AP9 PassportToFun Shares Ideas on Making this Summer Fun for You and Your Kids

Grok Headline matches for AP9 PassportToFun Shares Ideas on Making this Summer Fun for You and Your Kids

prohibited kids from making and throwing
snowballs

prohibited kids from making and throwing
snowballs 01/10/2004 11:57 AM
playing in the snow .. School officials .. Seattle Times .. snowball

seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2001833102_snowcri me09e.html
track this site | 6 links

jelly bracelets" are making a comeback
with teens and some grade-school kids.
But this time, there's a twist: In some
parts of the U.S., they're calling them
"sex bracelets" -- with various colors
supposedly representing promises to
perform sex acts in a

jelly bracelets" are making a comeback
with teens and some grade-school kids.
But this time, there's a twist: In some
parts of the U.S., they're calling them
"sex bracelets" -- with various colors
supposedly representing promises to
perform sex acts in a 12/12/2003 05:38 AM

cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/12/10/sex.bracelet.ap/index.html
track this site | 5 links

Kids Have a ‘Doggone’ Good Time with
Launch of RAGGS Kids Club Band Video
Series

Kids Have a ‘Doggone’ Good Time with
Launch of RAGGS Kids Club Band Video
Series 08/10/2004 03:43 AM
[PRWEB Aug 10, 2004]

Keeping Your Kids Truly Safe and Secure
on the Internet Now Just Became as Easy
as “Smart Zone Kids” Browser Available
Through Wholesale-Telecom.

Keeping Your Kids Truly Safe and Secure
on the Internet Now Just Became as Easy
as “Smart Zone Kids” Browser Available
Through Wholesale-Telecom. 12/22/2004 01:28 AM
Wholesale-Telecom is now offering an Internet browser that protects children and teenagers from online pedophiles and inappropriate content The browser is totally interactive for parents to customize to their preference. [PRWEB Dec 10, 2004]

Keeping Your Kids Truly Safe and Secure
on the Internet Now Just Became as Easy
as "Smart Zone Kids" Browser Available
Through Wholesale-Telecom

Keeping Your Kids Truly Safe and Secure
on the Internet Now Just Became as Easy
as "Smart Zone Kids" Browser Available
Through Wholesale-Telecom 12/30/2004 05:15 AM
Wholesale-Telecom is now offering an Internet browser that protects children and teenagers from online pedophiles and inappropriate content The browser is totally interactive for parents to customize to their preference. [PRWEB Dec 30, 2004]

Presents For Bad Kids Head To eBay,
Rather Than Kids

Presents For Bad Kids Head To eBay,
Rather Than Kids 12/27/2004 04:42 AM
Well, normally, people wait until after they've received presents to dump them on eBay. However, one father who felt his three sons were being particularly bad lately decided that to punish them he's putting their presents up for sale on eBay. To be honest, this sounds like a bit of a publicity stunt -- and it seems likely that, now that this is getting attention, that casino that seems to be buying e very random quirky auction item will snap this one up. Update: Whoops. It's apparently already happened. Indeed, the casino in question has d ecided to buy the undelivered presents. This is sort of an update on our story last year about how sellers were increasingly looking to use eBay as a publicity generating tool. It appears that's now being used by buyers to generate publicity, as well.

Ithaki 4 KiDs MetaSearch Engine for Kids

Ithaki 4 KiDs MetaSearch Engine for Kids 06/22/2005 02:48 AM


Ithaki 4 KiDs MetaSearch Engine for Kids
http://kids.ithaki.net/

Ithaki 4 KiDs helps you to find the best sites just for kids via searching in real time several search engines for kids like DmozKids, Yahooligans, FactMonster, ArtKIDSRule, AolKIDS, AwesomeLibrary & KidsClick!. Ithaki is a metasearch engine, it finds quickly the best web sites because it searches at once the top search engines and guides for kids, then ranks the results according to an internal ranking to make sure you get the exactly what you're looking for. This will be added to the search engines section of all the 2005 Internet MiniGuides.

MP3 Players Aren't Just For Kids; In
Fact They're Barely For Kids

MP3 Players Aren't Just For Kids; In
Fact They're Barely For Kids 12/19/2004 03:47 PM
The common bit of wisdom is that MP3s are a young person's technology. It's the teens and the folks just coming out of college that are the MP3 generation, after all, so they'd be the most likely to own an MP3 player, right? Not at all, apparently. A new study says that 90% of MP3 player owners over 34 years old. While this may have something to do with the high price of many of the best MP3 players, the numbers still don't seem right. It would be interesting to see the methodology behind this study. That's not to say that those over 34 aren't likely to own an MP3 player, but it's hard to believe that 90% of MP3 players go to those 35 and older.

Big Ideas

Big Ideas 07/25/2004 12:25 PM
Big Ideas. "Eating, sleeping, procreating, laughing - and trying to create a world in which we can do these things unmolested - have all been far greater drivers of human ingenuity than time machines or battery-operated scooters." - "We may no longer hold high hopes of the state, but if the study of individuals reminds us of our common humanity and prompts us to reassess the merits of the collective, let’s welcome it."

