Via the Curious Cat and Science and Engineering Blog I learned of these cool robots … only in Manhattan. HG Wells War of the Worlds they are not! I present to you Tweenbots by Kacie Kinzer.

"Mission 1: Get from the Northeast to the Southwest
Corner of Washington Square Park / time: 42 minutes / number of people
who intervened: 29. Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the
help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a
straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and
rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right
direction to reach their goal."

Okay … I believe in the value of these tools, but how many of you are in my position? I am trying to encourage the adoption and funding of Marketing 2.0 / Web 2.0 tools at my company. Not surprisingly my management asks me for hard data … business value cases … ROI. It's easy to find magazine and journal articles touting the need to use these tools, but finding hard data … well that's another matter. My research has led me to some neat places and sources. Here are just a couple of items you may find useful. I suspect I will have to conduct my own research, with truly measurable metrics.

• Track your Twitter referrals via Google Analytics

And some useful information about Marketing 2.0 from Sandy Carter … an IBM vice-president:

• The New Language of Marketing 2.0 (podcast interview)
• Support Information / Examples from the same book

Do you like maps? I do, and over the past few weeks I've very much enjoyed a blog I have newly subscribe to via RSS, the Map Scroll. Several times per week, you'll find new blog posts about maps which show demographical relationships. One recent posting showed where foreign born engineers in the USA came from originally (see below for just one twist … click to view full sized). Worth a look and subscription. This particular map was originally from the NY Times.

Ever heard about Google's data center, and their self-designed PC's. Their computer configuration was always a big secret, but not any more! Link to CNet and learn how to build your own data center computers. (click to view the image full sized)

This is a really smart use of Web 2.0 to map the region of each major league baseball team. Click to expand the image, or better yet … visit the United Counties of Baseball and let your voice (umm … I mean computer … be heard). Play Ball !