Jerusalem 2111 ~ International Sci-Fi Contest

MIT Media Lab student Natan Linder (of LuminAR fame) just pointed out the Jerusalem 2111 contest!

"The Jerusalem 2111 International Sci-Fi Animation Competition is a virtual and web-based contest in which users, 3D animators (professionals and amateurs) designers and architects from all over the world will be invited to submit their brief animated vision of Jerusalem, 100 years from today."

Dancing Auschwitz ~ Three Generations Survive...

I'm both laughing and crying, courtesy Cynical-C. Remembering the horror, but with a sense of humanity, hope, and humor... And further backstory... And even countering the critics.

Inhabitat Delights ~ A Curative Dose of Green!

I've overdosed of-late on the the color Oranje, much to my ultimate unhealthy-tude. So here's a restorative injection of gloriously Groen designs from Inhabitat!

Mouseless ~ Pranav's Latest I/O Idea @ MIT

Pranav Mistry of the Fluid Interface group here at MIT Media Lab here demo's his new Mouseless invisible computer mouse equivalent!

"Mouseless consists of an Infrared (IR) laser beam and an Infrared camera. Both IR laser and IR camera are embedded in the computer. The laser beam module is modified with a line cap and placed such that it creates a plane of IR laser just above the surface the computer sits on. The user cups their hand, as if a physical mouse was present underneath, and the laser beam lights up the hand which is in contact with the surface. The IR camera detects those bright IR blobs using computer vision. The change in the position and arrangements of these blobs are interpreted as mouse cursor movement and mouse clicks."

Cognition Outsourcing ~ Vinge on Singularity

Thanks to GeekPress impressario Paul Hsieh for spotting via the Speculist this video on ThoughtWare.tv of Vernor Vinge on the Singularity... FYI, Vinge will be speaking at the Singularity Summit in Australia this September 2010.

Click Botswana ~ Telederm Mobile Diagnostics

MIT Development Ventures alumco Click Diagnostics co-founder Ting Shih is preparing for the AIDS 2010 Conference in Vienna Austria and forwards this video about their Botswana efforts...

Get Ready ~ Andrés Cantor's "Gooool" Tutorial!

Legendary sportscaster Andrés Cantor's "Goooooool" Tutorial! P.S. So far, a entirely crappy game with no "GOOOOOOOOLS" at all. P.P.S. Except for Spain when it really mattered. Damn Octopus!

Serious Possibilist ~ Rosling @ TED on 2050...

Another Hans "Serious Possibilist" Rosling perspective on population and development towards 2050 here at TED@Cannes...

"Child survival is the new dream. It's only children surviving that we will stop population growth. And will it happen? Well, I'm not an optimist, neither am I a pessimist. I'm a very serious "possibilist." It's a new category where we take emotion apart, and we just work analytically with the world. It can be done. We can have a much more just world. With green technology and with investments to alleviate poverty and global governance, the world can become like this."

Lovely Hosts ~ Rainbow South Africa Reigns!

Independent of the results of the Finale of the World Cup -- which I most certainly hope will be Oranje! -- I want to wholeheartedly salute the wonderful people of the country of South Africa for hosting this Cup and thus sharing with the world how lovely your rainbow nation is! It's been great to both watch the various matches in the several new and revitalized stadiums as well as see so many news stories of local support and transformation and more. In this vein, it's good to read the commentators, including Matthew Kaminski of the WSJournal writing South Africa: After the Vuvuzelas Go Quiet and the FT interviews Over The Rainbow by Richard Lapper and Simon Kuper with five South African pundits asking Did South Africa win the World Cup? and even Barry Bearak's NYTimes piece South Africa Braces for New Attacks on Immigrants. Clearly there's room for further progress, but I for one am ecstatic with the positive progress and general prospects for South African -- and indeed greater African -- prosperity!

Cellphone Inventor ~ "Everybody Will Have One"

Thanks to Harvard's Calestous Juma for spotting this CNN interview by Tas Anjarwalla of Martin Cooper, Motorola veteran and telcoms entrepreneur most famous for inventing the cellphone in 1973!

MIT Global Challenge ~ Innovation in Action!

My MIT colleague Lars Hasselblad Torres describes the new MIT Global Challenge and posts his intro slidedeck... Plus check out the ongoing blog discussions!

Fankart! ~ At MIT, If It Doesn't Suck, It Blows!

More LOL's from MIT's gearheads gone wild! Fankart!

I Like Calamari ~ Paul Risks All, Bets on Spain!

Traitorous teutonic cephalopod picks Spain again!-) Backstory here. P.S. Breaking news flash: Victory is surely at hand! Mani the Malaysian psychic parakeet has tapped Holland as World Cup 2010 winner...

Grassroots Soccer ~ Football Is For Everyone

Thanks to Arne Hessenbruch for spotting the NYTimes piece by Celia Dugger, To Those With Nothing, Soccer Is Everything and related slideshow Grassroots Soccer...

"Jessica Hilltout, a Belgian-born photographer, drove across Africa for seven months last year to capture the continent’s love of soccer in advance of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. Her photographs are currently on display in galleries in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Brussels. "As the World Cup draws to a close this week, images of the highly commercialized, FIFA-sanctioned soccer will not be the only lasting ones," writes Celia Dugger."

P.S. Those kids probably are making better balls than the Official Fullaballoni FIFA ball;-)

This is My Fiets ~ Amsterdam Loves Bicycles!

Amsterdam + Bikes...

MV Dole Chile ~ Specialized Banana Boat!

Thanks to gCaptain for spotting the MV Dole Chile, one of a growing family of specialized banana boats, naturally in all-yellow livery;-) This is a Self-Sustaining Cellular Reefer Vessel according to top industry source infosite, Ship-Technology.

IDDS 2010 ~ More Emphasis on Dissemination

Colorado State University Professor and co-host Paul Hudnut writes in his BOPreneur blog that IDDS 2010 -- the International Development Design Summit -- has just Started-Up! This fourth incarnation of the Summit promises greater emphasis on Dissemination -- the organizational, logistical, and entrepreneurial challenges of scaling up and getting good ideas spread widely!

Venture Café ~ Links at the Innovation Epicenter

As I've noted before, the new Venture Café is being prototyped by Carrie Stalder, Tim Rowe and crew this summer every Thursday afternoon-thru-eve 3-8pm at the Cambridge Innovation Center at One Broadway in Kendall Square, Cambridge. The point of the Venture Café is to connect inventive, creative, and entrepreneurial people in an informal but interesting setting in the heart of our MIT + Kendall Square innovation epicenter, all fueled by tasty morsels and fine fluids. Spread the word to venture-minded friends and colleagues!

Skateboard Disaster ~ Epic Proportions. Huge.

UniqueDaily spots epic skateboard disaster. Huge.

Piruze Sabuncu ~ Challenge Project & Turkey...

Great to have HBS alumna Piruze Sabuncu join me on MaximizingProgress.tv tonight! Piruze's co-founder of The Challenge Project with classmate Justin Wieland, an initiative which rallies different members of a social group -- i.e. friends, family, colleagues, whoever is relevant -- towards accomplishing meaningful shared challenges, especially ones with a health and fitness dimension! By allowing marathoning Moms to compete equally with golfer Grandpas on common-basis achievement goals, they bridge time and distance and help people developed a powerful, shared wellness. Very interesting to hear of their next steps and plans going forward. Piruze and I also spoke about her homeland, Turkey, and the tremendous opportunities open to this Eurasian crossroad country. Whether investment and development in Europe or the Middle East or Russia or Central Asia or Africa or elsewhere, Turkey is incredibly well positioned for growth and dynamism!