The PF HYPER Blog

Updated Apple ad honors Mr. Jobs

2011-10-05T23:03:00.001-05:00

Friend Gary Leatherman updated a classic Apple ad as a tribute to Steve.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Apple's 1984 Commercial

2011-10-05T21:49:00.001-05:00

Always worth another look.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

RIP Steve Jobs 1955 - 2011

2011-10-05T21:25:00.001-05:00

Somewhere back in the 80s, I started to learn how to use a computer, a
PC running DOS. Just couldn't get it and the frustrated person at the
Metro State computer lab finally led me to a Mac. I'm guessing an SE.
I never looked back. It was an amazing tool. Thanks, Steve.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs

See the full gallery on Posterous

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

St. Paul Union Depot Pix: The LRT is Coming!

2011-09-22T23:02:00.003-05:00

See the full gallery on Posterous

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

We don't need no stinkin' walled gardens on our Internet

2011-05-14T11:05:00.001-05:00

Bob Garfield has a great piece at his AdAge blog on the whole Facebook-Burson thing (FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: The 'Truth' About Facebook PR Gaffe). In part, he says that Facebook's current slimy tactics make David Fincher's film The Social Network look more like reality than fiction. It's a good read and got me writing. (Thanks, Bob.) (And thanks to @dsearls for linking me.)

I've said this before to whoever will listen (short of ranting on street corners) but the future of our personal engagements on the Internet is going to be more twitter-like and google-like than facebook-like. Don't get me wrong, it's not necessarily going to be the current corporate Twitter entity or the Google entity (although that's much more likely) but it's definitely not going to be the Facebook entity unless they steer their corporate battleship in an entirely new direction (and they could do that just as Microsoft did with the dawn of Internet Explorer). Or unless we cede control of the Internet to AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, etc. You can be sure that Facebook will fit in very comfortably with that group.

Facebook, like the AOL of the 90s, is trying to wall us in so our Total Internet Experience is The Facebook Experience. This is antithetical to the nature of the Internet where the next thing is a link away and where the ecology has grown by leaps and bounds with no help from Facebook. The Internet does not need to be a walled garden and that idea has no benefits for Internet denizens. There is lots to support that the walled garden idea benefits Facebook's corporate model which is to sell as much of your personal information as it can get away with to other corporate entities. Yes, if you scan my Twitter feed you will find personal info but this is the info that I choose to share. Facebook shares whatever it can get away with.

Bonus Link: Doc Searls talks about moving tweeting from Twitter which is an excellent idea.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Geeking out with Toby, Pete, & WordPress at Minnewebcon

2011-04-10T12:38:00.001-05:00

Tomorrow at 11 Toby Cryns (the Mighty Mo guy) and I will be hosting a WordPress Geekout at Minnewebcon. We did this once before at the MIMA Summit and had a great time and the participants were very engaged. We'll share a few wordpressy things we've learned or stumbled upon and try to answer any and all questions. We encourage all in attendance to share their WordPress tips too.

We won't involve ourselves in the WordPress vs. Drupal debate.

So if you're at Minnewebcon, consider dropping by our session at 11!

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

New show at 950 AM showcases immigrant voices in Minnesota

2011-04-03T12:22:00.001-05:00

Through interviews, profiles and news reports Reflections of Minnesotans looks to provide a platform for Minnesota's diverse immigrants.

My friend Julia Nekessa Opoti is the co-host (and producer) of a new hour-long radio show at AM950 called Reflections of New Minnesotans. Check it out at 2 p.m. on Saturdays. Her co-host is Siyad Abdullahi.

Julia is a great choice for hosting the show. She has been doing community outreach for the Cedar-Riverside E-Democracy forum (mostly working with Somali immigrants) for some time and she has reported on (mainly East African) immigrant issues for Twin Cities Daily Planet and other local news sites. She blogs over at my lower case and the About page there tells more about her background.

Check the Reflections of New Minnesotans blog. They just posted their third show, an interview with Innocent Limo (pardon the spelling) from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, who farms in Minnesota part of the year and gives tours back in Tanzania in the remainder. Previous shows include an interview with Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison, and interviews with Dahir Jibreel, Ahmed Jama, and Ali Egal—local Somali immigrants working in the justice system.

Good luck, Julia! May you have a a run of many, many shows.

Here's the Podcast link:
http://www.am950ktnf.com/listen/Reflections+of+New+Minnesotans

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Valley Fair's flooded roller coaster

2011-04-03T11:49:00.001-05:00

I tweeted this image out earlier with a link to the Secrets of the City site where I found it. But I wanted a bigger picture of it and found one at the MPR story (linked from SOTC).

MPR (and SOTC) attributed the image to MN DHS and I decided to try and find the original. "DHS" is the Department of Human Services which seemed an odd place for this photo to start from. I wondered if they actually meant "Department of Homeland Security." I was right but Homeland Security isn't DHS it's DPS (Department of Public Safety) or SEOC (State Emergency Operations Center) and HSEM (Homeland Security Emergency Management). I guess it was easier to borrow the Human Services acronym.

The original (plus another Valleyfair shot among others) is over at an HSEM site in the slide show.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Shot across Apple's bow: Amazon's Cloud Drive & Cloud Player in 2 varieties: Web & Android.

2011-03-29T11:22:00.001-05:00

via amazon.com

Shot across Apple's bow: Amazon's Cloud Drive & Cloud Player in 2 varieties: Web & Android. See Amazon home page.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Two days later: Mary's Valentine flowers

2011-02-17T09:01:00.001-06:00

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

U of MN Press publishes Minneapolis bridge collapse book

2011-02-09T11:23:00.001-06:00

The Institute for Advanced Study announced the publication of The City, the River, the Bridge: Before and after the Minneapolis Bridge Collapse, edited by Patrick Nunnally and published by the University of Minnesota Press. The book is based on the symposium of the same name organized by the IAS in October 2008. Video of the symposium is online.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

COICA will make it easier than it already is to shut down sites like Wikileaks

2010-12-10T10:01:00.001-06:00

We already have laws in place to deal with infringing content, so don't
buy the excuse that this law is about stopping infringement. This law
takes down entire websites based on the government's say-so.
via Techdirt

I am very disappointed that Senators Klobuchar and Franken were among the 19 senators voting in favor of the COICA bill (Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act) when it came before the Senate Judiciary Committee. I'm especially disappointed in Senator Franken who has said so much in favor of Net Neutrality. A neutral net won't be of much use if the government can easily censor content. (Senator Franken's expanation of his vote here. I still don't buy the need especially in light of how easily the US government took down sites without COICA. See Who Needs COICA When Homeland Security Gets To Seize Domain Names?)

Also see Bob Collins' post at News Cut. Some good quotes and links.

via ScribeFire

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

The cats are using the toilet

2010-11-17T11:29:00.001-06:00

Back in August we started toilet training our cats with the CityKitty system. It's gone pretty well and for the last several weeks, we've not had to deal with a litter box any more. It's very nice.

Except Dia, the white one, only likes to use the toilet for pooping when we are in the bathroom with her. (Peeing in the toilet is no problem, thank god.) This might have to do with the treats we gave them in training after they used the toilet. Whatever it is, her alternate spot is our bed. We're not sure how we're going to break this but we've covered the bed with an old shower curtain for now. This is still better than having to mess with a litter box.

Things to remember: You have to leave the toilet seat down and the cover up. We put a strap around the toilet tank that holds the cover up or else I forget sometimes.

I've got more photos up at Flickr. I hope to get a longer blog post on this soon.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

TCF Bank has video to sell you overdraft fees.

2010-10-12T10:46:00.001-05:00

via tcfbank.com

(Click through the tcfbank link to see the video.)

Saying 'no' can avoid unexpected fees on your account.

TCF markets aggresively to University of Minnesota students. Before the Federal law change, the TCF ATM default was to allow ATM cash withdrawals whether funds were available or not and to charge an overdraft fee with no notification at the time of the ATM transaction. Even more evil, if you make an ATM deposit and then check your account at the ATM, it reflects the money you just deposited. But that money is not really there and attempting to withdraw it immediately will also result in overdraft charges.

I believe bank practices like TCF's led to the changes in the law. I think the little video is great in how it tries to convince you to let good ole TCF continue to pay out on insufficient funds and charge you a fee. Surely, they seem to say, this is the best way to go.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Twitter explains the Tweet Button? [video] via Holy Kaw!

2010-08-15T09:06:00.001-05:00

via holykaw.alltop.com

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

I make a quick decision on my primary vote for Secretary of State

2010-08-09T17:53:00.001-05:00

Researching out my choices on the Primary ballot, I was able to make a quick decision between Ritchie and Franson.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Minneapolis Foundation announces 2010 Digital Inclusion Fund Request for Proposals

2010-08-05T09:52:00.004-05:00

I am currently a member of the Digital Inclusion Fund Advisory Committee. This will be my last year.

The Digital Inclusion Fund Advisory Committee and The Minneapolis Foundation have called an RFP from eligible 501 (c)(3) nonprofits. Approximately $100,000 will be available for single-year grants in 2010. The Fund will make grants of various sizes, however the maximum grant size is $10,000 for this cycle.

Proposals must be received by 4:30 p.m. friday, september 10, 2010.

The Digital Inclusion Fund is a donor advised fund of The Minneapolis Foundation. It was established through a provision of the Community Benefits Agreement that was a part of the contract between the City of Minneapolis and U.S. Internet Wireless. USIW is the vendor responsible for establishing a wireless network in the City of Minneapolis.

Download now or preview on posterous

Forrest the Grandson wants Beatles so here's a playlist for a 4-year-old

2010-07-20T08:34:00.001-05:00

Every time I see Forrest he tells me he needs Beatles. He's not sure which Beatles, just Beatles. Finally I grabbed the CDs I have around and made a quick playlist for him. (Wish I had Yellow Submarine! I'll get that for the next playlist.)

Forrest's Beatles CD
Lovely Rita
A Hard Day's Night
With A Little Help From My Friends
Octopus's Garden
Getting Better
Can't Buy Me Love
She Came In Through The Bathroom Window
I'll Cry Instead
I Should Have Known Better
Polythene Pam
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

4th of July 2010 Fireworks pictures.

2010-07-06T10:29:00.001-05:00

My friend Bryan invites us over each year to watch Minneapolis river front fireworks from his condo on the 28th floor of the Carlyle Building. (The non-firework image is a view straight down from his balcony.) This is a rough edit of my pictures. I think it's clear that I'm not trying to get THE superbest fireworks image and rather go after the raw look to try and capture some of the noise and intensity of being so close. Enjoy.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Cloaked beaver sculpture in Bemidji in support of Gaea by Deborah Davis

2010-07-06T09:34:00.001-05:00

via bemidjipioneer.com

Cloaked beaver statue in Bemidji in protest of the city decision to remove the "Gaea," beaver sculpture by Deborah Davis after receiving complaints that it was "pornographic." (Pioneer Photo by Brad Swenson)

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Seeking nominations for my Mpls-Neighborhoods Twitter list

2010-07-04T12:39:00.001-05:00

A while back over at the @sewardtweets account, I started a Twitter list for Minneapolis neighborhoods and other relevant tweeters.

http://twitter.com/SewardTweets/mpls-neighborhoods

I'm looking for other tweeters that might fit this list especially other "official" Minneapolis communities and neighborhoods. (Unofficial tweeters representing neighborhoods will definitely be considered.) Please go over who I am currently following on the list to get a better idea of what it is I have in mind.

A few ground rules (it is my list, afterall):

It's Minneapolis only. I was going to add @freshmn and @tcdailyplanet but they cover a larger community.
Its not a single business. @Freewheel_Mdtwn didn't make my cut but @MidtownGlobal did.

I wish Twitter had collaborative lists that spanned account boundaries. But they don't so I will take this on for now. If anyone knows of other lists like this, let me know.

I would love it if you also subscribed to my list!

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Free USIW Wi-Fi hotspots in Minneapolis if you have a credit card

2010-06-14T14:44:00.001-05:00

Download now or preview on posterous

Minneapolis_South_free_wi-fi.pdf (1937 KB)

Free USIW Wi-Fi hotspots are supposed to be available around the City now (total of 117). I've attached the map for south Minneapolis.

I had trouble accessing the system in Standish Neighborhood Saturday morning with my iPod Touch. I was able to get to the login screen today at 26th Ave. S. and Franklin E. (northwest corner).

You do have to have a credit card for creating the account although you won't be charged. (I really wish they could have figured out a way to do this for people that don't have credit cards and because I really don't like to share that information if I'm not actually buying something.)

StarTribune has a story.

Maps for all of Minneapolis

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

3 iPhone/Touch Apps for getting real-time data on our Nice Ride Minnesota System (one of them does Android/Blackberry)

2010-06-12T12:46:00.001-05:00

There are three iPhone/Touch apps available at Apple's app store that give you real-time listing of bike and station availability. Search for "Bixou" (free Lite version or $.99 enhanced version) or "Spotcycle" (free). (Spotcycle is also supposed to have an Android & Blackberry apps available.)

