The Blogatron 2000

What are you doing on Monday?

// January 17th, 2010 // Comments Off // EchoDitto, Globe, Politics

Cross-posted from EchoDitto

Monday is Dr. Martin Luther King Day. It’s a national Day of Service and a time to reflect on social justice.

The crisis in Haiti brings extra focus and intensity to the question of how we care for each other. How did one of the world’s poorest countries struggle to survive just miles off the coast of Florida? Why does it require a massive earthquake for us to turn our attention to Haiti?

King wrote, “Every man [and woman] must decide whether he [or she] will walk in the creative light of altruism or the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment. Life’s persistent and most urgent question is ‘What are you doing for others?’”

We have been inspired by our friend and fellow technology geek Luke Montgomery. Three years ago, Luke asked himself that very question. He decided to build an orphanage, brick by brick for abandoned Haitian children with HIV/AIDS. And he looked to his online community and social media to help him do it through participatory fundraising on his website, WeCanBuildAnOrphanage.com. He raised enough funds to start a successful 10-bed orphanage in Jacmel, Haiti.

Luke is on his way back to Haiti. Because the infrastructure is in such bad shape, he’s planning to fly to the Dominican Republic and then make his way over a rocky and roadless mountain to get to Jacmel. He got some news this morning:

Our kids are alive but our orphanage was totally destroyed in the quake… but again, our 13 children have all survived. Somehow amidst all the death around them, these 13 orphans made it out of the rubble alive. They are now living on the street surrounded by rubble with no food, water, blankets or medicine. Many of them are HIV+. Two are handicapped and can not walk. We are rushing an emergency team to them to care for, feed and protect them. I’m leaving and will be on the ground in Haiti for as long as it takes to rebuild. We need your help. We lost everything.

We’re going to help out by renting a satellite phone for his trip. And we’re inviting you to join us by spreading the word about what Luke is doing. Share this link with your personal networks online (Facebook, Twitter, Email) to help put a face on the work that needs to be done in Haiti:

http://tinyurl.com/ykt74rg

The cool part is that he’s a web geek like us so he’ll be blogging and sharing videos/photos so people can see exactly how donations are being spent. You can see the full story of the orphanage in Haiti here:

https://wecanbuildanorphanage.com

For years it seemed like only moments of crisis — from natural disasters like Haiti to global warming — could unite us and our organizations in common purpose. But the connective tissues of technology seem to be taking hold in both charitable and corporate boardrooms alike. We’re seeing first-hand in our work across the climate, service, and veterans movements an unprecedented level of openness and collaboration.

Monday is Dr. Martin Luther King Day, a day of national and community service to remember his legacy. After years of working with leading organizations to support service, it’s a real privilege to join with them in a collaborative effort to build All for Good, a joint platform that makes service opportunities ubiquitous.

We’re proud to stand with so many of our clients and partners this weekend — Hands On Network, Do Something, Service Nation, The Huffington Post to name a few — in inviting you to join us in celebrating King Day as a day of service. Click here to find an opportunity near you – and join us in using a day of service to reflect on Haiti and social justice:

http://www.serve.gov/mlkday

Surviving theft. Shoulda worn that fanny pack.

// December 20th, 2009 // 1 Comment » // Globe, Life, Travel

I had my bag stolen earlier this week in Copenhagen. It was a huge distraction for about 24 hrs, but the upside is that I learned the truth about a few of those things people always warn us about. Hopefully this is helpful to you, but I’m also writing this to remind my future self:

