Art Spiegelman, Charles Burns and Steve Ditko.