I've looked at them both and I like the Bixou enhanced version. It makes it very easy to save your favorites and it seems to be loading the station list in relation to the station's distance from you.

http://www.bixoulite.info/en
http://www.bixou.info/
http://www.spotcycle.net/accueil_en/

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

USI Wireless launches then unlaunches ad campaign that compares Wi-Fi to a prostitute

2010-05-26T22:48:00.002-05:00

photo by @wentrogue

I first caught wind of this yesterday at the L'Etoile site which featured Vanessa Messersmith's photo of the USI Wireless (USIW) billboard along with the comment "Thanks USI Wireless for being just like a prostitute." In an email conversation, Vanessa elaborated a bit:

The woman is dressed in classic Hollywood street corner girl clothing. She is wearing a fur coat, has her head tilted, almost like chewing gum, and she appears like a sexy dumb girl. If not a prostitute, then perhaps a small town trashy girl. Either way you look at it, my friend and I were shocked and offended. How else am I suppose to interpret this ad?

Well Vanessa, according to a post over at the Minneapolis Issues Forum, this ad and the accompanying campaign "test-marketed to 100% approval" somewhere. But even with those great test market scores, USIW will be pulling the ads down this week. Councilmembers Elizabeth Glidden and Gary Schiff both contacted the company on the matter. So far, however, I haven't seen an official USIW apology on this matter.

In the post at the Issues Forum, Stacey Burns does an excellent job explaining why this ad is particularly demeaning in our city. I will just add that beyond the prostitution issue, this ad is just plain offensive particularly to women. I hope USIW understands this.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Bedlam "Hole-a-Thon" Tonight! Help fix the hole.

2010-05-26T19:08:00.004-05:00

From Benjamin Marcy at Bedlam Theater

As you may have heard, Bedlam had a bit of a problem when the floor of it's Fire Place Room collapsed earlier in May leaving a big hole. We've had a terrific response from the community to help us fix the problem.

Tonight we're having a "Hole-A-Thon" fundraiser asking for pledges to help support the theatre. There will be a number of performances in the hole starting at 8:00PM and going until 11:00PM. We will be streaming these performances online and you if you're unable to make it over you can check them out here:

http://bedlamtheatre.org/2010/05/live-from-the-hole/.

The performances may not all be appropriate for all ages, so a little forewarning, but still it's going to be a lot of FUN!

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Bedlam Theater needs your help

2010-05-11T22:40:00.001-05:00

From Ben Marcy, Development Officer with Bedlam Theater:

We have a bit of a crisis on our hands.

Last Tuesday, the floor in our Fireplace Room fell through and we found that the joists under the floor had considerable water damage from a pipe that had burst two months ago. While the water was contained in the room, the entire floor had to be removed.

We're now beginning our "Fill in the Hole" Campaign. We've had productive conversation with Fine & Associates, and they will match our amazing response of over 200 volunteer hours with rent reduction to offset the costs of the damages. We've raised a little money to help pay for the costs, but there is still more to do.

We're looking for donations, volunteers, and people getting the word out about our campaign. People can get more information on Facebook, GiveMN, and of course Bedlamtheatre.org.

Any way you can spread the word and help the cause is greatly appreciated!

Ben

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Minneapolis & St. Paul Police oppose Arizona-style immigration law legislation

2010-05-07T18:47:00.001-05:00

We believe that mobilizing local police to serve as primary enforcers of federal immigration laws will throw up barriers of mistrust and cause a chilling effect in immigrant communities, impairing our ability to build partnerships and engage in problem-solving that improves the safety of all members of the community. The culture of fear that this bill will instill in immigrant communities will keep victims of crime and people with information about crime from coming forward, and that will endanger all residents.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Vote for the Seward Redesign project at Pepsi Refresh!

2010-05-05T09:47:00.001-05:00

Seward Redesign is planning to develop a four acre industrial site near the Franklin Light Rail Transit (LRT) Station in the Seward neighborhood of Minneapolis. Drawing from the values of our community, we have created a vision for the future of city living that includes virtually everything an urban dweller could wish for: where rooftop gardens, private and public green space, young and old generations, mixed-income housing, direct assess to the city-wide bike highway and LRT Station, locally generated energy, carbon neutrality, and more come together. In order to make this vision a reality, Redesign is in need of funding to support the necessary design, engineering, and project management services.

We have applied and been accepted into the Pepsi Refresh Project, which is giving grants to various projects across the country that are trying to make this world a better place. There are 1,000 projects in the running this month, and the top projects in each category receive funding. We are in the neighborhood category for a $250,000 grant.

This is where you come in! Click on the link below and vote for our project. You can vote once a day for the whole month of May! Please help us vote, we can’t do it without you.

http://www.refresheverything.com/thefutureofurbanliving

Thank you!

Posted via email from Seward Profile

FRESH events

2010-04-19T22:42:00.001-05:00

Birchwood Cafe is a sponsor of the FRESH film and Tracy Singleton (Birchwood owner) will be moderating the post panel discussions on Wed & Thursday.

FRESH returns to Minneapolis just in time for EARTH DAY! FRESH is celebrating their theatrical release with showings this Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night @ 7pm at the Riverview Theater.

FRESH celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Each has witnessed the rapid transformation of our agriculture into an industrial model, and confronted the consequences: food contamination, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources, and morbid obesity. Forging healthier, sustainable alternatives, they offer a practical vision for a future of our food and our planet.

Among several main characters, FRESH features urban farmer and activist, Will Allen, the recipient of MacArthur’s 2008 Genius Award; sustainable farmer and entrepreneur, Joel Salatin, made famous by Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma; and supermarket owner, David Ball, challenging our Wal-Mart dominated economy.

http://action.freshthemovie.com/p/d/freshthemovie/event/display-theater-event.sjs?event_KEY=19557
Advance tickets can also be purchased through the link above, at the Birchwood Counter and at the Riverview the night of each show.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

bad news / good news when court says FCC can't require net neutrality

2010-04-06T15:31:00.001-05:00

Court Says F.C.C. Cannot Require ‘Net Neutrality’By EDWARD WYATTPublished: April 6, 2010WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Tuesday dealt a sharp blow to the efforts of the Federal Communications Commission to set the rules of the road for the Internet, ruling that the agency lacks the authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all Internet traffic flowing over their networks.

via NY Times

The bad news is that according to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the FCC has little clout in regulating net neutrality.

The good news is:

Congress may want to look even more closely at the Comcast acquisition of NBC Universal. If we don't have a neutral net, Comcast can slow access to competitors' content and favor NBC and...
Our legislative branch may finally decide to put a Net Neutrality law on the books.

Posted via web from Peter's posterous

Is Yelp filtering reviews for a fee?

2010-04-06T12:15:00.001-05:00

Yelp's Legal Troubles Mount

A San Francisco furniture store this week added its name (and court papers) to the list of small businesses accusing Yelp of extortion.

By Courtney Rubin | Mar 18, 2010

Story at inc.com

Via @s4xton I just heard about the lawsuits (now numbering threee) alleging Yelp blocks positive site reviews unless a business pays for advertising or will filter out negative reviews if you do buy. Yelp is denying it and says that the complainants don't understand how Yelp's filtering works in protecting users from fake or "shill" reviews. My own guess is that there are some aggressive (and possibly rogue) Yelp salespersons who are writing their own scripts.

Posted via web from Peter's posterous

Success: Seward Profile is sourced!

2010-04-02T16:31:00.003-05:00

Following up on the last two posts, the Profile blog is sourced at Kathie Jenkins' Pioneer Press Restaurant column. Well, sort of. Seems somone forgot the opening "<" of the <a> element resulting in a missing link but a visible URL.

I did send along a note to Ms. Jenkins informing her of the issue.

Ms. Jenkins apologized and explained that it was a last minute item written under deadline and she simply forgot. Thank you, Kathie.

Accidents will happen. For me, I still have this lingering doubt that not sourcing the Star Tribune or New York Times would have triggered an alarm along the way. Somebody must look over the content besides the writer. Of course if I'm a copy editor and I see "neighborhood blog" I have no idea what blog she is talking about. It would seem a good starting point to refer to the name of the blog in full (in this case Seward Profile). Then if you forget the link, someone would have a clue as to where to look. I'm realizing I should have asked for naming the blog in my email. Darn. A name without a link is arguably better than a link without a name.

Erica at fresh.mn was kind enough to retweet and link here. I'll close with her (re)tweet as I think she makes a good point.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

"Borrowing" content from Seward Profile

2010-04-02T10:59:00.001-05:00

I've contacted the Pioneer Press via email about republishing the Birchwood story from the Seward Profile (see last post). I sent the email to Kathie Jenkins and Life editor Heidi Raschke.

In the email, I pointed out the Creative Commons license I publish under prohibits commercial use of the content and it requires attribution. Given "fair use" under copyright, I don't really have a problem with summarizing and quoting a portion of the content even in a commercial venue. But not attributing and linking to the source is not OK and it's not something I expect to see in the twenty-first century from a major daily.

I've asked for the link and suggested an apology might be in order. I'll keep you posted.

We are all vying for attention on the web. Still we need to play by some basic rules and I don't think the size of your operation should make it OK to steal content from any of the many excellent local blogs that are providing relevant content to neighborhoods. I doubt if the Pioneer Press would appreciate my republishing its content and attributing it to "a local newspaper."

from my email to Pioneer Press

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Pioneer Press writer Kathie Jenkins forgets to link to Seward Profile

2010-04-02T09:27:00.001-05:00

Kathie Jenkins at Pioneer Press read the Seward Profile story on the Birchwood Cafe expansion and then wrote about it in her Restaurant News column ("A Tree Grows in Seward"). She sourced a "neighborhood blog" and didn't provide a link.

Profile is one of my projects and Kathie, I'm happy to provide you with easy-to-serve copy-and-paste material but how about at least linking back to the source? Hey this is the web! You can still fix it! Just send folks to: http://sewardprofile.posterous.com/birchwood-expansion-plans-update-from-tracy. Thanks.

All will be forgiven.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Minneapolis Digital Inclusion Fund Advisory Committee seeks new blood!

2010-03-30T13:29:00.001-05:00

In the 2006 negotiations with US Internet (USI) to implement a mesh wireless (802.11) network over Minneapolis, the City was able to negotiate a Community Benefits Agreement that included $500,000 in payments to a Digital Inclusion Fund (along with 5% of pre-tax income after the network was up and running). (See page C-1 of the contract.) The money is granted to support non-profit digital inclusion projects in Minneapolis.

So far the Minneapolis Digital Inclusion Fund Advisory Committee (DIFAC) has disbursed $400,000 of that $500,000—$200,000 over 2007 and another $200,000 in 2008. We (I am a member of DIFAC) plan on requesting proposals this year and disbursing at least some of the remaining $100,000.

During 2009, DIFAC finally drafted its rules for governance which includes terms for advisors and a plan to rotate off the current advisors over the next few years. Two advisers will be finishing their terms this year. (I'm one of them.)

We are beginning the application process for new advisors.

If you are interested in forwarding the cause of digital inclusion in Minneapolis, consider applying and download the description and application and send them in by June 1. Details are in the documents.

DIF Advisors Description
DIF Advisor Application (PDF)
DIF Advisor Application (MS Word)

Update: The application doesn't include contact information. You can send your completed application to Valerie Lee or contact her if you have questions:

Valerie C. Lee
Community Philanthropy Officer
The Minneapolis Foundation
800 IDS Center
80 South Eighth Street
Minneapolis, MN 55402
tel: (612) 672-3849
fax: (612) 672-3846
vlee@mplsfoundation.org
www.MinneapolisFoundation.org

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Viacom vs. YouTube

2010-03-21T13:23:00.001-05:00

Google and Viacom (owner of MTV, BET, Paramount, and more) are fighting it out in court with Viacom contending that Google is no longer a "safe harbor" under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act and must do more to ferret out and remove copyrighted material -- like Viacom's. Viacom is supporting its case with some old emails supposedly proving that Google relaxed its copyright policies after its 2006 YouTube purchase and that it knew very well that YouTube was a pirate haven of illegal video goods. Let's not forget to mention the "sour grapes" component here: Viacom wanted to buy YouTube too and Google beat them out.

Whatever Google authorized in the past, in recent times they have added content ID tools to help companies identify and find pirated content on YouTube. They've done this to such a degree that they've fallen somewhat afoul of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

One issue that has surfaced is Viacom "continuously and secretly" uploading its own stuff to YouTube (self-pirating?). (Viacom disputes this and claims it only happened a few times.) From the YouTube blog:

For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.

via youtube-global.blogspot.com

The Law Librarian Blog has a nice summary of points around these issues and links to articles in the last paragraph. Although I agree with Law Librarian that "neither party to the suit has any lock on legal or moral purity," if I had to choose a side to cheer, it would be Google. Although both companies are looking at revenues and bottom lines, Viacom is trying to control content distribution in a media market that arguably should be moved towards more sharing. YouTube on the other hand may not be perfect but it is involved in sharing content globally at no direct cost to producers. For me, that's very much a move in the right direction.

