Really simple syndication works

The use of RSS feeds from a range of news sources provides a way to see the world through a variety lens. I am a huge fan of Netvibes, which allows me to organise all my favourite information resources in one convenient location and it doesn’t clog my email. So I thought I’d share a couple of the stories that have come my way through this useful tool.

The human ingenuity and perseverance of William Kamkwamba, a young African man, is worth reading about. Because of poverty, he had to drop out of highschool but this didn’t stop him from continuing to learn through borrowed books. He decided to combine his love of science with his need for electricity; the result was a homemade genearator. Using discarded rubbish (e.g. a rusted tractor fan, a plastic PVC pipe, washers made from Carlsberg beer bottle caps, and a broken bicycle frame) he made a windmill that he hooked up to a car battery in order to store power. The device worked and his story can be read in ‘The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind’. I only wish my students were this committed and passionate to learn.

I also came across this amazing use of Flickr photographs to form a 3D representation of cities. A team of computer scientiests from Geogre Washington Univerisity combined over 150 000 Flickr photos to form 3D representations of Rome, Venice, and Dubrovnik (a coastal city in Croatia). The results are simply stunning.

Then today I came across an article in the NYT about a commercial music site, Pandora. Pandora is essentially a music genome project with a commercial application. The goal is to be able to decode a piece of music so as to identify its essential themes. Using this information, the site directs the user to other music that has been decoded as having similar traits. What really intrigued me was the driving motivation behind the endeavour. In our time-driven, deadline orientated ‘first-world’ society we often do not have the time to discover new music. We frequently rely on word-of-mouth referrals from friends or the likes of ‘opinion leaders’ via radio stations, blogs, or other social networking media. Pandora takes a different approach – it allows for ‘inner directed’ searches that are not constrained by sub-cultural influences. It offers true freedom to explore a wide range of music based purely on your own tastes.

So RSS feeds do have their place ­– from these snippets of stories ideas grow, mature, and hopefully make us more empathetic to the lives of others.