In the July 3 Globe South section of the Boston Globe is an article about some of the important innovations that have happened just South of Boston.

Some highlights:

1927, Dr. William Hinton, son of former slaves, developed a test for syphilus, one of the most challenging diseases of his time. Dr. Hinton became the first black professor at Harvard Medical School and was a pioneer in preventative medicine.

1836, William Otis of Canton invented the steam shovel, Otis steam shovels were used to fill in the Back Bay. Before his invention, construction workers did not have easy access to the powerful leverage of pneumatic and hydraulic energy systems in their tools.

1890's, King Gillette The founder of the Gillette corporation came up with the idea for the disposable razor while vacationing in Hull.

1906, Reginald Fessenden developed the first system to transmit voice and music over radio waves. His broadcast of Christmas Eve that year was heard by ships' radio operators all across the Atlantic. Before that time, they had only communicated via morse code, a language of short and long beeps.

1937, Ruth Wakefield, through experimentation and making do with different materials invented the chocolate chip cookie at the Tollhouse Inn in Whitman.

More Information:

Here is a link to the article: Link

The Boston History and Innovation Collaborative: Link

School for Champions Biography of King Gillette: Link

Boston Breakthroughs: Link

Steam Shovel information: Link

A bio of Dr. Hinton: Link

William Otis on Wikipedia - The polish version has more information (go figure): Link

Back Bay history - Link

Hello my name is...

Saint aka The Ghost

Richard Bach's story Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a very insightful work about innovators and innovation.  I'm not going to give a lengthy review of it except that I recommend reading it.  Leave the breakfast flock and learn how to truly fly.

The basic gameplay is this- you pick a map, and waves of zombies come. After you kill so many zombies, you get new weapons, which you will need to fend of the next wave of zombies.

You start with a trusty pistol- it shoots alright, kinda short range, and takes a couple shots to put down a zombie. It never runs out of ammo (This is the only weapon in the game that works like this) As you kill more zombies, you get better and better weapons and tools to survive- uzis, desert eagles, grenades, claymore mines, explosive barrels, defensive walls, etc.

It seems like it would be easy enough if it was just zombies you were fighting. Demons also show up, and they move faster, more intentionally, and they shoot fireballs. Which set off explosive barrels, or destroy defensive walls.

So gameplay basically becomes about setting up walls and explosive traps in order to control the flow of zombies into chokepoints and blow them up. And take out the demons. Because the demons can set off or destroy your traps and defenses, they're really the biggest threat. Most games end either with you either getting chased down in a corner and fireballed to death by a couple of demons or blown up by your own explosive chain reaction (probably also set off by demons).

And it's this which makes it capture the zombie horde experience so perfectly. You spend your time figuring out defenses to hold off a wave, frantically deal with it, then try to set up for the next wave, hopefully not blowing out all of your resources along the way. You'll find yourself developing several "fallback" points along the way.

The trick to giving yourself time to set up between waves is to save one zombie- you can out run it easily, and set up as many defenses as you want, then finish it with the pistol. Just be sure you don't accidentally set off your own explosive traps when you do it.

The variety of maps also makes for drastically different games- chokepoints, entry areas, all of these are different. I can't confirm, but it also seems to me that the difficulty of how many demons and how fast they're spawned seems to be different based on the map you have.

For a simple shoot the mob game, this has really deep tactics, and is the most satisfying zombie videogame I have ever played.

(Sorry for pulling the walkthrough vid.  It's hard to find video on this game- but man, this guy is good)

Silent Bomber is a sci-fi action game, you basically run around, shooting out bombs and then blowing up robots.  It's really everything (non sexual) a 12 year old boy could ask for.

The basic gameplay is this- you run around in an overhead map, fighting robots using your bombs.  You are limited to how many bombs you can lay out at one time (set them off, and you can lay out more).  You can lay out bombs where you stand, trailing them behind you, or shooting them at a target.  The first two tactics are great if you're going to lead enemies over them while they're chasing you.  The latter tends to be the general offensive choice of play.

Bombs become exponentially more powerful when you stack them together.  As play advances, you can upgrade how many bombs you can lay out, their range, and your shields.  Part of the tactics of play is figuring out how many bombs you need to take out the standard enemies so you can spread the love most efficiently.

Yes your bombs can hurt you.  Yes they give you explosive things to bomb as well.  Yes, together, it can either be a joyous explosion of enemy bot bits or your charred carcass getting tossed to the wall.  This game is like if Megaman, Gauntlet, and Bomberman had a raunchy menage-a-trois and made the ultimate love child game.

