It seems that Ishbadiddle is blocked in China. You can use The Great Firewall of China to test any site's availability. More about Chinese Internet censorship here.
February 2007 Archives
Over the weekend I visited my sister, and as per usual I got to do Family Tech Support. "You don't mind this, do you?" I gave her that look. "Are you kidding? I enjoy this." She needed Service Pack 2, so I did that along with a bunch of other updates, installed FoxIt PDF reader and CCleaner, and did some other updates and housekeeping. No problemo.
Back at home, I decided to finally do the same to our desktop. Tired of those SP2 nags. (Really, I've been putting it off for a long while.) All went well at first. In fact, installing SP2 and attendant updates takes just about the same amount of time as the Oscars telecast. (By the way, if you thought that you were left out of the Oscar Party invite list this year, we didn't have one, so you weren't left out, OK?)
But the next day, for some reason, the screen reverted to a color depth of 4, count them 4, bits. Tried the System Restore and somehow got caught in an infinite Cannot Boot Loop.
You know, there's never anything fun about doing an XP Re-Installation. Trust me, I've done it plenty of times. You know what they should do? Have a game. Instead of marketspeak "Here's what Windows can do for you now!" on the screen (while you watch the progress go s l o w l y from 22% to 23%) they should imbed some kind of game into the installation. Nothing fancy, I mean heck, Minesweeper must take up a few hundred K?
As it was, I caught up on some very important comic book reading instead.
Cornell researchers sent out résumés and cover letters to real employers for hypothetical job applicants. All had the same credentials, but the packages included subtle cues to indicate that some of the applicants were parents. (For example, a résumé might note that an applicant was an officer in a parent-teacher association.)The goal was to find out if employers are less likely to pursue an interview if they find out that a candidate is a parent, said Shelley Correll, an associate professor of sociology at Cornell, who helped conduct the study. And the answer was “yes for mothers, no for fathers.” [Link]
More of my recent pictures on Flickr
Back in bidness school, the conventional wisdom was that cause-related marketing (think Newman's Own) would not command a premium price, but ceteris paribus would influence a buyer to pick the do-gooder item.
A couple of b-school profs proved that wrong. They took a look at eBay purchases for similar items, that did and did not benefit charities: USNews.com: Money: The Price of Charity. They found an average of a 5% premium paid for items sold through Giving Works.
Hat tip to my colleague Amy W..
The folks at LibraryThing (where you can keep track of your own library) has done some analysis on tagging: When tags work and when they don't: Amazon and LibraryThing. Not surprisingly, LibraryThing has more tags than Amazon -- it's more fun to tag your own books. "Amazon is a store, not a personal library or even a club. Organizing its data is as fun as straightening items at the supermarket. It's not your stuff and it's not your job."
But what's interesting is that as the number of tags go up, the utility of those tags go up, since you're much less likely to see "single-opinion" tags ("great," "boring," "on my list," etc.). Wisdom of crowds, law of large numbers, and all that. And of course, the more useful tagging is at LibraryThing, the greater the incentive to tag yourself. Virtuous circle ensues!
Movielens, late to the tagging party, tries to get around the low-volume problem by enabling you to vote on tags. Tags that are useful to you get the thumbs up; tags that aren't get the thumbs down. Presumably then the tags that are voted up will be "popular" and then bubble up.
One solution for the "opinion" tag vs. the "useful" tag problem is to embrace it. Just have two different classes of tags. Left-handed tags are reserved for opinions, individuals' list-making, etc. Right-handed tags are for those that "objectively" describe the item. One might have a voting system in place to make sure that tags have the proper "handedness" but hopefully just giving users both options will encourage proper tagging.
I picked up this sci-fi / fantasy book off of my stoop, but had no idea it was the start of a huge world-building series. Of course I had no idea that the late Andre Norton was a woman, either. A Book to Borrow, and if you want it, let me know. Free for me, free for you.
Water buffalo: Worst possible Christmas present? A complaint that Heifer isn't really matching a single water buffalo purchase with a single donation prompts someone to go out and buy their own water buffalo.
Of course there are worse examples of philanthropic marketing: Red Cross chapter installs fearmongering terror billboard.
How President's Day should really be celebrated. Plus, there's no such holiday, officially. And: think you know when Washington's birthday is? You're wrong, sort of. (More here.)
Available in Purple. 'Nuff said.
Republic or Empire (Harpers.org)
The United States remains, for the moment, the most powerful nation in history, but it faces a violent contradiction between its long republican tradition and its more recent imperial ambitions.The fate of previous democratic empires suggests that such a conflict is unsustainable and will be resolved in one of two ways. Rome attempted to keep its empire and lost its democracy. Britain chose to remain democratic and in the process let go its empire. Intentionally or not, the people of the United States already are well embarked upon the course of non-democratic empire.
We are neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire. Discuss.
