Yesterday I attended the first meeting of a Project Evaluation Panel at Denver International Airport, convened to guide the process of choosing three new, temporary artworks from emerging Colorado artists.  Two will be on a median strip of Pena Boulevard leading to and from the airport. The other will be on a new Regional Jet Facility nearing completion on Concourse B.  This podcast contains interviews with panel members after our meeting, as we took a hardhat tour of the Concourse B area.

This book review of The Laws of Simplicity by MIT professor John Maeda follows David Tames‘s compelling recommendation of the book at last week’s Boston Media Makers meeting.  I loved this book and plan to read it again and maybe again.  The writing is playful and clear.  The concepts are subtle and powerful. Highly recommeded. 

Flickr photo of John Maeda by Keith Jenkins, Picture Editor of the Washington Post.

This week I visited the corporate headquarters of Me.dium in Boulder, Colorado, and spoke with Dean Steadman, left, community management director, and Tobias Peggs, business development director.  This startup is in beta, available by invitation . It adds a window to your browser that shows who else is visiting sites you might be interested in, and where you can follow them and chat online. 

I loved the high energy of their funky offices, filled with bicycles and more than 25 (to me) very young employees.  When I suggested a photo, Dean and Tobias left the conference room to don company T-shirts, a spontaneous bit of corporate enthusiasm and pride that I never saw when I worked for a natural gas utility. 

Me.dium is a potent evolutionary advance for browsing the internet.  When the Twitter buzz dies down, I can imagine an even bigger phenomenon: people realizing they don’t have to browse the internet alone anymore.  If as many people cross over as Dean and Tobias and their gang hope, one day in the foreseeable future it may well be all about Me.dium.

OK, I admit it. I’m hooked on Twitter, the deceptively simple site that asks "What are you doing?" and gives you 140 characters to answer the question.  I can’t help posting these microblog entries, and I look forward to receiving them from my friends on my Motorola Q phone, a steady stream of innocent little posts which delights me, especially when I hear from my "real-world" buddy Kes Woodward in Fairbanks.  Others on my list include Dave Winer, Cali Lewis, Kris Krug, Will Pate,  Leo LaPorte, and Stephanie Booth of Lausanne, Switzerland.

Music: "Going to the Sun"on the <a href="http://www.earthpassage.com/glacier.htm">Glacier Journey</a>
CD composed by Montana musicians Christine Dickinson, Janet Haarvig and Matthew Lyon&nbsp; Link <a href="http://www.earthpassage.com/glacier.htm">here</a>. Used by
permission.

I’ve been thinking about how the internet is changing what we mean by "friend," and how technology such as podcasting makes it possible to reach out to strangers despite differences in geography, ethnicity and other ways by which we separate ourselves from others.  For specifics, I turned to a new friend on the excellent Me.dium site, and to a few strangers on the Boston subway’s red line this morning.

Music: "Going to the Sun" on the Glacier Journey
CD composed by Montana musicians Christine Dickinson, Janet Haarvig and
Matthew Lyon  Link here. Used by
permission.

Photo of a Boston subway station by Michelle Barrette of Kingston, Canada, courtesy of Flickr.

Merle Goldman, professor emerita at Boston University and an associate at the John K. Fairbank Center for East Asian Resarch, last night addressed the Mothers’ Club of Cambridge Thursday night open meeting, hosted at the Cambridge Historical Society on Brattle Street.  My mother has belonged to this club for decades, and I can see why she seldom misses its events, even in bone-chillingly cold weather like we had in Cambridge last night.  This episode contains a brief interview I did with Prof. Goldman during the reception after her talk, in which she put China’s incredible economic growth in historical perspective and posed questions about whether the nation of 1.3 billion can make political changes fast enough to sustain the ongoing economic phenomenon.

Music: "Going to the Sun" on the Glacier Journey
CD composed by Montana musicians Christine Dickinson, Janet Haarvig and
Matthew Lyon  Link here. Used by
permission.

Blake Allison of Dingman Allison Architects in Cambridge, Mass., has begun work on our home remodeling project. After our first meeting this morning with our contractor, I asked Blake some general questions about the role of an architect. Afterward, we had a chance to admire his and his partner Nancy’s work in a completed remodeling project, also in Cambridge, courtesy of Polly, who showed us through her remarkable transformation of a 110-year-old home.
     Music: "Going to the Sun" on the Glacier Journey CD composed by Montana musicians Christine Dickinson, Janet Haarvig and Matthew Lyon  http://www.earthpassage.com/glacier.htm . Used by permission.

This visit to Cambridge marks the beginning of our remodeling plans for our new home here that will complement our base in Denver.  I’ve combined two artistic impressions of Cambridge in this podcast, a poem I wrote about the birth of my grandson a year ago, and an anthem sung by the Fellows of the University Choir this morning at Harvard’s Appleton Chapel.

mp3 version of today’s Audio Pod Chronicles, “PodCampers Pick Podcasts.”

John Joseph of Denver responded to an invitation to a podcast interview that I posted through the Mile High for Obama group at BarackObama.com. Having just finished The Audacity of Hope, I was looking for someone to discuss the book with me.  John, who is 27 and a programmer, met me at a Starbucks and shared insightful perspectives on the book and what he thinks may be ahead in the long campaign.  I liked the originality and nuance of his opinions.  For example, near the end of the interview he revealed why, even though he is a huge fan of Obama, he might actually prefer another Democrat to win the nomination this time, with Obama as Veep.  Not that he wouldn’t be thrilled to see Obama elected president in 2008.  Anyway, it was great getting to know John through the Obama web site, which is smartly designed to make it easy for Obama supporters to connect and share ideas and activities.