Naturally, you also receive limited special bombs- Napalm, Paralysis and Gravity.  And yes, they are all the joy that you can imagine.  Because they are limited numbers, you have to be careful about when and where you use them.  As long as you don't get stupid with it, you actually have a really solid number to work with.

There's enough variety in both enemies and environments and bosses that you will find yourself changing up your tactics to meet the game.  Nearly every level features several enemy generators that you will want to blow up, as the hectic pressure will keep you from standing still.

My biggest nitpicks with the game are that sometimes foes shoot at you from offscreen, and that, sometimes you get lost and don't know where to go next.  These two nitpicks are small flaws in an otherwise excellent game which has not been matched in gameplay since.

Here's a rundown of the videos we've done. ScobleizerTV (S)=36 shows. WorkFastTV (WF)=1 show. Global NeighbourhoodsTV (GN)=14 shows. FastCompanyLive (FCL)=44 shows. Total of 95 shows. Yowza, with more on the way.

My favorite ones? The Tesla drive, the IBM moving the Atom, the Yosemite ones with Michael Adams, and the Rackspace ones (they went IPO right after we shot, so we have the last video before their quiet period, plus they were darn cool and their new headquarters are mondo big).

What did we do bad? 1. Didn't get enough outside of the technology industry and didn't get short versions done. 2. Also didn't get transcripts done yet. 3. We had a rough beginning with Shel's show that got a lot better over time. 4. Also, the cell phone videos aren't integrated into the site the way they should be (I start those over on Qik, then move them over later, which totally doesn't take advantage of the "live" ability of cell phone videos).

I'd love to know what you think, good or bad. The next three months are going to be just as wild. Starting next week as we go to Seattle to see lots of startups and more stuff at Microsoft, too.

By the way, thanks to Rocky Barbanica. He edited and produced much of this stuff and has dragged our two HD cameras lots of places. Michael Shick edited Global Neighbourhoods and I'm most grateful for that, too.

Also, thank you to our sponsors: Seagate, who sponsors ScobleizerTV, and SAP, who sponsors WorkFastTV. It's expensive to buy HD cameras, buy gas for cars, travel around the world, and pay for bandwidth and other stuff. Not to mention our salaries. So, if you like what we do, please think of our sponsors next time you have a chance to choose them or someone else.

Finally, thank you to everyone who has been in front of our cameras. Without you, well, these shows wouldn't be interesting.

Here's a list of all of our shows, in the order they come up on the Web site.

JUNE:

Sliderocket. Intro to a very interesting new presentation package. (S)
Threshold. Intro to easiest-to-use wireless home automation system. (S)
Rick Rashid, Microsoft. He runs Microsoft Research. Enough said. (S)
Roy Levin, Microsoft. Smart guy who runs Microsoft's Silicon Valley Research group. (S)
New show launches: WorkFastTV (first one goes up tomorrow) (WF)
New show to launch: PhotoCycle (the trailer/intro is already up -- an astute ear will tell that's Ansel Adams playing piano, the full show starts later in June). (PC)
Eepybird. The folks behind those Diet Coke and Mentos explosions. (GN)
Pamela Skillings. Author of "Escape from Corporate America" talks to my cell phone about your career. (FCL)

MAY:

