Posts tagged with "Technology"
Information everywhere: Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry demo SixthSense
By Ari | Feb 2, 10 08:30 PM
More: Film and Video | Technology
Meteor over Gauteng, South Africa
By Ari | Dec 1, 09 07:56 PM
More: Environment | Film and Video | Technology
Fresh off the Wordpress: Frac Attack
By Ari | Nov 28, 09 10:31 AM
I'm sure Shira will post something more detailed later, but I'm excited about a new Wordpress site we just set up yesterday, so I'll write about the tech for now!
Frac Attack: Dawn of the Watershed is up at fracattackthemovie.com. It's an evolving site (the About page hasn't been made yet, for example!), so keep checking it if you want to see it grow. We'll be adding production info, credits and thank-yous, press coverage, and, after our world premiere at Cinemapolis on Dec. 10, the film itself, so people can watch the whole thing online anytime. It is, after all, an advocacy video, and we believe in free culture. This whole project is about getting the word out about natural gas drilling so we can protect New York state!
We set the whole thing up yesterday. We've been doing more and more Wordpress sites for clients and I wanted to do one for us and see how long it would take to put up something attractive and functional. Here are the features of this little site, built in one day:
- It makes use of a partnership with a local, related advocacy organization (Shaleshock; I update their website, among other things) to provide maintenance-free Take Action and background info links.
- This site has AddThis social bookmarking and send-to-friend functionality, and is already collecting stats via Google Analytics. We're also using a Facebook fan page and event listings (which we link to liberally) to help people get the word out about the film on Facebook.
- It's serving up a trailer hosted on social networking sites, saving us bandwidth and providing a range of online viewing options.
- Graphics, and the template itself, have been designed to not need updating: The left sidebar auto-updates as authors blog and add links and pages. The right sidebar is designed to not need any updates while sending traffic exactly where it's needed, though its auto-updating Flickr badge showing photos from the production (and soon, our Premiere, and house screenings!), which keeps it feeling fresh.
- Applying our ethics to our tech choices, we chose the free, open-source Wordpress, which I installed on our MayFirst hosting account. (MayFirst is an affordable membership-based tech organization that's a great hosting solution for progressive folks with a lot of websites.)
- To save on labor time (and, if this were for a client, costs), we used a free Wordpress theme by Eric Crooks, slapped a header on it that echoes our poster design (thanks to Joe Fisher for the amazing photography!), changed up the colors and fonts a bit to work with the film's look and feel, and put most of our efforts into careful content creation, fleshing out the site with essential pages and carefully-chosen, useful sidebar links. A few hours later: Presto, a website. Hardly any coding to speak of. We ♥ Wordpress.
More: Activism | Art and Design | Economics | Education | Environment | Human Rights | Media | Oppression | People we know | Technology | What we're up to | Work
Please help stop natural gas drilling
By Ari | Nov 21, 09 08:11 AM
Please take action now to help stop natural gas drilling in New York State. We need support. Thank you!
More: Activism | Economics | Environment | Human Rights | Politics | Technology
Popo-chan (Thank you, Flickr)
By Ari | Nov 5, 09 04:58 PM
Popo-chan, via Flickr - thanks cjPanda( LMB )!
More: Animals | Art and Design | Technology
Greening "Away We Go" and the Fun Theory
By Shira | Oct 30, 09 10:34 AM
More: Activism | Art and Design | Environment | Film and Video | Music and Audio | Technology
HappyCommunity by Apak
By Ari | Oct 7, 09 08:49 PM
They've posted lots of new stuff on Flickr, check it out.
More: Art and Design | Housing | Photography | Technology
Sometimes the Dalai Lama sounds like Buckminster Fuller
By Ari | Sep 24, 09 09:20 AM
One of the most powerful visions I have experienced was the first photograph of the earth from outer space. The image of blue planet floating in deep space, glowing like the full mood on a clear night, brought home powerfully to me the recognition that we are indeed all members of a single family sharing one little home. I was flooded with the feeling of how ridiculous are the various disagreements and squabbles within the human family. I saw how futile it is to cling so tenaciously to the differences that divide us. From this perspective one feels the fragility, the vulnerability of our planet and its limited occupation of a small orbit sandwiched between Venus and Mars in the vast infinity of space. If we do not look after this home, what else are we charged to do on this earth?- Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, in The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality
More: Books and Writing | Human Rights | Politics | Technology
New sites, new photos, new art
By Ari | Aug 14, 09 01:51 PM
Some recent work and updates:
The Amazing Hope Machine - a site about our friend Max's theatre work, with art by Matthew Duncan
Vintage Lucy - my mom's new vintage clothing shop; she's moving on from eBay. It's all used clothes, so it's good for the environment, and it has a vegan section, too!
Fundamentally Wrong - just started this blog about people doing messed up things in the name of god and religion
Lots of new art and photography and videos on Flickr
I've been blogging for freeDimensional
I post a lot of links and timely stuff (Ithaca and NYC events etc.) on Facebook and Twitter
And Shira and I have been posting a lot of great links on Delicious
Peace!
More: Activism | Art and Design | Photography | Technology | What we're up to | Work
fD Outreach: Wasan Retreat 2009
By Ari | Aug 5, 09 04:15 PM
We used Flickr and other social media including the Ning I set up for fD to record the happening, and to digest all we learned there so that it will be of use to a wider audience. Over time we'll be posting more and more videos and texts, but even now, you can see photos, videos, info on the amazing people who were there, and other coverage online. Check it out and join the Ning if you too care about free expression and the power of culture to change the world!
More: Activism | Art and Design | Film and Video | Human Rights | Media | Oppression | People we know | Photography | Politics | Technology | What we're up to | Work
Water catchment system for rain collection and filtration (video)
By Ari | Jul 30, 09 04:48 PM
Thanks, Sean! Via Share Tompkins.
More: Activism | Economics | Education | Environment | Film and Video | Technology
Ed Begley has a forum on Treehugger!
By Ari | Jul 20, 09 06:27 PM
I don't know how long it's been there or if I'm the last one to find it, but
Ed Begley has a forum on Treehugger, and I love Ed Begley, so I had to blog about it. Not really sure how often he goes there himself (it looks like a team of moderators is helping to get his voice in there, but doing a lot of the work themselves), but it's cool that it's there! Check out this thread about how Ed went vegan, then started eating salmons, and then went vegan again. Good stuff!
More: Animals | Education | Environment | Technology
Summer sci fi: An AI arms race and an elevator to space
By Ari | Jul 15, 09 04:31 PM
The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke
I'm a fan of Buckminster Fuller's world-changingly-big ideas for future human housing and transportation, so this book was right up my alley. Arthur C. Clarke tells the story of the construction of a "space elevator" and couches his suspenseful, fun narrative in a rich, invented history that has so many parallels to our own it's positively believable. Clarke seems to fall in the atheist camp, but the story playing with the "Tower of Babel" concept and the idea that engineering projects of this scale bring us into conflict with the gods - whether we've invented the gods, or they invented us.
Peace on Earth by Stanisław Lem
Lem's story of the arms race crossed with artificial intelligence is a wry, witty, imaginative page-turner that brings us from a futuristic earth to the surface of the moon, where fantastical robots baffle the narrator with their technological innovations. The characters aren't very likable but they're very funny and well-written; the ending fell a little flat but was ultimately satisfying.
More: Books and Writing | Economics | Technology
Tesla's beloved pigeon
By Ari | Jul 10, 09 10:00 PM
Today is Nikola Tesla's birthday. Look, he had a pigeon friend:
Tesla had been feeding pigeons for years. Among them, there was a very beautiful female white pigeon with light gray tips on its wings that seemed to follow him everywhere. A great deal of rapport developed between them. As Tesla confessed, he loved that pigeon: "Yes, I loved that pigeon, I loved her as a man loves a woman, and she loved me." If the pigeon became ill, he would nurse her back to health and as long as she needed him and he could have her, nothing else mattered and there was purpose in his life.
More: Animals | Technology
Fresh websites, hot off the Wordpress
By Ari | Jun 19, 09 10:04 AM
Recently I've made the switch to Wordpress, where I used to use Movable Type. I like that they've been committed to Open Source from day one, whereas Six Apart, the company that makes MT, has always seemed more profit-driven to me. I was shocked at how easy WP is to install, and at how deliciously comfortable it is to use. I'm able to search for, install, and configure plug-ins from within the WP admin area. Same with themes.
Many of the folks we work with are on a very tight budget, or have no funding at all, so being able to create an inexpensive or free site very quickly is something I've been wanting to learn to do for a long time. With WP, I can make a beautiful site that anyone can keep up-to-date in just a few hours. Finally.
What this has meant is that suddenly I'm able to do much more work for many more people, much more quickly. Here are a few recent sites I've made or worked on. These folks are really cool, visit their sites to find out more about them!
- Service Women's Action Network - SWAN needed a new logo as well as a new site that they could update easily and use to reach out to potential funders. This site is the result - it features a Vertical Response mailing list, Google Analytics and AddThis sharing. Before it was even online they were talking to Congress with their new logo printed on new business cards. Go SWAN!
- Using Their Words - This site is an activist effort by a woman we've worked with over at NYCORe. I initially helped her polish a Google Site and created this new illustrated header for her. Then we found out that her radical web host, MayFirst (to whom Shirari Industries is now migrating!) wouldn't even support her domain pointing to Google, since they're so commercial. So we moved the site onto their server and installed WP. I set up the front page to look less bloggy since the site's primary function is serving up radical curricula - and I used tags and categories to help visitors find the kind of lesson plans they're looking for.
- AEI Convergence 2009 - This site was particularly fun because it was a barter! In exchange for making my friend Emily's logo and putting together this quick WP, I got my bike fixed and she and Shira and I had a lovely meal together that she cooked and brought over one day. I love the little site, too - it's simple but it does what she needs it to do, and she can keep it updated easily, herself. And what a cool convergence she's planning! I love the photos she's adding to the site.
- Share Tompkins - This one was particularly fun because I wrote the resources page, too. Well, the first edition. Now others have been invited in and hopefully the page will grow and evolve. The site is made using the free, hosted version of WP, in keeping with the Share Tompkins ethos of making life more sustainable and affordable through sharing resources. Using the free version of WP gives us less control over the site's appearance and functionality, but the important thing is to get this content out and usable - not to have it be 100% beautiful and customized. That might come later - this is only the beginning for this fledgling mutual aid network. Our friends Jason and Joe are working on an even more useful sister site, where members of the network will be able to list haves and wants, to facilitate easier sharing and bartering. In the meantime, folks can check out the many trade networks listed on the resources page, or they can come to our community swap meets.
- freeDimensional - This site is still evolving, and has made some real progress lately! It's the only one here that's not a WP site - I built the splash page with some simple HTML, and the rest of the site is a Ning. Shira and I are very organizationally involved with these folks - we're both on their steering committee and we may soon have staff titles. Not sure - it's a horizontal network, and we're still discussing as a group how to best handle roles and responsibilities. But what all of this involvement means is that Shira and I have been intimately involved not only in the visual design of the site, but in creating the content on it, and even in making the organizational decisions that go into how the network presents itself and how it functions. It's an exciting process, with all of us volunteers and freelancers and staff people figuring out how to share power and how to talk about it. Mad props to Tricia Wang for her feedback on the site - I think we're making more and more sense, and becoming more and more easily navigable and comprehensible, and useful to everyone in the network that depends on the site.
That's it for now! Many more sites are currently in the works, and I'll share them when they're complete. Also on the table is a massive overhaul of this site right here, Shirari Industries. We're experimenting with a very new, flexible, open-feeling site navigation that we hope will be easier for us to keep up to date, and which will give a much better idea of all of our current projects. If there's anything you want us to keep or change or add as we do our redesign, please leave a comment with your ideas! We'd love to hear from you.
More: Activism | Art and Design | People we know | Technology | What we're up to | Work
Stuff going on in Ithaca
By Ari | Jun 12, 09 12:37 PM
I just made two Google Calendars, for Ithaca events and for Ithaca Freeskool. Both are pretty empty right now because I'm hoping the folks I invited in start adding their own stuff - I didn't want to do the fun, easy part.
I hope that having collaborative, public calendars will help us all to avoid conflicts when scheduling stuff - and that this could be a useful place for progressives to post stuff, a one-stop shop. Right now it's hard to stay on top of all the progressive stuff happening in Ithaca - what calendar should you subscribe to, where do you look? Everyone has their own calendar but it's hard to find it all in one place. So maybe Ithacalendar can fill that gap. Thanks to everyone who thought of it last night at Shira's DIY filmmaking class!
