So satisfying

When one observes magic, let it be clear that the magician is a skilful human, an artist, and not a born wizard. His acts are crafty examples of sleight-of-hand, and no supernatural forces are involved.  

Beyond the wonderfully positive effects of the Harry Potter series (for example, the reported growth in the number of book readers, notably – of children, worldwide), an auspicious downside may be the diminishing in importance of “fake” muggle magic, as opposed to “true” wizard magic. (more…)

This may sound like a movie script, but it is completely true: in October 1990, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters at Langley (which, by the way, is not Langley,VA, as many believe, but the Langley suburb of McLean,VA, in case you plan to visit), unveiled a strange, intriguing sculputre named Kryptos (“hidden” in Greek), – by sculptor James Sanborn and cryptoman Ed Scheidt, ex-director of the CIA’s Cryptographic Center.

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You may not be aware that you only have 18 odd days (as of now) to make it through NaNoWriMo 2008. NaNoWriMo – or National Novel Writing Month – is an international “seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing.”  If you join this marathon, you undertake to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30. If you read this today, you’re running out of time. (more…)

In November 2007, I moved this blog from a test location to its curent place online – live and open for visits. In the 12 months that followed, ToingToing! received a solid stream of unique visits – 59604 for the year, or an average of 4967 visits per month. I am deeply grateful to Big Friendly for technically birthing my blog and for nourishing it so beautifully ever since.

This celebratory piece is dedicated to three people who exemplify ToingToing’ing in action: learning creatively though personal expression.

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An interesting afterthought to my previous pieceon the battle between Microsoft Office and Google Apps was posted on Garett Rogers’ “Googling Google” blogon ZDnet’s Blogosphere. Rogers noted Balmmer’s belitteling remark on Google Apps – “you can’t even put a footnote in a document”  and says:

Perhaps what happened directly after he said that is precisely why Microsoft should be worried.

About 2 days after Steve downplayed any kind of competition that may be coming from Docs, Google added footnote support. The agility, and horsepower that Google has behind it is something that companies – even Microsoft – should be wary of, and definitely shouldn’t take lightly.

Google’s action is worth a thousand boastful speeches and so Ballmer’s derogatory remarks came back to haunt him. In face of a three year wait for Microsoft’s next major upgrade, Google delivered – literally – on the fly.  How’s that for chutzpha reciprocity?

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There are many definitions of the term Chutzpah- my gran’s description of someone with chutzpah is “a person who kills his parents and then asks for the court’s mercy becasue he’s an orphan.” I wish I could pit Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer against gran – she would have taken him apart.

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Of course, I did not expect my piece on the end of the Digital Divide as we know it to go unchallenged. Arthur Goldstuck popped in for an e-visit: “The mobile subscriber data is misleading, as it refers to mobile accounts or connections, not users,” he wrote.

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Catchphrases help us hold our intellectual head up high, socially. We can use buzzwords and Catchphrases as a mark of our understanding, our expertise, insight, intuition and general intellectual prowess. Some catchphrases were not really uttered but simply invented – - and then carried through the ages, delivered diligently from eager sender to ecstatic receiver. We now know, for example, that Marie Antoinette never said “Let them eat cake!” – well, in fact she did not even say the reported French retort – “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche!” but let’s not let facts kill a good meme, S’il vous plaît!In his book “Made in America” Bill Bryson reveals that Patrick Henry did not say a single word of his famous “give me liberty or give me death” speech. Then, we have modern catchphrase. While these aren’t urban legends, they sure are powerful memes.

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After this piece was published, I read what Alan Rusbridge, the editor-in-chief of The Guardian, The Observer and Guardian.co.uk had to say about the new structure his team plans to implement across the three publications. Speaking to Press Gazette, Rusbridge explained how the three publications’ news, business and sport staff will form a single team and be guided by four “content-neutral” editors, dealing with national (UK) news, international news, business and sport. Instead of keeping the classic newsdesk structure, writers will work within subject-specific “pods” — allowing for reporters to file stories anywhere within the four platforms.Rusbridge’s plan fits perfectly within the “guerrilla journalism” metaphor I described in my piece, because it allows for content to follow context and create stories within a dynamic, ever-changing larger picture, instead of being pre-assigned to arbitrary, generalist categories.

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How many movies you’ve seen, books you’ve read, after-dinner chats you had in the past 10 years were based on conspiracy-theories, urban-legends, word-of-mouth (WOM) sound-bites, e-mail hoaxes and other hard-to-substantiate sources? Now, let’s reverse this question – how many conspiracy-theories, urban-legends, WOM sound-bites, e-mail hoaxes and other hard-to-substantiate sources turned out to be the real, tangible and provable truth?

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