Via Inhabitat.com

So i know that with today being the last class, few people will read this (it also has nothing to do with New Media) but I was totally blown away by this article and had to share.

A farmer in Northern Ireland is cutting his carbon footprint by putting his cows on treadmills to generate electricity.

According to the article:

If the world’s 1.3 billion cattle used treadmills for eight hours a day, they could produce six percent of the world’s power.

Talk about renewable energy. Genius.

Just in case you missed it, a volcanic eruption in Iceland has been causing chaos in European airspace. With planes unable to fly through the ash clouds, tens of thousands of people have been stranded…including the Norwegian President who was in the States for the Nuclear Summit.

With no choice but to keep governing, Prime Minister Stoltenberg has been using his new iPad to keep in touch.

This must be an incredible boon for Apple, who’ll now be able to add ‘Govern a Nation’ to the list of uses for the iPad.  Those who doubted the usefulness of the product may now have to rethink their misgivings.

Via CNN

Looking back at my past posts, the blog seems to have taken on a theme of commenting on the incredible rate of technological change we’re experiencing. With a whole nation being governed from an iPad, the idea of tele-commuting and ‘work on the go’ has taken on a whole new meeting.

While this means that nothing, even a giant volcanic eruption, can keep us from getting on with our daily lives, I wonder how this 24/7 global connection will change the way that we live and work.

Like Penny Farthings, the Cassette Tape and smoking on airplanes, are we coming to a day where ‘offline’ will be a quaint and vaguely baffling notion?

While in an earlier blog, I wrote about how parts of our lives are changing at a frenzied pace to keep up with technological advances, it seems that applying for a job hasn’t changed much in the last decade.

This last bastion of the 20th century now has a challenger.

The ‘Social Media’ resume has started to take off as a credible and increasingly popular form of job application.

The New York Times recently profiled the trend writing:

Frankly, even if a job doesn’t require too much tech know-how, these do a much better job than a paper résumé in revealing a candidate’s ability to communicate effectively, an essential skill for a pretty large segment of the job market.

These online resume’s are more than just a page on Linkedin. They are interactive, social media profiles of the person and their achievements.

Youtube, Flickr, Forsquare, and Twitter. The possibilities are endless in the ways that you can market yourself and your past work to potential employers.

While the traditional cover letter and resume may be with us for some time, it seems that like the dreaded ‘writing sample’, we now have yet another criteria which we must complete.

While the NYT article is hailing it as the future of job applications, I can’t help but see yet another hoop to jump through on my search for employment.

People from class have been blogging a lot about internet security lately and it got me thinking, particularly with an exchange I had a few days ago.

A classmate I barely talk to, asked me about my friend Ben. Why? Because he’s currently hiring. How did they find out that I knew him? Facebook and Linkedin.

Although I wasn’t able to go, from what I’ve heard of Paul Meyer’s class on investigations on the web, this shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. In all honesty it creeped me out no end.

I came across this article from the New York Times. It charts how with a relatively simple computer program, you can basically reconstruct a full picture of someone’s life and personal details.

Computer scientists and policy experts say that such seemingly innocuous bits of self-revelation can increasingly be collected and reassembled by computers to help create a picture of a person’s identity, sometimes down to the Social Security number.

What is worrying is that, although you may institute strict control on what you say or post, your friends and colleagues may not.

“Personal privacy is no longer an individual thing,” said Harold Abelson, the computer science professor at M.I.T. “In today’s online world, what your mother told you is true, only more so: people really can judge you by your friends.”

There are almost daily revelations of security breaches, not only on online retailers such as Amazon or Netflix but also on Facebook, where recently, people’s private messages were accidentally redirected to strangers accounts.

With so much information readily available on the net, is anyone’s private life actually private anymore?

Included in the awesome graphics was a number of incredible statistics. While all of them have implications for New Media and Political professionals, one in particular caught my eye.

50% of Young Adults never use a Landline

Having taken a few classes in Research Methods and Polling, I started to think about how our industry is having to react at a faster and faster rate not only to new technology but also to changing habits and culture. There are still polls conducted which exclude cell phones all together. If the above statistic is to be believed, that excludes half of all young adults!