Amazee: Demo of new project-management online service. (S)
Bill Watkins, Seagate. Bill, Seagate's CEO talks to me about future of its business and asks "what recession?" (S)
Xerox CTO. Sophie Vandebroek talks to me about PARC and the post-copier world of Xerox research. (S)
TechCrunch Israel. I learn about Israel's entrepreneurs from TechCrunch's Roi Carthy. (S)
Plymedia. A cool online video company in Israel shows me their video overlay technology. (S)
Flixwagon. This Israeli company shows me how their technology lets you send live video from cell phones. (S)
Checkpoint. The biggest startup success from Israel. The CEO talks about security business. (S)
Itay Talgam, famous conductor. Part I. Part II. Part III. Gives a seminar showing management styles of orchestral conductors. (S)
IBM Research, Semantic Search. A look at research into semantic search at IBM's New Almaden Research Center. (S)
HBMG. An Austin, TX, company shows me their security software which uses unique video compression. (S)
Semantinet. Interesting new social networking tool/search engine in Israel. (S)
Neopolitan Networks. San Antonio, TX, based company that supports many companies with their bandwidth needs. (S)
CERN's Large Hadron Collider. The place where the Web was invented, but now they are turning on a new machine designed to discover the properties of Mass. A physicist shows us around and explains what we're seeing. (S)
Microsoft Research (Translations). See the latest in language translation technology. (FCL)
New York Times. They demo and announce "Times Machine" which lets subscribers look at older issues. (FCL)
Microsoft Research (Surface). Andy Wilson invented many of the concepts behind the Surface computer that you use your hands to control and here he gives us a ton of info about what he's building. (FCL)
FriendFeed (Designer). The designer behind FriendFeed and many Google products like Gmail and Google Reader, gives his philosophy on design. (FCL)
BluePulse. Social network for cell phones, CEO tells me latest. (FCL)
SlideRocket. PowerPoint competitor announces first version, coming in July. (FCL)
Google. Introduces FriendConnect. (FCL)
eMetrics Conference. Talking to experts about analytics of your Web site. (FCL)
PARC. A tour of the Palo Alto Research Center (subsidiary of Xerox) where the CEO shows me the first ethernet cable, which is still embedded in a wall there. (FCL)
Ansel Adams Gallery. Michael Adams, Ansel Adams son, takes us to Glacier Point in Yosemite where we interview him about Ansel's famous photos. Another video shows him in front of the family business. (FCL)
Minggl. A new toolbar so you can join your friends from several social networks. (FCL)
Web 2.0 Expo. An afterhours tour through the exhibit hall with the guys from Zude. (FCL)
Moo Cards. The CEO of Moo shows us his latest cool business cards which are a hit with photographers and social media influentials. (FCL)
Good Vision. An interesting company in Israel that focuses on helping companies perform socially responsible processes. (FCL)

APRIL

Newstin. A service, located in Prague, that helps you find the news. (S)
IBM Research, Moving Atoms. This is my favorite experience. We move a single iron atom across a piece of copper. In the video they explain why they are doing this (to make smaller and smaller storage devices). (S) We also have a cell phone video we did in the lab that gives more info. (FCL)
Admob. A new advertising network that's white hot aimed at getting ads onto mobile phones around the world. (S)
Austin City Limits. One of the best audio engineers in the world explains his work on this famous TV show. (S)
IBM's New Almaden Research Center. This is where tons of stuff was invented. Hard drives. Blue lasers. And more. (S)
PerfTech. Messaging technology for cable companies in our San Antonio, Texas, visit. (S)
Kulabyte. Making HD video compress faster and better. (S)
Rackspace's new headquarters. Get an exclusive look at Rackspace's new headquarters in San Antonio, Texas (they announced an IPO a few weeks after we visited). (S)
Rackspace Radio Station. A look at Rackspace's radio station in San Antonio, Texas. (S)
Rackspace/Leadership. Fun story about how Rackspace's Chairman got everyone inside Rackspace to change their minds. (FCL)
Rackspace/office fight. There's a fight inside Rackspace between dark and light offices. Which one would you pick? (FCL)
MySpace CTO. See the architecture behind this famous social networking site. (S)
Ben Segal. Mentor of Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web. (S)
Mahlo. Part I. Part II. Innovative search company that uses humans instead of algoritms to bring better results. (S)
Jim Long. NBC cameraman at of the US President. (GN)
KD Paine. Social Media Measurement guru. (GN)
Dell. Richard Binhammer talks with Shel Israel about social media and measuring results. (GN)
Radian 6. Part I. Part II. Measuring results and talking about Radian 6's business and how it impacts social media. (GN)
Buzz Logic. Measuring influence in social media. (GN)
Disney. Look at Disney's new virtual worlds. (GN)
Twitter. A talk with Twitter's founders about its impact on the social media world. (GN)
GM. A talk with General Motors' CEO where he admits he doesn't write his own blog. (GN)
Cemaphor. They show off their new technology that syncs Google Calendars and email with Microsoft's Outlook and Exchange. (FCL)
ZigTag. Demo of a new bookmarking service. (FCL)
AT&T. Demo of AT&T's new browser. (FCL)
Shane Finley. Micro-wine innovator. (FCL)
PhotoCrank. CEO of PhotoCrank tells me why he started his company. (FCL)
DeLoach Winery. A bunch of geeks get together at a winery for an interesting conversation about business. (FCL)
FriendFeed. Part I. Part II. The founders of FriendFeed talk about their business (this is one of the first video interviews they gave, since then they've gotten much more popular and have been interviewed more often). (FCL)

