How does a small group of artisans and activists transform a community? The Crucible has accomplished this through offering classes and workshops in welding, blacksmithing, foundry & moldmaking, woodworking, machine shop, motorcycle & bike repair, stonework, neon & light, kinetics, jewelry & enamel, fire performance, and clay animation.

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A couple months ago, Samantha Power, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, wrote a column for TIME entitled, Technology's Power to Narrow Our View. It begins:

Commencement season is upon us, when students across the nation make familiar pledges to go forth and change the world. The explosion of social networks on the Internet--Facebook users have affiliated with more than 80,000 causes--has emboldened them to believe their generation will make change. But does new technology make it more or less likely that young people today will commit themselves to do something for others?

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• Media Matters - Fox News airs altered photos of NY Times reporters
  Oh man. These people really are incredibly stupid.
• Mapstraction - mapping-service-indepentent mapping apps
  Provides an "abstraction layer" for client-side mapping, letting developers build mapping apps that can utilize multiple mapping services or switch between mapping services.

Hey all you do-good web innovators and entrepreneurs!

American Express is gearing up for its Members Project again this year.  They are looking for projects that are, "innovative, achievable, and can make a positive impact in one of the following areas: Arts & Culture, Community Development, Education, Environment & Wildlife, and Health."  Last year, one of the finalists was DonorsChoose, a site that connects public school teachers' needs with donors.

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As someone who was born in the generation that lives, breathes, writes, eats, sleeps, and drinks the Internet, I have become jaded with how many useless and uninteresting websites that I have found over the years.  It seems like every time that I sign online, I am bombarded with a flood of websites that I could easily do without.  There are certain sites, however, that are so useful and innovative in their clean design and functionality that I would be at a loss on the Internet without them.  As an Independence Day present to the readers, I decided to share these with you.

TV Shows on DVD dot com

Like a Wikipedia of television shows on DVD, this collective information website gives users the latest information on box art, bonus material, and release dates for all their favorite TV shows.  Other great features include in-depth reviews of new and old releases as well as a voting forum for which shows should be brought to DVD.  The voting forum has been sited many times by production companies as influencing their decisions and release schedules.  I visit this site at least once a week to see if anything good is coming to my local Best Buy, and I will keep voting for Daria until MTV gets off of their lazy butts.

Spreadshirt

The best in personalized clothing sites, this website offers users the ability to create custom outfits using their special online design tool.  Text, graphics, and type of material can all be tweaked to give an end result for which you are looking.  Numerous ‘earth-friendly' products, including hemp shirts, are available for green conscious consumers.  I've ordered at least three products from this site in the past, and I can attest that delivery is efficient, and the product was always exactly as I had specified.  In fact, I'm wearing a t-shirt from the company as I type this.

Yelp

Yelp is a fast-growing review website that was made specifically for restaurants and social scenes.  Currently, it features only bigger cities in the nation, but new cities are added frequently.  Unlike other consumer review websites, the written diatribes contained on the site are detailed, clean, and sometimes pretty funny.  The rating system is also clear and intuitive.  Users can upload their own pictures of the place that they are reviewing to further give users a taste of what they might be missing.  I always check out Yelp when I need to hit up a new bar or take the family out to a local restaurant.

Pidgin

Not so much a website as an open source tool, Pidgin offers users the ability to combine all of their chat features into one cohesive list.  All of your AIM, MSN, Gtalk, and other SMS programs will be conveniently placed into one ultimate buddy list on the side of your screen.  No longer do you have to load three different windows to keep up with all of your online friends.

Between my work on NewsJunk and PDF last week, I???ve been mulling over the state of political campaigning and technology. On the Dean campaign, the campaign???s blog ??? Blog For America ??? was a critical communications implement. We built a big daily readership and we thought of it like our own cable channel or major newspaper. There was an explicit understanding that it was our media outlet, and that Matt Gross, Zephyr Teachout, and Joe Rospars (among others) were our ???reporters on the ground???, covering the campaign ??? inside the headquarters and out on the road.

Dean desperately needed alternative sources of media. When I joined the campaign, every single news story about the presidential primary started something like: ???John Kerry, Dick Gephardt, Joe Leiberman and five other presidential candidates?????? Dean never got any press of any kind. But Trippi noticed that the blogs were writing about Dean. There was even an unofficial Dean campaign blog. Now here was a way to get ink, even if it was the virtual, blog kind of ink! Trippi started by posting on the unofficial Dean campaign blog as the campaign manager. And then there was an explicit decision: if the mainstream press isn???t going to write about us, then we???ll cover our campaign ourselves. Our rallying cry became: To the blogs!

