Tips, web design book reviews, resources and observations for teaching and learning web development.
Today it was announced as big news that an AIR program still in alpha state called Seesmic bought the very popular desktop Twitter application Twhirl. Yesterday Shelley contacted me with an invite for Aviary (which I’ll be writing about soon), a new photo editing app using AIR. When Adobe made AIR available for Linux earlier this week it also made the news.
It might be time to put AIR into your “things to learn about” list.
The USPS announced a free recycling project called ‘mail back.’
The “Mail Back” program helps consumers make more environmentally friendly choices, making it easier for customers to discard used or obsolete small electronics in an environmentally responsible way. Customers use free envelopes found in 1,500 Post Offices to mail back inkjet cartridges, PDAs, Blackberries, digital cameras, iPods and MP3 players – without having to pay for postage.
Postage is paid for by Clover Technologies Group, a nationally recognized company that recycles, remanufactures and remarkets inkjet cartridges, laser cartridges and small electronics. If the electronic item or cartridges cannot be refurbished and resold, its component parts are reused to refurbish other items, or the parts are broken down further and the materials are recycled. Clover Technologies Group has a “zero waste to landfill” policy: it does everything it can to avoid contributing any materials to the nation’s landfills.
Kind of a drop in the bucket since the UPSP has 37,000 retail locations, but it’s a start. Apparently, the only way to know if your post office is offering the mail back program is to show up in the lobby of the P.O. and look for the display holding the mail back envelopes.
Another promising new green idea is to rent your solar panels from Citizenre. No capital outlay, pay only what you previously paid your utility company monthly, and start using solar electric. Again, a small number of initial sites are in on it now, but they are just getting started. Where I live, I already opt to get my electricity from wind generators, so I wonder what my local public service is going to do with this one.
Did you already know about the WebbAlert daily tech roundup? I’m just discovering it. Go check it out.
A WCAG 2.0 Implemention site by Mike Cherim explains a bit about a AAA compliant site he made using WCAG 2.0 guidelines. You’ll find a link to the site. too.
SXSW Videos (not part of the official SXSW site) has lots of flavor for those who couldn’t make the event.
Hey ladies, want to go to business school? 10,000 Women is for you. Goldman Sachs says they want to help you get an MA or an MBA. Bravo to Goldman Sachs.
Earth’s climate is humanity’s operating system . . . what temperature we choose determines what functional calls we have, how stable the platform is, and what chances there are that we crash the OS and have to reboot. –Saul Griffith at How to Become Energy Literate and Battle Climate Change.
Arab Women’s Network is an interesting project helping Arab women learn to blog for a chance at an award and a role in the social media conversation.
Jury Sides with Blackboard in Patent Case at Inside Higher Ed leads with this: “A federal jury in Texas on Friday awarded the learning services giant Blackboard $3.1 million in its patent infringement lawsuit against a much smaller competitor, adding a new layer of complexity and uncertainty to a complex, uncertain market for higher education learning management systems.” This happened before the posts I wrote about iPhone and the question of Blackboard/WebCT.
Specify a Maximum width for em-based layouts is a bit of great advice from 456 Berea Street.
Cellphones: less than 30 years to world domination at TiKouka has some interesting thoughts on an article about the saturation of cell phones in our lives.
My post at BlogHer today is about tech news including Socket Sense, Mixbook.com, the Kindle Reader, and today’s announcement by Toshiba that Blu-Ray is the world champ.
Stone Deaf Pilots rates the U.S. presidential candidates on their positions on accessiblity to the deaf. The candidates positions on one of my personal issues, net neutrality, was explored by Save the Internet. What are the candidates positions on your favorite technology issue?