Is anyone else out there confused about what the heck RSS is?

This is the best explanation we have found so far by a social design consulting company called Common Craft. These guys produce short videos that explain prevalent but widely and wildly misunderstood tools and concepts on the internet. Using their trademark “Paperworks” technique, they create fun and extremely helpful introductions to social networking software, Wikis, and RSS. You can also commission your own Paperworks instructional.

With the words Wiki and RSS thrown around all the time now, these videos serve as a nice intro for the novice, or for “experts” who want to teach others about the benefits of these tools.

Click To Play

Click To Play

This is a great resource to go along with the recently added “New to Podcasts” feature on the Pop!Tech Pop!Casts page, which is a primer of sorts, for those who have some questions about what podcasts are, how to get them, and what you can do with them.

This month Business 2.0 published their list of “The 50 Who Matter Now”. The list includes up-and-coming entrepreneurs, some usual suspects like the guys from Digg, Facebook, Second Life, and of course the media’s latest darling…You. Me? Yes, You!

Have You had your fifteen minutes of fame? According to Business 2.0, you have. The publication is waving its finger at us and our YouTube loving ways. It was only last year that, according to Business 2.0 and Time Magazine, we were No. 1. We are now swimming in the bottom five. How the mighty have fallen.

This is what the magazine had to say:

“You: Web-enabled mass participation

Rank: 45

Why you matter: Can we be blunt? You had a disappointing year. It began with great promise, when this magazine placed You in the No.1 slot on the 2006 edition of this list. “You’ve become an integral part of the action as a member of the aggregated, interactive, self-organizing, auto-entertaining audience,” we said, and we really meant it! A few months later, our corporate cousins at Time concurred and named You the 2006 Person of the Year.

Then You got lazy. All those YouTube videos of cats dancing, playing the piano, and drunkenly running into walls? So derivative. Then there was all the fawning over Snakes on a Plane. What was up with that? And don’t even get us started on Sanjaya. Look, we still think You have lots of potential. But if You’re really going to change the media landscape, it’s time to step up Your game.”

Do you think You/We are changing the media landscape for the better or are we democratizing content to the point of buffoonery?

Here is a cute little “map” of Online Communities.

I hear that the Blogipelago is lovely this time of year - but beware the Bay of Angst!

Via::SwissMiss

Our friends at Trollback + Company were selected as winners in PRINT’s A+C=D Business Graphics Review for their Court TV outdoor-advertising campaign and 2006 Pop!Tech conference graphics. The review recognizes the best in design work done for corporate clients across the globe, from print ads and corporate identities to animated short films, websites, interactive games and more.

Trollback’s work will be featured in the September/October 2007 issue of Print Magazine.

This weekend, our “host with the most,” Andrew Zolli was featured on NPR’s Here and Now program where he spoke about what the world’s demography will look like in the next 100 years.

For those of you who didn’t know, Andrew, when not at Pop!Tech, does a bit of moonlighting as one of the country’s leading futurist researchers.

You can hear the program by going to the WBUR website.

From their site:

Futurist Andrew Zolli uses demographic data to predict what the world will look like over the next 100 years. Among Andrew’s predictions: the largest city of the 21st century will be in China and it hasn’t even been built yet; one-third of the world will run out of potable water; and a large group of Baby Boomers will end up moving in with their kids. We’ll find out how companies and governments are using these predictions to plan their cities and develop new technologies.

Pop!Tech performers have been a prolific bunch in the first half of 2007. Several artists have new releases (Ethan Lipton, Zivani Masango) and Rodrigo y Gabriela will be headlining at Central Park’s Summer Stage this year.

Renee Stahl (who brought her “melancholy pop” to our stage in 2005) is no exception - besides giving birth this year, she has recently released two new albums. The first album, hopeful.romantic, described by Renee as “on the electronic side or, as some call it, folktronica” is available exclusively at Barnes and Noble stores and at bn.com

The second is an album of lullabies called It’s a Big World! and is available at CDBaby.com.

Both albums feature Renee’s soft, moving voice and contemporary lyricism. More about Renee at her website Reneestahl.com and at ReneeandJeremymusic.com

and we are thrilled to have her!

Last year, Michele led Pop!Tech’s Carbon Negative Initiative to make the conference not just carbon neutral, but carbon negative. The project ensured an offset of more than twice the total carbon emissions, inclusive of flights, ground transportation and lodging of all 530 Pop!Tech conference participants.

Michele has posted on the Pop!Tech Blog in the past. You can see her stories here:

Two Pictures, One Vision

A Tale of Two Villages

She is the Managing Director of Global Foresight Associates, a foresight research and consulting firm based in Boston, and co-host of FringeHog, a podcast about the future. Michele is also the Executive Director of the Association for Professional Futurists and an active member of the Pop!Tech community.

Michele is at the forefront of her field, and when that field is futures research - you can be sure she will have a lot to share with us that will blow us away.