Posted via web from Peter's posterous

Posterous adds "page breaks" + timed releases

2010-03-17T14:47:00.001-05:00

Over the last couple of days Posterous has added new features. Most welcomed (by me anyway) are the "page breaks" which let you display a shortened version of a post on your main listing pages. You won't have to scroll and scroll now at sites that have longer posts (like my Seward Profile site where the neighborhood e-newsletter can stretch out a ways). The feature is a new icon ( )in the web editor or you can type "#more" on a new line in an email post like I'm going to do right now.
#more
The second feature is timed releases. I don't have a need for this right now but as more people want to post to the Profile site, I could see spacing the announcements and posts out over the day. One downside of this feature is that there still is no time zone chooser in Posterous so you have to time your releases for Pacific time.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Join us March 9 in Maplewood for a Digital Inclusion Summit with live broadcast of FCC National Broadband Plan

2010-03-04T16:49:00.003-06:00

America's Digital Inclusion Summit

Working Together To Expand Opportunity
Through Universal Broadband Access

Tuesday, March 9th at the Maplewood Performing Arts Theatre

Map

8:00 AM to 11:30 AM

FCC Broadcast of National Broadband Plan

11:30 AM – 1:00 PM

Audience and Panel Community Conversation

Rick King, Chair, Governor’s Ultra High Speed Broadband Task Force

Catherine Settanni, Founder, DigitalAccess.org

Sam Levy, Vice President and CIO, University of St. Thomas

Susan Nemitz, Director, Ramsey County Library

Mike Reszler, Director, Digital Media, Minnesota Public Radio|American Public Media

If you are unable to come for the entire event, please register below, and join us from 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM for lunch and a Community Conversation.

Join the Federal Communications Commission and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation for an overview of the recommendations in the FCC’s National Broadband Plan meant to ensure that all Americans are included in the broadband era. As the FCC prepares to deliver the Plan to Congress on March 17th, hear perspectives from Chairman Genachowski, members of Congress, Knight Foundation President & CEO Alberto Ibargüen and people from across the country that have benefited from broadband. Help create solutions that drive broadband adoption for all Americans.

Live at the Newseum, 555 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington DC

Videocast at the FCC Commission Room, 445 12th SW, Washington DC

Webcast with a Community Conversation at the Maplewood Performing Arts Theatre, 2100 White Bear Avenue, Maplewood, MN

Please register for the event at: digisummitstpaul.org

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Battle of the Micro Blogs this Friday at CoCo Coworking

2010-02-22T17:24:00.001-06:00

Patrick Rhone and I will spend Friday morning talking micro blogs at CoCo Coworking in St. Paul. (Get the event details here.) Patrick is a Tumblr aficionado; I evangelize Posterous. The plan is to for one of us to bring up a feature from our favorite tool and describe it then the other one of us will respond with how their blog does it better, different, worse, or not at all. We'll alternate on who initiates the feature descriptions.

After we are done with that portion of the show, Patrick and I will hang out to answer questions and help you get an account going on Posterous (which will likely dominate) or Tumblr.

Join us! The deal includes breakfast.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

FCC Chairman Genachowski’s speech at NARUC today

2010-02-16T13:40:00.001-06:00

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s speech at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) winter meetings today stressed our country's need for a robust and inclusive broadband infrastructure and discussed the upcoming National Broadband Plan.

Genachowski's Speech at NARUC
“Broadband: Our Enduring Engine for Prosperity and Opportunity”

I've pulled out some highlights below.

Genachowski really gets our need for broadband and how it will change the fundamental nature of business, education, communication, and social structure for the US. He brings up the comparison of the Internet to the interstate highway system and finds it lacking:

Some compare high-speed Internet to building the interstate highway system in the 1950s. It’s a tempting comparison, but imperfect.
In terms of transformative power, broadband is more akin to the advent of electricity. Both broadband and electricityare what some call “general purpose technologies”--technologies that are a means to a great many ends, enabling innovations in a wide arrayof human endeavors.
Electricity reshaped the world--extending dayinto night, kicking the Industrial Revolution into overdrive, and enabling the invention of a countless number of devices and equipment that today we can’t imagine being without.

Speaking of business connectivity, he says:

...many small businesses do not have access to a basic broadband connection. One estimate indicates that 26 percent of rural business sites do not have access to a standard cable modem and 9 percent don’t have DSL. More than 70 percent of small businesses have little or no mobile broadband.

He mentioned an exciting initiative from the Broadband Plan:

Our plan will set goals for the U.S. to have the world’s largest market of very high-speed broadband users. A “100 Squared” initiative--100 million households at 100 megabits per second--to unleash American ingenuity and ensure that businesses, large and small, are created here, move here, and stay here.

He follows that with a call to "stretch beyond 100 megabits" as Google is doing with its gigabit testbed initiative. Read that as a subtle message to incumbents that they should start looking at stretching their capabilities to get people connected at ultra-high-speeds.

He also mentions tweaking the Universal Service Fund as a "once-in-a-generation transformation... cutting waste, driving efficiencies, and converting it over time to broadband support so that all Americans can enjoy the benefits of 21st century communications networks." In other words, he says, we treat broadband just like President Roosevelt treated telephone service when he signed the 1934 Communications Act.

Genachowski’s understanding that broadband should be equivalent to electricity and telephony is the key of these remarks. The benefits of ubiquitous broadband will far outweigh the costs in building out the infrastructure. Our political leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, need to get this and must fund wisely the projects that will achieve the task.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Broadband Bill Introduced in MN Senate

2010-02-11T10:01:00.001-06:00

S.F. No. 2254 Broadband Bill Introduced in MN Senate

February 10, 2010 | by Peter Fleck No Comments Share

Networks

Last Wednesday, State Senators Prettner, Solon, Doll, Scheid and Rosen introduced S.F. No. 2254 which sets state goals for the deployment and speed of high-speed broadband. The bill has been referred to Energy, Utilities, Technology and Communications Committee for a hearing scheduled tomorrow, Feb 11th at 3pm (stay tuned).

The bill sets a statewide goal that by 2015:

“All state residents and businesses have access to high-speed broadband that provides minimum download speeds of ten to 20 megabits per second and minimum upload speeds of five to ten megabits per second.”

Additionally, “That Minnesota be one of the top five states for universally accessible broadband speeds, in the top five states for broadband access,” and in the “Top 15 of nations globally for broadband access.”

Interestingly, no mention of affordability.

The download and upload speeds and the 2015 deadline are recommendations from the Minnesota Ultra High-Speed Broadband Report released in November 2009.

Related: TECHdotMN interview with Rep Sheldon Johnson, the Chair of the Telecommunications Regulations and Infrastructure Division.

h/t Blandin Blog for the pointer.

No Comments

Post a comment

via tech.mn

My new "job" is blogging about Minnesota-related broadband & Internet over at Tech{dot}MN. So expect some "sharing" between these accounts.

Posted via web from Peter's posterous

Posterous evangelist seeks Tumblr evangelist for a (public) mock battle on 2/26 in St. Paul, MN.

2010-02-09T11:34:00.001-06:00

If you think Posterous is the uncool microblog and Tumblr really rocks, you could be the one! The plan is to talk microblogs at CoCo in St. Paul on Feb. 26 including some kind of "Battle of the Microblogs" event. For your time, you can hang out at CoCo for the day and get some free breakfast. This should be a fun and friendly challenge.

You can reply in the comments to this post (or use any other means of communication you might share with me).

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Can Entrepreneurs Lower Our Taxes by Rebuilding Legacy Government Systems?

2010-02-02T09:09:00.004-06:00

Perhaps what is needed is to let the dinosaurs become extinct and be replaced by swift birds and mammals.

I really like that quote by Prof. Vivek Wadhwa. By dinosaurs, he's referring to the large software consultancy firms that seem to have a stranglehold on government computing hardware and software and in sustaining those systems for big bucks. By "swift birds and mammals" he's talking about 21st century start-ups and entrepreneurs who build with open source and agile systems. (Prof. Washwa is an entrepreneur turned academic and a Visiting Scholar at UC-Berkeley, Senior Research Associate at Harvard Law School and Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at Duke University.)

He has two articles over at TechCrunch that look at bringing Silicon Valley tech expertise to Sacramento (capital of California) and rebuilding the legacy computer systems. In particular, he points to the unemployment insurance system. California has budgeted $50 million to upgrade it. Wadhwa bets "the Valley's entrepreneurs could build this system from scratch in less than a year for less than $5 million." A couple of entrepreneurs have already agreed.

Most states are probably in the same predicament as California with old COBOL (and earlier) systems that they continue to maintain but are not easily changed or expanded. Cities are in the same predicament. What an incredible opportunity for software and developer entrepreneurs to begin discussions with government IT shops about rebuilding systems for the future. We (who pay taxes) are looking at system rebuilds for a tenth of the cost of an upgrade of an ancient system!

Bringing Silicon Valley to Sacramento: Why Entrepreneurs Need to Help Rebuild California's IT Systems
Calling All Entrepreneurs: California Needs You

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Some notes on using Posterous

2010-01-29T12:01:00.001-06:00

Good thing: pasted picture and text from a web site in Gmail rich text editor and the picture appeared in Gmail and at the Posterous blog when I sent the email! (I think you have to enable the "embed picture" thingie in Gmail labs to do this.)
Bad thing: PST timestamp. If you're CST, all your posts are stamped 2 hours earlier. If you change one and then forget to change the next one, then they get out of order. Please, please fix this Posterous People!
Bad thing: Editing at Posterous and saving often results in Posterous telling you it can't find the page. Use the back button to go back to the edited post and try again. If it still doesn't work, copy the changes, go to the Manage area and try editing again and saving. It usually works the second time around. This is a really frustrating problem.
Tip: Send items in as private by sending to private@yoursite.posterous.com. Then you can edit and view before going public. I usually do this when I use the Share on Posterous bookmarklet.
Tip: If you send to posterous@yoursite.posterous.com it doesn't auto-post anything.
Confusing: If you are a contributor on someone else's Posterous blog and you use the "post" address for email, it will auto-post to your Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc. accounts and not the ones that belong to the site where you contribute. So use the tip from #5.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Dia & Noche (kitties) update. They still like each other enough to stuff themselves in the kitty bed.

2010-01-21T17:06:00.002-06:00

Posted via web from Peter's posterous

Brooklyn Park getting WiMax?

2010-01-14T14:33:00.001-06:00

Clearwire has a proposal in to provide a WiMax wireless network for Brooklyn Park. This will be the first WiMax network that I know of in this area. No investment by the Brooklyn Park; customers would pay for the service. Ostensibly they want to provide connectivity to people on lower incomes but prices they are mentioning do not seem very "low income" to me. (Maybe there is a tier they are not mentioning.)

US Internet president Joe Caldwell says that Clearwire's arrival "doesn't bother me a bit." That's interesting given that early on in the Minneapolis Wi-Fi deployment, US Internet was hopeful that other cities surrounding Minneapolis would want to contract with US Internet for wireless services. There was even talk of customers having the ability to use Wi-Fi across city borders if US Internet was the provider.

I would tend to be worried if I was US Internet. I don't think anything is stopping a company like Clearwire from providing services in Minneapolis if they could hang the transmitters. They could target areas of high usage like downtown and not be under any contract to cover the City. That could be a potent threat to US Internet's business model. (This is all conjecture on my part, of course. There could be something legal prohibiting another wireless provider.)

Read the story at tradingmarkets.com

Posted via web from Peter's posterous

Seward Market opens - story at Minnesota Public Radio NewsQ

2010-01-14T10:08:00.001-06:00

via minnesota.publicradio.org

Story at MPR on Maket's reopening one week after the homicides.

Posted via web from Seward Profile

The Recent State of the PF Hyper Blog

2010-01-08T19:16:00.003-06:00

Since July 12 this year, I've been using Posterous as the front end for this blog. I think every post since then started out as a Posterous submission. Posterous is an amazing blogging tool where you can do almost anything via email including auto-posting to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr (photos), YouTube (video), Scribd (documents), and also other blogs like this one, Tumblr, or WordPress sites. Mileage varies and I've had to come here and do some additional formatting but for quick-and-easy, there is nothing else that equals it. (Sorry Tumblr, but I understand you don't process video as slickly as Posterous.)

In terms of categorizing my blogs, this one is my "business/serious" blog and Posterous is my more personal space. Everything here (since July) is also at Posterous and some things (like cat pictures) are at Posterous but not here (usually). Tumblr is also in the mix and gets many of the posts just because I like to keep a presence with the cool kids there.

Things changed a bit recently. My neighborhood in Minneapolis (Seward) lost it's newspaper and news web site this year due to financial constraints. So I started a hyperlocal community news blog called Seward Profile for the Seward Neighborhood using Posterous. I have a longer range master plan to create a system that any community can plug in and start blogging. To fund it all, I've put in a proposal at the Knight News Challenge (and I've been bumped to the second round).

Now it gets a bit confusing. I added my personal pfhyper gmail address as a contributor to the Seward. It seems when I contribute via my personal gmail, it triggers all the autoposting attached to my pfhyper.posterous.com account including posting to this blog. I wasn't aware of that until today.