MARCH

Google Docs. They announce offline docs. (S)
Newtek. The Tricaster is mondo cool way to do video production. Leo Laporte is using one on his new show.
Microsoft Research/Redmond. An exclusive tour around Microsoft's new research building. (S)
MySpace. An interview with the VP of product development at this famous social network. Also got a separate interview with MySpace's CEO. (S)
Scribd. A startup in San Francisco that makes sharing presentations and docs fun. (S)
John Kao. Longtime business professor and innovation guru plays some music and talks about innovation. (S) I also did a separate interview with him on my cell phone, which is here. (FCL)
Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope. We got the first video of Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope (it got 10 million unique visits in first week). (S)
Amazon. Web services evangelist gives us an update on the state of Amazon's popular Web services. (S)
Seaworld. Shel gets wet in the name of finding out how Seaworld is using social media. (GN)
Intel. How the world's biggest processor manufacturer is using social media to get the word out. (GN)
Sun Microsystems. How Sun is using social media to better use its internal knowledge. (GN)
Forrester. Jeremiah Owyang, Forrester's analyst on social media, talks with Shel Israel. (GN)
Hugh Macleod. Famous artist that puts his drawings on backs of business cards up on his blog. (GN)
Microsoft. New Internet Explorer gets talked about in the hallways with executives from Microsoft. (FCL)
Monster. Cool new headphones get demoed. (FCL)
Lijit. Useful new search engine for bloggers demoed. (FCL)
Facebook. CEO Mark Zuckerberg takes questions from an audience at SXSW. (FCL)
AMD and ATI. A look into the merger of these two companies with executives from each. (FCL)
Make Magazine. Meet the guy behind Make Magazine, a popular magazine for people who like building their own things. (FCL)
Intel Chip History. A look back at San Antonio's tech history and part in designing Intel's famous 8008 processor that kicked off a whole industry. (FCL)
Ear Bender. After an REM concert we met a music promoter who let us into his world. (FCL)
Hatchery. How does a company get started when it's trying to disrupt something as big as the credit card industry? (FCL)
iLike. The founder of iLike told me at the SXSW conference that they had made a deal with R.E.M. (FCL)
Adaptive Blue. A useful toolbar for adding on search features gets demoed to me. (FCL)
Tesla. First ride in the production tesla with Elon Musk, chairman of the board. (FCL)
Annie Leibovitz. Famous photographer of famous people shows us around her exhibit. (FCL)
NASDAQ. Shows off its new technology which lets stock traders go back and check the price at a specific time. (FCL)
MFG.COM. Shows off a very cool app for tracking shipments. (FCL)
Larry Lessig. Gives his last talk on Free Culture at Stanford University. He's a law professor there and is quite famous for starting up Creative Commons, among other things. (FCL)
Joi Ito. CEO of Creative Commons talks with us on the way to a meeting. (FCL)
Tim O'Reilly. Future of Advertising conversation after Davos' World Economic Forum panel discussion. There was a second part of this conversation too. (FCL)
Rick Warren, Part I. Part II. Author of hugely popular "A Purpose Driven Life" and head of largest single church in USA has a fun chat with me at the World Economic Forum. (FCL)

This is a two-part video interview. Check out the old box products of FreeHand, PageMaker and even the old FlightCheck 3 box! Pretty neat- more than 11 years ago! You can catch part-two here:

Though we had a few other strategy rpgs out at that point- Ogre Tactics, Shining Force, Vandal Hearts, this game really sunk it's claws into a lot of people.  I know, it's the only game that got my girlfriend at the time pissed at me.

This game really worked with the 3-D aspect of the maps, giving varied and interesting terrain, and also managed to squeeze a lot of strategy out of small maps with only 4-5 characters on a team.  FF Tactics also wasn't afraid to ramp up the difficulty in the early and middle portions of the game- you had to get your game tight or get stomped.

FF Tactics had a fascinating combination of fun combats and good long term planning cycles.  Your characters got rewarded xp for doing anything more than simply defending or standing there, so it made sense to try to find something for every character to do, every round, in order to maximize their potential.  This did lead to some cheap tactics like leaving one bad guy alive while your allies sat around healing or buffing each other for free xp.

