Feed aggregator
Etsy Finds: Woodland Woo
I've always relished flipping through decor magazines, wedding design blogs, and Etsy's Weddings Category, making mental notes with my inner wedding planner for my own imaginary big day. Even when that wedding fever isn't burning as strong, I love looking at all the creative new takes and tiny clever details offered on Etsy to pull off a tailored event from start to finish.
With spring knocking on the door, an alfresco affair is on my mind fitted with bountiful foliage, ethereal vignettes and love in the open air. Below you will find a collection of spring wedding-inspired Etsy Finds that caught my eye today.
Wedding Attire
By pompandplumage, $12.
By sarahseven, $1400.
Kate Moss Tulle Millinery Fascinator
By pompandplumage, $32.
By bcyrjewelry, $240.
By plumprettysugar, $44.
Gold Leaf and Feather Hair Clip
By gingerandtonic, $24.
By blockpartypress, $30.
Guinevere- whimsical Bridal Veil
By gardensofwhimsy, $62.
By sweeteverythings, $8.
By MeandMatilda, $19.99.
By MattiOnline, $194.95.
cwynsel nytha . secret nest hair clip
By katescottage2, $15.50.
By JuliaSherryDesigns, $60.
By Nostalgiclinks, $21.95.
By duplume, $24.
By sustyle88, $55.
Wedding Decor
Pink Spring Cherry Blossoms Branch
By lunatiqueart, $11.
Moss Covered Wedding Monograms
By ChoosingYou, $62.
Babes in the Woods 6 Candle Holders
By TheBentTreeGallery, $38.
Mossy Wedding Card Box Bird Cage
By RomancingJuliet, $65.
By KatieLeighDesigns, $40.
By bettula, $28.
Block Printed Feathers Napkins
By ninaglaser, $12.
Rustic fence post table numbers
By martystew, $12.
By WarmCountryMeadows, $15.
By Funkifolkart, $39.99.
By jessedirk, $57.
By cuddlecreature, $30.
By AprilHilerDesigns, $135.
Blue Nest Table Numbers - set of 10
By APunkinCardCompany, $20.
Engraved Glass Toasting Flutes
By Laserbird, $24.
Tree Branch Place Card Holders
By MonkeysOnTheRoof, $18.
By LittleWeeShop, $25.
By sian, $95.
All the Details
By Myhaleygirl, $75.
Tree Initials - Wedding Invitation
By ellothere, $4.
Mossy Birds Nest Ring Bearer Pillow
By RomancingJuliet, $14.50.
By GoldenSilhouette, $1.90.
By alliebeans, $2.
By thebrickkiln, $21.
Paper Butterflies - Romanticism
By peacocky, $5.
By raedunn, $140.
pussywillow bouquet for flower girl
By thefrenchmouse, $35.
Logs and Leaves Wedding Invitation
By Cheerupcherup, $4.
Gift Ideas
wood journal with 2 hearts arrow
By crearting, $70.
By baileybowls, $29.
4-Ever Personalized Stationery Set
By SilhouetteBlue, $25.
By FairyDavis, $24.99.
By juliethefish, $15.
By nativevermont, $55.
By ChrissyAnnCeramics, $140.
Custom Love Birds in Tree Dish
By thebrickkiln, $21.
Apple Tree Folk Personalized Set
By happiestdaysdesigns, $66.
8x10 Matted Inspired Photograph
By inspiredartprints, $35.
Looking for more Etsy Finds? Try these links:
Guest Curators | Trends | Gift Ideas
Need a daily fix of Etsy Finds? Sign up for the Etsy Finds e-mail! Conveniently delivered to your inbox!
Survey Says: The Results of the Blog Reader Survey Are Here
First off, thank you so much to everyone who took the survey. It means a lot to us professionally that over 5600 people took the survey during the one week it was up. We want to share some of the information with you — both because you might be curious and also because the results will be informing decisions we make about the blog moving forward. Keep in mind that this wasn't a "scientific" survey (though our numbers pro Neelam12 analyzed the data with gusto) but a quick and fairly informal way to take the pulse of Etsians. Please note that italicized mentions of "sellers," "shoppers/browsers" and "both" are not meant to reflect the Etsy community at large, but rather the respondents for this survey.
23% of survey takers describe themselves as seller, 22% as shopper/browser, and 54% as both. We were pleased to see shoppers weigh in so heavily, since they naturally spend less time on Etsy than sellers, who are tending their shops and proactively seeking out new nooks and crannies of Etsy.
97% of the survey takers were female. The seller respondents were largely female, but not as highly skewed as the shoppers. The ladies love Etsy! One of the frequent comments people wrote in was that they wished there were more shopping content for men — and indeed more items for men made by Etsy sellers.
Across all segments, most respondents read the Etsy blog around a few times or once a week. Many sellers commented that they are too busy making things to frequent the blog.
For the question about how likely you are to recommend Etsy's blog, most survey takers responded in the "neutral" through "extremely likely" range. This makes us happy, but we know there's lots of room for improvement.
Age 25-34 is our sweet spot. After that, the next most populous age bracket for shoppers is 19-24, for sellers it's 45-54, and for both it's 35-44. Our seller-onlys are a bit older than the both and shopper readers.
For the question, "How do you navigate to the blog?" all segments use these the most: the "Blog" button in the main navigation, the animated ticker on the bottom of the Etsy home page, and Etsy Emails. Sellers and both are more familiar with the Community Hub. A lot of the free-form answers were things like: "I don't." and "Didn't know you had a blog." There were more shoppers responding this way than sellers, which underscores sellers' more thorough familiarity with Etsy. We need to let new shoppers know that the blog is a way to become more familiar with the Etsy community and a starting point from which to explore the range of our marketplace's offerings.
Whether you're a shopper or a seller informs which type of content you're interested in. Crafty how-to's and culture/lifestyle stories bridge the gap between sellers and shoppers. Sellers were not as enthusiastic about shopping content (some seller comments referred to it as "fluff"). Shoppers were not that interested in seller how-to's or company news. Interestingly, sellers are not as interested in craftivism as the shoppers and both segments. Nobody was all that pumped about events. Shoppers are really more interested in reading a blog dedicated to shopping content than sellers or even both. Sellers and both would be more likely to read blogs dedicated to seller content and company news. This confirms what we already guessed and leads to the next conclusion...
The majority of each segment thought that separating our blog into separate (but linked) Selling vs. Shopping vs. Company blogs would be helpful.
The majority of survey takers were very enthusiastic about the content that we offered on the list (eco-friendly, art and design, home decor and interiors, fashion and style, guest bloggers sharing cool stuff from the Internet) — but felt neutral about weddings, kids/babies, and pets. You can imagine those last topics would get stale for people who aren't at that life stage or just aren't as obsessed with those topics as others. Shoppers wanted more food/cooking content while the seller and both segments felt neutral about this. Many respondents mentioned specific series that they loved — or really disliked — while other respondents had completely conflicting tastes. They loved or disliked the opposite things! As editor-in-chief, I actually find this exciting: it shows the diversity of tastes and viewpoints of our readership. However, I think Etsy blogging needs to move more in the direction of enabling members (shopper/browsers and sellers and both) to create and share their own tastes and viewpoints. We need to do this in a scalable way — and the pitch form certainly is not that.