• Keep your passport not in your bag — like on your “person” or in a safe place in your room. Fortunately I had the prescience to pull my passport and other non-essentials out of my bag before heading out that morning, otherwise I may still be in the land of the Vikings. Although less important and easier to replace, same would be true for keeping your phone charger separate if you’re in a faraway place where you can’t get a replacement charger.
• Long live the cloud. I was travelling with a small and relatively inexpensive netbook laptop. Because I use it as a secondary computer for travel, it doesn’t contain anything special — it’s essentially a piece of plastic that let’s me access email, calendar, files, and the web, all of which are hosted remotely on google, dropbox, or evernote. I was up and running again within minutes of finding a replacement machine, or using a public terminal. No priceless photos or hard-won music collections lost.
• You can’t backup your moleskin (or non-hipster equivalent). Pretty obvious, but given how we live in a world of auto-save and redundant backups, it did come as something of a shock to realize that my [analog] notes from the year were unrecoverable. Since I didn’t have any special photos on my camera (see below), this was the most significant loss even though it was the least valuable item in my bag as far as my insurance company is concerned.
• Download/upload photos frequently when travelling. I didn’t lose more than a few dozen pics, none of which were that special, but it could have been much worse. The lesson for me here was that when travelling and snapping photos, it’s worth downloading from the camera and uploading to web/backup after every batch of photos that you couldn’t bear to lose.
• Don’t leave your bag even slightly unattended. Ok, right, thanks. Obvious, but my bag was actually attended when it was stolen — on the floor no more than three feet from me/our group. But it was dark and even though it was within my reach, there were plenty of distractions taking my attention away from my bag. So +1 for me for not leaving my bag in the corner or under a pile of coats; -1 for letting the bag out of sight while being obviously American in a foreign city.
• Identify your privacy threshold.Password protection on my laptop (and phone, which was not stolen) puts my mind at ease that no personal information will get stolen, especially since those dirty thieves are most likely looking to resell the equipment. But if you’re the type of person who takes scandalous pictures with your camera or a high profile individual recording your deepest secrets in a journal, it’s worth thinking about what you’d do if that camera or notebook were taken. I don’t think that means you need to limit your creative expression, but it does make me think twice about what I’ll comfortably keep in my bag when heading out vs securing in my apartment. It used to be that a high schooler’s stolen diary couldn’t make it much farther than a copy machine and the school hallways, but with the permanence of information posted to the internet, a few scans and uploads could be devastating depending on who someone is and what they write.
• Keep records of major purchases. Once you get a spreadsheet or system going, it shouldn’t be that hard to update every time you get a new ipod or camera, but if you’re filing an insurance claim, it’ll save you a lot of time and hassle digging up model/serial numbers and receipts.

I also learned that the Danes are the nicest people on earth. Everyone in the bar was helpful and sympathetic when I asked them all to move so I could search, the staff were helpful that night and the next day, and filing a police report couldn’t have been a more pleasant experience.

My thoughts go out to ocean explorer Roz Savage, an inspired woman who i recently met at the computer terminals at the Fresh Air Center because she too was without her laptop. Almost all of her worldly possessions were taken while in CPH. Check out her post [here] to see if you can help, or just to learn about all of her crazy adventures.

Top three reasons to travel with an iphone

// July 10th, 2009 // Comments Off // From the field, Globe, Technology, Travel

I try not to be a product evangelist but this was the first international trip i’ve taken with my iphone, and man has it performed in ways that I didn’t anticipate.

1. WIFI — enough said; ATT’s international roaming plans will cover you for some emergency email checks, tweeting, or mapping, but beyond that, tapping into hotel or conference wifi has proven invaluable for uploading photos, downloading messages, checking flight information, and most importantly, making phone calls (see 1B)

1B. SKYPE — in Turkey, ATT’s best roaming plan (at $6 for the month) brought the voice rate down to $1.99/min (from $2.99/min); nice to have for emergency use, but otherwise Skype has saved me; at point-zero-something-per-min to landlines, i’ve talked as long as i’ve wanted on clear connections and barely made a dent in my skype credit (just lookout for unstable wifi networks that drop your calls); pair this with free incoming on an inexpensive local SIM chip (cost me less than $20 for a number + some minutes) and I probably didn’t even need to tell my clients i had left the country; although the 7 hr time difference on email may have tipped them off.

