phenotypical

January 8, 2012 at 7:55am
28 notes

Reverse Robocall lets your robocall your representatives!

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Politicians robocall you. Now you can robocall them.

Welcome to the Robocall Revolution. We believe that voters should have access to the same technology political groups use to get their message across; so we built a simple web-based robocall tool to literally give citizens back their voice in the political discourse. What better way to exercise your rights to to speech, than to actually speak truth to power?

ReverseRobocall.com provides voters an easy way to communicate with one or hundreds of politicians or political groups using the same technology politicians use, the robocall or automated phone call.

January 6, 2012 at 2:54pm
2 notes

Sweden Recognizes File-Sharing as a Religion

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The Church of Kopimism, a religion whose central tenet is the free sharing of information, has been formally recognized by the Swedish government.

Kopimists believe all information sharing is “holy” and that the value of information multiplies when it’s shared. They hold CTRL+C and CTRL+V, keyboard shortcuts for copying and pasting, to be sacred symbols of their religion.

January 5, 2012 at 2:36pm
0 notes

Google+ Is Going To Mess Up The Internet

I hate Google+. Can’t stand it. It is agonizing to use. The stream is so noisy, it won’t even bother me when the inevitable Google ads arrive. Culturally, it feels like walking into a religious school. It swarms with disciples of the + waiting for the messianic downfall of the Evil Internet, so that the One True Google+ is all that’s left.

10:04am
4 notes

Camouflage from face-recognition software.

CV Dazzle™ is camouflage from computer vision (CV). It is a form of expressive interference that combines makeup and hair styling (or other modifications) with face-detection thwarting designs. The name is derived from a type of camouflage used during WWI, called Dazzle, which was used to break apart the gestalt-image of warships, making it hard to discern their directionality, size, and orientation. Likewise, the goal of CV Dazzle is to break apart the gestalt of a face, or object, and make it undetectable to computer vision algorithms, in particular face detection.

8:28am
2 notes

Pittsburgh government moves to the Cloud.

On time and on budget, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and Google executives today celebrated Pittsburgh government’s successful transition to Google Apps for Government. In less than four months, nearly 3,000 City employees made the switch from Microsoft Exchange email to a Google-operated email and communication system that will save the City about 25 percent in annual email support costs and make employees more efficient. In addition, employees now have shorter, more customer-friendly email addresses, 500 times more email capacity and IT personnel no longer have to spend time on server management and maintenance.

January 4, 2012 at 12:50pm
6 notes

NASA launches agency-wide Open Source initiative.

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The Plan for Code

Today we are launching code.nasa.gov, the latest member of the open NASA web family. Through this website, we will continue, unify, and expand NASA’s open source activities. The site will serve to surface existing projects, provide a forum for discussing projects and processes, and guide internal and external groups in open development, release, and contribution.

Learn more »

10:56am
4 notes

Hungarian schools dump MS Office.

Hungary’s public administrations will by default use open document standards for their electronic documents, as of April this year, the government ministers agreed on 23 December, and all public organisations are encouraged to move to open source office tools. Hungary’s government also in December decided to cancel the funding of proprietary office suite licences for all schools.

7:20am
18 notes

Go figure: George W. Bush barely mentioned in GOP campaign

For Republicans, the Bush administration has become the `yadda yadda yadda’ period of American history.

January 3, 2012 at 6:16pm
0 notes

53% of every tax dollar goes to war. Fifty. Three. Percent.

5:45pm
0 notes

OpenCFSummit is now THE CF conference to attend.

OpenCF Summit

Free and Open CFML

OpenCF Summit is a community gathering focused exclusively on advancing free and open source software in the CFML community.

If you’re interested in diving into the free software CFML engines,  learning more about the free software movement, and interacting with the most progressive thinkers in the CFML community, OpenCF Summit is for you!

When and Where?

OpenCF Summit is taking place on Feburary 24 - 26, 2012, at the Special Events Center in Garland, Texas.

See the attend page for airport, venue, and hotel information.

How Much?

72 hours of CFFreedom for the low, low price of only $72. Sleep optional. (Plus the obligatory small processing fee. Gotta pay the middle man don’t you know.)

Sign Me Up!

Register now!

January 2, 2012 at 12:54pm
1 note

Stop whining and start hiring remote workers - (37signals)

Every day I read a new article about some company whining about how hard it is to hire technical staff. Invariably it turns out that they’re only looking for people within a commuters distance of their office. I refuse to feel sorry for such companies.

…stop whining, spend a day to get up to speed on remote working practices, and hire outside of your commuter zone.

8:38am
5 notes

Dear Internet: It’s No Longer OK to Not Know How Congress Works

The fact is, Congress isn’t the only group in this equation that needs to get a clue. The online activists, the free culture crowd, and the pro-open and free Internet crowd needs to get a clue too. See — it’s just as important for us to understand how Congress works as it is for the Congress to understand how the Internet works. In Washington, those who “educate” Congress the best usually end up with the winning legislation.

7:32am
2 notes

Why do people hate programmers? Easy: what’s not to envy?

Most people hate programmers.
Sales people hate programmers.
MBA Types hates programmers.
Designers hate programmers.
Programmers hate programmers.
Joe the plumber hates programmers.
Girls hate programmers.

Why? I don’t know. I found a lot of speculations here, here, and here 

December 31, 2011 at 5:15am
0 notes

This is crony capitalism.

December 27, 2011 at 6:58am
0 notes

Civic Commons’ Marketplace now open for business!

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We are working to build the most complete and up-to-date database of government and civic software — both the apps themselves and where theyre used. You can help by adding a new app or by link an app to an agency/organization that has used it.