The big thing which you were planning around was the Job class system.  Each character could advance through different classes, and you'd earn points to buy skills along the way.  You could have a couple of secondary skills equipped from any class skills you had learned previously, so part of play was trying to figure out which jobs led to which, which skills were the best to acquire, and how to best mix them.  At the time, there wasn't the usual published walkthrough book or a lot of faqs on the internet, so you were going in blind.

Ultimately, a few skills tended to become key as play went on, mostly being skills that you could use all the time to farm for more points.  An early skill for Squires basically buffed their attack every time they did it, and it did not seem to have a time limit, or limit to how high you could stack it, so you'd just do that for 4 rounds while the enemy would approach, then start dishing out 1 hit kills.  Monks would gain the ability to heal or buff characters, and you could do that all day for points.  But probably the easiest skill to farm was the Bards/Dancers skills, which would fire off quickly and randomly buff your party or throw status on the enemies.

What kept this from being completely broken was that you had to also do this while keeping a good party mix.  This meant that advancing one character sometimes relied on advancing others- because you only had like 5 guys on screen, you didn't have a lot of wiggle room for missing key roles.  If characters died, you had a few rounds to save them or finish the fight- or you lost them permanently.  This really put the edge on the game.

A nice innovation was that the game didn't waste time with exploration.  You had a world map, you picked a location, and your team went there.  If it was a fight- you'd go straight to the battle screen.  If it was a town, you got a menu of the places you could go.  There was no time wasting, which, in part, really made it easier to lose yourself playing, because you were almost always engaged in play.

FF Tactics also made heavy use of optional text- it had an encyclopedia of people, places, historical events, etc., which added a ridiculous amount of story and setting to it, all without having to render it or give big cinemas.  Though somewhat of a cheat, it really had players using their imagination and meeting the game half way.  Because it was optional, you didn't have to dig into it if you didn't want to, you could just show up and fight monsters and have a good time.

This is still one of my 5 star games that I would pop in and play through again.

The show airs Mondays at 9pm Eastern time/6pm Pacific time. More information about the show can be read at http://innovation.cnbc.com/.

Both of these games brought a strong anime feel (back in the days when anime was hard to come by) and both brought that crazy mixed up sense of Japanese fantasy- where you have steamknights, ninjas, robots, and hawk people all tossed into a single world.

The Shining Force games were innovators of the time and also had some excellent menu systems, using a simple 4 boxes which you selected by pressing a direction on the game pad - which once you got used to it, made it very, very fast to work with.  Which was good, because the gameplay generally revolved around maneuvering up to 12 party members in strategic combat.

Not all of the units were balanced and you wanted to build up and which ones you could "get by" with, though it wasn't super punishing if you didn't know right away.  The sheer variety of characters made things very interesting in play.  Aside from the usual staples of warriors, mages, and healers, you had archers, robots with laser attacks, giant turtles, hawkmen, gnomes on helicopters etc.  This range of folks altered movement, and you really appreciated having flying team members to cross water and chasms, or that you could fly them away from danger over mountainous terrain.

This was one of the series of games that gave XP every time a character made an attack, which meant you no longer had to try to spread out kills just to get everyone to level up.  Certainly there was more xp to be had if you made the kill, but it wasn't a requirement anymore.  Later games like FF Tactics would push it further by giving xp for healing and other support actions, but at the time, this was still pretty revolutionary.  Characters could level up to 99, though at 20th level you could open up  a stronger class for them, which would reset them to 1, but give them much better stats, and usually transform the character's appearance.   Like, one guy transformed into a werewolf, another guy builds a fat suit of steam power armor, etc.

The AI for the opposition wasn't bad either.  You often found yourself cursing under your breath as your characters were getting targeted or hammered on by the enemies, or they'd retreat the healer you've been trying to kill for 3 rounds.

The basic unit breakdowns are pretty simple when you look at it in the abstract- attack, defense, movement and range.  Usually you'd try to coordinate to concentrate fire to completely wipe out a foe (a common tactic in hp baseed games).  Meanwhile, the foe is doing the same thing.  Your area of  effect spells became one of the trickiest things to strategize around, whether attacking or healing.  Again, intuitive controls made this less of a headache than you'd expect.

Shining Force games also loved to put you in weird but cool combat scenarios.  In one, you're shrunk down and fighting chess pieces on a chess board.  In another, you're fighting a giant and all you can see is it's feet, and the giant sword that comes down from above.  In yet another, you're dealing with a set of laser cannons which have a straight line of effect and you're trying to take them out while not getting caught in their laser "crossword puzzle" pattern.

