Month: August 2006

IBM Insight

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Thanks to the guys (there are no gals) at Civic Actions for linking to this fascinating article by a team of software engineers at IBM comparing content management systems. This is the first in a series called “Using open source software to design, develop, and deploy a collaborative Web site.”

Mambo was very appealing from the ease of install and the UI, but the development track at the time was fractured and didn’t give us any confidence of support.

Typo3 seemed to have a huge community and the maturity we were looking for. However, the learning curve for using Typo3 is daunting in comparison to Drupal.

We did have to invest some time to learn the Drupal way, and the framework just seemed to make sense. We also felt that Drupal provided the right combination of framework and flexibility to break out of the framework when needed to get the job done. With all things considered, we decided to use Drupal. The landscape of open source CMS is continuously changing, and in the future we’ll revisit these and any new entries in the field.
– Using open source software to design, develop, and deploy a collaborative Web site, Part 1: Introduction and overview

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Best summer movie of 2006

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Best summer movie of 2006
Everyone must see “Little Miss Sunshine.” Go now. You’ll thank me later.

This is the feel-good movie for anyone who has ever wanted to tell the world to just fuck the hell off.

In addition to the trailer and IMdB entry, I highly recommend the movies official site, which has all of your typical screensaver and chat icon downloads, as well as a ton of clever online grassroots marketing tricks including:

MySpace skins… Watch and Add Little Miss Sunshine video on YouTube… Threadless… Customize a new pair of kicks… Read about/Contribute to Little Miss Sunshine on Wikipedia… Dwayne’s browser homepage… Add your Little Miss Sunshine inspired photos here… 43Things: Dwayne, Richard… Rotten Tomatoes… Design your own VW bus… Frank’s favorite blog…

Jon’s story

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My friend Jon is going to be on The Story (on WUNC 91.5 FM) today at 1pm. Jon is super-smart and has been doing some really interesting work with the Open Prothetics Project since his arm was blown off in Iraq. Here’s a picture of Jon and his family at my wedding.

Open source software is familiar to many of us, but open source hardware is a new idea. Robert Haag shared his fishing pole design on an internet space called The Open Prosthetics Project. Dick talks to two site founders, Chuck Messer and Jonathan Kuniholm.

Jonathan lost his right arm in combat in the Iraq war. His company built the web community, which brings together amputees, engineers and prosthetists to develop and share home-grown advancements.
– The Story with Dick Gordon — North Carolina Public Radio WUNC

I have a meeting during the show so I hope someone tapes it…

Bonus link: Cool robotic stuff Jon was already working on before his injury.

Perfect recipe for PTSD*

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What’s worse than being stuck on an extended deployment in Iraq? Finally getting home to re-start your life, and then being told “nevermind!”

About 300 U.S. soldiers who just weeks ago returned home to Alaska after a year in Iraq are being ordered back to try to help bolster security in Baghdad, the U.S. Army said on Monday.
…
The brigade was so far along in the process of flowing out of Iraq after its yearlong tour that 380 soldiers had returned home to Alaska and 300 had arrived in Kuwait en route home, the Army said.
– Reuters AlertNet – US sending 300 newly returned troops back to Iraq

Rinse and repeat. In just a few short years we’ll have a population of trained killers, who’ve been emotionally and physically tormented by the Pentagon, back in the US with only a vague memory of what it felt like to be human.

* post-traumatic stress disorder

The next big thing?

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This photo on Yahoo just reminded me of a great idea I had in the shower this morning. Last week I came across two different pictures of pregnant bellies beautifully decorated with henna. I thought that looked like something I would love to do myself. (…When I get pregnant – not yet!)

But I’m afraid I won’t be able to find any talented henna artists. I think an easy and fun substitute would be fake tattoos! Wouldn’t that be fun? You’ve got this big belly hanging around, full of potential, why not celebrate and decorate it? Plus it would give me something to look at and smile about while in that 17th hours of labor.

So please send me links of you know of anyone selling prenatal temporary tattoos. If not, go ahead and take my idea and make some money. (And please send me some fun tattoos.)

All your AirTunes are belong to us

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If you use AirTunes, don’t walk – run – to http://RogueAmoeba.com and download AirFoil right now. This $25 application liberates that handy little Airport Express from iTunes slavery and lets it play music from any application on your computer!

I have been needing something just like this for months. I would have paid twice the price for something that works this well. (But don’t tell Rogue Amoeba that – they make tons of great, cheap Mac applications. (They do Windows too, but who cares?))

Bonus audio-related link: FrequeNC has tons of free MP3s of interesting local (Chapel Hill) bands. Enjoy!

collective wisdom

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As you may know, one of my favorite things to do is give advice. Fortunately for me the Internets were made for this kind of thing. 😉 The latest in such Q&A websites is http://DearInter.net (“consensus life coaching”) which was co-created by the son of the brilliant, genius, amazing author Neil Gaiman.

So far I like this new site better than http://Wondir.com, which aims to do pretty much the same thing. Interestingly (or maybe not), the son of my friend and favorite humorist-marketer-geek-protoblogger (and good wedding photographer) Doc Searls was involved with starting Wondir. Do we detect a theme? Sons of smart men looking to strangers for advice? Nah.

http://DearInter.net is way more lightweight than http://Wondir.com, but as a result is easier and fun to use. Witness: the answer-o-matic.

Help pick SXSWi 2007 panels

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South by Southwest is inviting folks to help them select the panels for their 2007 Interactive conference. I put in two proposals: “If All Politics is Local, Why Are you Still Reading DailyKOS?” and “Advocacy 2.0: Movement-building in the Age of Connectivity” (featuring Marty Kearns). Both are listed in the politics/social activism category. There are 173 proposals so I recommend using categories to navigate, even though they are kind of silly.

Offical announcement from the wonderful and talented Hugh Forrest after the jump…

Continue reading “Help pick SXSWi 2007 panels” →

Scouting tips

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Matt Doherty (UNC basketball player 1980-84 and coach 2000-03) has a new job coaching at Southern Methodist University and a new blog!

Watching three games is too much. Can’t do it. Therefore, I will try to get a chair between both courts and look at the “A” court first and during dead balls, study the “B” court. One time I was in LA looking at a 7 footer named Chad Bell on my “A” court. During dead balls I looked at court “B”. As I was looking at court “B” I saw this kid flying all over the court. He would steal the ball and lay it up, time and time again. At half time I learned that the team on court “B” was from South Carolina. I then turned my chair and flipped courts, making court “B” my “A” court and “A” my “B”. After the game I found out that the little jet on court”B” was Raymond Felton! Eight months later Raymond commited to me at UNC and three years later he lead the Tar Heels to the NCAA Championship!
– SMUMUSTANGS.COM

I love it. Um… go you Mustangs?

Thanks to Ed Cone for the link.