The 4th annual Maker Faire – the world's largest DIY festival – is happening this weekend at the San Mateo County Event Center! Things are going great guns at the fairgrounds and the excitement is palpable. It promises to be an off-the-hook weekend, maybe even several hooks! Follow it online via Twitter and makezine.com.
For those of you attending, follow our Twitter traffic channel @FaireTraffic for up-to-the-moment traffic conditions and parking info. Also, check out Becky's Ask MAKE column from a few weeks ago for useful tips on prepping for the Faire in general.
Google made several significant announcements at this week's developer conference in San Francisco, and we were there to cover the most important news.
On Monday, June 1st we will be kicking off Internet Week with an Ignite at the New World Stages. Tikva Morowati and I are co-hosting. Ignite NYC IV is proudly co-presented by the team at Web 2.0 Expo, a conference and expo bringing together the best and brightest in the Web 2.0 universe to show the world how the next Internet Revolution is being designed and delivered. Ignite NYC is sponsored by Web 2.0 Expo New York (which is November 16-19th at the Javits Center -- remember you have till Friday at midnight to get a submission in). Read more.
The history of science is all around us, if you know where to look. And if you're a traveler who loves science, you'll definitely want to check out at a timely new resource from O'Reilly, The Geek Atlas: 128 Places Where Science & Technology Come Alive ($29.99), by John Graham-Cumming. Arriving just in time for summer vacation planning, this unique travelers' guide covers 128 interesting destinations around the globe where major breakthroughs in science, mathematics, or technology occurred--or are happening now. Learn about the Tesla Museum, in Belgrade, Serbia in this excerpt from The Geek Atlas. Read more.
Around the time I submitted a proposal on the White House's open government dialog site for local forums to implement high-speed networks, the FCC released a 77-page report (in PDF format) that casts some light on the proposal. Their report, titled "Bringing Broadband to Rural America: Report on a Rural Broadband Strategy," covers a huge range of ground (and retells a lot of standard stories, including the reasons for universal service in broadband and a history of public infrastructure efforts). This post details some of the impressions I got relevant to local forums. Read more.
More and more people from the private sector are interested in playing a role in government, thanks in no small part to the excitement surrounding the Obama election and inauguration, in which social media technologies and information sharing were showcased at their best - massive fundraising from many small donors, empowering people to self-organize locally, and direct public relations that circumvented a mainstream media lens. Now, people enamoured with emergent social technologies want to know how they themselves can revolutionize not only politics, but also governance. Read more.
The next Web 2.0 Expo is this November 16-19 in New York City. It's our annual East-coast gathering for the web community. As always we'll have tracks and sessions for the product team (developers, ops, designers, project managers) and the business team (marketers, business development). The topics will cover mobile, ops, social media, government, geolocation, web development, RIAs, sales, VCs - just to name a few. The CFP (Call For Participation) for the show closes this Friday. If you have something to share then submit your talk now. Read more.
Here's a trick combining graphics filters with Google maps for some interesting effects. They don't necessarily make it easier to read the maps, nor do they have a lot of value, but they look interesting, and are fun to play with. I can't claim this idea as my own. I just randomly stumbled across this post on axismaps.com, and figured I'd throw together a Flex example showing how to do it. Read more.
I've posted a proposal titled Local forums to implement high-speed networks (broadband) to a forum on open government put up by the White House. I ask this blog's readers to tell other people who might be interested, and vote up the proposal if you like it. The Open Government Dialog site where this proposal appears is part of the White House's implementation of the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government that Obama signed on his first day in office. Hundreds of ideas have already been posted. Many are very specific and some look quite worthy, but I think mine stands out for the reasons listed in my justification. Read more.
In a world that is overly saturated with technology and the ever so present visual clutter of messages trying to vie for our attention we, as Designers and Technologists must embrace the "Art and Science" of the experience. As we look back over the course of the last several years in the Rich Internet Application (RIA) market we begin to see some patterns emerge. Patterns and languages circling around the idea that true change has, and always will, come from the delicate balance between Art and Science. Read more.
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