These games allowed you to save anywhere, which still is not a common feature in rpgs, and also, interestingly enough, had no grind zones.  Each fight was non-repeatable.  Surprisingly, this works out fine because if your characters are weaker, you get more xp and so it balances out through play.

The later iterations in the series would try to make the jump to 3D, losing much of the charm and system simplicity which made them classics.  Every few years someone tries to revive them, though they seem to always miss what made them work in the first place.  Advance Wars would be about the closest thing in current games, though it definitely has a more hardcore edge than SF series had.

This is still one of my favorite action mech games all around. While Armored Core series has outlasted it, nothing has the hyperactive fury of Virtua On. Though it looks like pure madness, there is actually a lot of tactics applied which makes the game as deep as any fighter game.

Like a fighter game, you have a lot of characters (mechs) to choose from, each with different special attacks and moves. The selection of mechs was also really balanced, with nearly every mech being useful and none dominating. (Though, there was one mech that could detach it's arms that no one ever seemed to get the hang of, but hey, one loser out of the bunch for a first gen 3D shooting/fighting game is not bad).

Also like a fighter game, you used different button combos to do different attacks- some faster, slower, wider attack radius, more or less damage, and most importantly, windup and cooldown time. You didn't want to be caught in a finish animation unable to move while your opponent just laid into you. With a short time for each match, you had a fast game of cat and mouse, trying to maneuver your foe right into catching your most brutal attacks, using sprays of light attacks to keep the pressure up.

One of the smarter design choices that FPS games would forget and rediscover is the value of constrained maps or arenas. The arenas are large enough to run around in, but small enough that you're never fully out of range- and the pressure is always on.

Compared to Armored Core, you certainly didn't get to customize mecha, but the controls were so much more responsive, intuitive and reactive. The game was actually about reflexes and dualing, and much faster paced. Since video arcades have closed, you don't see a lot of games like this. Within 10-15 minutes of playing, you get a good hang of how to play, and it's something you can pop in and blow off steam with friends.

You can blast through the game in a short time, though mostly replay was about either playing with friends or mastering different mecha.

This game also was one of the first to introduce recording and replaying matches- you could review your tactics, see how you played, or simply laugh at the beatdown and close calls applied.

Here, let the opening speak for the game:

So gameplay works on several levels.

First, you maneuver your team of mecha in a turn based fashion around on the larger map. You're dealing with stuff like terrain modifiers, positions to protect, positions to take, etc. Cities are great for repairing your mecha and healing your infantry teams, as well as finding new infantry teams to recruit. In this game, infantry make a world of difference and you'll want to protect and keep them around. When you actually engage an enemy mecha, either as the attacker or the defender, you go straight to the combat mode.

In combat mode, you alternate between 3rd person view, where the camera jumps around and focuses on particular infantry units or mecha when they actually perform a special maneuver. Otherwise, it's just this brutal shootout between the infantry teams while the mecha maneuver and aim. Seeing individual soldiers get shot and scream makes you feel terrible for your guys.

You have two infantry units that are specialized- they might be snipers (who increase your mecha's range by acting as spotters), engineers who lay mecha mines or defuse them, support troops to repair your mecha, grenadiers who do extra damage against mecha, general infantry for taking out the other sides' infantry, etc. Each unit comes with one or two special maneuvers they can perform. Aside from their special moves, you manage them by putting them up front for more offense (and taking more damage) or put them in the back to protect them. Unlike mecha, if you lose an infantry unit, they're gone forever, so protecting them becomes an interesting part of play.

As for your mech, you have a main cannon which takes time to aim. While you're aiming, you can't give commands to your infantry, so you better have them where they need to be. As you're aiming, you see the battle through a shaky periscope, and all you can control is whether your mech is moving forward or backward to try to get into optimal range. The longer you wait, the higher the percent chance of a hit is, and the less shaky the targeting is. Though like most other rpgs, it's about beating through a set of hitpoints for the enemy, you can do specific damage with a lucky hit- which might disable their weapons, or better yet, jack up their legs and immobilize the target. (This is why you want support troops who can do repairs on the field).

You also get specialized shells, depending on what infantry unit you have ON your mech. Some have stuff like gas, napalm or shrapnel rounds to use against other infantry (god, it's horrid), or armor piercing rounds to use against mechs. Each pilot also has a special move or two you can use with allows you to do stuff like aim faster, reload quicker, do brutal melee attacks, etc.

