background preloader

Serendipity

Serendipity
Serendipity means a "fortunate happenstance" or "pleasant surprise". It was coined by Horace Walpole in 1754. In a letter he wrote to a friend Walpole explained an unexpected discovery he had made by reference to a Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip. The princes, he told his correspondent, were “always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of”. The notion of serendipity is a common occurrence throughout the history of scientific innovation such as Alexander Fleming's accidental discovery of penicillin in 1928 and the invention of the microwave oven by Percy Spencer in 1945, the invention of the Post-it note by Spencer Silver in 1968. The word has been voted one of the ten English words hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company.[1] However, due to its sociological use, the word has been exported into many other languages.[2] Etymology[edit] The structure of serendipity[edit] Business and strategy[edit] M.

Why Ping Is the Future of Social Commerce: Tech News ? Apple announced on Wednesday a cornucopia of new hardware and software: sleek iPods, a brand new Internet-enabled video streaming device and new versions of its iOS software and iTunes 10. However, the most impressive to me by far was Ping, the music-only social network that Apple is opening up its 160 million existing iTunes users. No, I’m not blown away by the 160 million number. What I’m impressed by is the thinking behind Ping. Ping may function like a cross between Facebook and Twitter for iTunes by allowing you to follow celebrities, create social cliques and get artist updates via an activity stream. From a content perspective, there are three different types of media we love to talk about: movies we seemusic we listen tobooks we are reading These are accepted social norms. This click-and-go-somewhere-to-download model of affiliate links can never match a unified experience. Ping, from what little I saw during Steve Jobs’ demo, allows a similar level of social interaction.

WORK THEME PARK LA DEFENSE - Stéphane Degoutin, Gwenola Wagon Avec la croissance sans fin de l'exclusion, la Défense sera bientôt le dernier quartier de Paris où il restera encore des travailleurs. Nous préparons sa réhabilitation prochaine en parc d'attractions pour l'éducation ludique des exclus. On viendra ici regarder les derniers employés, enfermés dans leurs bureaux, comme on regarde aujourd'hui les derniers artisans au journal de TF1. A l'âge industriel, le travail laissait peu de temps libre. A l'époque postindustrielle, les loisirs sont surabondants, mais c'est le travail qui vient à manquer. Regarding the endless growth of exclusion and unemployment, la Défense will soon be the last area in Paris where will remain workers. In the industrial age, work left little free time. In the post industrial age, leisure is overabundant, but now it's work which has become scarce. La Défense is to be explored as a pleasure garden of the 20th century, specialised in the business and finance worlds.

Toward a local syzygy: aligning deals, check-ins and places Three significant trends in the local sector — deals, check-ins, and place pages — are on a bender and headed for an exciting convergence. When they meet we will see one of three things: a train wreck of incompatibility, an awkward confluence, or a very powerful alignment. I’m hoping for the latter, a sort of local syzygy, because a well-conceived orchestration of these trends will benefit the consumer and it has real potential to take us entirely out of the Yellow Pages era and into exciting, unexplored territory. This is a two-part post: here I look in more detail at check-ins, deals, and place products (including, briefly, the adventurously named Facebook Places) with an eye to what might follow. In a following post I will discuss how we may more actively ease their convergence with linked data and some basic adherence to extant standards, specifically how these efforts will affect the local consumer. Place pages and check-ins Get it here: the deal Part 1 wrap Related:

Flâneur Paul Gavarni, Le Flâneur, 1842. Flâneur (pronounced: [flɑnœʁ]), from the French noun flâneur, means "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", or "loafer". Flânerie refers to the act of strolling, with all of its accompanying associations. The flâneur was, first of all, a literary type from 19th century France, essential to any picture of the streets of Paris. Etymology[edit] Charles Baudelaire The terms of flânerie date to the 16th or 17th century, denoting strolling, idling, often with the connotation of wasting time. The flâneur was defined in a long article in Larousse’s Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle (in the 8th volume, from 1872). By then, the term had already developed a rich set of associations. In the 1860s, in the midst of the rebuilding of Paris under Napoleon III and the Baron Haussmann, Charles Baudelaire presented a memorable portrait of the flâneur as the artist-poet of the modern metropolis: The crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes.

Information Flow: Web of Constraints on Giant Global Graph | The Phaneron It’s been almost two years since December 2, 2008 when I published the first use case for Open Government: Linked Open Data. It’s great to see the wide-spread interest that’s emerged as well as the early adoption that has begun to take place. There was a time when it wasn’t clear that it would. In those two years both the US and UK governments have incorporated Linked Data into their datagov approaches, RDFa-like languages have been adopted at Google and Facebook, and membership in Semantic Web Meetups has skyrocketed. When Tim Berners-Lee published the W3C Linked Data design issue in July of 2006 he introduced four rules that foster a “post semantic” Web. The rebranding continued in November of 2007 with introduction of the term Giant Global Graph (GGG). In Working Ontologist, Dean Allemang and Jim Hendler introduce the AAA Slogan: “Anyone can say Anything about Any topic.” So, how will this all happen? 1.

de l'action à l'exposition Il a fallu une époque de profonde décadence de la vie sociale pour que l’art soit enfermé dans les cages des musées. Maintenant, il a pour champ d’action la vie entière.Taraboukine, Moscou, 1922 Introduction Un jour, en 1991, un homme, sans âge distinct, habillé de manière sobre, portant un sac à l’épaule gauche, déambule dans les rues de Mexico en tirant un petit objet cubique sur roulettes. Qui est cet homme ? Dès l’aube du XXème siècle, les avants gardes ont rejeté l’art académique en faveur de l’expérience réelle, voulant rapprocher l’art et la vie. L’homme anonyme tirant l’objet à roulettes dans les rues de Mexico en 1991 est Francis Alÿs. La légende indique « boule-de-neige, Mexico City, 1995 ». L’œuvre de Francis Alÿs étant prolifique et protéiforme, j’ai choisi de me concentrer sur les travaux qui soulèvent le plus d’interrogations : ceux fondés sur une prestation physique de l’artiste marchant (ses actions). I) Les déambulations b) En suivant des protocoles auto imposés 2. 3.

Search Tech: Entering the Age of Personal Discovery The Web is transitioninginto dynamic, real-time aggregation. This real-time aggregation and personalization of content is known as "discovery." True discovery will tie together all of your information -- what you have liked, purchased, viewed, discussed, browsed -- into a real-time aggregator that provides actionable recommendations on any category of your choosing. Web 2.0 (everyone's favorite 2007 buzz word) heralded the age of social networks and powered a fundamental shift in the Web: filtering out excessive noise while building connections to friends, organizations and communities. Fast-forward to 2010 and 800 Facebook friends later, and the noise is back. The Web is transitioning from an interactive Web 2.0 forum into dynamic, real-time aggregation -- the next logical step in the Internet's evolution. Discovery Explained Although discovery is not a new concept, it is just now being defined in relation to the online experience. How Does Discovery work? Going Mobile With Discovery

In public space we trust JR. CAN ART CHANGE THE WORLD?Se una casa editrice come la Phaidon decide di pubblicare un libro su un artista del calibro di JR sappiamo già che quella che ne uscirà sarà un'opera perfetta. Una delle prime immagini che vediamo aprendo JR. Art will save us all.

Related: