I had a couple ideas of my own that I thought might fit the bill, and I managed to get one of them out of my head in sufficient detail to submit*. Amazingly, my idea seems to have ended up in the 16 Idea Themes that over 3000 Googlers distilled from over 150,000 submissions!

My submission was one of the two bundled into this theme (other themes had as many as 6 relevant submissions)

As you might imagine, I’m pretty stoked. Of course, “Enable people to submit bug reports about problems in the real world” is just the first line of a longer submission – not too long – Google wisely required everyone to refine their submission to answering 6 short questions and supplying an optional short video. Good thing, given they got 150,000+ ideas to read through!

Three things you might be wondering at this point:

Surely this isn’t a new idea?

It’s certainly not a new idea in 2009. There a lot of similar projects underway right now. One of my friends was telling me about his at the Digital NZ hackfest just the other day. A recent silicon valley demo contest even featured a SaaS version of the idea, Citysourced, targeted at American Cities, and it was noted as one of the few potentially world-changing products among the 50 launches. It probably wasn’t a new idea when I submitted it for this 10^100 contest a year ago, although I hadn’t heard of anyone else doing it back then, and I also doubt it was a new idea when I submitted it for an informal blog post based competition 6 months before that (ironically, I was trying to win a ticket to Google I/O, and missed out!). Way back when I first thought of it, circa 2005, it may have been vaguely original, but there was little point in implementing such a project back then because cellphones with GPS didn’t actually exist at that stage, so it ended up on the backburner with the other 5-10 “big ideas” I usually have fighting to get out of my pile-o-notes and into some sort of coherent project plan.

Should I vote for Seth’s idea?

Well, the idea behind the competition is to help as many people as possible. So pick the idea theme you think will do that. However, here’s why it might be worth picking my one: Cellphones with cameras** will likely be more or less ubiquitous in 5-15 years, we all share an environment that has it’s occasional problems, and people who want to know about those problems (and pretty soon, autonomous systems will want to know too), and the usual ways in which information about these problems is transmitted, routed, stored, organised and displayed is really inefficient and fragmented compared to what could be enabled with todays technology, so a good implementation of this idea would eventually help everyone on the planet. So the real question is, could a project sponsored by Google in the next year or so create a significantly better outcome than would be achieved by leaving it to other players in this space***? And how does the importance of getting this done right, sooner rather than later, stack up against the other 15 big ideas? I may post a follow up considering one or both of these questions, but this post is getting long enough already.

Why isn’t Seth’s (or anyone else’s) name mentioned in this list?

I was initially a bit disappointed about that, but I think they quite rightly want people to focus on the ideas rather than the people who submitted them. I was also initially disappointed that they didn’t link the submission titles to copies of the complete submissions, but I guess the point is to get as many people as possible to read all 16 ideas and then vote, and linking to a bunch of extra information would not have helped! On the other hand, after the voting process is over and the “final five” are found, I hope Google will provide more information about the individual submissions and submitters.

In conclusion, go vote!

PS: I made my final submission in a bit of a hurry, typing it direct into Google’s webform, and wouldn’t you know it, when I went to recover the text I’d entered using Lazarus I discovered I didn’t have it installed in the browser I was using! Hopefully Google will send me a copy of my submission even if it doesn’t make it into the final 5 – I’d like to blog it for posterity.

PPS: If you actually managed to read this far, why not sign up for my RSS feed?

* I’m working on a blog post that explains the other idea, which I still think is well worth doing.
** GPS helps, but isn’t essential, phones can do a reasonable job of nailing down location using signal triangulation.
*** Of course, some of them would probably be invited to answer Google’s RFP, and an ideal solution would probably allow for open and distributed interop between both new and existing players in this space.

Following up on my previous post about the Christchurch Digital NZ hackfest, I did find the bug in my search plugin script, it was just one of those minor typos that takes ages to find because the error message you got when you tried to use it was completely uninformative. Sigh. However, since I spent most of my time on this during “Mozilla Service Week” I chalked up a few hours there to add to their total. Kudos to Mozilla for organising that and I’ll be sure to take part in a more serious way should they do it again.

