From Xeni's post in Boing Boing: Ohio election grok-helper, a very thorough collection of information on the confusing Ohio recount situation. Great work by Lisa Rein.
Report On Election 2004's Ohio Recount and Voting Fraud Situation
Called Podzilla by Adam Curry, this currently does not run on the fourth generation iPod. That's okay, I don't have the guts to try it yet, though son Mick might.
Apple will be releasing Tiger, the latest version of MacOS X, sometime early this year. One new feature will be widgets, little applications that are written using web authoring techniques.
I can see a great introduction to coding workshop at the PS188 net cafe based on widgets. Even I can learn to program these.
Link thanks to Forwarding Address: OS X.
A UNESCO supported resource for community technology centers. In English, Spanish, French, with selected sections in other languages.
ItrainOnline: Resources for Trainers: MMTK
Boston.com - Dad tries to sell Christmas gifts on eBay
Thanks to Dave Winer for the link.
I overlooked posting this. Alex Steffen provides the link to a free PDF guide to doing good in the world.
WorldChanging: Another World Is Here: The Rough Guide to a Better World
Via Daily Wireless, an explanation of skypecasting, podcasting using Skype calls over the internet.
Unbound Spiral: Skype Podcast Recorder = SkypeCasters
It's back to the basics for me. The team that built Dean's online presence gives tips on online organizing, blogging, fundraising.
Yes, that's my opinion. But this page by Mark Dery hits the ugliness of the word "blog" and then just keeps getting better.
From Slashdot:
Tor: An anonymous Internet communication system
A harrowing tale of immigration from El Salvador to the U.S. by way of the Usumacinta River.
La ciudad de Palenque en México fue la última en ser testigo de su paso callado y silencioso, tras cuatro horas en lancha que lo acercaron desde Bethel. Lo que parecía más difícil se convirtió en lo más fácil. "Los coyotes fueron comprando a la policía de todos sitios cada vez que nos paraban para que pudiéramos continuar. En México nos llegaron a parar hasta ocho veces", confirmó la temblorosa voz de "Marito", no por miedo, sino por frío.
I have to check this out later.
Yahoo! Search Services and Tools - Media RSS Syndication
A brief, non-controversial profile of the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve.
Agencia NOVA - Reserva de la biosfera Montes Azules
On the genocide in Darfur.
Says Nicholas D. Kristof:
Put 'moral values' to work - saving lives.
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columinst: Facing Down the Killers
How to protect food from bioterrorism.
The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: Think Globally, Eat Locally
I was feeling like a creepy old guy for declaring that videoblogging is BORING. That's why it hasn't caught on.
Hey, there will be room for boring self-indulgent video in the new new media universe (half of the video art from the 80's and 90's was no different) but it ain't the revolution, kids. It's just video art dating on the cheap, exceeding the limits on your $8.95 a month typepad blogs and getting away with it. Am I bitter? Am I drunk?
Anyway, I was glad to see the folks at Rocketboom mentioned in Mitch Ratcliffe's column. Had a fine beer or two with them at the Pink Pony a while back and they were the only vbloggers with a clue that I've noticed so far.
Red Herring Blog: 2005: The year the media will turn inside out
Thanks to Xeni for the link to Glenn's new weblog on RSS server and bandwidth issues. Funny name, good info.
The Defensores de la Naturaleza, who administer the Sierra del Lacandon Park in Guatemala, are in charge of a large, USAID funded project to protect the Usumacinta watershed.
PrensaLibre.com - Protegerán cuenca del Usumacinta
From Tim Jones at EchoDitto Weblog, a clear-eyed view of what it may take to push podcasting to its potential.
Media Revolution! One buzzword at a time.
Tim's also got a good rundown of audio software:
Sam at Daily Wireless with an update and a linkfest on WiMax, 802.16, the wireless broadband standard with a lot of promise for metropolitan networks.
Daily Wireless - Wavesat Shipping WiMax Chips
Jennifer at scriptygoddess asked her readers about web development tools for the Mac. I would have said Dreamweaver, as some did. But the comments have a lot of good info on other tools.
scriptygoddess - Tools for Web Development on the Mac?
Xeni follows up on the fight today:
Boing Boing: NPR, Wired News: Hollywood Wants BitTorrent Dead
Via JD Lasica's Darknet site and Xeni in Boing Boing, news of the battle between the RIAA and operators of BitTorrent tracker servers.
infoAnarchy || New Bittorrent study presented at FTC P2P workshop
Boing Boing: New MPAA lawsuits against BitTorrent, eDonkey expected
A broad coalition continues to build in opposition to the Plan Puebla Panama and the Central American Free Trade Agreement, in the Petén of northern Guatemala. This news report refers to both the Usumacinta dams (for now apparently on hold) and the new roads in the Montes Azules Reserve.
