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Product Developers Resource Center -- For product developers, information publishers, software developers and others who create and market products via the web.

Find how-to's, project ideas, project examples, tutorials, the Product Developers Newsletters, a large download library of tools and resellable products and more - to help you build your product development business.

Oops. This might be a great site but it costs $90 per year. I can gather that much quality data in one day across the internet. Why is this site worth it? I don't know.

It starts in Britain

DATA DEBATE STIRS IN BRITAIN: A customer of Lloyds TSB bank has complained to Britain's Information Commissioner arguing that data should not be transferred outside Europe without the consent of individual customers. The complaint by an unidentified Lloyds customer, filed in July, argues that Indian workers would not be subject to the same data protection standards applicable in Europe, according to the Lloyds TSB union, which has been campaigning against outsourcing of work to India and other countries. The Information Commissioner's office said British companies are still bound by European standards when data is transferred overseas: "There are various bases in law which can be used to legitimize the transfer overseas of personal data, consent from the individual is just one of them." (The Australian 19 Aug 2004) Rec'd from J. Lamp http://australianit.news.com.au

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When Marianne Williamson proposed a Department of Peace in the USA, Diana Basterfield thought 'Why not have a Ministry of Peace in the UK?' The campaign is running strong and has regular meetings at the House of Commons thanks to John McConnell MP.

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It starts in Brian

The Schwab Foundation define Social Entrepreneurs as:"A social entrepreneur is a different kind of social leader who:

• Identifies and applies practical solutions to social problems by combining innovation, resourcefulness and opportunity.
• Innovates by finding a new product, a new service, or a new approach to a social problem.
• Focuses first and foremost on social value creation and in that spirit, is willing to share openly the innovations and insights of the initiative with a view to its wider replication.
• Doesn't wait to secure the resources before undertaking the catalytic innovation
• Is fully accountable to the constituencies s/he serves.
• Resists being trapped by the constraints of ideology or discipline.
• Continuously refines and adapts approach in response to feedback.
• Has a vision, but also a well-thought out roadmap as to how to attain the goal."

Czeslaw Milosz

At the Solidarity monument in Gdasnk, Poland, there are figures of three icons: Lech Walesa, Pope John Paul II, and Czeslaw Milosz.

His life, forged from the start in the crucible of Russia and Eastern Europe, straddled the chaos and the cataclysms of the century.

He spent 30 years in self-imposed exile in France and the United States but returned to Poland in 1989 after the overthrow of Communist rule.

His poetry inspired his countrymen for decades before he won the 1980 Nobel Prize for literature, which made him one of the best-read poets in the United States.

"He is without question one of the heroic figures of 20th-century poetry, although 'heroic' was a mantle he shunned..."

Disillusioned with Stalinism, Mr. Milosz left Poland, finding political asylum in France, where he published "The Captive Mind", a widely influential attack on the manner in which the Communist Party destroyed the independence of the intelligentsia. His work was censored in Poland but circulated underground. It was not translated into English until 1973.

Although he was ill, he was writing until recently.

He pursued meaning until the end of his life, asserting, in a poem called "Meaning" (1991):

When I die, I will see the
lining of the world
The other side, beyond bird,
mountain, sunset
The true meaning, ready to
be decoded.

And if there is no meaning, what remains, he said, is a word, a tireless messenger who "calls out, protests, screams."

Deals not reported

Debt For Nature Agreement to Conserve Panama's Forests On August 19, 2004, the Governments of the United States of America and the Republic of Panama, together with The Nature Conservancy, signed a second round of agreements, reducing Panama's debt to the United States and generating nearly $11 million for tropical forest conservation over the next 12 years...

Chemo-evolution

[via Dr Menlo]

Terence McKenna's "Stoned Ape" Theory of Human Evolution

To summarize: McKenna theorizes that as the North African jungles receded toward the end of the most recent ice age, giving way to grasslands, a branch of our tree-dwelling primate ancestors left the branches and took up a life out in the open -- following around herds of ungulates, nibbling what they could along the way.

Among the new items in their diet were psilocybin-containing mushrooms growing in the dung of these ungulate herds. The changes caused by the introduction of this drug to the primate diet were many -- McKenna theorizes, for instance, that synesthesia (the blurring of boundaries between the senses) caused by psilocybin led to the development of spoken language: the ability to form pictures in another person's mind through the use of vocal sounds.

About 12,000 years ago, further climate changes removed the mushroom from the human diet, resulting in a new set of profound changes in our species as we reverted to pre-mushroomed and frankly brutal primate social structures that had been modified and/or repressed by frequent consumption of psilocybin. more

Random Success

Turning Random Chance into Runaway Success

Susan RoAne writes about the eight traits of people "who see the opportunity, perceive a possibility and parlay it into something positive, which has a measure of success. They don't just see opportunity, they seize it. They are observers who pay attention: to issues, problems, perplexing situations, and to people. Whether their moment of serendipity turned into a job or business, or two tickets to the Olympics or even the opera, they are OPEN! Because of that, they create their own luck."

