7 tips for communicating with people with disabilities Glenda Watson Hyatt, who blogs at Doitmyselfblog.com (“Your Accessibility Conscience”), gave an extraordinary presentation here at the SOBCon, Business School for Bloggers, talking about how to make websites and blogs more accessible to the disabled. It took her three months to perfect her presentation. I conducted a video interview with her that I’ll post here soon. What's Happening Around You? Banjo Knows The Spark of Genius Series highlights a unique feature of startups and is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. Name: Banjo
The Best Tools for Visualization Visualization is a technique to graphically represent sets of data. When data is large or abstract, visualization can help make the data easier to read or understand. There are visualization tools for search, music, networks, online communities, and almost anything else you can think of. Whether you want a desktop application or a web-based tool, there are many specific tools are available on the web that let you visualize all kinds of data. Here are some of the best: Visualize Social Networks Largest data breaches of all time As Sony deals with their most recent data breach of one million passwords, we look at the the largest data loss incidents on record, according to DataLossDB. As I'm sure you know, Sony has been having all sorts of data breach problems lately — namely a million passwords from the Sony Pictures site, 77 million accounts from the PlayStation Network, and nearly 25 million user accounts from Online Entertainment. I was curious how these recent attacks compared to the largest known data loss incidents, so I headed over to DataLossDB.
Oblong Has Built The Future Of Computing. I’ve Seen It. Used It. It’s Beautiful. “This is the next Macintosh-level of disruption.” Over the past several years, I’ve followed pretty much every new thing in the technology space, and written about many of them. But it’s hard not to get cynical when so much of what’s out there is not only not revolutionary, it’s often not even evolutionary. Security and Protection: Understand the Social in a Crime Network and How to Protect Yourself While the following is a bit off-topic, my head is spinning with all the layers and networks I’ve uncovered within this recent experience. A friend of mine called this a combination assembly line meets Wikipedia of crime social networks. It begins with my car being broken into and my purse stolen a few months ago, explores the social web of a crime network, and ends with some helpful tips and techniques for protecting yourself online and off.
Guide to shooting better online video The Canon Vixia HV40. Tips on video equipment, interviewing people on camera & more Target audience: Nonprofits, social change organizations, videographers, educators, foundations, businesses, individuals. This is part of Creating Media, our ongoing series designed to help nonprofits and other organizations learn how to use and make media. Invention Awards: Eco-Friendly Insulation Made From Mushrooms Invention: GreensulateInventor: Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyreCost: $1,500Time: 2 yearsIs It Ready Yet? 1 2 3 4 5 Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre want to line the walls of your home with mushrooms. The young entrepreneurs have created a strong, low-cost biomaterial that could replace the expensive, environmentally harmful Styrofoam and plastics used in wall insulation, as well as in packaging and a host of other products. Wind-turbine blades and auto-body panels aren't out of the realm of possibility, either. "We like to call it low-tech biotech," Bayer says.
The closing of American academia It is 2011 and I'm sitting in the Palais des Congres in Montreal, watching anthropologists talk about structural inequality. The American Anthropological Association meeting is held annually to showcase research from around the world, and like thousands of other anthropologists, I am paying to play: $650 for airfare, $400 for three nights in a "student" hotel, $70 for membership, and $94 for admission. The latter two fees are student rates. If I were an unemployed or underemployed scholar, the rates would double. The theme of this year's meeting is "Traces, Tidemarks and Legacies."
News Flash: Evidence Found for Large Saltwater Ocean Beneath Saturn's Enceladus "This finding is a crucial new piece of evidence showing that environmental conditions favorable to the emergence of life can be sustained on icy bodies orbiting gas giant planets." Nicolas Altobelli, the European Space Agency's project scientist for Cassini. NASA's Cassini spacecraft has discovered the best evidence yet for a large-scale saltwater reservoir beneath the icy crust of Saturn's moon Enceladus.
Oil giant Saudi Aramco back online after 30,000 workstations hit by malware Aramco, Saudi Arabia's national oil company, said on Sunday that the company was back in operation ten days after a massive malware outbreak hobbled 30,000 workstations at the company. In a statement on the company's Facebook page (content alert: Facebook page contains images of extremely phallic architecture), Aramco said that it had "restored all its main internal network services" that were affected by a malware outbreak on August 15. The attack was attributed to "external sources." The Verbalizer - An open source board to use with Google's Voice Search for Desktop With Google announcing the launch of Voice Search for desktop, we couldn’t help thinking that there was even more fun to be had with talking to a computer. So, we went ahead and built an open source dev board to inspire people to build their own useful and wacky contraptions to take Voice Search to another level. Out of the box, the Verbalizer connects wirelessly to your computer via Bluetooth and when triggered, opens google.com in a new tab and activates Voice Search. An audio notification is played signaling google is ready for your query, which is spoken into the on-board mic. The board is Arduino compatible and we left some I/O pins open, so it's easy for anyone to jump in and create something nutty with it. To show off the extent of what can be created, we invited some electronics newbies out to our first ever Make 'n Break workshop to share some toys we built with the Verbalizer, as well as to let them have a play.