A beautiful song to share --- lovers sung by Jackie Evancho

Jackie Evancho is a brilliant singer. It is unimaginable to believe she is barely 12, especially when you hear her songs. Lovers is one of her songs that I loved the most. She has interpreted the song so wonderful. I think that even the original movie itself does not deserve this marvelous rendering.

The Lyrics

There was a field in my old town
Where we always played hand in hand
The wind was gently touching the grass
We were so young so fearless

Then I dreamt over and over
of you holding me tight under the stars
I made a promise to my dear lord
I will love you forever

Time has passed
So much has changed
But the field remains in my heart

Oh, where are you?
I need to tell you I still love you
So I reach out for you
You fly around me like a butterfly

Your voice still echoes in my heart
You are my true love

There was a field in my old town
Where in spring all flowers blossomed wide
We were chasing butterflies
Hand in hand ‘till close of day

Your voice still echoes in my heart

A story I must share, save our sisters and children

I feel indebted. Although I am too busy to blog in these few months, I must say something about this talk.

There are people, especially children and women, who live desperately. That they feel out of hope is not because what they were but what they will. No matter how hard our heroes such as Sunitha Krishnan have worked to save these people physically, it depends on us, all of us, to accept them and welcome them back to our normal society so that they can be really saved in the end. Without our support, our cooperation, and our empathy, what our heroes can do is limited. If we do not do what we can and need to do, we are indebted.

The video lasts about 12 minutes. Please take a look, if you have not watched it before, and share the story with two of your friends (as Sunitha asked). Not only just talk to them, but also convince them that this is what we need to do. It will cost you zero dollar and zero minute. What it demands is only our open heart to sincerely welcome our poor brothers, sisters, and children back when they show up in front of you.

God bless them. God bless our heroes. And may God bless you and me too!

My Impression of Twine 2.0

Radar Networks is about to release Twine 2.0. The CEO, Nova Spivack, had made a presentation of the coming T2. I include the video in the following. It takes less than 5 minutes and is worth of watching.



From the beginning, Twine is a service that I constantly study. I had written the first impression, the second impression, and Twine went public that shared my analysis of the service before its beta, in the beginning of its invitation-only beta, and when it went public, respectively. I would like to continue this tradition for the news of the T2 release.

In short, the T2 moves Twine closer to the realm of Web search in contrast to Web bookmarking, based on Nova's talk in the released video.

Although there is natural connection between bookmarking and search, the distinction between semantic bookmarking and semantic search is significant. Usually, through bookmarking we briefly store the Web pages in which we are interested. Then by search we may retrieve the particular Web page of interest out of the pool of bookmarked pages. But semantic bookmarking asks for the organization of the semantics only within a self-defined knowledge network, i.e., basically with respect to every individual user only. Semantic search, however, demands the organization of the semantics cross the varied knowledge networks, i.e., across the varied perspective of knowledge organization over multiple users. This distinction dramatically increases the degree of complexity of the problem. I am truly impressed by the new announcement. At the same time, however, I really feel doubt of how much Twine 2.0 could solve the problem.

I feel that Twine missed something critical in its progress. In the following I will try to explain my viewpoint of what it might have missed.

Within Twine, there are actually three layers of semantic representations, which I would call them the layer of the twines, the layer of the individual knowledge networks, and the layer of the overall knowledge network. As the names suggest, the layer of the overall knowledge network represents the entire knowledge stored in Twine.com, the layer of the individual knowledge networks is composed by individual users' personal knowledge networks, and the layer of the twines is composed by all the individual twines defined in Twine.com.

Until now, Twine 1.0 pays most of its attention to the layer of the twines. Based on Nova's video talk, Twine 2.0 will mostly dedicate to the layer of the overall knowledge network. The missing part is thus the layer of the individual knowledge networks.

Back to my first impression of Twine, I had highly praised Twine's effort on developing the personal knowledge networks. They should be the foundation of Twine in contrast to the twines. Although it sounds ironically, it is indeed reasonable because the twines are nothing but the links among the individual knowledge networks. It is indeed the individual knowledge networks, instead of the twines, that are truly what the users are interested.

Unfortunately, it seems that Twine jumps back and forth between the layer of the twines and the layer of the overall knowledge network. But it forgets the crucial one that is the real foundation on which a best-performing Twine must rely.

On the other hand, it is much more feasible for Twine to develop a good business model if it does semantic search rather than semantic bookmarking. I guess that this is the real motivation underneath.

I am still look forward to the service. However, I feel sorry that it chose to walk the most difficult way to go ahead rather than choosing the other less aggressive but more stable (and promising) ways of approaching.