IDEAS

IDEAS 12/02/2003 01:22 AM
IDEAS - Internet Documents in Economics Access Service
http://ideas.repec.org/

Welcome to the largest bibliographic database dedicated to Economics and available on the Internet. Over 200'000 items of research can be browsed or searched, and over 110'000 can be downloaded in full text! This site is part of a large volunteer effort to enhance the free dissemination of research in Economics, RePEc. IDEAS is a service providing information about working papers and published research to the economics profession. IDEAS stands for "Internet Documents in Economics Access Service", which is not very good English, but you get the idea... The data available here are contributed at no charge by volunteers and made available freely. This service uses the complete data from the RePEc database, which includes bibliographic data contributed by over 330 archives, including many of the major research outlets and publishers.

Novel Ideas

Novel Ideas 06/10/2004 09:03 PM
Technovelgy lists inventions from science fiction novels, including the Tasp, the Delpi Pool, Retinal Projection and the Invisible Teenager.

Bad Ideas

Bad Ideas 04/09/2005 12:48 PM

« Hung between the squeaky piggies and nylon chew bones were an altogether different kind of squeaky chew bone. I wondered if they were beef flavoured and if they were a hot item with women who want to have their dog chew on them in front of an annoying boyfriend as a way to run them off. :) »

Another product of a bad idea: the new Fi zz Lime Cider. It tastes like someone poured cider into your G&T. There's a reason why it's the "World's first lime cider".

Too many ideas in one place?

Too many ideas in one place? 05/10/2004 03:01 AM

Jonas has another thing to say.....

Back to The Future.

Dave Winer:

Supernova and the recently announced Web 2.0 conference are throwbacks to the priorities of old conferences, of the eighties and nineties: sponsors, speakers, panels, audience.
Execs from high tech companies pay sponsorship fees, not disclosed, and guarantee that the content is paid advertising and that nothing real is said on stage. If you don’t pay the sponsorship fee, you don’t get a speaking slot. If you offend a sponsor, you don’t get invited back.

I agree with Dave and Marc. Conferences like these are more or less paid-for sales events, highly priced ones at that. Speaker selection and attendee lists reflect this trend, as well. We have at our hands what can be simply described as a traveling circus of speakers, echoing a number of messages which have been carefully selected and tailored to support the barely buried ulterior motives of sponsors and organizers.

This is less so an issue with the speakers. Most of which are genuine and looking to spread not a sales message but to educate and entertain.

I disagree with Dave on the next part:

The organization of the conferences, with speakers and panels, guarantees that the audience falls asleep or is frustrated, waiting to make their point until they get to ask questions at the end of the session.

Not so, I say. Conferences do their best to deliver a lively and inductive message. Supernova, Web 2.0, and others, make generous use of the traveling circus, add promises about financial gain or new discoveries and developments, and keep attendees on their toes.

This is, where the true problem lies. The infusion of new material, different speakers, or dissenting opinions is dangerous to the ideas of events with an agenda. A controlled message requires controlled ideas. The circus, by means of exposure, has since created celebrities of their own makings, another benefit to the organizers – big names draw big bucks, and big recognition for the advertised services.

[a preponderance of evidence - What Willis Wuz' Talkin' 'Bout]

The properties of ideas

The properties of ideas 10/29/2003 12:12 AM
Thomas Jefferson said: If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself, but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses...

Product ideas

Product ideas 07/02/2004 04:17 PM

With every WWDC, Apple announces more and more cool stuff for developers that make writing apps ever easier.

So that makes me wonder about the process of deciding what apps to develop. Assuming you have a ton of good ideas for apps, there are two basic ways to approach the decision:

1. Pick one that should be easy to implement because Apple has already given you most of what you need.

2. Pick one that should be difficult to implement because you have to invent a bunch of stuff from scratch.

For instance... when NetNewsWire 1.0 shipped, there was no WebKit for displaying HTML. There was an XML parser, but there was no object-oriented, easy-to-use Cocoa XML parser. The Cocoa bindings technology didn’t exist. HTTP networking was poorly supported. The XML-RPC support (for weblog editing) was so crashy at the time that I had to write my own XML-RPC client.

(When I was a boy, we used to have walk ten miles through the snow before we could retain an object. If we wanted to use autorelease we had to go without lunch.)

You can’t draw a conclusion from one example, but I’ll give it a try anyway. The conclusion might be that #2—pick something difficult to implement—is the better choice.

I say that because it gives you a chance to be first at something, to do something new. If it’s a good idea and you’ve done a good job, your chances of success are good.

On the other hand, you could probably do three easy apps in the time it takes to do one difficult app. So there’s definitely that to consider.

However, while I can’t talk about most of what happens at WWDC, I can tell you it’s utterly predictable that, in six months or less, there will be 15 apps that do X, 20 that do Y, and 30 that do Z—just because X, Y, and Z have been made so darn easy to do. But those aren’t apps, they’re statistics.

Ideas are Cheap

Ideas are Cheap 09/01/2004 12:28 AM
I've got a physical product idea that I'll probably never be able to develop, so I figure that I'll just...

