What is "the semantic web"?

The term "Semantic Web" bandied about quite a bit. Here's a brief but concise introduction that helps to explain it.

Intro to the Semantic Web, LITA Social Software Showcase 2009

View more presentations from bauderj.

Social Media, Innovation and Adoption

I liked this video by Clay Shirky about how communication innovation is changing the way conversation happens:

Where's George?

Last week the lunch crew in the building I work in decided to have a Franken pizza party (presumably to celebrate the fact that Minnesota again has two senators) but more likely because the cupboard at home was bare and lunch ingredients were elusive. They came around asking for preferences (for pizza, not political) and based on participation, the collection was three dollars per person for lunch. I went to dig out the requisite three dollars and as I got them ready to hand over noticed that one bill had stamped on it in red ink Where's George.com.

Being the curious sort, I had to check it out. So I scounged up another bill for the pizza, kept the one with the red stamp on it and did some web investigation. What I found was an intriguing little website where you can find out where that paper money in your pocket has been or where it will go next.All you need to do is enter the denomination, series, and serial number of any US dollar bill, and your current USA ZIP or Canadian Post Code in the box.

If the dollar bill you enter has been entered here before, you will get back a list of all the cities/states where that bill has been, as well as travel time, distance and speed of each hop!

If this dollar bill has not been entered before, you started the list!



Since my bill was already stamped, I registered at the site, followed the instructions for tracking a bill and found that the bill had originated in St. Cloud, MN on May 28, 2009.



One little flaw I found in the tracking information was that in following the directions in entering my bill by using my current zip code where I was, it did not actually track the bill's entire path. I knew where I had received the bill in change (Pat's Foods in Ontonagon, MI) and it had traveled considerably farther than the 150 miles to Mountain Iron, MN indicated by using my current location. It was interesting, nevertheless.

The site allows you to send and receive an anonymous e-mail message to contact the person who entered the bill and get a response from them if you wish to do so. There are a number of other things to do here too, fun/tools, a store, a top ten list, help, and a variety of reports that can be generated. It's easy to navigate and some curious fun besides.

If you're from Canada, be sure to check out Where's Willy? to track your Canadian Currency!

Thing 42 Music 2.0

I set up both a Pandora account and a Last.fm account as well as using blip.fm and Grooveshark. I left an embedded Grooveshark widget from this winter's cold spell in my sidebar for fun..Baby, It's Cold Outside..and it was!

My Last.FM widget is in the sidebar. I've received some suggestions from people, but mostly listen as the spirit moves me.

I do listen to a variety of Internet radio stations. The one I enjoyed most this winter was listening to friends from Ontonagon play Trivia as teams on the local station there. It was nice to hear friendly voices playing, even when you couldn't be there to participate.

Thing 41 Mashup Your Life

I tried out a number of different aggregators. The one I use the most and find helpful is Friendfeed. I added my Friendfeed badge to the sidebar. You can see most of my web2.0 affiliations are added to it.

What I like about it is that you can be as active or inactive as you like on Friendfeed. It's like Twitter expanded. You can chose to be part of the conversation, or just be solitary when you want to. Like Twitter, what gives it value is the people you follow. I've learned a lot of things just by seeing what those I follow are interested in. It's sometimes led me in unexpected directions. It's definitely expanded my interests and my world. I use it more for professional interests. Facebook is for my closer contacts.

Thing 39 Digital Storytelling

This thing could eat up lots of my time and was lots of fun. It was amazing to see what you could do free so easily. For more options, you could pay for additional capabilities.

I created one project in Smilebox and another in Scrapblog. The pages from Scrapblog are posted above.

Picture Book Fun for Thing 37