Five Web Trends Into 3.0 (4)

4) Voice/touch navigation, prevailing

The mouse/keyboard combination has been the dominant method for navigating the Web. The monopoly is, however, about to be ended. The voice/touch navigation matrix is prevailing to the mainstream.

The touch screen monitors and the touch screen computers have been in the market for a while. Rumor was told that Apple planned to add multitouch-enabled displays to its MacBook Pro laptop computers. Although it has never happened, the value as well as the market demanding of the multitouch-screen computers are unquestionable. Jeff Han had once demonstrated in a TED speech about not only the compelling flexibility but also the amazing computational power the multitouch-screen computers would bring.



When being questioned about the drawbacks of the touch-screen computers, people often mention the screen protection/clean and the price. Many people also believe that the reason the multitouch-screen MacBook Pro does not happen is only due to the price. There is an important issue that also hinders the prevalence of the touch-screen computers but generally overlooked---the input device.

With a touch-screen (especially the multitouch screen) computer, it is awkward to still use the traditional keyboard for input. A straightforward solution is thus to use the on-screen keyboards replacing the physical keyboards. However, this straightforward solution would not work.

The real problem here is that to type on a mobile phone is totally different from to type on a large-screen monitor. The users are supposed to be physically very close to their mobile phones whenever the phones are used. Hence there is no problem for them to use on-screen keyboard. In contrast, the users are supposed NOT to be very close to their large touch-screen computer monitors. By this mean, whether or not to type on screen becomes a very tricky question.

A way to solve the dilemma is to embrace the voice/touch matrix. The users may use the voice input devices for the long-distance data input, while the touch-screen input adds the additional capability for handling the complex input requests. To the best of my knowledge, several companies have already started to implement this matrix and planned to demo the matrix no later than the next year. This is another definite trend that we must not overlook when entering Web 3.0.

Previous installment: Five Web Trends Into 3.0 (3)
Next installment: Five Web Trends Into 3.0 (5)

A beautiful mind of creativity

Many times we are amazed by the witnessed creative geniuses. Elizabeth Gilbert is certainly among them. She, however, exclaimed that she is not a who being a genius, but a who accompanied by the intangible (spirit-like) genius.

Very much I appreciate this insight. Despite TED is well-known of its superior-quality talks, Gilbert's talk is exceptionally outstanding. We do not have to train ourselves to be geniuses---a mission that is too hard to be achieved for the majority of us. By contrast, every one of us can "have" genius with him, so long as he believes, and pursues.

The Credit Crisis video

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

This is a brilliant video that visually explains the present credit crisis. It is worth of your time if you have not watched it before. The video tells that the crisis is actually rooted by capital itself. the current presentation of capital indefinitely amplifies the greedy side of human nature. We truly need to invent a new presentation of capital (in contrast to manipulate any economic theory) in order to avoid this type of disasters in the future.

Cartoon 2.0

The Can from Carlos Lascano on Vimeo.

Yihong's comment: everything could be 2.0. And here are another one:


Inspiration (stopmotion) from Carlos Lascano on Vimeo.

And here is Allan's pick, another fascinating and moving clip.

Magic or Power of Mind

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an invitation-only event where the world's leading thinkers and doers gather to find inspiration. A recent show posted at TED brings me great interest. It is by Keith Barry, who is known as a "mind magician". After watching the show, I would like to ask a question---does the power of mind ever exist or are they just magic tricks?



I have no answer at this point. But here are two good references after you have watched this fascinating show. One is from MindHacks and the other is from Wired.

What do you think?

Mind, Unconsciousness, Emotion, some coincidence in our life

This is a great short talk. It makes me think of many things, especially how we might explore the power of mind. If we may construct a mind network, it will bring us unbelievable power that steam engines cannot compare.

The talk takes just a little bit more than 8 minutes. Moreover, Linda Stone has a brief recommendation of this talk too.

Si Chuan Earthquake, People need help!

As you may know, Thinking Space is a place we discuss World Wide Web related topics. Very rarely I post other topics beyond this theme. But this time, I have to do so for the recent massive 7.9-magnitude earthquake at SiChuan province, China. Tens of thousands people have been dead and more are injured. These people need help, and please help them as you can.

The following is a slide show made by my friend Oliver Ding.

Please Help Earthquake Victims In China

From: OliverDing, 8 hours ago

| View | Upload your own

As you may have known, a massive 7.9-magnitude earthquake rocked central China's Wenchuan County at around 14:00 5/12/08. The death toll was more than 19,500 by 16: 00 May 15th Beijing time, and much more were injured. The figures still continue to rise:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24589987/
Many of the victims were children!! Children died when they are in school! Many of them are the only child in a family! The entire Chinese nation is fighting with the disaster!
We need help from the world!
Please find the kindness in your heart and help whatever you can!


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