Great ideas 101

Great ideas 101 12/03/2003 02:57 AM
Boston Globe Dec 3 2003 1:55AM ET

Surfing for ideas on the Net

Surfing for ideas on the Net 06/01/2004 05:21 PM
Source: CBS.MarketWatch.com - ...fund managers are finding alternative investments to play the positive sentiment surrounding the [Google] IPO....

Where Do Your Great Ideas Come from?

Where Do Your Great Ideas Come from? 02/05/2005 09:32 PM

Some more 'fun with numbers' today. A while ago I mentioned IdeaChampions' When & Where Do You Get Your Best Ideas? survey. If you haven't taken the survey already, you can still do so. But before you click to post your answers, write them down. Then you can use this article to create your Personal Creativity Profile, as I've done above. The Profile will tell you: When and where you get your best ideas How your sources of great ideas differ from others, and why How you can make more time and space for creative activities The chart above compares my scores on the 36 questions with the normalized* answers of other respondents. If you want to create your own chart like this, using Excel or a similar spreadsheet software, here's how to do it: From the IdeaChampions' survey page, copy the 36 questions, and paste them to the first column of your spreadsheet using Paste SpecialText. Copy your scores into the next column. Then copy the normalized average scores from the bottom of this post into the third column, using Paste SpecialText. Highlight the entire table you've created and sort it in ascending order by your scores. Then add a row at the top of the chart and type in column headings. Then highlight the entire table you've created and Insert a bar chart, which should look something like the chart above. Interpreting your Profile: In my case, brainstorming, creative thinking techniques, talking with customers, taking time just upon waking, taking breaks, and listening to music are my six 'sure-fire' ways to generate creativity, so I should learn to draw on one or more of them whenever creative thinking is needed. I should keep a pencil and paper beside the bed for waking-hour inspirations. And since I take a lot of breaks and walk around, I should get wireless headphones so my music goes with me. I should study creative thinking techniques so that they become second nature. And I should spend more time talking with, and listening to, current and potential customers. What's more, the last three of these six creativity sources are unusual to me, and not effective for most others, so if I'm in a group creativity setting I should be cautious about suggesting others take breaks or listen to music. I should be sensitive to the fact that happiness is an essential precondition to creativity for most people, though it isn't for me, and also that most others will be more creative if they take a walk, read books, talk with friends, or spend time thinking just before bed, even though those techniques don't work particularly well for me. There are some other interesting differences between my creative places and times, and those of most others. I find flying and commuting very stimulating -- perhaps it's the movement, and the fact that my commutes are off-rush-hour and hence fast-paced and relaxing. I find television stimulates my thinking more than it does for most others, but that's probably because of what I watch -- documentaries, mysteries, in-depth investigative reports and foreign programming. And the least effective three sources for me -- internet surfing, vacationing and exercising, are all fairly intense, focused activities for me, that don't leave many 'cycles of brainpower' for creative thinking, though I can appreciate that others who find these activities more recreational could also find them more creatively stimulating. Next I asked myself how I could find more time and space for the creative activities that work best for me. To answer this I added another column to the spreadsheet, and entered for each of the 36 activities the amount of time each week I currently spent on each. I again used a scale of 1-5 for this: Activities that consume >20 hours of time a week -- 5 Activities that consume 15-20 hours a week -- 4 Activities that consume 10-15 hours a week -- 3 Activities that consume 5-10 hours a week -- 2 Activities that consume <5 hours a week -- 1 Now I added one more column that showed, for each of the 36 activities, my rating (1-5), divided by the amount of time I spend at it each week (1-5, using the scale above). If you do this and re-sort the 36 activities in ascending order of this last 'Personal Score/Time Spent' column, the resulting chart looks like this: What this second chart reveals is what, ideally speaking, you should try to spend more time doing (the activities at the top of the chart, which you've rated as a source of great ideas, but which you spend relatively little time doing) and what you should try to spend less time doing (the activities at the bottom of the chart). In my case, I should 'get out more' -- spend more time brainstorming with others and just moving around, and less time in front of the computer. I also need to use creative thinking techniques more often. My 'catch-all' #36 'other source' answer was spending time in the hot tub, which I suppose must somehow work for me the way showers work for others. What is it about being in the water that gets us thinking creatively? No wonder dolphins are such imaginative creatures! Though to my surprise, others' top 'write-in' answer for question #36 was 'on the toilet', so perhaps we should see whether porcelain has some mysterious power to spark ideation. While others spend their time in airport lounges, airplanes and traffic either bored or fuming, I find these activities 'transport' me and get me thinking very creatively. Because it's dangerous to write while driving, I've learned to use mnemonic devices to capture and remember ideas that occur to me until I can safely write them down (works in the shower, too). If I could find a dictating machine that worked with my voice-recognition software I'd probably use it instead -- maybe even write a whole paper or blog post simply thinking out loud while I drive. It's quite possible, though, that since much of my travel is early-morning, it's actually that time of day that's responsible for the flurry of ideas, rather than the movement. Though since I'm a night-owl, usually miserable in the morning, I'm not sure that my body clock, or the ones around me, could handle it if I tried early-to-bed, early-to-rise. It hurts just thinking about it. What works for you, and why? Are there times and places and techniques that aren't on this list at all that seem to surface great ideas for you? In what ways does your ideal environment for idea generation differ from mine, and from the other survey respondents'? And are there ways you could be spending your time a little differently to allow your right brain to get some more exercise? * How I normalized the 'average' answers to the survey: First of all, I double-counted the '5' scores, the proportion of people who found each time or place a 'sure-fire' source of great ideas, because I think that's just as important as 'average' score. Then, because when you average scores you get most of them clustered around the 3 average, I 'stretched' the results so that the top-scoring source (brainstorming) received a normalized score of 5 and the lowest-scoring source (being sad or depressed) received a normalized score of 2. Finally, I rounded the results to the nearest 0.5. The results then more closely map, in standard deviation and distribution of results, an individual's scoring. Here are the normalized scores in order for the 36 questions (for copying and pasting into your own spreadsheet): 4.0 4.0 3.0 3.5 3.5 4.0 3.0 4.5 3.0 3.5 4.5 4.0 5.0 3.0 3.0 3.5 4.0 3.0 2.5 2.5 3.5 3.0 3.0 4.5 4.0 4.0 2.0 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5 4.0 4.5 5.0 3.5 4.0

