Just how big is social media? Watch this

Gary Hayes from personalizemedia.com put together this very neat little widget which visualises the hyper-growth in usage of social media.

Introducing 'lifestream': UK MP's website breaks new ground

LibDem MP Lynne Featherstone is the party's lead on web stuff and so she should be - she's had a blog since 2003 and has fed it practically everyday since. Lynne even credits her election victory to her strong online presence and use of it as an organising tool.

When she came to updating her website she chose Simon Dickson of Puffbox, the man responsible for many website transformations including Number Ten's.

For her site Dickson has done something entirely new and - I think - brilliant. Called a 'lifestream' it brings together all the flotsum and jetsum of Lynne's online life in one place - her site.

Says Dickson:

So the grand concept of the site is the use of a tabbed 'lifestream' as the homepage. The initial view lists her last 10 actions, no matter where they happened - including Early Day Motion signatures, which required me to write my own scraper. Then, if you want to see her activity on one of those specific areas, you just click the appropriate tab. It's all driven by RSS; the tabs are powered by ajax; the lists are generated by a cron for obvious reasons.

It includes content from:

• Her blog
• Hornsey & Wood Green LibDem press releases
• Her tweets
• Her pictures on Flickr
• Her in Hansard
• Early Day Motion signatures
• Her videos on YouTube
• Media cuttings about her

So rather than a whole lot of icons you click through to find content this brings it all together. As I said, brilliant. And just maybe a first?

(Just not sure about the name 'lifestream', only I can't think of anything better).

How to design for .gov

Like this ...



Sample Twitter reaction 'IT ROCKS!'

I am reminded of the Mac o/s interface though :] (which, woods'n'trees, apparently hadn't crossed their minds).

Immediately appealing, the just redesigned utah.gov site has very strong usability - this was the central aim of the redesign. Behind the scenes it makes use of - I think unusually - a wiki as a platform for adding and maintaining new content.

It aggregates 27 blogs, over 100 Twitter accounts (separately, they are building a Twitter aggregator), a Flickr group and more than 120 online videos. It has a successful 24/7 chat feature which was launched last year and this success has already resulted in the closure of state offices on Friday due to web redundancy.

The state of 2.7m inhabitants outsources it's web work. Utah.gov is managed and operated without tax funds through a public-private partnership between the state and Utah Interactive, the Salt Lake City-based official eGovernment partner for the state of Utah. Utah Interactive is a subsidiary of eGovernment firm NIC, Inc.

The new site has a full tool set, including, I was very pleased to see, widgets such as ones for the latest sales available online from the State Surplus Property Program and air quality measurements. The widgets are built using the Sprout tool.

See www.utah.gov/connect — and www.utah.gov/data for the data resources they make available and www.transparent.utah.gov, a transparency portal which aims to be "the most detailed transparency site around". The latter has massively grown as legislators add more and more legal requirements for information to be made available online.

About the data portal, they say "by allowing public access to this raw data, Utah.gov is encouraging citizens to utilize and merge it in new and innovative ways – giving citizens the ability to participate in making government services more effective, accessible, and transparent."

It also has integration of emerging geographical detection technology to estimate the location of the user and display relevant location-specific information, including local meetings, local government Web sites, local school and library information, local park information, and available local online services. The site is optimised for mobile - see this presentation by Rashmi Sinha for more about that.

After tweeting about it a question came in to me about accessibility, so I asked their Chief Technology Architect Bob Woolley and he told me that apart from a few minor browser issues, "the site is engineered for low speed connections, and non-flash users, many accessible choices." Here's their policy on accessibility.

It makes great use of Flash - the State looks stunning from the animated photo choices - which followed from the finding that 97% of users had it installed. Looking at tweets about the flash banner it has succeeded in branding Utah as both a beautiful place to live and as a tech leader.

The site has enormous legislator buy-in and engagement (but, nevertheless, technology investment has suffered budget cuts).

David Fletcher, Utah CTO, has been measuring and says "the impacts of Utah's egovernment efforts .. amount to at least tens of millions of dollars in savings to the state, its businesses, and its citizens. It has also had a large impact in lowering unemployment, improving the business climate, and promoting entrepreneurship."

"There are some challenges in quantifying this impact, but even for some individual online services, the numbers are surprising." They have some services being provided nearly 100% online.

On doing all they have despite budget cuts he says (something UK egov could perhaps identify with) "like always, we [had] to get more creative and find ways to get what we need done for less."

