Rainbow Technology

I'll be anxious to see whether this proves out.

Sainul Abideen, the Indian inventor of "rainbow technology" has shown how you can store 256GB on a regular sheet of paper
data can be encoded into coloured geometric shapes and stored in dense patterns on paper.

Files such as text, images, sounds and video clips are encoded in "rainbow format" as coloured circles, triangles, squares and so on, and printed as dense graphics on paper at a density of 2.7GB per square inch. The paper can then be read through a specially developed scanner and the contents decoded into their original digital format and viewed or played. The encoding and decoding processes have not been revealed.

Using this technology an A4 sheet of paper could store 256GB of data. In comparison, a DVD can store 4.7GB of data. The Rainbow technology is feasible because printed text, readable by the human eye is a very wasteful use of the potential capacity of paper to store data. By printing the data encoded in a denser way much higher capacities can be achieved.

Business Exchange

Last Friday, I had the pleasure of speaking to the Boston Business Exchange, a group that is in the process of changing its name and its meeting venue, so no link.

Suffice it to say, they are business men and women who want to go a step beyond traditional networking, so naturally they are interested in blogs.

I spoke on Getting Naked and Blogging for Business, but in only 15 minutes time, I had to severely limit what I said, so I limited it to a few stories.

Instead of telling them all the benefits of business blogging, I pointed them to the Small Business Blog of the Day and its 101 reasons to blog.

As for consultants, here are some additional benefits.

You choose your niche and focus

o Write about what you feel passionately about.  It’s how you’ll attract  readers
o Position yourself as an expert
o Differentiate yourself for competitive advantage
o Write often, write short.
o Make your blog part of your overall marketing plan
o Think of it as managing your public reputation

Increase your visibility as an expert.

o Give away your resources as links
o Be a trusted filter of news in your industry or niche or neighborhood
o Point out important articles, news and resources
o Give your clients and prospects a reason to visit often
o Blogs are “word on mouth on steroids”
o You’ll get noticed and journalists will respect you.

Increase your sphere of influence  - Connect with Others

o Reach beyond the people you know
o Reach people in the future
o Reach around the globe
o Connect to people you respect and admire with your blogroll
o Be generous with links and credits
o Collaborate and cooperate on projects
o Your value is in your relationships, your value in trust,  not your exclusive knowledge

Make a chronicle of your professional life

o Content management system –great for notes .
o You set the categories
o When you read something you can make note, opine
o Corporate memory

Build your brand

o What’s your story? What’s your talent?
o Who do you INTEND to Be?
o What’s the POINT of what you do?
o Show how you think innovatively
o Let your personality shine through with all its passion and enthusiasm
o Share your knowledge and expertise and let people get to know you

Become a Better Communicator

o You will be exposed to more different points of view
o You will read more and write more clearly
o You will understand other groups/cliques better
o Listen to your readers

My Death Space

My Death Space is a new website for obituaries of MySpace members.

Clearly, the appeal is to a younger demographic with ads for Hot Girls and Sexy Singles.

Marketer Looks at 11 Trends

Via David Woldfe's Ageless Marketing comes a pointer to Eleven Trends from Tinderbox, a newsletter from the Hartman Group.

1) The Rise of Luxury Consumption Consumers from all walks of life are free - and willing - to explore levels of luxury heretofore reserved only for the most wealthy or elite peoples.
2) The Rise of the Experience Economy Consumers are less interested in fulfilling basic needs with products and much more interested in seeking fun and adventure through experiences.
3) Democratization of the Family Families are increasingly being run like democracies rather than fiefdoms, where each individuals wants and desires are accommodated despite their age or position.
4) Consumption Based Identities Increasingly, our identities are less the product of our family heritage and more a reflection of the assorted social networks we belong to - many of which are directly concerned with consumption.
5) Open Source & Creative Consuming Consumers have come to value consumption not as a means to an end (fulfilling needs), but as a source of productive activity worthy in its own right.
6) The New Empowerment Knowledge and authority are increasingly contested; they are viewed not as absolutes but as merely differing perspectives or interpretations.
7) The New Hedonism We have moved beyond the traditional (Puritan-based) belief that desirable outcomes must come from denial or abstinence.
8) Increasingly Fluid Tastes and Preferences Consumers no longer demonstrate a desire for consistency when it comes to choosing foods, beverages, clothes, etc.
9) Remixed Culture We are increasingly less likely to take things as face value but, instead, treat our culture - especially our consumer culture - as a source of irony, and playful commentary.
10) Firms of Endearment Cooperation is quickly managing to replace competition as the most critical marketplace value.
11) Consumption Driven Economy More than ever, consumers set the rules of engagement for the marketplace

Intellipedia

Using open source collaboration software used by Wikipedia, spy agencies are now assembling intelligence reports in a new way.

Spy Agencies now share the wikipedia way

The system allows analysts from all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies to weigh in on debates on North Korea's nuclear program and other sensitive topics, creating internal websites that are constantly updated with new information and analysis, officials said.

The system, which the public cannot access, is divided into classification categories starting with "sensitive but unclassified" and ending at "top secret." The program is still being developed, officials said, and has not replaced procedures used to create intelligence reports for President Bush and other policymakers. But it is being used to assemble preliminary judgments for a National Intelligence Estimate on Nigeria and may replace unwieldy methods for creating such reports.