We’ve been kept pretty busy at Social Signal (I’m not complaining, not for a minute, and not because I don’t have a spare minute to use for complaining, although I don’t, and even if I did I’d have used it up in this parenthetical comment) so blogging on my personal site has been pretty sparse this month.

But I’ve been assiduously bookmarking sites in Delicious, secure in the knowledge that they would appear as daily posts on my blog. That’s thanks for the automated blog posting feature Delicious offers – a feature that’s been just invaluable in letting me feel as though I was still delivering something of value to You, The Reader.

Assuming, of course, that it had been working, and hadn’t broken in, say, early September.

Heh, heh… boy, that would have sucked, huh?

Uh-oh.

When Delicious did its big major upgrade thing, it apparently broke the automagic blogging for a lot of people. (For this guy, it was in August. Only the coding gods know why mine kept working until September.) So there are some pretty big gaps in my posting this fall.

I think I’ve got it fixed (turns out I needed to re-enter my username and password, and change the mysterious “blog number” from “0” to “1”).

What have you missed? After the jump:

Here are the most recent things that caught my eye – and I’ll lead with one that I’d promised to blog about months ago:

• DreamBank – Get Dreams. Not Stuff.: Is Vancouver becoming the hot spot for innovation in philanthropy? GiveMeaning has made a big splash… and now there’s DreamBank, a way for people to aggregate their gifts in support of someone’s dream (charitable or otherwise). Darren Barefoot pointed me there way (with the gift of a cute little Aladdin’s lamp, now in the firm possession of a certain young fan of a certain Disney movie). The nifty touch: the interest that those pooled contributions earn while they accumulate goes to international non-profits, as selected by the “dreamers”. As the site’s About page points out, people receive countless unwanted gifts during the holidays and on their birthdays; this is one way to redirect that gift-giving energy toward things people really want, while supporting good causes in the process.
• rabble.ca version 2.0, now in delicious beta: The pre-eminent online community for the Canadian left relaunches with a new look, buckets of new content and this site: their new (beta) platform. A big improvement over the old site. (I’m still steering clear of the babble forum, though, for the same reason gambling addicts don’t go to casinos.)
• Friends in Low Places: It’s time for John McCain to come clean about his own radical friends – Reason Magazine: Wow. When a Republican loses Reason Magazine, well,… “The extremist McCain has befriended is Gordon Liddy, who got a 20-year prison sentence for multiple felonies in the Watergate scandal—including burglary, conspiracy, and illegal wiretapping…. Liddy is not someone most of us would want to see visiting the Oval Office. Working for President Nixon, he committed a raft of crimes to secure Nixon’s re-election and punish his perceived enemies. He proposed to do still more—bomb the liberal Brookings Institution, kidnap anti-war activists, and murder a couple of inconvenient people. “
• TPM’s Sleaze Map: Talking Points Memo is tracking the harshest, nastiest Republican attacks using a map. Click on any state to see a list of leaflets and robocall recordings; click on any of these to see or hear it. It may be true: there’s no such thing as under the radar any more.
• Arianna Huffington: The Internet and the Death of Rovian Politics: This would be nice if it’s true: Huffington argues that Rovian dirty-tricks politics don’t work in the connected age, largely because there’s no such thing any more as “under the radar.”
• Google Maps: At last: THE authoritative guide to where to vote, anywhere in the USA. Produced in association with the League of Women Voters, the Pew Charitable Trusts and the other folks involved in the Voter Information Project.
• Official Google Blog: Our position on California’s No on 8 campaign: This is nearly a month old, but if you haven’t seen it, Google has taken the unusual step of taking an official political position: opposing the anti-same-sex-marriage Proposition 8. To quote Sergey Brin: “it is the chilling and discriminatory effect of the proposition on many of our employees that brings Google to publicly oppose Proposition 8. While we respect the strongly-held beliefs that people have on both sides of this argument, we see this fundamentally as an issue of equality. We hope that California voters will vote no on Proposition 8 — we should not eliminate anyone’s fundamental rights, whatever their sexuality, to marry the person they love.” Right on, Sergey.
• Tigh / Roslin 2008!: Certainly puts those robocalls into perspective.
• Nasty as they wanna be? Policing Flickr.com: As Flickr’s community manager, Heather Champ has a huge job – and it’s often more nuanced than you might think at first glance. Check out this profile from the SF Chronicle.
• Seven reasons to ban online community members: Angela Connor on the community animator’s measure of last resort, and why you might want to take it.
• Recommended Web Strategy Reading: Jeremy Owyang’s greatest hits – well worth your time.
• CQ Politics | Trader Drove Up Price of McCain ‘Stock’ in Online Market: Apparently, some shadowy figure is dropping a lot of money in a predictive market to try to prop up the GOP ticket. Is this the first ever time someone spent serious coin to game one of these systems?
• Death by PowerPoint: Smashing presentation about more powerful presentations.
• Think before you speak. Don’t say “That’s So Gay.”: A great web campaign aiming for a simple, powerful goal: getting young people to stop using casual, offhand slurs when they talk. First on their hit list: “That’s so gay.”
• Petition: Ask Google for a World Diabetes Day doodle: This is the first e-petition I’ve seen trying to get a doodle on Google. It reminds me of the drives to get governments (usually local) to proclaim days or weeks in recognition of various groups or causes, usually to raise awareness. Which makes a certain kind of sense; for online citizens, Google is the closest thing we have to city hall.
• The Buzzer Blog: Translink is dipping its tires into the social media waters with the brand new Buzzer Blog, named for the long-standing (and newly interesting) newsletter familiar to transit riders across the Vancouver area. It’s well-written and engaging – check it out.
• Design Comics :: Characters and Scenes for Storyboarding and Design: Awesome: free, open-source illustrations you can use to create quick-and-painless storyboards.
• Pligg Content Management System (CMS): An open-source version of Digg (or, alternately, Salesforce’s idea management system, used by IdeaStorm and MyStarBucksIdea).
• WordPress Code Innovation Wizards – BraveNewCode: A Canadian web design and dev shop with a special expertise in WordPress.
• WPtouch: WordPress On iPhone » BraveNewCode: A great-looking theme for WordPress to make your blog easier on the eyes – especially if those eyes are looking at an iPhone.
• Social Media News Release: USA.gov: For the first anniversary of the Gov Gab blog, the U.S. government issued a social media news release. (“Gov Gab”, huh? I’m verklempt.
• Slate predicts McCain’s next 10 Hail Mary campaign stunts.: “3. Challenges Obama to suspend campaign so they both can go and personally drill for oil offshore.” Loved this.
• mediatedcultures.net @ kansas state university: Home to Prof. Michael Wesch’s (and students’) video collection, including the phenomenal The Machine is Us/ing Us.
• Dotmocracy | The best way to make decisions together: A facilitation process for getting lots of folks to collect ideas and put them in order of priority. The site includes a handbook, printable sheets and much more.
• A twitterfeed.com/SocialActions mashup: Clever idea! Fill in your Twitter name and password, add your favourite social cause, and this mashup will automatically tweet suggested actions via your account. Cute!
• Digital Roam: Careful Senator, your politics are showing: Family finances during the Bush years, as illustrated in napkin drawings. Awesome.