- What kinds of information the NSA is collecting about your communications - it's not paranoia if they're really after you. And they have really cool PDAs to do it with.
- The Feminist Review - bloggers calling patriarchy as they see it
- Geni - free Web 2.0 enabled online genealogy software
- The Onion nails it again: You know what's stupid? Everything I don't understand - "God, all the people, places, and things I haven't made the least bit of effort to comprehend should just die already."
- Get up to $15,000 for a project in your hometown - I love seeing this kind of use of the web.
- Some E-Cards - for when you care enough to hit send
Tag: links
The "I'm too busy with the dog show to blog for real so I'll grow them a linkfarm" edition:
- Popping Culture Blog by Michelle Manchir: Michelle's journalistic efforts at the Palladium-Item are some of the more refreshingly comprehensive and useful to come along in a while, and her blog entries are turning out to be similarly insightful.
- Peter Suber of Earlham College Gets Win for Open-Access at Harvard: Peter was a professor of mine at Earlham, and is one of the most interesting and intelligent people I know. He's been working hard at making scholarly articles available for free online, and this news is certainly a great milestone for that effort.
- WayNet.org allows organizations without 501(c)3 status to apply for fee-waived membership: Now you don't need to have a letter from The Man if you're a low-budget not-for-profit organization wanting to join this Wayne County community network association.
- The Palladium-Item is revising its forum posting policy so that it holds its online users to some of the same standards as its letter writers in the print edition. And yet despite some heroic efforts, as I predicted in 2005, the forum remains something of a drowning pool where trolls go to feed.
- Check out my Summersault Weblog entry on adding a free chat room to your website. Any questions? Come ask me in the chat room at live-richmond.com.
- I am searching for the medical term for "an irrational fear of velociraptors" - anyone?
Links of recent interest:
- Richmond Indiana Images of Home - a brief video slideshow with photos by Jim Hair and music by Brian Wallen.
- VotePoke.com - Are you registered to vote? Are you sure?
- Web Masters - Earlham College's recent Alumni Spotlight article featuring myself and Mark.
- Finding the Time and Place to Do What's Important - another interesting take by Dave Pollard; I may respond to some of his points in a forthcoming blog entry, if I have time.
- Hacking train tracks - It could work, if we can just get the right angles.
- The Story of Stuff - "From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns."
- The Official Blog of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, and the New York Times article that introduced me to it. I wonder how much comment spam *he* gets?
- Local geek Charlie Peck is still Intel's "fastest geek" - or, how to win $30,000 with just a screwdriver.
- Taking Charge of Your Fertility - the companion website to the book by the same name.
- Local Food Cooperative Management System Software - open source software to connect local food producers with local food consumers. It's one piece in creating a more self-reliant local economy.
- Are you brave enough to say no to a high-stress holiday? "The problem with Christmas is not the batteries. The problem isn't even really the stuff. The problem with Christmas is that no one much likes it anymore."
- Richmond News Review podcast episode #23: Debate bid followup, buying local, media coverage gaps from last weekend.
- And don't forget to submit your suggestions for the upcoming podcast segment, What news stories did Richmond media miss in 2007?.
- Energy Efficiency Jobs at Google: Get paid to save the world (or at least to develop technology that prologngs its life a bit). "Business as usual will not deliver low-cost, clean energy fast enough to avoid potentially catastrophic climate change...We need creative and motivated entrepreneurs and technologists with expertise in a broad range of areas."
- What We Call The Media: a satirical and irerrverant look at the state of mainstream broadcast media
Sustainability and energy efficiency edition:
- Question to the local Mayoral race candidates about energy policy - I submitted a question to Mayor Hutton and Rick Thalls via the Pal-Item's forum, asking "if elected/re-elected, what specific steps will you take to uphold the commitment the City has made to improve the environmental health of our communities, reduce emissions, discourage sprawl, increase fuel efficiency, and reduce energy consumption? What steps have you taken in your own life to reduce your energy consumption?" I wonder if they'll respond on their blog?
