Blog Action Day Yesterday

Missed the deadline but not the "aftermath" of the deadline. Still, I consider myself a part of this.

Here's an update from blogactionday.org's Robin Beck:

"Yesterday you and bloggers in 155 countries across six continents wrote about a single issue that impacts us all, and turned Blog Action Day 2009 into one of the largest social change events ever held on the web.

Your participation helped change the conversation and showed the power of the web to connect people across the world who despite their varied backgrounds have one shared desire: to make a difference. According to blogpulse, we increased the number of posts about climate change on a given day by 500%, and CNN wrote a great article covering the excitement and diversity of today's event across the web and around the world.

A full recap is up on our blog, and here are some highlights:

We hit 31,000 total trackable blog posts, and our current estimate is that together we reached at least 17.9 million people yesterday. We just exceeded 13,000 registered bloggers on the site and are working to get all of you who posted but haven't yet registered into the final count.

We had at least three major world governments as active participants in this year's event. United Kingdom Prime Minister Gordon Brown posted the first Blog Action Day entry in Britain at the stroke of midnight on the 15th, which was followed by Foreign Minister David Milliband and many others from the UK stationed around the world. The PSOE governing party of Spain hosted a bloggers event focused on climate change and transformed their website for the day to promote Blog Action Day. And late in the day, President Barack Obama's White House blog joined in become part of the global movement of bloggers shaking the web.

Of course, well-known bloggers were a big presence yesterday as well:

• The Official Google Blog gave a green tour of the company's campus;
• Mashable asked what you're doing to reverse climate change;
• The Unofficial Apple Weblog suggested "Five apps to help save the world";
• Treehugger gave us two simple things that could, by themselves, stop climate change;
• Global Voices posted a roundup of bloggers from around the world writing in many languages;
• Gadling spent the whole day posting about green travel;
• BlogHer covered the road to the next international climate negotations in Copehagen.

There are many more, and we encourage you to check out the Featured Posts on the blogactionday.org homepage for a longer list of some of the world's largest blogs.

Many of our nonprofit partners, leading organizations from around the world, were also actively involved in making the event a success:

• TckTckTck released a beautiful and touching new video;
• Greenpeace bloggers from around the world joined in;
• World Wildlife Fund featured Blog Action Day on their international climate blog;
• Oxfam helped emphasize the human side of the climate crisis;
• 1Sky wrote about the front lines of political activism in the US;
• The Nature Conservancy helped us understand the science of climate change;
• NRDC's Switchboard bloggers wrote informative posts all day;
• Consequence wrote a whole series of posts on youth climate leadership.

You should all feel proud of this remarkable collective effort. And it doesn't have to end today. For many, we hope this serves as an entry point into the broader movement to address the issue of climate change. There are a number of ways and some amazing organizations through which you can continue to remain involved, and we encourage you to check out our Take Action section to learn more. "

Eee PC just gave me a platform to talk about it

Image credits: newopps.blogsome.com

Where else but via its myeeepcmylife blog site.

I know I've just about abandoned blogging -- thanks to the growing popularity of presence tools (Read: micro-blogging). So you would pretty much "see" me often on Twitter and/or Facebook.

And yes, I've just been woken up from blogging slumber. Want to know why? Read more at my Eee PC blog.

Educator.com: Equalizing education

This should particularly appeal to students who want to get up to speed in learning online with highly qualified professors.

Educator.com styles itself as a pioneering E-Learning startup looking to equalize education. Its Twitter profile says it specializes in Algebra, Biology, Calculus, Chemistry, Java, Statistics.

I did a quick look at its main website and for Mathematics alone, it currently has 34 course offerings in Mathematics.

The Educator.com experience seems designed to recreate the live tutoring experience on to the internet. For example, a middle interface video lets the readers know exactly what's being explained while keeping an eye on the lecturer. If users need help in any of the scholastic subjects they offer, Educator.com sounds like a blessing to them. The site is currently still in expanding mode as the people behind it are getting more professors to fill in the subject such as physics, trigonometry, and more advanced topics like calculus.

Educator thus looks like it should be a must for those looking for the best scholastic content on the Web.

Here are a couple of samples:

First up, learn chemistry will take you to Advanced Placement Chemistry which is being run under Dr. Harold Goldwhite.

