The RoboCup Soccer Simulator – The RoboCup Soccer Simulator is a research and educational tool for multi-agent systems and artificial intelligence. It enables for two teams of 11 simulated autonomous robotic players to play soccer (football).

Brain workshop – Brain Workshop is a Python implementation of the Dual N-Back mental exercise. This exercise is the only mental activity that has been scientifically shown to improve your short-term memory (working memory) and fluid intelligence.

View your mind – is a tool to generate and manipulate maps which show your thoughts. Such maps can help you to improve your creativity and effectivity. You can use them for time management, to organize tasks, to get an overview over complex contexts

Sweet Home 3D – Sweet Home 3D is an interior design Java application for quickly choosing and placing furniture on a house 2D plan drawn by the end-user, with a 3D preview.
What are the ones that you find interesting?

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is something that I talk about at a high level when I deliver social media training. Here is the long version of this story.

• Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd)

This license is the most restrictive, allowing redistribution. This license is often called the “free advertising” license because it allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they mention you and link back to you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

• Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa)

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. Others can download and redistribute your work just like the by-nc-nd license, but they can also translate, make remixes, and produce new stories based on your work. All new work based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also be non-commercial in nature.

• Attribution Non-commercial (by-nc)

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

• Attribution No Derivatives (by-nd)

This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.

• Attribution Share Alike (by-sa)

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use.

• Attribution (by)

This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered, in terms of what others can do with your works licensed under Attribution.

There is a lot more to CC than these six categories. There is an organization called CreativeCommons.org, it’s a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright.

They provide free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof.

They are based in the U.S.A therefore it’s unclear if all their licensing rules apply globally.

There is another category called CCO that applies to your own work that you can waive your rights and make it completely available to the public without restriction to copyright and database law. This category applies to scientists, educators, artists and other creators and owners of copyright- or database-protected content.

We all need to earn a living, so who would be crazy enough to use these licenses?

The best known example of course is Flickr, they have incorporated these licensing into their offerings.

Wikipedia, Google and Open course ware. The most interesting one is a band called Nine Inch Nails, who released some of their songs for FREE as well as a limited tired step version of other products, services etc…This had an amazing effect whereby they had a sold out tour and sold their other products as well.

If you are thinking of incorporating CC into your business or otherwise, there are great guidelines on how to go about this. Since we are here in Canada, then how do we know if all this is relevant to the laws here. I am happy to say that we do indeed have a CC Canada.

Kaltura is a New York-based pioneer in Collaborative Media, allowing groups of users to create rich-media projects together using video, audio, and animation, similarly to what wiki platforms enable with text

The Wikimedia foundation have collaborated with Kalutra to enhance the current wikipedia offerings from text and images to video. This project is still in Beta however you can test it out e.g. parenting project.

Kalutra has over 60k publishers worldwide. It’s free and organizations can self host or use the SaaS model. They do have a monetization strategy and offer a few options from a starter SaaS to Premium.

This event is for:

• IT People –Technology is one way that governments are transforming how they deliver services externally and internally. Technology people are needed to explore the art of the possible for these new services. Mash-ups, Open Data, social media are but a few of the possible areas for discussion.
• Policy People – We need you in the conversation so that you can share your expertise on the realm of the possible from a policy perspective. Privacy, Security, Access to Information, Information Management are all key considerations for successful government transformation.  Come share your knowledge on how to make these policies enable new services.
• Government Services leaders – Ultimately, government delivers value through the many services that are provided. GovCamp is about exploring the realm of the possible for service to individuals, services to businesses and services to other departments. Your voice is essential to inform the community and to guide those ideas that the community may have for you!
• Community – We are fortunate that there’s a passionate and creative community with vibrant ideas about how they can help create a closer connection between governments, individuals, businesses and even among government itself. Your participation at the Canada Gov Camp will provide you with a venue to share your great ideas and, if all goes well, interact with some of the people that can take your idea further.

Canadian Developer Connection gives further details. Register for your chance to be part of great change.

This one half-day Social Media for Business teaches:

• History and evolution of Social Media
• Commonly used terms and definitions
• Social Networks
• Blogs
• Twitter (microblogs)
• Social Bookmarks
• Photo sharing
• Video sharing
• Podcasting
• Social websites
• Case studies

Participants will leave with a good understanding on what social media is and how to use it from a business perspective. They will be inspired to be creative and use their new found knowledge to use these technologies to communicate with their peers, customers and more.

Space is limited and is available on a first come and first served basis so sigh up to not be disappointed.

Happy New Year I hope you took time to eat drink and be merry. 2009 was a challenging year for many with the economic crisis still having it’s effects on businesses. This year should be better for everyone.

As a social media strategist I find that customers generally ask the same questions. During the course of the year I will be answering these questions. The biggest one that I will discuss today is the business case for participating in social media.

