There are some interesting thoughts about the problems with “rich-formatted’ HTML email in this article by Jaz-Michael King, entitled HTML Email Isn’t Rich on evolt.
Why HTML email is evil: a contrarian view
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Monthly Archives: January 2003
The next wave of globalization: high-tech jobs
BusinessWeek has a new cover story on The New Global Job Shift which documents the rapidly-emerging trend in Corporate America of sending high-paying white collar jobs overseas. This is where globalization really starts to hit home — among America’s professional/technical/engineering classes. And it’s just getting started: “40% of America’s top 1,000 companies will at least have an overseas pilot project under way within two years. The really big offshore push won’t be until 2010 or so, she predicts, when global white-collar sourcing practices are standardized.”
Rick Johnson, A Week of Diary Entries
Rick Johnson, Executive Director of Idaho Conservation League, former ONE/Northwest board member, and someone I consider one of my “wise elders” is this week’s diarist at Grist Magazine, my favorite online environmental publication.
Rick is extremely eloquent and thoughtful, and he has a unique ability to pack soaring prose and earthy insight into the same paragraphs.
Semantic Web and Lazy Web
Gideon just blogged the influential “Semantic Web” ariticle. One interesting project that has created a “Semantic Web” search interface is The Lazy Web, a Web site designed around “the ideaThe idea that if you wait long enough, someone will implement that wacky idea you had… (or already has!)”
Frictionless Fundraising
Michael Gilbert just wrote a very nice article entitled Frictionless Fundraising that provides a nice overview of how we should be thinking about the fundraising process from a communications context.
It’s filled with pungent, wise insights. My favorite bit: “Modern fundraising is obsessed with the Ask. Prospecting exists only to supply more people to hit up for money. Cultivation is a detour and stewardship an afterthought.”
Faultline: state-scale online news
Eureka! Faultline is an online environmental news magazine that’s covering state and local environmental issues, and looks to doing it right. They’ve got a lot of original news reporting, nice feature stories, daily news summaries from mainstream media, email lists, discussion forums, an RSS feed for syndication, and a nicely designed site to top it all of.
They write, “Our goal is to launch and promote a green multimedia group consisting of this website, a mass-market print magazine and a series of production-quality audio broadcast features, all intended to bring California’s environment to a broad section of the state’s residents.”
Yeah. All in all, a worthy model for emulation.
Wind power for urban buildings
MSNBC has this article on how the Dutch are planning to put small wind turbines on urban buildings. $5000-$12,000 a pop to start, 5000 KWh/year, an an estimate 5-year payback time. Cool.
Great info on new 802.11g wireless networking gear
The Wireless Networking Starter Kit: 802.11g Update is a solid, readable article on the emerging generation of high-speed 802.11g-standard wireless networking gear.
Bottom line: it’s faster, just as cheap and backwards-compatible with 802.11b wireless.
MLK Jr.’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech
Everybody should take an hour this week to read — or better yet listen to — Martin Luther King’s speech Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence. Delivered at the Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before his assassination, this is one of King’s lesser known speeches, but truly one of his most powerful and most relevant.
Bruce Sterling
Along with Carl Coryell-Martin I saw Bruce Sterling do a book reading last night. Carl wrote a bit about it. Bruce is one of my favorite pop authors, because he combines elements of cyberpunk with a pretty cool ecological consciousness. But, last night was kinda an off night for our “Viridian Pope-Emperor.”
Bruce read from the introduction of his new book — nonfiction futurism, a glance at the next 50 years — which sounds interesting, but he read from the introduction, about the process of futurism. Kinda boring — I would have rather heard some of his predictions!
He took audience questions, but as Carl notes, the questions ranged from kind a lame to frankly incomprehensible. Bruce riffed pretty well on some of them, but I found myself checking my watch.
Good perspective on North Korea
A friend who is well versed in US foreign policy issues recently pointed out the article North Korea Is No Iraq: Pyongyang’s Negotiating Strategy from the Arms Control Association. The article provides a good background on how we got into this mess with North Korea, and what the North Koreans are trying to accomplish. Worth a read if you want some deeper insight into our history — and future — with North Korea.
Freedom of Expression Editorial Cartoons
From Boing Boing:
The ACLU just launched an online gallery of freedom-of-expression themed art:
"Artists have always been at the forefront of the global fight for free expression. Recently, they have pricked the nation's conscience in the face of Government assaults on individual rights in the name of national security. Beginning this month, the ACLU will present civil liberties issues online through the eyes of political cartoonists and other artists. This rotating feature will change periodically, and will cover breaking news on the full gamut of civil liberties issues.
Our inaugural presentation is of an art show that first appeared in June 2002 and continues to tour the country. Entitled "USA Patriot Art: Cartooning and Free Speech in War Time," this updated collection of 43 provocative and powerful cartoons has stirred up plenty of controversy. Some cartoons never got published. One cartoonist lost his job. The ACLU has received generous permission from the show's curators to present it online."
Edwards campaign uses blog, IM for organizing updates
Wow. A early support of John Edwards’ 2004 presidential bid has set up a blog for Edwards. More interestingly, he has also set up the capacity to provide campaign updates and alerts via AOL Instant Messenger. The neat thing about AIM-based alerts is that folks can get alerts on cell phones and other mobile devices, not just pagers. In addition, they’re using a tool that lets them organize local “meetup” events in cities across the nation, and enabling real-time chatting among Edwards junkies.
This is probably an early preview of what the “online” 2004 presidential campaign is going to look like.
Rapid Restore drive imaging software
IBM has started bundling XPoint’s Rapid Restore software on all of its ThinkPads now. What’s interesting is that this software (unlike other DriveImaging products) allows the user data to be saved and restored, not overwritten by the image. Intriguing.
Jeff Reifman, Antarctic Traveler
My pal Jeff Reifman just got back from a trip to Antarctica. He’s been doing a week’s worth of journal entries for Grist Magazine. A fun read.
His photos are also pretty amazing.
Getting Things Done
Carl Coryell-Martin just did a great little lunchtime presentation on “How to Empty Your Email Inbox” based on the book “Getting Things Done” by David Allen.
It’s a little long to summzarize here, but this is an incredibly powerful set of processes for, well, getting things done. It has huge implications for how one organizes email and to-do lists in general. I and others at ONE/Northwest will be implementing this for ourselves in the coming months, and maybe we will think about how to help the environmental community implement some of these ideas.
I love it when somebody expands my mind. Thanks, Carl.
GeoURL: Location-enabling Web content
GeoURL ICBM Address Server is an intriguing project for tagging Web content by location so you can find content that is “near you.”
Microsoft’s worry: Seattle’s livability
This is a pretty interesting, level-headed interview/article by Adam Barr, “former Microsoft developer and occasional Microsoft pundit.” It ends with an intruiguing kicker:
Anything else Microsoft has to worry about?
There’s an external issue, which is that Seattle might become a less desirable place to live than it has been. The highway system is terribly congested and the public transit system is inadequate, but the state is in an anti-tax mode so there is no money to fix those problems. The public education system is also running low on money, and as an added bonus has been hijacked by advocates of standardized testing, so it should crater in about ten years. All this may make it tougher to recruit people to live in the Seattle area, where most of Microsoft’s product development takes place.
What I want instead of a monorail
While it’s nice to be within walking distance of a (proposed) monorail station, I’m starting to think that we’re a little behind the times.
How to write like a wanker
Amusing. How to Write Like A Wanker