However, all of that was erased by the last ten minutes of the last episode. Now that's an ending.
Your Camera Does Not Matter. About photography, but really about all acts of creation and art and our obsession with getting the Right Tool. Via Coudal.
Want To Buy My Students a $392 Camcorder?. In today's Slate.
To all the dear friends Jay and I were supposed to reunite with in New York this weekend: We're not coming. Jetblue has grounded us.
We just got home from from Oakland International Airport, where after sitting around for several hours we were told that our full flight was canceled because... wait for it... they couldn't find any flight attendants to work it. The desk agent
announced that the plane was there, the pilot was there, but somehow the flight crew had not managed to make it and there was no way to find anyone else anytime soon. (Did they try Craigslist?)
Among bad airline experiences, this was a new one on me. As we waited in line, l got out my laptop and searched Jetblue.com for the next flight we could get on. This being a holiday weekend, there were no available flights tonight, nothing tomorrow and nothing even on Saturday. I remembered that the last time a flight we were on had been canceled, on America West, we had been rebooked for the next morning on another airline. But when we got to the head of the line, it became clear they had nothing like this even remotely in mind. After deepsixing our vacation through poor planning, all they were willing to give us was a refund or a flight credit, the terms of which they could not explain at the time. We were told that, who knows, the company might change its mind tomorrow, but for now, get your luggage and go back where you came from.
Until now I have been a big fan of Jetblue and its cheap nonstop flights between NYC and the Bay Area. It had never occurred to me to that there were any customer benefits to code-sharing, "alliances" or other partnerships between airlines. Not that I have any idea whether such arrangements would have helped in this case. But if incompetent America West can get us moving 14 hours after a cancellation and Jetblue needs 48 hours to do the same, then maybe there are downsides to the Jetblue model that I haven't appreciated before. If we wanted
to be in New York two and a half days from now, we would have taken Amtrak.
My dilettante interest in the Semantic Web has mostly been limited to thinking about making this blog. But recently I've been wondering how I can apply some of these ideas to DonorsChoose. (For a primer on the SemWeb, read Paul Ford's piece and this Wikipedia article.) Specifically, how can we use microformats to increase access to microphilanthropy? (I've been learning more about microformats from microformats.org and its listservs.)
DonorsChoose both gives grants (to teachers) and receives them (from the public). We have thousands of proposals that public school teachers have posted on our site, and individuals can give directly to those projects. Similar microphilanthropy sites include Kiva, Modest Needs, Global Giving, and GiveMeaning. All are essentially philanthropic marketplaces that bring together givers and recipients. And thus all could benefit from opening our data in a way that would make them accessible beyond our own websites.
Picture the following mashup possibilities:
- Phil has just moved to Brooklyn, and wants to get involved with his new community. He enters his address into a Philanthropic Mashup site (made with Yahoo Pipes?) which aggregates local funding needs. He can filter those needs by cost, by type of program, and by demographics of the recipients. He decides to fund a classroom project at DonorsChoose and make a Back-to-Work Grant to a local family through Modest Needs.
- Jennifer has an old computer monitor she wants to donate to a local school. She calls a few schools but no one needs a monitor. She is able to search for local organizations that are seeking computer monitors, and finds a nearby women's shelter that is in need, so gives it there instead.
- Ashley is teaching her fifth grade class about water quality. They go to the Philanthropic Mashup site and find water quality projects all over the world. They decide to raise funds for one of those projects in Burkina Faso, sponsored by Global Giving. Later they follow up by looking for other projects in the same village, and find a Kiva loan for a new small business there.
- John is a programmer in Topeka who wants to help out literacy organizations, a special passion of his. He posts an offer of services his blog, with details of the hours he wants to commit and the types of services he offers. A literacy program in Saskatchewan has need of his skills, and is able to find John through Google because he has marked up his offer with the proper microformats.
- The Bailey Foundation wants to improve its outreach and reach more nonprofits with its Animal population control grants program. It posts data on its grant program (available amount, application deadline, etc.) on its site. An animal shelter that has never heard of the Bailey Foundation is able to find them and get funding for its Spay Day program.
These are the kinds of things that microformats could make possible. We at DonorsChoose have been talking about applying microformats to our proposals (each has its own page) to make them semantic, but none of the existing microformats seem to fit what we're doing. I also recently talked with Tom Williams at GiveMeaning who is also interested. I'm posting this here as what I hope will be part of a larger conversation about microformatting microphilanthropy.
Ideally we would have a microformat "hGive". This would allow organizations that are seeking contributions / in-kind donations / volunteers to use it, as well as organizations/people who are looking to volunteer, donate, etc. (I'm thinking of online volunteer clearinghouses such as New York Cares which exist in most US cities I believe.)
Here are some of the potential parameters:
- direction: seeking or offering?
- medium: cash or items or volunteers?
