On Monday, Seattle P-I owner The Hearst Corp. said that while it would end the print edition of the paper effective Tuesday, it would continue to maintain Seattlepi.com as a source of local news and opinion.
It marks the first time that a major metropolitan daily has attempted the switch from print and online to digital only. The shift could eventually be replicated in cities across the United States.
But at least in Seattle, the new digital product will be very different from the old operation — in both size and tradition.
Managers said the site will have an editorial staff of 20, down from more than 150. An additional 20 people are being hired to sell advertising. The staff writers remaining include columnists Joel Connelly, Art Thiel and Jim Moore, as well as cartoonist David Horsey.
MonthMarch 2009
With the recession in full swing, many Americans are returning to their roots — literally — cultivating vegetables in their backyards to squeeze every penny out of their food budget.
Industry surveys show double-digit growth in the number of home gardeners this year and mail-order companies report such a tremendous demand that some have run out of seeds for basic vegetables such as onions, tomatoes and peppers.
“People’s home grocery budget got absolutely shredded and now we’ve seen just this dramatic increase in the demand for our vegetable seeds. We’re selling out,” said George Ball, CEO of Burpee Seeds, the largest mail-order seed company in the U.S. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Gardening advocates, who have long struggled to get America grubby, have dubbed the newly planted tracts “recession gardens” and hope to shape the interest into a movement similar to the victory gardens of World War II.
(via Cryptogon)
Yeah, I’m pretty late to the table with this, but I just got around to watching it, and it’s worth while if you haven’t watched it yet:
Full un-edited version directly from Comedy Central – uncensored and even better:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Background:
Dan Gilmore guest post at BB:
That’s great. Except for one thing, which the article completely misses: You won’t find too many people in their middle ages or older in this category. Why? Because they can’t get health insurance. America’s health-care system makes it all but impossible for an older worker to try something new.
Even younger startup owners who are relatively healthy and have insurance are just a half-step from disaster. The insurance industry is in the business of not paying claims whenever possible, after all, and health insurers are working hardest to find ways not to cover people who might get sick even as they deny as many claims as possible from people who’ve been paying premiums.
The day we have national health care is the day that we unleash a wave of entrepreneurship the likes of which we’ve never seen before. That’s one of the best reasons for moving toward such a system.
William Gibson:
eBay is apparently doing everything it can to discourage the kind of auction-based digital flea market it so gloriously was in its beginning. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to use, that way, and many buyers and sellers of wondrous fifth-hand hyper-specialist gomi are getting very discouraged. A market is being created, thereby, for a purpose-built all-gomi auction site, optimized for people who want (nay, need) to buy and sell, say, anonymously designed 20th-century American workwear, one piece at a time. Or, really, whatever. Used. Gomi. Junk. Clinically otaku-searchable, no fuzzy logic messing with your carefully refined strings. Micro-transactions. For dropshipping of boring new merch, there’ll always be eBay.
The business model, basically, would be what eBay was about eight years ago.
See Also: Gibsons’ obsession with eBay
At last a game with a future we can pursue: a new world with new qualities. A world without daily work routines, traffic jams, bureaucracy, deforestation, and hunger problems. A world with more exchanges, more experiences, and more human interaction. Better improvements can not be hoped for: more money and more consumption, yet more renunciation. Improvements today which are more friendly to life will produce more cultural riches, and more exchanges between all. This is all with a minimal burden on the environment and a maximum amount of self-determination. Put an end to the monopoly!
You choose a new homeland, a new Bolo. Every Bolo has a special way of life and is nearby. The organization of your chosen community needs you to bring it goods. You obtain distinct items during the course of the game. Any surplus produced in your own Bolo is trade able with other players. Every exchange offers a new experience. Also, every visit to another Bolo brings new knowledge.
Which Bolo should be judged to be first? Last can quickly become first, as when someone has attained a new innovation, it can quickly be shared with the rest of the collective through visits and the cultural exchanges that result!
—
bolo’ bolo is game designer / Anarchist P.M.’s second foray into political board games, with his first being the cult tile laying favourite Demono. bolo’ bolo is based upon the book of the same name which lays out P.M.’s ideal society based upon sub-communities, each autonomous, with an economy fueled by trade.
Game components are in both German and French, and are rather archaic with the ‘cards’ being coloured paper with black ink style drawings, absolutely nothing like Demono’s more lush visuals.
The basic idea of the title is that each player represents one of the “bolos” on the board, each of which specialises in the production of certain things, and which needs certain others, which is accomplished via trade.t
More info and pics: BoardGameGeek
(via OVO)
Alfred Sirleaf is an analog blogger. He take runs the “Daily News”, a news hut by the side of a major road in the middle of Monrovia. He started it a number of years ago, stating that he wanted to get news into the hands of those who couldn’t afford newspapers, in the language that they could understand.
Alfred serves as a reminder to the rest of us, that simple is often better, just because it works. The lack of electricity never throws him off. The lack of funding means he’s creative in ways that he recruits people from around the city and country to report news to him. He uses his cell phone as the major point of connection between him and the 10,000 (he says) that read his blackboard daily.
(via Ethan Zuckerman)
That’s the surprising conclusion of a NASA-funded study by the National Academy of Sciences entitled Severe Space Weather Events—Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts. In the 132-page report, experts detailed what might happen to our modern, high-tech society in the event of a “super solar flare” followed by an extreme geomagnetic storm. They found that almost nothing is immune from space weather—not even the water in your bathroom.
(via OVO)
Shizzow encourages users to accompany each location update with a short message describing their current activity. The added context is super helpful in real life social applications, and it elevates Shizzow above a simpler service like Fire Eagle, which just provides location data, and Brightkite, which is being used more like Twitter with location attached. By contrast, Shizzow puts location at the fore.
The $12 computing system itself defies conventional expectations of what a computer today should be. The soul of the Apple II and a geek microprocessor favorite of the 1970s, the 8-bit 6502 processor is the heart of these computers. It is small enough to be contained within a full-size keyboard and sold for mere dollars. The keyboard also has a slot for game cartridges, and is usually sold with a mouse and two game controllers. Many of these systems are currently on sale as “TV computers” in Bombay, Bangalore and Nicaragua. They are often packaged in boxes emblazoned with unlicensed cartoon art (Mario, Spiderman) and misspelled English (“Lerrn compiters the fun way!”) and are bundled with games that would likely be copyright violations in the United States. And like the early home computers sold in the United States, they plug into a TV screen for display. […]
It’s an ambitious project and one that requires just a tad of youthful optimism to pull it off. Dodge a pothole in China or India and you are likely to bump into the carcass of yet another ambitious attempt to bring low-cost computing to the developing world. The MIT Media Lab-backed One Laptop Per Child project planned to bring $100 computers to those in need. That project has never been able to achieve that price point, although OLPC cofounder Mary Lou Jepsen said Tuesday here that more than a million of the project’s XO laptops had been shipped to kids in more than 30 countries. Recently, Indian government officials made an announcement of a $10 “computer” that proved to be a dud.
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