Check out NearbyWiki

 My cool find of the day is NearbyWiki.

It links Google Maps with Wikipedia and will show you all the places in an area with Wikipedia articles.

It will start in your location if you have location sharing on, otherwise you can scroll and zoom to wherever you want. Clicking "List" at the bottom shows the articles in a list form. en.nearbywiki.org/map/

 

One reason I check my spam folder

Do you remember an old pre-internet letter we all used to get every couple of years? The letter had been around the world nine times and good luck would come if you copied it and mailed it to 20 people. The letter reported how various people with names like Constantine Dias and Aria Daddit had terrible things happen when they failed to forward the letter but then good things happened when they remembered the letter and followed the instructions.

This message that wound up in my spam folder today somehow reminded me of that old letter and made me wistful for it:

From: Detective Yasushi Uzawa Subject: RE:ARE YOU DEAD OR STILL ALIVE ???? To: Date: Sunday, November 13, 2011, 2:54 AM I am Detective Yasushi Uzawa, a Japanese, I am in charge of scammed victims compensation scheme propagated by the United Nations.My appointment came as a result of the meeting held by the United Nation Secretary General Mr. Ban Ki-Moon and African Leaders.

After series of meetings and deliberations, it was concluded that a foreigner should be the chairman, as the African citizens that held the post in the past made no difference; instead they worsen the situation, by defrauding the scammed victims more.

You are enlisted as one of scammed victms that shall will recieve a compensation of $800,000.00 US Dollars (Eight Hundred Thousand United State Dollars) The commission has mapped out modalities and procedures that shall enable you recieve the compensation . (i) You are to forward all the names and telephone numbers of people you have sent money in the past, this will enable us apprehend them and try to get the money you sent to them back. (ii)You are advised to stop forth contact with any government agencies, ministers, commissions, panels of any sort, apex banks or commercial banks, as the continuous contact with these agencies will complicate your transactions. (iii) Reconfirm the following information (a) Your full name and address, (b) Phone, fax and mobile #.

On this note, you are advised to indicate your interest by applying for the Deduction Certificate. This is the only chance to rightly get what belong to us from African Government; we have gone through a lot from Africans. Contact us now. Detective Yasushi Uzawa Executive Chairman scammed victims compensation scheme (SVCS)

A cursory Google search on Yasushi Uzawa turns up a scam email from 2009. It is good to see that he has now gone legitimate and is working for the other side. Unfortunately, I don't believe I've ever been scammed, so have no honest claim on the $800,000.00 US Dollars (Eight Hundred Thousand United State Dollars) he is offering.

My Current Preoccupation: Face Tagging on Picasa

I haven't played Mumu all weekend. Why? I'm too busy identifying faces in my digital photos with Picasa.

It's addictive. First Picasa looked at all the photos on my hard drive. Then it spotted most of the faces. Then I told it who some of the faces were. Then it started guessing at matching faces. That's when it became obsessive.

What's especially fun is when it guesses wrong, but is weirdly close. Like when it thinks Manon is her mom or one of her sons.

There's a quick intro to Picasa 3.6 and its face recognition at MakeUseof.

Keeping up with social media and Creativity

Once again, I am falling behind here. Meanwhile I'm all over other places on the internet.

I blogged about last week's performance of View Finder on the Propeller Dance Blog. That included uploading 277 photos to Flickr.

Also, I've been posting all sorts of things on the Astronaut Love Triangle Blog to inspire the group to new heights of artistic excellence. On the Astronaut Love Triangle Wiki, I've started making a list of creativity warm-ups.

I went looking for creativity warm-up exercises on the internet and found a startling lack of creativity about them. In particular, I kept finding suggestions that you get people to think of as many uses for a brick as they can imagine. I don't believe this is because there is something inherently creativity-inspiring about bricks. I think the people drafting the exercise couldn't be bothered to think of their own objects with non-obvious uses.

Just to check on this, I googled a series of phrases starting with "things you can do with a lightbulb" [There was only one when I did it, but there'll be at least two if you do it now.] "Things you can do with a brick" was the winner with 29 hits. [30 now]

This reminds me of a story that I heard from the famous Seymour Papert back in 1984. He had heard the story from Jean Piaget when he studied with him in the '60s.

It seems there was this elite school in France for artistic youth. One day they had a celebrated painter visiting them. At dinner, he asked about how they selected the students who would attend and they told him that they tested them for creativity.

"How do you test creativity?" he asked.

"We have a number of exercises and questions, for example, we ask them to list as many things as they can think of do with a brick."

"A brick..." said the artist. He pondered a while. "I suppose you could use it to build a house..." He thought more until the silence grew awkward and someone changed the topic.

Getting back to the internet and social media. I've signed up for two things that I just don't get. LinkedIn and Twitter. Am I missing something? Is there a point to either? Is there something beyond getting all my friends to join up so we can waste each others time and receive targeted advertising?