Last week the Witness Hub was updated with new enhancements and features -- most obviously, the Hub Map is now also on the home page!

Here is a video demonstration:

This feature required asynchronous loading of the Hub Map, including it's full-screen switcher and chunk marker loader code and features, on-load of the 'Map' tab (a Hub-customized version of jQuery tabs).

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2 months ago we launched the Witness Video Hub. Last week the Hub Map's full-screen mode was finally released! It features an original full-screen-mode switcher which puts the map in to, and out of, fullscreen mode without a full page reload.

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Google Earth has added a Global Awareness Layer that features data from a collaboration with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial on the Genocide in Darfur. It is a very moving presentation of data making Google Earth a valuable tool for education and activism around issues of human rights. The Geospatial data is linked with images and stories of survivors of the Genocide.

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TerraPass a company that allows the public to buy carbon offsets in the cap-and-trade system (you buy carbon polution that companies are selling basically) to offset CO2 polution from driving has introduced a flight calculator. Visit the Flight Tracker to calculate the CO2 pollution from specific flight routes. You can then buy a Terra Pass to offset the impact of your flight. Or you can buy Trees For the Future and help repair ecological damage in developing nations at the same time as you remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

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Mashups

are one of my favorite things - synthetic creativity born from the creativity and generosity of open technologists whose works are available on the web to be cross-pollinated with other technologies or datasources to produce brand-new things. It is an ever-accelerating artform in the World Wide Mesh that promises endless Darwinian generative possibilities. Recently the term has been showing up in common culture and the meaning risks dilution. Let's get specific. What exactly is a mashup? Mashups: The new breed of Web app is a new IBM article that provides a great overview of the history and the categories of "mashups" - and bears reading even for Technorati who already get and even contruct mashups.

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Just like it says. Check out this amazing tool: http://www.scrutinizethis.com/ Submitted by Brooks Cole

I am always fascinated by new visual ways of looking at old things, ways which reveal truth and meaning and intent previously hidden but secretly suspected. Take the example of the annual State of the Union speech, no doubt one of the most artificial and deliberately, if not cynically, constructed examples of speech of any kind, nestled as the crown jewel in the crown of synthetic political diatribe. Since the goal of modern political speech is such a game of obfuscation and misdirection, better tools to deconstruct the game to reveal the true intent and meaning of the gamers are the tools of true democracy.

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Here is a release of MapThing. This Drupal 4.7 module allows people to create a Google Map for their website and display a CiviCRM group plotted on it.

3.4 magnitude quake from the USGS: http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Quakes/nc40183688.html http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Maps/122-38.html

This is a short conversation with Jakob Lodwick of Connected Ventures. BarCamp is happening at ConnectedVentures' office. Jakob works on CollegeHumor.com and Vimeo.com, a video sharing and social networking site. Yesterday Jakob lead a talk about soft links in social networks. I talked about it a little bit in my first podcast from yesterday. Basically the idea is that there isn't just one type of connection between people, we have different connections, social networking applications should recognize that. The machines should be able to learn the strength of our connections based upon how we give our attention. If I look at your flickr pictures all the time, but not the photos of another contact, then flickr should stop showing me the other person's and show me more of yours.

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