CLAUDE CHAPPE (1763-1805), French engineer, was born at Brulon (Sarthe) in 1763. He was the inventor of an optical telegraph which was widely used in France until it was superseded by the electric telegraph. His device consisted of an upright post, on the top of which was fastened a transverse bar, while at the ends of the latter two smaller arms moved on pivots. The position of these bars represented words or letters; and by means of machines placed at intervals such that each was distinctly visible from the next, messages could be conveyed through 50 leagues in a quarter of an hour. The machine was adopted by the Legislative Assembly in 1792, and in the following year Chappe was appointed ingenieur-telegraphe; but the originality of his invention was so much questioned that he was seized with melancholia and (it is said) committed suicide at Paris in 1805. ( (50 leagues) per (quarter hour) = 690 mph

It follows that the design process of the future will require a more sophisticated understanding of the user community. This starts with anthropological fieldwork, and it includes participatory design processes, mock-ups and prototypes, and systematic mapping-out of the whole universe of potential applications niches. A good place to start, as I’ve mentioned in the context of wearable devices, is with relationships. Think of the unbundled-and-disembedded cell phone functionalities not as devices for making phone calls, but as infrastructures for maintaining relationships. What is the informational architecture of a user’s ongoing relationship with a family member, a school, a doctor, a video game company, and so on, and what could those architectures become? What issues, privacy for example, are at stake in the design and ongoing renegotiation of that architecture?

Here, then, are some of the fundamentals of professional networking. They will sound cumbersome and abstract. You will be able to skip some of the steps as you get established in your field, but if you are starting from zero then the process really is quite complicated. 1) Know your goals. 2) Identify relevant people. 3) Court these people individually. 4) Meet these people face-to-face at a professional meeting. 5) Exchange drafts. 6) Follow up. Lets look at each in turn.

The Centre for Mobilties Research (CeMoRe) studies and researches the newly emerging interdisciplinary field of 'mobilities'. The concept of 'mobilities' encompasses both the large-scale movements of people, objects, capital, and information across the world, as well as the more local processes of daily transportation, movement through public space, and the travel of material things within everyday life.

on personality and network coordinates; how people who are good actors get ahead by molding themselves to the situation.

On March 2, 1791 sent a message 10 miles away. In about 4 minutes they transmitted the phrase: "If you succeed, you will bask in glory."

excellent french maps of the optical telegraph

In the context of online social networking, surveillance is something potentially empowering, subjectivity building and even playful – what I call participatory surveillance.

We see clusters of happy and unhappy individuals in the social network like blinking lights in this complex fabric that is made up of people where some people are happy and some people are unhappy and there is a kind of gray zone between them.

An idea is a multiple sequence of creative acts. This is important because it means that creativity isn’t just the domain of brilliant people, it’s also the domain of average people who travel to other groups.

"Just as Facebook is revolutionizing how individuals connect, Salesforce to Salesforce is revolutionizing how companies connect and share business information," said George Hu, executive vice president, products and marketing, salesforce.com.

eldercare site (in the style of babycenter)

The program will begin at 8:30 a.m. EST on Thursday, November 29 and continue until 5:30 p.m. Later that evening, portions of the the celebratory gathering will be Webcast from roughly 8:00-9:30 p.m. EST. The program continues on Friday, November 30, from

In making Facebook's useless-information-production apparatus central, the real value of the network decreases.

"The cheapness of communication is a double-edged sword," Dr. Reader says. Whereas you might enrich your life with more contacts, the things that are "important for intimate friendships," such as presents, meals and a ride in your car, he says, don't exis

Interview on the teeter totter in Homeless Dave's back yard.

funding for facebook apps

I've been told more than once that I'm a 'networked' guy. Although I've built my Portland network from scratch over the past 11 years, I don't consider myself a networker in a traditional sense. To me, a stereotypical networked person wears a suit, shows

Maybe, but I can only manage what I can measure. And in terms of things that I value, such as links, smart comments, traffic to my blog, etc, the SL appearance might as well have never happened. It didn't leave a ripple in the world I live in (AKA Real Li

my last event, the MeshWalk Palo Alto drew nearly 100 entrepreneurs and investors for a day of walking, was sponsored by Mohr Davidow Ventures, and well over a dozen angels and vc’s participated.

valdis has a blog

Why is it that the strongest advocates of a networked economy fail to see the importance of communities, which they wrongly equate to social networks?

After reading about twitter and investigating the other tools with twitter, it became easy just to dump all of the feeds into to twitter using http://twitterfeed.com/or http://www.rss2twitter.com/

techcrunch's take on style and fashion sites online; michael arrington really doesn't get the appeal, though he seems to get the business model.

You planned on going, but 3 hours before, it occurs to you that you have a job and don't have the power or skill to prioritize your networking life.

There are dozens of networking groups out there, and in honor of National Women's History Month this month, Loudoun Business wanted to provide businesswomen with a listing of several groups dedicated to their interests. Some are well-established, while ot

once upon a time, vince cate wrote the "alex" file system for mounting remote FTP sites. http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/cate92alex.html looks like a modern extension of same

todo: set up michigan chapter

there has to be a better word than "linkbait" to describe this in a positive way

CRACIN brings together community informatics researchers, community networking practitioners and government policy specialists from across Canada to document and assess the achievements of community-based ICT initiatives in the context of, among other thi

ndiyo appears to be a project that is building a thin client linux based terminal for kiosk and telecenter type applications. i say "appears" because it's not 100% clear from the blog what's going on.

note the black Houston to Atlanta link 8/31/05

gui showing your network performance along a scale (no diagnostics but nice visualization)

the preliminary to the "Bridging the Wizard Gap" workshop

use web100 tools to debug some kinds of network problems

classic from Phil Agre on how to work an online network in support of your research ends