Sectores populares de Guatemala sellan compromiso antineoliberal - Prensa Latina
This is the call to action for our time. Using technology to help stop the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, Africa.
Ethan Zuckerman's Weblog : Ghana's election, and hopes for Darfur?
I read Joshua Shimkin's account of a podcasting session at a Harvard conference and felt inspired to comment. Maybe it was the reference to Ed Sullivan that got me going.
Click More for the text of my comment.
It sounds as if there was actually little discussion of the political implications of podcasting. One thought - The lack of metadata (transcripts, summaries, etc.) is a strength, beyond the pure experience of a performance. This is non-searchable (though eavesdroppable) web content. So beyond the "route around mainstream media" concept there is p2p communication and organizing potential with some built-in privacy.
And comparing Winer and Curry to Ed Sullivan, while evocative, doesn't make it. Ed was high vaudeville brought to our living rooms. But that didn't make us all impresarios. We couldn't all start up our own TV variety shows. A better early TV model would be Ernie Kovacs, playing with the medium instead of just putting stage shows on it.
Curry and Winer were more like early breakthrough independent filmmakers - Leacock and Pennebaker, shooting pretty girls and flower children in "Monterey Pop"? They (C&W) were just homemade and goofy enough that they established the "anyone can do it" meme from the start. Never mind that Curry's ease came from years of experience, and Winer's appeal from years of thinking about users and developers partying together. They created a format that in its glitches and flubs, its geek digressions, revealed how it was made as part of its content. No other medium has had that transparency from the start.
Now it will consolidate, and slicker productions will proliferate, but that combination of the "how" with the "what" gave it the power to take off so quickly and may be the key to its future political implications.
More philosophically:
"When making an axe handle
the pattem is not far off."
Something about the self-referential nature of podcasts and their making brings to mind the Gary Snyder poem:
Axe Handles
One afternoon the last week in April
Showing Kai how to throw a hatchet
One-half turn and it sticks in a stump.
He recalls the hatchet-head
Without a handle, in the shop
And go gets it, and wants it for his own.
A broken-off axe handle behind the door
Is long enough for a hatchet,
We cut it to length and take it
With the hatchet head
And working hatchet, to the wood block.
There I begin to shape the old handle
With the hatchet, and the phrase
First learned from Ezra Pound
Rings in my ears!
"When making an axe handle
the pattem is not far off."
And I say this to Kai
"Look: We'll shape the handle
By checking the handle
Of the axe we cut with-"
And he sees. And I hear it again:
It's in Lu Ji's Wen Fu, fourth century
A.D. "Essay on Literature"-in the
Preface: "In making the handle Of an axe
By cutting wood with an axe
The model is indeed near at hand.-
My teacher Shih-hsiang Chen
Translated that and taught it years ago
And I see: Pound was an axe,
Chen was an axe, I am an axe
And my son a handle, soon
To be shaping again, model
And tool, craft of culture,
How we go on.
***************************
A bit pricey but the low end could be useful for a video swat team. Or a production company. Anything that takes some of the logging load off of the editor usually helps the process, depending on who's doing the logging. Now I'll look for a shareware version.
DV Log-X FireWire Videologger for Macintosh OSX
This question came up in my most recent paying editing job. We were sending Quicktime outputs of our Avid cuts to the composer and to the client for review, and wondering how to make sure the QT clips matched our cuts.
MacSlash | Using Timecode in Quicktime?
Move over WiMax. First out of the gate WiFi Wireless claims many advantages over 802.11.
Daily Wireless - Startup Plans 802.22?
Someone recently asked me how to find license free music. Here's a source that looks interesting.
This is a classic Hermann Bellinghausen rant. If half of it is true, the Selva Lacandona is truly under assault from commercial logging interests, with help from the government. Recent reports of bridges and roads seem to support this.
La Jornada - En Montes Azules el gobierno cambia su política de conservación del medio ambiente
Extensive quotes from a Pentagon Defense Science Board report. Also a link to the full pdf.
Daily Kos :: Pentagon: Bush's 'hypocrisy' lost us hearts and minds
No, not building walls. I think I've done my share of that. Building consensus. Rebuilding the Dems.
From EchoDitto Weblog, a source of sense in the post-election world.
Good post on the shift to a hydrogen economy, from WorldChanging.
Hydrogen 101 - Unlocking the Code – Science, Systems and Technological Breakthroughs
On the Road to a Gigabit Broadband: Are we there yet? Self-Assessment Guide for Communities
Via Tech Access
Are we there yet? We're not even to 1 megabit for less than $100 a month.
A rather more realistic report comes from the Center for an Urban Future:
A bridge is under construction to span the Lacantun River in the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, Chiapas, Mexico. It will allow heavy trucks to travel over a new highway through the reserve.
