reviews Xythos

Links to Software as a Service online doc management  collaboration services:

• SharePoint
• Intel with their coming SuiteTwo amalgamation - Intel has cancelled this project
• O3Spaces with their open source challenge to SharePoint,
• Blogtronix with their updated Enterprise 2.0 collaboration offering,
• BaseCamp
• Adobe are shifting their Acrobat product

The One Health Initiative, a movement to forge co-equal, all inclusive collaborations between physicians, veterinarians, and other scientific-health related disciplines, has been endorsed by various major medical organizations and health agencies, including the American Veterinary Medical Association, the American Medical Association, the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, the American Society for Microbiology and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Advances in interdisciplinary research and teaching are critical to producing workable solutions to many of society's most pressing problems. "Fostering Interdisciplinary Inquiry: An Invitational Conference" will focus on policies and practices of academic institutions and is intended to foster institutional cooperation among the nation's top research universities, public and private, and to expand understanding of both opportunities and challenges in advancing interdisciplinary research, academic programs, teaching, and training. A key goal of the conference is to create a consortium for interdisciplinary transformation that will continue to advance progress on these important issues.

The University of Pennsylvania and Arizona State University are teaming up on technology transfer in a three-year experiment that will allow each to take advantage of the other’s expertise in commercializing the findings of their researchers.

From the website:

Croquet is a powerful open source software development environment for the creation and large-scale distributed deployment of multi-user virtual 3D applications and metaverses that are (1) persistent (2) deeply collaborative, (3) interconnected and (4) interoperable. The Croquet architecture supports synchronous communication, collaboration, resource sharing and computation among large numbers of users on multiple platforms and multiple devices.

A great Harper's article on the relationship of authorship to creation.  Highlights:

"Any text that has infiltrated the common mind to the extent of Gone With the Wind or Lolita or Ulysses inexorably joins the language of culture. A map-turned-to-landscape, it has moved to a place beyond enclosure or control. The authors and their heirs should consider the subsequent parodies, refractions, quotations, and revisions an honor, or at least the price of a rare success." 

I've long thought that a reasonable plan. 

Abstract from First Monday:

In groups people can accomplish what they cannot do alone. Now new visual and social technologies are making it possible for people to make decisions and solve complex problems collectively. These technologies are enabling groups not only to create community but also to wield power and create rules to govern their own affairs. Electronic democracy theorists have either focused on the individual and the state, disregarding the collaborative nature of public life, or they remain wedded to outdated and unrealistic conceptions of deliberation. This article makes two central claims. First, technology will enable more effective forms of collective action. This is particularly so of the emerging tools for "collective visualization" which will profoundly reshape the ability of people to make decisions, own and dispose of assets, organize, protest, deliberate, dissent and resolve disputes together.