This is one of the best strategy rpg games, that also touched on revisionist steampunky WW2 stuff WAY BEFORE everyone else jumped on the bandwagon. It's a hard find but well worth it.

And from among his (shaytaan’s) repertoire of schemes and ploys is that he invites the slave (of Allaah) with his good character, cheerfulness and joyfulness to types of sin and wickedness. As a result, he will meet and greet him (the sunnee) with that which will not enable him to rescue himself from his evil except his display of displeasure, giving an angry look and turning away from him. So, the enemy will act kindly towards him, greeting him with joyfulness, a glowing face and beautiful speech. Then, he will attach himself to him, and have a strong desire to save himself from his clutches, however he will be unable to. As a result, the enemy (Iblees) will continue to move among them (the deviant, innovator that works for Shaytaan and against the sunnee slave) until he achieves his desired goal. Finally, he enters upon the slave with his plots by way of good character and a shining face. It is for this reason, the 'Doctors of the Heart' have advised (us) with turning away from the People of Innovation, not extending to them the greetings of salaams and happy, glowing faces or even meeting them (at all) unless it is with gloominess and sternness!"

I don't find that surprising, given that terms like "Web 2.0" and the derivative "Enterprise 2.0" do a poor job of describing how the 2 evolved from the 1 in the first place. To say that they are "more social" or rely more on "user-generated content" would not explain their use within an enterprise environment. And given the fact - supported by the survey - that tools like wikis and blogs are most often adopted ad hoc by small groups, teams or departments within the larger enterprise, it's logical that the rest of the company would lack the context to appreciate how such tools might help them if adopted company-wide.

A hierarchically managed enterprise (some redundancy there) is not going to naturally support the culture that most effectively uses social media. And yet, there seems to be a sense within at least that 44 percent of respondents that moving in that direction is "imperative." The writing is on the wall that competition through innovation requires more fresh thinking, more brainstorming, more low-risk idea generation. These are all supported better through the social media that have come to dominate the civic forums of the Web than through the silo-structured enterprise platforms that organize information exchange within corporations.

Those of us who work in social media need to develop better descriptions for how these tools can be adopted effectively. Jerry Michalski calls our process "weaving a global brain." One element that's essential if social media is to work is trust. If he corporate culture fosters trust among its workers, then social media will prove useful. If not, no amount of understanding or training will make a wiki or a blog work. But will social media force its own culture to grow? That's a challenge that only the corporate executives in charge can answer.

I particularly liked the project SAP is working on, building prototypes in Second Life that are connected through sensors. The prototype in Second life is by itself the biggest idea to confirm that SAP was moving Web 2.0. These applications are fed directly by sensors, which means that there in no typing on the keyboard. You now find conducted by SAP in Second life. SAP now uses Second life for events, online training, demos, etc. For details, read Mario's blog.

I also came through some projects by "Imagineering" team of SAP led by Denis Browne. SAP is into co-development with the customer innovators, who are invited to spend 6 months working directly with imagineering team. These customers report back to their company what they have learnt via blogs, wikis, webcasts and podcasts.

These truly are practical ways for enterprises to put new forms of collaboration to. work.

P.S you can find some pics of Second Life-SAP's collection at Craig's ablum.

Sorry about the wait- I've been a bit busier as of late, and, well... had some issues finishing up Episode 6.

But its done now! Episode Six covers This Week in History, Mother Teresa, and Futurology! (not to be confused with either Futurism- the art form, or Scientology)

Here's the link!

http://www.box.net/shared/51i2lus08w

We are lots of things, but are we mostly that?

Why does life seem like a neverending series of crises for some people, and a walk in a rose filled park for others?

It can be said that the people walking through the rose filled park are just hiding the truth, or avoiding the truth. It can also be said that the people living through crisis after crisis are just making problems out of what should be minor bumps in life's road. But overall doesn't it seem that some have it easy and some are getting hammered by life?

After more than a few conversations about this here's a synopsis of what Helen and I have been thinking.

Satan has a goal. His mission is to keep each and every one of us from finding God. He works 24/7 finding obsticles he can place between us and God. And if he can find something that works he will keep using it...forever. The worst news of all is that he is good at what he does. He is relentless. He will continue to attack until his mission is complete.

So the simplified question is why do some people get attacked more than others. It seems the easy answer is that some of us are so close to God that Satan has more difficulty getting to us. Some people have such a close relationship with God that whatever Satan tries fails. Well...that sounds nice, and I am sure that has some merit, but Helen and I have been rolling around a different idea.

