An Example of Poor Research
Posted: February 26, 2008 5:17 pm | 0 comments
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Andrew Jankowich's Blog
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On the Need for More Transparency at the MBTA
MBTA does not seem very transparent so this might support having a site describing its workings/services:
Posted: February 26, 2008 5:12 pm | 0 comments
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Eco/Carbon Consciousness
For those who discussed tools or sites to facilitate ecological/carbon-conscious living see this article, For EcoMoms, Saving Earth Begins at Home: http://tinyurl.com/2vpmud
"Move over, Tupperware. The EcoMom party has arrived, with its ever-expanding “to do” list that includes preparing waste-free school lunches; lobbying for green building codes; transforming oneself into a “locovore,” eating locally grown food; and remembering not to idle the car when picking up children from school (if one must drive). Here, the small talk is about the volatile compounds emitted by dry-erase markers at school.
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“It’s like eating too many brownies one day and then jogging extra the next,” said Kimberly Danek Pinkson, 38, the founder of the EcoMom Alliance, speaking to the group of efforts to curb eco-guilt through carbon offsets for air travel.
Part “Hints from Heloise” and part political self-help group, the alliance, which Ms. Pinkson says has 9,000 members across the country, joins a growing subculture dedicated to the “green mom,” with blogs and Web sites like greenandcleanmom.blogspot.com and eco-chick.com. Web-based organizations like the Center for a New American Dream in Takoma Park, Md., advocate reducing consumption and offer a registry that helps brides “celebrate the less-material wedding of your dreams.”
Posted: February 16, 2008 7:31 pm | 0 comments
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Abby Blachly from LibraryThing
will be speaking in class on February 20th.
LibraryThing's website:
Abby Blachly is LibraryThing's head librarian. Her LibraryThing profile: http://www.librarything.com/profile/ablachly
A description of what they do: "LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily. You can access your catalog from anywhere—even on your mobile phone. Because everyone catalogs together, LibraryThing also connects people with the same books, comes up with suggestions for what to read next, and so forth."
And more at http://www.librarything.com/about
You can sign up and catalog 200 books for free so I encourage you to sign up and get some experience with the site before the next class.
Articles about LibraryThing: http://www.librarything.com/press/
LibraryThing's 2 blogs provide more information about current issues with the company:
http://www.librarything.com/blog/
http://www.librarything.com/thingology/
Posted: February 16, 2008 5:29 pm | 0 comments
Tags: abbyblachly, blogs, books, class, guestspeakers, librarything, speakers, websites
Class Links
Following are some of the websites we referred to in class:
Wal-Mart's expansion into medical care: http://tinyurl.com/2ozeyx
On the need for digital curators/researchers: http://www.micropersuasion.com/2008/02/the-digital-cur.html
"Much the same, the digital realm too needs curators. Information overload makes it difficult to separate junk from art. It requires a certain finesse and expertise - a fine tuned, perhaps trained eye. Google, memetrackers such as Techmeme and social news sites like digg are not curators. They're aggregators - and there's a big difference."
Online art galleries/marketplaces:
Charles Saatchi's student art site Stuart: http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/stuart/
Handmade item marketplace Etsy: http://www.etsy.com/
Marketplace for web programmers Rentacoder: http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/default.asp
If you are thinking of planning out a project with any sort of web-based component it could be interesting to take a look around to get a sense of going rates.
Jobsite for nonprofit and volunteer positions, Idealist: http://www.idealist.org/
Reclaiming materials:
House built with material from the Central Artery (torn down and replaced by the Big Dig): http://tinyurl.com/2mlvsj
New Yorker article on the demolition of a building that describes the value of old lumber: http://tinyurl.com/38kfjq
"Reclaimed lumber had become one of his passions since studying 211 Pearl. More than three trillion board feet of wood have been put into American buildings since 1900, he said. Of that, about a billion and a half board feet are torn out every year. When his boss’s father founded the company, in 1933, he got the wood for free—demo crews were happy to have it hauled away. Now the yard paid up to two dollars a board foot for old pine. Weathered hardwood was in such demand that barns across the Midwest were being pulled down for scrap, and eco-conscious celebrities like Bill Gates were using reclaimed wood in their houses. One bar on the Lower East Side was panelled entirely with cypress boards from pickle barrels."
Posted: February 16, 2008 5:13 pm | 0 comments
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What is the Future of the Music Industry?: Discussion with Musician Brad Turcotte
If you are curious about how artists and others are dealing with a world of free content then you may be interested in this discussion between musician Brad Turcotte and upcoming class guest speaker David Weinberger.
(FYI: Attendance not required for our class and there may well be video or audio of the event posted later.)
Monday, February 11, 7:00 PM
Griswold Hall Room 110
Harvard Law School
Cambridge, MA
(nearest T stop: Harvard Square)
"The traditional music industry is crumbling. From the dust comes … BradSucks. Brad Turcotte is the very paragon of a Webby, open source musician. At his site (http://www.bradsucks.net) you can download his music for free or pay him a little money. You can reuse his music as you’d like, subject to the Creative Commons license. Not only can you remix it, but Brad posts especially good remixes. He has even open sourced the paint job for one of his guitars. At this Web of Ideas, Brad will play some music and talk with David Weinberger of the Berkman Center about whether he’s the future of the music industry.
Web of Ideas is an evening discussion series at the Berkman Center, lead by Berkman Fellow David Weinberger, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto and author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined and Everything is Miscellaneous. Each session will begin with a 20 minute discussion-opener, followed by open conversation. Food will be provided.
This event is free and open to the public. Please RSVP to Amar Ashar at rsvp@cyber.law.harvard.edu if you plan to attend."
Posted: February 10, 2008 2:14 pm | 0 comments
Tags: creative commons, discussion, music, open source, remix
Expanding Markets: Educational Entrepreneurship Overseas
Following up on our discussion of entrepreneurship in education, an article on how American universities are developing overseas branches (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/10/education/10global.html?hp)with an interesting discussion of the problems and benefits:
"The American system of higher education, long the envy of the world, is becoming an important export as more universities take their programs overseas.
In a kind of educational gold rush, American universities are competing to set up outposts in countries with limited higher education opportunities. American universities — not to mention Australian and British ones, which also offer instruction in English, the lingua franca of academia — are starting, or expanding, hundreds of programs and partnerships in booming markets like China, India and Singapore.
And many are now considering full-fledged foreign branch campuses, particularly in the oil-rich Middle East. Already, students in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar can attend an American university without the expense, culture shock or post-9/11 visa problems of traveling to America."
Posted: February 10, 2008 2:07 pm | 0 comments
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