Bad Geek Ideas

Bad Geek Ideas 12/31/2003 12:19 AM

The Eight Biggest Tech Flops Ever: I haven't even heard of half of these: Data Play? Magic Cap? Go?

WebTV: A type of internet appliance that used a TV, instead of a monitor, to display web pages. Initially popular with the tech-averse when it shipped in 1996, Microsoft would buy the company for $425 million a year later. But when sales stalled at around a million users, someone woke up and realized that low-resolution TVs are lousy at displaying emails and web pages. Microsoft has since renamed WebTV MSN TV, but it's not any better. If you're reading this on a WebTV - or an MSN TV -- I'm sorry for calling your kid ugly, but get yourself a real computer. You'll like it a whole lot better.

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Widget ideas

Widget ideas 04/11/2005 04:59 PM
Tom and I were talking about how useless most of the currently existing Dashboard Widgets are, and this guy agrees: What I'm afraid we're going to see is a huge influx of extraordinarily useless stuff—more iTunes controllers, duplications of existing...

Blogging Ideas

Blogging Ideas 06/02/2004 05:01 PM
I've just agreed to be the official blogger of for the first day of Boston.com's Ideas Boston 2004 conference. The redoubtable Scott Kirsner will be blogging the second day. The blog should show up on Boston.com somewhere. Looks like a great conference and it should be fun to blog......

Gift ideas

Gift ideas 12/11/2003 01:09 PM
For that special someone. Kinda/sorta nsfw and/or offensive.Via Bifurcated Rivets.Again.(flash?)

Donation Ideas

Donation Ideas 07/20/2002 11:08 AM

The Year In Ideas

The Year In Ideas 12/13/2003 12:45 PM
popo writes "The New York Times Magazine has a review of the year's most original and interesting ideas. They include "The Tornado in a Can" ("A contained ...

