One of my favorite possessions as a child was a world globe. I spent hours spinning it, stopping it randomly with a finger tip and then imagining what each far flung place would look like. I wondered what it smelled like. I wanted to know what and where people ate and where they played. Simply put, I wanted to know what it was like to live there. Back then it never occurred to me that the art and science of cartography would make it possible to create collaborative maps of individuals’ emotions.

All of us unconsciously tag places with the emotions we experienced while there. Not only that but we re-experience those same emotions when we revisit the place and sometimes when we simply think of it. Mapping feelings is a continuation of the making the invisible visible trend. However, mapping something as intimate as your feelings, emotional cartography, strikes me as a very different expression of this trend. When we make our feelings visible, we reveal intimate bits of ourselves for all to see. What this means for the future, I’m not sure. I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on emotional cartography.

Mood Jam is a platform to explore the colors people associate with their moods. You can record your moods and describe them by selecting a color from the palette that best represents your mood and then you can use the text box to describe your mood. There is even a Google gadget for mood jams so you can display your mood on your homepage and share it with your friends.

Map My London is sponsored by the Museum of London. The map is a repository of peoples’ memories attached to specific geographic locations all around London. The memories are sorted into six categories: love/loss, fate/coincidence, beauty/horror, joy/struggle, friendship/solitude and what else. When I clicked on the love/loss tab red dots popped up all over London. When I moused over the dots memories like this popped up.

Too nervous to kiss after our second date. We stood with our hands in our pockets and at first desperately and then with increasing enthusiasm talked about Mister Men. For an hour. I missed the last train, but I got my first kiss.

Bio Mapping San Francisco is one of the most recent projects by Christian Nold. His maps explore the emotional relationship people have with their local environment. Volunteers strap on a bio-mapping device, a Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) device that is GPS enabled. The bio-mapping device records the wearer’s emotional arousal in conjunction with their geographical location. The resulting maps reveal the participants’ unseen emotional responses to their environment. The maps make visible locations where communities feel stressed and excited.

We Feel Fine is another masterpiece by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar. When you launch the site after a few moments you see a message that says, “Looking for feeling from people in the last few hours”. After a few more moments your screen is filled with what seems to be millions of multi-colored particles careening through space, each represents a single feeling posted by a single individual. Any particle can be clicked revealing the feeling or photograph it contains. The particles self-organize along a number of axes, expressing various pictures of human emotion. We Feel Fine paints these pictures in six formal movements titled: Madness, Murmurs, Montage, Mobs, Metric and Mounds. I’ve spent more time than I will admit playing with this site.

The FeelMap is a Google Maps Mash Up of We Feel Fine data. You can explore the worlds’ feelings two ways. Storyteller mode that lets you watch as emotions are bubbled across the screen or Marker Overload, which is a display of map pins with data.

The five websites I’ve mentioned represent five ways to map our emotions. If you know of more please share. I’m very interested in tracking the emerging practice of emotional cartography.

Carl Honorgot on stage at Pop!Tech and spoke to my soul. Yes, I’m well aware that I’m being hyperbolic, and that it was more likely a case of the right talk at the right time. After all, his message to “slow down” isn’t exactly rocket science; my mother has been saying the same thing for years. Yet Pop!Tech was the next-to-last stop for me in a five-week personal travelpalooza. I’ve been on the road for 4+ days a week for over a month; in the course of ten days I’d been through Amsterdam, Hawai’i and finally, Camden, Maine. Maybe it was his sincerity, his humor, or perhaps it was just the slightest hint of the sexy accent, but at last I was finally ready to listen. Aside from the message to eat slower, cut out unnecessary trips and trim my calendar, what I heard Honorsay was: start to blog slow.

Let me be clear: I love - make that LOVE - the fact that I attend many of the same conferences as two of my favorite bloggers, Ethan Zuckerman and Bruno Giussani. These “twinbloggers” sit tirelessly in the back of conference rooms and crank out crystal clear renditions of the speaker’s presentations - in real time. Ten minutes after a session is over, while the rest of us are still catching our breath, they’ve posted an online record for the world to see (Ethan, while at Pop!Tech, wrote over 20,000 words in three days). Moreover, I’m grateful for the fact that they attend many more conferences than me, and so I reap the benefits of their parallel-processing brains; reading either one of their blogs is like getting a masters degree in global current affairs.

But.

Yes, there’s a but. Here’s the thing: I want to liveblog. I aspire to liveblog. But the truth is, I’m not all that good at it. I’m a futurist and as such I’m hard-wired to think before I type, to process things, to connect the dots and consider the systemic implications of any newly presented idea. Moreover, I invariably find that the most interesting people at any given conference are NOT the ones on stage, and so I instinctively spend my time meeting people and sniffing out the stories no one else is paying attention to. It’s also why I spend an inordinate amount of time talking to cab drivers, but that’s another story.