Recognizing the power of new media to build our own work-around the ???gatekeepers??? of the modern political process gave the Dean campaign critical fuel, and the energy of the entire blogosphere was gasoline on the fire of Dean???s growing grassroots momentum. I???ve long thought that the secret sauce of the Dean campaign were the monthly in-person Meetups that Michael Silberman managed, but watching this election unfold I???m realizing that our blog???s end-run around traditional media (with the help of the rest of the blogosphere) was equally important.

All of which leaves me mystified why the campaigns haven???t built their own media operations. And I don???t mean just blogs. Why not a 24-hour newsroom, with anchors and field correspondents and commentators? The technologies needed ??? and even the distribution ??? are not expensive any more. You can buy a lot of consecutive time on cable with the kind of budgets we???re seeing this election cycle. Presidential campaigns of either party could attract top talent to create and manage the content. Not to mention the grassroots power of utilizing your supporters to create content.

Feeding NewsJunk over the last few weeks has made me recognize some of the gaps in media coverage ??? and the opportunities the campaigns are missing. There remains a mysterious and much revered relationship between the political campaigns and the political press corps, but I???m unconvinced that it serves the people well. And in all honesty, I???ve been disappointed by most of the blog coverage and commentary of the election; that???s why on NewsJunk you see mostly mainstream news sources. The blogs seems to mostly repeat items from the mainstream press ??? not just the news, but the commentary as well.

And it???s not just political news, commentary, and policy debates. Have you ever listened to Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell sportscast one of the Eagles??? football games? It???s fun. Give Al Gore a show on how to go green. Who would host ???Deal or No Deal??? on Obama???s network?

The great challenge of creating a news organization ??? or if it???s going to be broader than news, let???s call it a media organization ??? the great challenge is honesty. Campaigns are famous for spin and obscuring the hard questions. Even on our Dean campaign blog, it was hard to find an accurate and serious accounting for our loss in Iowa the morning after. But the radical transparency and honesty of your own media outlet would say volumes about the kind of President you might make, and the opportunities to set the agenda seem enormous.

I noticed that Linda Douglass, a major television journalist for ABC News, joined the Obama campaign as senior staff. [Full disclosure: EchoDitto does unrelated tech work for Linda???s husband, John Phillips.] It???s time to kill the 30-second spot and instead focus on the exciting opportunities and possibilities of the next generation of Fireside Chats. It???ll be fun. I promise.

John Lyman from Google.org talks to us about how social benefit organizations are using Google Apps to enhance their operations and collaborate.

Our goal is really for non-profits to have access to the same technologies that Fortune 500 companies have… And the way that you do that, basically, is you make the same technology available to everyone, which is what Google has done.

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• Bike-friendly mapping directions in NYC
  This gives starting point/destination directions in NYC, tailored for bikes. That means it routes you on "bikeable" streets (not highways). Neato.
• Neat video of a train that doesn't need to stop to board
  With a secondary entry/exit car on a raised platform, this train is designed not to stop for boarding or existing passengers. Pretty neat.

For the past couple weeks there has been a long discussion thread happening on the Net Tuesday San Francisco Meetup list serv about people wanting to form a Drupal for Good group in the Bay Area.

Joshua Wiese set up a Drupal for Good San Francisco Bay Area Google group to help get it organized.  You can join the group by clicking here, and anyone can view any of the group's activity, without joining, by clicking here.

Not in the Bay Area?  Here is a link to the Drupal for Good discussion group that anyone can join wherever they live.  You also might want to check out the Drupal Dojo.

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As a loyal technology fan and social change enthusiast, attending my first Personal Democracy Forum (PDF08) in NYC excited me. The ability to mingle with others who share my interests and desires to use technology to make changes in the world and ease our lives is an unbelievable experience that I couldn’t pass up. As I walked into the Lincoln Center Rose Hall, with the grand glass windows and stunning views of Columbus Circle and Central Park I instantly thought WOW – what an amazing place, just based on the location this conference is going to be great! I then walked into the atrium where many of the sponsors/exhibitors had their booths, and went to join my colleagues at our ImpactWatch booth. As I surveyed the room, I took in the beauty of the floor to ceiling glass windows and looked at the various booths around me. From the previous grand technology conferences/trade shows/exhibition fairs I’ve attended in the past, I assumed that this conference would be like all the others, packed full with booths with insight on new products and ideas and tons of swag, but when I looked around, I realized I had the wrong assumptions. Now, while I will say that the booths in attendance did advertise excellent products, including ours =), I had previously thought this conference would have had more companies in attendance advertising the other great products that are available to the online political community. After this realization, I decided to sit in on my first session and recognized what PDF08 really is all about.