- cost: (perhaps other pricing data like minimum donation, payment types accepted -- not sure what the standards are for price data among other microformats). Also, loan or grant? (For example, Kiva and ModestNeeds give loans, DonorsChoose and Global Giving give grants). There also could be total cost vs. cost remaining, interest rate data for loans, etc.
- date: for expiration dates, volunteer event dates, application deadline dates, etc. Cf. hCalendar standards.
- demographic: some kind of data about the recipients -- avg income?, number of people the project will serve, etc.
- geotag: where is it?
- guarantor: is there an organization that guarantees this request? This would separate an individual asking for help (I need a loan) from an organization asking for help on behalf of an individual (Modest Needs will provide a loan to the individual whose identity and need they have confirmed).
- keyword tags: ("education," "Shakespeare," "clean water" etc.) The Foundation Center's Foundation Directory has a list of Foundation Fields of Interest which could be the basis for a standard Program Type list.
- description: The executive summary.
I'm sure there are other possibilities / desiderata, especially around volunteer projects (one time vs ongoing, group vs individual, etc) but this is what comes to mind.
If there were an implementable standard, I'm pretty sure I could get DonorsChoose to start using it in the nearish future. And then, of course, Utopia Ensues.
[12:54] thehomelesshelper: hey
[12:55] meverettlane: hello
[12:55] thehomelesshelper: whts up
[12:56] thehomelesshelper: you have a blog?
[12:56] meverettlane: i do. do i know you?
[12:56] thehomelesshelper: nope
[12:56] thehomelesshelper: I wanted to knoiw
[12:56] thehomelesshelper: if you could help promote a good cause
[12:58] meverettlane: how did you find my IM address?
[12:58] thehomelesshelper: yahoo groups
[12:58] thehomelesshelper: see
[12:58] thehomelesshelper: I have a website
[12:58] thehomelesshelper: that helps homeless
[12:59] thehomelesshelper: like basically I collect donations until I reach a large sum then I give it to a homeless person so that it can help them out in a huge way instead of a small way
[12:59] thehomelesshelper: and I make a video of me giving them the money so that everyone else can see how much happiness they have brought by donating
[13:01] thehomelesshelper: just take a look at my site
[13:01] thehomelesshelper: www.thehomelesshelper.com
[13:02] thehomelesshelper: what do you think?
[13:07] thehomelesshelper: im not a scam if thats what your thinking, im just trying to help some homeless people
[13:10] meverettlane: three things:
[13:11] meverettlane: 1) I used to work for an organization that helped the homeless, and I think that large cash disbursements are not the best way to help homeless people.
[13:12] meverettlane: 2) I have my own nonprofit that I work for now, and that's what I encourage my blog's readers to support.
[13:12] meverettlane: 3) i don't like being digitally "chugged."
[13:16] meverettlane: most of the chronically homeless are either mentally ill, or addicted to drugs / alcohol, or both. A big chunk of cash will not help them.
[13:18] meverettlane: if you really want to help someone who is in need, I would suggest www.modestneeds.org
Wordless pancakes v1.2. Via Coudal.
I just saw two ads, back to back -- one for a car, one for fast food -- both using "Sweet Home Alabama" on the soundtrack.
High Dynamic Range Photography on flickr.
When a human eye is actually on location, it is constantly moving, adjusting the pupil size, allowing in more light in some areas, less in others, and the visual cortex actually works to build a patch-like vision of the scene. That is what we remember in our mind’s eye: an idealized super-realistic memory of the scene. HDR appeals to those people that actually see the world like this.HDR normally involves multiple exposures of a scene at different stops (i.e. +4, +2, 0, -2, -4). These images are then processed and tone mapped for contrast and luminosity settings in sort of a techno-custom-software-darkroom until a light balance is achieved. HDR can also be used with single exposures in RAW format with a similar tone mapping process. [Link]
Very trippy, hyper saturated images.
So my mom sent me a copy of
"A flower grows in Brooklyn."
This particular cliché seems to be beloved by headline writers, whenever they have to hed any article about anything happening in Brooklyn. "A Blank Grows in Brooklyn." I grit my teeth every time I see it. I haven't even read A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
Please, for the love of Mike, kill this cliché! I call for a national moratorium on "A Blank Grows in Brooklyn." Somebody get Marty Markowitz on the phone.
Via Boing Boing. I've been saying "via" a lot lately. Ah well, some OC (Original Content) coming soon. I'm working on a post on microformats and microphilanthropy. Really.
Tufte Alert! The Gapminder World 2006, beta will chart just about any demographic data vs. other demographic data, for all nation-states or a subset, on log scales with bubbles (scaled to national population or any other data). Kewl. Via WhatsAPundit.
How to fix campaign financing forever for $50. Well, $50 per citizen, to be exact, but essentially have the gubmint act as an anonymizer. Via rebecca's pocket.
Fantastic, in every sense. 4 Stars
