The days that we can continue to pretend, despite all evidence to the contrary in a world of rapidly increasing wealth stratification, that mankind will anyminutenow be emancipated by Ubuntu, Wikipedia and Facebook are over.
Just getting caught up on e-mail after two weeks on the road and ran across this enjoyable essay by a friend and colleague Dmytri Kleiner.
After a couple of weeks of fighting off pneumonia — antibiotics, inhaler, and all — I’m finally feeling like I’m getting back on my feet. Though I never feel very productive when I’m sick — I did have time to jot down a few Web sites of recent note:
Total accident that I stumbled on Fog Creek Copilot: Wow! What a great little subscription-based application for remote desktop assistance. Works on Windows or Macintosh computers. It looks simple to set-up, and the price is right.
I think that OpenCongress caught everyone’s attention recently. Yet another great “Politics 2.0” project from the Sunlight Foundation. OpenCongress brings together official government data with news and blog coverage to give you the real story behind each bill.
stikkit just stuck for me during a little Web 2.0 application search. This is a crazy little Web-baed productivity application that David Wheeler — the lead Bricolage developer — is involved in.
Of course Brad — my fun-loving BSD friend — pointed me to the BSD Network CLI. It’s one of the most interesting “themes” for Wordpress that I’ve come across. The world of Web 2.0 never ceases to amaze me. Basically, this is a command-line interface for reading a blog via a Web browser. Type “help” to get a list of available commands.
I can’t remember where I first saw One Percent for the Planet — but it seems to be catching on. One Percent for the Planet is an alliance of companies that recognize the true cost of doing business and donate 1% of their sales to environmental organizations worldwide.
Adam tipped me off to CheatNeutral — a good satirical campaign about carbon offsetting. And Colan Schwartz tipped me to RetailMeNot in SILC.
So, there you go: being sick is totally boring. ;-)
There’s been lots of renewed discussion recently on two important questions for Canadian civil society:
This came up a few months ago, when some Web of Change alumni asked the first question. I struggled with this just a little over a year ago while working on the Kleercut campaign (you can read a bit about it here). Basically, as ActionWorks (a hosted advocacy system that licensed the aforementioned data) was being purchased by AdvocacyOnline (who also licenses that data), we had to find another way to provide similar tools on the site (for less than the $9000 - 12,000/year licensing fee that AdvocacyOnline wanted for its tools).
I received the following (cleverly crafted) e-mail from the NDP team on Saturday:
Can you believe these Liberals?
Watching the Liberal convention, it’s clear these Liberals haven’t learned a thing. Arrogance and backroom deals are alive and well in the Liberal party.
On a better note, we’ve almost succeeded in our campaign to buy an ad on theglobeandmail.com. We just need about $2000 more to make it a go. Can I count on you to make it happen? Please donate online now by clicking here.
When people log on to theglobeandmail.com on Monday, let’s make Jack Layton and the NDP the first thing they see.
Éric Hébert-Daly Federal Secretary, Canada’s NDP Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld
And, upon visiting the theglobeandmail.com this morning, found Jack Layton staring me right in the face. I’ve screen captured the page for posterity: a nice example of very solid online campaign strategy.
An interesting phone conversation with a colleague working on the David Miller campaign for Mayor of Toronto left me pondering the question: If I were the Mayor of Toronto, what would my blog strategy be? It’s an interesting question for our current Mayor — David Miller — who ran as the “underdog” in the last election and now runs again almost unchallenged. Aside from the obvious implications that this has for Miller’s fundraising strategy, it also occurred to me that it would impact his campaign’s initiatives around blogging and mobilizing the “netroots.” In short, it seems that the key questions are:
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