Here’s a cool idea: a site called How’d They Vote, dedicated to telling you how your MP has voted, how often she or he speaks in the House… and, most fascinating of all, how nasty they are in debate.
HTV has waded 3 per cent of the way through endless hours of verbiage (“I would like to call the House’s attention to the presence in the Gallery of my orthodontist…”) and coding it according to its vituperation level. And that may be HTV’s most important innovation.
Just in time for the late summer season, the latest must-have blogging accoutrements at Caf?©press.com: the BlogHer Cafe, with all proceeds going to BlogHerCon.
Each T-shirt, mug, cap, bib and onesie bears a slogan dreamed up by the ever-astonishing Alex, including:
And there’s even more BlogHer gear here.
Be the first kid on your blog to own one. Operators are standing by.
It’s the call of the beach — in this case, Jericho Beach. Or if you’re feeling a little more urban, Kits Beach (the site even has a martini recipe for that extra little bit of productivity-killing goodness).
In other words, launched by the glorious weather this weekend at the folk festival, it’s finally summer.
How many conferences have you been to where a head table of presenters opened with dry, over-cautious remarks, and things only got interesting during the audience Q and A?
Alex, blogging from AdvocacyDev II, is delighted at the tack the organizers — a duo called Aspiration Tech — took:
Their approach is to bring a whole bunch of interesting people together and let them drive and structure discussions. No talking head panels here: session topics have emerged out of the interests and needs of the people in the room, and each discussion has been a mix of brainstorming, case sharing, strategy sharing, putting questions out for feedback, and coming up with really concrete ideas for projects and next steps.
This ties in with a discussion unfolding on several blogs on “unconferences”, including a thought-provoking podcast conversation from Johnnie Moore, who asks “how can we get away from unsatisfying conferences where the audience is often bored, towards much more engaging learning events?”
Want to get the latest hard-hitting tech news analysis? Wondering how to leverage cutting-edge technology to impact your bottom line?
Look elsewhere, my friend.
Because dotThis! is a tech news roundup like no other. It weighs in at under two minutes… features zero high-profile guest stars… and uses occasional off-colour language. Enjoy.
dotThis 1.0
For all you Technoranki junkies out there. Ahem:
I click without hope
Technorati is unchanged.
Frustrated: I sigh.
Update: Whoops. Thanks to Declan for the polysyllabic assist.
My one-time Charlatan compadre James Hrynyshyn has headed south of the border, but thanks to the miracle of the Internets, I can still find out what’s going on in that fertile mind of his at Island of Doubt. Given that he told me about peak oil two years ago, I tend to be pretty interested.
Yesterday’s post is a thought-provoking look at fusion energy, given the announcement last week that the ITER consortium has finally chosen a site:
It slipped under the radar of, or got passing mentions in, most corporate and independent media outlets. But that’s not what’s troubling. Instead, it’s the reaction from environmentalists that has me concerned.
I’ve been a little skeptical of the latest Microsoft ad campaign, which basically says that if you don’t upgrade to the next version of Office, you’re less evolved, facing extinction — and scaly, to boot.
On the other hand, it’s a rich vein for culture jammers to mine. From a Vancouver washroom (click for full image):
Lately, I’ve been following Notes from a Teacher: Mark on Media. Written by a former journalist turned Kwantlen journalism instructor, it started as a way to share information with his students. But now its mandate has broadened:
The more I read, the more I see that we are in the middle of a significant media revolution, driven by the combination of technology, reader dissatisfaction and the desire of passionate journalists to do something better.
So today the blog also covers the way journalism is changing — everything from the impact of blogs and the Net to local coverage that communicates with, not just to, the community. The writing’s crisp, the commentary’s great, and you’re pretty much guaranteed an intriguing nugget in every post. If you’re a media junkie, get thee hence for a gander.
If you want to take the plunge into iWork ���05 — Apple’s word processing (Pages) and presentation (Keynote 2) combo — you might have a little trouble during installation. Thanks to a bug in the software, it rejects perfectly valid serial numbers.
I couldn’t find the solution on Google, but Apple’s discussion groups had the answer. (Linking to specific posts is difficult, but drill down through iWork ’05 > Keynote > iWork serial number tip.) The dirty details follow, as compiled by a user named Peggy:
There’s a small army of researchers hard at work on public policy projects. But until now, most of their work has stayed hidden from the U.S. taxpayers who fund it.
Now that’s changing. Thanks to the work of Open CRS, the efforts of the U.S. Congressional Research Service – which might otherwise never make it outside of a Senator’s or Representative’s office – are seeing the light of day.