The latest version of Did You Know? has been released, titled Did you know? 4.0, this time created by The Economist Magazine for their annual Media Convergence Forum in partnership with the original creators of Did you know?/Shift happens. Read more about the process on The Fischbowl and enjoy the video.

John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly, founders of the Web 2.0 Conference, have coined a new term (and released a white paper) on what they believe is the next evolution of the internet – Web Squared (Web²).

The Web is no longer a collection of static pages of HTML that describe something in the world. Increasingly, the Web is the world – everything and everyone in the world casts an “information shadow,” an aura of data which, when captured and processed intelligently, offers extraordinary opportunity and mind bending implications. Web Squared is our way of exploring this phenomenon and giving it a name.

According to Battelle and O’Reilly, Web 2.0 + World = Web².

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As the deadline for proposals to the 2010 National Diversity in Libraries Conference is fast approaching, I thought it would be appropriate to post examples of intersections between culture and mobile technology.

• A cellular company, Zain Uganda, which allows clients to pay for fuel purchases via their mobile handsets through the ZAP service
• The predictive text programme which predicts Welsh words as you type, launched by the Welsh Language Board at the National Eisteddfod in Swansea
• LG Electronics two mobile handsets that include features specifically created for Muslims, including a Qiblah indicator, Adhan and Salah prayer time alarm functions, Quran software, Hijiri calendar and a Zakat calculator

I believe that in the near future we will begin to see examples such as these been created for libraries and targeted to the specific cultural groups that make up their users. If you are interested in learning more about the intersection between technology and culture I would suggest “Human-Built World: How to Think about Technology and Culture” by Thomas P. Hughes and “Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change” by Wiebe E. Bijker.

Tomorrow is Information Overload Awareness Day according to Basex, who are organizing a conference to call attention to a problem that, according to their research, costs the U.S. economy $900 billion per year in lowered productivity. While it seems strange to organize a conference to impart yet more information on Information Overload Awareness Day, they do seem to be trying to offset some of the problems…

Individual tickets for the Inaugural Event are $50 but individuals promising not to multi-task (IM, e-mail, Twitter, etc.) during the event receive a 50% discount

If you would like to learn about this issue, check out the Information Overload Research Group who provide an online Resource Center of articles.

To help do my part to lower the amount of “information pollution”, I will not be posting any information online via social networks for 24 hours, starting at midnight tonight. If you would like to join me, to try something similar, or have any ideas on how to lower information overload, plaese leave a comment.

Update August 18, 2009

Thanks to Bobbi Newman for finding the following important, educational video on the dangers of Information Overload.

I am now an official TEDx licensee and will be organizing a TEDx event in Ontario for librarians in the fall of 2009 called, strangely enough, TEDxLibrarians.

If you would like to help or have any suggestions, please contact me. If you are on Twitter and would like to spread the word, the hashtag is #tedxlib.

Want to learn more about TEDx? Then go here.

Stay tuned!