It's generated some strange postings. I posted a photo piece last night but it needed editing at Posterous. The problem is the Posterous editing doesn't change the post here at the PF Hyper blog so some of the photos are missing captions or have the wrong captions. In another instance, I think I deleted a post and reposted it but it didn't get deleted at this blog so it appears twice. I'm taking care of the issues now and I've figured out how not to trigger all my auto-posting when I contribute to the Seward blog.

Tragedy in Seward: My Story

2010-01-07T15:35:00.002-06:00

This is a reposting of my article at the Seward Profile News blog, a news site for the Seward Neighborhood in Minneapolis.

This isn't a personal blog, of course, but today I'm going to take the liberty of writing my story from last night as it relates to the tragedy. Partly it's community "news" I think and partly it is helping me in processing the event.

Last night I headed to Seward Co-op about 7:45. Mary was having friends over and I planned to park on Seward Co-op's public Wi-Fi and have some deli hot bar dinner. I was all bundled up, Sorrel boots bike messenger bag strapped to my back, and a long scarf.

We follow the alleys to the Co-op. I live on 24th Ave. E just south of Franklin. The alley behind our house "T's" as you approach Franklin Avenue and you must go left or right travelling parallel to Franklin. I went right (west). A few steps and I was behind the Seward Market. I heard a loud "bang." It sounded like wood breaking but I thought it could be a gunshot. As I got to the street and looked toward Franklin, I saw someone exiting the Market. It didn't feel right and I avoided the person thinking if that was a gunshot this was the shooter. I circled Bethany Lutheran Church and went through the parking lot to Franklin and walked back to Market. Two men were approaching me. They had heard the shots too. They reached the market before I did, crossed 25th and told me there were bodies in the doorway and store. I called 911 immediately to report a shooting and we walked to the Market entry. 911 dispatch started to ask if there was a robbery and I said "No! There are bodies here. Three bodies. We need an ambulance. " Police and ambulance arrived shortly. (I'm not sure why I thought I only heard one shot.)

I really appreciate the kind words from so many of you checking to see if I'm OK and I will try to get back to you all personally. I am. Of course, I am still processing what happened and my nearness to the tragedy itself. I am so saddened by this event but still feel that I live in a safe urban area. This is a fluke and "not indicative of our community and will not detract from our vibrant, diverse and welcoming neighborhood" (from the open letter now circulating).

My heart goes out to the families of the victims.

Please join your neighors in a candlelight flashlight vigil at the Seward Market (2431 East Franklin) this evening at 7:45. Bethany Lutheran (right across the street) will open it's doors for warmth and Seward Co-op will provide hot drinks and snacks.

Posted via email from Seward Profile

Minneapolis Unwired: The network is just about as complete as it's going to be

2010-01-05T22:10:00.002-06:00

Minneapolis is officially unwired says the Star Tribune:

The $20 million Minneapolis wireless Internet network has been completed after 2 1/2 difficult years of technical and political delays. The city's next step: getting the police and fire departments using it this year.

The City's basic requirement was for coverage of 95% of it's 59.5 miles and performance meets the City's expectations, according to Minneapolis Chief Information Officer Lynn Willenbring. There are 16,500 private subscribers, according to Joe Caldwell, marketing vice president of US Internet, which owns and operates the network. The company hopes for 30,000 individual customers.

Getting City departments to use the wireless network is another story. So far Sprint cellular services trump US Internet Wi-Fi services with the City using less than half of the $1.25 million a year worth of services it's paying for. Luckily unused money can roll over to future years of the 10-year contract. (What happens if there is still unused money after ten years?)

Esme Vos wrote about the network today at MuniWireless, stressing the need to upgrade to 802.11n units sooner rather than later if it's not been done already. (I don't think it has.)

US Internet has improved customer service in the last year and now sends out (and charges for) a technician on each install. General satisfaction of users on the system seems to be growing. I'm seeing far fewer complaints via my Google Alerts than in previous years.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Resurrecting online news in Seward Neighborhood (Minneapolis, MN) or "the hyperlocal beat"

2010-01-02T14:25:00.001-06:00

Seward Neighborhood on the east side of Minneapolis and bordering the Mississippi River, has had a community newspaper, the Seward Profile then The Bridge (and more recently the Bridgeland online news site), for a long, long time. (The Profile may have been the first community newspaper in Minneapolis. I'm still trying to verify that.) In 2009, due to finances, the newspaper ceased publication and the online site stopped updating. Seward was left with no distributed news source.

The Seward Neighborhood Group (SNG) sends out an email biweekly newsletter which covers SNG meetings and a few community events. The Seward Neighbors Forum is another news source with a total subscription base of about 300 (Seward population is 7,000.) (I co-manage the Forum.) Even with these, there is a news hole.

The SNG plans on publishing and delivering a quarterly news sheet of some kind in 2010. This will help but I think we still need to find a way to "report" more on what's going on in the neighborhood and even dig out the small events which could benefit from wider exposure. Of course, I think the Internet is probably the best way to do this so on December 18, I launched the Seward Profile News Blog.

It's my hope that we can use the news blog as a source for print stories in the quarterly news sheet. But beyond that, I think we are at a tipping point in providing current and relevant news online and keeping it very, very local (or hyperlocal which is a somewhat new term for this sort of thing).

Of course to do this, you still need some kind of editing structure and you need some reporters or journalists out there sending in stories. My plan is to enlist folks in the community (anyone interested really) to provide the news. To start, I'll serve as editor, but long-term, I'd like to see a community person take on that role and somehow find funding for a stipend (maybe $200 a month?).

The qualifications of the "citizen journalists" I'm looking for are very basic, especially on the technology side. First, you can write engagingly and you are interested in the neighborhood. As for "professional journalism" qualifications, you can learn them as necessary. The main ones are don't write fiction and source all your statements or clearly mark them as opinion.

As for the technology side, a new (free) blogging tool is emerging called Posterous and if you know how to email, you can post to the news blog. (If you don't know how to email, I'll teach you.) Posterous is an amazing new type of blog called a "microblog" which is set up to allow very quick posting. If you want to add photos, simply attach them and Posterous will display them with your piece. Same with video. This ease of publishing should see Posterous being used more and more for small group and community blogging. No other service currently offers the ease of use of Posterous.

I have applied to the Knight News Challenge for funding of this project. I want to create a kind of turnkey system for communities to use to establish an online news blog. I'll also be seeking other funding as soon as I find a fiscal agent. (Knight News Challenge doesn't limit proposals to only nonprofits so I could apply for that one as myself.)

I once had a dream of becoming an editor and publisher for a small newspaper. The web and blogging has somewhat allowed me to fulfill that dream. This step takes me a bit closer.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Phil Windley discusses entrepreneurship with Sramana Mitra on Technometria.

2009-12-31T11:43:00.001-06:00

Sramana Mitra believes in the importance of entrepreneurship to the world economy. As a writer and entrepreneur, she assists others in learning how to build an organization. She joins Phil and Scott to discuss her strategies. In addition to presenting her thoughts on entrepreneurship, she also offers useful details about how to create jobs, how to find money to for company creation and some of the factors important for success.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

McClatchy: "Investors could only lose in Goldman's Caymans deals" (not to mention taxpayers)

2009-12-31T10:35:00.001-06:00

When financial titan Goldman Sachs joined some of its Wall Street rivals in late 2005 in secretly packaging a new breed of offshore securities, it gave prospective investors little hint that many of the deals were so risky that they could end up losing hundreds of millions of dollars on them.

Goldman did very well as our economy collapsed including a $10 billion preferred stock investment from the U.S. Treasury in October 2008, as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

Goldman's activities in the Caymans helped it unload some of its subprime-related risks on others and also amass tens of billions of dollars in protection against a U.S. housing crash that ultimately occurred. These deals have accounted for a sizeable share of the firm's $103 billion in revenues and more than $25 billion in profits since Jan. 1, 2007. At the end of 2009, Goldman had set aside more than $16 billion in cash and stock bonuses for its employees.

Not only were investors losing, we (US taxpayers) lost to as Goldman covered its bets:

Many of Goldman's winning bets with other large U.S. banks raised the price tags of 2008's government bailouts of Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and others by sums that no one has yet determined because the contracts are private, according to people familiar with some of the transactions.

Read the full story at mcclatchydc.com. Then go watch Boiler Room.

Thanks @dangillmor for the link.

Posted via web from Peter's posterous

The State of Coworking in the Twin Cities

2009-12-30T12:01:00.001-06:00

Why Coworking? I am a "veteran" of the Crema Cafe Coworking site. I have enjoyed spending time at Crema with an extremely diverse group of coworkers ranging from a "paper" artist to a social entrepreneur. Crema gets me out of the house (blessing to the wife). So does working in coffee shops but at Crema, we are making a conscious effort to meet our coworkers either at our "staff" meetings or just sitting and chatting. (You also don't have to ask someone to watch your laptop when you use the restroom.) I can bounce ideas off folks and get feedback. I think we will see collaborative projects blossoming out of these spaces as the inmates cheer each other on. Since we are not formally tied to each other by a corporate/business umbrella, we are far more open to new ideas. There is no risk to losing our jobs by endorsing visionary ideas.

Coworking blossoms. Here in the Twin Cities we went from no coworking spaces to three in the course of a few months. Are we blessed or cursed? How do you choose between Crema Cafe Coworking, CoCo, and 3rd Place?

Cost. Cost is an issue for me. Although the CoCo space in downtown St. Paul is beautiful and arguably the most professional of the bunch, it's also the priciest at $35/day ($150 if you buy five day passes together). They do offer a free one-time-only guest pass and I will definitely try that out. (If you're thinking of trying out the free pass, consider the first week when CoCo will serve breakfast treats!) CoCo has other pricing models including a Cofounder lifetime membership if you sign up as a fulltime coworker ($250/month) before the Jan. 4 opening day. CoCo also has a parttime coworker status for $180/month which offers 10 days of 8-5 access. Check the site for details.

3rd Place pricing is doable on my budget starting with a one-day per week pass for $55 ($44 if you register before Jan. 1). Fulltime 24x7 access is available for $215/month ($172 before Jan. 1!). I just went to their open house and it's a nice, homey space. There are big tables with plenty of room. You will likely find me working there on Tuesdays in January.

Crema Coworking charges $40/month for access from 8 to 4 each Tuesday. For another $5/week, you get a truly awesome lunch. (Crema Cafe is known for it's good food along with Sonny's ice cream. Sometimes we get ice cream.) The space is akin to a coffee shop. Tables are small and some of the chairs and benches are not built for long-term sitting. There is lots of sunlight and an outdoor patio. Wi-Fi access is very adequate. (I may continue coworking at Crema in addition to 3rd Place.)

After looking at these options, I would say we are blessed with coworking spaces in Minneapolis with a variety of amenities, environments, and prices. I think there is room for them all and hope that the new kids—Coco and 3rd Place—can survive their startup months. I predict that as we move into the new decade, other casual coworking sites will spring up at local (read walkable) sites in neighborhoods. Crema is somewhat filling that bill now. It really depends on the kind of community that coworkers want and the focus which might be geographic, tech, startup, etc.

State of Crema. Crema is offline until at least February. Amy Bryant and Zack Steven were "managing" the space. Zack is now a cofounder at the 3rd Place site and I think Amy is also moving on. So if Crema is to continue, someone (someones) needs to be the point person.

Mapping the Options

View Larger Map

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Snowmagedon 2009! Photos from 24th Ave. E.

2009-12-27T16:58:00.001-06:00

A few pictures from 24th Avenue East.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Seward Profile

Connected Nation is Minnesota's designated broadband mapping entity. Not good.

2009-12-22T19:59:00.003-06:00

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced today that it has awarded 15 grants to fund broadband mapping and planning activities. Minnesota is on the list with Connected Nation as the designated entity to receive a total of $1.7 million. Connected Nation is an organization sponsored by telephone and cable companies. It represents their interests in deciding what data to collect and how information should be displayed. So much for transparency.

Several other states are also aligned with Connected Nation or a Connected subsidiary. This doesn't bode well for finding out exactly who is not being served in terms of high-speed internet access.

For more information on Connected Nation's conflicts of interest and problematic mapping, check the Public Knowledge site.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Downtown Minneapolis bike lane in need of plow

2009-12-21T15:38:00.001-06:00

I think this was on 1st Avenue. As snow cleanup is a major issue for winter bikers, I would think the City would expend more effort in at least cleaning bike lanes.

Also saw a car parked on the bike lane.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

List your business for free at the BuyLocalMN directory

2009-12-21T09:43:00.001-06:00

Local businesses can list their business for free at BuyLocalMN.com.

http://www.buylocalmn.com/

Please make sure to put "Seward" or preferably "Seward Neighborhood"
in the description so you appear in this list:

http://www.buylocalmn.com/search/node/seward

(I may tighten the search to "Seward Neighborhood" as right now it
lists a baby food company that's stocked at the Co-op but not in the
neighborhood.)

Posted via email from Seward Profile

Broadband stimulus money awarded to U of MN project.

