Archive
156 posts
It sure has been a while since I last blogged over here, or over at CivicActions . I've been pretty busy with work, and catching up on things here in NY. I am getting ready to head out in about a week for Seattle, but I won't be there for long, I fly to Amseterdam…
TerraPass a company that allows the public to buy carbon offsets in the cap-and-trade system (you buy carbon polution that companies are selling basically) to offset CO2 polution from driving has introduced a flight calculator. Visit the Flight Tracker to calculate the CO2 pollution from specific flight routes. You can then buy a Terra Pass to offset the impact of your flight. Or you can buy Trees For the Future and help repair ecological damage in developing nations at the same time as you remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
Never mind that the penguins look like a little L:inux Penguin, or that the video is actually not funny at all, it seems that this piece of YouTube ephemera mocking Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” has an inconvenient truth of it’s own: the video seems to have been paid for by a PR firm that counts Exxon as a client. Perhaps the Republican firm, DCI, should have given the film maker a bit more direction, they could have attacked Gore on the merrits as in this opinion piece that points out Gore’s hypocracy: owning multiple very large homes, lots of air travel, family ownership in oil stocks and a mining concession that has been accused of polluting on his own property.
If newspapers running classified ads were anything like th record companies and the RIAA, reports like these would be a jumping off point for a campaign to shut down the popular classifieds site, CraigsList.org . What is the connection? Well, CraigsList enables all sorts of crime, real criminal crime, not just civil infractions,…
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)
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 them.
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.
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.
Kaliya Hamlin , a friend of mine from various converenences, is involved in the planning/convening of an open space conference in Vancouver about single sign on, identity related issues. What do I mean by that? Well, I think Kaliya can explain it better . I agree with her that it is important for folks from our sector (social source, progressive technology) to be in on these discussions. The identity layer will really propell our experience of the internet to the next level.
CivicActions is co-sponsoring Drupal Camp Seattle with Vancouver Drupal ASP Bryght and Rain City Studios (also based in Vancouver) on Wednesday and Thursday, June 28, 29 at the Richard Hugo House . I’ll be facilitating and co-facilitating sessions for non-coders on e-campaigning with Drupal, boot-strapping your site with Drupal as a non-coder, CiviCRM for power users and a quick tour of the views module.