John Moore posts charts “comparing the attributes of both George Bush and John Kerry to well-known brands”:

“Mapping Bush and Kerry to well-known product and corporate brands reveals how each candidate is viewed and suggests brand strategies each can employ to potentially sway the critical undecided voter group.”

Click on the title and check it out.

Judith Meskill links to Monster.com’s “online community of professionals”.

A quote from Dina Mehta’s blog:

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.” - Carl Jung

BFD reader Lisa Kious kindly pointed me to the letters to the editor regarding the recently announced poverty summit. I love what Gary Zwick of Solon is saying:

Congratulations to The Plain Dealer and other me dia outlets in Cleveland. After several years of regurgitating various lists detailing what a bad place Cleveland is to live, they’ve finally convinced me. I give up. While it’s too late for me and my wife (we’re here for the duration), we are counseling both of our children, both of whom are attending schools outside of Ohio, not to come back. Apparently, this is not a good place to be, for any reason. And even if this is counterintuitive, perception is reality… And now we learn that Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell is calling on a group of 40 community leaders to address the poverty issue. While the makeup of the group is as yet unknown, I suspect that we all know most of the people who will be on the list: the usual suspects… This town has a vibrant small business community and a first- class middle-market professional community. Many of these people are ready, willing and able to be part of the solution, without any personal or monetary agendas other than to make Cleveland a better place to work and live. But there will not be, nor has there ever been, a place at the table for us.

How can we stop parents from telling their children to move away and not come back? How can we engage the Mayor to invite unusual suspects to participate? If the table is too small, can we loose the table and bring more chairs?

That got me thinking about Open Space Technology. Remember Canadian Tables? I think it’s time to turn the tables on edge and use them for something other than to keep people apart.

Via Boing Boing via Joi Ito:

A post on an indymedia website says activist Joshua Kinberg — inventor of a wireless, bike-mounted, dot-matrix printer for spraying protest messages in the street — was arrested yesterday at the RNC in NYC… Kinberg’s invention allows users to spray messages transmitted to the bike-printer by way of the ‘Net or SMS. They’re painted in a water-soluble chalk solution that washes away with water (not spray-paint, as misreported elsewhere).

Make sure you click through for the pic and Joi’s comments. Good stuff.

Anthony is linking to BFD. How do I know? I check Technorati about once a week. Anyway Bizz Bang Buzz is a great title for a blawg “covering news and information relevant to entrepreneurs, executives and others interested in business and technology”. I’m subscribing to the atom feed and blogrolling it as well.

Particularly Denise Polverine, who had the article fixed quickly and posted the link in the comments.

Article/puff piece on residential living in downtown Cleveland. The great piece was in the “Forum” section, by PD technology writer and blogger Chris Seper. This piece has some great recommendations for encouraging people to live downtown — well it would if the whole damn piece was on the site. For some reason — presumably a technical glitch — most of the article is not online. I disagree with some of the larger recommendations (foreclosing the East Bank of the Flats for condos), but the smaller livability issues are more doable and practical (cheap parking permits for residents). There are plenty of other things that could be done, but this is a good starting point for ideas. Sadly, I doubt the city will actually try them.

Here’s what Chris said:

Casinos don’t make communities. Nestled in Cleveland’s downtown, where developers would build casinos and convention centers, new families are growing, college graduates are settling into their first apartments and jet-setting yuppies are sipping mojitos in downtown bars. Some want to invigorate the downtown by adding new buildings. What it really needs is more feet in the street - both coming from the growing number of apartments filling the landscape and from cash-flush customers patronizing downtown businesses. No One Big Idea is going to make downtown Cleveland hum. I lived in the city’s Warehouse District for two years and realized that small ideas must be stacked to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with grand innovations. The city needs everything from pizza to new party centers to get itself going. And everyone - from politicians to property managers - can pitch in. The following list may not be completely realistic. But consider these ideas for a few moments; they could squirt some verve into a downtown in need of bodies, life and community…

Mmmm. Sipping mojitos in downtown bars. I’ll let you know if it’s really like that. By the way, the emphasis is mine.

Thanks for the great resource, Steve.

Jack Ricchiuto quotes Thich Nhat Hahn:

Do not maintain anger or hatred. As soon as anger and hatred arise, practice the meditation on compassion in order to deeply understand the persons who have caused anger and hatred. Learn to look at other beings with the eyes of compassion.

