December 2007
Steve Job’s home in 1982.
Goddamnit, I knew he was a monk.
SMS in humanitarian relief / disaster relief / refugee camps
“MY NAME is Mohammed Sokor, writing to you from Dagahaley refugee camp in Dadaab. Dear Sir, there is an alarming issue here. People are given too few kilograms of food. You must help.”
A crumpled note, delivered to a passing rock star-turned-philanthropist? No, Mr Sokor is a much sharper communicator than that. He texted this appeal from his own mobile phone to the mobiles of two United Nations officials, in London and Nairobi. He got the numbers by surfing at an internet café at the north Kenyan camp.
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9546242
CDC approved coughing/sneezing strategy: your sleeve
Only you can stop pandemic flu!
Winston Churchill
The destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits — not animals. [This . . .] whether we like it or not, spells duty - Winston Churchill
Innovative Sheltering Red Cross Conference
Note that all the presentations are online at that URL.
My notes from the event - click on the blue links for the notes I made
A gallery of the shelters I saw at the event.
Horribly low (audio) quality video of my talk.
The talk was actually pretty good. Great things will come of it.
2D barcode hash based UPC codes for everybody
* You upload a piece of content to a Server
* the Server hashes the content (you could be a Server.)
* it creates a 2D bar code of that hash, with a URL redirection pointer
* you print the hash and stick it to things
* anybody who wants to know what it is takes a picture, and checks the hash against a distributed database of hashes, much like DNS
* typically a hash would be a URL, email address, or other short string
* very short content can be encoded directly, without the hash, of course - but at that point, why not just print the string on it.
Like Thinglink, but with sensible crypto features.
Video Quicktime VR
http://demos.immersivemedia.com/fvdemo_1/data/CylindricalFlashPlayerDemoSite/NYC42ndStreet/video.php
You play the video, and you can scroll around the clip to look around as it plays.
Really impressive.
Really, really funny piano performance video
Rachmaninov had big Hands
Thanks to Lugon!
Malawi - copying the west’s real development model with great results
Farm subsidies and NPK fertilizer are freeing Malawi from hunger.
What can I say? Congratulations, Malawi.
Organic farming and the global food question
Organic agriculture can double or triple the world’s sustainable food supply.
I think it’s legit. Analysis?