Beyond Messaging

Next year's Twitter? It's Foursquare - CNN.com

Foursquare ventures beyond utility, however: It's a virtual game in which participants earn badges for checking in at various locations; those that check in most become a venue's "mayor." By all accounts, this mechanism is as addictive as Twitter, Facebook or checking your e-mail on a BlackBerry.

via edition.cnn.com

Well, I didn't understand the value of Twitter for a while, so maybe I will figure out the value of Foursquare later. But it seems kind of stupid to me at this point. But if your users are into it, it's a good idea for the System Admin to know about it, right? So now at least we know.

The History of the Internet in a Nutshell

Here’s a brief history of the Internet, including important dates, people, projects, sites, and other information that should give you at least a partial picture of what this thing we call the Internet really is, and where it came from.

via sixrevisions.com

Fun history lesson for us nerdy types. Growing up with my Dad being a net pioneer gave me a lot of early exposure. Reading through the history of the Internet is a little bit like listening to oldies in music - you get a little picture of where you were and what you were doing at the time. And for those whippersnappers among us, this is good stuff to know for you to flex your techie chops.

Free Linux eBook Ubuntu Apps

I found this goody on Slickdeals.net - a free eBook on Ubuntu Linux.  According to the site the eBook is about the best applications for Ubuntu, and also has a lot of general tips.  The print version of the book is also available from Amazon.

A free Linux application & tip book for Ubuntu. (PDF)

http://www.ubuntuapps.org

Gravity Integrates Google Wave Functionality with SAP

...various features of true real-time collaboration are shown, such as different colour-coding for each individual modeller, history of a model, asynchronous and synchronous editing, and more. The demo also shows how robots (automated components that act as Wave participants) can be leveraged in order to syntactically correct the model on the fly. In the end, we will see how models are exported using BPMN 2.0 XML. They will then be imported into SAP Netweaver BPM for further refinement and execution.

SAP Community Network Blogs

One of the first business class use cases for Google Wave comes from the SAP Research labs in Australia. There is a nice demo video that shows how the collaboration tools in Google Wave can be used with SAP in the fictional merging of two companies business processes.

I am testing Google Wave myself, and I am interested in how I can integrate Wave functionality in with my TypePad hosted blog.

10 Terrible Tips for Longer Battery Life - Batteries - Gizmodo

If your laptop battery gets hot enough to sear tuna, step away. Check your fridge for tuna. If no tuna in fridge, run to the supermarket to buy tuna. Don't worry, as long as you don't unplug your laptop, the battery will stay hot while you are gone.

via gizmodo.com

Hysterically funny list of really bad tips for getting better performance out of batteries.

Get this guy the world's smallest violin

No matter how unimportant the event, the actual experience of something has become secondary to our capturing of it and telling our followers.

via www.techcrunch.com

Paul Carr in his NSFW column on Tech Crunchis complaining about how social networking and streaming statuses are making people self centered and unable to simply live for the moment.

He's obviously never spent a lot of time with a scrapbooker - we live for taking pictures and capturing moments. Scrapbookers will catch ourselves dressing the kids for our photo shoots, staging events around scrapbook page ideas, and generally making our family crazy by documenting everything from the visit to the pumpkin patch, to junior's tonsillitis.

Guess what - human beings are self centered. That's not new, and Facebook didn't make that happen. Everyday life is also for the most part just plain boring, and Twitter didn't create that situation either. The answer to "what are you doing right now?" is most likely not going to win 99.9% of people a Pulizer Prize. Deal with it.

There is a joy in boring everyday average life and it should be ok to share it. Yes, use your judgment. No, we don't want to know EVERYTHING. But people should feel free to be the boring and authentic selves that they are. And yes, if you want to - take a picture and share it. To me, this is in fact living in the moment.

I Wonder How Much Money was Spent on this Study?

Study finds that social networking actually improves face-to-face communication

via www.computerworld.com

This is another one of those "I can't believe they paid for a study to determine this." articles. Turns out that people who use social networking on the computer are more social. Yeah - that's kind of the whole idea.