Digital NZ has created a Custom Search Builder, and it seems to me that they could add Search Plugin generation to this reasonably easily. All they need to do is take a copy of my sample and use it to create a template the swaps out the content of the ShortName and Description tag, and also the template attribute in the <url> tag – everything else can stay the same. Then they need to add a javascript install link to the search result pages similar to the one here.

Heres what my sample search plugin file looks like (NB: First bit of code I can recall posting in this blog. I promise not to make it a habit.)


<OpenSearchDescription xmlns="http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/"
xmlns:moz="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/">
<ShortName>Digital NZ</ShortName>
<Description>Digital NZ Archive Search</Description>
<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
<Image width="16" height="16" type="image/x-icon">data:image/x-icon;base64,[data string goes here]</Image>
<Url type="text/html" method="get" template="http://search.digitalnz.org/en/search">
<Param name="search_text" value="{searchTerms}"/>
</Url>
</OpenSearchDescription>


The Webserver has to serve up that XML file with a MIME type of application/opensearchdescription+xml

eg using apache, in a directory where .xml isn’t reserved for anything else, one could put this in a .htaccess file:

AddType application/opensearchdescription+xml .xml

It’s also relatively trivial to add something to the headers of a webpage to enable autodiscovery of one or more search plugins. I’ve done that on my example page. Once you’ve done so it’ll appear in the search plugin manager for the browser, like this:

For more details, and how to do other cool things like enabling search completion, see:

OpenSearch Specification
Mozilla article on creating OpenSearch Plugins for Firefox

Many of you will know her as the founding editor of the uber-famous (well, in tech circles) Lifehacker, a phenomenally successful blog covering tips, tricks, software and sites that offer a multitude of ways to improve your workflow and lifestyle. Sadly, the sheer number of suggestions forced me to stop reading Lifehacker a while ago – chasing up all those potential speed improvements wasn’t helping me get anything done in the short term! I’m looking forward to achieving a somewhat more measured pace of life improvement from reading Gina’s new blog; Smarterware.

The fact that so many of these posts were of good value, and the fact that Gina was churning out a dozen or more every day, day after day after day, is certainly a Heroic feat in my opinion. I don’t think I’ve managed a dozen blog posts inside a single month, let alone in a single day.

While researching Gina’s life (a remarkably easy task, given how much she has written or had written about her in the last decade), I discovered an article that mentioned the genesis of Lifehacker – it turns out she was already working for Nick Denton as a coder when he bought the domain name, and her enthusiasm for the what could be done with it made him offer her the editor job on the spot. Many will realize this was probably one of the best HR decisions Nick made in his life, and it has to be said he’s made some good ones in his time.

“The one blogger I wished we had landed at Weblogs, Inc. was Gina Trapani from LifeHacker. I tried every two months for a year I think… no offer was good enough. Very, very frustrating.” – Jason Calacanis

To go from being a full time professional coder (with a pretty impressive resume) to being a full time professional writer is no small feat. Both involve using a keyboard and your brain – after that the similarities start to die off pretty fast. So that’s another reason Gina is a Tech Heroine.

I was actually aware of Gina well before she started Lifehacker, in that she was one of the few girl geeks who was seriously blogging, and there was a time (pre-2004) when just running your own blog qualified you as being moderately cool. I looked in the WayBackMachine and discovered she’s been blogging since late 2001 – which makes her a serious early adopter. Here’s her first post.

Another reason she’s among my Tech Heroines is that she’s the author of quite a few Firefox Addons, and I would say she’s contributed just as much to the success of Firefox through constantly blogging about Firefox and Firefox add-ons on Lifehacker, and providing early examples of add-ons for people to learn from, as almost anyone who actually works for the Mozilla Foundation. They should give her a medal or something. One of the earliest “Top X Firefox Add-ons” lists features her app “About this site”.