Utah.gov is like every egov person's dream come true and, very interestingly, the site has been noted as way in advance of other US states — perhaps in part because, as Fletcher notes, some of the ideas driving it have come from the UK!

Here's their video about the new site:

HT: Ari Herzog

How bad floods created great egov web 2.0

At Socitm's Better Connected event 2 June in Brum by far the hit of the day was this presentation:

Inbc09 May19 Session5 John Steed

View more OpenOffice presentations from paulcanning.

John Steed from Cheltenham Council talked about how the massive flooding of the town a few years ago gave a kick-start to their social media efforts - and quickly won top level support after a brief hesitation.

They used a free blog service, Flickr and YouTube to keep residents and others informed during the crisis. They couldn't rely on the website alone and this allowed them to help residents help themselves - posting photos of what was happening for example.

John talked about what's been going on since then and they are making some great use of social media, being innovative and implementing some good ideas. Their Flickr content has evolved into a 'go to' place for local photos as local photographers get engaged. Their videos are useful in being visual and showing some beautiful parts of the town.

His talk inspired a lot of people on the day and - as one twitterer noted - why we don't seem to applaud any longer at these sorts of events is a mystery.

Montpellier, Cheltenham, UK

Eggs, potholes and Robert Mugabe's last days - we hope

The Zimbabwean underground Civil Action Group Sokwanele is proving the best source for online news about what's going on.

They are:

A civic action support group driven towards the use of non-violent actions to bring democracy, justice and freedom to Zimbabweans.

Sokwanele means 'enough is enough' in Ndebele. The non-violence is very important with comments regularly deleted or edited. They are not affiliated with the MDC.

Yesterday they posted a telling story about the Zimbabwean International Trade Fair - yes, such a thing exists and went ahead at the weekend. The sole news about the event was that local hotel managers ended up arrested because inflation is so unbelievable that they had to put up prices, which in the Alice in Wonderland economy is illegal.

Prices of eggs double in one day, from Z$100mil to Z$210mil. For a shop owner, just keeping two out-of-date yogurts on the shelves can drive them out of business. Once ended, businesses are taken over by the state and handed to Zanu-PF's allies.

Roads outside the shiny Bulawayo hotels don't have potholes, around the corner there's potholes and traffic lights which don't work. The potholes themselves are one way for starving Zimbabweans to make some money. Kids fill them in with sand and then clamor for tips when drivers slow down.

Sokwanele's blog was the first to report on the Chinese arms-carrying ship - which they now say is being shadowed by a British nuclear submarine.

And they have also set up - as happened in Kenya - a whole series of online tools.

A Google Map is marking locations of the terror campaign currently going on.



As well as a contacts database for taking action in support - currently aimed at the UN and South Africa. And a terror photo album on Flickr. And a cartoon gallery.

These last three I don't recall seeing in Kenya, although Joseph Karoki was posting lots of photos there.

Album of Terror

Sokwanele's Zimbabwe Flickr photostream, Mugabe's reprisal attacks under the codename Operation Mavhoterapapi (Where you put your 'X').

More photos or video tagged with set_albumofterror on Flickr

The MDC Secretary for Ward 1 Zimuto Masvinga, who is 36 years old, was attacked on Tuesday in Baradzi Village, Masvingo. ZPF youth broke his door down and dragged him outside insisting that he take them to all the other MDC members houses.

He refused so was beaten with iron bars and logs of wood. He slept the night in the bush and then found his way to medical facility.

The thugs referred to their actions as Operation Mavhoterapapi - “where you put your X”.

More Zapiro cartoons

Gordon B on the bleeding edge

Hat tip to Simon Dickson for what can only be his work/influence in making the PMs current US visit a bleeding edge tech/web event.

Checking out the #10 website and page created for the visit, it's just about the most bleeding edge web coverage by a Great Leader out there in - oh - the world?

It simply uses Flickr, Twitter, RSS and Google Maps. No outsourcing or farming out to IBM or MS or god knows who. It's 'bleeding edge'. And actually simple.

As for the content and the politics ... another story. But the tech. two thumbs up. No wonder the US website following their campaign, TechPresident, keeps raving about this.

Google Reader clips catch up

• Analysis: Google App Engine alluring, will be hard to escape
  Opening up the 'cloud', Google gets good reviews from those looking under the hood.
• Flickr Video Launches - A Unique Experience
  There's already a backlash from Flickers, and it's only supposed to be a 'moving photo': hence 90 seconds. It's not a YouTube competitor.
• The new web communicator
  Gerry McGovern says too many government websites 'overflow with vanity, pomposity and waffle'.
• Blogging Kills Disproportionately? NYT’s Story Doesn’t Make the Case
  Dan Gilmor: .. because "the data are so breathtakingly shallow", and don't other professions work hard?
  
