The Big Question: Do you have a blog that is art or design based?
You can be a painter, designer, critic or follower of art… or a student.

This is a list of interesting, different art and design blogs.
I am hoping to get over 1000 here, so I will be adding them to get us started,…

ANALYSIS, Melbourne, Australia — We have to look at technology as something to utilize for a practical outcome.
Australia needs new ICT policies.
Why we don’t have an ICT Export industry!
According to the AIIA, domestic production of ICT is worth between 4 and 5% of GDP.
ICT exports were once around $7.8 billion per annum, in 2000, according to AIIA.
Now, under Howard, these have declined to $5.4 Billion according to Austrade.
There’s no reason we cannot more than double ICT exports in 5-10 years through government policy.
Canada is a country closes to Australia in …

ANALYSIS, Global: Web Media –
The media has the wrong idea on what YOU and I want to read and watch.
Wrong, Wrong, Wrong.
News flash for the Media.
People are not obligated to read /watch your media.
Relevance will determine if they do.

COMMENT, Global: 2thinknow ® have identified Web 2.0 as one of the big trends sweeping the business world in a short to medium term.
If you feel Web 2.0 is a buzzword. it is. But then again unlike most, this one is useful.
What is Web 2.0?
In short Web 2.0 is the new new printing press, wireless and TV Tube.

This blog is about to undergo a change.
I am going to drop the political commentary. Too much unwelcome ‘response’.
Culture, art, ideas, innovation
From now on we’ll be sticking to art, culture, ideas, food, wine, language and more positive things. Some environmental posts. Innovation through inspiration.
These have been the most popular and some of my favorite posts -

Top 7 Art Galleries you must visit in europe
Understanding Modern Art
Generation X and Y is the Creative Generation

End of Cheap Goods
7 Inspirations of the World

Many of these posts had 1000 plus readers, and still have …

ANALYSIS, Sydney & Melbourne, Australia –
An open letter to visiting President Bush.
Mr Bush is in Sydney Australia at current for the APEC summit, this was written just after his joint speech with Mr Howard today.
Dear Mr President,
You spoke at the APEC Summit with our Prime Minister, Mr Howard.
I agreed with your remarks Sir, about freedom and human rights being critical to the world’s future.
But the Oil War is not the way to spread freedom.
This war is deeply unpopular because the people ‘get’ it was not an honest war.
Another’s freedom …

ANALYSIS, Global –Sometimes the logic for oil usage sounds crazy.
Rather than reduce use of oil we go into a war using oil to fight for more oil supplies so we can have more plastic goods made from oil.
This itself increases global oil consumption further reducing oil supply.
Huh?
Does that Sound rational? Read it out aloud. No.
Economically it is not rational. Common sense tells you it is not rational.
Sounds like a panic because we might run out of oil to:
a) drive our big cars/SUVs/motor homes
b) manufacture more plastic cr*p we don’t …

COMMENT, Global — We’ve have been in a post-modernist age for some time now.
But someone forgot to tell those 1950s-loving industrialist neo-cons.
The innovation zeitgeist is with the Creative Age.
Let’s look at where that innovation is for a moment.

ANALYSIS, Global — Our town, our world, is drowning under a flood of cheap sub-standard products. Products that we can and did once live without.
This is because our modernist global economic system in English-speaking countries largely runs on the manufacture and mass consumption of cheap low-priced goods made from oil-based plastics.
Think about that for a second. What really happens?
The following chain of events was loosely based on media reports of the China pet food story, Fisher Price scandal, and recent other events.
Here is one average scenario:
A company in your city …

COMMENT, Melbourne, Australia — Social networks are the next big thing, depending on where you are located in the physical world, they can be at various stages of adoption.
I asked this to a few people at WordCamp 2007 in San Francisco, and in a case of preaching to the converted, many felt blogs were already ‘established’.
But blogs & social networks have not gone mainstream yet in most markets.
(If one applies a model called the Innovation Diffusion curve, that is.)
PS. If you are reading this and twittering, you are probably not …

COMMENT, Melbourne, Australia — First of all let me say I am not partisan. I vote right, I vote left.
Personally, I think Giuliani, Gore, Clinton and McCain would all make good presidents at different times. Professionally I think Gore, Giuliani and Clinton may all lead to good outcomes for innovation.
The Left/Right divide is increasingly irrelevant, in any case. In a prior analysis from 2thinknowTM I made the case that the real contest is between Engaged and Not Engaged. See: Election innovation: why Left & Right don’t matter.
How Bush happened:
The people …

