Inside View

Call for Lifelong Learning

SOME OF OUR e-learning team will spend a few working days during the Christmas break examining the European Community's Lifelong Learning Programme call for applications. This new programme replaces Socrates, Leonardo da Vinci and the eLearning programmes. For those who read these words as the first step towards collaboration, start your deep reading below the line.

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Official Journal of the European Union -- "Call for Proposals Lifelong Learning Programme" (47k PDF)
EC Call and the meatier Part 1

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Inside UK Startups

ACT FAST and you can be among the first 10 subscribers to Vecosys.com, the group blog  covering Web 2.0 and Mobile start-ups across Europe. It emerged in a firestorm of LeWeb3 in Paris, appeared on my Twitterscope and is published by Sam Sethi and Mike Butcher.

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Six Degrees of Nike +

THE SCOPE TEAM stutter-stepped through filming a segment on six degrees of separation today and by happenstance also filmed a segment yesterday that came to fruition through the validity of the six separations theory. We recorded a live session of the Nike+ running shoe (technology in the photo) as Jonathan Sanderson explains.

Moleskine Windows

WHILE TOSSING OUT a writing anthology, I read familiar words. "Words, like eyes, are windows into the soul." As online essayists often say, each writer helps to enrichen the world. When they write emotively and share their experiences, they dangle their bits for all to see. Because long after they post their words or write their books, every phrase, all their sentences and their subtle turn of language will last as long as virtual memory. It takes courage to write and share. As another Christmas season approaches, I'm grateful for the privilege to read and share experiences both online and through letters. It often feels like I've discovered a hidden wing of a personal library and that I'm among the first to open the collections.

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Already Social

SAY WHAT YOU WILL about Bebo, MySpace, Facebook or any other form of social media, but the horse has bolted already. Anecdotal evidence we see when training Transition Year students on week-long short courses clearly documents that young teens are already engaged with social media long before schools acknowledge the existence of the networks in the first place.

Smart Spenders

INVESTMENT ALONE does not buy success and that business fact is no more apparent than in the realm of corporate R&D investment. Booz Allen Hamilton's second annual study of the world's 1000 largest corporate R&D accounts identifies 94 "high-leverage" innovators", including Black&Decker, Dentsply and SanDisk. These companies consistently spend less than their competitors on R&D and yet outperform their industries across a wide range of performance metrics.

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Barry Jaruzelski, Kevin Dehoff, and Rakesh Bordia -- "Smart Spenders"

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For My Birthday

AFTER I TURNED 20, I learned I was lucky to have a January birthday because whatever I didn't get for Christmas, I had a strong chance of getting for my birthday. So, for an upcoming birthday, I want both a direct drive record player and a manual typewriter. These were the first two implements I used to make money. They are the things my parents and grandparents used to communicate. Today, I type on a noiseless keyboardt and listen to music on a player that does not spin. Less than 40 years ago, both of those activities used totally different technologies. I wonder if I put on old vinyl and looked at a sheet of paper in a typewriter, would I be able to write faster than 500 words an hour?

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Blogging Conferences are Dead

EVEN THOUGH few company websites in Ireland offer newsfeeds, the corporate knowledge suggests that blogging conferences are dead. I've met 43 strangers at a wedding in Canterbury this weekend. Only six of them ever read a weblog. Another four liked the concept of reading short news items on the bottom of a television screen and they were entertained by the FreeNews flow I get on my mobile phone. It's not difficult finding blogs in mainstream life. Even some of the technically challenged artists I knew from the MAVIS programme in Dublin now see the Page Rank value of blogging. If only the Arts Council insisted upon newsfeeds as part of the accessibility matrix it occasionally uses when evaluating the online presence of festivals and groups it funds. Social software has proven its merit. It's time for an extended social conversation among all parts of Irish life instead of reducing talk of blogging to a slagging match.

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25 Killer Apps

PETER COFFEE lists his top 25 killer applications of all time. Notice the preponderance of spreadsheets in his listing.

One Million Christmases

FACT: There are fewer than 1m photos tagged as "Christmas" on Flickr. This happy squirrel by Doc18 is the "most interesing" Christmas photo on Flickr. And it should be--a toy covered in chocolate.

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