La Jornada - El gobierno dice proteger la selva, pero la agrede construyendo puentes: zapatistas
Next time I upload:
3ivx D4 4.5 - MPEG-4 Compression
Connect globally, act locally. Still plugging away at the community wireless project for our part of the lower east side of Manhattan. And it's starting to take shape, thanks to some neighborhood partnerships and help from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program.
(Click MORE to see an outline of our plans)
Avenue D Network
A community web, based on free wireless access
The Lower Eastside Girls Club and Public School 188 are forming a partnership to bring internet access, science and math education, and wireless broadband to a community that has been underserved in all of those areas.
The main components of the project are:
1) A community technology center at PS188 (Houston and Ave. D) in what is presently the entry foyer of the school. This long, beautiful space, with arched doorways to the outside, will be filled with a wireless internet cafe open to students and parents of the neighborhood. It will also serve as the after-school and weekend headquarters for a project to get students interested and active in science, math, and information technology. Funding for the facility is in place. Architectural design has already been completed. System design and implementation will begin in January of 2005, with the center opening in the fall of that year.
2) A digital photography, video and internet radio center in the Girls Club building, to be constructed between 7th and 8th streets on Avenue D. This building will be certified "green" and will also house commercial spaces at street level and artist studios on the top two floors, in cooperation with FEVA, the Federation of East Village Artists. Groundbreaking on the building will take place in the fall of 2005.
3) A wireless community broadband network, with antennas on the Girls Club and PS188, that will provide free or low cost internet access to the housing projects on Avenue D. It will form the basis of a community -wide network, sharing audio and video programs, health information, business advertising, educational programs, and community news. First evaluations and tests of wireless equipment, range and coverage will begin in spring of 2005. Development of community-specific applications and first network "broadcasts" will also begin at that time.
We are seeking volunteers, interns, and mentors with skills to contribute in many areas, including the following:
Network design, implementation, and security
Wireless broadband system design
Social software, applied to neighborhood wireless communications
Innovative educational approaches combining internet, math and science
Training youth and adults in Information Technology
Global collaboration, through web, VOIP, video conferencing
Video, audio and music production and distribution on the web
Website and weblog design, and training others in that area
RSS, "podcasting", bittorrent, and other emerging distribution methods
Mobile sharing of media and information
There will be opportunities for direct service and initiating educational projects with students and families from the Girls Club and PS 188 starting in Summer 2005.
In addition, we need people who can pursue options for acquiring the bandwidth for the system - copper, fiber, point to point wireless - and develop partnerships with suppliers and manufacturers who would benefit from the visibility of the project and the development of new social software and other community applications.
We are also open to any good idea that adds to the creative mix and serves the neighborhood.
The first results of this effort will be the construction of the PS188 internet center and the creation of a database of resources and a first planning survey, all by the fall of 2005.
The Avenue D Network will be designed by all participating partners, including PS188 students, parents and staff; NYU Interactive Telecommunication Program students and faculty; iEarn advisers; students and staff of the Bard High School; and members of the Lower Eastside Girls Club and FEVA. It will capitalize on and communicate the diversity and creativity of the Lower East Side, and will provide a model for centers in other communities.
Project coordinator: Dave Pentecost, dave.pentecost [at] gmail.com
In 2001 I rode for three weeks in the back of a pickup truck belonging to the leftist Mexican newspaper La Jornada. We were racing through Mexico in a highspeed motorcade, chasing the comandancia of the Zapatistas on their caravan from the jungles of Chiapas to Mexico City. Then newly elected president Vicente Fox had declared that he would settle the rebel crisis in fifteen minutes. He gave the Zapatistas safe passage on their way to the capital, and they stopped every day along the way to speak to rallies of cheering supporters. It struck me then that we were seeing the mainstreaming of rebellion. Of course, Mexico has had a lot of practice at this - before Fox, the group in power for 70 years without a break was the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
This news item is the latest twist in the story of Subcomandante Marcos, leader of what has been described as the first internet rebellion.
HoustonChronicle.com - Rebel leader to pen a political fiction
"Leftist Zapatista rebel leader Subcomandante Marcos, who slipped largely out of the public eye three years ago, plans to re-emerge in fiction as the co-author of a police/political novel that will appear in excerpts in a leftist newspaper, his collaborator announced Friday."
It will appear in installments every Sunday in La Jornada. Here's their story, with photos of Marcos and Paco Ignacio Taibo II, his collaborator.
La Jornada - Taibo II y Marcos escriben novela a 20 dedos (Taibo and Marcos write a novel with 20 fingers)
I just posted the Ohio Video the Vote longer clips to the Internet Archive, a remarkable project created by Brewster Kahle.
Here's an excellent, link-filled introduction to the Archive and Brewster's work, courtesy of Daily Wireless.
Daily Wireless - Universal Access to All Human Knowledge