[Socially] Situating Personal Information Management

PIM practices become easier if [an] organization provides some infrastructure to alleviate the difficulty of these activities. But a larger value is that the organization can leverage these personal practices to improve the effectiveness of others and to capture that elusive corporate knowledge in an easy way.

Situating Personal Information Management[1]

Thought provoking. Give the video a watch.

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[1] Situating Personal Information Management - http://www.youtube.com/user/googletechtalks#p/u/1/eA9NT4b6UNA

OOPSLA is changing. OOPSLA is becoming SPLASH.

The conference for Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA) has a new name and overall mission. It's now Systems, Programming, Languages, and Applications: Software for Humanity (SPLASH). I'm liking the name.

Seems like they're attempting to reconcile the inclusion of the Onward! track of the OOPSLA conference. I approve.

In 2002, Onward! was created as a special track within OOPSLA to be a venue for bigger ideas than normally are accepted by mainstream computer science conferences, but within the scope of OOPSLA’s focus. "Bigger ideas" included new approaches to programming, software, and software development; new paradigms; and even new ways to present ideas.

Beginning in 2003, Onward! papers were included in the OOPSLA proceedings, and in 2005, Essays and films were added to Onward!. As the track grew, it became clear that there was a need for Onward! in a larger context than object-oriented programming, and in 2009, Onward! spun off from OOPSLA to become a stand-alone conference focusing more broadly on software and programming in all their manifestations, and including not just the pure technology but also processes, methods, and philosophy.

From 2010, we plan that Onward! will be co-located with SPLASH (the evolution of OOPSLA), but in the future, the sky’s the limit.

- Onward! History

For important dates and information, see:
http://splashcon.org/
http://onward-conference.org/

"SixthSense" from MIT Media Lab

Pattie Maes and one of her students, Pranav Mistry, demonstrated a system they've been working on to "augment" a user's experience of the world by delivering relevant information about certain objects, as well as allowing the user to interact with that information.

Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry demo SixthSense
http://www.ted.com/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html

I've imagined something similar in the form of glasses that record your eye movements and cross-reference that data with recorded images of what's in front of you with to determine points of focus. Then, theoretically, they could display information about whatever you're focusing on onto the glass of the spectacles. Pattie Maes takes it in a slightly different direction when, at around 08:30 in the video, she says, "who knows, maybe in another 10 years we'll be here with the ultimate 6th sense brain implant."

Regardless of the interface (fingers, eyes, brain, etc.), is this something that would be good for humans?