Ideas for Better Conversations

Ideas for Better Conversations 04/06/2005 05:53 PM

The Idea: A summary of the importance of conversation as a catalyst of cultural evolution, the seven purposes of conversation, some 'cultural anthropology' on how conversations 'operate' today, and a first stab at some rules or principles we could learn and adopt to produce better, more effective and productive conversations. In my article Seeing the Big Picture (Building a Bigger Frame) I argued for the need for more expansive thinking to encompass, understand and build on different points of view, rather than reinforcing and polarizing those points of view through parochial and antagonistic argument. One of the crucial tools we use to exercise and expand our thinking is conversation, and it occurred to me that if we want to learn to think in ways that transcend the old, learning to converse in ways that transcend the old might be a good place to start. Humberto Maturana has said: Human existence takes place in the relational space of conversation. This means that, even though from a biological perspective we are Homo Sapiens, our way of living - that is to say, our human condition - takes place in our form of relating to each other and the world we bring forth in our daily living through conversation. If you're like me, you've engaged in your share of eavesdropping in public places -- restaurants, bars, elevators, cocktail parties, subway trains. What is disturbing is not that the subject matter and arguments are usually inane (though they are), but that the syntax, the flow, and the composition of the conversational threads are so awkward, sloppy, selfish and extravagant. It's been said that conversation is like a dance: It requires some grace, some courtesy to avoid stepping on your partners' toes, and agreement on who (at any point) is leading and who is following. Perhaps this is why conversations that involve three or more people at once are often so clumsy, more like a sequence of two-person conversations one after the other with (to strain the dance analogy) different people constantly butting in, usually before the song in progress has properly ended. Recently I read a wonderful quote that went something like this: Are you listening or just waiting your turn to talk? Sound like someone you know? A recent article< /a> by Australian Open Space practitioner Alan Stewart suggests five purposes for conversation: learning, reassurance, building trust, "working out what is important" and entertainment. Here's (I think) a more complete list from one of my 2003 posts: Educating: teaching or learning something useful or interesting Conceptualizing: Thinking out loud, organizing and articulating thoughts, challenging, understanding something better, reassuring Rehearsing: practicing to improve language skills Socializing: finding people with similar ideas, interests or ambitions Convincing: selling, seducing, persuading, engaging, building trust Assisting: helping others or getting help Entertaining: amusing, escaping, overcoming boredom, indifference, loneliness, shyness, or low self-esteem It's humbling to note that Bernd Heinrich provides examples in Mind of the Raven of all seven of these purposes to various raven vocalizations. And in his examples, ravens seem to be decidedly better at it than most humans. Perhaps that's due to the fact they've been around longer than we have, so they've had more practice at it. It couldn't be just that they have better manners, could it? ;-) In his article Stewart says: From circles of elders around ancient campfires to the conversations in the cafés and salons that spawned the French Revolution, people have always gathered for real conversation about questions that matter. In those times and places where innovation is born other simple conditions are also present. In addition to pursuit of a question that really matters and commitment to creating the space and time to explore it, it is crucial that mutual listening and a spirit of discovery infuse the conversations. A certain type of "magic" appears—the magic of a new collective intelligence arising from the individual minds present in the conversation. The wisdom needed to address the concerns of any group is already "in the middle of the circle" waiting to be tapped. These webs of conversations and the action commitments that naturally arise from them can serve as the energy generator, the amplifier, the core unit of change force for co-evolving the future in any system. He quotes Konrad Lorenz' on the hazards of conversation: "Said is not heard; heard is not understood; understood is not agreed to; agreed to is not carried out". This is a more concise way of laying out the enormous intellectual and emotional challenge entailed in conversation that I described in my That's Not What I Meant article . Here is a recap of my amateur observations about conversations from that post: Linguistics professor Deborah Tannenbaum says women and men (with some notable exceptions) converse in entirely different ways, and they converse differently with members of the opposite sex than with members of their own. Conversations have a myriad of complex but unspoken cultural norms, styles and rituals (taking turns, pausing, nodding, apologizing for interrupting or misunderstanding etc.) When two people with different norms, styles, or rituals try to converse, or when a third person ignorant of the styles or rituals shared by the other two tries to enter a conversation, the result is both comical and tragic. A form of violence, even. Most people don't appear to listen to what they themselves are saying. Many conversations include someone saying "I didn't say that" when in fact they did. I suspect if people listened to a tape or video recording of their conversations they would be stunned. They might never say anything again! Most of the real communication in a conversation is not in the words. It's in the nuances of body and eye language. It's in the tone of voice. It's in the pauses. It's in the physical proximity or distance of the conversants. Many effective conversations appear to be really interviews. That entails specific roles for the two conversants, with the interviewer's role being the more difficult and more important. If one person is mostly asking questions and the other person is doing most of the talking, it's an interview, not a conversation. Conversations with more than two people are generally either parallel sequences of two-person  conversations, or moderated conversations, where one person is clearly directing the conversational 'traffic'. Conversations would, I think, be much more effective if we had a ritual of having each conversant state upfront what their personal objective for the conversation is. I appreciate that in some cases this must be done tactfully: "I've wanted to meet you since Mr. A told me that you... ", or "I'm looking for some help with..." In the absence of such a protocol, a lot of initial conversations exhaust an enormous amount of participants' energy trying to figure this out tacitly. From watching online chat (the only written medium that in my opinion is fast and immediate enough to really qualify as 'conversation') and listening to young people especially talk, what people seem to want most from conversation with friends is reassurance. Everyone is always fishing for compliments and confirmation, and, unless and until they clearly know and trust the offerer very well, dubious of the offerer's motivation when they get them. Few people, it seems, are really looking for advice, debate, or 'constructive criticism' in a conversation. But many seem enthusiastic to offer these things anyway! You can tell almost immediately whether participants in a conversation trust each other or not. If you want to observe conversations where there is trust, go out for dinner a lot, and avoid offices and bars. I'm coming to believe that good conversation, like good collaboration, is a skill, and, just as a lot of practice dancing badly does not make you a better dancer, just talking a lot does not necessarily make you a better conversationalist (in fact I suspect it may make you worse at it, by entrenching bad habits). If it's a skill it should be possible to learn it and teach it. And, while the seven 'purposes' of conversations bulleted in red above might require somewhat different skills, I suspect that there is a basic conversational 'skill set' that is common to all purposes. The following list of 'rules' or 'principles' or 'elements' of good conversation constitute my first attempt at identifying what we would need to learn, and teach, to be better conversationalists. Unfortunately, it seems likely that the quality of the conversation will inevitably be at the level of the poorest conversationalist, just as the performance of a dancing couple will reflect the least-accomplished partner. This list is the result of thinking out loud, and I'm sure it is far from complete. Please join the conversation! We need to learn to do three things simultaneously: (a) listen intently and carefully to what others are saying, (b) think the arguments and concepts through in our own mind (and draw our own conclusions), and (c) articulate what we are going to say before we speak. This is extremely difficult, especially in a large group. If all participants do not do this, the result is a vicious cycle of poor conversation: not listening (and disengaging), not thinking, and not articulating properly, leading to more 'not listening'. We need to limit how many words we say before we allow, and encourage, others to speak, to keep the conversation 'in sync'. We need to allow pauses in the conversation, for people to catch up, and think coherently about what direction the conversation might most effectively go next. We need perhaps (I'm not sure) to allow and encourage people to pull themselves periodically out of the conversation and facilitate it as if they were non-participants: summarizing, time-checking, asking questions, drawing people out, even suggesting how the conversation might be made more productive. Is that presumptuous and manipulative? We need, as I suggest above, a 'ritual' (protocol) by which each participant and new entrant in a conversation begins with a brief upfront tactful statement of their personal objective for the conversation. We need another 'ritual' that would allow participants whose objective in the conversation is not being met to leave without excuse or apology and without other participants (even if there is only one!) taking offense. How else will selfish conversationalists ever learn? Back to the dance analogy, we need to evolve (or rediscover) tacit ways to cede and request the floor without interrupting the conversation or its flow, and tacit ways to invite or welcome others to join a conversation without side-tracking it with formal introductions. Could we evolve, as birds seem to have done, some graceful (good conversation, it seems to me, has a lot to do with grace) wordless gestures that would accomplish this, and allow us to signal that we would like to speak, who (if we have the floor) we are inviting to speak next, when we are finished speaking, that we understand, that we don't understand, that the speaker should let someone else talk, etc. We need to learn to read and understand body language, and to express body language unambiguously. It's an essential part of the conversation, and suppressing it or distorting it muffles the conversation. There is a new technology just announced that captures every conversation you participate in, records it, compresses it, and transcribes it. I'm ambivalent about this. Recording of conversations makes me shudder, yet it might allow us to retrieve information (contact information, context information) later that could be enormously valuable. We need to decide how to extract the benefits from such technology without incurring its risks, and without its trust-threatening and conversation-dampening attributes. We need to learn to be much better story-tellers, and more improvisational. We need to learn effective listening techniques, and critical thinking skills. Prevailing wisdom is that we need to be more respectful, more polite in our conversations. While I don't doubt this would be helpful, I'm not sure it can be taught or mandated. What are the 'model behaviours' that set an example for respect and politeness in conversations? What can we do to tactfully nudge those (especially when it's our boss!) who fail to demonstrate respect and politeness even when others are behaving in an exemplary way? OK, I've said (more than) enough. Thank you for listening. Your turn to speak.