And as much as I admire Ethan and Bruno and the cadre of other livebloggers, I’m continually troubled by the sense of personal inadequacy and guilt (thanks, Mom, for the Catholic upbringing) that their presence initiates. The truth is: I can’t type as fast, I can’t think as fast, hell, I can’t LISTEN as fast as these guys. It’s a little like being at the local ice rink, casually skating around on a Sunday afternoon, and Michelle Kwan shows up and starts throwing out triple solchows.

Which brings me back to Carl Honor?, whose message I internalized as: “it’s ok to blog slowly.” If it takes me a few days (or a week) to let the ideas marinate and get my thoughts out, then so be it. I don’t know if the result will be any better, but at the very least I hope I will stop suffering from idea indigestion. And so, in my Pop!Tech haze, I make myself a promise to live less frenetically. I will practice deep breathing. I will do yoga. I will not get on airplanes before 6am. And from now on, I will slow blog. Thanks, Carl.

(MB note: this is part of an occasional selection of random rants which I write that have absolutely nothing to do about the future. Enjoy.) 

It’s ten o’clock in the morning and I need a new cell phone. Exactly why I need a new phone today is another story, but suffice it to say that the fact that I’m driving to the store on a Sunday morning - that is, after Saturday night - is a relevant factor. ?Nuf said.

For years I’ve had the Luddite version of a mobile phone. It did a total of three things effectively: it made calls, it received calls and it dropped said calls in the middle of important conversations. Today, however, I’m taking the plunge and buying a full-fledged PDA. I’ve resisted getting a so-called “smart phone” for years, for a number of reasons. First, depending on my daily caffeine consumption, I have mild to moderate ADD. It’s bad enough that I exacerbate my condition by continuously running email, Yahoo messenger, Gmail and Skype in the background at the office (a practice which gives the impression that I have a larger social network than I actually do while simultaneously providing a never-ending source of excuses to be interrupted). In short, the last thing I need are new ways to be distracted.

Also, despite my delusions of grandeur, the reality is I’m not remotely important or interesting enough to need to be informed of email the nanosecond it arrives. It’s not exactly like I’m in charge of running a nuclear reactor or coordinating surface-to-air missile tests (and if I were, one would surely hope that I wouldn’t be checking email while doing so).

And most importantly, my venture into smart phone ownership means that I can no longer make snarky and disparaging remarks about the CrackBerry addicts who sit in meetings, ignoring the human life-forms in the their presence and squinting anxiously into a 2-inch screen. After today, I’ll be one of them. Like the Borg, I’ll be assimilated.

So it’s with a fair amount of trepidation that I find myself standing in the heart of the electronics department surrounded by dozens of cell phones, all of which are designed and marketed to reinforce the fact that despite a post-graduate degree and $50k in student loans, I will never, ever be as smart as the $7 worth of plastic that I now hold in my hand. I’m staring at a device which looks something like a cross between a computer, a television and a pedometer, but in fact bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to a telephone. Pete the sales guy explains that the phone in my hand is the latest engineering design in artificial intelligence. Based on some sort of NASA-quality algorithm, the phone allegedly uses “predictive inquiry” to anticipate my requests. Hmmm, I think, does that mean it’s about to ask if I want my Bloody Mary extra spicy?

Meanwhile, Pete is trying patiently to explain to me (again) the 12-step process needed to check the phone for messages, an act which apparently requires a feat of eye/hand coordination beyond my simple human abilities. Apparently the phone can simultaneously check email, keep track of appointments, update my contacts and remind me to get my oil changed. Here’s a question: if this phone is so damn smart why doesn’t it call voicemail for me? And when it’s done it could start on my taxes. For that matter, if it really wanted to show off it could teach my husband how to wash dishes.

Considering that each of the phones has enough processing power to light up a small Midwestern town, I realize that my purchasing decision boils down to style rather than substance. Today a mobile phone is less a communications device and more a lifestyle choice. Resisting the urge for some impromptu self-analysis, I search the shelves again with a view toward discovering my inner cell phone:

Motorola RAZR

With a name reminiscent of a foreign-born cover girl, the Motorola RAZR (and its BFF the KRZR) is the supermodel of the cell phone world. This is the phone for the South Beach crowd. All glam and Grey Goose, the RAZR is a testament to the importance of fashion over function.

