Monitor Talent - a group of thinkers, innovators and speakers that I'm proud to be part of, now has a blog, edited by team leader Chris Meyer. Hope to see some of my posts appearing here soon and looking forward to this as a way to keep up with extraordinary folks like Howard Rheingold, Chris Luebkeman, Kevin Kelly and others.

Great video of Kongar-Ool Ondar doing "durgen chugaa" - a form of Tuvan throat singing that sounds a lot like rap, though it's basically a way singers test each other with tongue twisters. Long live Tannu Tuva!

Harsh and interesting analysis of William McDonough's influence on sustainability through his "cradle to cradle" idea. Reads as a classic tale of a visionary who couldn't bring an idea to scale and let an obsession with intellectual property stop him from leading a movement… or perhaps it's a hatchet job.

We were shocked when the number of Japanese bloggers surpassed English-language bloggers. Now the explanations - they're teaching houseplants how to blog. A plant in a cafe is blogging using data from sensors in its pot. It's more articulate than many of the folks I read.

Fascinating project that's trying to offer language lessons by leveraging web2.0 aspects, letting users correct each other's work and (I think) create teaching materials. Membership-based - you really need to join it to get a sense for what they're doing

Tips on innovating in a developing world context from Paul Polak, Amy Smith, Design in Africa… and me. :-)

Nick Carr offers an interesting theory - that as the web expands, we concentrate attention on a few large sites. Seems to miss the point about the technical difficulties of running popular sites, or the power of network affects in large sites. Still, interesting to think about in relation to echo chambers and the homophily problem

Jonathan Elendu of Nigerian citizen media site ElenduReports.com has been detained in Abuja by Nigeria's SSS. It's likely that his family visit raised attention of local forces who consider some of his highly critical online content to be seditious. This is bad news for Nigeria's vibrant independent media community.