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Allan Kent a.k.a. MediaFrenzy, in his infinite boredom, tagged me with that 7-facts thing. Here are the rules:

• link to the person who tagged you
• post the rules here
• share seven random or weird facts about yourself
• tag seven random people at the end of the post, linking to them
• leave a comment on their blog so they know they’ve been tagged

Seven things few people know about me:

1. Early in adult life I delivered traffic summonses for a living
2. I have caught three burglars in two different occasions whilst in the act
3. For relaxation, I draw the same face over and over again
4. I can land an Airbus A380 on X-Plane
5. I once studied to become a minister of religion
6. English is my second language
7. I was a vegan for 6 months – once

Now: Amy, Andria, Ivan, Ivo, Francois, Stephanie and Alex. You are the proverbial it.

Love this TED Talk: Moshe Safdie (2002)

Especially his poem at the end:

He who seeks truth
shall find beauty,
he who seeks beauty
shall find vanity
he who seeks order
shall find gratification
he who seeks gratification
shall be disappointed
he who considers himself
the servant of his fellow being;
shall find the joy of self-expression
He who seeks self-expression
shall fall into the pit of arrogance -
Arrogance is incompatible with nature.

Through nature, the nature of the universe
and the nature of man
we shall seek truth
if we seek truth
we shall find beauty.

The Web sites of political candidates running for the most prominent office on the planet, are often the main junction for information dissemination and fund-raising.

Been wondering what happens to these Web sites when all is said and done. Here is a short snapshot of what happened to the .com’s of the names that dominate the US political scene for short, but intense periods of time:

George W. Bush: The outgoing president’s Web site has lapsed and now redirects to a Republican page on GOP.com

Bill Clinton: The man who is hoping to become the first First Gent who used to be the President sports an ad-trap over at billclinton.com.

John Kerry: The democrat who lost against Bush in 2004 is still politically active and so is his site.

Howard Dean: The democrat who was edged out by Kerry in 2004 in the bid to win his party’s nomination, has set his URL to forward to his Wikipedia entry. Which, as a minimum is something President Clinton could have done.

Al Gore: The Nobel prize-winning environmentalist has a busy site – all dedicated to his new-found calling to save the planet from greenhouse gases.

It will be interesting to see, one year from now, what we will find at barackobama.com and hillaryclinton.com

Fanatical fans love to hate the coaches of their teams, especially when the chips are down. Deep down, they all believe they could do a better job.

What if a club could employ an internet application that would allow registered fans to collectively manage their team, replacing the need for a single individual coach/manager.

The system could present fans with a continuous stream of options upon which the fans must vote. The system would inform the team members what to do, based on majority rule.

As an exercise in true democracy, it would be fascinating to see if the collective wisdom of the team could outwit their opponents.

Found this on Wikipedia today:

A premature obituary of USA VP, Dick Cheney. His obituary was released erroneously along with several other public figures due to a technical hitch on CNN.com on April 16, 2003.

What is interesting is that a side by side comparison of the obituaries reveals a template style for producing them, which explains why bits of Her Majesty, Elizabeth II’s obituary in the making was attributed to the Veep.

A computer can do a year’s work of a thousand men in one second. But in one second can make a bigger mistake than a million men could never make in a lifetime.

This is rather beautiful.

Amaztype.

From that man with the beautiful interactive soul, yugop.

From the Official Google Blog: Google Translation + Gmail help people.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

As more and more connections between useful tools are being made, the pace with which the Web will enable us to transform the world will accelerate like something that accelerates very fast.

How do taxi drivers in big cities know where to supply taxis where there is most demand?

Most probably use a combination of intuition and experience. Which explains why in a city like Hong Kong, you often see people queueing at taxi stands, waiting for the trickle of cabs to alleviate the pressure.

But what if a mobile phone company would install a taxi function on phones? Perhaps a special button or a combination key-press that instantly triangulates your position and then transmits your request to a central database which builds a map of all taxi requests.

This system could even pinpoint the closest taxi to you and then allocate that cab to you.

And what if you could even pay your cab fare for that ride with your mobile phone. So when the ride is over, the driver could have the cab fare texted back to you so that the amount is deducted from your phone bill.