If anyone wants to be an editor on either or both of the calendars, and if I haven't yet invited you (sorry, I'm doing this rather haphazardly, any omitted invites are not meant to be slights!), please let me know and I'll get you access.
More: Activism | Happenings | Technology | What we're up to
Waterboard torture memo set to music
By Ari | Apr 23, 09 05:55 PM
More: Activism | Film and Video | Human Rights | Oppression | Politics | Technology
Some good books: DIY media labs and culture, environmental sci fi, the origins of aggression, and tantric buddhism
By Ari | Apr 20, 09 09:13 AM
Grow Your Own Media Lab by James Wallbank
My review
I found this book tremendously inspiring and challenging, and hope that others who are interested in technology and communities give it a read. It's an accessible and engaging short howto to making technology more accessible to people regardless of class and abilities. It helped me to see the importance of embracing free and open-source software, and the huge potential of dumpster diving and recycling for meeting people's technology needs economically and in an environmentally sustainable way. It also helped me understand that the key to empowering tech users is not detailed instructions, but rather, to serve as a facilitator of their interaction with technology as they learn how to educate themselves and solve their own problems - basically, teaching others the value of the DIY ethic.
The Wounded Planet by Roger Elwood
My review
Awesome different ideas about the future, written from an early 1970s viewpoint. Scary to see how little has changed about our behavior, especially considering how much has changed about our understanding of our impact on our environment.
On Aggression by Konrad Lorenz
My review
This book, though it's very pre-identity politics, had a lot of excellent takeaways for me, as a peace activist. It shows how human behavior and animal behavior (humans being animals) reveal patterns that can help us understand how to break free of self-destructive and socially-destructive behaviors like war.
Introduction to Tantra: A Vision of Totality by Lama Yeshe
My review
This book is written in an engaging style which is meant to approximate the voice of influential Lama Yeshe, who died in the late 1980s and was reincarnated to parents in Spain. The text explains how someone can use tantric (Tibetan) buddhism to reach enlightenment efficiently, which theoretically will allow you to, like Lama Yeshe, control the process of dying and rebirth so that you can help others and create a more compassionate world. It includes detailed descriptions of meditations and other exercises one can do in this pursuit, and serves as an overview of the first stages of tantric practice, encouraging readers to find a Lama they like so they can pursue further study in community.
Personally, I enjoyed the style and content and found the ideas very intriguing - but I shy away from organized religion and power hierarchies, and tantra as outlined here does seem to depend on such things. It also seems somewhat heterosexist. I hear that not all followers follow plans like Lama Yeshe's to the letter, though he does speak with such an authoritative voice that one would think that his plan is the tried and true method to attain enlightenment.
These criticisms aside, I did love reading the book, and felt many of the techniques outlined in it really are useful and do contribute to the practitioner's experience of bliss and wisdom.
Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity by Anne Elizabeth Moore
My review
This book made me reevaluate my relationship with money and has challenged me to figure out how to make a living while really retaining my integrity as a culture worker. I mean, I've been working on that for years, but the author of this book and the many interesting people she interviewed are helping me see that I could go even farther. Good stuff - and an excellent primer on the punk movement, as well as on street art's evolving relationship with commerce.
More: Activism | Art and Design | Books and Writing | Economics | Environment | Human Rights | Technology
Flutter - Satire Is Fun!
By Shira | Apr 7, 09 01:24 PM
This really gets at the ridiculousness of Twitter, a website that I have thus far managed to steer clear of...
(And yes, I know that Twitter is great for all kinds of reasons, I just can't spend any more time online or I will explode.)
More: Film and Video | Media | Technology
"You are brilliant and the world is hiring!" – Paul Hawken
By Shira | Jan 14, 09 07:21 PM
Here is first part of Alex Steffen's keynote at the Hazel Wolf Environmental Film Festival. You can watch the rest at Worldchanging. I especially like when he talks about transportation and mutual-aid. Good stuff!
More: Activism | Economics | Environment | Film and Video | Housing | Technology
freeDimensional: Birthing a web 2.0 child
By Ari | Jan 12, 09 06:44 PM
I hope executive director Todd Lester of freeDimensional doesn't mind if I quote him with the title of my post here, but this is how he described the collaborative experience of launching fD's new site this weekend, and I think it's particularly apt: We all birthed a web 2.0 child. You can go meet it here: freeDimensional.org.
freeDimensional is an organically-growing, partnership-based organization that links activist culture workers (journalists, artists, writers, and the like) who are facing repression and censorship with support services, including safe haven placements in artist residency programs. The power of the organization is in its social networks around the globe. These programs, these services, these people, are all out there - the challenge is only to connect everyone so we can all engage more effectively in mutual aid.
I met Todd way back at the end of 2005, through Shira and their work around the Media That Matters Film Festival. He needed a site, and at the time, I remember seeing that they'd need something much more interactive in the future, but that for now, I could make a small, informational site to give them a web presence while they built their organization. For a long time I thought that in the future we'd hire some big web design firm to come in and create some perfect glittering website for them that would magically fulfill all of their many needs.
In the interim, I had a bit of an awakening about the internet, via my understanding of web 2.0 (collaborative, online) technologies. The internet can be an extension of our physical lives, a way for us to transcend space and time. Our blogs and Flickr photostreams and Tweets and Delicious links and Facebook updates are extensions of and aids to our imperfect human memories. Email and messaging and Skype and the like allow us to connect with each other across great distances, often instantly. We're all learning how to use the internet most effectively to meet these great needs, and in the process, I believe we're gradually realizing our commonality, and creating new solutions to age-old problems that formerly seemed unsolvable. (I have a theory about web 3.0. If anyone reads this and is interested, comment and I'll write about it!!)
So when fD finally outgrew their little site and was ready for something new and more useful, Shira and I were ready to craft a solution for them. It was time for them to clarify what they were all about, explain it well, and then provide an online platform for the incredible social networking that had been happening in the real world. fD was ready to go web 2.0.