With so many changes occurring it is becoming even more important for our industry to keep our ear to the ground. While the last ten years have seen amazing changes, I’m eager to see what the next ten will bring us.

From Bits and Pieces:

Via: Online Schools

It summarizes the top ten ‘Usability lessons’ from the book. While many are quite common sense, I found #8 interesting.

Don’t lose search: Some people (search-dominant users), will almost always look for a search box as they enter a site. These may be the same people who look for the nearest clerk as soon as they enter a store.

Although I had never thought of a search component as a ‘vital’ part of a website, when I read this, I realized I find myself quite irritated if I need one and it’s not there.

Are there any ‘Usability lessons’ that surprised you?

For anyone who’s interested in the topic of usability, you can find a free chapter to read online here at Steve Krug’s website.

While many are heralding the new age and propelling themselves head first onto the technology bandwagon, the owner of this unnamed club is hanging on determinedly to the old-school. In this world of breathless idolatry of celebrity bloggers and flash in the pan tech crazes, it’s a funny and refreshing change.

Enjoy (PS, be warned, there is some bad language)

“What got you to where you are, is not necessarily where you have to go now,”

However, in the battle between the old and new, it seems that the traditional media are beginning to fight back.

“The New York Times is now as much a technology company as a journalism company,”

A recent Guardian article explored the different ways in which two of the biggest ‘traditional’ media outlets, CNN and the NYT, are taking very different approaches in how they are building their online presence.

The New York Times has an in-house research and development team dedicated specifically to envisioning the future of newspapers and then bringing those software and applications to life.  For example, the team has recently been working with RFID chips to study and experiment with the different ways to consume media.

“The project. called ‘Shifd’ – or in house, “Custom Times” – is a mobile application that provides users the capability to seamlessly shift content back and forth between their desktop computers and mobile devices.”

Conversely, CNN has taken to working closely with the technology companies themselves, creating collaborations and relationships across the CNN platform. From live Facebook feeds during the 2008 elections to dedicated twitter accounts for the anchors, CNN has been aggressively revamping the way that they report news.CNN’s iReport is ta good example of this. With 10,000 reports per month it is fast becoming the jewel in the company’s crown.

“Apart from integrating iReport prominently at the center of CNN’s website instead of hiding it away at the bottom, the iPhone application integrated iReport prominently. Today, CNN’s iPhone app is as much a news-making as a news delivering application, and as the iReporters can add their telephone number, email and location to their report, CNN’s editors can get back to them or even assign them to certain content CNN is looking for.”

With the dawn of the new decade, it is increasingly obvious that the use of technology by media outlets is here to stay. While the rate of change has been slow, they are finally beginning to realize that rather than the enemy, the internet offers the chance to expand their readership and enhance their business. What will be interesting is to see who embraces the change, and who falls by the wayside.

I used to work for an organization called The American Values Network and still sometimes help out with their blog. Last month, a few of us wrote pieces which we posted across the blogosphere to help raise awareness on a campaign AVN are doing on Vieques, a small island off of Puerto Rico. I knew nothing about the island and was absolutely shocked how under reported this story is. I think it’s really important that people know more about how much Viequens are suffering and how they are effectively being ignored. Hence this slightly off-topic posting.

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Paradise Lost

Planning an escape from the cold with a beach vacation this winter? Why not try beautiful Vieques?

A small Island off the coast of Puerto Rico, Vieques is considered a hidden gem in the Carribbean with miles of underdeveloped and pristine beaches. This beauty however, comes at an incredibly heavy price. Until recently, Vieques had been used as training and testing ground for the US Navy for the better part of 60 years. A huge amount of munitions were tested and nearly 80 million pounds of ordnance were dropped on the island between 1984-1998 alone.

It wasn’t until April 1999, when a bomb accidentally killed one civilian and wounded several others that the protests from the local community gained national attention. The wrangling and negotiations took years and it wasn’t until 2003 when the Navy finally pulled out. However, for the nine thousand or so residents of Vieques, the nightmare wasn’t over.

