The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, scored an unprecedented $3.625 million in one glamorous night to establish the first collection of Islamic art in Texas and the South…

That’s pretty cool…

And it still amazes me how quickly the comments can slump into a mud slinging contest… one comment actually makes a very valid point about people saying online what they would never say face to face, and then… calls them cockroaches!

ok… so, left the post this morning still a bit confused about how OpenSocial Functioned… especially after seeing the Ask a Ninja screenshots. So, when I check my Bloglines just now – saw a post by HappieKatie:

So say you have a really awesome online tool/site that helped your community keep track of their favorite Japanese cartoons, you could create a widget for MySpace that users could add to their profile page using data collected by MySpace and your cartoon site.

All their info would be integrated and updated seamlessly within MySpace.  Other MySpace users can interact with it.  Other users can see how cool it is and start using your widget and loving your manga community.  The best part of it all is that there’s no new programming languages to learn – HTML, Java — but nothing network specific.

Ok, so now it makes a bit more sense… its not your whole profile – its that bit of info relevant to a particular site that you can move to another site… I think I am starting to wrap my brain around it.

And… so for kicks on a Friday Afternoon – a neat example of Universal Connectedness:

1. HappyKatie was one of the organizing members of The Tendenci User’s Conference, who…
2. Invited Tracey and I to share about our success with the Save The Center Campaign, for which…
3. I got a very nice bottle of Merlot and gift certificate to Borders (cause those Schipulites are complete out-of-the-closet book-aholics) which I used to…
4. Buy Naked Converstations, which came in the mail and I started to read yesterday, whose author is writing another book about just the things…
5. OpenSocial is trying to accomplish!

So what can I add?  Perhaps, only a whiny little ego stroke. Fifteen months ago, I announced I was writing a book called, Global Neighbourhoods and renamed this site. My ‘Big Idea’ was that sites themselves would become unimportant as the power moved to small groups of users. The same people would find the same friends and share videos and photos and information and endorsements as thy bopped about from one site to another.  The size of a site would no longer matter.  Instead the small  circle of friends forming around a topic, would become the focal point and these friends would influence each other far more than any marketing campaign or ad network could. read more>>>

Fun Stuff!

and why should you care…

1. OpenSocial is from Google – so right away, its Google for heaven sake and anyone that has anything to do with the internet should perk up their ears a little bit.
2. A brief delve into the techie stuff (very brief and very lite)… developer (people who type up the code for all that cool stuff like Flickr, linkedin, Tendenci, etc.) can now create a cool social application (anything that you set up a profile for) and have that application work across all the social networks that are using OpenSocial.
3. What does that mean for you and me??? Well, I can set up my profile in a Tendenci site… with all my info, pictures, contacts/connections with other folks… then my profile can be used in whole bunch of other site… I don’t have to start over each time.

   1. What does OpenSocial mean for the end users?

      Most importantly, OpenSocial will benefit end users because –

      - It will allow end users to use the same applications across social networks.
      - Over time, it will allow end users to share and synchronize profile, friend and activity data across social networks.
      - Over time, by allowing more niche social networks to evolve, it will increase the social networking options available to end users.

      Read More...

Ok, ok… you know I love TED! And here is a great reason why… this guy spends his life studying happiness/well-being… well of course I want to hear what he has to say!

What I took most from this talk was how much time I spend in pursuit of well-being financailly, socially, physically… and still how little time each week or even day, I spend in pursuit of well-being just in my mind/soul. It reminds of the old story of the priest who said he spent an hour in prayer everyday – except on the days he was busy… and then he spent 2.

What is happiness, and how can we all get some? Buddhist monk, photographer and author Matthieu Ricard has devoted his life to these questions, and his answer is influenced by his faith as well as by his scientific turn of mind: We can train our minds in habits of happiness. Interwoven with his talk are stunning photographs of the Himalayas and of his spiritual community. (Recorded February 2004 in Monterey, California. Duration: 21:06.)

For all you girly girls out there – this site is for you!

Its by Liz Tran – a Seattle based artist and its get this… a new dress every day!

Thanx to HappyKatie for pointing it out.

My fav??? The Vera, cause its just so me.