"Public Trust" - film from outdoors company Patagonia

Public Trust is the company's effort at broadening the scale and scope of their storytelling on the issues of around conservation. This new feature film aims to raise awareness of federal land being turned over to oil drillers, miners, and others who’d destroy our wild refuges. Patagonia, famously declaring that the POTUS has stolen our lands, back in 2017, produced this film to raise awareness of the kleptocracy-in-progress with the present administration. 

The brand is launching a feature documentary on YouTube called Public Trust, which makes the case for protecting American public lands -- and how extractive industries are actively working to shrink and privatize them. 

Executive produced by Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard and Robert Redford, the film focuses on three conflicts: the gutting of the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah, the threatened destruction of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and the fight over oil drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Watch the entire film here...

Oppose Censoring the Internet

 The government wants to control access to the Internet. This is a very bad idea, opposed to all the principles it was founded on. 

https://gizmodo.com/trump-wants-to-build-a-wall-around-the-internet-how-wo-1844691997

Never too early for Xmas gift ideas...

George Takei is, in a word, awesome. His new book, Oh Myyy! (There goes the Internet), is his take on a late middle-aged man embracing with the internet. Of course, this former Star Trek star is, fundamentally, a geek, so we should expect he'd be comfortable in the new media world. From the Amazon description,

How did a 75-year old actor from Star Trek become a social media juggernaut? Why does everything he posts spread like wildfire across the ether, with tens or even hundreds of thousands of likes and shares? And what can other sites, celebrities and companies do to attain his stratospheric engagement levels, which hover or top 100 percent while theirs languish in the single digits?

Takei is a proponent of gay rights, active in politics, and has won several awards and accolades in his work on human rights and Japanese–American relations, including his work with the Japanese American National Museum. His story as an young internee in the shameful WWII camps in the U.S. is worthy in its own right.

Health care giver information access expands with a SAAS offering

Here's a software-as-a-service (saas) that meets the growing need to share health care information when being a care giver. If your parents are growing old, or you have a spouse who needs your attention, this could be a good way to share the data, and burden. CareZone addresses the need for a safe place to keep information about doctors, diagnosis, and medicines. CareZone lessens the burden when sharing among a select (and trusted) group -- your spouse, your immediate family and trusted neighbors. The service was introduced last February with little notice, and is growing.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/the-anti-facebook/


- Posted by Tom/Bluedog

Yes, adverts on the web pay off - for Google and Facebook

It should be obvious to anyone surfing the net that all those web pages we enjoy at zero cost are being ad supported (or otherwise subsidized by goodwill or some other contribution). In many cases, the data from users/readers is what is valued -- companies are able to take user data, sell it to advertisers, and make money. That data you're giving away online is worth something, but have you ever wondered how much? A privacy add-on for Firefox gives captures some metrics to help.

Read more at Ars Technica
- Posted by Tom/Bluedog

Augmenting Reality As the Ultimate Knowledge Management Tool

Hands-free means more than just phone calls while jogging, or sipping your latte while reading your iPad. Other ways of merging multiple data sources based on your geo location (i.e., context-aware mapping of information) are emerging. As usual, Google is out in front with Information Architecture. So what does Google's Glass look like? Well, press photos show a spare-looking frame that sits above the wearer's right eye -- not terribly fashionable, meant more like a HUD (heads up display) found in military-style helmets, some automobiles, and in many computer games. This interesting info graphic gives a better idea of what the functionality is, since you won't be winning any fashion awards for the pre-production prototype. Unlike other systems, Google's doesn't overlay data completely in front of the wearer's entire field of vision. Instead, datagrams appear only in one’s peripheral vision -- relevant to what the wearing is looking at. Of course, the Project Glass video is a marketing effort as much as a look at the product -- which, after all, doesn't exist yet. But opening eyes to the possibility of augmented information displays is certainly a way to motivate the competition. You've got such data mashups on the iPhone already. One example is WorkSnug, an iOS app that helps you locate a place to work. It identifies Wi-Fi hotspots and potential workplaces -– from coffee shops to professional rent-a-desk office space. Combining social media (user reviews cover power provision, atmosphere, noise levels and even the quality of the coffee), this is a cool way to find what you need on the go. It's clear that the future promises the continued blending of technology and the eye (such as Google’s project glass) and other amazing emerging optical technologies on the very near horizon. Graphic from Zenni Optical.

Now is not the time to give up on the Internet

The opposite of liberal is, well, IMHO, the desire to inflict on others a reduction in 'adaptive potential'. I would suggest this means the ability to choose between a range of attractive opportunities. Barriers to social mobility, relentless mega-corporation dominance, endless growth of government, restrictions on human sexuality and freedom of expression all qualify as narrowing.

I find the Internet has proven to be a means to facilitate growth in adaptive potential. Opening markets globally for large and small businesses. Amplifying peoples' voices. Reducing cost of public service delivery.

Supply chain and e-commerce improvements are contributing to overall economic growth. With the size of the global market getting bigger, the rewards for uncovering lucrative new ideas grow -- a multiplier effect. Moreover, as new ideas flow across national boundaries faster and more easily, humans all benefit.

Public officials, potential laws, and other public policy issues are scrutinized and influenced by Internet-organized movements.

Public spending should focus on broad-based, pro-growth, pro-poor services like primary education, primary health care and infrastructure investment.

How big a phenom is social media? For the short-attention-span, watch this video

Interesting video from a Dutch firm, Video Infographs, showing the major statistics for social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Youtube, LinkedIn and others. This paints a picture of how social media is expanding -- think of Youtube reaching 700 billion playbacks in the last 12 months! This is amazing, and, coupled with mobile browsing, I am convinced the untethering of the internet only spells good things...

Social media, is, ahem, already in the mainstream. And, let's face it, mobile platforms are the way people *want* to interact via this conduit. Sharing content via a mobile device (ok, let's just say it, iPhone or iPad) is a growing trend. Location-based interactions are increasingly the way to monetize or realize the potential of this model.