Shira made a short video intro for them and helped them rework and refine their mission statement and other organizational copy. I helped them look at their many technology options and to select free services that will allow them to grow and extend their reach with minimal cash outlays. The site is built on the Ning custom social networking platform (the free version for now). We're transitioning the mailing list to Vertical Response and their lovely nearly-free non-profit program. Shira chose the beautifully high-res-capable video service Vimeo to host fD's intro video. We integrated Twitter, Flickr and YouTube feeds into the site. We'd settled on Network for Good to collect donations a while back. fD also has accounts on other social networking sites, which we've been using to meet and collaborate with even more people around the world.
These free and low-cost services have limitations - you're fitting your own complex self into a sometimes-imperfect template, and you don't have the same level of control over your content that you'd have if you were hosting the whole thing on your own server. However, they make an extraordinary array of sophisticated communications features accessible to organizations that don't have tens of thousands of dollars to drop on a new custom-crafted interactive site every few years. The internet is changing so fast that production cannot keep up with the technology if we follow old models of design and interaction. This solution can and will grow and evolve, flexibly adapting to and taking advantage of new technologies as they come.
This project would not have been possible if Shira and I, or fD, worked in a more mainstream and less openly collaborative way. Shira's and my cooperative approach to design problems and fD's trust and willingness to experiment made for a very organic design and production process that drew on the strengths and knowledge of everyone involved. This web 2.0 child we've birthed together reflects that process, and is stronger for it.
freeDimensional.org »
More: Activism | Art and Design | Books and Writing | Film and Video | Human Rights | Media | Oppression | People we know | Technology | What we're up to | Work
More Do Not Leave Unattended
By Ari | Dec 12, 08 09:43 PM
A while ago I wrote about a collaborative notebook project, Do Not Leave Unattended! We were lucky enough to get one of Jude's first notebooks; I passed it onto Shira, and then she passed it onto Angela. She wrote about it and you can see it at Do Not Leave Unattended! It is pretty awesome. I found it really moving.
Previously:
Do Not Leave Unattended: Dispatches from Ithaca
Do Not Leave Unattended!: New design launched
More: Art and Design | Books and Writing | Oppression | Politics | Technology
Cool folks we're working with in Ithaca: Ithaca-Area Vegan Meetup Group and Shaleshock
By Ari | Dec 2, 08 03:05 PM
Are you in the Ithaca area, and either vegan or vegan-curious? Come check out the Ithaca-Area Vegan Meetup Group - we have a weekly coffee and tea hour at Autumn Leaves Cafe, 3pm on Sundays. Lately folks have been talking activism, which is awesome! Come over and get involved if you're in town and love animals. Whoo! If you want to help promote, here are handbills and a poster. (Designed by me.)
Another project Shira and I have been participating in is Shaleshock - the site was hacked before we arrived in town and so they haven't had a very good online presence. We're helping to get content up there and organized. It's my first time working with WordPress (I'm usually a Movable Type girl), and it's a lot of fun. Big thanks to Joe for setting this thing up!
More: Activism | Animals | Art and Design | Environment | Happenings | Oppression | People we know | Technology | What we're up to
"The role of trust in high tech work- The case of Freelance Web-Designers in NYC"
By Ari | Nov 10, 08 03:36 PM
A while back I participated in a study by a Columbia sociology student named Matthias Thiemann, who has written a 120 page thesis in German based on his research. He's translated a four-page section of it which may be published as a chapter in an upcoming book, which I really got a kick out of and wanted to share here: The role of trust in high tech work- The case of Freelance Web-Designers in NYC (PDF)
Some highlights that I really identify with (and I guess I should, since I was part of the sample):
In sending away clients to cheaper, better suited competitors or building little devices free of charge, freelancers establish a reputation of putting the clients’ welfare first, generating trust. Such acts of gift-giving then can lead to overcome the volatility of market-demand by generating referral networks for the freelancer and binding the gift-recipients for the long term.I totally do this! I learned this from Tekserve, where I first worked when we moved to NYC - and it's not something I do to get something out of people, with the expectation of returns. I do it because, like Tekserve, I care about the people I'm working with, and about their projects, and if I can do something that's perhaps small and easy for me, but of great value to my clients, I'll do it in a heartbeat. This is also why Shira and I sometimes refer clients to other designers - if we know someone who can do a given job better or more economically for some reason, we pass it on, because it's in our client's interest. And rather than losing us clients, often those same clients come back because they know we did them a good turn.
In the sample, the more successful freelancers deserve special attention to the communication process, attempting to include the wishes of the customers and providing them with the feeling that they are in command. This strategy does not only bind their clients to them and leads to several referrals due to the pleasant process of cooperation, it is also a lucrative strategy in itself. The increased trust into the interaction partner seems to arouse the desire to actively engage in the process of production. This not only increases the satisfaction with the final product, it also increases the amount of work time spent on a project which adds to the income of the designer.Here too, we don't use this strategy so we'll spend more time and make more money, though of course those are nice side effects which do happen on some projects. Shira and I treat every design job not as merely a service for pay, but as a cooperative partnership - we specialize in helping to give form and reach to our clients' ideas. The result is that the client is usually very, very happy with the product, and the product is very, very useful to them. We do give advice and make calls as designers, because we often have a deeper understanding of communications strategy and visual design principles than do our clients (which is, after all, why they hire us), but we don't steamroll our clients into accepting things they don't dig. We like to work with people to make things they love, and which will last. It's good for the client, and Matthias's study is helping me see how good it is for us, too.
Click here to read the paper, and let me know if you too are a web designer who'd like to talk to Matthias. His research goes on...
More: Activism | Art and Design | Books and Writing | Economics | Technology | What we're up to | Work
Lynn Love Thinks: Ari's mom's new blog!
By Ari | Oct 21, 08 09:52 AM
She's an awesome mom because she always treated us kids as her equals, allowing us room to grow into our own people. I've always thought of her as one of my best friends; she's someone I can learn from and who is willing to learn in turn. Now I'm happy to call her a fellow blogger! She's just begun her own blog, Lynn Love Thinks, where she's writing about the books she reads, progressive politics and social change, art and craft and collecting, and spirituality.
Fun fact: The name of the blog uses her middle name rather than her last name. "Love" was her mother's middle name, and Mary gave it to Lynn, and Lynn gave it to me. It's not a hippie thing (though my mom was a hippie!), but an old Swedish thing, I guess.
Check it out and comment on a post to give her some encouragement - she's new to blogging and I want to keep her at it!