The legacy of the Navy’s presence was miles of untouched beaches and a profusion of chemical pollution, the long term effects of which have been a devastated ecosystem and unprecedented levels of disease. In 2001, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Puerto Rico conducted a study which showed that over half of Viequens had unsafe levels of chemicals in their bodies such as Mercury, Arsenic, and Lead. The Puerto Rico Department of Health described Viequens as having significantly elevated risks of asthma, cancer, diabetes and heart disease when compared with mainland Puerto Ricans.  Recently, around seven thousand Viequens filed a federal lawsuit seeking compensation for their illnesses. The Navy has continued to claim that there are ‘no health risks’ associated with the bombs that were detonated, some of which contained depleted uranium. The studies that they cite have been widely dismissed by academics and scientists in both Puerto Rico and the US.

However, there is some encouraging news. The Federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, recently announced that it would be overturning the 2003 research which stated that there were no health hazards directly linked to the prolonged bombing of the island. However this is only one small step toward the islanders receiving any sort of recompense for their suffering.

When the Navy left, the people of Vieques were able to escape the daily bombings and acrid air, but the specter of disease haunts them still.  The Navy may have returned their land in 2003, but only with funds to pay for treatment will Viquens get back their lives.

Tonight, CNN ran a story on “Campbell Brown” on the plight of the people of Vieques. You can read more about it here: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/02/01/vieques.illness/

I’ve never had trouble sleeping, I never even questioned the beauty of it until I stopped being able to sleep for more than 3-4 hour stretches. For a girl who can easily sleep 10-12 hours, it’s been a bit of a living hell.

The only good thing to come out of this is that I’ve been able to waste endless amounts of time in the wee hours of the morning trawling the internet following the election campaign back home. For those of you who don’t know (or haven’t had the extra time to become obsessed as I’ve had) there is going to be a general election in the UK in the next few months.

The British political system must seem a little chaotic, if not downright crazy to an American. We don’t actually know when the elections going to be because its not been ‘called’ yet. Yes, the Prime Minister could decide to have it next week – although its more likely going to be in early May.

As a Parliamentary system, the UK offers possibilities unheard of here in the States. One is a particularly tantalizingly prospect for anyone who, like me, loves what is sometimes deridingly called ‘the process’.

From The Times of London

Labour and the Conservatives are neck and neck in the marginal seats that will determine the outcome of the general election, raising doubts over David Cameron’s ability to win a clear overall majority…

This means that the UK could end up with a  ‘Hung Parliament‘, a ‘Minority-Led Government’ or even a ‘Coalition Government’. Whichever way it goes, some are saying it’s the best thing to happen to British democracy in years, others, such as the financial markets and investors, are beginning to freak out.

Now the reason I bring this up, other than to share my current obsession with you, is to explain that this all started with a blog post. I follow a blog called ‘Political Betting‘ (another British quirk – we bet on everything, so this blog is set up to analyze polling data, but as a gambling tool!) which then pointed me to the article by the Times.

The fact that I am able to follow the day-to-day minutia of political campaigns, even a few years ago, would have been impossible without access to the domestic and cable news stations or at least hours and hours of research time. With newspapers constantly trying to out do each other with online content, with TV stations and cable news delivering clips and streamed programming, with the advent of ‘Pirate TV‘ (which streams cable TV live) and with a plethora of blogs focusing on the national to the very very local – there’s very little I’m missing out on in terms of the election coverage

Two years ago, the head of strategy for the Tories, Steve Hilton, moved to California with his wife for six months while she worked at Google. Pre-2006 I think he would have had to quit his job, the Tories instead let him cyber-commute (interestingly, his time in the States is very much reflected in the Obama-like messaging that the Tories are currently using). While this has been going on in the business and high-tech industries for years, it’s still pretty unheard of for politics.

With the ever-increasing ease and access to information on the net, is this the future? Will I be working for my political party while living in Buenos Aires? While there is always an argument for the need for in-person work and personal connection – I do wonder what the next few years will bring us in terms of innovation to make it easier even still to cyber-commute. The future is bright – now, if only it would let me sleep!