2. VIDEO — i recently upgraded to the 3GS, but the video was incidental for me; not anymore; having video has been a cool way to capture unique stories or experiences as they happen; i’d never travel around with a camcorder (i eventually abandoned my Flip after a several-month honeymoon was over), but when there’s one on your cell phone, you’d be amazed at what starts to be come video-worthy all of a sudden.

3. MAPS — English is not so prevalent here, even in Istanbul, as most people had me believe. As in, I have yet to find a cab driver who knows where my hotel is. But everyone can read a map of their own city, so shoving a screen in a driver’s face has proven to be remarkably effective. (Or if you’re suspicious of the results of your exchange, follow along on GPS to see if you’re heading in the right direction.)

Spread the story. Stop the Disease.

// October 4th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Globe, Internet, Photos

This is really well done; incredible photos by James Nachtwey being put to great use. Only wish the online action component were a bit stronger. Makes me wonder why we waste so much time on some of the things we do. Watch in full screen with audio up.

Hat tip: Ted email list

Running around the world

// August 25th, 2007 // 3 Comments » // Environment, Globe, Politics

I’m sure we’ve all talked about doing this sooner or later, but Simon’s actually doing it right now — one of 20 people on the Blue Planet Run 2007 team. 10 miles a day every day for 3 months — amazing.

So if you’re in NYC or DC later this week, check out Simon and the rest of the runners as they approach the finish line of their 3 month journey around the globe. All in the name of safe drinking water.

Also, this is nuts: only $30 ensures safe drinking water for life for one of the billion fellow travelers who don’t have access to it. I just gave… You can too right here.

best out-of-office auto-reply of the month

// August 21st, 2006 // 1 Comment » // EchoDitto, Globe, Technology

“I am sitting on a beach in Zanzibar. I will be back in Kampala on 8/24.”

From the road: EuroDiesel III

// February 16th, 2006 // 5 Comments » // Globe, Travel

checkin in here via le blog to let friends and family know that i’m alive and doing excellently on vacation, successfully upholding my solemn vow to stay unplugged from email, hence my first use of this blog as lame mass-email or livejournal post

just rolled into London this afteroon with tybvig and his brother ned on day 6 of this euro-bender vacation. a few solid days here in this fine city to follow, but for now a big thanks to le jimmy for boldly ditching his desk job in manhattan at the end of last year to go write and teach skiing in st. moritz, switzerland — a romantic maneuver from which we’re all vicariously benefitting, especially those of us who visited him in the sunny, alpine resort town for the past few days to take advantage of the skiing and, more importantly, the even more impressive apres skiing

so i’m really just writing to say check-out jimmy’s blog and reports from la suisse here at his new blog, The Duffle Bag Beat — some great writing and hillarious stories to enjoy while i romp around euro-land en vacances:
http://www.thedufflebagbeat.com

Giving thanks for Vermonter friends

// November 24th, 2005 // 2 Comments » // Consuming, Globe, Life, Outside, Technology

My good friend and college roommate is a proud Vermonter. I’m often jealous of his idyllic childhood—which he mostly spent building cool stuff, jumping into rivers, eating local foods, and pushing down rotting trees in the forest.

Every once in a while, he finds a subtle way to remind me—the flatlander—how he still has his priorities in much better order than mine. From an email yesterday:

quick question… do you need digital recordings to pod-cast? and… how does one take the recording and being casting to pods? (I hate this life we are living… I had a weekend of roller skiing, partridge hunting, and woodworking.)

I forgot, why do we bag leaves?

// November 18th, 2005 // 3 Comments » // Environment, Globe

This must be a hillarious picture to most of the world…

They’re thinking that we’ve gone completely mad — trying to stop anything that moves on its own. Who knows what those devilish, elusive little leaves could be up to, flying around, moving to and fro, taunting us… Round ‘em up and bag ‘em!

Photo by Larry Untermayer of WestportNow.com.

From bad to worse — 18K estimated dead in Pakistan—Kashmir—India

// October 9th, 2005 // 3 Comments » // Globe

Pakistan quake toll at 18,000–spokesman tells CNN

CNN report here

Give to the International Federation of Red Cross / Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) right now.