Nearly half of the Shopper/Browsers were not aware of Etsy's videos. Of those who are aware of the videos (and it's more likely to be a seller or both), most of them enjoy videos when they happen to see them. This is bittersweet: if more people knew about the videos, they'd be into watching them!
The majority of respondents were enthusiastic about video portraits of people, places, things and crafty how-to's. Across the board, people were neutral about weird, arty videos and user-generated videos. Shoppers and both were neutral about help videos, while sellers wanted more.
This pie chart shows that survey takers would prefer that non-English language content be separated. As you may have noticed, we now have our UK blogger Amity contributing a UK Edition. More information on French and German blogs, with Amelie and Matt and Beni at the helm, is coming soon.
Most people feel neutral about changing the name "The Storque" to something else. But of the people who care, more of them want us to change it than not change it. Over here at the Etsy office, we are leaning towards letting go of "The Storque" moniker and keeping it simple with "Etsy Blog."
Sellers and both are more interested in starting a blog on Etsy, while shoppers are more likely to not be interested in starting a blog at all. Perhaps this is because sellers and both have a vested interest in getting the word out about themselves, while shoppers are more interested in browsing others' content. We see this as a challenge because we want shoppers to be more involved on Etsy and to have more of a presence — especially in sharing their favorite items and sellers, their experiences using the site, and how they live the handmade/vintage life. The more shoppers could share their activity on the site with their friends and family and other members with similar taste, the easier it would be for everyone to find items and inspiration. And further — Admin would not be under as much pressure to curate items for shoppers, who constantly tell us that they are "overwhelmed" by search results.
Here are some of my other notes from looking at responses people wrote in the comments.
"I get the blogs in my email." and "Don't really understand 'Blogs.'" Some survey-takers don't seem to be clear on what a blog is. We need to remember that a portion of Etsy members are new to the Internet and Etsy may be their starting point in their journey to becoming tech-savvy. For shoppers especially, there is some confusion about the difference between the Etsy Finds emails they subscribe to and "the blog." We need to do a better job of communicating this to new shoppers.
The blog is a way for shoppers to start their searches for Etsy items. From shopper/browsers: "This blog is the reason why I shop on Etsy. There are SO many items that it's really difficult to wade through the ok/kinda junky/cheesy stuff and find things that are clever or beautiful. Those 'handpicked' posts are SO helpful." "The Storque is a great way to see what's hot... It's a great source of inspiration for me." From sellers: "My products have been featured before and I really appreciated the attention/traffic. I found that it brought more traffic than a front page placement because it stayed up for longer and even if someone purchased the item it wouldn't disappear." "I love how your blog calls attention to things of a common theme and highlights items you might not think to put together. This is a great tool for buyers to learn how to look for items of a certain type or for a particular occasion and it's very exciting for the seller to be listed. We couldn't stop checking yesterday to see the number of hits and hearts our store got after being mentioned in the n00bs entry." We're happy to see that readers (especially those who are shoppers) are clicking deeper into Etsy to heart or purchase an item, or to simply check out a seller and her shop. One of our goals is to engage visitors on the Etsy site so they don't just "bounce" if they don't like an item. Some sellers expressed concerns that too many of the same items/sellers/aesthetics are featured on our blog, while others told us that they discover things they'd never seen before. We received very passionate comments that expressed polar opposite sentiments. Very interesting indeed! Again, I'm eager for Etsy to open up the curation and blogging to the community instead of just Admin. The Etsy backend needs better tools to show repeats to the various Admin who are curating items.
Blog posts are too long. Blog posts are too short. There are too many posts. There aren't enough posts. We got a lot of conflicting comments on these topics, and would need to ask specific questions about these next time.
The layout and navigation is too complicated. While some readers said they liked the layout and have no problem finding what they want, far more people expressed frustration and confusion about the layout. We Admin think the blog layout could use some changes in the future to make it a more intuitive experience.
A blog is personal. "I love getting to know the Etsy team through the blogs. It makes me feel connected to and part of the community rather than as if I'm a faceless seller using a faceless corporation as a marketplace. (I'm an ex-eBayer and I left because they lost their family spirit)." While this sums up what I want to hear from our readers, I also want to acknowledge many of the sellers who commented that they want to see more diversity in viewpoints, rather than just those of the Admin. We do have partners and Guest Curators and contributors, but I agree that Etsy needs to do more to open up blogging to more folks in the handmade world. The Etsy marketplace is like a rain forest of tastes and styles and interests: there's more diversity of creativity here than anywhere else on the Internet. There's just no way that our small staff can accurately represent everyone while maintaining that authentic, personal voice. I'm looking forward to a day when we editors aren't bottlenecks (many of you have noticed that the pitch form is closed) or are seen as as gatekeepers who don't have the same Favorites as you. My strategic view is that Admin need to be facilitators in connecting our members, while also being the real people behind Etsy.com. There will always be Admin bloggers because of the quote above, but we'd like to develop an efficient system that allows for more content from our members.
And the answer you've all been waiting for — the most popular spirit animal is...
The most popular shopper spirit animal is a cat. Note that the domesticated cat blew every other animal away, and that's not even counting the lions, tigers, snow leopards, panthers, and cheetahs! The most popular seller spirit animal is a wolf. Runner-up was the bear.
Comments please! I'll do my best to answer follow-up questions.
Does HTML5 Really Beat Flash? The Surprising Results of New Tests
With the impending launch of the Apple iPad, the Cupertino-based company's shunning of Adobe Flash technology has been brought to the forefront of technological discussions. While it was one thing to forgo Flash on a small, mobile device such as the iPhone or iPod Touch, some are questioning whether lack of Flash support is going to be a make-it-or-break it feature for the new slate devices arriving next month - devices which, if you believe Apple CEO Steve Jobs - are "better than netbooks."
On the flip side, Apple supporters echo the company's sentiments that "Flash is a CPU hog" and including support for the technology in Apple's mobile line-up would negatively impact battery life.
However, recent tests have put Flash up against HTML5, the new web markup language that eliminates the need for the Adobe plugin. The results of these tests show that this is not a simple black-and-white issue. Is Flash really a CPU hog? Yes, in some cases. But, surprisingly, not all the time. In fact, sometimes HTML5 actually performed worse.
Testing Flash and HTML5Jan Ozer is an expert in video encoding technologies, has worked in digital video since 1990 and is the author of 13 books related to the subject. Recently, he put HTML5 up against Flash in a series of tests that pitted the two technologies against each other on both the Mac and PC and in different web browsers including Internet Explorer 8, Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox.
The results of the tests in their entirety are published here on StreamingLearningCenter.com. The summary in a nutshell? Flash isn't always a CPU hog, sometimes that honor goes to HTML5.
Some of the highlights of Ozer's findings are below, broken up into both Mac and Windows test results.
Mac Tests
- With Safari, HTML5 was the most efficient and consumed less CPU than Flash using only 12.39% CPU. With Flash 10.0, CPU utilization was at 37.41% and with Flash 10.1, it dropped to 32.07%
- With Google Chrome, Flash and HTML5 were both equally inefficient (both are around 50%)
- With Firefox, Flash was only slightly less efficient than in Safari, but better than in Chrome
- Safari wouldn't play HTML5 videos, so there was no way to test that. However, Flash 10.0 used 23.22% CPU but Flash 10.1 only used 7.43% CPU
- Google Chrome was more efficient on Windows than Mac. Playback with Flash Player 10.0 was about 24% more efficient than HTML5, while Flash Player 10.1 was 58% more efficient than HTML5.
