Thinking, Instructional Design, PWLE, Manufacturing, & Google

Thinking is so over - Times Online
The idea that content on the web is "free" is mistaken: the hidden cost may be the demise of old media and entire art forms on which the free content depends. Another web idea dismantled by Keen is the concept of the "long tail" - the slow but gradual accumulation of sales by niche products such as books that could never have commanded shelf space in shops but can wait for buyers to find them on Amazon. In other words, you may never get more than 10 buyers for your little book of poetry, but thanks to the net you can publish it anyway. Somehow those 10 readers will find you. Also see, Does Internet democracy work?

Technology Skills for Instructional Designers - Experiencing E-Learning
More than any specific set of applications, though, is the desire and motivation to learn new technology, especially to learn it independently.

Personal Work and Learning Environments (PWLE) - eLearning Technology
I believe there's quite a bit of commonality among the kinds of tasks we deal with (at an abstract level) and we need to help each other figure out how we can effectively and efficiently work through these tasks as individuals, as work teams, as part of a larger ecosystem.

Rhythm - Basic Principles of Design - About.com
Rhythm in design is also called repetition. Rhythm allows your designs to develop an internal consistency that makes it easier for your customers to understand. Once the brain recognizes the pattern in the rhythm it can relax and understand the whole design.

Japanese repair culture and distributed manufacture - Pulse Laser
Distributed Manufacturing is an alternative to the mass manufacture and assembly line of Fordism. The parts can be accessed separately from the assembly, we can build our own neighbourhood factories for custom goods! Mass manufacture doesn't imply treating workers like interchangeable parts too! What's more, it bootstraps off mass manufacture and makes something different out of it.

Google Keeps Tweaking Its Search Engine - New York Times
Freshness, which describes how many recently created or changed pages are included in a search result, is at the center of a constant debate in search: Is it better to provide new information or to display pages that have stood the test of time and are more likely to be of higher quality? Until now, Google has preferred pages old enough to attract others to link to them.