Where is the money to be made in widgets? Jeremiah Owyang provides a few (fairly unconvincing) suggestions.

Technorati Tags: commerce, web2, widgets

Jeremiah Owyang has a useful post listing all the handy Twitter tools that add value to the popular micro-blogging platform.

Technorati Tags: tools, twitter

GroupTweet is a service which allows a group account to be set up on Twitter which all the members of a group will then get automatic updates from. I could see it being used by a development team, or a sales team – indeed any small group that have a higher-than-average interest in what each other are doing. Great innovation.

Technorati Tags: twitter, tools

I was watching a really remarkable video the other day – of a talk given by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor at TED. The talk contains a harrowing – and at the same time funny – account of when she suffered a haemorrhage in the left side of her brain which then slowly shut down leaving the right side to run the show.

Our right hemisphere is all about this present moment. It’s all about right here right now. Our right hemisphere, it thinks in pictures and it learns kinesthetically through the movement of our bodies. Information in the form of energy streams in simultaneously through all of our sensory systems.

As a consequence of the stroke Jill experienced some really remarkable effects (even if they were scary at the same time). Her perception of the world was fundamentally changed.

About the same time I found this video I was listening on the radio to a deaf Italian Tomato Lichy who is trying with his wife to have a second deaf child by IVF. The couple are both deaf, as is their child. Unable to conceive naturally, they want to have IVF but only pick deaf embryos for implanting. They believe that deafness isn’t a disability but a gift which leads to a rich world with its own language, culture and traditions. It goes without saying that they face an uphill battle to have their wishes accepted and I have to confess I have quite a bit of difficulty with the position personally myself.

But as biotechnology and genetics gathers pace it begs the question whether we might not face a future where people are free to choose the senses they want, or the way their neural pathways process data, so they can experience the world in a way different from the one we call normal (and which already many, many people don’t share.) After all, red is only red because of the way the human brain processes light signals – there is no such thing in the world as “red”. People who suffer from synesthesia already know how malleable colour is – they can hear it.

Wired recently carried an article about the way in which scientists are now reconsidering autism in the light of new evidence. There is another remarkable video referred to where Amada Baggs, a 27-year-old autistic woman, describes the “language” she uses to interact with the world. In times gone past in all likelihood she would have been dismissed as lacking intelligence, but the internet and affordable computing power has given her the chance to show the world quite the opposite.

Could people start to opt for this kind of experience if the science of biological choice makes it possible? Maybe not very likely, but what about those people with gifts which normal-ability people would already regard as remarkable.

Stephen Wiltshire is the 33-year-old autistic “savant” who appeared on television recently and drew an accurate 13ft panorama of London after only a short helicopter ride as a prompt. Might not people choose this gift if it was on offer?

Perhaps the next phase of evolution will be made up by a splintering of what it means to be a normal human being as choice and technology open up limitless possibilities. And, given Man’s less than impressive record with difference, that would mean more than a few challenges along the way.

Technorati Tags: genetics, biotechnolobiotechnology

…if you are an aficionado you can follow them here.

Technorati Tags: twitter, social media

Robert Scoble interviews Kevin Norton from the Google Docs team who demos new offline functionality in Docs – more trouble for Microsoft.

Technorati Tags: Google, productivity, video

Wired has an analysis of what happened to Google’s share price when it became known that the growth in clicks per ad has stopped growing. Google’s stock closed down over 3% on news that the February click through rate grew only 3% in February compared with a year earlier and January didn’t rise at all on a year earlier. But Wired points out that the figures are the result of some changes in Google’s advertising policies.

The Mountain View-based company said in January that the drop in click-through rates is a result of its efforts to boost the usefulness of each click to its advertisers’ sales performance. For instance, the company decreased the space around a word that would result in a click, so more clicks would be intentional.

Some are arguing that Google’s advertising should rise even faster with the changes:

Rob Sanderson, an analyst with American Technology Research, said per-click revenue will rise immediately if advertisers see more value in each click, because they’ll pay more for them at auction.

Technorati Tags: advertising, Google, online

paidContent.org has made some changes to reflect its growing business, including appointing Charlie Koones, until recently publishing director of Variety, to its board. Read the details:

Charlie Koones is joining our board…till recently he was the president and publisher of Variety, and left in January, after spending 17 years within the Variety/Reed Business family. Koones was a primary architect of Variety’s digital growth. Since its launch nine years ago, Variety.com has enjoyed major gains in advertising and page views. I have known Charlie for a while now, and have admired his multi-platform approach and expertise in building an iconic brand such as Variety. He will help us build out our digital entertainment trade media business. He joins Nathan, Alan Patricof, Larry Kramer and myself on our Board. He is based in Los Angeles.

Technorati Tags: online

US newspapers have had their worst year for advertising for almost 60 years, reports Jeff Jarvis. Total print advertising plunged 9.4% to $42bn in 2007, the largest decline since records began. Internet advertising grew 18.8% to $3.2bn, but the rate of increase is slowing: it grew by 30% the previous two years. This looks like systemic on top of economic decline, he reckons.

Technorati Tags: advertising, newspapers

This one I would like to see….

Technorati Tags: mac, video