2009-12-18T15:58:00.001-06:00

The University of Minnesota's Broadband stimulus proposal was approved and received $2,862,333 in federal funds yesterday. The University and its nonprofit partners will develop and improve 11 computer labs throughout underserved neighborhoods in the Twin Cities. The U press release states that the proposal was selected "from among 2,200 proposals received by the Department of Commerce." The reality is that all the eighteen projects funded were selected previously by their state. (Minnesota has not confirmed this yet so I'm assuming that the state did recommend the project. Minnesota has not yet publicly stated any recommended projects.)

More details in the U of MN press release.

Discussion and list of other projects at BroadbandBreakfast.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

The irrevocable rights we relinquish when we publish to the Web. (It's not just Posterous, folks.)

2009-12-01T12:47:00.001-06:00

As many of you already know, I've fallen in love with the Posterous tool as the easiest way to publish to the web—especially for the non-tech, potentially digitally-divided communities. If you can email, you can post to Posterous.

So I get a little defensive when I see something like this on Twitter:

Didya know: You grant Posterous the irrevocable, fully transferable rights to use, reproduce, distribute, modify...

I responded:

IOW, Posterous requires a basic Creative Commons Attribution license. You still retain ownership and copyright of your stuff.

And this is true. These terms of service (TOS) are very similar to the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license (without the attribution). But with Creative Commons select the licensing. You don't have a choice when you use Posterous. They require certain rights detailed here:

Posterous TOS

You shall retain all of your ownership rights in your User Submissions; however, by submitting material to Posterous you grant Posterous the irrevocable, fully transferable rights to use, reproduce, distribute, modify, transmit, prepare derivative works of, display and produce the material in connection with Posterous and Posterous's business, but solely in accordance with these Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy.

But Posterous's terms are no more onerous than the other web tools we're all using (including Twitter, where this conversation began). (Do I hear "boilerplate"?) In fact, Google has blanket terms (below) for all their stuff as well as specific terms for their various tools like Blogger. (I would hope the Gmail TOS isn't granting Google the right to share content from my email!)

I'm not worried about this personally and just assume this allows for some marketing on the part of the tool vendor for which they can use content I've placed on their site. I trust that they won't do something stupid or offensive with my content and I hope that they will let folks know where the content came from.

I pulled up some TOS statements around repurposing your content with links back to the TOS pages. Remember, you still own it and you have the copyright. All of these sites also state that clearly. (I didn't look at the Facebook TOS but I assume it has similar language.)

Twitter

You retain your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through the Services, you grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute such Content in any and all media or distribution methods (now known or later developed).

Tumblr

Subscriber shall own all Subscriber Content that Subscriber contributes to the Site, but hereby grants and agrees to grant Tumblr a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, transferable right and license (with the right to sublicense), to use, copy, cache, publish, display, distribute, modify, create derivative works and store such Subscriber Content and to allow others to do so (“Content License”) in order to provide the Services.

Google's Blogger

By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the members of the public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, publish and distribute such Content on Google services for the purpose of displaying and distributing Google services.

Google

By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

NetRoots MN: The Blogasota Session with @RobinMarty

2009-11-21T09:41:00.002-06:00

We are discussing the nuts and bolts of blogging with Robin Marty. Some high-powered bloggers in attendance. Shaping up to be a great discussion! We are currently talking about how to make money with your blog.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

MPR on U of M and the increasing transfer population (mostly community colleges)

2009-11-13T10:31:00.001-06:00

via minnesota.publicradio.org

Interesting article by Tim Post (@posttim) looking at the increasing population of mostly community college transfer students. The cost of tuition is a prime reason for starting at a two-year college.

The article leaves me with several unanswered questions. Community college officials state their students do as well or better than students who do all four years at the U of MN but offer no evidence.

The U of MN has survey evidence that transfer students are less satisfied with their experience than students who start as freshmen. A national survey (National Survey on Student Engagement) finds that transfer students take part in fewer campus activities.

We need student ages to understand this better. What's the median and average age of the transfer students? If they are older -- say past 25 -- it would make sense that they might feel a bit out of it and this would make them less satisfied. I would also guess that many of these students are holding down jobs and going to school part-time which does not help in integrating them in campus life.

But really, I shouldn't have to guess. The U of MN should do the research and share it. This would make a great longitudinal study (and probably should have been started a few years ago).

Posted via web from Peter's posterous

Why I voted "No" on Minneapolis Charter Amendment #168

2009-11-03T10:51:00.001-06:00

Here's what the amendment reads:

Should the City of Minneapolis adopt a change in its charter to the composition of the Board of Estimate and Taxation so that the Board's membership consists of the members of the City Council, with the actions of the Board subject to the powers and duties of the Mayor?

Here's what Green Council Member Cam Gordon says:

As we begin the constructive discussion next year about how to improve the ways that the City Council works with the Park Board, we should do so with the BET in place and ready to be reformed and more fully utilized to help make our City government more responsive, accountable, transparent and fiscally prudent.

That pretty much sums up my own take on the amendment and BET.

I certainly agree with much of what Aaron Landry says about the BET including:

I strongly favor having our elected City Council be held responsible and accountable for these things, like almost every other major city in the country.

But I think we need to have more discussion on how to reform the process and not just jump off the current horse. While I don't think voting "yes" will spell the end of the independent Park Board, I do think BET is one of the very few places (maybe the only place) that the Park Board and City Council sit down together and talk.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Fluid for Wave: Instructions on building an app

2009-11-01T13:03:00.001-06:00

I use a Fluid app to engage with Google Wave. The TC Wave has links to how to do this but the TC Wave is becoming harder and harder to navigate and find things. So here's the blog post with links to how to integrate Fluid and Wave and Growl.

Download Fluid then drop by Guillermo Rauch's devthought blog for how to create the app (plus a link to a very nice Wave icon to use for your Fluid app). Then if you're interested in Growl notifications when new messages arrive at your waves, install Growl and then add this script to your Fluid app. (Guillermo's page describes how to install a script in a Fluid app.) Growl notifications only work when your Fluid Wave app is open.

I'm happy with the Fluid Wave app performance and I've had no serious problems. It can be slow but no slower than Firefox (3.0.15). I have heard Chrome is snappier but I don't think Google has released an official Mac OS X Chrome yet.

Please add any useful links about Fluid, Growl, Wave etc.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Jon Stewart on The Daily Show: From Here to Neutrality. Why we need that neutral Net & a look at the some of the silly arguments against neutrality.

2009-10-28T19:37:00.001-05:00

via thedailyshow.com

Jon Stewart nails why we need Net Neutrality and pokes fun at Pony Express McCain.

Posted via web from Peter's posterous

Followup to the kitty video posting: What happens with video at Posterous?

2009-10-25T14:58:00.001-05:00

Here is what happened when I emailed out my last Posterous kitty post with an attached .m4v video.

It took forever for Posterous to process the video. It took so long—from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.—that I started thinking it just didn't support m4v format. But Posterous handles the situation well and doesn't send out status or blog updates until the processing is done. For anyone that found the video (and "still processing" message) at my Posterous account, it did allow viewing.

Results from my Connected Services

YouTube and Flickr: Posterous processed the video and sent it along, adding it to my accounts.

Tumblr and my PF Hyper Blog: No embedded player. Provides link to download or to view on Posterous. Includes text of my Posterous blog post. I went back to both Tumblr and my blog and added the Youtube embed code.

Facebook: Status update with the embedded video. Includes start of the Posterous blog post and a link back to Posterous to finish reading the post.

When I checked the video in Flickr, I found that a group of tags had been added: cleaning, stretching, cats, cat, licking, cleansing, and lick. I hadn't tagged anything myself and some of the tags were not from my blog post. Checking my Flickr Recent Activity, I found the footprints of that infamous cat and pizza lover, s4xton. Thanks Aaron.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Kitty Chronicles: The Cleansing (video)

2009-10-25T13:55:00.000-05:00

Two reasons for this post.

General cuteness in sharing our new kitties' life with you.
Testing video uploads to Posterous. I haven't done this before.

The video should get bundled up and sent to YouTube with an embedded player in Posterous. (Wonder if the video will also go to Flickr.)

The video was taken with my Canon SD850. I saved as a desktop video for the web out of Quicktime to get it smaller. Quality did not seem to suffer very much. It's still hit-or-miss with this video stuff for me.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Two new kitties at our place. First look.

2009-10-24T12:06:00.001-05:00

As some of you know, last year, our cat Marlmalade died. That made us catless after some 35 years and at least seven cats.

Marmalade

Last week, we saw a post in the Seward Community Forum that two kitties needed a good home. We tried to talk our nephew and his wife into becoming cat people with these kitties but they decided they weren't ready yet. So we finally decided to enlarge our family again and invited the kitties to our place.

Here's a first look and I'll have more pictures (and video) up soon.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

First thoughts on my Wave World adventure

2009-10-15T13:05:00.001-05:00

Somewhat random notes from my first visit to Google Wave.

"A wave is a hosted conversation." (from the Google Wave in Action video) Ah ha. That's a good description. A wave is also boring when you're all alone.

Video says you can drag and drop from iPhoto but neglects to mention that you have to install Gears. Wonder if I can do that directly from Flickr.

Installing Gears.

With Gears installed, I can drag photos from desktop or from iPhoto. I was not able to drag an image from a web page however. Very nice and Waves gives a full-screen display when you click the thumbnail.

SHIFT-ENTER closes or opens "blips" which are the things waves are made of.

Double-click a blip to reply/edit that blip.

You can edit someone else's blip as they are editing it. There was some highlighting indicating the other editor at one point but it went away. There doesn't seem a way to identify who typed what if you are in the same blip.

Easy to get lost in a Wave if you are replying to previous blips or editing old ones. Is there a way to manage or sort? Ah ha. Playback mode goes through the wave in chronological order and indicates edits with yellow highlights.

I'm using Firefox 3.0x. Friend using Safari. Compatibility seems fine.

When you mute a wave you can see it by choosing All from navigation pane. To "unmute," select wave and click the inbox tab.

Finding waves with a particular contact: The search box for the inbox area is not useful unless you know the wave email address. It won't give you a hit off the name (unless I'm missing the query term for it). So you would have to look for "pfhyper" for me and not "Peter". You can search on "Peter" from the contact search and the pop-up will reveal recent waves. (Checking Wave help and they mention you can't actually search on names yet.)

The Google Wave overview video is telling me I can link waves and publish them to my blog. Do you have to use blogger for that? Ah, you need a gadget or robot or something. Wavety.com has a list of robots and gadgets.

I finally found the Tweety robot (made by the Wave team) and installed it. Tweety will display your Twitter stream in Wave and allows you to tweet from Wave. Or at least it will do that when they finish with it. Right now, it will grab your current twitter stream but then not continue updating and you can't post to Twitter.

Check the Wave help forums if you are trying to get gadgets, robots, extensions to work. That's where I found out that Tweety is broken for now. When they get it ready to go, it will be put in the Extension Gallery located in the "Welcome to Google Wave" wave.

For the record, this is how you install the Tweety robot. The instructions may be useful for other robots and gadgets.

Add tweety-wave@appspot.com to your contacts.
Start a new wave.
Drag the tweety contact to the contact area above above the new wave.

That's all from my first Wave adventure. If you're on Wave, you can connect to me at pfhyper@googlewave.com.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Is Michael Pollan anti-agriculture? Agriculture critic's appearance angers university alumni (via @KTAndrea)

2009-10-15T08:15:00.001-05:00

via latimes.com

Although "agriculture" often means big farm enterprises, it can also simply mean "the practice of cultivating the land or raising stock." I don't think Mr. Pollan objects to that. For him, it's all in the means whereas for Big Ag, it's often more about the ends especially getting the animals to market really fast and increasing profits.

Posted via web from Peter's posterous

Support rural America! Call a sex chat line today! (AT&T, Google Voice, & Net Neutrality)

2009-10-15T07:56:00.001-05:00

Google Voice blocks calls to certain rural areas because of outdated regulations that require the big phone companies to pay access charges to the rural companies when calls are completed in the rural company's phone network. The original idea behind this regulation was to help in sustaining rural phone networks that may not have enough subscribers locally to pay for all their costs. AT&T, Verizon and the rest of the big telcos have no choice about paying these fees. At the moment, Google Voice does have that choice. AT&T is not happy about that and has raised a bogus charge of Google violating net neutrality.

It gets juicier. Some rural carriers figured out a lucrative business getting "popular" chat lines to use their local numbers. Each call that (mostly) men made to the (mostly) women at the chat service resulted in AT&T (Verizon, etc.) paying the access fees. This amounted to a lot of money. Enough money that the rural carrier chould just give the number to the chat service and in some cases kick back some of the wealth. In their defense, the rural carriers point to stimulating local economies, providing local jobs, and American entrepreneurial spirit. (I made up the part about "entrepreneurial spirit." The local jobs would come from potential chat lines and tech help centers located in the rural area.)

Google's Richard Whitt says it best at the Google Public Policy Blog: "This issue has nothing to do with network neutrality or rural America. This is about outdated carrier compensation rules that are fundamentally broken and in need of repair by the FCC."

Read Matthew Lasar's article, Is AT&T targeting Google Voice to stop "traffic pumping"?, over at ars technica for the deets.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Backyard Snow Photos

2009-10-13T14:22:00.001-05:00

See the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from We want your snow pictures!

