I’m at “Plone Magic Camp” this weekend to learn about the Plone content management system, programming and designing in Plone. (For web geeks: Plone is an open source CMS built on top of the Zope framework which is written in the Python programming language.) Going to “Magic Camp” I was hoping to get a wand…
Category: Web/Tech
Activist Tech: from listservs to virtual worlds
I went to a workshop on “Technology and Social Activism” at the Beyond Broadcast conference this weekend. I suppose it was ambitious to expect anything other than a quick fly-over of interesting initiatives in using technology for activism, since this could have easily been the subject of a three-day conference. As one participant Sean Coon…
Green.tv: the first broadband TV channel on the environment
Today was the launch of Green.tv, the first "broadband TV channel" on environmental issues. Sponsored by the UN Environment Programme and a host of other sponsors, the site will carry films from around the world produced by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community filmmakers, public sector bodies and companies with a firm interest in protecting the environment….
webconferencing < teleconferencing
So after researching pretty extensively the webconferencing offerings of all of the main providers on the market (webex, webconference.com, webdialogs, elluminate, centra, net meeting, etc), I have come to the conclusion that none of them can provide yet the kind of fidelity of a traditional teleconference. Multi-party, full duplex on all webconferencing services I have…
Web conferencing woes
I’m evaluating several web conferencing packages for my organization. In my mind I imagine that there must be one that combines video conferencing, VOIP, traditional teleconferencing, app sharing and recording. And that doesn’t cost $10,000 a year to deploy. I’m quite fond of Elluminate, which is a web conferencing service that comes from the academic…
Signs that you are no longer cutting edge – SNL spoofs video podcasting
Saturday Night Lame, I mean, Live, did a skit spoofing video podcasting last night, hearkening back to the Dana Carvey and Mike Meyers parodies of cable access television programming. The main difference being that "Wayne’s World" was actually funny, while this barely passed as comedy. For those who didn’t suffer enough, you can view the…
Using the Net to share our mental maps
I was playing around with the cool website wayfarer.com and I created a map of swing dance venues in Manhattan. Wayfarer uses the Googlemaps system to allow anyone to create their own custom maps, and allow others to add and edit them at will. You simply name your map (“Haunted Places in Dartmour,” “Great Lakes…
Dr King on Technology and Social Change
This is what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had to say about technology and social change: The trouble isn’t so much that our scientific genius lies behind us, but that our moral genius lies behind us. The means by which we live outdistance the spiritual ends by which we live. Amen.
Windows on a Mac: Get Ready for More Switchers
I just finished watching the webcast of Steve Jobs at the Macworld expo in San Francisco, where he unveiled today the newest innovations coming out of Apple. I’m a huge Mac addict — I’m typing now on my third iBook. And Job’s announcement that the newest “Macbooks” and iMacs will come with Intel dual core…
Dear UN: Please get an RSS feed
The United Nations website is filled with a wealth of useful information and news about the world we live in, from on-the-ground updates on conflicts and security crises to statistical data on every country on the planet. And yet it tends to hoard that information to be mostly consumed by a small population of diplomats…