We were all 13 years old, once!

http://www.amnh.org/nationalcenter/youngnaturalistawards/2011/aidan.html

The unintended consequences of web services that try to algorythmically guess what you want to see, based on who they think you are and the patterns of what you do…

Offered by author Jeremy Rifkin; more about him here. Illustrated talk to the Royal Society for the Arts, London.

This company is interesting because it attempts to break out of the box of search-as-we-know-it. In a quite different way from Search Visualizer; perhaps a complementary way:

“We build search technologies that make it possible to discover information that is difficult to describe.

Words like cool, modern, hip, romantic, retro and timeless mean different things to different people. So until computers can read your mind, Keywords don’t always work.

With Sortuv technologies you discover places, events, products, people, ideas and experiences that matter to you by comparing and connecting them to things you already know and like.”

Their initial application is interesting things to do in major American cities, and popular culture. I can understand why, if they’re seeking to build an early business model. But the technologies could have broader application, and combined with SV could be significant.

http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2009/03/Stealthy_Sortuv_emerges_in_Seattle_with_semantic_search_41337417.html

“Though it sounds odd, the technology could go so far as to find a bottle of wine that is like a Monet painting.”

“…the technology could be applied to human resources in order to help companies find job candidates who resemble other successful employees. Or, he said, it could be used to find patterns in legal documents.”

Autistic? Not.

This video describes an interpretation of the meaning of the Voynich Manuscript by Dr. Gordon Rugg, one of the founders of Prevocative and a professor of knowledge modelling at Keele University, Staffordshire U.K. Professor Rugg demonstrates how the Voynich, a classic problem that has fascinated linguists and encryption excerpts for centuries, could be a hoax. An edited excerpt from the “Weird or What?” documentary, first aired May 2010 on the Discovery Channel. Details from the original producer, see http://dsc.discovery.com/

From the Museum of Natural History, and their partner across the Park, the Hayden Planetarium, with funding from NASA. If this isn’t enough — you can download the data and tools used to make this video and make your own — lots of teacher resources and academic depth here too, if you want it:

http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/universe/download/

Arthur Lipper comments: This is the most fascinating thing I have seen in a long time. Felt slightly dizzy just looking at it.
Michael North adds: Play this in hi-def if you can — a six minute tour of the most advanced technologies ever deployed. And one of the greatest examples of international co-operation, too. Where else can you find the top 15 countries in the world all collaborating smoothly on something this complex and important? Let’s hope that, together, they can find a way to keep it working and growing.

Creativity, iteration, ambiguity, time — reflections from innovators at Google and GE.

From a worthy source, http://fora.tv — subscription to their bi-weekly updates almost always nets a useful video or two.