Robin Good: Curation with Noowit

Civil Society, Crowd-Sourcing, Innovation, Media
Robin Good
Robin Good

Noowit is a new curation and publishing platform that allows you to do on the web something very similar to what Flipboard allows you to do with your smartphone or tablet. You can curate a beautiful-looking web magazine, by selecting content from its internal news discovery engine or by clipping any content you find on the web with the dedicated NOOWIT bookmarklet.

On the backend you can select individual topics, authors and specific sources you want to subscribe to, to keep yourself informed. You can provide specific RSS feeds or import your collection of RSS subscriptions.  You can create multiple content sections inside a magazine and when you add new content you can easily decide in which section it is going to end up.  A swift navigation scheme provides almost seamless integration between the excerpted content that appears in the magazine and the full, original resource that you can navigate to without losing touch with the rest of the magazine.  NOOWIT magazines can be set to be public or private and they can be viewed across devices and screen of all sizes.  Like on Flipboard it is now possible to edit, modify or add to content that you pick and select to be added to your magazines.

My comment: NOOWIT easily creates great-looking digital magazines of your selected articles and resources. It is a great tool for anyone wanting to create easily a “splashy” curated digital magazine that looks great across devices with the minimum effort possible.

Private beta: http://www.noowit.com/

Preview: http://www.noowit.com/pbeta

Example I created: http://www.noowit.com/RobinGood

Chuck Spinney: Syria as a Case Study in the Failure of Democracy, Economics, Foreign Policy, Governance, and Intelligence

Corruption, Government, Media, Peace Intelligence
Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

Attached is another excellent report by Patrick Cockburn on the disorientating nature of contemporary yellow journalism in the Syrian Civil War.

Of course, disorientation is not a new problem in war: Sun Tzu said, “All war is based on deception.”

But the ability to manipulate data and images with high-tech computing technology and then distribute that manufactured ‘reality' nearly instantaneously, and at very low cost, has increased and decentralized the power to deceive.  This decentralization of the power to disorient has made everyone from Barack Obama to John Q. Average American more vulnerable to the self deception of an incestuously amplifying OODA loop*, and in so doing, it has spread confusion, disorder … and culpability throughout the political decision-making system.

This ambiguity goes beyond centrally orchestrated propaganda and raises what may the central question of contemporary governance in a system based on the assumptions of a representative democracy :  Who are the real decision makers in an evolving decision making system (or OODA loop) that is pulled and twisted by a plethora of ephemeral shadows in a cave?

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* Readers unfamiliar with the nature of incestuous amplification in OODA loops will find a brief explanation in my essay Iraq Invasion Anniversery: Inside the Decider's Head.

Chuck Spinney

Port de Plaisance,Taverna, Corsica


Foreign media portrayals of the conflict in Syria are dangerously inaccurate

World View: It is naive not to accept that both sides are capable of manipulating the facts to serve their own interests

Patrick Cockburn

Independent, 30 June 2013

Every time I come to Syria I am struck by how different the situation is on the ground from the way it is pictured in the outside world. The foreign media reporting of the Syrian conflict is surely as inaccurate and misleading as anything we have seen since the start of the First World War. I can't think of any other war or crisis I have covered in which propagandistic, biased or second-hand sources have been so readily accepted by journalists as providers of objective facts.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Syria as a Case Study in the Failure of Democracy, Economics, Foreign Policy, Governance, and Intelligence”

Owl: Syrian Rebels Behead Two Christians, One a Priest

08 Wild Cards, IO Deeds of War
Who?  Who?
Who? Who?

Obama is Sending Arms to These Utterly Vicious Thugs and Murderers: Your Tax Dollars at Work

“Two Christians, one of them a priest, have been beheaded by militants because they were suspected of cooperating with the Syrian military, according to an Al-Alam report. A video uploaded to the internet yesterday shows two men with their hands bound, surrounded by dozens of people, many of them armed and cheering in celebration. The two are brutally executed – beheaded with a small combat knife. Echoing previous beheading recorded by insurgents, the head is held up to the cheers of onlookers and then placed on the body.”

I forced myself to watch the video of this atrocity done by these cruel bastards. In the second instance, the killer had to be handed a second knife to finish the job. These idiots appear unable to keep the knives sharp, much prolonging the pain and misery of their victims.

Article and Link to Video of Beheadings – CAUTION – Very Disturbing Imagery:

Syrians Behead two Christians

 

Rickard Falkvinge: When Journalism Dies, Tyranny Thrives

Corruption, Ethics, Law Enforcement, Media
Rickard Falkvinge
Rickard Falkvinge

With Journalism Persecuted, The United States Is Now At Event Horizon To A Police State

Repression:  Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian reporter who published Edward Snowden’s leaks, was recently suggested to be a criminal for shining light on the NSA’s abuse of power. This is a key identifiable step when societies close down; it is a point of no return. It seems the United States is reaching the event horizon to a police state.

Read full post.

SchwartzReport: Focus on Bees and Accountability

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 07 Health, 11 Society

schwartz reportThis is the latest on the collapse of the bees. The loss of these little beings is beginning to impact humanity, as this report shows. Part of the problem may be a particular mite. But as I read the literature the overwhelming cause is pesticides and herbicides.

Yet still the Obama Administration, its Department of Agriculture, the EPA, even the State Department, are supporting and protecting Monsanto, Dow, and the four other companies who produce and promote these poisons, in their quest for profit. If this continues, in my view, within the next decade we are going to have a world food crisis.

Where's the Buzz? N.J. Crops Affected by Decline in Honey bee Population
REBECCA FORAND – South Jersey Times

Here is yet a different facet of the great geopolitical trend that is changing our world; in this case the rise of what amounts to a new global hereditary elite. What continues to amaze me is how passive populations around the world have been about this.

Let me also note the references to Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow, who I think are the best socially progressive intellects on cable television. They actually understand what data is, and how to interpret it. In the media today this is almost as rare as a white crow.

How Inbred Elites Are Tearing America Apart
DAVID DALEY – AlterNet (U.S.)

Mini-Me: US reportedly bugged EU offices, computer networks, according to Der Spiegel magazine

#OSE Open Source Everything, Corruption, Government, Military
Who?  Mini-Me?
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

US reportedly bugged EU offices, computer networks, according to Der Spiegel magazine

The United States has been accused of bugging European Union offices and accessing EU computer networks, according to secret documents cited in German magazine Der Spiegel.

EXTRACT:

The president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, says if the report is correct it will have a “severe impact” on relations between the EU and the United States.

“On behalf of the European Parliament, I demand full clarification and require further information speedily from the US authorities with regard to these allegations,” he said in a statement.

Luxembourg foreign minister Jean Asselborn told Der Spiegel, “if these reports are true, it's disgusting”.

“The United States would be better off monitoring its secret services rather than its allies,” he said.

Read full article.

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Sepp Hasslberger: Renewable Source Electricity To Exceed Gas and Nuclear by 2016

05 Energy, 11 Society
Sepp Hasslberger
Sepp Hasslberger

It is good to see there's progress towards getting off fossil fuels, but we still have a ways to go … and there are new free energy technologies being developed that may bring us there even faster.

Energy Revolution

Mark Dansie

Revolution-Green.com, 28 June 2013

Electricity generation from renewable sources worldwide will exceed that from gas and be twice that from nuclear power by 2016 says the International Energy Agency.

The IEA says renewable power is expected to jump by 40% in the next five years and will make up almost a quarter of the global power mix by 2018. The prediction is in the IEA’s second annual Medium-Term Renewable Energy Market Report.

Read full article.

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