- On Firefox, Flash 10.1 dropped CPU utilization to 6% from 22% in Flash 10.0
- In IE8, Flash 10.0 used 22.41% CPU and Flash 10.1 used 14.62% CPU
In analyzing the results of the tests, Ozer determined that the key to better Flash performance was dependent upon whether or not it could access hardware acceleration. This feature, launched in Flash 10.1, allows the plugin to use the graphics processing unit (GPU) on some computers to decode video. Depending on the video card and drivers, (NVIDIA, AMD/ATI and Intel offer products that support this), the video decoding process in Flash 10.1 can now work for all video playback, not just full-screen playback as was available in Flash 10.0.
According to Adobe, hardware acceleration is not supported under either Linux or Mac OS X, the latter because Mac OS X does not expose access to the required APIs. Adobe goes on to say "The Flash Player team will continue to evaluate adding hardware acceleration to Linux and Mac OS X in future releases."
Here's what this all means in layman's terms: Apple isn't allowing Flash to become more efficient on their Mac OS X/Safari platform (or their iPod/iPhone/iPad one, either) by not providing the access to the hardware it needs to reduce its CPU load. Adobe is waiting and watching to see if they do, but, as Ozer says "the ball is in Apple's court."
Will Apple budge? At this point, it's unlikely. In blocking Flash on Apple devices, the company can easily claim that it's simply not an efficient technology...and that's true for now, considering how it's set up. But if the company wanted to allow it and make it work, it seems reasonable to believe that they could. This is what leads some insiders to believe that the decision to block Flash is less of a technological one and more of a business-minded one. After all, if you could easily visit Hulu.com (or, overseas, the BBC iPlayer, for example) to stream TV shows and movies, then why would you need to buy them from the iTunes Store?
So while Flash's "CPU hogging" may be a contributing factor in Apple's decision to not support the technology on their mobile devices, that's probably not the only reason behind the block.
Thank you to Dan Rayburn, who pointed us to Jan Ozer's article featured here on StreamingMedia.com.
DiscussSXSW 2010 for Marketers & Online Strategists
Navigating SXSW is overwhelming to say the least! To help you out ReadWriteWeb has been breaking the events, panels and parties down into vertical reviews. This post provides what we think are some of the best for marketers and online strategists. We'd also love to hear your recommendations in the comments.
tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sxsw_2010_for_marketers_online_strategists.php';tweetmeme_source = 'rww';Online strategy is multi-faceted. You need to know as much about marketing and understanding people and their motivations as you do perfecting the online experience, understanding the next technology breakthrough on the horizon and being an excellent conversationalist - while still being able to measure the impact of it all. So this list provides a smattering of some of the best to see in all four.
This is part of a series of ReadWriteWeb guides to SXSW Interactive 2010. If this guide isn't your cup of tea, be sure to check back for more information soon!
<?php include('../includes/sxsw2010.php'); ?>How Your Brand Can Succeed in the New Web
With Brian Solis. "Engage is the new book by Brian Solis that will debut at SXSW. Representing the third book on new media and its impact on society, culture and communication. Engage will help anyone not only understand the changes in the media landscape but also how to lead it. Brian Solis will be joined by a special guest to discuss the new book and answer questions followed by a book signing."
"The ability to share online has allowed consumers to control and filter the Web. For brands and publishers, tapping into Influence is critical to social media's future. What is influence and how is it measured? Leading voices in social media from multiple backgrounds will define the value of influence, discuss best practices, and predict future impact. Data will be shared! This panel is sponsored by ShareThis." With Tim Schigel, Paul Berry, Dave Knox, Mike John-Baptiste, Shiv Singh.
Extending Your Brand? There's an App for That
"For many, brand extension into the digital realm means a Web site, a banner ad, a viral campaign. But applications can extend conversations and perceptions of a brand, as well as add to discussions and ideas in compelling new ways. How can applications help your brand and idea be more authentic, genuine, user friendly, and just plain old fun? Learn from the folks that are making it happen. This panel is sponsored by Microsoft Silverlight."
With Gary Vaynerchuk. The content of this presentation has not been announced, but knowing Gary and his successful track record in growing business through the use of social media, this one is not to be missed.
Program or be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age
With Douglas Rushkoff. "Winner of the first Neil Postman award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity, Douglas Rushkoff is an author, teacher, and documentarian who focuses on the ways people, cultures, and institutions create, share, and influence each other's values."
I Don't Trust You One Stinking Bit
"What gives people confidence on the Web? Bringing together experts in social capital and online trust, we help you build the company your users can love and call their own." With Chris Brogan and Julien Smith.
Monkeys with Internet Access: Sharing, Human Nature, and Digital Data
Clay Shirky hasn't announced the content of his presentation yet. He "divides his time between consulting, teaching, and writing on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies. His consulting practice is focused on the rise of decentralized technologies such as peer-to-peer, Web services, and wireless networks that provide alternatives to the wired client/server infrastructure that characterizes the Web."
With Craig Watkins. "In 2006, S. Craig Watkins participated in the MacArthur Foundation's well-funded digital media initiative alongside a select team of scholars and tech experts. The goal was simple: to understand young people's emphatic embrace of social and mobile media. Watkins went on to build a small research team that skillfully collected over 500 surveys and conducted 350 in-depth interviews with young adults, parents, and educators."
Design and Usability, The UX of Mobile
"The term 'user experience' used to be an afterthought in mobile application design. The iPhone changed all that and has set a new benchmark for user experience on mobile devices. This panel will serve as a primer for anyone interested in learning how to apply UX principles to the creation of applications for iPhone, Android, and mobile websites." With Barbara Ballard, Tom Limongello, Scott Jenson.
The Ten Commandments of User Experience
"User experience is the result of your interactions with a product or service, specifically how it's delivered and its related artifacts according to the design. In this presentation we will explain how following the 10 commandments can boost your project's ease of use, appeal, conversion rates, and more." With Raina Van Cleave, Nick Finck.
Persuasive Design: Encouraging Your Users To Do What You Want Them To!
"So you've designed a great product, fixed a stack of usability problems and spent a fortune on marketing. The only problem is, people aren't using it. In this session you will learn how to get your users to do what you want them to through good design, human psychology and a touch of mind control." With Andy Budd.
My Three-Year Old Is My Usability Expert
"Children are perfect testers for the innate usability of visual structures. Learn how neuroscience and cognitive psychology research can make your designs and interfaces more intuitive." With Dave Stanton.
Can the Real-Time Web Be Realized?
"The emergence of the real-time Web enables an unprecedented level of user engagement and dynamic content online. However, the rapidly growing audience puts new, complex demands on the architecture of the Web as we know it. This panel will discuss what is needed to make the real-time Web achievable." With Scott Raymond, Brett Slatkin, Dare Obasanjo, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Jack Moffitt.
Time + Social + Location. What's Next In Mobile Experiences?
"As more devices become location aware, social uses will continue to evolve beyond just who and what,to WHEN. Adding the temporal dimension creates new opportunities for social interaction. Learn about ways to leverage and use technology to add features at the intersection of temporal, social, and location." With Naveen Selvadurai, Josh Babetski, Greg Cypes.