For reasons that may not be immediately apparent, the success of Mozilla ranks up there with the success of Google, Wikipedia, and the W3C as reasons why the web is so damned useful today, as opposed to mired in a morass of crappy over-commercialized portal sites and walled gardens, so Gina’s contributions to the success of Firefox are no small thing in the world of Tech Heroism.

Gina has said that her book is one of the things she’s most proud of, so I really must get around to buying it sometime soon. [2] Her book is called “Lifehacker – 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Life”.

If you can’t wait to get the book, or don’t feel like perusing thousands of lifehacker articles for your dose of wisdom from Gina, the interviews she gave to Tim Ferris and The New York Times should at least whet your appetite.

It’s not for nothing that in 2007 she was ranked 7th by Forbes in a list of 25 Web Celebrities, one above Mark Zuckerburg, the founder of Facebook.

Herein endith my tribute to Gina Trapani. To read about more Tech Heroines on Ada Lovelace Day, check out this huge list of posts, which is also available referenced by subject, and the locations of the bloggers writing about them!

[1] “Today” being a somewhat amophorus concept for me. Lets just stay I started this post on the 24th, NZ time, and will finish on the 24th, American time.

[2] My book reading has slowed to a crawl now the internet feeds me pretty much everything I need, but I make exceptions. It doesn’t help that book prices in New Zealand are at least twice what they are in the USA, if we’re lucky. This is another reason the internet is a great leveller – eliminating the edge once enjoyed by readers in large markets with better enconomies of scale. Imagine what it would be like if everything on the internet was priced differentially by where you lived, or you weren’t allowed to watch clips from an upcoming movie because it wasn’t available in your country….ok, bad example. Eventually the creative industries will realise how batshit crazy they are to do this to their international fans.

I first ran across Generation while watching an interview they gave at the Skoll World Forum (ok, I admit it, I am seriously jealous of Jeff Skoll, not only does the guy run a Movie Studio, but he has a World Forum named after him)

Blood and Gore have this extremely devious plan for making the world a better place. They want to demonstrate to the investment market that an investment strategy which considers the attitude companies have to externalities before investing in them is going to be more profitable in the long term than an investment strategy that doesn’t, hence causing a change in the way major funds invest, hence causing a change in the way companies behave.

“In the end, we hope to be one of many firms in this emerging system that will make sustainable investing mainstream. We believe it is inevitable that the broader capital markets will eventually embrace not just the idea of research into non-traditional factors that impact performance, but also explicitly recognise that the way businesses manage the risks and opportunities related to global social, economic, environmental and political issues fundamentally impact the ability of companies to generate value for their shareholders in an enduring way.” – Al Gore.

Of course, you might say that sort of long term systems thinking is the reason Gore lost in 2000, because it’s utterly opaque to the average swing voter, but ironicly the thinking behind the 4-5 party line vote that really counted was surely even more opaque.

Musing on what might have been we have this great skit from Saturday Night Live.

PS: Check out the new Swicki in my sidebar. Developed by some friends of mine here in Christchurch, they’re pretty neat.

As I recall the story goes that Mark then gave a million Rand to every one of his staff, including the gardener. Good show, I thought. Next I heard anything about him he had paid his way onto a soviet rocket and was going to be the first African in space. Well, lucky for some I thought.

A couple years later I heard he was forming his own Linux Distro. Cool, I thought, that should go well. It certainly did. Ubuntu is now the most popular linux distribution on the planet. That probably makes Mark one of the most important Benevolent Dictators in Open Source, and although not quite as Karma-laden as RMS or Linus Torvalds yet, he has the advantage of having a fortune in the bank and a few other philanthropic projects and foundations up his sleeve, so that definitely puts him in the upper eschalon of open source people who are really making a difference.

I see from his official bio that he’s an Iain Banks fan. I’ll post about Iain soon, who as well as being my favourite author is probably more than anyone responsible for my techoprogressive outlook on life.

