Inquirer: Dan Rubin: “Sharing the Blinq”
Author Archives: Karl
Puppy Mills in PA coming back?
In 2008 Governor Rendell signed into law regulation that closed down abusive puppy mills in PA.
Don’t look now, but the state legislature is moving to turn back the clock. I’m having a hard time finding updates to this story on the Web interestingly enough, so if you know about updates, where to find them, and how to fight this, feel free to share.
Shelley Powers recently posted about the situation in Missouri, which seems to have set the stage for PA.
Where to follow news about Japan
Like many, I’ve been sending my thoughts, prayers, and donations to resources related to Japan this week. The scale of the devastation is hard to comprehend. While CNN and other stations seem to have woken up and the NYTimes has been fantastic, these days you can get local news when an event occurs from anywhere in the world, translated to English. The following two sources of news I’ve been following all week long:
On Twitter:
In addition, the following Metafilter conversations have been powerful reminders that simple software, with strong community participation and active, thoughtful guidance, is the secret sauce to grow a discourse online:
Here are some additional links to check out:
Google’s Crisis Response
Rafe Colburn has additional links
CrisisWiki: 2011 Sendai Japan Earthquake and Tsunami
A new CMS to watch?
Armstrong is a new open source CMS in development, based upon Django, and funded by the Knight Foundation.
There is a recent piece about Armstrong posted at The Nieman Journalism Lab with a good thread questioning the need and the backing technology since other options exist. I think the more experimentation in this space the better because as Rafe Colburn has rightly said, “Content management is still an unsolved problem”. Rafe ruminates that, “For some reason, finding an adequate balance between usability, flexibility, and performance is nearly impossible.”, and it can seem that way if you are shooting at a fixed target. Anyone who has worked on a CMS project has felt this way. I certainly have from time to time. The trick is to have a solution that not only meets your needs, but can evolve as those targets shift, and educating those involved that it is a part of a larger ecosystem where evolution is a feature and not a bug.
Wanna give your kids a head start?
Help them play (Slate): “Adults often assume that most learning is the result of teaching and that exploratory, spontaneous learning is unusual. But actually, spontaneous learning is more fundamental. It’s this kind of learning, in fact, that allows kids to learn from teachers in the first place.”
A photo essay time capsule from 1990
How to be a Retronaut: “USA Shopping Malls, Summer 1990”
Andrew Tait’s latest video – comparing every version of IE
YouTube: We are IE – Comparing every version of Internet Explorer:
From Andrew Tait.
written haiku for a cause
Howard is hand writing individual copies of his haiku ‘Heroes 2’ to benefit Team Kristi, the effort to support the the family of Kristi Hertzog, who is fighting for her life after the birth of her twins.
How Google Tests Software
James Whittaker has been sharing the details on the Google Testing blog recently and it has been a fascinating series:
“How Google Tests Software – Part One”
Managing development flow to go faster
Three from Jon Moore (he doesn’t post that often, but when he does, they are must reads, so subscribe!):
Jon Moore: “Managing Software Development Flow”
Jon Moore: Intuitions about Software Development Flow
Jon Moore: How to Go Faster
And one from Aaron Held that is related on the “Measurement of Awesome”: “This is kind of like gravity. Science can only measure the effects of gravity but you can’t run without it. And running beats floating back and forth aimlessly any day”