ActivityStrea.ms: Is It Getting Streamy In Here?
"From Facebook's newsfeed to Twitter's relentless real-time updates, the metaphor of the "stream" has taken social networking beyond blog posts and on to rich social activities. Learn about ActivityStrea.ms - the open format adopted by Facebook, MySpace, and Windows Live - and how it's fundamentally changing the social Web." With Chris Messina.
HTML5: Tales from the Development Trenches
"HTML5 is coming. Originally called "Web applications 1.0", it brings new semantics, JavaScript APIs for drag and drop, offline storage, generating images, plugin-free video and form validation. It's upset semantic Web advocates, accessibility evangelists and baffled developers. Cut through the crap: learn what it is and what it does."
What Are Analytics? A Guide To Practical Data
"Analytics are often a confusing and convoluted mess, but that doesn't mean that they have to be. The Guide to Practical Data will help ensure you're reaching your full analytical potential. Learn how to analyze public and proprietary data to accelerate the success of any initiative." With Margaret Francis, Blake Robinson.
Those are our SXSW Interaction recommendations for marketers and Web strategists. If you've got suggestions or feedback, let us know in the comments! See you in Austin!
DiscussLocalize.drupal.org: More improvements on the staging site, feedback is still welcome
I've announced our staging site for localize.drupal.org two weeks ago, and some people did take on the opportunity to test out the site and provided valuable feedback. Fixes and improvements are rolled out continually on the site. Since the staging site was set up with a completely revamped user interface to translate text, the following changes made their way onto the staging site:
Bicycling Directions, Trails Come to Google Maps
There's nothing worse for a bicyclist than finding yourself a mile in to a two-mile stretch of shoulder-less, busy, highway-speed traffic with no alternative route. Before today, this was a common occurrence if you went to trusty Google Maps to get bicycling directions, but starting today, that has all changed.
Google has added bicycling directions, lanes and routes to Google Maps, meaning you no longer have to drive, walk or bus to get directions. And we can tell you, bicyclists are excited.
Before now, the only option to cyclists to get even remotely appropriate directions, was to use the walking option, but this would still ignore bike trails. Google has heard the pleas of cyclists and, from first look, we have to say that the feature is well implemented.
We gave it a test to see if it would put us on some of Austin's more bike unfriendly streets, but it managed to chose some good alternative routes and stick to the bike trails when it could. The directions got a little wonky when we threw it a few curve balls, but we expect this to happen with any mapping service, especially one still in beta. But, as we've learned, you can't just go mindlessly follow directions, lest you end up in a lake.
The new feature also includes a "Bicycling Layer", which shows bike paths and bike-friendly streets with or without lanes. Three different lanes appear in the layer.
- Dark green indicates a dedicated bike-only trail;
- Light green indicates a dedicated bike lane along a road;
- Dashed green indicates roads that are designated as preferred for bicycling, but without dedicated lanes
According to Google, it has also taken steps to avoid uphill and long downhill routes, busy roads and even busy intersections. Google says that it even takes hills and other factors into account when calculating your trip time. "Assuming typical values for mass and for wind resistance, we compute the effort you'll require and the speed you'll achieve while going uphill," Google says in its Lat Long Blog.
Google worked with the Rails-to-Trails Conservancy to bring more than 12,000 miles of biking trails to its map, along with bike lanes and recommended streets for 150 cities across the country. Google makes sure to point out that the feature is still in beta, so feel free to tell Google the next time you find yourself on a crowded, shoulder-less highway because of Google Maps.
And for those of you headed to fair Austin this week, make sure to take a look at the new feature, because it includes all of Austin's numerous bike trails and bike lanes. If you've never been to Austin for SXSW before, bicycling is the way to get around town and now you'll know how to get there.
DiscussUK Edition: Dog Rescue With pennydogaccessories
The internationally-renowned dog show Crufts — judging on appearance, agility and even doggy dancing — is on this week in Birmingham. In light of some controversy surrounding its screening on the BBC due to the questioning of certain breeders' ethics, I've invited Kerry Wilkinson of pennydogaccessories to tell us about an organisation called the Retired Greyhound Trust (RGT).
Adopting Penny, our first greyhound, coincided with me taking my craft more seriously. Through wanting to help raise money for the RGT, pennydogaccessories was born!
We adopted Penny in May 2007, just before her 10th birthday, which is pretty old to be adopted. The tattoos in her ears told us a lot about her: when her birthday was, who her parents were and also her racing history. She raced in Ireland until she was two years old, then for a further year in the UK, where it came to a sudden end after being knocked down on the track. Her life after that and before being adopted is vague.The local dog warden found her in a ditch with several injuries and she was extremely wary of people, especially men. Luckily she got to know and trust my partner, Alex, quite quickly after they went chasing rabbits together! To this day she walks faithfully by our sides.
Penny is safe and well, which wouldn't have been possible without the RGT. Before we signed her adoption papers, she underwent an operation to remove a growth from her face and several bad teeth. She was also given tablets for an infection in her tail. All of this was paid for as part of their adoption scheme. In June 2009 we decided to adopt again, this time a more boisterous six-year-old called Fletcher. His original name was Slippy and he had a much more prosperous racing history. Even though he'd been in a home before he came to us, he still received treatment paid in entirety by the RGT to remove a corn from his foot (plus countless dressings and antibiotics afterward).
Photo by pennydogaccessories
So after spending other people's generous donations on Penz and Boo (their nicknames), when I set up pennydogaccessories on Etsy I pleddged to donate $2 from each sale to slowly pay it all back. To this date I have raised £500 (around $680), partially funded by the lovely buyers of Etsy! Fundraising for greyhounds doesn't stop there. There are estimated to be up to 9,000 greyhounds retiring from racing every year in the UK alone, with many more in the U.S., Ireland and beyond. There are similar organisations in place worldwide that help promote re-homing and the Etsy Team Handmade4Hounds help raise money for a different one each month. Just search Team H4H to find their members' items for sale.
If you're thinking of re-homing a dog, consider a greyhound. They're very easy to care for and don't demand too much besides lots of cuddles, the occasional treat and perhaps your place on the sofa!
Further resources:
Handmade4Hounds Team Shop
Retired Greyhounds Trust
Many thanks to Kerry for telling us about this wonderful cause. Check out her items ($2 from every sale goes to the RGT) and her Etsy picks below.
Browse items for Pets on Etsy | Read More Posts In The UK Edition
Dries Buytaert: City of Athens using Drupal
The City of Athens has launched a new Drupal site to serve as its official website, along with a Drupal-based site at http://www.breathtakingathens.com/ that provides visitor and tourism information.
Athens is a large city (3.5 million residents and 6 million tourists each year), with a large tourism base due in part to its role in the 2004 Olympic Games. To support the city's needs, the site includes a large calendar of city events, a comprehensive map-based index of city services and interactive tools that allow citizens to access city resources. The site builds on Drupal's multilingual capabilities to provide information in both Greek and English.
Stella Power: Migrate module: migrating a node's taxonomy terms
One of the issues I encountered when migrating nodes to Drupal, using the migrate module, was that I couldn't associate nodes with more than one taxonomy term. Actually in this example, I'm migrating content from one Drupal database to another, so I'm going to assume everyone is already familiar with the database structure, specifically the node and term_node tables.
