Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Twitter is introducing a new Tab to its redesigned social dashboard. Depending on which test you’re part of, you may already see “People” or “Find People” just to the right of the Messages link at the top. This new feature is the culmination of Twitter’s work to enhance your experience within the rapid-fire micro information exchange. While this isn’t Tweet-stopping news, it is important.

By clicking through, we open a window that allows us to look beyond our egosystem to explore the topics and tweeple who also contribute to the Twitterverse. Doing so reveals that our world is in fact, not flat. And, we also discover parallel universes that could benefit from our connection as well as benefit our social existence.

This is about who we know and who we should know.

We teach.

We learn.

We grow.

As a result…the magnetism of the network grows stronger, until it becomes part of our human nature, an extension of who we are and what we do. Indeed, Twitter is gradually migrating us from social graphs to interest graphs. Why? Because Twitter needs us to grow and shape our connections to keep us focused on our attention streams and to cultivate a rich landscape of contextual networks or nicheworks around interests, topics and memes. Aside from creating a valuable exchange for information commerce, interest graphs improve how people learn, discover, share and communicate. Nicheworks are also incredibly monetizable and may in fact, represent the future of marketing, service, and advertising.

Who to Follow

WTF (couldn’t resist) introduces us to the people who are connected to friends and friends of friends as well as those whose Tweets echo  similarities to our own. Here we learn more about people, their recent Tweets and are given the ability to follow them or add them to a list on the spot.

Once on the WTF page, we’re presented with new tabs to help us expand and refine our interest graph, “Browse Interests” and “Find Friends.”

Browsing interests is also extremely intuitive.  Simply browse top-level topics and Twitter’s human algorithm introduces you to a qualified set of individuals and branded accounts. This same technology will eventually escalate beyond connections as we start to explore the world of social networks and conversations to predict behavior, outcomes, and events.

Interest graphs aren’t limited to Twitter. Every social network competing for your attention and connections will nurture the maturation of social and interest graphs. As architects of our own online experiences, it improves how quickly relevant information and people find us, our ability to develop and better our online persona, and ultimately how we positively affect those who follow us.

(h/t TechCrunch)

The all-or-nothing funding site Kickstarter has another big hit on its hands — and an iPod nano watch on its wrist.

In just 72 hours, nearly $200,000 have been pledged to support a set of kits that turn the latest iPod nano into a multitouch time piece.

The project, which promotes two different kits — the TikTok and the LunaTik, is a fully realized version of the iWatch-style mockups that started to appear online soon after the most recent nano’s release.

Designed by Scott Wilson, the founder of the Chicago-based design studio MINIMAL, the kits are designed to make the nano into an LCD-based wrist watch. Wilson, the former global creative director at Nike, has plenty of experience designing great-looking sportswear.

However, as he explains in his Kickstarter video, rather than designing a project for someone else, he wanted to create something under his own label. Wilson created two different watch variations, the TikTok, which features a snap-in design, and the LunaTik, which is designed to make your iPod nano into a more permanent time piece.

The goal is to sell the items in Apple Stores. Supporters can pledge $25, pre-order a TikTok (which will retail for $34.95) or spend $50 to pre-order the LunaTik (which will retail for $69.95). For $70, supporters can pre-order both units.

Check out this video to see the prototypes in action:

The original funding goal for the project was $15,000. Three days in, the current tally is at $193,000 with 2,600 backers as of this post. With 27 days to go, it’s likely that TikTok+LunaTik will exceed the reigning Kickstarter chamption and take top spot.

In a statement, Wilson said, “There are other options out there but Kickstarter is by far the easiest and most well-architected experience at the moment. This type of funding platform is a game-changer and just the beginning in shifting more power back to the individual creative entrepreneur.”

TikTok+LunaTik are just the latest example of major successes spurred by the Kickstarter project. Last month, the iPhone 4 tripod The Glif broke through, big time. That project has since ended — after realizing over $137,000 in funding — and the creators are about to start production on the first batch of units.

It’s interesting that Wilson, a man who obviously had other funding connections, chose to use Kickstarter as his platform. The results clearly speak for themselves — but it’s hard to imagine a faster way to generate nearly $200,000 in capitol.

Obviously not every idea is going to be as good as The Glif or TikTok+LunaTik (Disclosure: I’m a supporter of both projects), but the fact that individuals have the opportunity to get their projects funded in these ways is pretty incredible.

Houston, a city with deep ties to the petroleum industry, is embracing an electric future by rolling out a $10 million EV charging network that could put everyone within five miles of a charging station.