Emily [the remedy] says:

I know you all love hearing bout my mis-adventures that result from one too many martinis at the Velvet Tango Room, so go show Paulius some love….vote the Tango Room the best martini and singles scene in Cleveland!

From Wired.com’s article on Natalie Jeremijenko:

“There’s always been an alliance between hacker-technicals and direct-action-in-the-street people,” said Yale anthropology professor and anarchist organizer David Graeber. “Natalie is one of the only ones who has feet in both worlds, and actually brings them together.”

Months ago, it became clear that the RNC counter-demonstrations were relying on digital technology. But most of the gadgetry involved was household stuff — text messages to report cops’ whereabouts, or web pages to arrange housing. Jeremijenko and her group have gone beyond that, hand-crafting devices meant to level, just a bit, law enforcement’s technology advantage over activists. Their devices include a 10-foot balloon, for counting crowds; a set of pirate transmitters, for taking over local radio stations; and 1,400 face masks that measure the level of pollution in the Manhattan air. Think of the group as a kind of Darpa of dissent — with Jeremijenko’s loft as the headquarters.

“To me, social issues are technical issues, and vice versa,” she said, as her rabbit, Sally, skittered across the hardwood floors. “So I’m interested in how do you exploit technology for just social policies.”

From Wired.com: “Not only is the U.S. government keeping too many secrets, it’s spending too much money to do it. That’s the conclusion of a government watchdog group, which estimates more than $6.5 billion was spent last year keeping data under wraps.”

I’ve always wanted to go to BM. This year, I’ll be subscribed to the feed:

Programmers and artists from ROAM-NET are bringing a mutant art car, and a public terminal kiosk for this year’s Burning Man festival in the Nevada Black Rock Desert.

DOOM, their telecommunicative vehicle is equipped with a wireless public terminal, a GPS system, and two webcams.

All along Burning Man (from the 30th through the 6th), they will be uploading photos to the igargoyle website of interesting technology from the festival and blog the event on the ROAM-NET newsfeed.

The goal of this project is to establish a roaming platform for signalling to, and interacting with event participants, be it through event publishing, blogging, photo sharing, or signalling to your friends where you are.

When are we going to have our own version of BM here in Northeast Ohio?

The volumn of posting over the weekend might not be what you’re used to. I’m getting the harley back on the road, and heading down to the IKEA in Pittsburgh. I’ll make up for it with an audio blog and some pictures…

In a discussion this morning, over a cup of coffee, my friend grew tired of me extoling the virtues of applying percision to brewing. Read this before you brew your next pot:

Measure the coffee to be used and measure the volume of your coffee cup.

I can’t stress how important this is. One six-ounce cup of coffee needs two tablespoons of coffee beans. If that sounds like a lot then you have probably been making less than full strength coffee as I was. For years I was making coffee with less robust flavors because I had too large a cup for the amount of coffee I was using. When I finally did begin measuring, my coffee drinking experience was transformed into the delightful, pleasing experience that remains constant if I follow these simple directions.

Added emphasis.

Ross at Strategize [who recently started linking to BFD] posts:

Dave Pollard has a great list of things about which you can be optimistic.  Great way to start the week!

• There are more people writing, articulately and eloquently and with the weight of excellent information and argument behind them, about the need for radical change to our culture than ever before. This is a groundswell of awareness and deep caring, possibly unprecedented in the history of man. Something important is happening here.
• The Internet has given us two powerful weapons for change: knowledge exchange and organizing capacity. We’re learning to use them well.
• Women are slowly gaining power and influence in our society. Young women are better educated and better informed than any generation in our history.
• Not having children is no longer, for the first time in our culture, considered selfish or anti-social.
• The Wisdom of Crowds.
• In the next decade much of the baby boom generation will be retiring. That means a huge number of people, a generation with a penchant for change, will suddenly have an enormous amount of time to think, to learn, to do things for reasons other than financial gain.
• Stories have immense power to change minds. We are learning the process of crafting astonishing stories.
• The Power of Community.
• In our search for models and leaders and inspirations, we are becoming skeptical of arrogance and glibness and the cult of personality, and looking instead for humility, honesty, flexibility, collaboration.
• A World of Ends. There is a large and growing appreciation that small and decentralized just works better. And is smarter and more agile.

Keep up the good work, Ross.