  
• Timothy Karr: OK Go: The Heat is On an Open Internet
  And it's analogous to "boiling the frog."
• Professor questions the value of e-democracy centre
  Stephen Coleman damns ICELE with faint praise.
• A Widget That Tracks Political Sentiment
  What's being talked about in news and blogs.
• Europe Is Searching For Its Silicon Valley
  London has it's pros but isn't the concept out-of-date?
• Lost BBC coding found
  The author of the 404's finds them again - five years on, no change. I'm shocked.
• Council Logo
  Luke Akehurst plays with that quickly disappeared Progressive Governance Summit 'swastika' logo.
  
  
• Zimbabwe elections
  Kenya Pundit's take. The possible development of a new trend of “civilian coups” in Africa?
  
• Game for a laugh - Anne Diamond on games in the Daily Mail
  Martin Belam looks in depth at another, ridiculous take in the MSM.
• SEO Rapper
  From JackP. Hysterical. Yes, he raps about SEO.
• Social networks - will the government crack down?
  BBC reporter thinks they'll have trouble.
• Bill Maher: The Biofuel Boom
  It's a big mistake.
• Hillary Tries Grassroots Budgeting
  A very interesting new fundraising tool, help rent a van!
  
  
• BBC News redesign: while developers ignore their users, the users fix the site!
  How Firefox/Opera users can fix the bugs themselves.
• Al Gore's RealSimple 'We' Campaign
  The $300m campaign to raise climate change in the election isn't doing web well.
  
• Is Hazel Blears on drugs feeling ok? : Pickled Politics
  Tackling rhetoric and lazy journalism. Where are these 'no-go areas'? And what, exactly, do they do about them?
• U.S. Invasion Has Made Life Worse for Iraqi LGBT Community
  Oh yes it has.
• Coleman connects on Citizenship
  Professor Stephen Coleman stops being negative about blogging and joins in.

Not on Reader - A 'West Wing' Writer Imagines the Showdown at the Democratic National Convention. From New York Magazine. Lawrence O’Donnell Jr writes the script for Four Days in Denver. Wonderful.

Number Ten, rollingstones, upyerbrum!

The Number Ten website has just started a Twitter feed - which egov Minister Tom Watson says is already invaluable (as you might imagine).

It's claimed to be the first by a Great Leader but there are existing ones for both GW Bush and Aussie PM Kevin Rudd (I think they mightn't be your actual leaders though ... ).

They've also launched a Flickr account and the early set of tags made me laugh out loud and think of William Burroughs and cut-ups, yet again ...

Banksy on the Essex Road

Time lapse film of people coming to see his latest for one hour on March 6. It's now covered up to protect it from vandals - I think it's actually opposite a Tesco Local. NB: you may want to turn the volume down due to hideous music choice.

• Banksy on Flickr

Wesly Ngetich

Kenyan Marathon Runner Killed by Arrow - 14 hours ago

Wesly Ngetich, 34, won the Grandma's Marathon in Duluth, Minn., in 2005 and 2007. He and at least a dozen other Kenyans withdrew from the Rock 'n' Roll ...

The Associated Press - 157 related articles »

Photo/hat-tip: K. Praslowicz

This is Web power · Kenyans need blogs

Back from a break and some new-ish sites to tell you about, all of which show more new tricks and more great uses for the web (and they're truly inspiring). More to follow, first to Kenya.

NAIROBI — Dipping in and out of the headlines but far from resolved, the Kenyan crisis has shown up many media organisations and quite a few journalists in their ignorance about Kenya. Many have actually openly said that they don't 'get' it.

One good example was China's first statement, issued on Monday (14th). They, rightly, criticised colonialism's legacy, but also said:

"The Western 'democracy' transplanted to Africa is unsuited to local conditions and has sowed the seeds of disaster."

African bloggers have already picked this up and called it 'racist' — western media have so far missed it entirely.

What interested bystanders can now do though is get a wide range of Kenyan opinion and reporting 'on the ground' via blogs. If you really want to get some idea of what's happening and why, blogs are your best source.

There are dozens of Kenyan blogs. Some are by white people but most aren't, many are by expats. Some support President Kibaki, many the opposition but most aren't political. Many are religious or business blogs. Across the range you get endless eye-witness accounts and background, including from members of the Kikuyu, and one incredible photo-journalist's blog.

