Check this out.
You get to sense the journey you can have before you leave home!
Awesome.

Experiential Travel Meets Experiential Technology: Relief Rides Come Alive

As a 53 year old “World of Warcraft” regular player I felt a lot better when I read a paragraph from the Wired “2006 Rave Awards”  … particularly these words “World of Warcraft is a glimpse into our future“.  That didnt make me so guilty aboot the hours I spend on the game.

“The quality and the popularity of World of Warcraft has propelled MMORPGs from a subculture into the mainstream; some call it the new golf. But it’s more than that: World of Warcraft
is millions of people with diverse backgrounds collaborating,
socializing, and learning while having fun. What we’re experiencing
with this game is similar to the “adhocracy” of many successful open
source software projects. It represents the future of real-time
collaborative teams and leadership in an always-on,
diversity-intensive, real-time environment. World of Warcraft is a glimpse into our future.”

Wired Magazine Issue 14.06

Second hand book stores are great placed to spend some time but for the owners just browsing doesnt pay the rent. Some old favourites have moved on over the years but many still remain. Here is a way for some of them to survive. Integrate the strore with an on-line bookstore!

APP.COM – Rural stores thrive by opening doors to a wider world of customers | Asbury Park Press Online

Microsoft is redoubling its efforts to persuade business leaders that
it is committed to working more closely with the open source community.

Open source community wooed by Microsoft – ZDNet UK News

I’ve had a few previous posts on this topic.

How MySpace Works

My kids don’t use eMail!

The following article also points out something I have learned from my kids …

“It’s just too weird to communicate with your parents on MySpace.”

ContraCostaTimes.com | 06/18/2006 | For teens, e-mail may be snail mail

What a paradigm shift!
We are all becoming authors.
With every blog post, with every photo stream, with podcasts.
“Many elements of society have come together at this time to make self publishing possible. Most people have home computers to write their books on, the industry has created high-speed digital printers and the Internet means all of these things can communicate”

Massive Book Publishing Growth Predicted

What a great article Chris Anderson wrote for Times On Line.

With a third of Amazon’s book sales coming from titles outside of the top 100,000, and growing, it sets you thinking about where we all will get our own particular pieces of information from in the future!

When you think on this …

“Most of the top 50 bestselling albums of all time were recorded in the
Seventies and Eighties (the Eagles, Michael Jackson), and none of them
was made in the past five years. Hollywood box-office revenue was down
by more than 6 per cent in 2005, reflecting the reality that the
cinema-going audience is falling even as the population grows.”

and this …

“No 1 is still No 1, but the sales that go with that are not what they once were.”

and this …

“although we still obsess over hits, they are not quite the economic
force they once were. Where are those fickle consumers going instead?
No single place. They are scattered to the winds as markets fragment
into countless niches.”

Read Chris’s excellent article here … and support him … buy his book!

Brave new world of a million niches beats the blockbusters – Business – Times Online

John GANTZ told delegates at IDC’s Expo and Forum in Boston that they had better adapt to accelerating change or dissapear. He goes on to point out three specific challenges ahead of them.

“The first challenge is posed from the convergence of the World Wide Web and the telephone network, which he said will create a type of new infrastructure – “the great Internetwork.” This will extend far beyond desktop PCs and telephones to reach cars and other mobile platforms, meaning the corporate landscape will evolve as the number of ‘customer touch points’ multiply.

The second area of potential disruption will come from software, in particular the explosion of open-source development; service-orientated architecture, the merger of Web-based and desktop services, additional to composite applications. The entire sector, regardless of location, is expected to change – some companies will be forced into acquisitions, while others will make
mistakes, risking an “end user veto” of unpopular features.

The third area of potential chaos will be pervasive computing, spreading beyond PDAs and music players. Entire buildings will be added to the network of the future, while sensors in rubbish bins and parking spaces will be deployed to improve collection rates and traffic flow. Supporting the trend, demand will explode for phones, games, toys, cameras and handsets enabled with VoIP or GPS, while sales of PCs will level out by 2015, Gantz said.”

Innovate or fail, CIOs told :: Contractor UK

We store our photos on .mac or Fickr.
Our videos find their home on YouTube.
Our blogs are stored on .mac, Blogger or a histed WordPress site

Now we can share our spreadsheets.
Google.s new spreadsheet may be short on features but it is a pointer to the future. Read more here!

Google Spreadsheets has better collaboration tools than Excel, but not better features | News.blog | CNET News.com

Great article and book!
Brief summary below but read the lot here

Why the world is now flat – JAMAICAOBSERVER.COM

THOMAS L Friedman’s is entitled, The World is Flat.

Flattener No 1: When the walls came down and the Windows went up
Flattener No 2: When Netscape went public,
Flattener No 3: Work Flow Software
Flattener No 4: Open-sourcing
Flattener No 5 Out-sourcing
Flattener No 6: Off-shoring
Flattener No 7: Supply-chaining
Flattener No 8: In-sourcing
Flattener No 9: In-forming
Flattener No 10: The steroids

The flattening of the world is
largely unstoppable. This holds out the potential to be as beneficial
to a society as a whole as past market evolutions have been. There is
only one message: You have to constantly upgrade your skills, or get
left behind. Understand these forces and benefit. Ignore then and you
will fall victim.