Silicon Valley, with its safe little world of unisex ponytails, mid-range Cabernet, fresh faces, expensive bicycles, big white teeth and university style suburban planning (and I'm talking about Sand Hill Road, where the VCs' fraternities are, here), is an awful lot like a University.

Every social network has its particular neighborhood feel and Facebook, which started in the elite Universities, has the same feel as Silicon Valley.

I heard someone who had built a very successful web company describe Facebook as 'the Internet'.

So I ask you. Is that statement based upon business acumen or the experience of using a social network that feels familiar but mirrors a relatively small community's world?

Mythbusting: Why Facebook isn't the reincarnation of Google - Valleywag

Perhaps this is old news, but I just received an email:

"Kevin Bacon Invites You to Join Six Degrees"

Seems they have actually hired the person at the center of the social networking meme. Which is actually pretty good, by email marketing standards.

Any Techno-epidemiologists out there who know what the trigger was that made Orkut so big in Brazil?

Was there a 'Typhoid Mary' somewhere in Porto Alegre, a massively connected maven that managed to create a tipping point for an entire community to adopt it?

Porto Alegre (6985 members)
New York (1762 members)

orkut - communities - list

Xanga is in the top 200 of all websites, overtook Friendster in January and is growing fast.

Is the decentralized weblog world, where people have pages under their own domain, missing something?

Xanga, which is a walled garden service, is not only bigger than all the other blogging tools put together but is actually more viral than Friendster.

Apparently former CEO of Yahoo, Tim Koogle will be replacing Johnathan Abrams as CEO of Friendster.

Tim Koogle is an investor in Friendster and a heavyweight like this suggests that the investors are confident enough to go the full distance with it.

It will be interesting to see if Orkut will bcome Google's first dud.

Andrew Grumet has an excellent proposal for using RSS to share and syndicate TV listings that can be used to instruct your PVR to record program information.

Ken Rinaldo's amazing 'augmented reality robotic fish tanks' will have their first showing in Lille on the 6th Dec:

"Augmented Fish Reality is an in process installation of rolling robotic fish-bowl sculptures designed to explore interspecies and transpecies communication. These could best be termed as "biocybernetic" sculptures that allow Siamese Fighting fish to use intelligent hardware and software to move their robotic fish bowls...

As with many fish, Siamese fighting fish have eyes, which allow them to see for great distances outside the water. They can see color and seem to like the color yellow. Researchers St Andrews and Leeds at the University of Edinburgh say "Now, fish are regarded as steeped in social intelligence, pursuing Machiavellian strategies of manipulation, punishment and reconciliation, exhibiting stable cultural traditions, and co-operating to inspect predators and catch food. "

Some recent studies have show that fish were able to recognize individual "shoal mates" and display social prestige as well as tracking relationships with fellow fish. Researchers have also observed fish building nests, using tools and having long term memory.

They have the ability to mentally map their environments in finding food and avoiding predators. The Siamese fighting fish already use the interface of the first robot and choose to use it to move the bowls around while interacting with their environment. This design uses accurate infrared sensors around the bowl. By swimming to the edge of the bowl the fish activate motorized wheels that move the robots forward and back and allow the fish to turn the robots to switch direction.

Humans will interact with the work simply by entering the environment. In past artworks I have found that the Siamese fighting fish move toward humans, presumably because they associate humans with food. Still, these are robots under fish control and the fish may choose to approach and/or move away from the human participants and each other.

These bowls are large for Siamese fighting fish and consist of a living environment that includes peace Lilly plants that absorb and prosper from the fish waste and provide oxygen to the fish. Stones in each tank make their world friendly and more complex. The bowls and robots are designed to allow the fish to get to within 1/4 inch of each other for visual communication between the fish, both male and female.

Sound travels four times faster in water than in air. The betta fish hear sound through the vibrations in the water. In Thailand, Siamese fighting fish have been bred to be more aggressive. This behavior has been exploited by Thai fight organizers for years, so that the fish will fight to the death.

Small lipstick video cameras mounted on forty-five degree angles under two of the bowls image the interior of the fish bowls as well as humans in this environment. These video images are intercepted with transceivers and projected back to the walls of the installation and will give human participants a view of what the fish are seeing.

Human participants will be able to feel as though they are inside and outside the bowl simultaneously. Dry cell batteries function for long periods and recharging stations are hooked up during evening hours to recharge the batteries. The bowls have bump sensors that stop them as they approach walls, each other and human participants. The tanks will move away from other tanks only when the fish swims to the opposite side of the tanks in search of other interactions in this augmented world."