Via Shiny Shiny: these dogs will start shaking their heads and singing a few seconds before the phone actually rings. I guess the actual ringing doesn't give you enough prep time before you answer.

Interesting National Geographic article on the things that make Lance Armstrong the winner that he is:

Early in his career Armstrong showed only average muscle efficiency—the percentage of chemical energy that the muscles are able to harness to produce power. Higher muscle efficiency means greater production of power.

From 1992 to 1999, the year of his first Tour de France win, Armstrong was able to increase his muscle efficiency by 8 percent through hard and dedicated training. Coyle says Armstrong is the only human who has been shown to change his muscle efficiency.

News.com has a good article on the interruption environment technology helps us create:

The typical office worker is interrupted every three minutes by a phone call, e-mail, instant message or other distraction. The problem is that it takes about eight uninterrupted minutes for our brains to get into a really creative state.

The result, says Carl Honore, journalist and author of "In Praise of Slowness," is a situation where the digital communications that were supposed to make working lives run more smoothly are actually preventing people from getting critical tasks accomplished.

Also:

The problem appears to be getting worse. A study by Hewlett-Packard earlier this year found that 62 percent of British adults are addicted to their e-mail--checking messages during meetings, after working hours and on vacation. Half of workers felt a need to respond to e-mails immediately or within an hour, and one in five people reported being "happy" to interrupt a business or social gathering to respond to an e-mail or phone message.

...via Smart Mobs

Tagsurf is a new type of online message board which organized by tags instead of topics. Discussions are threaded like traditional message boards.

...via Smart Mobs

A Fast Company article on Cirque du Soleil and innovation:

It's this willingness to take creative risk that is Cirque's original genius and the key to its competitive success, says Renee Mauborgne, coauthor of Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant (Harvard Business School Press, 2005) and professor of strategy and management at INSEAD. Cirque combined the thrill of the circus with the high production values and intellectual sophistication of the theater or ballet to create a new art form and, along with it, a new "blue ocean" market. The company's future, she says, will depend on its ability to sustain that culture of risk taking, particularly as competitors enter the market. "The danger is that when you begin to be imitated, you start entering into red-ocean competition, where your focus is on outcompeting rivals rather than on creating the next blue ocean," says Mauborgne. "Then the competition, and not the marketplace, sets your agenda

...via elearningpost

At Knowledge Lab, Etienne Wenger in a video interview about communities of practice

Great article at T.H.E. Journal Online on the skills that every educator should have today:

1. Word Processing Skills
2. Spreadsheets Skills
3. Database Skills
4. Electronic Presentation Skills
5. Web Navigation Skills
6. Web Site Design Skills
7. E-Mail Management Skills
8. Digital Cameras
9. Computer Network Knowledge Applicable to your School System
10. File Management & Windows Explorer Skills
11. Downloading Software From the Web (Knowledge including eBooks)
12. Installing Computer Software onto a Computer System
13. WebCT or Blackboard Teaching Skills
14. Videoconferencing skills
15. Computer-Related Storage Devices (Knowledge: disks, CDs, USB drives, zip disks, DVDs, etc.)
16. Scanner Knowledge
17. Knowledge of PDAs
18. Deep Web Knowledge
19. Educational Copyright Knowledge
20. Computer Security Knowledge

    ...via The Shifted Librarian

A coffee mug that doubles as a computer mouse:

SearchEngineWatch reports on how Americans search:

What are people searching for? Most people (88%)said they were researching specific topics—specifically, information about hobbies. And women (61%) were more likely to search for health and medical information than men (35%). Surprisingly few people researching specific topics are looking for job or career information (28%).

Other common things people use search for include:

• Getting directions/maps - 75%
• Looking for news - 64%
• Shopping - 51%
• Looking for entertainment web sites - 47%

...via Smart Mobs

From a CIO Insight article:

In analyzing more than 6,500 data points from each of 22 top e-commerce sites, a new Keynote Systems report found that many sites were too slow, failed too often and often glitched during the crucial checkout period.

...via http://wwSmart Mobs

An article at Demos on some of the issues of municipal wireless:

Fast, reliable access to the internet -- broadband -- has quickly become an indispensable asset in American life. To the businesses and families who rely on it, the internet's basically priceless, offering security and opportunity as well as any financial asset. But since its inception in America, the internet has also been in the unique position of being a utility--a community asset--delivered exclusively by private businesses. So what happens when what's good for the community isn't good for the businesses' bottom lines? In the rural Midwest, hundreds of thousands of citizens get left without on-ramps to the Information Superhighway.

In last month's Washington Post, Verizon spokesperson Harry Mitchell was direct about why the company doesn't bring broadband to citizens in remote areas: "You've got to have a business model where you have a chance of making some money." This coming, incidentally, from a company with $68 billion in revenue in 2003.

Meanwhile, according to the National Rural Telecommunications Cooperative, fewer than 10 percent of homes in rural America have broadband access. If you think that's not critical, tell that to the sixty Chrysler repair shop workers of Scottsburg, Indiana who were told in 2002 that they'd lose their jobs if they didn't get first-class internet hookups for their on-the-job laptops. Sixty solidly middle-class jobs in a population of 6,000 is no small matter--and that's why mayor Bill Graham stepped in where Verizon wouldn't. A quick analysis determined that the whole county could be blanketed in wireless internet by piggybacking on existing public power and water towers at a cost of only $385,000. The network was completed in less than four months. The city now charges its citizens and businesses $35 a month for regular access and $200 for a high-capacity T1 line (as opposed to the prohibitive $1300 a month it used to cost.)

...via Smart Mobs

The FCC reports that residential and business broadband signups are up 34% this year.

...via Smart Mobs

Google Maps Mania reports on how people are using Google Maps' API.

You can:

Find the landmark
Check out injuries from running with the bulls
Recent worldwide earthquakes
...and many more

...via BoingBoing

From Popular Science, an article on how to have wireless wherever you go.

...via BoingBoing

By now you know all the regular things you can do with RSS: track news, track packages, put news from other sources on your web site. But here's a whole list of other things you can do too.

...via Cutting Through