Startup Summer ~ Entrepreneurs of the Revolution

Nice venture piece by NYTimes' Hannah Seligson on Arab Spring, Start-Up Summer?

"Six months after an uprising led by people like her ousted Hosni Mubarak and overturned the established order of the Arab world, Ms. Mehairy has joined the ranks of Egypt’s newest business class: the entrepreneurs of the revolution. Instead of leaving Egypt as she had planned, she is staying to nurture a start-up [...] “The revolution really made my generation believe in ourselves,” Ms. Mehairy, 30, says. If Egyptians can topple Mubarak, she wonders, what else might they accomplish?"

Several startups mentioned, including SuperMama, Inkezny, Bey2ollak, Kngine, and more.

The Hub ~ Epicenter of Innovation and Universe

I'm sitting in this Hoffman talk listening to people going on about how things happen in "the Valley" -- meaning Silicon Valley, SF Bay Area, California, USA. Just "The Valley". What do we call things coming out of the Boston-metro area? This used to be Route 128 and the Massachusetts Miracle, and then for a horrific nanosecond, the dot.Commonwealth, but no compelling moniker seems to have stuck. But why do we actually need to reinvent this?

We have been and simply are "The Hub" -- the epicenter of invention, venturing, innovation, and the Universe!-)

100 Million People ~ Hoffman on Having Impact

LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman speaks now at the Media Lab on How to Benefit 100 Million People: Designing and Building Human Ecosystems for Networks and Marketplaces. Key themes...

• Public Intellectual Society -- How improve ourselves and society by designing, building, and improving human ecosystems;
• Impact at Scale -- How change world, elevate game for us all, meaning hundreds of millions of people;
• Media Enables -- Designing and building tools for linking humanity. Software and networks are incredibly powerful;
• Commerce is Good -- Economic engine drives growth and endures;
• Learning from Ventures -- First company begat better followers;
• Platforms, Networks, Marketplaces -- What to invest in and build;
• LinkedIn as Live-Case Study -- Most well-known exemplar of themes;
• as Platform: LinkedIn Skills -- App that's usefully enabled mashup;
• as Network: LinkedIn Today -- People w/ ID, connected, ultra-custom of professional relevance;
• as Marketplace -- Talent liquidity via transparency and reputation leads to tremendous productivity boost for society;
• Self Regulation Layers -- Explicit and implicit reputation, permission, empowerment;
• Career Ladder is Broken -- Old world metaphor, change too fast and different. Must be more adaptable. Everyone an entrepreneur!
• Startup of You -- Reid's new book, you need to operate as business of yourself!

Also interesting Q&A discussion with Media Lab Director Joi Ito plus audience, including connecting with polar-opposite Peter Thiel, that it's generally not a good idea to dropout of college, pros and cons of business-mindset and their monopolistic temptations, LinkedIn has has best-interest of professional customer centrally in mind, crafting a culture of collaboration, architecting for innovation, teaching "how to" collaborate in order to get high-performance, Google buying breakfast thus synchronizing group circadian rhythm, dealing with IPO and being public, Chomsky's Responsibilities of Intellectual, always speaking truth but not all truths, helping SME businesses better connect and find each other, timescales of change in IP patents vs IP internet, explaining away MBA and background in management consulting (ouch;-), data as Web 3.0, data-ownership, overhauling the global patent system, role of open vs closed systems, etc.

Madiba! ~ Charlie Rose's Mandela '93 Interview

Happy Birthday, Nelson Mandela! Here's Madiba interviewed by Charlie Rose back in 1993!

Kendall-Central ~ Cambridge's Zoning Venture...

Cambridge is running a planning study to envision the future of Central Square, Kendall Square, and the Transition Area connecting the two squares. Given the lack-leadership and short-sighted nature of MIT and other dominant landowners in the area, I most surely hope the City doesn't cave in to narrowminded interests and unwise planning. FYI...

"The next Kendall Square Advisory Committee meeting is Thursday, July 21 2011, 8-10am Cambridge Innovation Center (Havana Conference Room, 5th floor), One Broadway, Kendall Square. Bring ID."

Africa Tech ~ WIRED on Emerging Innovators...

