[aha] Re: call

[Derrick de Kerckhove]

Dear All, here is a tentative list of sites that over the years have  
attracted my attention. I am putting them all together to save them  
from terminal loss. The trouble with great web sites is that they  
appear in your life like excellent jokes, you hear them, you love  
them, you swear to yourself and to anybody who cares to listen that  
you will remember that one and tell it to everybody in sight, and you  
forget them immediately.

Good oldies (search engines)

Thinkmap
A lot of imagination went into the hypertextual possibilities of links  
even before pageranking implemented by slashdot,com and later Google.  
I was very inspired to write my book on Connected Intelligence by  
Thinkmap, a site that is now an industry that began as a thesaurus  
using a hyperbolic tree connecting all the words that related in  
clusters around a central one that gave it the theme. I recommended  
them for the Ars Electronica prize back in 1996. Today, the New York  
based company offers a number of interesting services. <http://www.visualthesaurus.com/ 
 >

The Brain
Every one one knows about this good, clean design, for  browsing one's  
own content classification. I like the design, but I don't use it,  
except occasionally as a substitute for Powerpoint when I have the  
time: <http://www.thebrain.com/>

Kartoo
I loved this one at first sight, a French invention of ten years ago,  
that allowed one, much faster than even Google today, to locate  
exactly which John Smith you were looking for. They are still around  
with a clean design and fast interactivity. <http://www.kartoo.com/>

Grokker
Not humongously useful, considering how many city or name-based search  
engines exist today, but still thrills me for its design. <http://www.grokker.com/ 
 >

Smart Money Map-of-market
Martin Wattenberg who created this site is a master web designer.  
Again this oldie shows an artistic side (check many other sites by  
Wattenberg) that uses a Mondrian-like design to indicate variations in  
stock market. Intelligent, beautiful, alive and useful (for those who  
had money before the crisis!)  <http://www.smartmoney.com/map-of-the-market/ 
 >

Last Fm
Everybody knows this one too, although more recent than the previous  
ones. The ancestor of this one got a Jury mention at Ars Electronica  
1994. It was called homr.org and allowed people to rate music and  
obtain not only a list of other music they might enjoy based on their  
ratings, but also created an automatic community of people whose  
choices were similar to yours. Subsequently it changed names and then  
disappeared. LastFm is a kind of re-incarnation of the principle, but  
without the community creation, something that I dubbed, "electronic  
tastebud" .
<http://www.last.fm/>


Newer issues
There are tons of new things since web 2.0, social bookmarking and  
Google-everything (and specially umteen variations on googlmaps).  I  
am including here the ones that come to mind spontaneously, but the  
list is FAR from exhaustive, and I welcome any suggestion on your part.

Oskope
This is a very elegant and truly useful site to search, classify and  
store in a rapidly interactive way whatever you are looking for on  
YouTube, Flickr, E-Bay and whatnot. Check out the click and drag and  
set in folder function. Awesome. <http://www.oskope.com/>

Devonthink
Devonthink was recommended and demonstrated to me by Stephen Johnson,  
best-selling author of just about anything he cares to publish. He  
claims that he owes it all to this little-known but powerful search  
engines that probes the contents of your own computer (as GoogleDesk  
does, but much better) in a rational tag and keyword based fashion.  
The principle is simple but requires a minimum of discipline (which of  
course I do not possess!): you simply tag along the quotes and texts  
and references that you encounter in the course of your writing,  
surfing and storing, and five years later, you have another book that  
is almost self-written! If you think that is too ego-centric, just  
throw the theme of the book in <www.del.icio.us.com> and 24 hours  
later, the world will have given you stuff you can add to show that  
you are contemporary to the isssue! <http://www.devon-technologies.com/products/devonthink/ 
 >
NB: del.icio.us has a system very much like Devonthink, but dedicated  
to the web, that is outside content as well as stuff inside your hard  
disk. Try it, you will never leave it.