Backing up is hard to do: A quick look at my OS X data backup plan

2009-10-13T08:59:00.001-05:00

Backing up is hard to do. OS X Time Machine makes it lots easier if you have a dedicated drive connected up to your Mac. But my main machine is a MacBook and I don't have a single workspace in the home where I can leave a hard drive ready to connect. I move around. Also not ready to spend the funds on any wireless backing up.

Second best (for me) is to turn Time Machine off and use on demand. I enable the TM status in my menu for this. Then connect the backup hard drive and choose "Back Up Now" from the menu. I try to do this every evening.

I just bought a 750GB Western Digital My Book drive from Amazon (+-$100). The My Book includes Firewier 400 ports along with USB 2.0 and I need the FW for compatibility with some older computers (an Apple Cube for one). Not crazy about the look and feel of the My Book and sometimes it won't mount immediately which I think has to do with its sleep mode. But I think it will do for the immediate future.

Time Machine is wonderful and restorable if your drive goes bad. It also keeps around old versions of files until you fill up your backup space. For that reason I backup my 150GB drive to a 230GB drive. TM will delete the oldest backup when the drive is full. You can also have it warn you before it deletes.

TM backups aren't bootable. If something goes wrong, you have to restore the backup. I want something bootable so if something goes wrong, I can reboot off the backup drive. SuperDuper ($27.95) accomplishes this and is very fast after the first full backup. It's been upgraded for Snow Leopard. I keep my Super Duper backup on a partition of the 750GB drive. It will only "grow" as big as the internal.

I use to use Carbon Copy Cloner by Mike Bombich and free. I switched to Super Duper because CCC was very slow even when only backing up changed files. I just visited Mr. Bombich's site and I'm curious if he's enhanced performance in the latest version. The site itself is much slicker than before and the ad blurbs make CCC sound pretty slick. I think I'll have to test it out.

There is an excellent user-generated Time Machine FAQ over at the Apple Discussion boards. For one thing, it explained clearly how to move my old Time Machine backup from one disk to another under Leopard (Snow Leopard lets you simply drag-and-drop.)

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Update on Seward Co-op Annual Meeting

2009-10-07T16:08:00.001-05:00

It was a tight election race for the Seward board of directors on Tuesday evening. Alas, I was short by some number of votes and won't be at the table in the next year. Thanks to all who voted for me. There's always next year.

Incumbents ruled with current board chair David Hoffman-Dachelet and Miriam Holsinger getting reelected. The third spot went to Seward employee Allison Meyer. (Allison served as the employee director this past year but ran at-large this year.) Greg Gustafson is the new employee director. Check the announcement here.

Some notes on the Co-op's health...

We have grown from 4,700 members to 6,300 members since January and continue to grow at the rate of 100 members per month
We have 50% growth in sales since January with 34.8% of our sales from local food
We created 55 new jobs for a total of 175 employees

The food at the meeting was excellent as usual including wonderful dessert treats at the table and a personal chocolate bar from Equal Exchange Chocolates. Adam Wozniak's band provided some great jazz music as we dined. (Find Adam on Facebook and MySpace.)

So become a member of the Co-op and you can join us for dinner next year (and vote for me!). It's a one-time $75 payment.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Unsummit: Pete & Jeff Talk Net Neutrality & Censorship

2009-10-05T14:58:00.001-05:00

Jeff Pesek and I are facilitating the Net Neutrality discussion at the Unsummit (@unsummit) at Minneapolis Central Library on Saturday, Oct. 10. We're scheduled for 10:40 in the Pohlad Room.

I'm working on the description of our session for posting to the Unsummit site. Here's what I have so far.

Net Neutrality & Censorship

Net neutrality has become a big deal since FCC Chair Julius Genachowski spoke in favor of it last month. How would net neutrality hurt or help the Internets as we know them? Will it be the end of innovation and the free net markets? Will a non-neutral net allow AT&T to spoon feed us "approved" data and censor what they don't like? Will a neutral net allow Google to dominate the world?

What the heck is "net neutrality" anyway?

Join us in a lively (and respectful) discussion on neutrality and whether it will help or hinder the Net.

Comments? Wonder if I can do the link to Genachowski's speech.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Join Mary and I at the Seward Co-op Annual Meeting for an awesome dinner (and consider voting for pfhyper!)

2009-10-02T14:49:00.001-05:00

You do need to be a member. Cost is $75 and it lasts a lifetime. The dinner is truly awesome and costs $5 (with tix in advance, $15 day of the meeting). It will be held next Tuesday, October 6, from 6-8 p.m. at Augsburg College, 720 22nd Ave., Christensen Center Commons, 3rd Floor.

After you become a member, you get to vote in some new board directors. I'm a former board director and I'm running for a spot this year. Read my candidate statement below and please consider voting for me.

You can download a PDF with all the candidate statements at the Seward Co-op web site. You need to bring your ballots to the store by noon on October 6. (You can also vote at the meeting itself until 6:30 p.m.)

Peter's Candidate Statement

Describe your experience with cooperatives. My wife and I have been members and employees of Seward Co-op, and we have lived in Seward Neighborhood for 30 years. I am a former editor and publisher of the co-op’s earlier newsletter, “Whole Wheat News.” I served on Seward Co-op’s board of directors in the ’90s and helped plan for the last new store on west Franklin Avenue. We have shopped almost exclusively at Seward for 30 years. We were also active in Seward Cooperative Daycare when we were raising our daughter.
Summarize your business experience. I have many years of business experience both in running my own successful computer consulting business (PF Hyper, based in Seward Neighborhood) and in sitting on the co-op’s board of directors during the last expansion to a new store. I have tracked budgets, allocated resources and planned major projects.
What do you believe are the primary challenges facing the co-op today, and how can you help Seward Co-op to meet those challenges? I believe the primary challenge facing the co-op and all small businesses today is a national—and global—economy in disarray. As the problems with mortgages and foreclosures play out over the next few years, the co-op must budget its resources carefully and watch for trends and falling profits. The board must stay vigilant as to how this is affecting our sales and the bottom line. I believe education is a key component in keeping our current members shopping at the co-op and in securing new members. The co-op currently does an excellent job with education and should continue this progress. We should look for ways to reach out beyond current membership and start conversations about sustainable agriculture, organics, and cooperative economics. We should also expand this discussion to the health care issue, as good nutrition is intrinsically linked to good health. The Internet is an excellent tool for education, and I have experience both with web develop- ment and social networking. Finally, we need to support the community we live in. Seward Co-op is already doing this well with the Seward Co-op Community Fund, the Eat Local initiative, and donations to the Groveland Food Shelf among other efforts. These efforts should be continued and expanded during this current economic downturn to even better meet our mission of sustaining a healthy community.
Why do you want to serve on Seward Co-op’s Board of Directors? Simply put, as a longtime Seward resident—including raising my daughter here and now shopping at the co-op with my three grandsons—I have a very personal interest in Seward Co-op continuing as a strong and viable busi- ness. I think I have skills and ideas that will help in this process.
How could the co-op better serve its members? The best way for the co-op to serve its members is to stay healthy and in- crease efficiencies to provide our food at competitive prices. A healthy and committed board will greatly aid in this effort. I would like to be a member of that board.

Thanks!

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Minneapolis Unwired: Test the Wi-Fi System for Free!

2009-10-01T20:15:00.002-05:00

First some background: Minneapolis is blessed with a municipal Wi-Fi network owned and operated by US Internet's (USI) USI Wireless (USIW) group. The City is the anchor tenant on the network. Businesses and residents of Minneapolis can purchase accounts and it's arguably the cheapest way to get broadband in Minneapolis. (It does give us a third choice for broadband which is one more than most cities.) Because of all the blogging I've done about the system, I'm often asked what I think of the service.

You don't have to ask me; you can check it out for yourself. As part of the community benefits in the Minneapolis-USI contract, USI has paid for a "Civic Garden." The Garden consists of community and City of Minneapolis sites. You can access the Wi-Fi network via the Civic Garden for free and browse. If access speeds are satisfactory, they should only get better once you have the USIW Ruckus modem which boosts the signal. Let's go through how you can access and test the system.

Find the access point. On the Mac, you can pop down a menu that shows all the wireless access points in range (see picture). On the PC, you can open a window that shows you the same. (Sorry, I'm a Mac guy so I don't have a PC picture.) The SSID or identifying name will be "USI Wireless," "City of Minneapolis Public Wi-Fi," or "Welcome to Minneapolis." (That last one is rare but I've seen it.) Once you see it, connect to that network and open your browser.

Wi-Fi Menu on the Mac
Your browser will open to the USIW terms of service. Read them and accept. (If you don't accept, that will be the end of your testing.)
Once you have accepted the agreements, you are at the Civic Garden.
You can browse a variety of community sites or use the "Get City of Minneapolis News" link to access the City's site.

If you are unable to even see the USIW network in your home (stucco homes are very problematic), try access from outdoors, even walking up and down the block. You can see the USIW antennas on electric poles—some look like kegs and others are flat panels. (The picture at the top of my blog is the keg style.) If you get access outside, inside access may be acceptable once you buy or lease one of the booster (Ruckus) devices from USIW. If there is no access inside or outside, let USIW know and see if they can do anything. Your mileage will vary. There are problem ("challenge") areas in the City where you just can't get a signal.

Ordering Wi-Fi

USIW now sends a technician installer person out for every install whether you think they need to come to your house or not. They charge $25 for this. I've heard there is currently a wait period of a week or so.

I'm not a USIW subscriber (yet). I do get a good signal where I live without any special antennas or devices to boost reception.

Wi-Fi Issues

The Wi-Fi spectrum is subject to all kinds of interference including microwave ovens, cordless phones, and other Wi-Fi access points. Trees with leaves will also cause interference so your reception will usually be better during our Minnesota winters. Sometimes your signal just goes away or gets so weak as to resemble the old days of the dial-up modems.

Good luck. I hope these instructions are clear and if they aren't, please let me know how I can improve them. Also I'd like to know your experiences if you test the system and whether or not you decide to subscribe to USIW.

Minneapois Unwired: Updated Community Benefits Status

2009-09-19T18:00:00.003-05:00

I recently posted on the status of community benefits included in the City of Minneapolis contract with US Internet (Minneapolis Unwired: Status of Our Community Benefits). Since then, the Minneapolis Digital Inclusion Fund Advisory Committee (DIFAC) has met and the City and US Internet provided further updates and answered some of my questions. (I'm a member of the Committee.)

I want to be clear that our committee is solely involved with the Digital Inclusion Fund and in making grants to nonprofits. We are not a regulatory group in relation to all the community benefits.

Bold/Italic indicates statements (slightly edited) from my previous post. I use US Internet and USIW interchangeably.

USIW is required to provide monthly payments of five percent (5%) of their "Pre-tax Income from the operation of the Network within the City." DIFAC has not seen any of that money yet and I haven't heard when payments are supposed to begin.

The payments will be yearly and the contract will be amended to reflect that. The logistics of monthly payments with the City verifying USIW's financials would be a nightmare. (USIW is privately held so financial information is not public.) The donation will be based on net income. There was no profit thus no net income in the past year (their fiscal year ends April 30) mainly because the network did not get built out as quickly as hoped and subscriber counts aren't as great as projected. If all goes well, USIW should have a donation for DIFAC this current year in the third quarter of 2010. (After the close of the fiscal year USIW will have an outside review and then forward financial statements to the City for confirmation.)

USIW is still building out around the lakes ("challenge areas") and expect an influx of subscribers once they are finished. USIW announced at the meeting that they were just finishing implementation in Prospect Park. That area should be "unwired" as of this writing.

USIW "will offer free 1 megabit broadband Internet access service in public locations (Parks, Plazas) defined by City up to a maximum of five percent (5%) of the geographic area throughout the City."

There is not yet any free access but the City wants to move forward on this soon. The plan is to convene an ad hoc committee to make recommendations as to best location for the free areas. I'm sure parks and plazas will be in the mix and I would like to see major entertainment areas: Uptown, downtown, parts of Northeast, and maybe around the downtown riverfront. Another site I believe ripe for free Wi-Fi is City Hall itself.

USIW is also supposed to sponsor an annual DIF fundraising event.

USIW is planning a fundraiser. We are hopeful that something will be in place soon.

USIW is supposed to be seeking "additional contributions and/or matching funds from community businesses, foundations and charities to increase the amount available in the DIF."

No report on any activity.

USIW is supposed to conduct community meetings twice per year around the City "to ensure continued encouragement and support for the inclusion into the digital age of the maximum number of citizens, households and businesses in the City."

No report on any activity.

(end update)

I'm very glad to have the updates on community benefits and I feel we are moving forward (albeit more slowly than some of us might like to see). I think I can speak for all of our committee in saying that we really would have liked to see a contribution from USIW to the fund in time for another round of grants this fall. We do have $100,000 and the plan right now is to keep that money, possibly until fall, 2010, when we expect the next contribution from USIW.

In the meantime, we are working on governance issues for the DIFAC including length of member terms and replacing members who have left. We may be recruiting new members by early 2010. Watch my blog for announcements.