Ubunto is apparently an African altruistic ideology of sorts and a word very difficult to translate into English, according to the Wikipedia entry – but frankly, it sounds pretty appealing, and perhaps it’s not a good sign that there isn’t a good English translation for it. English usually just steals any useful works from foreign languages, but at the moment, in English, “Ubuntu” means “popular linux distribution” and it may be a long time before any other meaning could shine through that. Apparently Nelson Mandela baked Ubuntu into the spirit of post-apartheid South Africa, which may have been part of the reason the transition actually sort of worked. Mandela is a pretty amazing statesman, I wish there were more like him on the world stage.

If/when I finally switch to Linux on the desktop (been using it server-side for many years) I’ll probably switch to Ubunto. I like the founder, I like the concept, and I like what I’ve seen of the distro so far. Can’t go wrong really.

[1] I know, I’m simplifying. But a discussion of how SSL certificates really work is way too technical for this blog.

So, not in any particular order, here are some incredibly cool people doing great things for the people of this planet:

Steven Clift whose tireless promotion of e-democracy may shortly be rewarded with an Ashoka fellowship. I have been following his do-wire mailing list for at least 5 years now and I think he’s well worthy of that honour. It’s a bit of a fluke, but the company behind the forum software he’s using for his Issue Forums is run by people here in Christchurch.

Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, who recently suggested that we could be a bit smarter about the way we discuss politics online and may be hoping to kickstart another revolution of sorts. Personally this is an area where the idealist and the pragmatist within me have an argument. On the one hand I’d like to see net culture transcend the pathetic sloganeering of broadcast politics, but on the other hand I’m aware that for the moment a fully integrated strategy that bows to the tyranny of the “swing voter” might be necessary in 2006.

The Omidyar Network, who support many worthy causes and have this amazing community of altruists around them.

Jeff Skoll, definitely a philanthropist after my own heart says here : “In my case, I like to support causes where “a lot of good comes from a little bit of good,” or, in other words, where the positive social returns vastly exceed the amount of time and money invested.” – or, in other words, he’s a Philanthohacker. One of the very clever things he’s doing is running Participant Productions, who are harnessing the power of the movie theatre for the sake of good with films like An Inconvenient Truth. and Syriana

Benetech, who I first spotted because they employed Brendan Nyhan who was involved with Spinsanity, an amazing blog I was following that covered the unprecedented level of media spin in the post 9/11 era, right up until they re-elected Bush, after which I guess they decided that the American public wasn’t quite ready for this whole “sanity” concept yet.

Dave Pollard who was Chief Knowledge Officer of Ernst & Young before he decided that he could do more to save the world through blogging. A fantastic blog.

The WorldChanging bloggers, who I wish I had more time to read. They are supported by the above mentioned Omidyar Network (it’s funny how often I discover something amazingly cool and then later discover the Omidyars have started funding it)

Richard Stallman, who more than anyone is responsible for the worldwide open source movement. Met him once at a party here in Christchurch. Nice guy.

The Responsible Wealth network, who definitely have a few clues.

George Monbiot – who mainly draws attention to big problems, but occasionally comes up with some very interesting solutions, unfortunately they often seem to involve the British and/or American Governments behaving responsibly, so don’t expect to see any of those solutions implemented anytime soon.

Aubrey de Grey, who’s somewhat radical proposal is that we could engineer the end of biological ageing within the next 50 years. He’s causing a bit of a stir in the biogerontology world, many of whom think he’s holding out false hopes and probably resent his grabbing all the headlines, but he’s got enough scientists supporting him that I think he has to be taken seriously. Given the acceleration in scientific and medical research that is being driven by the internet and cheap computing power, I find it all remarkably plausible. It’s certainly an amazing time to be alive – the age of possibility.

…and of course I am still yet to discuss the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation in any detail.

Finally here are a few random links from my philanthrogeek bookmarks:

• Center for Inquiry Transnational
• Democracy 2.0
  
• Open The Government
  
• Oligopoly Watch

Please note that this is far from everyone who’s impressed me in a philanthrogeek capacity over the last few years, but it’s enough to talk about for the moment.