My answer to that is that it is no longer “should we participate” but how should we participate. Or communications mix has increased significantly since the old days.  We now have

• print – newspapers, trade publications, magazines
• radio
• TV
• website
• micro sites – site for a specific product or promotion
• social networks – Facebook, LinkedIn
• micro blogs – Twitter, Identi.ca
• video sharing – YouTube, Vemio, Blip.tv
• photo sharing – Flickr
• wiki – pb works, Tiki wiki, media wiki

As a communicator it’s now a challenge to pick the right channels to participate in. Although most of these are free your time or your employees’ time isn’t. There is no one tool and it’s usually a combination of tools that are needed in order to communicate effectively.

Communication can be internal within an organization (intranet) or externally. If it’s external communication then it’s easy however if you are interested in internal communications then Facebook, YouTube, Flickr are not the appropriate channels for you.  There are open source and commercial applications that enable you to achieve the same goals.

So what facts do I have to back my claim? Just take a look at your habits at work and in your personal lives.

• How many emails do you get per day? How many of them are directly related to what you are doing vs spam?
• How much mail do you get? How much of it do you read vs put in the recycle?
• Where do you spend your spare time? Is it online playing games, looking at videos, photos etc…

The answers to this is pretty simple we have way too much stuff to read whether it’s email, bills, letters etc. therefore we are very good at filtering. So then as a business who needs to communicate externally with customers or internally with employees how do you get your message through?

It’s through use of these social media tools, photos, video and audio.

I will leave you with this.   Pepsi Skips the Super Bowl, Spends on Social Media Instead!!!!

Social media is the invitation to your house party!  (Your house is your website)

The importance of tagging…

“Google juice”

diigo – social bookmarks – a way of tapping into social knowledge-base of Web content

Tip: for your company’s wiki page don’t have it written by the marketing dept. Have employees, customers do it instead – for a better sense of authenticity.

Blogs – company blogs should be integrated into the company website rather than being standalone

Social networks – Facebook. How do businesses participate

- pages – access to ad network

- groups

Remember there are other social networks besides Facebook and LinkedIn, think about where your markets are and find out which SNs are strongly present.

47% of all online users in Cda are on Facebook

Microblogs e.g Twitter. Good for marketing research.

It’s social media so start using the media!

Understand the psychology of social media. e.g. Intel put up photos of their trade show people and speeches because seeing photos brings people closer, makes the customer link stronger.

Use a video to increase survey participationl

We’ve just finished an ice breaking game – everyone was an ‘ingredient’ in a recipe and we had to find our fellow ingredients to make a recipe for hot dogs and hamburgers.

I’m quickly drafted to be part of a team and it looks like we’re winners.  But now it turns out that I’m the wrong ingredient!  I get kicked out of the recipe team. (snif!)

The presentation is starting.

Natasha’s got a cool idea to get us involved in social media.  She’s got us using vidcams and digital cameras, blogs and tweets during the seminar.

Everyone is introducing themselves and other folks are taking pictures and video!  We’re hearing some amazing career stories:  investors, NGO people, quadrilingualists, PR, high tech, National defense, HR, consulting, startups, fitness.

More snacks have arrived!

/wynn

This concept is geared towards museums and galleries to drive new traffic to their exhibits. Typical visitors generally fall into 3 categories

• tourists
• members
• occasional visitors

Most of these institutions are very heavily funded by various foundations and tax dollars. The revenue generated by visitors is minimal. This has been the model for quite some time but Social Signage aims to change this by getting more people into the museums.

It’s all based on connecting with the community by interacting and sharing their comments during their visit. The end result is for a more dynamic museum/gallery visit.

So if you are in the business of Museums or Galleries and want to know how to get more people through those doors, then RSVP to natasha at virtualeyesee dot com

Date: October 7, 2009
Time: 4:00pm
Location: Maple Room, Executive Meeting Centre, Westin Hotel

Ok I am going to cut to the chase, it’s the @mentions or new tagging feature from Facebook. If you are a regular Twitter user you are very familiar with the @username, as a way of replying to the people you are having a conversation with.

This feature is somewhat similar to Twitter however it’s not only user name based but contextual as well. Here’s an example of what I am talking about. Say I want to @ a particular friend who’s name begins with A.

Click on the wall tab and type the @ followed by the word you want to use, in this case it’s @a.

A drop down window will be opened with all the relevant info. related to a.  i.e. Pages, groups, events etc.. that contain a. Keep typing the rest of the word until you find the relevant item.

Click on the item. There you have it. It’s very easy.

So if you have been to an event and want to comment on it use the @mentions feature. If you have a comment for a number of friends then this is a great feature to use as it saves you writing on multiple walls at the same time.

Go ahead it and get @crazy in Facebook.