When I first started using the migrate module, I ran into a similar problem with migrating a user's roles. It's not possible to just create a Views relationship (aka LEFT JOIN) between the node and term_node tables using the node id. This will produce one row for each node and taxonomy combination, but the migrate module is only able to handle data sets that contain one row for each entity. With the above solution, I have more than one row for each node, which causes the migrate module to import the same node more than once, causing all sorts of problems.
Like with the user roles example before, we can overcome this by implementing a migrate hook, specifically hook_migrate_prepare_node().
Delicious Chrome Extension Early Beta Now Available
Bookmarking service Delicious has just rolled out a Google Chrome browser extension.
Like other Chrome extensions we love to play with, this one is lightweight, fast and useful. There's no bulky sidebar here. Bookmarks can be created and saved with a miniscule "TAG" button and they can be searched from Chrome's excellent omnibar. So, do you think this will prompt loyal Delicious users - many of whom had been holding out on Chrome in favor of Firefox - to switch to Google Chrome entirely?
This is what the button and simple form for bookmarking a page look like:
While this extension doesn't have all the bells and whistles of some of Delicious' other browser add-ons, the team noted that the public demand for a Chrome extension prompted them to release a beta earlier than they would have liked.
"It doesn't have all the API's needed and it's missing a good chunk of the functionality we believe it needs, but we're getting so many requests for the Chrome extension that we're going to make this available sooner than we originally planned...
"As soon as Chrome is able to support the functionality needed we'll ensure the features of this extension matches that of our other browser add-ons. There are still some interactions we're not quite happy with that we'll address shortly, but we wanted to give you an official Google Chrome extension as soon as possible."
What do you think? Does the new Delicious extension make you want to use Chrome more? Or if you're a Chrome fan, does this move give you a renewed interest in Delicious? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
DiscussOpen Thread: Should Social Media Experts Be Required to Know Their Tech?
Social media gurus: We all know one. If you're lucky, you know only one.
They are the attendees of tech parties, the "Twitter consultants," the armchair generals of the Internet, and their numbers grow by the day. Yet most of them couldn't distinguish a line of code from a badly punctuated haiku.tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/open_thread_should_social_media.php';tweetmeme_source = 'rww';
What's to be done with the social media experts? Accept that their blathering may contain some wisdom? Or require technical exams for all Twitter users with more than 1,000 followers? You decide! And make the NMDs among us take our "technical" quiz.
There is always grave danger when amateurs turn overnight into experts. This sub-professional clown town is where B movies and Soulja Boy come from. It's also the birthplace of every blowhard who tells you you're "doing it wrong" without any technical knowledge or original thought to back it up.
Sometimes, it's not such a bad thing - in fact, there are a great many non-technical social media folks who are doing a great job of creating quality content and helping brands get themselved situated on the Web. But most of the people I can think of who fit this description have been doing their thing for so long that they've had to pick up a few technical tidbits along the way to ensure their continued success and to ensure they weren't sounding like idiots.
However, I hold the strong opinion that if you're working in technology - even as a PR flak or social media consultant - you should be able to understand some of the terms, concepts and people that make your business possible. Otherwise, you risk your own reputation by taking the chance that you're scarily wrong or laughably vague, and you risk gumming up the works for your clients by not knowing how to communicate with their audience, many of whom are very technical folk.
Ultimately, taking the time and effort to understand the technology you use is simply a matter of taking pride in your work, just like the barista who knows all the ins and outs of the perfectly pulled free-trade organic espresso or the skilled sommelier who, though he may not make the wine himself, knows everything about who did and where and how.
Take this quick survey, my social media gurus. (Techies, don't take the survey; you'll skew the results.) If you can't work out the answers, you might be sounding like an idiot - I tell you this because I'm your friend and I care about you. And remember, when you cheat, you're only cheating yourself, so no Wikipedia for you.
Let me know in the comments what you think about the issue. Am I being an elitist prig? Did I not take my rant far enough? How much do you think a social media expert should know about tech? Would you work with someone who couldn't sail through this "technical" survey?
var PDF_surveyID = "0CB7279E686F7832";
var PDF_openText = "View Survey";
View Survey
Phonebooth Launches Free Google Voice Alternative for Startups and Small Businesses
Phonebooth.com, a VOIP service for individuals and small businesses, just launched a free version of its service. Phonebooth, just like Google Voice and Ribbit Mobile, provides its users with a free local phone number that can be forwarded to any cell phone and landline. Phonebooth also offers voicemail transcriptions. What makes it stand out from it competitors, however, is that it offers an auto attendant feature that allows you to route callers to different employees.
It's worth noting that Bandwidth.com, the company behind Phonebooth, has been providing infrastructure services to other VOIP services, including Voxeo and Yext, for more than three years. The company's VOIP network delivered almost 4 billion minutes in 2009. Bandwidth began a beta test of the paid version of Phonebooth.com last year and now has over 1,000 customers.
Features in Phonebooth's free version:
- Free local phone number for your business
- Includes an auto attendant (Press 1 for Sales, Press 2 for Support...etc.)
- Unlimited extensions for your employees or partners
- Read your voicemail, with VM-to-email & text transcription
- 200 free minutes of inbound calling (6¢ additional)
- Includes new Contact Us Plus feature
Starting today, Phonebooth will offer a free service geared towards individuals. The company also announced the general availability of its $20/month/user option, which offers a fully featured phone system in the cloud. One of the advantages of using Phonebooth over similar services like Google Voice or Grasshopper is that the company allows users to upgrade their phone system over time. Once your company outgrows Phonebooth's basic plan, you can easily switch to a higher-end phone system (Phonebooth on Demand) with hardware IP-based phones.
Phonebooth's users will be able to choose local numbers from virtually everywhere in the U.S. (the service us U.S.). Sadly, though, there is no way to make your Phonebooth number appear on the caller ID for outgoing calls from your landline or cell phone. Phonebooth doesn't currently offer any mobile apps, though the company told us earlier today that mobile apps are definitely on Phonebooth's roadmap.
Contact Plus WidgetIn addition to the free VOIP service, Phonebooth is also launching a new widget for small businesses - Contact Us Plus - that allows potential customers to use Phonebooth's VOIP service to initiate a call right from the website. In addition to initiating phone calls, the Phonebooth widget can also feature additional contact info (Twitter account, email etc.), as well as your address and a map. Phonebooth's users can also opt to show phone numbers for different departments in their company in the widget.
DiscussSXSW 2010 for Web Celeb Stalkers
A ReadWriteWeb Guide
OMG! Kevin Rose just touched my shirt!
Don't lie - we know you get butterflies at the thought of bumping into iJustine or Robert Scoble at a tech conference. We've pulled together a nice little cheat sheet just for you, friends. tweetmeme_url = 'http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sxsw_2010_for_web_celeb_stalkers.php';tweetmeme_source = 'rww';Whether you want a simple handshake, and autograph on your iPhone or a chance to pitch your idea for the Next Big Web App, here's ten places, panels and parties where you can track down the Internet famous at SXSW 2010. Don't forget to leave your tips in the comments!
This is part of a series of ReadWriteWeb guides to SXSW Interactive 2010. If this guide isn't your cup of tea, be sure to check back for more information soon!