VCs Don't Invest in Ideas

VCs Don't Invest in Ideas 03/26/2005 01:20 PM
SiliconBeat looks at the overhang in venture capital because interest rates have led to a general glut of capital, and wonders if all that supply benefits demand: So if you think you've got a good idea, you're marginally more...

Ideas for Saving the Internet

Ideas for Saving the Internet 12/31/2003 10:50 PM

101 Ways to Save the Internet: Some great ideas here.

Create the all-in-one inbox Email, phone calls, instant messages — they should all go into a single app. [...] Simplify Web publishing Why can't we post files from our desktop to a Web site in one drag-and-drop move? [...] Release Episode III on the Net It's going straight to video anyway. [...] Upgrade to IPv6

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Ideas for Social Software

Ideas for Social Software 12/31/2003 09:38 AM
Seconding Liz's linking to Matt Haughey's ideas for useful social software. Matt suggests "Epinions + Friendster," which sounds a lot like a company that Paul English, Rick Levine and I tried to start a few years ago. Matt puts the problem well: Last summer I moved to a town in a place far away from where I've spent the past few years, and one of the first problems I had to solve was finding the perfect everything. I quickly amassed a bunch of questions that took months of trial and error to answer through a network of new friends and...

Book giving ideas

Book giving ideas 12/19/2004 03:21 PM
Not from me this time, though if I read more new books I would recommend some too you. This one comes from the New York Times: 100 Notable Books of the Year. This year the [New York Times] Book Review has selected 100 Notable Books from those reviewed since the Holiday Books issue of Dec. 7, 2003. Sadly I've only read one on the entire list, The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan, the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America, which was great. 2004 has been my most pathetic year for reading. I used to read the number of books I've read this year in a week back in the day. Hopefully 2005 will be different.

I need OSCON talk ideas...

I need OSCON talk ideas... 02/04/2003 11:54 PM
As Jim notes, it's almost time to get submissions in for this year's OSCON. What should I submit this year? I've got a selection of stuff on my MySQL Stuff page. I could update/recycle some of that. But it'd be...

New Political Protest Ideas

New Political Protest Ideas 06/14/2004 12:57 PM
Signal Orange has an idea to protest the Republican National Convention. Sounds a lot more effect than some other plans going around.

Ideas for Buyers and Renters

Ideas for Buyers and Renters 08/22/2004 09:19 PM
An idea to make it easier to purchase a house, and another idea to make it easier to pay rent.

Boston Ideas bl0g

Boston Ideas bl0g 06/08/2004 03:31 PM
Scott Kirsner is blogging the Boston Ideas conference. (I blogged it yesterday, at the same url.) Music, stem cells, the brain, biological computers......

Should ideas be considered as sources?

Should ideas be considered as sources? 09/09/2004 05:30 AM
While programming you should do lot's of decisions. The reason why you choose to implement something and something not is essential. Should it be considered as "sources" and also included with src distribution?

