Crowdsourcing is the latest Web buzzword – it can also be as confusing as a tuk-tuk ride through Bangkok. Handle Crowdsourcing with care.

Crowdsourcing is becoming the Web’s hottest buzzword. It could kickstart the next Web. Like blogging, Web 2.0, social networking and social media defined the last decade of the Internet, Crowdsourcing could shape the next. And it should.

Web 2.0 was all about the ‘social revolution’. Broadband, cheap laptops and smartphones allowed the masses to access free or nearly free software to converse and create. It unleashed the social media revolution we now depend on.

Traditional venture capital is at a Crossroads. The industry is still young by many standards, and like all spotty teenagers, it’s changing. The first and second generation of professional VC’s have learned a bunch of things, sadly most at the expense of the entrepreneurs they backed and the investors they sold.

The art world is a changing. Slowly, underground yet profoundly. The first 1,000 years of the art market was patron-centric. Call it Art 1.0: The patron – generally the aristocracy or church – owned the artists and ran their lives, wives and commissions. The artist was their decorator, creator and muse.

There is a lot of buzz around B2C Crowdsourced advertising campaigns. The likes of Pepsi and Unilever have stolen the Web bylines with marketing concepts suckled from diverse crowds of video producers and other creatives using cash prizes and social networks.

The Conservative party have been making a lot of noise about Crowdsourcing. Obama is its pioneer. But they have little in the way of practical details about Crowdsourcing strategies and mechanisms. Here is a list of applications of Crowdsourcing in government that we think could prove the most effective.

The concept of ‘agency’ or the role of ‘agent’ has not changed much in 100 years. Particularly when it comes to the creative agency. But there’s something a brewing in agency land.

blur Marketing took the FT Digital Media conference social. blur’s Crowds and clouds jazzed things up at the eventful conference and ricocheted speakers perspectives across the Twittersphere and social networks. Read all about it here.

It used to be that great design cost the earth. Leading design agencies positioned themselves as reassuringly expensive. Assured rip off more like. That was before the Internet spawned over 210 Million Websites. Before one third of the US working population found itself in design related jobs. Before Apple. Pre Steve.

Forget Crowdsourcing – check this dude kite surfer clear a pier. He’s got a life! You?

b-uncut is fast emerging as the worlds leading artist Crowdsourcing platform. The beginning of Art Market 2.0. Here are some examples. Find more photos like this on b-uncut.net

People have been commissioning artists for a thousand years. It is one of the earliest forms of trade. Kings, Queens, Lords then industrialists, pioneers, even pirates took artists in and fed, housed and paid them to make great art. The artist commission is as old as time.

Following our ‘What is Crowdsourcing?’ initiative here’s a great video explaining the phenomenon. Jeff Howe, who coined the term Crowdsourcing, tells us what it’s all about.

The marketing services industry is changing. Big agencies are getting it from all sides. Google has eroded their media buying divisions. Social media is challenging their PR departments, while YouTube is confusing the hell out of TV advertising production. And mobile marketing – well that’s a whole new game of tennis.

Crowdsourcing in plain English video. Just launched – Viral. Informative. Cool.

A quiet revolution is under way in the art world. One that few expected and most missed. Because it’s on the Web; called b-uncut. It was started in 2007 by a group of contemporary artists, led by Philip Letts, as a new kind of collective. One without borders. One bound by the Web. They’re vision [...]

Steve Jobs will surprise the world on Wednesday and remind us what a bunch of numbies we are for not figuring the real Apple Tablet. Sleek design, wonderful curves and white. It’ll cure all known diseases and includes a couple thousand books. Probably. What do you think the Apple Tablet will be? Crowdsourcing your wildest [...]

Sparxoo, a US research firm focused on innovation and digital strategy, wrote a cool article yesterday on ‘Building the Crowd.’ They talk about 3 leading Crowdsourcing projects including Groupon, Kiva and blur Group. Examples of real businesses building sustainable business models around Crowdsourcing. ‘blur Group takes crowdsourcing to a whole new level — creating powerful [...]

blurGroup.com Version 3 is live! Buyer focused, marketplace drive. Faster than ever. Do you need a Crowd?

The western world is still in crisis. Following the financial tsunami of 2008/9 the West faces another emergency. As the dust settles on the economic meltdown it is becoming clear that not only did we strangle our recent start-ups, but there is no capital around for the new ones. Banks are still not lending to [...]

Tina Brown, over at The Daily Beast, wrote a powerful if somewhat negative article last year about ‘The Gig Economy’. This followed research they did which revealed that nearly a third of Americans do multiple gigs or freelance jobs. It seems that the days of full, dependable, monogamous employment are over – at least for [...]

Sparxoo, a cool US social media blog, published an interview today with Phil at blur Group on the future of Crowdsourcing. Read it here.

blur Designs, the leading, international Crowdsourced design agency is expanding now that it has nearly 1,000 top designers worldwide. Check them at the all new blur-Designs.com. ‘Need a Designer?’

The b-uncut Store is doing for the art world what Loudclothing.com does for the music industry (which is why EMI bought them yesterday!). And art lovers are buying in, snapping up the latest contemporary art accessories – t-shirts, posters, coasters, mousepads and more. Here’s a few we like. Go to the b-uncut Store today and [...]