COMMENT, Sydney, Australia — Network goods are an economic term. Basically they mean the more people on the network the greater the value of the network.
Myspace is an obvious one. Telephones an older example. The internet a modern-ish example. Airports.
Anything where building more users/locations/access points or effectively nodes, increases the value of the network.
Network goods: the concept that explains the value of your life

The web of interrelationships that is your or my life, is a web of intersecting networks. In our published research to be released soon, we will be …

NEWS AND ANALYSIS, San Francisco, USA – Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of leading blogging platform WordPress, spoke at WordCamp 2007 today, Sunday July 22, 2007.
For the Agenda of the Matt Mullenweg’s presentation: http://2007.wordcamp.org/schedule/state-of-the-word/
NOTICE AND LICENSE: This story is copyright © 2007 2thinknow.This story is licensed for reprint in full or excerpt under copyright in any print or online media, under the terms that it includes the following byline within the reprint:Source: Christopher Hire, 2thinknowTM : http://www.2thinknow.com/innovation

Innovation: Past and Future of WordPress, according to Matt
Mullenweg …

ANALYSIS, San Francisco – WordCamp 2007 commenced today in San Francisco, at the Swedish American Hall on Market St. This is my second post.Presenter in the second session, was experienced journalist and IT veteran John Dvorak. He was joined by writer from the (sadly rumoured to be defunct) Business 2.0, OM Malik.
Dvorak had two interesting points regarding innovation:
“Bloggers present themselves as bloggers”
“Citizen journalism”
Schedule: http://2007.wordcamp.org/schedule/blogs-vs-journalism/
Both these allude to the innovation zeitgeist as 2thinknowTM define it.
The innovation zeitgesit in blogging is the upcoming professionalism and redesign of the presentation of user …

ANALYSIS — I don’t like Left and Right. They are increasingly irrelevant to political elections like the US political race or Australian federal race.
Try engagement and inevitability as the key distinctions to examine elections.
In my time working for various government departments I could tell you some stories, but then the saying goes, I (or someone else) really would have to kill you.
But I can tell you as someone who has seen things first hand that Left & Right alliances, factions and segmentation are more about alliance and …

OPINION, Leeton, NSW — There was a knifing in Melbourne last weekend. There is a knife, drug and violence epidemic in the Australian cities. There are severe infrastructure problems in Sydney, and emerging infrastructure problems in Melbourne.
The answer however is simple, and something State Governments avoid.
The answer is to do something.
As most governments are rewarded when they do nothing, less criticism from public & media, then the incentive is to do nothing.
Or as one leading government figure stated when asked why he didn’t do something: we don’t make …

Forget myspace, unless you are a band, start thinking web social communities integrated around common ideas. In business words – fragmented vertical markets of web communities.
Some have said personal/professional divide. More likely we will have multiple profiles in multiple places, StumbleUpon, Xing, linkedIn, Ning, Skype and others being some of those.
Social communities
These are also ending the disconnection found in modern society. Social disconnection is the number one Innovation Driver, found in our Global Innovation research.
So in other words, feeling depressed, empty & alone? Well, in a word you are not …

ANALYSIS — Innovation (a positive social change) is rare. Innovation is needed in environmental issues, not reliance on just scientific solutions.
This means, governments, business, people and their communities need to act. And to varying degrees each of them are.
The Big Innovation Guerrilla/Gorilla in the Room – Our Environment
Your beliefs on Climate Change don’t matter, nor mine. Our environment is the issue.
A reasonable person would agree beyond reasonable doubt that there is evidence of harm to human and animal life attributable to environmental damage.
That is the standard of proof in …

Television drug of the nation, breeding ignorance and feeding radiation.
Or so the rap song goes. Which in itself is a backhanded compliment.
The point is what you watch/read/see/hear creates your mind-set. And intelligent, creative people don’t want their head filled with scams, murders, Mormon sectarian love stories, Grey’s Anatomy, fart jokes, a puerile US comedy, more gory murders and more reality porn of ugly nude people (ie. Big Brother). That’s Sunday nights.
You say there’s the off switch. That there is, but at 8.30pm on a Sunday night after dinner it’s easy …

Fresh from my posting about university students, I saw this on www.Digg.com the news ranking site.
The world’s oldest blogger… this lady has a very entertaining (and pictorial) blog.
“My name is Olive Riley. I live in Australia near Sydney. I was born in Broken Hill on Oct. 20th 1899.Broken Hill is a mining town, far away in the centre of Australia. My Friend, Mike, has arranged this blog for me. He is doing the typing and I am telling the stories.” 
read Olive’s Blog | digg story
A very entertaining read, and to …