Other items at this meeting included information on the City of Minneapolis application for federal stimulus funds. One project would provide broadband to 41 public housing high rises and the other would involve training users on how to use the Internet. The broadband system would use a rooftop antenna system to connect to the USIW wireless system and then provide wired connections to high rise residents. I'm trying to get more information for a future blog post (like what's the bandwidth and what's the cost to users).

We also discussed the creation of a long-term group or committee to steer the City on technology issues and digital inclusion and to oversee the community benefits. This could be part of the Neighborhood and Community Engagement Commission or a separate group and possibly even ad hoc and formed as needed with members chosen with expertise to address specific issues.

The next DIFAC meeting will be in early December.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Hearing tonight: Should we block the Greenway with an LRT station?

2009-09-17T07:35:00.001-05:00

[This is from the Midtown Greenway Coalition September E-News. An LRT station disrupting the Greenway does not seem sensible to me and it costs more. Find out more at the Midtown Greenway site.]

There is much hullabaloo about the route that the proposed Southwest Light Rail Transit (LRT) line will take through Minneapolis, and the outcomes have enormous impact on the Midtown Greenway.

Your voice is needed at:

A Public Hearing on SW LRT
September 17, 2009 (6:30 pm - 8:30 pm)
Hosted by the Hennepin County Regional Railroad Authority
on behalf of the Southwest Policy Advisory Committee
at the Eisenhower Community Center Theater
1001 Highway 7 in Hopkins

Of the two possible routes for the SW LRT once it enters Minneapolis on its way downtown from the suburbs, the one that passes through the Greenway to Nicollet Avenue is not favored by the Midtown Greenway Coalition. This Greenway/Nicollet route would block the bike trail at Nicollet Avenue, requiring bikers, joggers and walkers to come up out of the Greenway, cross Nicollet Avenue, and then go back down into the Greenway. In addition, 60% to 80% of the south bank of the Greenway west of Nicollet Avenue would be replaced with a high concrete retaining wall. Instead, the Midtown Greenway Coalition prefers modern streetcar vehicles as the way to bring rail transit into the Greenway alongside the trails. This streetcar line would connect with the Southwest LRT on the west and the existing Hiawatha LRT on the east, all as part of the “Network Alignment (see image above). Unbelievably, the cost for the Network Alignment that includes both the SW LRT through Kenilworth and the Greenway streetcar would be $400 MILLION LESS THAN the SW LRT Greenway/Nicollet alignment by itself! Learn more about the two LRT options and a streetcar in the Greenway at southwestlrt.wordpress.com and please attend the September 17 public meeting to raise your voice in favor of the SW LRT Kenilworth alignment.

[This text refers to the image.] The Network Alignment: Kenilworth 3A + the Midtown Greenway Streetcar (the “Green Line”) would serve more Minneapolis population, employment, commerical nodes, growth centers, transit-oriented development, and transit-dependent riders than any other SW LRT alignment.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

GiveMN.org for ZERO transaction fees for Minnesota charitable giving

2009-09-14T11:30:00.003-05:00

Last week the Kari Ruth from St. Paul Foundation and GiveMN.org spoke at the Tuesday NetSquared event about GiveMN.org. GiveMN.org is a new charitable-giving platform for Minnesota nonprofits. The site goes public in November but it's up now and you can add your nonprofit's online profile. That's not a bad idea as they are planning a Minnesota Match Day in November which I assume means that your nonprofit can somehow tap into some matching funds for contributions.

To get your profile on GiveMN.org, you first find your profile at www.razoo.com (or create a profile there). Minnesota profiles at Razoo will automatically be transferred to GiveMN.org.

The site will offer nonprofits zero transaction fees. That's why your nonprofit should be at the site and why donors should give via the site. For donors, it will also offer a profile page for tracking your giving to any nonprofit in the U.S. that accepts credit card donations. (I'm assuming you have to contribute via Razoo if the nonprofit is not Minnesota-based.) There are other features for donors too like engaging "in an active, donor-centric online community with opportunities for collaborative giving and tools that integrate with other social media." That sounds interesting.

The site includes the Razoo nonprofit search engine tweaked for Minnesota nonprofits. Feelings at the presentation were mixed as to how valuable a giving search engine really is in terms of seeking a nonprofit to give to. Most of us already know who we want to support and if not, Google offers an easy (and likely more comprehensive) way to find organizations.

Many nonprofits use Network for Good as their online donation site. It's free to list there but there is a transaction fee for each donation (in the area of 4%, I think). GiveMN.org will use Network for Good's donation engine on the back end but no fees will be deducted. It's really a no-brainer (my opinion, at least) for nonprofits as to whether or not to participate and then to promote giving at GiveMN.org. There's no reason you can't leave all your other donation sites in place (even at Network for Good) and add (and promote) GiveMN.org.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Minneapolis Unwired: Status of Our Community Benefits

2009-08-31T09:15:00.004-05:00

[I have been on the Minneapolis Digital Inclusion Fund Advisory Committee since the beginning. The Committee disburses the money in the Digital Inclusion Fund via an RFP system to nonprofits.]

In drafting the contract in 2006 for the deployment of the municipal Wi-Fi network, the City of Minneapolis negotiated a number of community benefits with US Internet (now US Internet Wireless or USIW). This "community benefits agreement" (CBA) is one of the first nationally between a city and private vendor and has become somewhat famous in the policy world.

Minneapolis is now three years into the contract with USIW. This would seem a good time to evaluate the benefits and whether Minneapolis is getting its "moneys worth," so to speak.

I dug out the contract so I could see the original language. Community Benefit portion starts on page 6 with payment and pricing information on page C-1. The DIF group has a meeting Wednesday so if you have any feedback, please send it along and I'll do my best to bring it to the meeting.

You will note references in the contract to the Digital Inclusion Task Force (DITF). The DITF "retired" after forming the Digital Inclusion Fund Advisory Committee (DIFAC) of which I am a member. That's the "governing" body now monitoring portions of the CBA. (What we exactly are monitoring is up to interpretation.)

USIW was required to fund the DIF with an initial $500,000. That money is paid and accounted for. The DIFAC has given out $400,000 of it over the last two years. We have about $100,000 on account.

USIW is further required to provide monthly payments of five percent (5%) of their "Pre-tax Income from the operation of the Network within the City." DIFAC has not seen any of that money yet and I haven't heard when payments are supposed to begin. USIW does have a representative on DIFAC and we are supposed to learn more this week. According to early estimates by USIW and listed in Attachment C of the contract, USIW should be giving the DIF $467,207 in "Year 3." That would be 2009 if we are counting from the year the contract was signed. (By Year 10, the DIF is supposed to receive $1749,387.)

There is other revenue sharing around the Walled Garden/Community Portal advertising but as far as I can tell, there is no advertising yet. The DIF will also share in revenues from any local municipality Wi-Fi deployments but that hasn't happened yet either (and wouldn't that municipality want its own CBA and share of revenues?).

Walled Garden

USIW is required by contract to build a "walled garden" portal page with free access to whoever can get the signal and access to some City and neighborhood/community sites. That's in place. I don't know how much engagement the City or USIW has with individual communities but you can go to the portal site free and access the City of Minneapolis web site free. That's cool. The contract also specifies content management systems for communities. I'm not sure if that's in place yet. Link to Community Portal.

Free Accounts

The City negotiated 100 free accounts for community technology centers (CTC) in the contract. Applications were sent out this year and 51 groups replied and should have free accounts soon. The City will follow-up with another round of application requests in case some groups missed the first round. If you know of a nonprofit that has public access to computers or tech literacy classes, you should have them contact the City. (You can download the application here.) Organizations will also receive monthly Wi-Fi subscription vouchers for volunteers.

Missing Pieces

The biggest missing piece of course, is the monthly payments to the DIF. I am hopeful that this will be addressed this week.

There are a couple of other items that are missing (or that I'm not aware of).

Free 1MB access

USIW "will offer free 1 megabit broadband Internet access service in public locations (Parks, Plazas) defined by City up to a maximum of five percent (5%) of the geographic area throughout the City." I don't know of any free access. The City press release for the agency free wireless makes it sound like this is in place. It's possible it is. It would certainly seem a good marketing move on the part of USIW. I'll update this after our meeting.

Fundraising

USIW is supposed to be seeking "additional contributions and/or matching funds from community businesses, foundations and charities to increase the amount available in the DIF." This is really important as the volunteer DIFAC doesn't really have the time to do serious fundraising.

USIW is also supposed to sponsor an annual DIF fundraising event. Unless I wasn't invited, as of today, there has been no event.

They are also supposed to conduct community meetings twice per year around the City "to ensure continued encouragement and support for the inclusion into the digital age of the maximum number of citizens, households and businesses in the City." I don't think these have taken place yet either.

We are three years in on the contract. I think we need to address where all the benefits are and USIW should let us know when to expect them. Maybe the City is aware of the issues and has a satisfactory response from USIW. Since I'm a member of DIFAC, you'd think I'd know that but sometimes big cities move in mysterious ways.

I'd love feedback on this especially before the Wednesday meeting.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Day at the Fair (photos)

2009-08-30T20:55:00.001-05:00

We went to the Minnesota State Fair today starting with the Milk Run 5K (sorry, no photos), then returning for a family day with the daughter and her family. It was a beautiful day for it (if a bit cool in the morning).

Notes

Paul is the singing guy in the video and my son-in-law.

That's Robbie the Oldest Grandson showing off some autographs he got over by Fan Chatter.

Crayfish are by the DNR building (although I bet they put different critters out each day).

The fish. If you aren't from around here, you may not know that our fish pond is one of the most popular spots at the fair.

Trash sculpture. Always an interesting art piece. They make a scavenger hunt out of it as you try to find particular pieces of trash in the sculpture. I can't find the 2009 artist's name at the State Fair site. Looks like they will tell us after the fair is over.

Seth the Middle Grandson is eating a turkey leg. His father ate most of it but lets him gnaw on the bone.

How the hell long has Spamville been at the fair?

Lego Nation leaves the Fair today (and travels to Colorado State Fair). Very busy with lots of kids.

The art show. Does anyone anywhere put on an art show like this one? 2,105 artists from all over the state submitted work this year and 382 pieces were accepted. A wonderful show! (I did think photography was a bit weak this year but it was made up for by some incredible photo-realistic pencil work.) I photographed a few pieces.

Alligator Alley is by Denise M. Rouleau

Check out Morning Ritual the necklace by Elizabeth M. Garvey. Those aren't shells.

The lure is entitled Fish Story and by Michael A. Hall.

Bone Doggy is by Mark Davidson

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

City of Minneapolis seeks BTOP grants to get broadband to public housing

2009-08-24T14:33:00.001-05:00

Business Information Systems at the City of Minneapolis is applying for NTIA Broadband Technology Opportunity Program (BTOP) grant money to bring broadband to Minneapolis Public Housing highrises. The request was approved at the August 10 Ways & Means meeting. Full text of the request is below.

Since they are looking at using Wi-Fi, I will surmise that US Internet Wireless (USIW) will be involved in the deployment. Did anyone consider broadband via fiber which would be much faster and not require any Wi-Fi cards? Another option would be a community wireless system using Open Source hardware and software. I would guess that it would be far cheaper than USIW's equipment. I know of at least one non-profit that might be interested in working on something like that.

Here's the request (also available at the City's site):

The Recovery Act directed The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) to expand broadband access to unserved and underserved communities across the U.S., increase jobs, spur investments in technology and infrastructure, and provide long-term economic benefits. The result is the NTIA Broadband Technology Opportunity Program (BTOP). BTOP will provide grants to fund broadband infrastructure, public computer centers and sustainable broadband adoption projects.
BIS has partnered with the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority (MPHA) and seeks approval to apply for two grants:
1. Infrastructure - to bring broadband into Minneapolis Public Housing highrises
2. Sustainable Adoption - to develop and deploy an awareness campaign; provide training; purchase and distribute hardware to connect with mobile and WiFi (iTouch, Netbooks); and to update the Minneapolis Civic Garden portal to provide multi-lingual support, mobile accessibility, and ideation software. The sustainable adoption project will reach out to all MPHA residents including Section 8.
In addition to MPHA, BIS is partnering with area organizations.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Meet Mr. Slim: New AC unit downstairs

2009-08-01T14:15:00.001-05:00

We live in (and own) a duplex in Minneapolis. We're on the second floor. We have baseboard electric heating so no ductwork for a central AC system. We have an older industrial AC unit mounted in the wall which does an adequate job of cooling about half of our unit. There's no installed AC in the tenant's unit. Or there wasn't. Now there is. We just had a Mitsubishi Mr. Slim Split-ductless Heat Pump installed. (Never mind that this is a record-breaking COOL summer in Minneapolis.)

It's really, really quiet. Besides cooling to 12,000 BTU, it will also provide heating at a 13,600 BTU rating which installer said would give enough heat down to freezing temps. It was pricey but we can get some stimulus money to cover 30% of the install charges. (It is Energy-Star rated.)

