The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament is my favorite sporting event.   This mikon was made by my friend John Ritner.  John’s two teams William and Mary and the Tar Heals are out. 

My Final Four is Kansas, Syracuse, West Virginia, and Duke.  Jayhawks to win it all.

Who is in Your FInal Four?

My friend Bijoy Goswami wrote a very insightful book, “The Human Fabric” , that describes three core energies (or personalities) of people and how those energies show up one’s life.  It also describes how businesses can organize themselves to be more effective by matching-up complementary energies.  Those energies are: The Maven, The Relater, and The Evangelist.  Bijoy commissioned icons of each core energy.   Bijoy says I am a  Maven (this is the icon).  He posted all the icons on this Mikons page.

On another note,  Bijoy has been an inspiration in my life.  He challenges me to be me.  Connect with him and your life will change, if you are willing.

Girls, what are you wearing?

For conversation topics that stick, use MikonMixer Stickers at parties and conferences.

What are you wearing?

Share your personality with MikonMixer Stickers…if you dare.

That’s right the title says “Sex Symbols”.  Karen Krebs blogs on her site True Intimacies and is the author of “Intimacies: Secrets of Love, Sex & Romance”.   She has a set of icons that represent the title of her book chapters. 

Karen put this set of icons in Mikons. 

Here is what she writes about them in Mikons.com:

“These mikons are used in the Table of Contents of the book, Intimacies: Secrets of Love, Sex & Romance, by Karen Kreps. They represent chapters that involve: singles, couples, love and romance, issues of commitment, sex and sensuality, and money. See www.TrueIntimacies.com.”

I like these icons because they are simple and descriptive.  Karen is using Mikons among many other social strategies to spread the word about her passion and her contribution to the world. 

Fantasy Football freaks are using Mikons to create their custom helmet and logo.  Here are a few of the designs.   There are a couple ways to add a helmet or logo for your team.  The general directions leagues that link to an URL are below.  Otherwise you can copy the .GIF image by right clicking on the mikon you made, copying it to your computer and uploading it to your league team page.  Use the biggest mikon image available in the Mikon Details, so the image looks clean.

This is useful for the ESPN League:

1. Search for “football” and select a helmet or image that you can “remix”.

2. Add the mikon to your home page and edit it in the MikonMachine how ever you like with colors and images.

3. Copy the source link in the EXPORT screen.  Click on the helmet and choose the 200×200 image size. Look for “src=http…” and copy the URL. 

4. Add that link in your Fantasy Football Team Setting page and save it.  It should show up. 

If you need help send us a comment.

BTW, week one is over and I am 1-0 and got 146 point this week…I had Drew Brees

Karen Renaud from the Department of Computer Science of the University of Glasgow has been studying authentication systems for school-aged users. She contacted me after learning about Mikons and the MikonMachine. Karen conducted a study to learn if user-created visual symbols were a viable alternative to user-generated passwords. Click here to read the actual paper – it’s facinating.

Ms. Renaud tested an authentication system using Mikons in a classroom setting. Students drew their visual “passwords” using the MikonMachine.  To access grades and homework, the students had to correctly identify their Mikon from a host of false targets.

It turns out that Mikons (the user-created visual symbols) proved to be more memorable than passwords – which is not surprising.  However, there were  issues with other students guessing the symbols of their classmates.   Ms. Renaud concludes that using user-generated visual symbols as an authentication system is useful for  users with developmental or language difficulties.  Also this is appropriate where such systems do not require a high level of security concerns.  She intends to study the technique further.  More to come…