Voting machines are unreliable across the United States. How can that be in a major democracy?

ANALYSIS, Germany — Train travel, after an unfashionable period in the 1970s-80s, is emerging again as an environmentally-friendlier, and practical way to travel to and from work.
Well, this is true, in Germany, and much of Europe.

The ease of implementation of the Deutsche Bahn (D-Bahn) system, allows for the enquiry into, and booking of complex train routes.
Whilst no mechanical system is perfect, those with some human knowledge of conditions on the ground in Germany, can plan and map routes across Europe using the German website for D-Bahn.
German Trains Worldwide Benchmark
In public …

ANALYSIS, Australia – In the first 70 days of Australia’s new leadership, the 2thinknow assessment is that things look promising for innovation under new Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
The 2thinknow scorecard on Rudd and innovation is an 8 out of 10.

Why?
The main reason, is that unlike some politicians he is actually personally championing change. And it’s not change of ideology or dogma, but the sort of practical change Australia needs.
Shortly, I will list the 7 steps Rudd took towards innovation in the 70 days.
But first some background.
The Howard Year’s …

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 …

COMMENT, Australia — Normally I don’t do this.
Make predictions, that is (in public, yet!).
However I am testing innovation models used for prediction. My innovation analysis though shows 3 likely outcomes for Australia.

(Photo by Ester Inbar )

COMMENT, Melbourne – 3 Breakdowns in 1 hour in a 2 kilometre stretch of the busiest tram route in Melbourne, St Kilda Road, as of 10.15 am today.
There was a recent crash on St Kilda Road on Monday, in the same spot 3 breakdowns occured in one hour today.
This is happening very frequently, almost EVERY day, so as a majority of people who catch a tram to work are or meetings, study or family are inconvenienced every day.
It is seriously impacting lives, and forcing people to drive even …

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, Melbourne – Where you work is important to how you are inspired to create & then implement innovation.
Do some of these describe your workplace?
Concrete, gray, drab, cubicle, boxed-in, noisy, mobile phone ringtones from hell, low barriers, bombarded with email, ‘no door’ policy, jokes, noise, prison-like gulag?
Or is it more interesting?
Post-modernist refugee camp for cultural relativists?
Weekend-after recovery center?
Creative desert?
Angst-ridden pit of teenage romance?
So what works for innovation?
One of the perks of having worked at so  many corporations (more than 350) is you get to see what works and what doesn’t …

2THINKNOW COMMENT, Melbourne – “Left turn at Albuquerque.”
Unless you have watched Bugs Bunny you wouldn’t know that. But chances are you have. No matter where you live.
And you might know:
“Quoi de neuf, docteur ?” (Francais)

” Che succede, amico?” (Italiano)
“Hej šefe koji ti je vrag?” (Yugoslav)
“Eh, What’s Up Doc?” (English)
… or in any other language you care to name.
Bugs Bunny is a cartoon that has almost universal understanding across multiple languages all throughout the world.
Animation lends itself to universal communication.
Animation can be dubbed easily into any language. The lips moving don’t …

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 …

OPINION, Melbourne — We all keep hearing how difficult Generation X & Y are to work with. (Mainly Gen Y).
Well I’d say it has something to do with those “oh so demanding baby boomers” who were their parents.
Truth is:
if you dose a bunch of kids up on sugar, …
chauffeur them around to every single hobby that might interest them, …
tell them that all viewpoints are culturally equivalent, …
teach them to question all authority figures, …
give them what they want with no discipline,…
smoke dope yourself but lecture them on it/tell them …

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 …

ANALYSIS, Melbourne –I loved rail as a kid. That trip from the small town I lived in to the ‘big smoke’ always took a 5 hour bus and a train trip.
And there was something inspiring about the rattle of that train.
Nostalgia aside, railways now are once again are on their way to leading the innovation zeitgeist in transport.
Railways – Back-to-the-Future Innovation
In cold hard fiscal terms railways have a bright future with some caveats.
Most importantly, trains have a very long-term future mainly due to the fact that trains carry more passengers …

COMMENT, Australia — You said: I’d come to Australia, but…
A land far far away, Australia…
For all the people I have spoken to since starting the Global Innovation Conversation in April, a lot of you have expressed interest in visiting Australia.
It’s a long flight, but I’m hoping to make it easier for all you eager visitors from USA & Canada so you can do it in comfort. The easy way…
Flying times disable Innovation
Many bright and clever people have expressed to me they’d love to fly to Australia, but it is simply …

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 …

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 …

Librarians are having to deal with the vast amount of content that only occurs in web or electronic form. It’s a massive trend. So a term, Library 2.0 and a support network has arisen. One of their communities online is at: library20.ning.com
Organising electronic data: this is a big issue. I predict veteran website snapshots will be a collectors item one day, much like movie merchandise/posters are now.
Social networking innovations: I found this whilst researching on Marc Andreessen’s new venture Ning.com, basically a site that lets you create your own social …

Sir Tim Berners Lee on the next big innovation beyond Web 2.0. That would be the semantic web. Or basically interchangeable data, data from your contact database, talks to data from a website allowing you to file someone you meet online in your contacts. Or an invoice in your accounting system is machine-readable as an invoice on the web.
In other words no more data conversion. This is what XML is all about, but that is one part of it.
If it wasn’t Berners Lee, i’d say perhaps that’s a B I …