Chase Jarvis recently posted about his Create-Share-Sustain paradigm. I’ve referenced it, linked to it, quoted it several times this past year. In that paradigm, the notion of sustaining the create-share cycle is generally seen as a financial one. It’s the grease on the wheels that allows you to keep going – whether that’s working at Starbucks or a day-job you love, or even making photographs as a career itself. But there are other means by which we sustain ourselves. Man, Jesus once said, does not live by bread alone. Of course, He was referring to prayer, a sustenance of the soul. Art too sustains the soul. But how do you sustain art?

Once again, The Times Magazine looks back on the past year from our favored perch: ideas. Like a magpie building its nest, we have hunted eclectically, though not without discrimination, for noteworthy notions of 2009 — the twigs and sticks and shiny paper scraps of human ingenuity, which, when collected and woven together, form a sort of cognitive shelter, in which the curious mind can incubate, hatch and feather. Unlike birds, we can also alphabetize. And so we hereby present, from A to Z, the most clever, important, silly and just plain weird innovations we carried back from all corners of the thinking world. To offer a nonalphabetical option for navigating the entries, this year we have attached tags to each item indicating subject matter. We hope you enjoy.

several major corporations have taken inspiration from the open-source software movement and are experimenting with forums for sharing environmentally friendly innovations and building communities around them. The first such effort, the Eco-Patent Commons, was started in January 2008 by I.B.M., Nokia, Pitney Bowes and Sony in collaboration with the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

Gunter Pauli, from the "Zero Emissions Research Initiative" gives a vibrant speech about how nature provides an important model to find solutions to the ecological crisis. His call for action is followed by disruptive and inspiring examples ranging from battery-less devices to biomimetism.

“Once you develop a style and become known for a particular kind of work – turn in the other direction, stop being formulaic and re-invent yourself”

The Elders are an independent group of eminent global leaders, brought together by Nelson Mandela, who offer their collective influence and experience to support peace building, help address major causes of human suffering and promote the shared interests of humanity.

Embedded in everything from cellphone bills to car-rental contracts, ''hidden fees" are hiding in plain sight. Two economists explain why they're likely to stay that way.

All the elements are in place for cell phones stuffed with many different microcurrencies.

In the late 1800s, the Brooklyn Bridge was built with no power tools, no heavy machinery, and only a basic, evolving understanding of how to make steel. It’s not these facts, but the stories surrounding the facts that inspire me when I take a good, long stare at a suspension bridge. But first…

Twitter bots, aggregators, social software, mobile apps - we use these things more and more in our daily routines to make our lives better. But can we also use them to remake our cities altogether? How can these technologies be applied to transform urban spaces, changing them from the centralized, hard-coded things they are today into finely-tuned, fluid, user-operated systems that are efficient, sustainable and fit for life in the 21st century?

I tried a little experiment in 2008: living smaller. I caught public transport only. I got rid of extra lightbulbs. I baked my own bread. I froze my own dumplings. I didn't buy any gadget. I didn't buy any CD. I didn't get a flatscreen TV. No home phone; no home internet; no cable TV; no new art; no gin. I only took one international trip (which was quite important) and two domestic flights (to my dear parent's 80th birthdays) but turned down several work opportunities that involved flying, even though it meant less satisfactory participation at SC34 WG1. I let my passport lapse.

Great website design.

“De auto is de grootste oplossing van de klimaatverandering, niet het probleem” en “For most people denial is a river in Africa“. Twee curieuze uitspraken van een van de voormalig topmensen van softwarebedrijf SAP, Shai Agassi. Agassi houdt zich tegenwoordig bezig met de/een oplossing van het klimaatprobleem met zijn nieuwe bedrijf Better Place.

Anand Agarawala presents BumpTop, a user interface that takes the usual desktop metaphor to a glorious, 3-D extreme, transforming file navigation into a freewheeling playground of crumpled documents and clipping-covered "walls."

Optimism is a political act. Entrenched interests use despair, confusion and apathy to prevent change. They encourage modes of thinking which lead us to believe that problems are insolvable, that nothing we do can matter, that the issue is too complex to present even the opportunity for change. It is a long-standing political art to sow the seeds of mistrust between those you would rule over: as Machiavelli said, tyrants do not care if they are hated, so long as those under them do not love one another.

Dutch design agency

Maybe you've felt it - the buzz in a room, the tension in the air, the accelerating pace at which people are connecting and the realization that we're all in this together, even if we don't quite know what "this" is. At least in my small pocket of the world (wide web), something is brewing. That something is The Future of Science.

A robot that relaxes when stroked and cuddled mesmerises another that loves human faces. The University of the West of England's David McGoran takes his Heart Robot on a touchy feely tour, while Matt Denton of Micromagic Systems explains how his facial r

So we're trying something new: we're going to list some of the ideas we've been waiting to see, but only describe them in general terms. It may be that recipes for ideas are the most useful form anyway, because imaginative people will take them in directi

Breakthrough ideas are around the corner, says the Google co-founder. But most of us are failing to take a chance on them.

If I had to pick the critical technology for the 20th century, the bit of social lubricant without which the wheels would've come off the whole enterprise, I'd say it was the sitcom. Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened--ri

Chris Anderson’s FREE! essay in Wired is certainly a good think and is the culmination of a lot of thinking around what digital technologies mean for the economy. As a photographer, I immediately think about what Chris is saying in terms of photography.

Why let all of your ideas die with you? Current Copyright law prevents anyone from building upon your creativity for 70 years after your death. Live on in collaboration with others. Make an intellectual property donation.

MindMeister supports all the standard features of a classic mind mapping tool - only online, and with as many simultaneous users as you like!

Here it is: I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly.

We don't need 'leadership' or 'leaders'. What we need is experimenters.The way to create working models that work better than the dysfunctional ones we have now, in a complex system where no one is in control and no one has the answers, is to try things.

The internet is a copy machine. At its most foundational level, it copies every action, every character, every thought we make while we ride upon it.

And hello, 2008! We’re planning to greet it with some kinder, gentler resolutions, and you can bet they won’t involve the kitchen, the remote, or running shoes. But they will involve a shutter. We’ve come up with 19 photo-related New Year’s resol

Latest news about new sustainable or eco-ideas

Writing is easy, it’s quality that’s hard. Any idiot who knows 5 words can write a sentence (e.g. “Dufus big much Scott is”). It might be grammarless, broken, or inaccurate but it is writing. This means that when people can’t start they’re ima

We love GNOME. Sometime around 2.6 it started becoming really, really damned good, and a lot faster and more responsive. All kinds of nice things like Network Manager, the Nautilus CD burner and the SFTP support popped up. It helps that most major Linux a

AllThingsD.com is a Web site devoted to news, analysis and opinion on technology, the Internet and media. It is a fusion of different media styles, different topics, different formats and different sources.

Are you drowning in email? Is your inbox a source of constant low level stress? Over the last year, David Allen’s GTD has completely changed my work habits and I am now a happier, more efficient, less anxious web worker.

Dabble DB lets you build database applications with no hassle. It’s easy to use yet extremely flexible and powerful. Screenshot of table view Unlike a spreadsheet, you can save multiple views of your data from any angle and re-organize it on a whim. And

"The idea that we could better understand ourselves by looking at how we employ technology was and remains the driving force of my work as a journalist."

BibliOdyssey Books~~Illustrations~~Science~~History~~Visual Materia Obscura~~Eclectic Bookart.

An unofficial Google Maps blog tracking the websites, ideas and tools being influenced by Google Maps.