Will a serene background image of a snow covered field and non-obtrusive piano really help me bang out serious prose? I don’t know about all the bells and whistles around Omniwriter Beta V2′s version of an immersive writing environment, but I’m sort of taken with the fading in and out interface and cool round buttons, and as a free download and a Mac only application its passed my minimum requirements to try out.
Posted on Wednesday, 30 December, 2009 By yours truly | TOOLS:Talk or Share
I was recently reminded about the Russell Tribunal on Palestine when a friend of mine invited me to join its group on Facebook. I had started a post on it some time ago, one of many along the lines of “look at this, isn’t this neat” type of thing. But the Tribunal, though still new, is kicking into high gear in March of 2010 with a its first session in Barcelona. Before that takes place I decided to look around its already published statements and whose who lists to see if it was something worth following or another in a long series of well-meaning organizations basically telling us all what we really already know without offering a tangible way forward.
The InterWeb loves a list, so that’s how we’ll format this one.
Posted on Tuesday, 29 December, 2009 By yours truly | TOOLS:Talk or Share
Beta launch of Shafaf.org: Crisis mapping for the people of Iran.
Beta launch of Shafaf.org: Crisis mapping for Iran.
Shafaf.org is still under development but the crisis map tool is working, and we’d really appreciate it, in light of events in Iran, if the URL for it was spread around some. Using a beta version of Ushahidi, we’ve started the crisis mapping service for Iran in Farsi, English and French at http://shafaf.org/ushahidi/.
Please pass this around to people inside and outside Iran who have up-to-date information to add regarding acts of repression, violence and censorship.
Shafaf will be undergoing revisions in the new year and will be fully launched with the 1.0 release of Ushahidi. In the meantime, we’d like to see it start becoming a resource for grassroots information gathering.
Posted on Sunday, 6 December, 2009 By yours truly | TOOLS:Talk or Share
The new D3 is roughly based on four WordPress themes
Time for a new look.Maybe it’s because I use reading glasses these days, but gone is the fine-print sized san serif typography that used to make up the bulk of the blog’s content. I took drew3ooo offline for most of December for a redesign. Consider this post to be the liner notes.
The vivacious layout, sparse use of color and elegant typography that make up this site’s sexy, sexy design are based on the stylish themes hanami and olulipo by A. Mignolo.
Posted on Thursday, 3 December, 2009 By yours truly | TOOLS:Talk or Share
TreeHugger reports that the USDA has added PETA to its list of terrorist threats. So, have we seen the last of nude fashion models in cages or slightly offensive billboards? It’s sort of akin to labeling a Koala a dangerous animal. Call PETA several things: innacurate, trite, innefective, for example, and you might be on to something, but a threat to anyone, including their intended targets, they really are not. Still, as this blog points out, “Regardless of how you feel about PETA and their tactics, they are a lawful, above-ground, national non-profit.” It seems the word terrorism means whatever you want it to anymore.
Green is the New Red: “Animal industries are quite open about their desire to use terrorism laws to keep their practices out of the public spotlight. I recently posted about the Animal Agriculture Alliance calling for federal prosecution of undercover investigators. It’s not because the investigators are violent. It is because they pose an even greater threat: educating the public.”
If it’s true that factory farming industrylobbyists are behind the listing over PETA’s supposed undercover investigations, then let’s see more of that from the organization that up until recently was about to close shop. Forget the billboards and phony publicity stunts and get on with the fact finding, and releasing.
I would love a search result that by default didn’t include his propaganda empire of faux news. However, Google, since you seem to want to play ball and offer a first-view-free compromise of sorts, Try this out: Add a a couple of new tabs to your search browser, one that filters out subscription-only content and another one that just shows the subscribe stuff.
Because I get tired of sifting thorugh results that include pay-to-view content in the mix. It doesn’t say you have to pay before you click, so it’s kind of false advertising anyway. Add an option so I can just see the non-subscription content and filter out the rest. If I ever want to see what the pay-for stuff has to offer I could simply click over and check it out. That would let online publishers know what people are willing to click and what they aren’t, and also show them what search results look like that don’t include the subscriptions sites.
I have a hunch that the free tab will in fact offer richer, more interesting and unique content, because it will be taking out a number of media organisations throwing money at SEO geeks trying to game their crap content higher on the ranking ladder. Anyway, that would introduce some friendly competition to the mix. Rupert shouldn’t have a problem with that.
I was recently reminded about the 
We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet.
