Communicating in a networked world
Whoof! I thought I knew everything about Twitter, but I was really surprised to learn something new [see below] last week.
If I drop this message into my Tweetstream… “@quinnovator That was a great idea you had the other day!” …who sees it? Specifically, do all of my followers see it? This would be like sitting at a dinner party, wanting to ask a question of the person next to you, and shouting it out so everyone could hear it.
Another experiment here in San Francisco, finding more ways to pay the parking meter.(Though we’re way behind Europe.)
I was a bit disappointed because some years ago all parking meters in San Francisco were converted to use (in addition to quarters) a smart card that you can buy for $50 (or $20) that fits a slot in every parking meter and lets you pay using the card rather than having to carry quarters. And I buy and carry one of those cards in my car all the time. I feel virtuous because I never have to dig quarters out of my pocket (or the back seat, or under the front seat, etc.) and just pull out the card.
But these new experimental meters accept debit or credit cards as well as quarters. Probably a better idea because far more people carry credit cards. And they’re solar powered. (And yes, in parts of town we’re testing pay-by-phone.) (And yes, we’re testing pay-and-put-the-receipt-on-the-dashboard, like New York and other places.) I wonder how well these credit-card meters will perform in the rain?
When I made my first trip to Dharamsala, India, in 2005, to see this hub of activity of the Tibetan exile community and the home of the Dalai Lama, I was hosted by Thubten Samdup. “Sam” is founder of the Canada Tibet Committee and an activist in the exile community. He lives in Montréal. When he’s not traveling, that is.
One of Sam’s recent projects (it’s a couple of years old now) involves a group of Chinese-speaking (reading and writing as well) Tibetans who live in Dharamsala and spend their time chatting with people inside China. About what it is to be a part of the Tibetan culture and how it relates to the rest of China. It’s an actual project with financial supporters and employees, and you can contact me if you’re interested in helping support it. Sam also spends a lot of time in the Tibetan exile settlements in the rest of India, but that’s another story.
Cloud Computing– it’s a relatively new term for a relatively old concept. For at least six months now I’ve been thinking about two inevitabilities: 1) that my servers will fail some day soon; and 2) that I may have to rapidly scale (up) some customer’s site because it will suddenly have traffic needs well beyond the capacity of my servers.
The answer is pretty obvious to me – I’ll soon be eliminating my own serves in favor of purchasing computing power in whatever quantities I need at the time. Scalable on demand. From one of the cloud service providers that are coming online now.
Google Earth can be viewed as a “browser” for people who are visually and spatially oriented. It lets them access information from around the world, using the planet itself as their visual/spatial reference point. For our new Project Happiness, we are anticipating we’ll receive posted video, audio, photos and other artistic contributions from schools and students around the world, and Google Earth will be one of the “portals” that people can use to sort out this information.
To find examples of Google Earth being used by nonprofits, check the Google Earth outreach web site. There are many, many specific example on the outreach showcase page.