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The Long Tail: A Long Stretch?

education identity technology trends
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I recently finished reading Chris Anderson’s “The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More”.

The Long Tail is a statistical property which says that the majority of the population rests in the tail of probability distribution. The reason the Long Tail works is because today, with the accessibility of information, society demands variety. This demand stimulates the need to have a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities, in addition to a small number of popular items available in large quantities. Throughout The Long Tail, Anderson uses music as his prime example. The example works like this: Music is the general category. Within “Music” there are various genres that range from highly popular (Rock/Pop) to more unique (African Folk). Anderson explains that because there is a higher demand for Rock/Pop, it is at the front of the tail, while African Folk, which sells fewer albums, falls somewhere on the falling part of the tail.

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The Delicious Connection Between Judaism and Technology

education identity technology trends

Hello! My name is Becca Stern and I’m the newest addition to the JPS Interactive team. As the JPSI Summer Intern, I’ll be writing and contributing to the JPS Interactive blog and the Tagged Tanakh all summer, and I could not be more excited!

A little about myself: I’m a rising junior at the University of Pittsburgh where I’m studying English Literature and Children’s Literature. I’m a native of Philadelphia (go Phils!) and I love to eat and travel—especially at the same time.

One of my first assignments at JPS was to sort through JPS Interactive’s bookmarks. Using a web tool called Delicious, JPS staff have tagged and gathered interesting tidbits of information found online that relate to Judaism and technology. After hours of exploring three years’ worth of links (which I guess are kind of like digital bread crumbs), I started to conceptualize the path JPS Interactive and the Tagged Tanakh are forging.

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Pulling The Torah Rather Than Pushing

education identity technology trends
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David Siegel would have us believe that the era of pushy salesmen and invasive marketing is coming to a close. With the dawn of the Semantic Web, pulling will become the more active verb (and business strategy) of the 21st century.

Siegel is an entrepreneur, typographer, and technologist and is one of the biggest proponents of the semantic web (aka Web 3.0). If you’re looking for a simple explanation of how the semantic web and its business applications work–check out this post Siegel recently composed for American Express or this post that discusses his work.

What does this have to do with Jewish educational technology? How does the idea of pull affect Jewish publishers, educators, and other community leaders?

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Turn the Future Into the Past

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The Tagged Tanakh (TT) turns the future into the past by making Torah study front and center in the Jewish educational experience. The Tagged Tanakh takes the Old Testament and places it in a contemporary format and context to suit the needs of current generations. Using the TT, educators can build new curricula, conduct faster research, prepare D’vrei Torah, and help foster communities of practice around Jewish text.

For everyone else, the TT offers an easy and engaging way to learn Torah L’shma, learning just for the sake of it.

Previously on this blog, we noted that the Talmud dominated the intellectual discourse of Jewish thought for more than a millennium. However, both halakhah(Jewish Law) and haggadah (Midrash) use biblical prooftexts to validate and ground their arguments. The foundations of Jewish scholarship, ethics, and imagination are found in the Tanakh.

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Digital Diplomacy and Our Not So Distant Future

technology trends
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In recent news, Google and the U.S. State Department unveiled their plans to work with Iraq’s National Museum to digitize their collection and offer a “virtual tour” of Ancient Mesopotamia with Google tools. Comcast officially announced that they are acquiring 51% of NBC Universal. Stevie Wonder was appointed a position at the UN as a Messenger of Peace. And poor Tiger Woods is being skewered by the media.

So what do all these things have in common? Each one of these headlines forecast major developments in technology that will profoundly affect our future. Although I don’t have a crystal ball, I do have a healthy imagination and read lots of Warren Ellis comic books. So here are four things that I think will change the way we conduct our lives in the coming years.

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The New Non-Profit: Convergence Culture Part 2

identity trends
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Last week Philanthropy.com featured a fascinating report published by La Piana Consulting for the James Irvine Foundation. The report identified five key trends influencing the non-profit sector and gave examples of organizations that were effectively navigating our convergence culture.

After reading the report I felt a mixed sensation of vindication and dismay. Many of the conclusions validated the moves we have made with JPSI and the Tagged Tanakh and many other points reflected how much further we have yet to go.

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What is a dataset? Part 2

technology trends
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In an earlier post I introduced the concept of datasets and how they are becoming more valuable via crowd sourcing tools. Tech guru Tim O’Reilly has suggested that, “Data is the next Intel Inside,” meaning that the next major commodity in our economy will be specific bodies of information or data. Here’s the money quote from the O’Reilly post:

“The race is on to own certain classes of core data: location, identity, calendaring of public events, product identifiers and namespaces. In many cases, where there is significant cost to create the data, there may be an opportunity for an Intel Inside style play, with a single source for the data. In others, the winner will be the company that first reaches critical mass via user aggregation, and turns that aggregated data into a system service.

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All Quiet on the Philanthropy Front

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Yes, yes we all know that times are tough. And as of late, philanthropies have found themselves in the hot seat. The Wall Street Journal recently published an article lambasting foundations for tightening their belts too much:

“An increase in the payout rate to 6%, all in grants, would eventually add about $10 billion a year to the coffers of nonprofit organizations to the approximately $40 billion that it is estimated that foundations now give. Foundations have claimed that such an increase would jeopardize the perpetuity of their assets, yet a number of studies argue that their assets could be maintained with a payout of 7% or 8%.”

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Tools and Resources for the Network Age

education identity technology trends
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Is the Information Age at an end? With a new decade nearly upon us, some have been saying that we are now entering the Network Age– a time when men will mine for data, not oil. Ranking and figuring out how people share their sentiments will become the driving force of community management and business growth.

In the book Authenticity, the authors describe “rendering experiences” for customers as the foundation of this new emerging economy. Digital Anthropology jobs and community management tools will drive the 21st-century economy. Eventually, we’ll all climb aboard the Cluetrain and ride off into brighter, more lucrative future.

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