Ideas For The Post Panther Mac

Ideas For The Post Panther Mac 10/29/2003 07:09 PM
The difference between local computers and those on the network must be minimized. (Can Sar via MyAppleMenu)

14 Small-Cap Stock Ideas

14 Small-Cap Stock Ideas 01/22/2004 10:18 AM
In a big year for the market, small caps stood tall. Here's a look at the current Foolish 8 stocks.

Wild & Crazy CPU Ideas

Wild & Crazy CPU Ideas 07/09/2004 08:14 PM
Well, nobody could call this anything but far-fetched, but it makes for good late-Friday relief: Paul Murphy thinks Apple should switch over to SPARC processors. Hey, I’m down with that, think of the employee discounts.

New ideas for Clyde regeneration

New ideas for Clyde regeneration 08/04/2004 02:39 AM
Plans to transform wasteland along a large stretch of the River Clyde are due to be announced.
Grok Description matches for AP9 PassportToFun Shares Ideas on Making this Summer Fun for You and Your Kids
GrokA matches for AP9 PassportToFun Shares Ideas on Making this Summer Fun for You and Your Kids

Chip fraud quartet jailed for VAT scam

Chip fraud quartet jailed for VAT scam 07/19/2004 09:35 AM
The Register Jul 19 2004 1:59PM GMT

Internet users warned of cheque fraud
scam

Internet users warned of cheque fraud
scam 01/02/2004 11:00 PM
Irish News Jan 2 2004 10:25PM ET

SCAM FILE: Avoid fraud at Internet
auctions

SCAM FILE: Avoid fraud at Internet
auctions 08/15/2004 06:02 AM
Kansascity.com - Sun Aug 15, 07:33 am GMT

Bank issues warning of internet fraud
scam

Bank issues warning of internet fraud
scam 07/27/2004 02:25 PM
Ireland On-Line Jul 27 2004 6:39PM GMT

Scam Busters Just As Bad As Scam
Victims?

Scam Busters Just As Bad As Scam
Victims? 01/19/2004 05:05 AM
An odd article out of South Africa complaining that scam busters are just as bad as scam victims - in that they act in just as predictable a manner. Of course, the scam busters aren't the folks losing money to the scammers, and, in fact, they often are doing a good job to spread news of a scam to protect potential victims. So, I'm a bit confused as to what's so upsetting about people taking it upon themselves to tell others about a scam. Certainly, there are some things that don't deserve to be publicized, but are, due to the intensity of the efforts against them. However, scams are something that clearly should be publicized to limit the negative impact. It seems that the real complaint of the writer isn't so much scam busters, but "fad" busters who complain about people getting hooked on the latest fad. However, fads and scams are two very different things.

Scam Within A Scam Warning

Scam Within A Scam Warning 12/22/2003 07:43 PM
There have been a ton of warnings about so-called "phishing" spam scams - where a very realistic email from a well-known financial firm asks you to confirm the details of your account. Of course, the email isn't real and the scammers just want your account details. They go through all sorts of tricks to hide the fact that the email isn't real, but the latest such phishing scam uses a bit of social engineering. It warns people about such scams, and then says they need to fill out new information to avoid being taken by such a scam. It seems the scammers are trying to get increasingly clever, and it's an interesting social engineering trick to try to get people to let down their guard by first warning them about a scam - and then scamming them anyway.

Scam I am

Scam I am 04/06/2005 10:04 AM
Management consulting is a giant fraud! OK, we knew that. But what Martin Kihn reveals in his entertaining new book is just what miserable lives these know-nothing "experts" lead.

Following The Bouncing 419 Scam

Following The Bouncing 419 Scam 07/09/2004 01:13 PM
Because no one can believe just how often people are fooled by obvious 419 scams, the folks over at TheRegister have put together a story looking at the details of how one works, including the entire series of emailed correspondences. They also checked out the fake bank that the sucker sent his money too, and even spoke to someone claiming to work at the bank, who quickly got upset and hung up on them as he discovered where the phone call was headed. However, as they point out, it was the guy's own greed that got him into the situation: "He allowed his desire for riches to suck him into a scheme that - even if true - he must have known to be illegal. He has no recourse to law and the 419ers are laughing all the way to their bogus London bank."

New advance fee scam

New advance fee scam 01/05/2005 08:31 AM
Personal Computer World Jan 5 2005 12:49PM GMT

Anatomy of a 419 scam

Anatomy of a 419 scam 07/09/2004 08:31 AM
Exclusive One victim's first-hand account of advance fee fraud

Romancing The E-Scam

Romancing The E-Scam 12/02/2003 12:13 AM
It's fairly impressive what scammers can trick people out of. A man in Minnesota has been arrested for tricking two women out of over $300,000. He met them both in "romantic" online chat rooms, and convinced them to give him money to invest in various real estate deals that apparently didn't exist. One woman was scammed out of $36,000, but the other forked over $280,000 before she realized that the real estate deals didn't exist. So, here's the question: you meet someone in an online "romance" chat room and they start asking you for money. At what point do you stop and do a little due diligence before just sending them checks? I would think that most people wouldn't even bother to speak to the guy again, but if you can get past that, you'd at least try to find out a little more about what you were investing in. Some people apparently have too much money on their hands and don't seem to care what happens to it.

How Will They Scam Thee?