Saying far more in a few photos than yet another news-free monotone sob story from the BBC's Orla Guerin or ITV's Neil Connery (many Kenyan bloggers have praised Al-Jazeera's coverage), Joseph Karoki's blog has been documenting what's happening since the stolen election.

Joseph Karoki

Karoki has been sourcing photos from all over - I noticed today that a New York Times photographer is now contributing. And linking to others such as this Flickr collection.

He, along with the other bloggers, have managed to build up a fact-heavy network which is trying to talk peace and preach calm. Anything else, particularly 'tribalism', is being shouted down by other Kenyans in their blogosphere - it's great to watch this network evolving, even if the circumstances are appalling.

Kenyan blog Mentalacrobatics, has another positive angle - which, again, I'm not seeing in the MSM:

I have been expecting many of the younger voters to come and express their anger at me for getting their hopes up that their vote was as powerful as anyone else’s vote. Instead what I have seen is very encouraging; people are engaged in the political process as never before.

For example, earlier on Tuesday a group of youth were busy calculating how many votes you need to be elected Speaker of parliament. At petrol stations you hear debates about whether Nominated MPs are nominated before or after the speaker is elected, people come up to me and ask if there is anything that can prevent Kibaki from stealing all the Nominated MP positions for his own party in defiance of tradition which states the nominated positions are given out in proportion to the number of seats won, and the most requested document request I receive by email these days is for the Constitution.

Tuesday’s parliamentary proceedings were broadcast live on TV and the whole country was watching and taking note. When Marende [opposition candidate] was elected speaker we could hear shouts of celebration from Kibera and Kawangware [Nairobi slums]. This engagement is not exclusive to the middle class. It looks like stealing an election is a fantastic way to get the public engaged in civic education. Now that is a massive silver lining!

The exasperation with leaders is constant, as is the demand for fair elections. One sign of blogging's growing power in Kenyan politics is that they've rapidly developed as an avenue for counter-opposition propoganda.

Another rapidly growing angle is the use of video. This has been circulating news of acts of police violence — The following video may disturb you - which have transferred to MSM.

• More video

All of which gives the lie to the opinion expressed not just by the Chinese but by many Westerners - that democracy won't work in Africa. Online you can watch Kenyans trying to build their democracy. I find this inspiring and the cynical, sometimes racist, attitudes to their efforts somewhat depressing and lazy.

Karoki and other bloggers are working with Mama Mikes - the big electronic money transfer business - with an appeal for Kenya. There, you can buy a shopping voucher which will be used by Kenya Red Cross for food, water, blankets, clothes, sanitary products, toys for children etc. (And maybe condoms).

There's also another excellent blogger initiative called Usahidi (Swahili word for 'witness') which is recording all acts of violence (on a Google Map).



As many bloggers have explained, what's happening - especially with the continuing total news media blackout imposed by the government - has shown exactly why the Internet is so important for Africa.

• Kenyan blogs aggregator
• Mashada (online chat which connects with SMS)
  

Addendum: Wikipedia is a good source on British colonialism in Kenya (stuff you wouldn't know from school). Did you know we (the British) had over a million Kenyans in concentration camps within living memory - during the 1950s uprising?

• Kenya Wikipedia page

• Postscript

This is Web power · Challenging Cosa Nostra

'Twittering while holding Milan is just freaking awesome'

Tech pioneer Robert Scoble has just Twittered the birth of his son.

The moment, Twittered:

Hugh: I can't get a good link for Flickr for some reason. Hospital wifi is a bit flaky. Just visit my blog and click the Flickr feed there. 04:32 AM September 14, 2007 from twitterrific
Photos of Milan are up at N01/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://www.flickr.com/photo... 04:26 AM September 14, 2007 from twitterrific
Thank you so much to everyone for your kind wishes! Everyone is doing well. Milan is 9 lbs and was born at 2.24 p.m. today. 04:25 AM September 14, 2007 from web
Phoned-in TwitterGram http://tinyurl.com/2eq4zu 02:55 AM September 14, 2007 from TwitterGram
Milan is here! 02:30 AM September 14, 2007 from iTweet
Phoned-in TwitterGram http://tinyurl.com/ypzj5q 02:28 AM September 14, 2007 from TwitterGram

He notes:

Milan isn't the first baby to be blogged from this hospital [Stanford University], either. http://blog.maxzeller.com/ was born here

More

Greenland glacier melt accelerating

Guardian reports today that the giant Greenland glaciers are, as feared, melting more quickly.