Nice piece by Pete Guest in WIRED about Switching On: Africa's Vast New Tech Opportunity...

"Beyond macroeconomic factors [...] technology is driving profound changes to economies and societies across the continent. The hundreds of millions of mobile handsets and billions of airtime minutes only go some way to describe the scope of entrepreneurship that underpins Africa's technological revolution. From mobile payments to telemedicine and advertising, there is a common pulse of innovation, driven by an irrepressible combination of aspiration and necessity. This is the new Africa."

Companies and innovators mentioned include M-PESA, Verviant, PesaPal, Safaricom, Google, Wananchi, Zuku, InMobi, Encipher, mPedigree, Kalahari, Dealfish, Mocality, and more.

Arab Summer ~ Economist Maps MENA Latest...

The Economist supplies cartographic chronicle of Arab awakening!

It's Japan's Cup ~ Very Exciting Football Finale!

Wow, Japanese Women played amazing real football finale World Cup versus USA! Far better and more exciting than Men's Cup!-) Writes the WSJ's Goldenberg...

"Japan is certainly the biggest underdog winner in World Cup history -- Men's or Women's."

Desert Chill ~ UAE's First Ice Cream Trucks!

Tasty story out of Dubai about Desert Chill by BBC reporter Philip Hampsheir, British take ice cream vans to Middle East after they...

"...spotted a gap in the market and launched the UAE's first mobile ice cream service to serve spectators at sports games. The firm now has five vans and has expanded into neighbouring Abu Dhabi."

Fantastic! The ice cream truck is an essential part of every kids upbringing, especially in our hot summer months! This British expats-run, Emirates-born venture is well-poised to spread cool joy throughout the Gulf and ultimately the greater MENA region!

Saving Valentina ~ Great Whale + Human Tale!

HuffPost's Laura Hibbard spots this great whale of a tale!

Life, Above All ~ Chanda's Secrets in South Africa

I'm looking forward to seeing new drama film Life, Above All...

"...an emotional and universal drama about a young girl (stunningly performed by first-time-actress Khomotso Manyaka) who fights the fear and shame that have poisoned her community. The film captures the enduring strength of loyalty and a courage powered by the heart. Directed by South African filmmaker Oliver Schmitz, it is based on the international award winning novel Chanda’s Secrets by Allan Stratton."

NYTimes reviewer Manohla Dargis writes that Life is...

"... a grave and quietly moving story about a South African girl of extraordinary character, does something that few painful dramas accomplish: It tells a tale of resilience without platitudes about the triumph of the human spirit or without false promises about an unclouded future. The battle fought by its 12-year-old heroine, who struggles to save her family and best friend from prejudiced neighbors who often look like a mob, may be over when the movie comes to its stirring close, but there’s no end to the fight."

Predator Ecodynamics ~ "Trophic Downgrading"...

The latest Science has a very compelling review piece by Estes, et al, on Trophic Downgrading of Planet Earth looking at the unexpectedly wide-ranging ecosystemic consequences of humanity killing off upper-food-chain predators -- i.e. the "big animals"...

"Until recently, large apex consumers were ubiquitous across the globe and had been for millions of years. The loss of these animals may be humankind’s most pervasive influence on nature. Although such losses are widely viewed as an ethical and aesthetic problem, recent research reveals extensive cascading effects of their disappearance in marine, terrestrial, and freshwater ecosystems worldwide. This empirical work supports long-standing theory about the role of top-down forcing in ecosystems but also highlights the unanticipated impacts of trophic cascades on processes as diverse as the dynamics of disease, wildfire, carbon sequestration, invasive species, and biogeochemical cycles. These findings emphasize the urgent need for interdisciplinary research to forecast the effects of trophic downgrading on process, function, and resilience in global ecosystems."

Here are images of landscape-level effects of trophic cascades from the absence or presence of apex consumers in several selected aquatic and land ecosystems... Mechanisms and indirect consequences on diverse ecologies...

"...including wildfires; disease; composition of atmosphere, soil, and fresh water; invadability by exotic species; and species diversity."

NatSciDemos ~ Harvard's Lecture Demo Videos!

Thanks to Harvard's lecture demoguru Daniel "Akayama" Rosenberg of InDemoVeritas fame for pointing out the NatSciDemos videopage full of glorious science lecture demonstrations!

