I’m sure I’ve missed quite a few, as I haven’t had much time to spend on it yet. If you can think of anyone who should be on it and isn’t yet, or you think you should be on it, just leave the username as a comment here, or just tweet me.

Later on I’d like to break this large list down into smaller, more manageable subcategories such as clean tech, organisations, individuals, companies and blogs.

Let me know if you can add to it. Thanks.

Image via: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joc67/ / CC BY 2.0

On Tuesday the US President announced the biggest upgrade of the US power grid in history. The plan will help build a smart energy grid and will be funded to the tune of  $3.4-billion. It’s hoped that the plan will spark a new era of clean energy generation, delivery and consumption.

“This grid… still runs on century-old technology. It wastes too much energy and costs us too much money and it’s too susceptible to outages and blackouts.” Obama said.

The fund will be drawn from Obama’s $787-billion economic stimulus plan. Administration officials said the project will create tens of thousands of jobs and create a platform for a new clean energy infrastructure.

Officials also said the investment in the new smart grid will allow companies to better draw electricity generated by solar power in the western US and wind power from midwestern states. In addition, the plan will fund the installation of millions of smart meters in homes and businesses.

via AFP

As some of you may know, in late August I flew to New York on a work trip, which amongst other things included attending the Mashable Social Good Conference.

Anyway, it was a good trip but during the long-haul flight back I developed deep vein thrombosis, or DVT, not fun!

I didn’t manage to find the time to blog while I was traveling. I did manage to find the time to tweet fairly often though, it could be said. It was much easier to tweet from my iPhone on the run than to sit down and write blog posts. I was going to blog about the trip as soon as I got back, but when I found out I had developed DVT, my immediate plans changed somewhat.

I seem to have spent the last two months working, but also visiting doctors, getting regular blood tests, taking warfarin, not drinking much alcohol and generally trying to stay healthy. As some of you may also know, we (my partner May and I) are soon to have our second child, so we’ve also been busy making preparations for the new arrival whenever possible.

Funny how a potentially life threatening condition can make you reassess your life and what’s really important. I am planning to blog more regularly here again now though. It feels right to get back into it again, now that my health feels like it’s getting back on track.

As mentioned, it’s no surprise that Ustream is doing well on Twitter, as the immediacy of live video streaming and Twitter compliment each other nicely. It’s very easy for Ustream broadcasters and viewers to tweet out links to interesting shows as they are happening. Live video streaming shows are able to take advantage of the real-time nature of Twitter to capture the interest of potential viewers who are online and tweeting ‘right now’. Conversations about live shows often tend to crossover to Twitter too.

The Ustream and Twitter symbiosis is a good example of how the potential of the real-time web is only just beginning to be realised. No doubt there will be many more examples of companies, organisations, communities and individuals using multiple real-time services simultaneously.

Here’s a comment thread on FriendFeed about this video.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook has acquired FriendFeed for a substantial US$50 million, in a combination of cash and Facebook stock.

Regarding the acquisition, via the Friendblog, FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor states:

“Now we have the opportunity to bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world and to work alongside Facebook’s passionate engineers”

He mentions that FriendFeed will continue to operate in the meantime, until the two parties figure out what to do over the long-term. I assume that eventually Friendfeed will cease to exist and much of the smart technology involved in FriendFeed will end up emerging as new features in Facebook. That seems to have been happening lately anyway.

Facebook’s press release about the acquisition mentions that all four founders of FriendFeed will now hold senior positions on Facebook’s engineering and product teams. This could mean that they will have quite an influence on the way Facebook develops in the future.

One question that immediately springs to my mind is: will we soon see Facebook change so that feeds update in real-time in a similar way to Friendfeed? It was only 4 months ago that Friendfeed implemented this change itself. Some people didn’t like this change, I thought it was definitely a step forward. It’ll be interesting to see how Facebook develops over the coming months.

Apparently Twitter experienced a DOS attack of substantial proportions. According to Mashable, attacks were also carried out against Facebook, LiveJournal, YouTube and other social media networks, although Twitter was hit the hardest. Although not confirmed, it seems the attack may have had something to do with the ongoing conflict between Georgia and Russia.

I hope attacks like this don’t become a growing trend, it’s really annoying for users, especially as more and more people are coming to rely on Twitter for their communications. It’s going to be difficult for Twitter to become “the pulse of the planet” if the pulse flatlines on an ongoing basis.

UPDATE: It seems the attack was targeted at one pro-Georgian user of Twitter, Facebook, LiveJournal, Blogger (via Bronwen).

It’s a talk well worth watching. He makes some great points about where media in general is heading and gives some good examples of the ways the media landscape is rapidly changing . One particular example illustrates how, in terms of using social media for campaigns, supporters can be convened but not controlled.

Shirky ends with a question that I think a lot about myself: how can we make best use of this medium, even though it means changing the way we’ve always done it?

I wish I could embed the video here, but of course I can’t, so this link to the video will have to suffice.

UPDATE: Oh, the video is on YouTube now too. Here is the embed: