CivicActions

Have I ever told you how much I love data? After listening to Larry Garfield's talk Drupal Databases: The Next Generation, I now love data more than ever!

The database layer for Drupal 7 has been completely rewritten to take advantage of PHP's PDO extenion. Not only does it allow Drupal to work with many different database types it also simplifies how developers interact with the database.

Some time ago, Kieran approached me about the possibility of running coder on patches submitted to Drupal.org.

Because of some outstanding work by Stella, and (of course) Moshe a.k.a. drush, Kieran's wish is now a possibility. The actual patch issue is here.

Drupalcon Szeged is one week away. I am glad I am attending, and I am planning on leading a Birds of a Feather (BOF) during the conference. The focus of the BOF is creativity and programming. I want to discuss the weird mix of human behavior and code. Sounds strange I know, so let me describe in more detail.

The CivicActions team has gone a little crazy the last couple days using a new site (faceyourmanaga.com) to create avatars of themselves. We'd like to think of them as the CivicActions Action Figures, or even the CivicActions Super Hero's.

credit: Monster Much

If picture is worth 1000 words, that would make this 5 minute, 15fps video worth at least 300K words on Photoshop tips.

Every once in a while it's good to review the basics and yesterday I virtually attended a website usability presentation given by NTen. Using three simple criteria they reviewed the websites of various not-for-profit organizations to deomonstrate how some simple changes could potentially have a positive impact on the site and, more importantly, online donations.

I Heart Miro has created the absolute easiest (and most passive) way to support the Participatory Culture Foundation's FOSS Miro project.

By just installing the Firefox extension, anytime you shop at Amazon a small portion of the proceeds will go to support Miro.

The extension works by adding the Miro referral code to the URL when you browse on Amazon. When you buy something, the Amazon referral fee is donated to their a 501c3 non-profit.

Joe Solomon introduced me to the project and posted on the NetSquared blog about abstracting the project to support any non-profit.

What about going a step further, and being able to select Drupal, the Free Software Foundation or any other Free & Open Source Software project - and then select from a list of affiliate programs such as iTunes which will donate a 5% commission on all qualifying purchases. (like your DRM-free purchased music)

At lunch today I had a great connection with Joe Solomon, a Social Media Consultant, who is the Project Lead of the KnowMore.org Firefox extension.

When installed, KnowMore's icons integrate into Google's search results to help users understand data from the KnowMore database.

KnowMore is community dedicated to chronicling corporate abuses, worker's and human rights, fair trade, business ethics and the environment, via a vast user-generated wiki database.

The extension is powered by KnowMore's new API which enables any developer to take KnowMore's corporate data and build web apps that empower consumers and help citizens hold corporations accountable.

The MetaVid project captures legislative proceedings and make full video streams accessible and searchable from the text transcripts.

Check out MetaVid directly or search Pelosi