Lynn Love Thinks
More: Family | People we know | Technology
Cool vegan travellers
By Ari | Oct 15, 08 02:04 PM
You can follow their odyssey on their blog, and here's a link to their Flickr photoset about the bus.
More: Activism | Environment | Family | People we know | Technology
Goodbye NYC Flickr...
By Ari | Oct 3, 08 06:48 PM
I'm paring down the many groups (305!) I'm in on Flickr and I've just realized I should say goodbye to the NYC-specific groups I likely won't have many submissions for, at least not until we visit one day. So sad! I really liked a lot of them so I thought I'd post them here, in case anyone out there is also on Flickr, and wants to meet other NYC photographers or share their NYC work.
Brooklyn
Brooklyn Graffiti
11 Spring St
Nature NYC
Figment*
Bushwick, Brooklyn
New York City
Arts in Bushwick
NYC Text Art
More: Photography | Technology
A new vegan cat community
By Ari | Oct 1, 08 10:31 PM
I've been frustrated for sooo long by my inability to hook up with other folks who have vegan cats. I mean, I've met a few people online, but it's hard to really share information in any kind of organized way. Where can I ask people for advice on how to talk to our vet without getting instant judgement? Where can I share tips on how to best prepare Vegecat homemade vegan cat food?
Well, I finally decided (as if I don't have enough to do), that I should just go ahead and start a community and see what happens. Maybe I'm the only one out there looking for this kind of thing, I don't know. But it's worth a try!
You can visit the community here: vegancats.ning.com
Please feel free to fire questions at me if this is the first time you've heard of vegan cats! And be sure to check out the always adorable Sid, Zora and Snow, our own dear vegan cat housemates.
This is my first time setting up a Ning from scratch, rather than just customizing an existing one, and I've got to say, it's awesome. Very easy to set up and integrate with third-party services. This one is a bit of a practice run for me because I may be setting one up for our friends at freeDimensional in the near future. Go Ning.
More: Activism | Animals | Health | Technology | What we're up to | Work
Flickr: "popularity" and social change
By Ari | Sep 28, 08 11:31 PM
Ah, Flickr. I spend waaaay too much time on there. But you know, I consider it a form of activism - and there are some amazing activists on there spreading some beautiful ideas, so I'm not the only one with an agenda. I can be very shy in person, but on Flickr, I can have meaningful dialogues with people from all over the world, many who help me to learn and change, and many who I hope I've helped along a bit as well.
I think that Flickr's measures of "popularity" are very compelling measures of what works and what doesn't in doing advocacy on Flickr. Here are the four measures of popularity (according to Flickr), and some notes on how each measure is useful from an activist perspective.
Most interesting
Mostly my art, at this point - which is encouraging! But then, the whole "interestingness" thing on Flickr is a bit of a mystery so I'm not sure what this says about my art. Some of my more political stuff is right up top in this list, and by keeping track of what Flickr calls interesting, I can adjust my ongoing work to see if I can tweak the results. Yes, I literally make art that I think might get into this queue. If I can get Flickr to call activist art interesting, that means more people see it when browsing Flickr.
Most views
If a photo has anything remotely sexy in it, tag it with "sex" and "sexy" and you too will soon be posting photos in the "5,000 views" and "10,000 views" groups. Some results break this mold though - like this snap of a sidewalk installation by De La Vega. The upside of the ridiculousness of sexy tags' popularity is that you can use this to create dialogue. Yay stealth feminism!
Most faved
Also a lot of my art, and my more arty photos. Yaay! This is why I love Flickr - honestly I never made so much art before I started posting stuff on here and getting feedback. By keeping track of what folks like about my work, I can adjust what I post and get more challenging ideas out there more effectively.
Most commented upon
Somehow, I've been fortunate enough to get some really great dialogues going around speciesism, sexism, sustainability, and other issues - many of which go on for some time. I've learned a lot over the years and have gotten pretty good at keeping dialogue going. If I get worked up or push radical ideas on people too quickly or too forcefully I find that I come off as pedantic or holier-than-thou and the dialogue sputters out quickly. I find that asking questions is more useful - if folks reach conclusions on their own they'll be more engaged and will want to keep talking with me. It's fun to see other activists join in to help me out - and I've even purposefully posted my photo in relevant groups to get activist help on occasion! But it's even more fulfilling and enjoyable to see folks coming around to compassion, just by having the space to ask questions and challenge my ideas.
Does anyone else do this kind of thing? How do you get conversation going on difficult subjects?
Previously: 6 best practices: Engaging in social networking for social change
More: Activism | Animals | Environment | Human Rights | Oppression | Technology
Al Gore says it's time for civil disobedience
By Ari | Sep 24, 08 10:04 PM
Gore urges civil disobedience to stop coal plants:
If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration... I believe for a carbon company to spend money convincing the stock-buying public that the risk from the global climate crisis is not that great represents a form of stock fraud because they are misrepresenting a material fact... I hope these state attorney generals around the country will take some action on that.
More: Activism | Environment | Media | Oppression | Technology
Living with Solar and Wind Power in Ithaca: Lessons from an Energy-Efficient Lifestyle - Sept. 24th
By Ari | Sep 10, 08 10:42 AM
Another event we're excited about in Ithaca: Living with Solar and Wind Power in Ithaca: Lessons from an Energy-Efficient Lifestyle, coming up on Sept. 24th, 7-8:15 pm, at Greenstar Coop. It's 100% free and... 100% awesome? We hope so. Visit Greenstar's Community Calendar for more info or call 607.273.9392 to register.
Read on for the full event description.
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6 best practices: Engaging in social networking for social change
By Ari | Aug 9, 08 03:56 PM
Continue reading "6 best practices: Engaging in social networking for social change..." »
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Announcing Lionessthefilm.com
By Ari | Aug 1, 08 02:36 PM
Just launched today, Lionessthefilm.com. We worked with filmmakers Daria Sommers and Meg McLagan, along with consultation from Working Films and Matt Syrett, to craft a comprehensive online outreach tool for this exciting new documentary. The site was built on Movable Type 4 (open source, baby!), uses Google Analytics to track traffic, and dovetails with accounts on YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, and Google Calendar, to provide soldiers, veterans, and those providing support services with ways to engage with the film and with each other - and to help get their stories heard. We also designed the film's branding, as well as posters, postcards, email graphics, and other outreach essentials.
