Saturday and the Wisdom of Crowds...

There's a book out called The Wisdom of Crowds...

"We generally have less information than we’d like. We have limited foresight into the future. Most of us lack the ability—and the desire—to make sophisticated cost-benefit calculations. Instead of insisting on finding the best possible decision, we will often accept one that seems good enough. And we often let emotion affect our judgment. Yet despite all these limitations, when our imperfect judgments are aggregated in the right way, our collective intelligence is often excellent.", [James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds]

cnn review

And today that collective wisdom came into play at the Nashville Palm Users Group - Not only did I enjoy a great demo of Apple's iPhoto and Aperture by Fred Heumann, but learned more about Flickr, Mobilogs, TextAmerica and other ways to share photos online with friends and family.

Part of the collective wisdom came upon me today when I expressed frustration with my constant blue screen of death on my desktop PC, especially when I'm writing a blog entry... (cause I have to stop and copy and paste this piece I just wrote so that I won't lose it) - either when Blogger crashes or Windows XP blinks off with the dreaded device driver 256:1 error code.

So from the collective wisdom of three different people, Michael, Steve and Randy - they all point to using Opera as a internet browser. The wisdom shared was to never ever use Internet Explorer again to eliminate spyware, possible crashes, etc. So here tis - so far so good! However in Blogger, the Edit HTML and Compose tab don't show up, so I'm back to Internet Explorer for this particular task.

One cool feature that I am looking forward to using since I am in the Voice Biometrics software business in Opera is Voice functionality!

Opera is the first browser to prepare for a future of Web sites offering interactive, voice-enabled shopping and booking systems. You can browse the Web using spoken commands, such as "Opera next link", "Opera back", or "Opera speak". The latter command will make Opera read Web page content and e-mail messages to you aloud ,adding usability as either a screen reader or advanced dictionary. Voice is currently offered in English and works on Windows 2000 and XP. A headset with a microphone is required to use Voice.

Also, I met a blogger (Tn Girl)! Which proves that we all do get out and can actually have a real conversation without typing - We talked about the Nashville Is Talking Meetups that I yet to have attend, but want to; a Lego's desk and Flickr.

When I worked briefly in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Anton Zucker was key in organizing blog together meetups across the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area on a monthly basis; there were topics that he would jumpstart to get the conversation flowing. There were even blogging 101 classes to help aspiring bloggers and podcasters get going with the basics. Maybe I'll help champion monthly meet ups here for bloggers; we already have a great time at the Palm users group, so I expect the community spirit to carry on as we tap into the wisdom of crowds!

(Never trust the wisdom of mobs... your car may get torched)