<?php include('../includes/sxsw2010.php'); ?>Justine Ezarik, a.k.a. iJustine
Longtime lifestreaming queen iJustine is famously an Apple fangirl, but it's Intel that's giving you the key to tracking her down at SXSW. She's and Intel Insider, and she might be stopping by some of the Intel Insider events, like Frank Gruber's Johnny Cash party or Chris Heuer's Social Media Clubhouse. We don't have hard and fast details on Ezarik's whereabouts, but wherever she is, she'll probably be tweeting, so keep an eye on her Twitter accounts.
Pool may not be a household name in and of himself, but there's nary an Internet user who hasn't been in some way effected by the fun and foul play on 4chan. "4chan - often referred to as a 'meme factory' - has been responsible for the creation of countless Internet memes but is perhaps best known for its exploits. In this conversation, we'll explore the game mechanics of online communities. What fosters creativity in an online community? What design elements can we incorporate to increase interaction? How is the game played?"
In "How to Be Black," The Onion web editor and star of Popular Science's Future Of series Baratunde Thurston will "touch on the black online experience (if there is such a thing) included memes, statistics on usage patterns, popular destinations and issues of representation. For example, are black people as represented among the creators, developers and builders of our future or are we more consumer oriented than average?"
Our favorite sex blogger will be kicking off SXSW with a presentation on "How to Not Be a Douchebag at SXSW[...] Aimed at both first-time and long-time attendees to SXSW Interactive, this biting and humorous, yet useful panel takes a look at the common actions and behaviors to avoid if you don't want to be described as 'doing it wrong.'"
This year, the Digg founder returns to host Diggnation Live at Stubb's. The Bigg Digg Shindigg was certainly one of the largest events at SXSW 2009, with fans crowding around the large outdoor stage to take pictures and watch Rose shoot the Diggnation episode. But don't expect to meet the man himself unless you've got VIP status for the party.
In his talk, "ActivityStrea.ms: Is It Getting Streamy In Here?," Messina will explore the nuances of the real-time web. "From Facebook's newsfeed to Twitter's relentless real-time updates, the metaphor of the 'stream' has taken social networking beyond blog posts and on to rich social activities. Learn about ActivityStrea.ms - the open format adopted by Facebook, MySpace, and Windows Live - and how it's fundamentally changing the social web."
This young developer and successful entrepreneur will be hosting the Web Framework Battle Royale. "Which web framework will rule them all? As an audience member you pick the winner! We will present an introduction to a variety of web frameworks including Rails, Django, Catalyst and Sinatra. You can vote for the best web framework in categories such as URL handling, database integration, forms, HTML templating, documentation, testing and deployment."
The WineLibraryTV founder is a true Web guru and an inspiration to entrepreneurs and content creators around the globe. He'll be giving one of his signature, unforgettable presentations again this year as part of the Interactive Speakers Series.
Three years after his web app hit it big at SXSW 2007, Twitter co-founder Ev Williams takes the main stage to be interviewed by Havas Media Lab director Umair Haque in front of a live audience . All we have to say is that you'd better get there early if you don't want to get stuck watching a simulcast in an adjacent room!
A last-minute stand-in for Natali Del Conte at this event, BOL founder Wood has a fanbase of her own. "CNET's Buzz Out Loud will broadcast live from SXSW. While discussing the day's tech news, hosts Tom Merritt, Jason Howell, Molly Wood and others will chat with the audience and invite special guests to talk about what's happening at the show and beyond."
Bonus Round! If you stalk him on Twitter, Foursquare, Plancast and Gowalla, you might get to bump into Robert Scoble, as well. Or, you can catch him at the Rackspace party Monday evening. And of course, while we don't consider ourselves celebrities, the RWW crew will be present and accounted for at the PBS/NPR/RWW party Sunday night!
Those are our SXSW Interaction recommendations for web celeb stalkers of all stripes. If you've got suggestions or feedback, let us know in the comments! See you in Austin, folks!
DiscussGoogle Launches Apps Marketplace for the Enterprise
Google launched an application marketplace today comprised of services from third-party providers that integrate with the Google Apps ecosystem.
The news has been anticipated for some time. In particular, it shows how much Google is embracing open-standards and leveraging its search and Google Apps platform to attract third-party developers.
Google made the announcement at its Google Campfire One event tonight. The emphasis Google is putting on the enterprise is apparent in how much attention the company put into the event. Over and over we heard that Google passed the 25 million customer mark over the weekend.
It is that mark that Google is using as its hook for attracting developers to its platform. Developers will be charged $100 to join the program. With that entrance fee, they may add as many apps as they wish to the Google Apps Marketplace.
The marketplace supports OpenID to provide a single sign-on for developers. Authorization is integrated into the platform. The customers get access through OAuth, the open standard for authorizing users.
A "manifest page" is the foundation for the service. The developers provides information when adding the application to the marketplace that identifies it. Developers then provide additional information about the product.
The system is a controlled. Application developers submit the app for approval, which might take a few days.
Intuit provided an example of how the system works by showing how payroll could be managed. The customer accesses the account. With Google Apps integration, the customer accesses an account where they have the employee information. It's that collected contact network that is then integrated with the payroll application.
Atlassian showed how Studio, its project management application, would integrate with GMail and Google Apps. Again, if the company is standardized on Google Apps, the information is available through the network.
Manymoon is another project mangement application that was demonstrated. It uses Google Apps to develop features such as a calendar, showing how a startup can leverage Google Apps to add features to its service.
Other companies that were a part of the initial launch include Socialwok and Appirio.
At its core, the marketplace is built upon Google's search capabilities. Google Apps can be extended with applications. In turn, developers have access to the built-in capabilities of Google Apps.
Perhaps the greatest value to customers will be if they are centralized on Google Apps. If so, they can get some pretty powerful capabilities of the marketplace.
DiscussTwitter to Save Us From Ourselves & Phishing; More Is Needed to Make Innovation Safe & Viable
It never ceases to amaze me how many high-tech industry elites get ensnared in every Twitter phishing attack. (See our November story 7 High-Tech Twitter Users Who Fell for Phishing Scams) This evening Twitter announced that a new program will intercept links sent out by Direct Message and through email, checking to make sure they are safe. Phishing prevention is no small matter.
Twitter's is a good move but a lot more is needed all over the web. If we want a transactional developer ecosystem of distributed identity and portable user data, there are both user education and technical changes that need to be made.
I don't mean to be pedantic about this, but here's my take on the subject.
It's only because there is a big developer ecosystem creating interesting new services on top of our Twitter identities that any of us would ever consider logging in to Twitter while on another website. That ecosystem is great, and it's the kind of thing that an interconnected web that leverages portable user data would be filled with. But if user data is a form of currency and even people who are professional technology analysts (paid hundreds of dollars an hour for their technology advice - and many of these people are falling for Twitter phishing scams) - if even these people can't tell the difference between a good transaction and a bad one, then what does that say for the future of distributed developer ecosystems and data portability?
Apparently, though, fooling people these days into handing over their Twitter login through an unsafe transaction is like taking candy from a baby. It's really easy.
That's a failing of user education and of the design of distributed authentication transactions, isn't it? (Though it's tempting to blame the users who fall for it, it really is!)