Through beautiful footage shot by our friend Kirsten Johnson (Farenheit 9/11, Deadline), Lioness tells the story of the first women in American history to be sent into direct ground combat. The interviews with the Lionesses are gripping; as anti-war activists we found watching the film to be an invaluable learning experience that really helped us identify with soldiers who are putting their lives on the line in armed combat. It movingly shows both the combat experience and the impact of it on people's lives, after they've come home.
Visit the site at Lionessthefilm.com to view the trailer, find screenings, get involved, and sign up for updates.
More: Activism | Film and Video | Oppression | People we know | Technology | Work
Jack and Jane - Environmental Pioneers
By Shira | Aug 1, 08 02:30 PM
More: Activism | Animals | Environment | Film and Video | Technology
"Sudan? Monkey riding a rhino"
By Shira | Jul 30, 08 04:08 PM
More: Animals | Art and Design | Media | Technology
humans are so...creepy
By Shira | Jul 16, 08 05:30 PM
considering euthanasia for wild horses
gps for tracking hunting dogs
celebrity chef suffocating chicks on TV
running cars on cow fat
sheep as dialysis bags
More: Animals | Environment | Food | Health | Media | Oppression | Technology
More on Click!
By Shira | Jul 15, 08 01:14 PM
Ari and I went to check out the Click! show at the Brooklyn Museum. Seeing my name and photo on the gallery wall was a little anti-climactic, but thrilling nonetheless. While the methodology behind the project is very interesting, the gallery execution felt a little flat. It would have been awesome, for example, to see the results animated on flat-screen TVs, alongside snippets about crowd-sourcing, curation and the nature of photography.
The show is getting some press coverage...
From Proles vs. Pros: An Experiment In Curating by Robin Givhan:
This exhibit may have been particularly suited to crowd-based curating because photography is a medium that people experience every day, whether it is a particularly artful photo in the newspaper or an artsy black-and-white snapshot of their newborn they're e-mailing to relatives. There's a sense of ownership and accessibility with photography that doesn't exist with sculpture or painting. That connection is one of its pleasures; it doesn't seem so precious or elitist.
And 3,344 People May Not Know Art but Know What They Like By Ken Johnson:
How people arrive at consensus in the art world is worth studying. So is the tension between experts and nonexperts, which can extend to the highest reaches of the culture industry. So it is possible that Mr. Surowiecki’s ideas might yet prove fruitful for the business of art. But it will take a lot more persuasive reasoning to convince anyone with a serious interest in artistic quality that “crowd-curating” is a good idea. The best you can say for “Click!” is that it’s a good conversation starter.
Here's a podcastof the panel at Governor's Island. I ask a question at about 44min. 30 sec.:
And there's a book of the show available through Blurb:
Buy the book!
$3 off discount code
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Columbia study on independent new media workers
By Ari | Jun 30, 08 01:10 AM
Any freelance web designers out there who want to help sociologists understand what's going on with our field? I spoke with Matthias at Columbia last week and had a great conversation about networking, relationships with other freelancers, quoting/estimating and fees, unionization questions, and other interesting facets of the freelance life. Here's info on the study if you'd like to participate:
You have been chosen as a participant for a study on employment conditions in contingent labor markets. This research is directed to gain a better understanding of this expanding form of labor markets and the exigencies it imposes upon workers in them.
Recent changes in organizational structure and employment relationships in the American work place have created an increasing amount of workers that work as singular self-employed. This study will scrutinize the actual demands that are exerted upon workers in this situation when the acquisition of future work becomes of major concern. For this purpose freelancers in the new media industry are a fitting target group, as their industry is characterized by a high percentage of freelancers, temp agents and independent contractors.
The study looks at how individuals adapt to the direct exposure to the labor market in terms of work load, skill development and life work arrangements and if and in which ways they use peers to delimit work load and secure continuous employment by leading guided interviews and collecting network as well as socioeconomic information. Of course all information gathered will be used confidentially and names will be anonymised.
Your cooperation might allow us to understand better the specifics of the new media labor market and to formulate policy recommendations to improve the situation for workers. Therefore, your participation would be highly appreciated.
If you agree to being interviewed, please email mt2430 -at- columbia -dot- edu or call the following number (646 552 2803) and we will set up an appointment according to your wishes
With our Best Wishes
Prof. Seymour Spilerman
(Principal Investigator Columbia University, Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Social Sciences)
Matthias Thiemann
Co-Investigator
(PhD-student Columbia\ Sociology Department)
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My photo is in the "Click!" show at the Brooklyn Museum!
By Shira | Jun 26, 08 04:12 PM
This is the photo I submitted to the Brooklyn Museum's "crowd-curated" show, "Click!" and...it's going to be in the show!!! Can you tell I'm excited? You can explore the show online or come see it at the Brooklyn Museum, June 27–August 10.
There's also a panel this Saturday on Governor's Island as part of the Figment Festival:
Click! Panel Discussion
Saturday, June 28, 11 a.m.
Governors Island
Brooklyn Museum clicks with the crowd at FIGMENT 2008, a celebration of participatory art and creative culture held on Governors Island. A panel discussion about the process and outcome of Click! will be held on Saturday, June 28, at 11 a.m. Panelists include James Surowiecki, New Yorker financial columnist and author of The Wisdom of Crowds; Jeff Howe, contributing editor of Wired magazine, who coined the term “crowdsourcing”; Eugenie Tsai, Brooklyn Museum’s John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art; and Shelley Bernstein, Brooklyn Museum’s Manager of Information Systems and the organizer of Click! The panel will be moderated by Nicole Caruth, Brooklyn Museum’s Manager of Interpretive Materials and a freelance writer and curator based in Brooklyn. Please note: In order to make the panel you must take the 10 or 10:30 a.m. ferry, which depart from South Ferry and are free of charge. Specific travel instructions can be found on the Figment Web site. The panel will take place in Perkins Hall. Seating is limited.
We went to the Figment Festival last summer and it was awesome - hope to see you there!
More: Art and Design | Environment | Happenings | Media | Technology | What we're up to
The Effect of Flickr on My Israeli Grandmother
By Shira | Jun 20, 08 03:12 PM
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Anti-capitalist / environmentalist / tech news mashup
By Ari | Jun 14, 08 03:33 PM
- MySpace is redesigning and I am so not excited. Sorry, MySpace. You've been too ugly for too long. I'm just biding my time until the current internet evolves into a wonderful free-culture free-software filesharing hive mind. C'mon people. Drop the profit model. Let's abandon the waste of competition and move onto cooperation, see what we can come up with then. My prediction: Awesomeness.