BlackBerry Pearl

This phone is as good looking as it is intelligent. If this phone were a sweater, it would be silk. If it were a vegetable, it would be haricot vert. It’s the All-American phone, the kind that’s naturally, annoyingly good at almost everything. Like the cheerleader-valedictorian, it’s the phone you love to hate.

T-Mobile Dash

The name says it all. You’re busy, over-booked and more often than not, late for something. This is the phone for soccer moms, CPAs and other practical-minded people who don’t have time for extraneous details like remembering what kind of phone they have.

T-Mobile Sidekick

For those who always wanted their own entourage but couldn’t afford the trust fund to buy it. The Sidekick is all about The Scene. The Sidekick says you know who’s in, who’s out and who doesn’t even need to ask.

Palm Treo

A phone only a gadget geek could love, the Treo isn’t so much a phone as it is a measure of manliness. Like most things made for guys, it’s bigger than it needs to be and as the name suggests, is designed for your hand to play with.

LG Chocolate

A phone that taps into the most fundamental of human desires, the LG Chocolate is for those who appreciate the finer things in life, such as a phone that’s designed to look like a candy bar.This is for anyone who hungers for design and has a healthy appetite for aesthetics,because nothing says international sophisticate like a phone that’s part art, part aphrodisiac.

Finally, there’s the Samsung Blackjack. The new kid on the cell phone block, the Blackjack is the unknown maverick. Like its name implies, this the phone for those who laugh in the face of danger: bungee-jumpers, adventure-racers, tap-water drinkers. Personally, I think it speaks to my entrepreneurial sense of risk-taking. So in the end I roll the dice and place my bet on the Blackjack. I’ll let you know if I get lucky.

I’m blogging for WorldChanging Austin, one of nine local editions of WorldChanging.com. There was a party Tuesday evening in Austin to celebrate the release of WorldChanging: A Users Guide for the 21st Century. The party gave those of us blogging for WorldChanging Austin a chance to put faces to names and to talk about ideas for future blog posts.

Solar Austin hosted the party Tuesday for Alex Steffen, co-founder of WorldChanging. He talked about the importance of focusing on solutions to the Global Problematique and how astonished he was by the number of existing solutions. He shared his favorite world changer, a flower that turns a different color in the presence of the chemical released by decaying land mines.

The best part of the evening was talking with Austin world-changers about their inspiring projects and unique solutions for a sustainable future.I’m proud to be blogging for WorldChanging and encourage you to check both WorldChanging and WorldChanging Austin to learn about creative solutions for global challenges.

Today probiotics such as LAB are common in our foods and in dietary supplements, but in the future there will be increased use of probiotics in disease treatment and prevention. Recently researchers at Rutgers reported on a revolutionary treatment for periodontal disease. The innovation is a slow release polymer-based drug delivery system that may be implanted in pockets between the teeth and the gum.
The plastic material is inserted between the tooth and the diseased gum; as it breaks down it releases salicylic acid to treat the pain and inflammation and three antimicrobials each with a different release rate to treat the infection.

Human clinical trials may be two or more years away depending on the FDA.

Additionally, BASF Future Business GmbH and OrganoBalance GmbH are developing personal care and oral hygiene products based on lactic acid bacteria. The Lactobacillus (LAB) prevents cavities by binding to cavity causing bacteria preventing it from sticking to tooth surfaces. Researchers at OrganoBalance GmbH have discovered that LAB stimulans also promotes rapid regeneration of the skin’s protective microbial flora. They hope to develop lotions and creams using LAB that will have cosmetic applications.
via MedGadget

On September 19 a flock of specially equipped homing pigeons will once again set out to blog about air quality, this time over Newport Beach, CA. The pigeon bloggers sport custom-built miniature pollution sensors that collect and send information to an online server where pollution levels are visualized and plotted in real-time using Google Map. This project has two main goals: 1) to re-invoke urgency around a topic that has serious health, environmental and political consequences, but lacks public action and commitment to change; and 2) to broaden the notion of grassroots scientific data gathering while building bridges between scientific research agendas and activist oriented citizen concerns.

PigeonBlog is one of the ubiquitous computing demonstrations planned for UbiComp 2006. UbiComp is an international meeting focused on ubiquitous computing. You should check out the other demonstrations of ubiquitous computing posted on the conference website. They range from A Persuasive Game to Encourage Healthy Dietary Behaviors in Kindergarten Children to a MASTABA: A Digital Shrine for Family.

It appears that one of my dream gadgets, an origami dvd player, is closer to becoming a reality. Sony plans to create electronic devices that fold for easy storage inside a pocket and become rigid when unfolded. The origami gadgets will be made of a flexible polymer containing conductive rubber bracing struts filled with a gel of aluminosilicate particles suspended in silicone oil.

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