The privately funded system, dubbed evGo, being developed by NRG Energy will provide home-charging equipment and public charging stations to subscribers throughout Harris County, Texas. Subscribers will pay as little as $49 for unlimited access and the ability to “fill up” in as little as 30 minutes.

The announcement comes as automakers, led by General Motors and Nissan, start bringing cars with cords to market. One of the biggest challenges to the mass adoption of electric vehicles is their relatively limited range and the question of where we’ll charge them when we aren’t home.

NRG, the second-largest power generator in Texas, joins startups like Coulomb Technologies and Ecotality in answering that riddle by selling access to a charging network. The goal, said CEO David Crane, is to “make the electric vehicle more convenient and practical to own.”

“One of the huge advantages the electric vehicle has over other alternative energy vehicles, such as hydrogen or compressed natural gas, is that the infrastructure for electric-car fueling already exists.” he said. “It’s called the home electrical system. The service station of the future is your garage and all we need to do to extend that to the transportation system is the last three feet of extension cord in your garage. We’re here to get after it.”

Subscribers will pay a flat fee of $49 to $89 a month for unlimited access and all the juice they need. The fee, which would be added to the customer’s monthly utility bill, includes a 220-volt “Level 2″ home-charging station with a dedicated smart meter. Such a station, which uses the same voltage as a dryer, can charge a typical EV in six to eight hours. NRG expects customers will charge primarily at home, but they will can plug in at any public station at any time.

NRG plans to install between 50 and 150 public charging stations throughout the Houston metropolitan area by the end of 2011. They will be located in shopping centers, supermarkets and business districts along the city’s vast web of freeways. They’ll also be available in some apartment complexes, condo communities and the like.

Those stations will include both Level 2 and Level 3, or so-called DC quick-chargers, that can have a dead battery ready to roll in as little as 25 minutes. Crane said access to a charging network will “significantly close the decision gap” between buying an electric vehicle or plug-in hybrid and a conventional automobile by replacing range anxiety with “range confidence.”

Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States, with a population of more than 2.2 million people. NRG hopes to eventually blanket the region with enough charging stations to put everyone within five miles of one. Crane said he is confident the system will have 1,000 subscribers by the end of next year, then grow “at warp speed” as the number of EVs on the market grows. “2011 is a year of transition,” he said. “By the end of 2011, there could be 12 to 15 models on the market.”

That’s a bit optimistic, but several automakers have promised to have electrics on the road by the end of 2012. There is no doubt the cars are coming, and EV advocates applauded NRG’s plan even as they expressed some reservations.

“I see it, overall, as a good thing,” said Paul Scott, a founder of the advocacy group Plug In America. “Anything that encourages the adoption of the EV is a good thing.”

But Scott and others expressed concern at the flat fee, “all you can eat” approach to NRG’s plan because it does little to encourage people to plug in at off-peak periods. There is concern that having everyone plug in during peak times could strain the grid. It would be better, Scott said, if NRG encouraged people to charge up at night, when utilities have excess capacity.

EV advocates also expressed reservations that NRG is proposing a walled garden where only subscribers can access the public stations. Other companies, like Coulomb Technologies, allow “point of purchase” access where anyone can plug in by simply swiping a credit card or calling an 800 number. NRG said it is exploring point-of-purchase sales but said the system will be available only to subscribers when it launches next year.

Those concerns aside, the breadth of the proposal and the list of companies backing NRG impressed some in the EV community. Aerovironment and General Electric have signed on to provide charging-station hardware and smart meters. Best Buy, Walgreens and the H-E-B supermarket chain will install public stations. Direct Energy, Green Mountain Energy, Reliant Energy and TXU Energy will provide the electricity. Nissan and Smart are among the automakers supporting NRG, as well.

“We think is a very good program that is unique in the country,” said Keiichi Kitahara, senior manager of corporate planning at Nissan. “We’re supporting a lot of government-backed projects, but this is the first privately funded project. We think we’ll see more of this.”

The Department of Energy has invested more than $140 million to develop EV infrastructure with partners like Coulomb Technologies and Ecotality. NRG is footing the bill for evGo itself, and Kitahara said private investment will be the fastest way to build infrastructure.

“Government money can kick off the infrastructure, but unless there is a business case for it and the possibility to make it profitable, it’s not going to take off,” he said. “If they prove this model will work in Houston and the rest of Texas, it’s something that NRG or anyone else could replicate elsewhere.”

Crane said NRG decided to start in Houston, in part because it has a deregulated electricity market. He was quick to add the model could be adapted to suit “less deregulated markets” with municipal utilities. NRG already is in discussions with utilities in San Antonio and Austin, and bringing its model to a regulated electricity market is “not at all insurmountable.”

Photo illustrations: NRG Energy