- Vinyl shower curtains are deadly and may be banned. We bought an organic cotton one a while back and have been using it with no liner. We throw it in the wash every month or so. Works like a charm, doesn't require regular replacement like a plastic one, and doesn't leach 100 toxic chemicals into our bathroom like PVC ones apparently do. Yaaay.
- McCain has declared the ruling on Guantanamo "one of the worst" in US history, and in so-doing, I hope he's turned off millions of potential voters. That is, if Americans like justice. I like justice. But then, I've seen time and time again that the American people don't always vote in ways that make any kind of sense to me.
- Here's further evidence of McCain's unsuitability for leadership: Dude is all about the exploitation. To stimulate the economy, he plans to "extend the Bush administration's tax cuts, eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax, and slash corporate taxes," which to me sounds like "make the rich richer and the poor poorer." What little tax we do pay goes toward fighting oil wars instead of taking care of basic necessities like healthcare and public transportation. Maybe with more cash to spend we can buy more DVDs and sneakers, but why pour our hard-earned wages back into the pockets of global capitalists exploiting animals, workers and our environment for their own profit?
More: Activism | Environment | Health | Media | Oppression | Technology
Victor Papanek's Design for the Real World
By Ari | Jun 6, 08 01:12 PM
We've mentioned Victor Papanek's Design for the Real World a bunch of times but never blogged it properly, so here goes. Read it! It's amazing. It was written in 1970 but is still all-too-relevant today. The cover of our awesome 1973 Bantam edition (pictured here), reads, "Why the Things You Buy Are Expensive, Unsafe, and Usually Don't Work! With some startling practical alternatives -- like a radio that costs 9¢, a $6 refrigerator, a television set for $8, and much, much more! Design For The Real World by Victor Papanek: Human Ecology and Social Change With an Introduction by R. Buckminster Fuller; Completely Illustrated". Papanek adorably refers to his friend and introduction-writer as Bucky throughout the book, and relates stories of visionary design teams doing what the two men refer to as Anticipatory Comprehensive Design.
Basically that means looking at real-world problems and trying to solve them in an ecologically-sound and efficient, forward-thinking way, with the help of the stakeholders, the people who are actually affected by the design problem and its potential solutions. This is opposed to the more common practice of profit-driven design, which uses planned obsolescence and the vagaries of "fashion" to sell the same old crap year after year, dressed up in fancy new skins or even just different marketing. For every cool new low-cost, low-impact tool that's accessible and useful to folks who really need it, there are a million new expensive, ugly and possibly dangerous items put on the market simply to make a profit, Papanek says, and his message holds true today. The design world, for all of its improvements, does continue to churn out useless junk and endless repetitions of bad ideas.
Here's part of the flow-chart illustration with which Papanek ended the book - you'll have to read the book to see the rest of it, including his suggestions for how to get around the problems outlined here. But he doesn't give us all the answers - the flow-chart only goes so far as suggesting possible solutions to the world's problems; he puts it on us to fill in the rest of the chart as we move onto creating those solutions.
Since Shira and I are all about creating sustainable solutions in every area of life including the design work we do for clients, we found the book's message right up our alley, and the suggestions for improvement just as relevant today as they were when they were written nearly 40 years ago. It's encouraging to see that when Victor wrote this book he and Bucky were really trailblazing a new approach, which today has many adherents, with dozens of books and websites now dedicated to designing for the great majority of people instead of the privileged few who pay big bucks for pretty new designer chairs and the like. But we've still got work to do. So, read this book, and act on it!
Design, if it is to be ecologically responsible and socially responsive, must be revolutionary and radical (going back to the roots) in the truest sense. It must dedicate itself to nature's "principle of least effort," in other words, minimum inventory for maximum diversity... or, doing the most with the least. That means consuming less, using things longer, recycling materials, and probably not wasting paper printing books such as this.
Fortunately, Design for the Real World has been in print for many years, and is available used from many freecycling / swapping networks as well as libraries and used bookshops, so no new materials need be used today in learning from this beautiful and clever and useful book.
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Happy List
By Shira | Jun 5, 08 07:20 PM
There is a cat posse in our apartment, same-sex marriages are going to be recognized in New York State, my cousin Amir starred in this Borat spoof (it's a video for his high-school graduation party in Haifa), crop circles on google earth, using skype as our land line, Senegalese hip-hop at the eighth annual Media That Matters Film Festival Awards Ceremony, visiting Ithaca last weekend for a co-housing workshop at EcoVillage, looking for an apartment in Ithaca and finding an awesome one!!!, the plants in our window pots are starting to bloom, Obama is the democratic candidate for president, sharing our art and music this weekend as part of Bushwick Open Studios, picking up our first Hearty Roots CSA share of the season in Williamsburg, women's turkish oil wrestling at Galapagos, Renegade Craft Fair at the McCarren Park Pool June 14-15, Pineapple Express at BAM with Director David Gordon Green, tank tops, summer...
More: Art and Design | Environment | Film and Video | Happenings | Health | Housing | Music and Audio | People we know | Queer | Technology | What we're up to
E-waste recycling event at Tekserve Mac shop - NYC
By Ari | Apr 10, 08 03:55 PM
Our favorite Mac shop and my one-time employer Tekserve, who recently sold us our new and amazing video editing system (THANKS!), is having their second annual Electronics Recycling Event, together with the Lower East Side Ecology Center. These sorts of environmentally-friendly shenanigans are just what I'd expect from Tekserve, home of "Fair Weights and Square Dealings." The event will be April 26th-27th, right here in NYC.
More tips on recycling things you just don't know where to recycle:
GrassRoots Recycling Network
EcoCycle
GreenDisk
More: Activism | Environment | Happenings | People we know | Technology
Making my bookmarks more del.icio.us
By Ari | Mar 1, 08 03:37 PM
Recently, I finally got to a place where I wanted to share my Safari bookmarks; I thought I'd try importing them into a social bookmarking tool, and switch to keeping track of things there instead of in Safari. After long consideration I chose del.icio.us.
