I was pretty floored at last year’s DrupalCon when Dave Cole, from the White House’s office of the CIO, announced that the federal government of the United States was going to contribute 4 new modules used in Whithouse.gov to the Drupal Community.
On the macro-level there was the wonderment that comes with watching a paradigm shift unfold in right in front of your eyes. more
Categories:
Cool Tech | Politics & Advocacy
A friend pointed me to this great post by Danah Boyd on Alternet discussing the implications of the race and class demographic divides between Facebook and Myspace: more
Categories:
Politics & Advocacy | Stats
At first blush, it doesn’t seem like the world of enterprise software has much to do with the work we’re doing building and empowering online communities and movements. What could the world of massive databases running of 30 year old tape-based mainframes have to do with training tomorrows leaders in the fight for the environment? Surely the email servers that run the blackberries and stock tickers and acquisitions databases for the Fortune 500 companies are only similar to our online organizing campaigns in the features of their most basic technologies, with the way in which these application are made and function being like day and night, right? more
I just came from having lunch with someone I’d never met. We made the plan through NoonHat (which, it turned out, we both found through the O’Reilly Radar blog). The service is prety straightforward: pick a date on which you’re free for lunch and specify a radius within which you can meet and the Noonhat servers will send you and your lunchmate an email the morning of through which you can work out the details. It’s quite a beauty in its simplicity, leaving communication between the parties up to email and with an interface that is a simple extension of Google Maps. Though it echoes local meetups like Lunch 2.0, after-work drink network, facebook lunch groups and web dating, it’s still a pretty unique idea (though my lunch partner had already been working on a similar one). more
Ethan is Technical Director at EchoDitto, where he works with socially responsible clients of all types and sizes to develop innovative online strategies and bring them to technical realization. He has been working with internet technologies since 1994, and recent projects include the National Yiddish Book Center, the East-West Institute, Seventh Generation and the NAACP LDF.
He is currently interested in the new possibilities opening up due to the convergence of the mobile web, HTML5 and hybrid online/offline organizing strategies.
He blogs at http://echodittolabs.org/ and tweets as @eethann. He is active in local organizing around food and environmental issues in Ithaca, NY, where he serves on the board of the GreenStar CoOp. When the computer is off he likes growing food in his garden and preparing it with his wife after a long hike before going out dancing.
Nicco Mele was interviewed by The American Prospect about Facebook's recently announced initial public offering.