His background and the scope of the course follow:

"University of Cambridge educated (Ph.D and B.A.) Dr. Harold Goldwhite guides you through Educator's Chemistry course. Professor Goldwhite has taught all over the world, from 46 years in Los Angeles, to several years in England, and visiting professorships in France, Mexico, and Venezuela. His experience on the History Channel and vast knowledge of chemistry transform his lectures into an informative and fascinating journey with a comprehensive syllabus that covers standard and accelerated one year courses. Topics range from Atomic Theory, Chemical Reactions, Bonds, Kinetics, Acids and Bases, Thermodynamics, Electrochemistry, to Radioactivity. Each lecture is accompanied by multiple examples for each new idea and detailed notes of things to remember."

Next up, learn calculus leads you to the online class of Professor Murray. More below:

UC Berkeley (Ph.D) and Georgetown (B.S.) educated Dr. William Murray instructs Educator's Calculus II course covering from Advanced Integration Techniques and Applications of Integrals to Sequences/Series. Professor Murray demonstrates his extensive teaching experience by clarifying complicated topics with a wide array of examples, helpful tips, and time-saving tricks. Will's course is essential to those struggling with Calculus who would benefit from clear explanations and examples of common problems. Each video lecture is accompanied by several worked-out video examples and important notes to prepare for any examination.

There's a whole lot more but you may wish to quickly search the site for quality learning wherever, whenever.

Social network + online store = Sandbox

Don't know about you but after I've joined tons of Social Network Sites in the last 6 years, I realize that I go through the cycle of technology adoption from trigger to peak of inflated expectations all the way to plateau of productivity. In between, I also tend to sink into some sort of SNS fatigue. So when a new site turns up -- usually every six months, I routinely create an account, based on each one's relative novelty.

Most usually come within my online attention radar. This time, I came across Sandbox via a huge billboard among a bunch of others along the stretch of Highway 54 in Makati, EDSA to the younger generation.

Ok so I ask myself what else is new? You've seen one with a lot of videos. And another with a lot of pictures, and yet another one with loads of music. What else could be different with Sandbox? Perhaps, the following?

To the younger set it could be a provider of services like friendster but with online store.

To the more mature and sophisticated netizens, it could very well be a source of services like facebook but with online store.

Then again, probably the best thing that makes Sandbox different from other websites, is:

It's an online store that allows you to download music, games and movie-themed content to your mobile.

Hold on, give me time to create a new account and go through the cycle again. And good thing there are open APIs. You don't have to really abandon your other SNS so long as the accounts could cross-connect.

[Edit] - After creating an account and doing the usual validation steps, (Note: They are rather particularly stringent about the usrn@me + p@ssword specs.), I was taken to the site. One thing that caught my attention, the right-hand side application icons that move like those of the Mac during Mouse hover. Will give myself more time to explore its digisoria section. Looks interesting.

It's ok here

Or that's how the site AyosDito.ph would translate to English. Site's title tells us it has something to do with buying and selling in the Philippines. A comprehensive nationwide buy-and-sell website is something that I've actually been looking for in the last 4 weeks for posting an advertising for a school to no avail. So I had to go via the usual route of newspapers for national reach plus the plain old community approach of handing out flyers. Turns out I missed this vehicle by two weeks. Still it might be worth mentioning in this blog post.

You might be interested to find out that AyosDito covers the entire archipelago of 7,100 islands. And that means you can even browse regions from CAR to ARMM. Check out NCR to see some used items. Now if for some reason you'd want to buy or sell a bicycle, you may wish to click on bike.

Currently, the site is on very active mode, to wit:

Post an Ad for FREE and WIN Big Prizes!

Weekly prizes: HP Mini-note, Sony Digicam, and iPod Touch

Check out the amazing prizes that we are giving away and find out if you are one of the lucky winners of AyosDito.ph Post and Win Contest!

For those following posts on Ad Astra

... seems like they'd have to do that on twitter for the most part.

Blogging could perhaps give way to micro-blogging for now.

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Kairos has patiently waited on me

Image credits: http://www.masternewmedia.org/

Sometime in 2007, I discovered Yahoo Pipes. It's a service that allows one to "program" mash-ups using feeds and other inputs to generate custom feeds. True to form, I started toying with some sample Pipes, e.g. pulling word-of-the-day inputs from freedictionary.com and producing "interesting" photo-collections.

In 2008, I came across a protomnema-inspired vocabulary-building educational framework, and after vaguely mashing the two ideas simply gave them short shrift.

Then for some reason, I suddenly felt a need for Yahoo Pipes. So I picked the 2-year old mash-up and tinkered with it again. Click on the Word-to-Flickr Image Aggregator.

Get RSS results here.

For a moment there, it all seemed like a result of random collaboration.