Zephyr Teachout, the Director of Online Organizing for Howard Dean’s ‘04 Campaign, began the forum speaking about the evolution of the internet and the various ways people can use it for social change. As she quoted poet Walt Whitman, “Democracy rests finally upon us,” I realized the overall point of the conference is to network and engage with others about how to use technology to our advantage to address the issues and make progress. It was not as much as about the exhibitors, like at other conferences I have attended, but more about meeting others and dialoguing about our interests and sharing our ideas for the future. Throughout the day I spoke with other industry pioneers who are using the internet to educate the public and at times even ease people’s lives such as Arianna Huffington (Huffington Post), Jeff Jarvis (Buzz Machine), Robin Chase (Zipcar founder and now Meadow Networks), and Tim Breidigan (Eventful). Each person I spoke with furthered my interest in how I can use my abilities and the internet to aid in the world’s progress.

At the end of day one, Elizabeth Edwards spoke at the conference via Skype, for the bad weather had kept her from reaching NYC, and it was through seeing another example of how the internet connects people and how politicians are making a difference with their use of technology that I realized that change begins with us. Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, said in the Closing Plenary: Redefining Leadership in a Networked Age that when, “you give people real power and you trust them, they will then take that trust and take responsibility.”

As PDF Founder Andrew Rasiej closed the conference by suggesting that next year’s PDF be renamed the Participatory Democracy Forum, I reflected and realized that what I really learned at PDF 2008 is that with the creativity, drive, and trust, the public truly can make changes in the world and, it is through the use of technology that we will achieve whatever we put our minds to.

Between my work on NewsJunk and PDF last week, I’ve been mulling over the state of political campaigning and technology. On the Dean campaign, the campaign’s blog – Blog For America – was a critical communications implement. We built a big daily readership and we thought of it like our own cable channel or major newspaper. There was an explicit understanding that it was our media outlet, and that Matt Gross, Zephyr Teachout, and Joe Rospars (among others) were our “reporters on the ground”, covering the campaign – inside the headquarters and out on the road.

Dean desperately needed alternative sources of media. When I joined the campaign, every single news story about the presidential primary started something like: “John Kerry, Dick Gephardt, Joe Leiberman and five other presidential candidates…” Dean never got any press of any kind. But Trippi noticed that the blogs were writing about Dean. There was even an unofficial Dean campaign blog. Now here was a way to get ink, even if it was the virtual, blog kind of ink! Trippi started by posting on the unofficial Dean campaign blog as the campaign manager. And then there was an explicit decision: if the mainstream press isn’t going to write about us, then we’ll cover our campaign ourselves. Our rallying cry became: To the blogs!

Recognizing the power of new media to build our own work-around the “gatekeepers” of the modern political process gave the Dean campaign critical fuel, and the energy of the entire blogosphere was gasoline on the fire of Dean’s growing grassroots momentum. I’ve long thought that the secret sauce of the Dean campaign were the monthly in-person Meetups that Michael Silberman managed, but watching this election unfold I’m realizing that our blog’s end-run around traditional media (with the help of the rest of the blogosphere) was equally important.

All of which leaves me mystified why the campaigns haven’t built their own media operations. And I don’t mean just blogs. Why not a 24-hour newsroom, with anchors and field correspondents and commentators? The technologies needed – and even the distribution – are not expensive any more. You can buy a lot of consecutive time on cable with the kind of budgets we’re seeing this election cycle. Presidential campaigns of either party could attract top talent to create and manage the content. Not to mention the grassroots power of utilizing your supporters to create content.

Feeding NewsJunk over the last few weeks has made me recognize some of the gaps in media coverage – and the opportunities the campaigns are missing. There remains a mysterious and much revered relationship between the political campaigns and the political press corps, but I’m unconvinced that it serves the people well. And in all honesty, I’ve been disappointed by most of the blog coverage and commentary of the election; that’s why on NewsJunk you see mostly mainstream news sources. The blogs seems to mostly repeat items from the mainstream press – not just the news, but the commentary as well.

And it’s not just political news, commentary, and policy debates. Have you ever listened to Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell sportscast one of the Eagles’ football games? It’s fun. Give Al Gore a show on how to go green. Who would host “Deal or No Deal” on Obama’s network?

The great challenge of creating a news organization – or if it’s going to be broader than news, let’s call it a media organization – the great challenge is honesty. Campaigns are famous for spin and obscuring the hard questions. Even on our Dean campaign blog, it was hard to find an accurate and serious accounting for our loss in Iowa the morning after. But the radical transparency and honesty of your own media outlet would say volumes about the kind of President you might make, and the opportunities to set the agenda seem enormous.

I noticed that Linda Douglass, a major television journalist for ABC News, joined the Obama campaign as senior staff. [Full disclosure: EchoDitto does unrelated tech work for Linda’s husband, John Phillips.] It’s time to kill the 30-second spot and instead focus on the exciting opportunities and possibilities of the next generation of Fireside Chats. It’ll be fun. I promise.