Pretty good example of how things are changing if you ask me. People are beginning to realise that we’re all in this together. I think now that we’re no longer “connected” in a mediated way via our TV sets and newspapers, but hyperconnected in a more direct fashion by way of the net, the 6 degrees of seperation are reducing to 5. Eventually everyone will be no more than 3-4 “hops” away from someone suffering under 3rd world conditions, and that has got to make a difference I think.

The effects of Buffet’s bequest are possibly much more profound than you might think:

1. The obvious one: The foundation has lots more wealth at it’s disposal to do great things with.
2. Bill and Melinda are no longer just spending their own fortune, so they will work all the harder to ensure that the money is spent well.
3. Buffett himself will be better placed and better to leverage his own brainpower and contacts for the causes the foundation chooses to support.
4. Becuase nobody as smart as Buffett would give away that much wealth to a foundation without believing it would be well spent, it’s going to be a lot harder for naysayers to pretend that BG is only doing this because Microsoft isn’t as much fun as it used to be now that it’s stock price has been flat for a few years, or some other equally uncharitable explanation.
5. The foundation gains considerable respect and publicity as an organisation, it will be taken more seriously.
6. As I mentioned in my first paragraph, it sets a good example. It’s a refutation of the “Greed is good” mentality – he who dies with the most toys does not win, its the people who made the best use of their toys to help others during their own lifetime who win. As Soros has said, if you leave your fortune to a foundation with instructions to spend it wisely, they will not be inclined to take risks with it, and sometimes risks must be taken.

It very much bears mentioning that WB has also donated smaller (But still significant) fortunes to other foundations run by people he trusts (eg, his children), with instructions to use the money wisely on smaller philanthropic projects. I’m a strong believer that a little wealth with some smart people in charge of it can go a lot further than a lot of wealth with a huge committee in charge of it, or of course, an enormous amount of wealth with a corrupt government in charge of it.

BTW: One of my many unfinished drafts is about Bill Gates and his big announcement, I’ll get back to that one soon.

Anway, what I admire about Soros as a philanthropist is that he has a great grasp of the complexity of human societies, just how hard it is to effect any significant change, and then he goes ahead and does his best anyway, without fear of the inevitable failures. He isn’t hoping to find easy answers or make flashy gestures, but he knows that there are things that can be done that definitely help – like investing in education and health, and monitoring government activity, that will gradually move a society in the right direction.

I think quoting Soros is the ultimate answer to naive libertarianism and free-market fanatics. It’s obvious that he has a very strong understanding of the world financial markets, from which he has made billions, but he is also very clear that markets are not enough on their own, and can do some serious damage if left unchecked.

“We need to maintain law and order. We need to maintain peace in the world. We need to protect the environment. We need to have some degree of social justice, equality of opportunity. The markets are not designed to take care of those needs. That’s a political process. And the market fundamentalists have managed to reduce providing those public goods.” – George Soros

He thinks very hard about some monstrously complicated issues, and he tries to share the benefit of his wisdom – not only through supporting changemakers in their own countries through his foundations, but also through writing books. I have to admit that I’ve been so busy in the time since I discovered that he was more than an ordinary billionaire that I haven’t had time to read any of his books, but they’re definitely on my amazon wishlist.

I’ll probably write more about Soros later. I really am a bit of a fan. He’s got some great stuff to say about the “war on terror” at the moment, so if you, like me, don’t have time to read the book, then at least catch some of the interviews linked from his homepage.

[1] On the matter of people who get their facts through other people, who thinks Ken Lay was as badly misinformed by his people as GWB usually is? Personally I think that like Bush, he was well aware that the information he got was being pre-laundered and pre-spun, but that was the way he liked it.

[I'm turning off comments for this post because it seems to be the one that gets the most spam comments for some reason.]

I’m very open to discussion on which parts of the general technoprogressive agenda are good, and which are not. I’m inclined to think they’re mostly all good. Or at least all mostly good.

[1] Don’t even get me started on “Web 2.0″.