The following few sites tickle my global art fancy because they all  
take advantage of the limitless potential for worldwide participation  
in a common realization or real-time global information.

World clock
This is an all-time, anytime, winner that allows you to see the  
statistically correct numbers of specific worlwide events, birth,  
deaths, maladies, car sales, house starts, oil barrels, prices, etc.  
You can ask for any configuration of data in terms of the day, the  
week, the month, the year or the decade. Impressive because it  
generates instantly a global emotion, the like of which began for me  
when I saw Apollo's landing on the moon in 1969...
<http://www.poodwaddle.com/clocks2.htm>

Global emotional circulation
I am putting under this title a group of variations on the theme of  
global emotion by Maurice Benayoun, a French artist who has developed  
a strong global sensibility. You may need to dig a bit into this  
following URL to find stuff that suit your interest more specifically <http://www.benayoun.com/projet.php?id=32 
 >

Sensorband
AtauTanaka's great shared musical composition and playback site
<http://www.sensorband.com/>

Wefeelfine
Like Wattenberg, Jonathan Harris is another Webmaster to keep track  
of. I am very moved by this attempt to provide the user with a real- 
time array of expressions of emotions around the globe. It paratkes of  
the same sensibility of the beautiful Listening post by Mark Hansen  
and Ben Rubin, but instead of merely showing you text-based messages  
flying across neatly arrayed screens, it allows you to interact and  
select clusters of real-time messages on your screen
<http://www.wefeelfine.org/>

The universe.com
The other Jonathan Harris must see, this site offers a dozen different  
way of arranging and sorting data about news, events and people you  
need or want to know about immediately. Useful and super aesthetically.
<http://universe.daylife.com/>

Bestiario
Another stunningly beautiful browser, not quite global in intent, but  
created by developers working for Art Futura (a great refernce in  
itself) to allow people to browse pleasurably and rapidly all the  
videos posted on line by the world famous TED conference
<http://www.bestiario.org/research/videosphere/>

Hyperlinking the Real World (courtesy of Eduard Vinyamata)
European researchers working on the MOBVIS project have developed a  
new system that will allow camera phone users to hyperlink the real  
world. After taking a picture of a streetscape in an urban area, the  
MOBVIS technology identifies objects like buildings, infrastructure,  
monuments, cars, and even logos and banners. It then renders relevant  
information on the screen using icons that deliver text-based details  
about the object when clicked.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hyperlinking_the_real_world.php

My own site (in construction but already visitable) is an attempt to  
provide a background history and a large sampling of existing gloabl  
artistic installations, web sites and other projects. Only the first  
four little screens of the 33 that make up the global person - hommage  
to Nam June Paik - are active, but it gives you an idea. I will be  
working with Paolo Branigade to complete the site over the year. Help  
and suggestions are welcome.
<http://www.globalhood.eu/>
See also the lovely site created by Franz Iandolo and his students on  
the same theme: <http://www.mediaintegrati.it/prova/progetti/uomoglobale.html 
 >

Some of my favorite Youtube videos: these are so well-known that they  
need no introduction. If you haven't seen them, you simply owe to  
yourself to google them and check them out RIGHT NOW.

Battle at Kruger
Free Hugs
The machine is using us
The YouTube Symphony Orchestra,

Featuring the first-ever collaborative online orchestra, performing  
the "Internet Symphony No. 1 'Eroica'", by Tan Dun.

http://www.youtube.com/symphony

Have fun and please do me the same favor if you can remember more good  
sites than good jokes!
Cheers. DdeK

NB: A note to Tatiana Bazzichelli: Dear Tatiana, Franca suggested that  
I should put this list on the AHA list and ask for contributions from  
your impressive community. Do you think it needs to be translated in  
Italian, or can the English version do ? Cheers and Happy New Year to  
you.

NB: A precision to all who intend to respond; please do not burden  
yourself with lenghty explanations regarding sites you might  
recommend, you have all bee selected because I trust your judgement;  
all you need to do is to send me three or four among your favorite  
links. Cheers. DdeK

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