- The Cuddle Mattress - if you're looking for a get rich quick scheme, just patent this idea today! (And think of all the heat loss prevented by more efficient cuddling.)
- A Quick Video Introduction to Peak Oil - a primer on the concept of peak oil and resources available to learn more. Created by Aaron Wissner, who I met this past weekend (and geeked out with a bit over his Canon HD DV video camera).
- Business Alliance for Local Living Economies - How can my business use less energy and produce less waste? How can I help my customers understand that locally owned businesses are important to the strength of our community? What new business opportunities exist for our region in the emerging green economy? BALLE has some good answers.
- smallisbeautiful.org - programs that demonstrate that both social and environmental sustainability can be achieved by applying the values of human-scale communities and respect for the natural environment to economic issues.
- Rest in peace, Rachel Burrell: friend, encourager, piano teacher, visionary, comfort to grieving children everywhere, and an amazing woman.
- Seven principles of community building: don't try to control the message, transparency is a must, participation is marketing, concept of audiences is outdated, build value, inspire with real information, manage distribution media to grow.
- A new episode of my podcast (online audio broadcast), the Richmond News Review: a great interview with Jason Truitt of the Palladium-Iteme, who talked candidly with me about the state of the paper's citizen journalism efforts.
- Unconference: a new way to bring people together and Open Space: a new way to run productive meetings. The next time you're considering having a meeting, gathering, summit, conference, colloquium, retreat, seminar or workshop, consider using these formats.
- Do you really know what's in that Chipotle food you're eating? Find out with the Chipotle Nutrition Calculator. My (now formerly) usual burrito has 1,336 calories in it.
- In the theme of nefarious co-opting important activist ideas into consumerist culture, apparently the cosmetics and plastic surgery industries are working on appealing to women with a new and unfortunate message: conforming to traditional notions of beauty is the new feminism.
- If you've ever received junk e-mail, you may be interested in the massive network of zombie computers (maybe even yours) that is powering the efforts of spammers and network abusers everywhere: Gathering 'Storm' Superworm Poses Grave Threat to PC Nets. Scary stuff.
- When you are in conflict with a partner, there are only two possible intentions: you either intend to protect yourself from hurt feelings or you intend to learn and grow from the experience. The difference between the two approaches can be the difference between successful conflict resolution and failure.
- Richmond residents are invited to a debate between mayoral candidates Sally Hutton and Rick Thalls this Wednesday. And did you know there are 17 people currently running for President of the United States? Wow.
- For consultants: Every project and every office has multiple personality types. How you work with them and how you manage the rationale of decisions and feedback is crucial to your success. By applying the right relationship management techniques, you can calm tension, communicate more easily, run your projects more efficiently — and you might get additional work since the relationship with the client will be strong from beginning to end.
- What does it mean to be on the ball? It means you've got good Flow. Especially important if you're creating websites.
It's "you can't make this stuff up" day here on the Internet. Today's highlights include Woman tries to pass fake $1 million dollar bill at a Wal-Mart and It's every other state that's confused about time changes, not Indiana. And we wonder why people on the U.S. East and West coasts consider everything in between to be a vast wasteland...
A convergence of funny things going on on-line has hit me this week, so I should share some of those. First you have the "e-mail virus wars" that have broken out between the Bagel worm and the NetSky worm. The two apparently wage war on each other on your vulnerable desktop, including cursing, malicious uninstallation, sounds on your speaker, and more...follow the drama here. Then you have the Dishonest Dubya lying action figure, which, regardless of your political views, is just a fun toy to play with. 🙂 Then you have your culturally insensitive parody of a Microsoft product. And finally, you have the latest issue of The Onion, with news stories such as "Virulent Strain Of Soy Flu Traced To Single Tofurkey" and "Jesus Demands Creative Control Over Next Movie". Enjoy.
