Gregory Heller Get in touch

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The blog

725 posts on careers, communication, technology and civic life, since 2005.

  1. Congressional Cars

    Just saw this on the Politicker . My favorite Congressman, Anthony Weiner is a good guy. Leasing one of hte cheapest cars on the Federal dime. See the complete list of congressional car leases .

  2. NYT: Alive and Well in Silicon Valley

    NYT ran this article about NY’s Silicon Valley . The salient points were something like this: tehse second wave companies are frugal, they are not taking VC, they are managing growth. The best line from the piece was this A lot could go wrong to derail the momentum of New York’s technology scene. Advertising spending could drop. A shortage of talented programmers could slow the speed of development… That last line is key.

  3. WorldChanging: Green Building Action Plan

    From World Changing: California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is a bit of an enigma. He has promoted state policies that have alienated both progressives and moderates (as demonstrated by the resounding election defeat for his various initiatives), but has done more to push a green agenda than pretty much any previous governor. The latest step in his plan, the Green Building Initiative, mandates that all public buildings be 20% more efficient by 2015, and suggests regulatory incentives to get private buildings to meet that same goal (PDF).

  4. Ad Council “Public Service” annoucement Discourages Activism

    This has got to be one of the strangest AdCouncil ads I have every seen. The plackard reads something like “Stop Pollution” and the bottom reads something like “Saving the World Isn’t easy, saving a life is. Give Blood.” The AdCouncil is an industry/corporate financed nonprofit group that creates and places “public service announcements”.

  5. Paying for Wifi?

    I recently traveled from Seattle to the Bay Area (SeaTac to OAK on Alaskan Air). I got the SeaTac early (because I could get a free ride) and figured that I would be able to find an internet hotspot there. Low and Behold, between a Starbucks and some other Coffee Company, I was told that I could connect to the internet. The service, provided by Cingular required what at first just appeared to be registration, or maybe activication if you had a Cingular account, but no! It required a payment! $10 for 24 hours at that particular location! I was in a bind and needed to get online, so I paid it, but it felt so dirty! Paying for WiFi! Shouldn’t that be a standard amenity in airports? How long are these companies going to be able to get people to pay? I would venture to guess that you could have an advertising supported WiFi service in airports that would pay for itself rather quickly.

  7. Seattle Drupal-Camp Planning Meeting

    A few of us are getting together in Seattle on Wednesday, March 15th, to start planning a DrupalCamp for Seattle! All are welcome… We’re meeting upstairs at 1:30 at Caffe Vita in Capitol Hill: http://www.caffevita.com/location.html So far the people attending are: – Samantha Moscheck – Gregory Heller – Jakob Perry – Mike Moscheck — Seattle Drupal Developer Meeting What: Informal gathering and planning sessions Who: Drupal developers, implementors and professionals as well as people interested in learning more about Drupal. Goals: Meet each other, network, begin planning Drupal Camp Seattle.

  8. Why We Fight

    Last night I went to see the Eugene Jarecki documentary "Why We Fight" about America's propensity towards militarization and war. The film was disturbing. People will say it is “over the top” or slander it as “left wing liberal media propaganda”. Those people will continue to ignore the fact that there is something very…

  9. It's Been a while

    It has been a while since i have blogged over here. Things are great in seattle. I made a trip back to new york about a week or so ago (i guess two weeks now) and i'll be back in Ny in early April. I have been blogging more frequently over at CivicActions I'll…

  10. Productivity: Mozilla Thunderbird and Calendar enhancement Ideas

    I have been thinking about how i would improve Mozilla Thunderbird and calendar since before the GooToDo demonstration at BarcampNYC , but that really got my ideas swirling. Just yesterday, Hope and I were talking about email and productivity and the 800 messages in her inbox. So I started thinking a bit more about what I want from my email client and calendar tool. Email: I want to be able to tag (think del.icio.us, flickr, web2.0) my incoming email. I don’t want to have to move it into folders, and then remember where i put it it. I just want to tag it with the relevant keywords, and then be able to easily filter and search based on tags.