Open Data Advice for Librarian Coders
For the purposes of this post we will ignore how remarkably badass sounding the word librarian becomes when “coder” is added to the end of it. I recently had a…
technology
The more things change… Amazon’s “anticipatory shipping” and the village square
Media outlets recently publicized Amazon’s patent for what it calls “anticipatory shipping.” The premise is as simple as it is creepy: Amazon will charge and ship items before customers have…
New Technique For Restoring Historic Videos
USC Shoah Foundation has a large collection of interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides. Old physical media formats are susceptible to damage from fires to…
Open Data Day Google+ Hang Out
With just about a month to go until Open Data Day things are going well. There are quite a few cities that have been added to the open data day…
Using Drones For Studying Ecologies
Drones are popularly associated with American air strikes on civilians and thus have a negative reputation. The technology underlying the drones can be used for good though. One example of…
More Clever Climate Change Awareness Actions!
…Burning oil caused the melting in the first place… A week ago two climate change activists pulled a Yes Men on our greatest employee, Mr. Stephen Harper. But last summer,…
A Key Union Priority for 2014
Naomi Klein urges unions to join climate change fight Many groups are calling for significant and sufficient action to address climate change, which is fantastic. But unions have not been…
Simon Norfolk – Forensic Traces of War
A controlled explosion of an American fuel convoy in Iraq being filmed on the set of ?Over There?, a Fox TV production about the life of a US Army platoon…
Enbridge: What Now? We Escalate Our Fight
Some breaking news occurred yesterday, the Joint Review Panel of the National Energy Board approved the Enbridge pipeline, but with 209 conditions. To quote a teenager from 1994: “Big whoop.”…
Tech on the Side: Lessons from HDDVD vs Blu-ray
My first real foray into the world of following tech news came with the epic HDDVD vs Blu-ray fight. This was more than a little odd. At the time, I…
Open Data Day 2014 is Coming Feb 22 – Time to Join the Fun!
So, with much help from various community members (who reminded me that we need to get this rolling – looking at you Heather Leson), I pleased to say we are…
Technology Is Opening A New Era Of Ethics
Whether it is the accumulation of data about your life on Facebook, your online professional profile on LinkedIn, or the location tracking features of your cellphone, there has never been…
Tech on the Side: Apple’s tablet upgrade cycle problem
On this blog I like to cover the big issue facing our planet, issues dramatically affecting millions or billions of people: war, conflict, global warming, poverty, economics, rights and freedoms,…
Video Games to Help the World
A game based on the story Half the Sky puts players into a perspective usually different than their own: a young girl in the developing world. It teaches young gamers…
Fairphone – A Phone Built With Social Values
Fairphone is a new phone built in an ethical way using (mostly) ethically sound sources. It’s a reaction to the ongoing problems with electronics manufactures who get minerals from conflict…
A Tricorder To Find Out What’s In Your Food
TellSpec is a new device currently being crowd funded that tells people what’s in their food – just like a Star Trek tricorder. It uses spectrometry to analyze the food…
Mozillians: Announcing Community Metrics DashboardCon – January 21, 2014
Please read background below for more info. Here’s the skinny. What A one day mini-conference, held (tentatively) in Vancouver on January 14th San Francisco on January 21st and 22nd, 2014…
Digital Attachments
It’s tough to lose a solider. Especially one like Dimitri. A fine sniper, with a good kill record. I had trained him for so long, raised him from a lowly…
The Age of Exploration Isn’t Over
Humans haven’t been on the Moon for over 30 years and as a result it’s easy to think that the “space age” is over and our exploration of the universe…