Category: Web/Tech

Great series of ideas for the future of the bookstore. I’m not sure we need the cultural loss of the bookstore as a place that brings the community together. Building A Better Bookstore – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast. Tony Sanfilippo reimagines the bookstore as a place with bestsellers up front, a print-on-demand machine in the middle, and a scale of pricing options for how to buy or rent the books in the rest of the store, including ebooks

This is an awesome story. Meet the tireless entrepreneur who squatted at AOL | Bootstrap – CNET News. But unlike most people working at AOL’s Palo Alto, Calif., campus who were surely still hours from showing up at the sprawling complex, Simons was already there. He’d been living there for two months, hiding out at night on couches, eating the company’s food, and exercising and showering in its gym. And now, with an angry security guard bellowing at him, it was all over.

I’m posting this story, because it really is an education story. Look at the quotes. Yes, these companies need engineers, but they also need people who are culturally aware, language savvy, creative and in general, all the things a good humanities/liberal arts education will get you. The future is not an either/or proposition between engineering and literature, but a combination of the two. Unfortunately, as start-ups are looking for these skills, higher education is scaling them back, seeing them as impractical and not profit-making. Too bad the people actually making the money aren’t making the decisions. I actually think higher…

App designed by a friend of mine. Good fun, and cheap too. Mood-Tuner for iPad on the iTunes App Store. Mood-Tuner is a mindfulness tool that helps you build emotional fitness. Think of it like a life-coach/ guru/ therapist in-your-pocket. It is a set of easy, pick-me-up practices that you can do anytime, anywhere. Using special questions to redirect your inner dialog, Mood-Tuner helps you shift from stuck to inspired; from "blah" to "awesome!".  Mood-Tuner was born out of a desire to create a stress-free way to implement the lessons from personal development and wisdom traditions into our real lives.…

Rachel from Velveteen Rabbi got me to write a piece for this important website.  My name is islamoyankee | My Name Is Me. I lived through 9/11. My Muslim identification became more important. I read an article about the two things the French fear/hate: Americans and Muslims. The author of the article coined the term “islamoyankee.” I appropriated it to describe me as being a proud New Yorker and committed Muslim.

Connected Citizens: The Power, Potential and Peril of Networks – Knight Foundation. Ten years ago, a tiny web site asked people to volunteer to write their own encyclopedia. Today, Wikipedia is the most widely used reference work in the world. Rapid advances in digital media and technology are changing how we connect to information and each other. The way we engage in public dialogue, coordinate, solve problems—all of it is shifting. New networks are emerging everywhere. It’s exciting—and frightening. What is this new network-centric world? What does it mean for community change?

Very pleased to be a featured speaker for this “seminar,” of 60 second thoughts on the role of social media in the Muslim-majority world. The Future of Islam In the Age of New Media. Join 60 speakers comprised of Islamic scholars, new media experts, academics, journalists and activists, along with thousands of participants who will be tuning in for an unprecedented conversation, focused on exploring answers to these pressing questions.