Debt Metrics ~ Forbes' Fisher on Global Bomb...

Daniel Fisher wrote in Forbes about The Global Debt Bomb with these embedded infographics...

Mapping Corruption ~ Parking & Transparency...

wayusei via MapPorn spotlights indices of Corruption...

Emerging Africa ~ 17 Countries Leading The Way

Many thanks to our Harvard colleague Calestous Juma for spotting the latest report by the Center for Global Development on Emerging Africa: How 17 Countries Are Leading the Way by former senior fellow Steven Radelet with an introduction by Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf...

"Since 1995, seventeen African countries have defied expectations and launched a remarkable, if little-noticed, turnaround. These countries are putting behind them the conflict, stagnation, and dictatorships of the past and replacing them with steady economic growth, deepening democracy, improved governance, and decreased poverty. Five fundamental changes are at work:

1. more democratic and accountable governments;
2. more sensible economic policies;
3. the end of the debt crisis and changing relationships with donors;
4. the spread of new technologies; and
5. the emergence of a new generation of policymakers, activists, and business leaders.

[This study] takes a fresh approach by recognizing the important differences between Africa’s emerging countries, the oil-exporters (where progress has been uneven and volatile), and the others (where there has been little progress) instead of treating sub-Saharan Africa as a monolithic entity. This important book describes the revitalization underway in the emerging countries and why it is likely to continue."

Check out their Average Growth Rates per Capita 1996–2008 map...

Pretty Ugly! ~ The Flashed Face Distortion Effect

Neatorama's Alex spots Illusion Turns Pretty Girls into Ugly...

"Like many interesting scientific discoveries, this one was an accident. Sean Murphy, an undergraduate student, was working alone in the lab on a set of faces for one of his experiments. He aligned a set of faces at the eyes and started to skim through them. After a few seconds, he noticed that some of the faces began to appear highly deformed and grotesque. He looked at the especially ugly faces individually, but each of them appeared normal or even attractive. We called it the “Flashed Face Distortion Effect” and wanted to share it with the world, so we put it on YouTube. The effect seems to depend on processing each face in light of the others. By aligning the faces at the eyes and presenting them quickly, it becomes much easier to compare them, so the differences between the faces are more extreme. If someone has a large jaw, it looks almost ogre-like. If they have an especially large forehead, then it looks particularly bulbous."

Pretty ugly shocking illusion!

Avoid Carmageddon! ~ JetBlue's 20min, $4 Fly-O

Brill promo by JetBlue -- a 20 minute, $4 fly-o over the under-construction this weekend 405 Freeway in LA -- a.k.a. Carmageddon! Thanks to Sarah Sled for spotting this delighter!

Printennas ~ Cheap Wireless Energy Scavengers

Thanks to Vitor Pamplona for spotting Rebecca Boyle's PopSci article on New Printable Antenna Can Harvest Ambient Energy To Power Small Electronics w/ photos by Gary Meek...

"A new ultra-wideband antenna printed on paper or plastic can harvest ambient energy, enabling wireless sensors to tap into electromagnetic currents in the air around them. The device captures energy from a wide spectrum of frequencies, converts it to direct current, and stores it in capacitors or batteries. Researchers at Georgia Tech scavenged sufficient microwatts to power a temperature sensor, using the ambient energy produced by a television station signal that was a third of a mile away. More powerful systems that tap into multiple wireless bands could generate one milliwatt or more -- enough to power small wireless sensors and microprocessors. Researchers hope that when it’s combined with advanced capacitor technology, the device could provide up to 50 milliwatts. [Here] Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering professor Manos Tentzeris displays an inkjet-printed rectifying antenna used to convert microwave energy to DC power. This grid was printed on flexible Kapton material and is expected to operate with frequencies as high as 10 gigahertz when complete..."

Manhattan’s Grid ~ Randel 1811 vs NYC 2011

Nice little infographic in NYTimes on How Manhattan’s Grid Grew...

"In 1811, John Randel created a proposed street grid of Manhattan. Compare his map, along with other historic information, to modern-day Manhattan."

Thanks to itsren on Reddit mapporn for the spot!