APOD: Mammatus Clouds Over Mexico

"Under some conditions, however, cloud pockets can develop that contain large droplets of water or ice that fall into clear air as they evaporate. Such pockets may occur in turbulent air near a thunderstorm, being seen near the top of an anvil cloud, for example. Resulting mammatus clouds can appear especially dramatic if sunlit from the side. The above mammatus clouds were photographed last month over Monclova, Mexico."

BBC: Song-swappers settle out of court

"Seventeen Danes and one German have settled at a cost of several thousand euros each. In Italy 30 criminal cases are being brought against individuals."

And so it comes. Or rather goes—the end of the golden age of free music.

Global mobile phone sales soar

600m handsets in 2004? Maybe Russel Beattie will be right about billions of mobile users joining the internet. Mostly Chinese ;-)

He Says the Fat Epidemic Is an Illusion

An obesity researcher, argues that contrary to popular opinion, national data do not show Americans growing uniformly fatter...

He looks at data from 1991 to today in the US. Here, in the UK I'm seeing many more fat people than 10 or 20 or even 30 years ago. I'm sure of it. There was only one kid in my class 30 years ago who was 'fatty.' In my daughters class now there's four, and many who I could have called 'fatty.'

And when I see pictures of Americans in bars, they're really fat! Maybe, my mind is warped? I don't think so.

Stop blogging or...

From the New Yorker, I think.

Let users decide what's important and what's to be done in your company

This article tells of the layers of corporate waffle and loss making work middle manages seem to generate, but the one gem is this allegory:

An architect once designed a cluster of buildings. When asked by the landscape crew where to pave the sidewalks, he told them to plant grass between all the buildings, wait a year, then, after the occupants had worn the most useful paths, the architect told the landscape crew to pave the pathways that the occupants had created.

The comments and discuss features in blogs, where readers can leave feedback help to create the right lines, the right thinking, the right story. People aggregate and work out the best paths, ideas, deeper conversations happen, people actually think harder before they write. Relationships start between people and ideas. Other blogs link into these thoughts, stories, driving more traffic, and more thought... This is group thinking at its best. AKA internal, blogging systems, just like the one I run for the Government Office for the West Midlands.

Blog the blog?

eBay Hops Aboard The RSS Train

eBay: "...the feeds would be used to push special offers, promotions and system status messages via RSS."

Doesn't sound very interesting as a first step. Another site provides RSS feeds that are targeted at your search key words — much more useful, and its been out nearly a year.