The predicted rise this century was 20-60cm (about 8-24ins) , but it would be at the upper end of this range at a minimum, and some believed it could be two metres. This would be catastrophic for European coastlines.

Robert Corell, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, said in Ilulissat, Greenland yesterday:

"We have seen a massive acceleration of the speed with which these glaciers are moving into the sea. The ice is moving at 2 metres an hour on a front 5km [3 miles] long and 1,500 metres deep."

He had flown over the Ilulissat glacier and

"seen gigantic holes in it through which swirling masses of melt water were falling. I first looked at this glacier in the 1960s and there were no holes. These so-called moulins, 10 to 15 metres across, have opened up all over the place. There are hundreds of them."

This melt water was pouring through to the bottom of the glacier creating a lake 500 metres deep which was causing the glacier to float on land.

"These melt-water rivers are lubricating the glacier, like applying oil to a surface and causing it to slide into the sea. It is causing a massive acceleration which could be catastrophic."

The glacier is now moving at 15km a year into the sea although in surges it moves even faster. He measured one surge at 5km in 90 minutes - an extraordinary event.

The changes are triggering earthquakes.

· Glacier Melt in Google Earth · Google Earth file

www.flickr.com More Flickr photos tagged with glaciers

Religious leaders from all over the world met at the mouth of the Illulissat last week to say a silent prayer for the planet, appealing to mankind to address the impact that humanity is having on life on Earth.

Christian, Shia, Sunni, Hindu, Shinto, Buddhist and Jewish religious leaders took a boat to the tongue of the glacier for a silent prayer for the planet. They were invited by Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of 250 million Orthodox Christians worldwide.

NASA: Fastest Glacier in Greenland Doubles Speed
Greenland Ice Changes Since 1990's: This visualization of laser altimeter measurements from the mid 1990's shows overall thinning of Greenland's ice sheet, with thickening in a few locations including the Jakobshavn Glacier, where the ice stream slowed down in the mid 1990s. More recent data show that the Jakobshavn is now, in fact, retreating, and causing accelerated thinning of adjacent ice at higher elevations in a manner that is consistent with its acceleration. Cool colors represent areas of thinning ice while warm colors show thickening. Slight inland thickening is attributed to accumulation of atmospheric moisture from melting ice at the coasts, supporting observations of a greater net loss to the overall sum of Greenland's ice cap. (6.7 MB). Credit: NASA



NB: First try with new Blogger video upload. Quick and easy but there's no way to share video and it's not indexed by Google Video. Also not allowing resizing, unlike YouTube.

Another NASA Jakobshavn Glacier animation

EU Video 'Living with climate change' about glacier retreat in the Alps, sea level rise (good bye Netherlands) and changing tourism patterns (bye bye Med, hello Baltic)

Burning Man Live Feed

Very watchable (nb: Quicktime). You get the organiser's radio traffic. Could be another planet when the dust gets up.


Packing up.

• POSTSCRIPT
Current photos tagged 'burningman' @



www.flickr.com




More Flickr photos tagged with burningman

Gov Blogs proving their worth

Flood and drought hit Cheltenham have been using a blog along with other Web 2.0 tools to keep local media and the public up-to-date.

Web Officer, Pete Riley, told journalism.co.uk that:

We decided to use the hosted version and wordpress.com because we couldn't be sure that we'd have a reliable electricity supply here at the office. This way, any of the team can update the site from anywhere, including our home computers if the need arises."

The blog has been used to offer advice about emergency water supplies, encourage people to recycle their plastic water bottles, display a supportive letter from the Queen, and post photos of the damage done to the town's leisure centre.

Blog content is supported by multimedia in the form of photos at Flickr and a handful of video clips on YouTube.

Bytes · Women online - Google seeding - cool videowall

TechPresident: Morra Aarons: Women Online: Facts, Figures, and the 2008 Election

• After sleeping or spending time with family, the Internet is women’s favorite leisure activity (Yahoo/Starcom report 2005). But women surf around less than men: they like to frequent trusted sites and communities. This is important for campaigns to remember.
• Even females who don’t self-describe as “political” organize and raise money: A recent survey by BlogAds.com found that of the “mommy” blog readers surveyed, 46% have contributed to a cause or campaign.
• Women talk differently online: "This is a huge generalization, but men use the blogosphere as a podium, e.g., 'This is what I think.' Women use it as a dialogue," Janet Eden-Harris, Internet firm Umbria's CEO, recently told the Denver Westword News. "The number of words that women use on a blog far exceeds that of men," she said. More later this week…

Anyone who follows politics knows this: For 40 years, more women than men have voted in elections .