Remember when debit and credit cards were first introduced and many people didn't trust them? Aren't you glad we figured out how to make that work? Similarly, we need a combination of user education (don't give out your credit card number to random people who call you on the phone) and practical measures - credit card transaction receipts have two copies, your copy is the one with the full number printed on it - take it with you. Little things like that and more made plastic a viable platform for commerce. Distributed online identity needs similar measures taken.
You know what also doesn't help? People who try to be helpful by urging users to not even click on phishing links. It's not like these are mysterious poisonous substances that will kill you if you touch them. Go ahead and click on them! Just don't give the resulting spoof pages your username and password. That's the problem!
It's early days in all of this and more moves like Twitter's tonight will be needed. For the good of user security but also for the good of all the innovation this web has the potential to deliver.
DiscussThere is No Perfect VP of Sales and Marketing
Sales and marketing are not the same thing. It's true they both deal with relationship management and it's true that neither of these job descriptions require hardcore engineering, but just because they're both in the realm of words over code does not mean that they are the same. At the risk of muddling your mind with HR jargon, the core competencies of a marketer are very different from those of a sales person. Surprisingly, many startup CEOs insist on hiring for a VP of Sales and Marketing position.
If you're the VP of sales and marketing for your company, this article is not about how you aren't doing your job properly. In fact, it's about how you're doing the job of two separate people and shouldn't be. Interwest investor Bruce Cleveland recently wrote an article entitled, In Search of the Mythical VP Sales and Marketing where he defines the separate domains of sales and marketing.
Says Cleveland, "Sales and Marketing are vastly different functions that require substantially different personalities, skills, and decades of experience to master...A CEO who doesn't understand this basic fact, or doesn't believe it, is not a CEO I want to invest in."
Explains Cleveland, a sales person understands the inner workings of B2B deal probabilities and the short term requirements to increase deal flow. Meanwhile, marketing people look at the landscape from a longterm perspective and lay the groundwork for sales through analyst, media and web leads generation. Essentially, sales people are great oral one-on-one communicators and marketers are great written mass communicators.
He writes, " I have found that the CEO who makes this serious mistake hasn't worked with someone who is an excellent Marketer and therefore discounts the role it plays." With expertise in the Software as a Service space, it's interesting that Cleveland believes the marketing role is the one that gets tacked on at the last minute. While sales offers obvious measurement through direct revenue generation, marketing tends to have a less clear set of metrics.
Cleveland explains that "today's head of Marketing must be an excellent demand creator (the "owner" of future revenue) through sales-ready leads." Essentially he believes that the marketer's job is to increase perceived value and generate demand on a massive scale in order to grease the wheels of the sales team.
DiscussJustin Miller: Drupal module: Advanced Comment Trigger
I have to admit that I've got it pretty good in the website spam department. The Mollom project, started by some of the same folks who started Drupal, uses content analysis to keep spam users from registering accounts on my site, leaving blog & forum comments, and using my site's contact form to spam me via email as well.
The only problem that I've really seen is the rise of spammers who will post blog comments containing text from the blog post itself, almost entirely unchanged, along with one or more links to their sites. Content-based analysis is of no use here, since the majority of the comment is actual text that I would want on my site -- after all, I blogged it!
Until now, I've been following all blog comments to my site via built-in RSS feeds, noticing spam comments some time after they were posted, and going back and deleting them. Drupal allows for comment moderation, but I want comments to go out there right away.
Pushing Back Against the Methane Tipping Point
A piece in the latest issue of Science shows that there's a considerable amount of methane (CH4) coming from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, where it had been trapped under the permafrost. There's as much coming out from one small section of the Arctic ocean as from all the rest of the oceans combined. This is officially Not Good.
Here's why: methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, significantly more powerful than carbon dioxide. There are billions of tons of methane trapped under the permafrost, and if that methane starts leaking quickly, it would have a strong feedback effect -- warming the atmosphere and oceans, causing more methane to leak, and on and on. The melting of methane ice (aka "methane hydrates" and "methane clathrates") is probably the most significant global warming tipping point event out there. If we see runaway methane from underneath the Siberian permafrost, we could see temperatures increasing far faster than even the most pessimistic CO2-driven scenarios -- perhaps as much as 8-10° C, very much into the global catastrophe realm. To put it in context: rapid methane releases have been implicated in extinction events in Earth's geologic past.
(Here's one piece of mitigating information: it's unclear how long this methane leak has been happening, or the degree to which the measured methane levels exceeds previous amounts. If we're lucky, this is actually a status quo situation, and we still have time before we reach a tipping point. But basing our strategy on "if we're lucky" is not very wise.)
Because of this tipping point/feedback process, a runaway methane melt won't stop on its own. When I've written before about desperation as a driver for the rapid (and risky) implementation of geoengineering, this is precisely the scenario I had in mind. If this news holds up, and if it can be shown that the methane leak is actually increasing, then I believe that we are certain to engage in geoengineering, and probably will do so before we have enough good models and studies to suss out any unwanted consequences. We'd be faced with a choice between guaranteed catastrophe or terrible uncertainty.
We'd probably try every geoengineering option available in the event of a methane runaway, but the one that most people would focus on would be the temperature management strategies: stratospheric sulfate injection, seawater cloud brightening, and (unlikely to happen but certain to get a lot of media attention) orbiting reflectors. But there's one more method we should consider. Understanding its potential requires a bit of science talk.
I noted earlier that methane is a "significantly more powerful" greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. More specifically, it's at least 21 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO2; some reports (such as the first piece I linked to above) cite it as 30x stronger, and I've been seen as much as 72x stronger. The difference comes from how the effect is measured over time -- methane and carbon dioxide leave the atmosphere at very different speeds. Although CO2 takes upwards of a century to cycle out naturally, methane takes only about ten years. Why the difference? Chemical processes in the atmosphere break down CH4 (in combination with oxygen) into CO2+H2O -- carbon dioxide and water. In addition, certain bacteria -- known as methanotrophs -- actually consume methane, with the same chemical results. These processes have their limits, however; an abundance of methane in the atmosphere can overwhelm the oxidation chemistry, making the methane stick around for longer than the typical 8-10 years, and the commonplace methanotrophic bacteria evolved in an environment where methane emerges gradually.
These are pretty much the only two natural methane "sinks." There are a few small-scale human processes that can make use of methane (for the production of methanol for fuel, for example) and function as artificial sinks, but such efforts would be hard-pressed to capture methane released across two million square kilometers. So here's where we start to think big.
Both of the natural processes are, in principle, amenable to human intervention. The oxidation of methane into CO2 and water is a well-understood phenomenon, and relies on the presence of OH (hydroxyl radical); upwards of 90% of lower atmosphere methane is oxidized through this process (PDF). But OH is something of a problem chemical, in that it's also a key oxidation agent for many atmospheric pollutants, such as carbon monoxide and NOx. Although we could produce OH to enhance the natural chemical oxidation process, the side-effects of pumping enough OH into the atmosphere to oxidize all of that methane would be unpredictable, but almost certainly quite bad.
So what about methanotrophic bacteria? Such bacteria have long been recognized in freshwater areas and soil, and have had limited use in bioremediation efforts. Methanotrophic Archaea -- similar to bacteria, but a wholly different kingdom of organism -- were recently identified in the oceans; research suggests that methanotrophic Archaea may be responsible for the oxidation of up to 80% of the methane in the oceans. Methanotrophic microbes can also be temperature extremophiles, as they were among the various species found after the Larsen B ice shelf collapsed.