Weirdly, the only way I could figure out how to make all of the imported links public at once was to run a script written by a blogger in 2006. I'm not convinced there isn't some way to do this in del.icio.us itself, but the last comment from a grateful code borrower like myself was in December 2007, and I can't find any way to batch edit within the site for the life of me.
Anyway, the script works - it takes a while though. If anyone knows of a way to batch edit more effectively in del.icio.us, please comment!
Also useful-looking, by the same blogger: Scripted Re-Mark
Oh, and check out my del.icio.us links: del.icio.us/arimoore
More: Technology
Books: Searchable, free, earth-friendly, and extremely organized
By Ari | Feb 15, 08 10:29 AM
I read a lot and am always keeping lists of books I want to read. After cutting and pasting into text documents for years it occurred to me there must be a better way to do this; sure enough, there is. I tried LibraryThing (not free after 300 books!) and Google's My Library (lousy interactivity and no way to add notes). Then I actually typed "track books want read" into Google and Ask Metafilter came to the rescue.
Folks seemed to really like Goodreads, and now I know why. It's free and very interactive, and offers fields for notes/reviews and recommendations. It also automatically offers you "read" and "to-read" bookshelves, with the capability to add as many other shelves as you like - useful if you want to offer lists of recommended titles on particular topics.
In the process of all of this catalog-perusal, I realized something that I guess should have been obvious if it wasn't. I've long been annoyed by not being able to hit Command-F ("Find file...") in the real world. I mean really, wouldn't this make life a lot easier? With books it's particularly infuriating - unless I take copious notes and write in my books like crazy, I know the likelihood of my actually being able to find a quote or idea in the future is pretty slim. Wouldn't it be awesome to be able to search your shelves for "nonviolence," say, and find all references, across genres?
Well, at first I thought it was silly to input books you already have into a catalog tool like this, but now I get it. It's surprisingly easy and quick to get them in there, and then, you can search your shelves. This is where Google is supposed to be better, allowing you to actually search within books - but for me, the interactivity of GoodReads outweighs the usefulness of that feature. In any case, I'm now able to hit Command-F and then find the result on my shelf, and however imperfect the system is, it's made our library more useful.
A major issue I have with all of these sites is that they usually offer purchasing links, and those links all send you to giant corporations who send new books through the mail. My ideal book is a used one my neighbor hands me - no new printing and paper, no shipping materials or freight fuel and pollution, no participation in global capitalism. Unfortunately none of these sites allow you to customize the book purchase links that come up while people are looking at your catalog, so the best I could do was put a list in my profile. Here it is, if you too like to get books but want to do it in an earth-friendly way:
- FreeCycle - facilitates swapping free used stuff in your local area
- PaperBackSwap - book/DVD swapping community
- BookCrossing - used books sent/left and tracked, sort of a worldwide booksharing system
- Better World Books - Carbon-offset shipping, profits support literacy programs worldwide
- Alibris - used books, for sale
- Abe Books - used books, for sale
More: Books and Writing | Environment | Technology
Simulated stupidity
By Ari | Feb 3, 08 02:05 PM
Recently I saw a big ad for EA's "Sim City Societies" that shows three (fake) people and the societies they've built, one of which is obviously meant to be an earthy crunchy green city and another that's insanely capitalist. Curious what options the game would actually give you (can you make a sustainable anarchist community, for example?), I checked out their site.
The game does seem flexible, poking fun at both capitalists and utopians and hinting at the idea of creating a balance. ("Mix and match societal values — productivity, prosperity, creativity, spirituality, authority, and knowledge — to determine the core attributes of your city... Witness the evolution of your city as its appearance and sounds adapt to reflect these values.") But right up at the top of the home page is a prominent "Learn more about alternative energy" link that leads to a BP-branded site explaining that this game is the result of a partnership between the oil company and EA.
While I appreciate that BP is apparently doing a lot of work in green energy development, and that this game will allow users to experiment with wind farms and other green technologies, this looks like a massive greenwashing campaign to me. BP paints itself here as a green energy company, with nary a whisper of its record as one of the ten worst corporations in the world.
With BP so intimately involved in this game's development, my guess is that folks who want to set up oil-guzzling societies will be conveniently prevented from causing the oil spills and oil refinery explosions that characterize oil's real-world impact... which sort of negates the whole point of a game that supposedly serves as a mini experimental laboratory for various energy options, doesn't it?
Related: Games for Change: Serious Fun
More: Activism | Environment | Games | Oppression | Technology
Here Comes Everybody
By Ari | Jan 30, 08 08:56 PM
Why User-generated Content Mostly Isn't by Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody:
The internet is in a way the first thing that really deserves the label 'media'. It is a truly general-purpose mediating layer, one that can hold multiple types of content, created and distributed for a huge variety of reasons and in a huge variety of ways, ways that can't be fit into the old mode of "content", where one group creates and another merely consumes.
(via unmediated)
More: Activism | Books and Writing | Media | Technology
Ch..ch..ch..changes
By Shira | Jan 21, 08 07:22 PM
It's still hard to believe that Shirari Industries is my full-time gig. My days feel longer in the best possible way, and I fall asleep excited about the next morning.
We just got a new Mac Pro, and it's pretty awesome. My old iMac could barely run iPhoto without crashing, so with me working from home, it was definitely time to upgrade. The cats were almost as excited about opening the boxes as we were. So far, I'm a happy customer and I'm especially psyched about the new iApps. Unfortunately, I think I might have some major issues getting sound recording set up as there are Panther incompatibility issues with the MBox and the Oxygen8 - bummer!
Technology is weird. Somehow, no matter how incredible a device seems when it first comes out, it feels slow and useless only a few years later. Has the device degraded or have we, as individuals, just upgraded our expectations? I recently read Victor Papanek's 1972 book Design for the Real World. (He was a friend and colleague of Buckminster Fuller, developer of the geodesic dome.) The book presents an indictment of planned obsolescence, the notion that corporations purposefully perpetuate a disposable, commodity-driven culture by creating products that aren't built to last, and by always pushing the newest model while discontinuing support of older editions.
The moment I started up GarageBand on my new Mac and tried to record a song using my MBox, only to discover that the device is "not yet supported," Papanek popped into my head, and I felt a rush of guilt. Should I really be investing in more machinery that's probably going to end up in a landfill in a decade or sooner? At least I can console myself with the fact that my Samsung monitor had an Energy Star sticker on it and that Apple went a little greener in 2007.
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