CivicActions

What was AT&T's vision of the Internet? Movies on demand? Bridges without stopping to pay toll? What about he CRAZY stuff, like: Meeting without your shoes on?! Faxing from the beach? Tucking your baby in from a phone booth? Who the hell knows what a phone booth is?

Zephyr Teachout has a great op-ed in the Washington Post today about the future of campaigning.

She talks about some interesting ideas like mobile political affinity software, political accountability software and political placement as ways of reaching voters in '08.

Thanks to the Berkman Center newsletter for pointing this one out.

Free Range Graphics (makers of 'The Meatrix') have produced another great video about the dangers of PVC (aka Vinyl) in the home.

Did you know that PVC, the material used in shower curtains and kids’ toys, is dangerous to our health and our environment?

Free Range produced the video for the Center for Health, Environment & Justice (CHEJ). This new movie is part of a national campaign asking Target Stores to phase out the poison plastic and switch to safer, cost effective alternatives, as other retailers have done.

A brief look at YouTube's most popular videos of the day, and what do you find? Cingular with the #1 video?! (391,397 views today alone!) Yep, the name of the video is "Cingular presents: YouTube Underground!" Cingular nabs the "Viral Day Action" award (VD Action) with this clever bit of marketing... a video announcing a YouTube contest for the best band, video or song on the hugely popular video social networking site. And, only a day after Warner Music signed a deal with YouTube - agreeing to a new royalty-tracking system... A good week for the 'Tube.

Kaliya Hamlin pointed me to this article about Mashup Camp (not to be confused with MashPit the Mashup hackathon that Chris Messina envisioned and has been involved with.)

Mashup Camp is an unconference utilizing open space strategies like the law of two feet.

Apparently unconferences are becoming so popular that "Doug Gold and David Berlind, the organizers of Mashup Camp, hope to turn unconferences into a business." Um... I guess. The business will be one the organizes unconferences. Seems a bit strange. I know it does take work to line up sponsors, locations, etc... But one of the things that really makes the unconferences i have been to so great is the "of the people, by the people, for the people" nature of them.

Good article in The Economist on open-source software and how the model adapts to other businesses:

http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5624944

Offers good arguments for the continuing rise of open-source, as well as its possible demise.

Browsing Politics1, I came across a very unusual site for Joe Dunn who is runnning for State Controller. I wasn't sure he was running for office or an Academy Award, but the site certainly isn't politics as usual...

Distributing the Future has podcast with a segment on "attention streams". I have been posting on the topic here, including 2 podcasts with Fen.

I declare 2006 the year of attention.