As I said before Satan is smart. He knows what will get to us, and will not hesitate to use anything he can find. Given that fact wouldn't it make sense that Satan knows which of us are more dangerous to him? Wouldn't it make sense that Satan knows who he needs to pay more attention to? Who are the "hard-cases" and who are the "push-overs".

Does it make sense that if God has blessed someone with a gift that will lead many people to find the truth, that Satan would focus more on them in an effort to eliminate this persons influence on the world? Would Satan spend more effort on some people and less on others?

As God tells us in James 1:2 "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials" If we are to consider it joy when Satan attacks us maybe Satans attacks are an indication we are actually doing something right. If Satan never spends any time trying to derail our life maybe our life isnt causing him any concern. Maybe our life is not worthy of Satan's attention. If Satan looks us over and decides that we are not a th

We would love to hear everyones input on this. Don't be shy. Tell us what you think.

Como todos los años, la revista norteamericana Creativity, eligió a las personas más destacadas dentro del rubro creatividad. No sólo destacan a personas del mundo publicitario, sino que también suman rubros como diseño y cine.

El listado creado por la publicación busca destacar a los mayores innovadores del años. La medida, obviamente subjetiva y atada a los criterios editoriales de Creativity, remarca la labor de aquellos que "repetidas veces dieron muestra de su brillantez" y a quienes " llevaron a su campo de desempeño, sea publicidad, entretenimiento, marketing, tecnología o diseño.

Entre los elegidos de este año se destacan el publicitario Dan Wieden (socio fundador de la agencia Wieden+Kennedy), la banda de música electrónica Daft Punk, el veinteaniero Mark Zuckerberg (fundador de Facebook), los hermanos Coen (directores de cine) y el argentino Juan Cabral, director creativo de Fallon London y responsable de campañas memorables como Gorilla de Cadbury, Balls y Play-Doh para Sony Bravia.

Referencias: 1) Scott Vitrone, TBWA/Chiat/Day, N.Y. 2) Geoff Edwards, T.A.G 3) Ian Reichenthal, TBWA/Chiat/Day, N.Y. 4)Scott Duchon, T.A.G, 5) Ridley Scott, Director 6) Dan Wieden, Wieden+Kennedy 7) Paula Scher, Pentagram 8.- Shane Smith, VBS.tv 9) Eddy Moretti, VBS.tv 10) Will Gompertz, Tate 11) Brad Neely, Writer/Animator 12) Jan Jacobs, Johannes Leonardo 13) Yves Behar, Fuseproject 14) Leo Premutico, Johannes Leonardo 15 and 18.- Daft Punk, Musicians 16) Jaime Griesemer, Bungie 17) Juan Cabral, Fallon, London 19) Randy Krallman, Director 20)Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook 21) Rei Inamoto, AKQA 22) Tom Kuntz, Director 23) Zaha Hadid, Architect 24) Joel Coen, Director 25) Ethan Coen, Director

Too often we stop creating the future and start repeating the past. We stop doing ministry out of creativity but out of memory. Faith is the willingness to look foolish. God seems to use the people willing to look foolish the most. R.T. Kendall — “The greatest opposition to what God is doing today comes from those who were on the cutting edge of what God was doing yesterday.”

Offered By: National Research Development Corporation (NRDC)

Key dates:
Deadlines for Application Submission:
NRDC Innovation Award of the year: Deadline: April 25,2008
NRDC Societal Innovation Award of the year: Deadline: April 25,2008
NRDC Budding Innovators Award of the year:Deadline: May 15,2008

National Research Development Corporation (NRDC), on behalf of the Department of
Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) provides Tax Free cash awards in the following
three categories to stimulate the spirit of inventiveness among the scientific, technical
persons, industrial workers, technicians, artisans, craftsman and students so that the creative
talent which lies hidden in individuals or groups in organized R&D and institutions could be
harnessed.

AWARD CATEGORIES
1. NRDC Innovation Award of the Year

IP Driven Innovation
Premium Innovation
Innovation in high tech area

2. NRDC Societal Innovation Award of the Year

Agriculture
Environment
Rural
Energy

3. NRDC Budding Innovators Award of the Year

Student registered for Bachelors, Masters or Doctoral Degree Program
Maximum age limit is 30 Years
The application should be forwarded through Head of the Institution

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