Aloha

communimage is an attempt to entertain a visual global dialogue. ... Each image (or 'patch') carries a certain amount of meta information (added by the creator of the image). This meta information will be used to visualize facets of communimage. The collection (currently) consists of about 40,000 imaqes from 2,000 contributors. It's reminiscent of the ars electronica 's dataspace / datascope / datasphere model ... where each location on the globe represents a data activity.

bitboy's techno blog

"With Keyhole, you can fly like a superhero from your computer at home to a street corner somewhere else in the world - or find a local hospital, map a road trip or measure the distance between two points," said Jonathan Rosenberg, vice president, Product Management. "This acquisition gives Google users a powerful new search tool, enabling users to view 3D images of any place on earth as well as tap a rich database of roads, businesses and many other points of interest. Keyhole is a valuable addition to Google's efforts to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." [1]

Keyhole represents the largest commercial imagery database online in 3D today. Covering over 80+ major metropolitan areas and thousands of individual cities, Keyhole's database includes access to millions of dollars worth of satellite imagery, aerial photography, elevation data, street vectors, business listings and other databases merged together and available for instant access. [2]

[1] Google Acquires Keyhole Corp, Mountain View - October 27, 2004 - Google Inc. today announced it acquired Keyhole Corp., a Mountain View, Calif.-based digital mapping company. http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/keyhole.html

[2] What are Google's plans for Keyhole?

Tim Bradford's Writers' workshop panel distilling beat into 8 panes.

I've been chatting with Linda T from Phoenix who is working with a Japanese homestay teacher dealing with rowdy students and culture shock. We're thinking of ways to deal with the cultural issues; the classroom management problems are beyond my ken. She's suggested a nice reading list for host families to help them help their home stay folks.

• American Ways: A Guide for Foreigners in the United States, Gary Althen, Intercultural Press (January 1, 1988), ISBN: 0933662688. Paperback: 192 pages
• The Japanese Way : Aspects of Behavior, Attitudes, and Customs of the Japanese, Noriko Takada, Rita Lampkin, McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (November 11, 1996) ISBN: 0844283770. Paperback: 112 pages
• Japanese Have a Word for It : The Complete Guide to Japanese Thought and Culture, Boye Lafayette De Mente, McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (October 11, 1997) ISBN: 0844283169. Paperback: 400 pages
• Memoirs of a Geisha : A Novel, Arthur Golden, Vintage Books; contemporaries ed edition (January, 1999) ISBN: 0679781587. Paperback: 448 pages

Two other books came to mind, mainly to round out the concept that there might be a way to understand "culture shock."

• Culture Shock! Tokyo at Your Door, Yuko Morimoto Yoshida, Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company; (June, 2003) ISBN: 1558687483. Paperback: 160 pages
• Culture Shock USA (Culture Shock Guides), Esther Wanning, Publisher: Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company (May 1, 2003) ISBN: 1558687599. Paperback: 264 pages

Vinton Cerf, CircleID Internet Governance, 2004 November 04

"In its earlier years, the Internet was simply a tool for the research and education community to explore new ways of sharing computing power, software, and information by way of electronic mail (which became a popular application around 1971 on one of the Internet's predecessors, the ARPANET). The approximately one billion users of the Internet today have the same range of interests as the general population in most countries. The side-effect of this wide spread use is that abuses have arisen that are not unlike the kinds of abuses one finds in other societal settings. Fraud, misinformation, harassment, illegal transactions, theft of resources, breaking and entering (hacking into computers), copyright infringement, and many other exact or approximate electronic analogs of improper behavior can be found on the Internet. Such problems plainly raise public policy concerns among governments and stimulated much interest during the many talks associated with the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS).

"The term "Internet Governance" has become an area of particular attention in part as a consequence of widespread recognition that the Internet represents an important area of national interest for all countries seeking to participate in the benefits of global electronic commerce, distance learning, access to the encyclopedic wealth of information on the Internet, and in the social dimension that the Internet is creating. From the perspective of governments, the Internet is simultaneously a technology that promises high economic value for parties making use of it and a challenge in that it is unlike all other telecommunications media previously invented.

Continues at http://www.circleid.com/article/795_0_1_0_C/

what can i say? "napster was only the beginning."