by gregoryheller | Jul 18, 2006 | Uncategorized
<p>If newspapers running classified ads were anything like th record companies and the RIAA, <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/baycitynews/archive/2006/07/17/craigslist17.DTL" target="new">reports like these</a> would be a jumping off point for a campaign to shut down the popular classifieds site, <a href="http://www.craigslist.org">CraigsList.org</a>.</p> <p>What is the connection? Well, CraigsList enables all sorts of crime, real criminal crime, not just civil infractions, so CL is bad, and must be shut down.</p> <p>The music labels that back the RIAA use similarly tortured logic to go after file sharing technology, demand DRM <A href="http://www.defectivebydesign.org">(Digital Restrictions Managment)</a> and sue the pants off — often unwitting — internet users who may intentionally or accidentally make a music file available on their computer for other's to download.</p> <p>Oh, if anyone is interested, I'd like to sell some really expensive jewlery tomorrow night around 10pm in the Muni Lot on Ludlow and Broome. It's a pretty quiet lot at night, so no one will disturb our transaction….</p> <p>(I am kidding of course! Have fun on...
by gregoryheller | Jul 18, 2006 | Uncategorized
Late last month I topok an afternoon to go on a bike ride with Hope. I took my camera with me and shot this little video while riding on the Burke Gilman Trail. (video after the jump) <!– break –> <object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-TsJI-V-ruc" /><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-TsJI-V-ruc" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425"...
by gregoryheller | Jul 13, 2006 | Uncategorized
Kaliya Hamlin pointed me to this article about Mashup Camp (not to be confused with MashPit the Mashup hackathon that Chris Messina envisioned and has been involved with.) Mashup Camp is an unconference utilizing open space strategies like the law of two feet. Apparently unconferences are becoming so popular that “Doug Gold and David Berlind, the organizers of Mashup Camp, hope to turn unconferences into a business.” Um… I guess. The business will be one the organizes unconferences. Seems a bit strange. I know it does take work to line up sponsors, locations, etc… But one of the things that really makes the unconferences i have been to so great is the “of the people, by the people, for the people” nature of...
by gregoryheller | Jul 11, 2006 | Uncategorized
CivicActions launched HightowerLowdown.org on Monday. This site follows on our launch, earlier this year, of JimHightower.com and last year’s Hightower Roadmap, our first project with Hightower’s team. Jim Hightower, the former agriculture secretary of Texas, is a well respected populist commentator and pamphleteer. Every month Jim and his associates publish four pages packed with insightful and often humorous political and social commentary. The HightowerLowdown.org site is the online version of this influential monthly newsletter. Existing print subscribers can activate a Drupal account and receive access to the premium content. The system of online account activation communicates with their third-party subscription fulfillment firm. The HightowerLowdown.org also republishes Jim Hightower’s daily Common Sense Commentary from JimHightower.com. The Common Sense Commentaries consist of a text transcript of a 2-minute audio broadcast. (Jim has been doing these audio commentaries for over six years making him the first podcaster, though none of us knew it!) Listeners can subscribe to an RSS feed for these “podcasts” or listen to them on the website. Both sites are running Drupal 4.7, incorporate the innovative Content Construction Kit module, and use the MLM/News/Send module suite (developed in part for this project) to send weekly mass emailings to Hightower’s readers. We use the Premium Module, developed for this project, to restrict access to the newest content on the site. The Guest Pass module (also developed for this project) allows subscribers to send a guest pass to premium content to their friends and family. And we use CiviCRM and CiviMail to keep track of subscriber options and to enable the Hightower staff to send highly targeted email announcements. We were...
by gregoryheller | Jul 11, 2006 | Uncategorized
M&R Strategic Services did a quick little study on the effectiveness of images in advocacy emails. Basic idea is now that so many people block images in their mail clients, or their mail clients do it for them, images may hurt, rather than help the organization. You can read the 4 page study here. From what I gather, the numbers don’t prove the case “images hurt you now.” And the study doesn’t answer the question in the title “Do Images Help or Hurt?”. The number say “The effect of images in email are really statistically insignificant.” The differences in open rate or response rate were all withing a few hundredths of a percentage point, which given the unreliability of email metrics like open rate tracking and click through tracking, I would say are within the margins of error. The authors of the report admit this: Although we cannot make any definitive claims based on the results of just three tests, these results do indicate that the inclusion of additional images does not increase response rates to advocacy messages or fundraising appeals, nor does it decrease them. While it may not hurt to include properly formatted images in your email message (thought it could hurt if your message gets quarantined or rejected by a potential donor or activist because it looks blank in the preview pane), it also does not appear to help at all. What might have helped here is talking to some of the recipients, and also doing a bit of analysis on what caused message to be quarantined or flagged as spam. The report does offer some...
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