1. They talk to strangers.
2. They make small talk.
3. They "drop" names.
4. They eavesdrop and listen.
5. They ask for/offer help.
6. They stray from their chosen paths.
7. They exit graciously without burning bridges
8. They say YES when they want to say NO.

Real christians

"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.
And so on.

Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney stuff.

For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that's Moses, not Jesus. I haven't heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.

'Blessed are the merciful' in a courtroom? 'Blessed are the peacemakers' in the Pentagon? Give me a break!"

From an insightful and highly quotable article by Kurt Vonnegut entitled "Cold Turkey."

It is proper to doubt. Do not be led by holy scriptures, or by mere logic or inference, or by appearances, or by the authority of religious leaders. But when you realize that something is unwholesome or bad for you, give it up. And when you realize that something is wholesome and good for you, do it.

- Buddha

Rampant economic insecurity

A new book about economic insecurity. The article (on New Republic Online) looks at how to measure economic insecurity, and what policies are necessary to minimize it.

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Over two decades, the income gap has steadily increased between the richest Americans, who own homes and stocks and got big tax breaks, and those at the middle and bottom of the pay scale, whose paychecks buy less. Wages are stagnant and the middle class is shouldering a larger tax burden. Prices for health care, housing, tuition, gas and food have soared. New government data also shows that President Bush's tax cuts have shifted the overall tax burden to the middle class from the wealthiest Americans.

The wealthiest 20% of households in 1973 accounted for 44% of total U.S. income. Their share jumped to 50% in 2002, while everyone else's fell. The share dropped for the bottom fifth. "For those working in the bottom half of the pay scale, they're under an enormous amount of pressure." The job market is soft, sending wages down. Hiring came to a near standstill this summer, adding just 32,000 new jobs, stunning economists who had expected seven times as many.

More than a million jobs have been added back to the 2.6 million lost since Bush took office, but they pay less. Temp agencies alone account for about a fifth of all new jobs. Three in five pay below the national median hourly wage — $13.53. The average wage of $525.84 is at the lowest level since 2001.

The income gap is showing up in booming sales of luxury items. Porsche sales are up 17% for the year. Strong sales at Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue overshadow lackluster sales at stores such as Wal-Mart, Sears and Payless Shoes. © AP

How to argue

Thirty-eight dishonest tricks which are commonly used in argument, with the methods of overcoming them.

Pet census

Study shows U.S. pet population

Cats, 77 million. Dogs, 65 million. Such are the estimated totals, as of 2002. Two-thirds of U.S. farms have dogs, but 90 percent of the canines are owned by city dwellers. Then there are the various birds, guinea pigs...

Green cars

Green Car Congress
Technologies, issues and polices for sustainable mobility.

Huge power sources

In the early 1990's I worked with a small Texas firm from the oil patch which led toward promoting immense undersea power generators. In our approach, the generators would be submerged in large ocean current -- undersea rivers -- capable of tremendous torque. Of course, this is a challenge. The forces are intense and can easily destroy most designs. We connected this team with one of the largest "heavy iron" manufacturers in the world. This led to designs of huge cast iron parts, odd in an age of hi-tech materials, but a potent and practical use of existing technology. The proposed iron gears - perhaps from four to more than eight feet in diameter - could manage the torque of very large very slow-moving turbines under the sea. While many designs use advanced materials, this approach answered the problem of corrosion with the sheer mass of low-cost commodity iron. The power generation potential is astounding.

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Tidal Flow To Power New York City

The plan is to attach the machines, which look like small wind turbines, to concrete piles hammered into the bedrock nine metres below the river's surface. As the tide surges in and out, the heads pivot to face the current and the blades spin.

The project which started in January 2003. Verdant Power, a small energy company, will install six electricity turbines into New York's East River. These turbines will deliver only 200 kilowatts of power, but will be the world's first farm of tide-powered turbines, according to Nature.

The company plans to populate the tidal basin with several hundred turbine units in the years to come, with a goal of 5 to 10 megawatts within three years. The next step will be to install other farms in the US and in developing countries. The company plans to be present in ten sites by 2007.

Pronounced 'peeps'

Who was Samuel Pepys?

[via Future Now] A mere 344 years ago, in Restoration London, a public servant named Samuel Pepys was busy writing a daily entry in his diary. He continued this for about ten years. If you have taken any history classes that include this period, or read novels based on this time, you know the value of Pepys's scribbling. He provided us with a day to day view of what life was like back then.

So what could this have to do with Emergent Technology? It turns out that Phil Gyford has been replaying Pepys diary on the web, one entry per day, and will continue for about a decade. This trail of information is like an early blog, though it should be noted that Pepys never intended his writings to be public.