We are working on a simple expressive app that will help people communicate feelings with very little effort. Look for updates and links to download at clrr.me. 

Everywhere I look there are good services repeatedly trying to trick me for a buck. I don't blame all of this on MBA's but I suspect that they are the best at doing this. Where do you go to school to learn to create value? What's the name of that degree?

A nearch bar is a search + note + message bar where you can easily find and add information to public or private corpses. 

Some ideas to establish prior art.

Combine the note input and search bar functions.

Have two buttons. On either end of the note/search bar. On the left side have an eye icon that lets you record your perceptions (ie. "I saw graphiti"), On the right side have a hand icon that lets you record your actions. 

In our small backyard garden these bugs are eating the radishes. do you know what they are?

Or how about this mold covering the squash?

Up side canyons of the Grand Canyon there are puddles along a stream bed completely isolated from any moving water source. The puddles are teaming with life despite the absence of any water way into the pond. Tadpoles, minnows, algae, water slugs, water striders and many types of aquatic plants saturate the pond. Each one crawling through the thick algae, swimming the perimeter or peering up tempted by what lays outside the water. The slowly evaporating pond shrinks without regard to the increasingly frantic creatures.

Evolution goes into overdrive as resources become scarce in this isolated environment. The pond creatures necessarily breed incestuously magnifying the existing genetic traits and increasing the frequency of mutations. Succeeding generations become better suited for the sunny desert pond slowly shrinking and warming. 

One can imagine just before the pond is consumed by the sun, and the last creatures are baked, a storm rages upstream raising the adjacent stream enough overtake the pond and wash its inhabitants back into the mainstream. The organisms well adapted for the still warm pond are now tumbling through the cool flash flood and headed toward the big river. The former pond is now the stream bed and only the organisms adapted for the warm pond but can also survive the river will continue to reproduce and propagate genetic features.

Many remains of ponds not saved by the flood lay scattered along the stream bed. Remains of creatures adapted to the extreme but with out impact on the continuing generations. These short tendrils of evolution cut short by a high pressure system covering Arizona keeping away any potential moisture that could save the new age creatures. Survival of the fittest 

These ponds of temporary life mimic the ways cultures and ideas develop in stressed environments. Some ideas flourish and adapt into a stronger form while others get caught in a vicious loop only to be killed once dumped back into the mainstream. Other, potentially great ideas are never seen by the majority only to be passed by and left baking on the dry rocks.

How can we create environments that foster fast changes to ideas that leave them stronger and ready to contribute something to the mainstream all while minimizing the risk of being dehydrated to death? The most adaptive pool I've seen so far has been noisebridge in San Francisco, an infrastructure provider for DIY projects. We can thank similar puddles like the cafe penny universities during the age of enlightenment for many of the great ideas we still learn about today.

The only related joke I've heard:
How do you kill a hipster? .................... Throw him into the mainstream.

It is no wonder that the US tax rules get more complicated every year when the most interested parties, accounting firms and the IRS, benefit from convoluted tax procedures. 

Consider a proposed bill to change the tax code. The change complicates things so that more people and businesses will need accountants or tax services those companies will lobby and support the bill. Since the marginal change (% of profit) to the befitting companies is larger than it is to the companies that pay the tax law will trend toward complexity.

Said in systems theory vernacular... The feedback that increases the complexity of tax code is greater than the feedback reducing complexity. This causes the overall system to increase in complexity. It's a vicious cycle.

Attended the Makers Fair today and was blown away by the open hardware and 3d printing progress. You can build anything from replicas of your face or rocket ships. Companies now offer complete manufacturing services so that you only upload a file and everything will be built for you. The maker movement will continue to be the engine of America. Here are some pics from the event.

There was a focus on developing standardized parts that would work with many other products and uses. This contrasts the traditional proprietary approach where companies try to make their systems as incompatible as possible. You've got to love the open minds.


As seen below there were robot petting zoo's, sun cooked pop corn, bee farms, solar bike trailers laser cut furniture. Well worth the full day. 

It was an odd feeling to have the wall explode next to me while I was searching for some clean boxers this morning. Made me think hard about life. Life's short and it can end in a second. Live it up. 

My air mattress is still inflated!