<>

As women go, so will the White House, which is why it is important to cover not only what campaigns and organizations are doing online to sway women voters, but also to observe what women say and do in their own networks, blogs, and online communities.


~~~~~~~~~~~

• Dave Briggs points me in the direction of docstoc.com
  

  Similar in concept to Flickr.com (for photos) and YouTube.com (for videos) Docstoc.com will be the online community for sharing all types of documents.

• Something similar which I just discovered is SlideShare (I used it in an earlier post).
  
  
• The World In One City is a great new blog:
  

  Our aim is to prove that London is the most cosmopolitan city in the world, by endeavouring to meet and chat to a citizen from every country in the world who currently lives and works in London.

  
  So far they've got 144. The Guardian did something similar in 2005:
  

  Altogether, more than 300 languages are spoken by the people of London, and the city has at least 50 non-indigenous communities with populations of 10,000 or more. Virtually every race, nation, culture and religion in the world can claim at least a handful of Londoners.
  

  London: the world in one city
  Interactive: Use our scrollable map to see which ethnic communities live where in London.
  View this map as a pdf
  Key to the map

  London by religion
  Map: Counting the capital by religion.
  London by religion: analysis

  London by ethnicity
  Map: Counting the capital by ethnic group.
  London by ethnicity: analysis

  What the maps don't show
  Factfile: Tower Hamlets has the lowest proportion of ethnic Indians of any London borough; 5.1% of Kensington and Chelsea's populatino are Americans. And many more facts and figures.

• Sydney Morning Herald: The YouTube election
  That's John Howard on the right and ALP leader Kevin Rudd on the left
  

  • John Howard's fake MySpace page
  • A Little Beef - Howard/Bush mashup by Red Symons
  • GetUp's ad starring Max Gillies as Howard
  • GetUp's site for spoof election ads
  • What's in the Box? (spoof ad)

• Mark Tillison detects other motives in Google's extension of their hosted online office tools from educational to non-profits:
  

  · The educational sector is pretty communal, there’s lots of sharing of ideas and word of mouth, so plenty of organic growth.
  · It’s a very large, well defined sector that will create a large user base very quickly.
  · Most importantly, what do we trust most as users? We trust what we know. As human beings, we don’t typically like change. When we’re getting educated, we use the tools we’re presented with because we don’t know anything else. When we leave education, we want to use those same tools that we’re comfortable with.
  
  This strategy, often called ’seeding’, produces exceptional results in the medium to long term, but you need a lot of funding to survive the investment period (like Google, for example).



~~~~~~~~~~~




• 2008 Presidential Wire Videowall is a brilliant mash-up with Yahoo Pipes and Google Video by a former Guilliani advisor, Patrick Ruffini:
  

  The videowall aggregates all the latest YouTube videos about the ‘08 candidates in a full screen total immersion experience. I’ve found it very useful in tracking down debate clips, anonymous oppo hits, and other cool stuff I’ve missed. Voter generated content is mixed in with media clips and official candidate videos to provide a 360 degree view of the campaign.

  Does take time to load :/
  

Russian riot police are all HOMOs

A list colleague Steve Bowbrick has this hysterical photo mashup and useful political satire against bigotry on his Flickr pages.

Look. I know this is childish but for some reason it cheers me up to learn that, if you reverse their photographs in Photoshop, the Russian riot police's badges read: 'HOMO'. Thanks to Reuters for the photos, by the way (un-reversed versions included for no good reason).

Public Library Geeks Take Web 2.0 to the Stacks

WIRED
Beverly Hanly
03.29.07 | 2:00 AM

When the IT director at North Carolina's Charlotte & Mecklenburg County public library began training staff in the latest web technologies, she lured reluctant participants with bribes -- a free MP3 player and the chance to win a laptop.

Six months later, the program they developed is the real prize. Learning 2.0, developed by public services technology director Helene Blowers, has become a surprise grassroots hit, available for free on the web and adopted by dozens of other libraries around the globe.

"The last thing we want is for people to come into our libraries and ask about Flickr or Second Life and be met with a blank look," said Christine MacKensie, director of the Yarra Plenty Regional Library in Melbourne, Australia, which just finished a four-month version of Learning 2.0. "And they certainly won't now."

<>

"E's" --

• exposing staff to new tools,
  
• encouraging play,
  
• empowering individuals,
  
• expanding the knowledge toolbox,
  
• eliminating fear

> ARTICLE <