How Will They Scam Thee? 01/27/2004 02:56 PM
The FTC counts the ways consumers are hoodwinked in a new report.

Scam the scamers

Scam the scamers 12/02/2003 01:38 AM
Inspirert av Marcus sin post fra sin spam folder, søkte jeg litt på nettet og fant en hysterisk morsom site: Quatloos! som er en site for diverse e-mail scams. Spesiellt artig var denne samtalen mellom DR. ELVIS ANYIM, the Procurment...

Warning over net name scam

Warning over net name scam 04/28/2004 04:10 PM
BBC Apr 28 2004 7:56PM GMT

Latest Scam: Pay Us For Using @

Latest Scam: Pay Us For Using @ 08/17/2004 03:23 PM
TheRegister has picked up one of the more amusing scam emails apparently making the rounds. It's not entirely clear how much they're actually asking for (the quoted email shows a few different amounts), but those behind the scam are suggesting that they've copyright ed the "@" symbol and users need to pay (somewhere around $10 to $20) for an unlimited one-year license. The thing is... some people might actually fall for something like this.

yet another new phising scam

yet another new phising scam 01/22/2004 12:45 PM
Gadi Evron (Jan 22 2004)

IRS warns of e-mail scam

IRS warns of e-mail scam 04/30/2004 09:57 PM

Internet scam uncovered

Internet scam uncovered 05/03/2004 10:12 PM
Sunday Times South Africa May 4 2004 2:57AM GMT

ASA slaps Nodots scam

ASA slaps Nodots scam 12/04/2003 07:18 AM
EU Registry Services also cautioned

Publishing-scam vocabulary

Publishing-scam vocabulary 09/21/2004 06:23 AM
Cory Doctorow: Teresa Nielsen Hayden's latest blog-essay on publishing scams explores the vocabulary choices that tip off the likelihood of a sleazy publishing scam:

This is a segment of a larger piece, the working title of which has been "Ambient Misinformation about Publishing and Writing, and the Cultivation of the Reader Mind: A Rant I Didn't Get to Deliver at Noreascon." It has occurred to me that I could write about this one for a very long time without exhausting the subject.

Certain words and phrases are like little genetic markers for scammers. Here's a non-exhaustive list, non-exhaustively explained:

1. "Giving new writers a chance." Also: "Helping new writers."

While agents and publishers frequently do just this thing, they don't talk about it in those terms. For them, it's always a specific new book, a specific new author. Making judgements about which book and which writer they're going to work with is the heart of their job. When you hear someone talking in an indiscriminately general fashion about giving a chance to new writers, there's something wrong.

Same goes for "helping new writers." There might be legitimate projects aimed at helping new writers as a class, but the business they're in isn't agenting or publishing.

Link

EBI beats Internet scam

EBI beats Internet scam 09/02/2004 12:40 AM
AME Info Sep 2 2004 4:34AM GMT

Web of guilt in Google scam

Web of guilt in Google scam 05/18/2004 04:43 AM
New York Daily News May 18 2004 8:39AM GMT

Internet Scam Slammed

Internet Scam Slammed 09/14/2004 01:47 AM
Stock Patrol Sep 14 2004 6:30AM GMT

Backwards scam spam

Backwards scam spam 09/07/2004 07:41 PM
From: kenbergstore01@fastermail.com Subject: Sales Enquiry.............. Date: September 7, 2004 1:48:45 PM PDT To: [hidden] perl.org Hello sales, I want to order for some items from your store to my store and the shipment will be international to africa(nigeria) mail me back for the type of payment you accept and the list of items that i want.your responce is needed urgently. REGARDS, KEN. -- _______________________________________________ Get your free email from http://fastermail.com Powered by Outblaze How can anyone possible fall for...

More Scam Victims Who Don't Believe
They've Been Scammed

More Scam Victims Who Don't Believe
They've Been Scammed 04/28/2004 11:40 AM
Last year, we wrote about a man in Florida who gave all of his money to Nigerian scammers and still refused to believe he had been conned. It seems like this is fairly common. Over in Switzerland, police tried to explain to someone why the $115,000 he had sent to Nigeria was never going to be seen again, and he refused to believe him. Despite plenty of evidence being presented to him, six months later he was found sending another $38,000 to Nigerian scammers. There's a point at which you wonder if some of these people almost deserve to lose their money.

Scam Combines Patriot Act FUD With IE
Bug

Scam Combines Patriot Act FUD With IE
Bug 01/24/2004 06:10 PM

Other News: Mob Phone Scam

Other News: Mob Phone Scam 02/12/2004 11:28 AM
An organized crime scam sucked $200 million out of victims' accounts via innocuous little charges on phone bills.

Other News: "Do Not Call" Scam

Other News: "Do Not Call" Scam 02/13/2004 11:54 AM
The FTC points out a fake "Do Not Call" website.

Man Sentenced in $5M Wheelchair Scam

Man Sentenced in $5M Wheelchair Scam 12/20/2003 01:30 AM
Reuters via Wired News Dec 20 2003 0:35AM ET

AP9 PassportToFun Shares Ideas on Making this Summer Fun for You and Your Kids

The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry: passporttofun scam passporttofun fraud apr passporttofun