We recently began to learn much more about how methanotrophic bacteria function, as a team from the Institute for Genomic Research sequenced the genome of the methanotroph Methylococcus capsulatus. The scientists discovered that Methylococcus has the genomic capacity to adapt to a far wider set of environments than it is currently found in. They also looked at the possibility of enhancing the microbe's ability to oxidize methane, although admittedly for purposes other than straight methane consumption.
So here's the proposal: we need to deploy methanotrophic microbes at the East Siberian Ice Shelf. Methanotrophic Archaea appears to be best-suited for this task, but we don't know as much about them as we do about bacteria. If we need to modify the microbes (to consume methane more quickly, for example), we may need to work on Methylococcus bacteria, making them viable in extremely cold seawater. I suspect that working with the Archaea will probably be sufficient, but it's important to think ahead about different pathways. Either way, we should consider just how we could make use of methanotrophs to avoid a methane-melt disaster. Given the size of the region, we'll need lots of them, but that's one advantage of biology over straight chemistry: the methanotrophs would be reproducing themselves.
We need to be aware of possible unintended consequences, but at this point, it's not clear how additional methanotrophs would pose a larger risk; moreover, a mass of methanotrophic organisms would undoubtedly be helpful for reducing overall atmospheric methane beyond the Siberian release. Nonetheless, there are some crucial questions we need to answer before we could consider deploying natural or GMO methanotrophs:
If the frozen methane in the Siberian ocean is melting faster, our options are extremely limited. We'd no longer be in a position to stop the melting, even by ceasing all greenhouse gas production today; the temperature increases we're seeing now are the results of greenhouse gases put into the atmosphere decades ago. And when methane melts, it appears to do so quickly -- there are signs that past methane clathrate events took less than a human lifetime.
This is why I think that methane melt would inevitably mean geoengineering. But if this is the case, the pathway I suggest here may be the best option. The engineering options are enhancements of common natural processes, as opposed to something that emulates extreme conditions (such as sulfate injection). At least with current understanding, there would be few downsides to a greater-than-expected growth of the methanotroph population -- it might even be helpful in mitigating atmospheric methane coming from other sources, such as cattle.
A further advantage is that this is a process that could begin after we start to see significant methane output and could still have a measurably positive result. Using microbes for bio-"scrubbing" of methane from the atmosphere would work on methane that was a decade old as readily as methane fresh from the permafrost. We'd still see some effect from the methane that makes it to the atmosphere, but eventual removal would help to reduce that effect. This means that we still have time to get more certainty about the methane situation before we would need to use the methanotroph option; we don't necessarily have to rush past our better judgment in response. With a process of this magnitude, it's worth taking the time to get it right.
If we are seeing the beginning of a runaway methane melt, we would be facing a problem of a scale with few precedents in human history. No society on the planet would be unaffected; if left unmitigated, it would continue to affect the lives of our children, and our children's children, and generations beyond that. And remember, this is a fast process -- simply pushing a bit harder to reduce carbon emissions will do nothing to stop it.
Our choices are few, and the risk of not acting is (potentially) immense. We may well be on the brink of a new era in planetary management. Let's hope we're up to the challenge.
(Some of this essay reproduces text from my initial methanotroph proposal on Worldchanging back in 2005. At that point, it was speculation -- now, it's something we need to seriously consider.)
This piece originally appeared on Open the Future
Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!
(Posted by Jamais Cascio in Features at 2:24 PM)
Veil Lifts Slightly on Apple’s Secret Plan to Control the Universe
The recently unveiled secret agreement that Apple makes iPhone developers sign supports what many have suspected all along: Apple is trying to control the universe.
Much has been written anecdotally about the Apple app-approval process, with the words “arcane” and “Kafkaesque” coming up a lot. But the letter (and crimping spirit) of the agreement was a matter of pure speculation until the Electronic Frontier Foundation had the clever idea of making one developer an offer he couldn’t refuse.
That developer was NASA — a government agency that can’t exactly keep all the secrets it might want to — and the offer was really a demand under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is a nonprofit organization that defends free speech, privacy, innovation and consumer rights. Senior staff attorney Fred von Lohmann used an FOIA request to compel NASA to release Apple’s nondisclosure agreement for iPhone developers. Apple forces developers to sign the NDA before they can access the software development kit for the iPhone OS, which also powers the iPad.
Apple is possibly one of the most tight-lipped companies on the planet, so glimpses like this into its inner workings are rare. Making matters worse, the agreement itself bars developers from making “public statements” about the agreement’s terms, so without this confluence of events, it may never have come to light. As Wired.com’s Dylan Tweney tweeted, “The first rule of the iPhone developer program is: You do not talk about the iPhone developer program.”
A full recounting of the contract is reported by Gadget Lab’s Brian X. Chen. Judging from the March 17, 2009, revision of the agreement (.pdf), Apple’s treatment of app developers doesn’t come near putting them in a virtual sweatshop, and indeed, some of them should probably thank Apple for creating the platform that made them rich.
That said, Apple exerts total control over which programs are allowed to run on the iPhone OS run by the iPhone, iPod Touch and the upcoming iPad, from the early development stage all the way to the marketplace. As I pondered last week, “Who would have thought that in 2010 everyone would be so excited about a computer that only runs software approved by its manufacturer?”
The iPod was a music player, but an iPad is a computer. As Apple migrates its App Store model from MP3 players and cellphones onto a computing platform that for some, could replace a laptop, the company’s rules about what those app developers can and can’t do are coming under increasing scrutiny. Just think about what would happen if Microsoft were to demand such authority over the software that runs on its tablet PCs. One can only imagine the backlash.
With the iPad, however, many seem willing to lock themselves in a walled garden of approved software and throw away the key. (Yes, we know, you can jailbreak the iPhone OS and install whatever you want, but that comes with its own set of trade-offs.)
Terms of service often bar signatories from all sorts of normal-seeming behavior, so the non-lawyers among us should take these with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, Apple’s choice to sell devices that only run approved software, and only software sold in its own store, could ultimately make people wonder whether the cameras in the company’s infamous “1984″ commercial may have been pointed in the wrong direction.
See Also:
- Apple Change Quietly Makes iPhone, iPad Into Web Phones
- Google’s ‘Don’t Be Evil’ Mantra is ‘Bullshit,’ Adobe Is Lazy: Apple’s Steve Jobs
- Apple Adds and Removes ‘Explicit’ Category from App Store
- Apple Explains Semi-Ban of Sex Apps
- Apple’s Next Revolutionary Product: iTunes
- Apple Tablet Will Likely Support 2 Kinds of Apps
Lullabot: Which Simpsons character best represents the Drupal community?
In preparation for the Bringing it All Back Home: CMS Communities panel at SXSW, which I'll be speaking at on Saturday, I posed the following question on Twitter and in #drupal:
Which Simpsons character best represents the #Drupal community and why?
And the winner, in terms of number of responses, was...
- Thinks she has all the answers to save the world but is so pathetically naive she never will. Yet you love her anyway. - TheRealCrell
- Underestimated, Intelligent, resourceful. With a wonderful singing voice. - bear_feet
- She is open minded and usually diplomatic :) - JCL324
- Logical, but not so popular. - DaftNinja
And here were the others. Feel free to comment too with your own. :)