We are considering (and have a bid) on having one installed upstairs next year.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Greek-themed Dinner (pictures)

2009-08-01T13:47:00.001-05:00

We had an excellent meal the other evening with tabouli, hummus, and a
simple Greek salad. (Taouli wouldn't hold still for a picture.) Wish I
could claim credit for its creation but it was all Mary's doing.

(I'm also testing some photo quality in posting to posterous)

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Topsy Turvy Tomatoes with Pepper

2009-07-27T07:18:00.001-05:00

We are growing tomatoes and a pepper in Topsy Turvy planters this year and so far, they are doing very well. Topsy Turvy allows you to "Grow delicious homegrown tomatoes without the backbreaking work!" and I'm always in favor of avoiding backbreaking work. This also avoids having to continually stake the tomatoes to keep them from resting on the ground and rotting.

We tried this last year with a homemade unit made from a 5-gallon plastic container. Squirrels chewed through the top and got in the soil. No problems like that this year.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Officially laid off today from my web developer position at the U of MN

2009-07-20T17:07:00.002-05:00

Update: Original post title said I was "laid" today. I wasn't. I was "laid off." Oops.

I have 28 days left with the Masonic Cancer Center IT dept. My options
at the moment include:

1. Bumping someone of lower seniority and taking their job.
2. Going on the "layoff list" where I get priority for jobs I'm qualified for.
3. Taking the severance package which includes 8-weeks salary,
vacation payout, and healthcare at current employee cost for a year
(and I still qualify for unemployment).

I will leave the Cancer Center with a Masters in Public Affairs from
Humphrey (if I finish a paper and pass the stats class by the end of
the summer session). So I am seriously considering option #3. With
unemployment, I should have a nice cushion to look for something in a
policy/strategy area or maybe help a group use the social web. I have
ideas. I have dreams.

If I go that route I will be interested in any freelance web work to
help pay the bills. Or how about a freelance web project that has a
social web component to it? I have some great ideas. I have deep
blogging and twitter experience and I can fake it on Facebook.

If you have some ideas (or work) for me, I'm pfhyper at gmail.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Sustaining the sparrows & finches

2009-07-18T12:28:00.001-05:00

These feeders are generally empty about five hours after filling. At
any given time, there may be 10 to 12 birds feeding on both or
jostling for a spot. We get mostly sparrows, plenty of finches, and
occasional flicker and chickadee. Also spotted on the (wire) feeder
this year: red-wing blackbird, grackle, mourning dove, downy
woodpecker. Cardinals also hang around but don't come to the feeders.

The population growth on the feeders took a while. The first year we
saw very few birds. Each year there were more. Now I think our address
in imprinted in the DNA of most sparrows in Minneapolis.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Mary heads for the summit

2009-07-18T07:33:00.001-05:00

http://www.themckeevers.com/photos/photo/img_8305jpg

In May, Mary visited Breckenridge, CO and went on her first 14er hike
on Quandary Peak (at 14,265 ft. it is the 13th tallest mountain in
Colorado and one of 53 peaks above 14,000).

With winds at 60 mph and her aversion to cold, she didn't quite make the summit.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Richfield Baseball: Robbie at the plate

2009-07-17T12:07:00.001-05:00

This was at the last game of the regular season for Robbie, the eldest
grandson, and his team, the Richfield LA Dodgers. I really love
watching these games.

The season is almost over. Next week the Dodgers start the playoffs
series. Oh, it was a great game and the Dodgers won 5-2.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Playing with Posterous

2009-07-12T22:25:00.001-05:00

I'm playing/testing Posterous, a new service that is sometimes being
called life streaming. It works with email. You send an email (which
is what this is) to Posterous and it publishes to your Posterous blog.
You can also auto-enable other services like Twitter and have a link
to your Posterous account appear there. I'm trying to send this to my
PF Hyper blog (pfhyper.com/blog). It should appear there and in
Posterous.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Tree hacks in the Seward hood

2009-07-08T20:15:00.002-05:00

Tree trimming in Seward Neighborhood. I wrote a bit about it at my Tumblr blog.

Tumb, tumbling away

2009-05-30T11:30:00.001-05:00

pfhyper started a tumblr blog. I think I'll use it to store links where I want to say more than 140 characters (the twitter limit). Plus Twitter doesn't archive well yet. We don't really know if our early tweets are in a database somewhere or not.

Minneapolis Unwired: Dead zones & IOUs (plus a Wi-Fi in the parks update)

2009-05-30T11:08:00.002-05:00

Steve Alexander has a report on the Minneapolis Wi-Fi deployment at the Star Tribune. Judging from the dates on the comments, I think it's from May 26 but there's no dateline on the story.

The gist is that it's not done which is also the ongoing mantra. "It's always something" as Gilda would say. Prospect Park is still a "challenge" area and there are others around the metro--a total of three square miles still unwired. The park issue I reported on before seems to be resolved and a contract is in place with a bit of money changing hands from US Internet to the Park Board. (Read details over at the eDemocracy Forum).

The City of Minneapolis is using only $50,000 worth of services but paying $1.25 million per year. The article says the money carries over (an IOU so to speak) so supposedly we will get full value eventually. Some reasons we aren't getting full value now are because the network needs to actually be complete before Police and Fire will mess with it and because some City departments are slow in adopting the service.

Alexander talks about using the network to track video from a police car going 80mph. I would love to know how that is possible. I don't think the current network, in areas where it is fully implemented, allows you to smoothly travel from node to node in a car without losing the connection some of the time. So do we have a "special" high-speed backend network for police and fire? I know there is a "public safety" channel or something but if it's still in the Wi-Fi range, it would be subject to all kinds of interference.

US Internet meanwhile says they now have 14,000 subscribers. Those numbers should eventually translate to cash infusions in the City's Digital Inclusion Fund with a minimum of 5% of net pretax income. The fund has $100,000 left of the initial $500,000 from US Internet. The fund and the money are part of the Community Benefits Agreement in the contract. I'm on the Digital Inclusion Fund Committee and so far we have not heard when we will receive more money and we have postponed this years grant-making cycle.

We are still the muni-wi-fi poster child of the world. It's working here because the City of Minneapolis signed on as anchor tenant and is paying a hefty fee to support a network. However, unless the City starts to get its money's worth of services soon, we may have rethink this poster child status.

"Minnesota's Greatest Generation"Opens Saturday

2009-05-22T23:30:00.002-05:00

The Minnesota's Greatest Generation Project started in 2005, marking the 60th anniversary of the end of WWII. The capstone of the project is the Minnesota's Greatest Generation Exhibit that opens Saturday, May 22, at the Minnesota History Center.

Thursday was Media Preview Day and in addition to inviting the known press, the Minnesota Historical Society also invited the local blogger crowd and even called the last hour of the preview a "blogger exclusive." Nice idea although I may have been the only actual blogger to show. I think the scheduling had something to do with that; they held the preview from 10 am to 1 on Thursday. I'm lucky that I have a flexible "real job" work schedule.

Since the invitation stressed the intergenerational aspect of the exhibit, I invited my 11-year-old grandson to join me. Robbie was a great choice and he really enjoyed the exhibit. He brought a notebook and took notes. Joe Hoover, a member of the Historical Society Web Team, was our guide.

The Greatest Generation preceded the Baby Boomer generation. I'm a baby boomer and I was born in the last section of the exhibit, the boom years, where you find all the TV sets. The exhibit itself, all 6,000 square feet, is laid out chronologically starting with the Depression years, then WWII, and then the boom years. There is lots to see and hear.

Some of the highlights of our visit were the 1930s movie theater illusion that makes you think you are in a movie theater with rows and rows of seats, the bullet-packing assembly line, and the C-47 troop transport simulated flight into Europe on D-Day with enemy fighters and anti-aircraft guns firing away. They also have a soda fountain from the 30s which was the "social web" for that generation.

You can listen to many recorded stories as you wander through the exhibit and you can chat to a couple of folks who lived during the time: Frederick McKinley Jones and Virginia Hope. Frederick (1892-1961) was a self-taught engineer and inventor who held over sixty patents. He invented the cooling system to preserve foods for long-distance transport via trucks which was the beginning of the Thermo King Corporation. He was black.

Virginia was a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). These women were the military stateside flyers during World War II, freeing the men for combat. They learned to fly many different types of planes. After the War, they were discharged and it wasn't until 1977 that they were granted veteran status which allowed them to receive benefits.

Make sure to chat with Frederick and Virginia when you visit the exhibit.

There is much, much more. Check out my photos. Check the web site. Get over to St. Paul and see for yourself.

Can Computers Take Advantage of Ultra-High-Speed Bandwidth?

2009-03-17T11:26:00.001-05:00

Christopher Mitchell is Research Associate over at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, an organization that (among other things) supports democratic access to airwaves and wires. I've asked Christopher to post on broadband issues. I hope this won't be the last you see of him here. You can reach Christopher at christopher@newrules.org.

Can Computers Take Advantage of Ultra-High-Speed Bandwidth?
Christopher Mitchell

During discussions about the need for ultra-high-speed bandwidth in communities around Minnesota, some have suggested that many people have computers that cannot take advantage of these faster connections. This has happened before the Governor’s Task Force as well as Committees in the Legislature. One person even suggested that some computers cannot take advantage of speeds beyond 5 megabits/second.

This claim is not only inaccurate; it reveals a flawed understanding of how Internet connections are used in the modern household.

Modern families frequently have multiple devices competing for bandwidth and sharing a single connection, including hand-held Wi-Fi devices, multiple computers and gaming machines and — starting this year — televisions and TiVos downloading content directly from the Internet.

To illustrate: Mom may be checking into the office remotely via VPN, Dad may be uploading video from yesterday's little league baseball game, Suzy is watching a lecture from Stanford for college credit, Tom is on a vidchat with friends, and grandma is checking in with her doctor.

A home office user may sometimes need very fast speeds to transfer large files to co-workers or to rapidly backup large amounts of data. Vendors could provide Ultra-High-Speed networks with bandwidth on demand allowing a user to purchase a 50Mbps connection during the hours from 8-noon and have a more modest connection otherwise.

Fast Internet connections will not be forced upon those who have no use for them. However, communities increasingly have businesses and power users demanding faster connections at affordable prices.

Thus, the argument that communities do not need these connections because some have computers unable to use them is at best irrelevant. But it is also inaccurate.

Ten years ago, computer motherboards had a standard Ethernet jack providing at least 10Mbps speeds. Thus, if someone is using a computer that was purchased within the last 10 years, we can be confident that the computer, at a minimum, can handle a 10Mbps connection. If it cannot, a $20 network card will solve that problem.

The 10/100 network cards (which connect to networks running both at 10Mbps and 100Mbps) were available ten years ago but did not become a standard on most PCs until around 2002-3. Nine years ago, the iMac offered a standard 10/100 port, meaning that any Mac purchased within the previous nine years will almost definitely support 100Mbps speeds.

If I had to guess, I would suspect that at least 95% of computers used today have been purchased within the previous ten years. Nearly all of those computers will have a 10/100 network port built in, allowing them to take advantage of up to 100Mbps. But even faster network speeds have long been available — the University of Minnesota has connected devices to its network at 1000Mbps (1 Gigabit/second) since 2004.

A few months ago, I purchased a refurbished laptop from Dell. For $1000, I received a laptop that came with 1Gbps networking capabilities.

Though most computers today may not have the ultra-high-speed capability of my laptop, we must keep in mind that it will take several years — under the most optimistic schedule imaginable — before these speeds are available to homes. By that time, computers will have commonly supported 100Mbps or faster speeds for many years.

What we call ultra-high-speed networks are becoming commonplace in parts of Europe and Asia. Our computers are not the limiting factor, the high cost and limited returns of building these faster networks is the issue.

Christopher Mitchell is the Director of the Telecommunications as Commons Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Minneapolis. His e-mail address is christopher@ilsr.org

2008 Minneapolis Digital Inclusion Awards

2009-03-01T14:11:00.002-06:00

I sit on the Digital Inclusion Advisory Committee and we finished another award cycle last year that I never blogged about. (Here's a search link where you can read more about the Committee and my involvement.) I'm doing a presentation on digital inclusion this week at the U for a journalism class so I thought I should at least get this information online here. (In my defense, I did Twitter the awards back in December.)

We have away $200,000 for the second year. We have $100,000 left. According to the US Internet Wireless (USIW) contract, USIW will continue funding with a minimum of 5% of net pretax income. When the Digital Inclusion fund will see this money is not clear. There are other benefits too including free accounts for nonprofits. The City convened a work group last summer to look at some of these and how to proceed. I sat at the table with that group too and we finished meetings in the summer. We are still waiting for the applications for free accounts. Hopefully this will move forward soon.

Without further ado, here are the 2008 awards:

Casa de Esperanza - $20,000 for Centro de Información y Recursos, which offers free internet and technology access at a location in the Mercado Central on Lake Street.
CommonBond Communities - $30,000 for technology access and literacy efforts at Seward Towers East and West.
Employment Action Center - $30,000 for software and equipment for the Community Technology Center to assist new Americans in a web-based English language learning program.
Library Foundation of Hennepin County - $24,676 for technology training in Hmong, Somali and Spanish at four Minneapolis libraries.
Minnesota Computers for Schools - $8,000 for distribution of refurbished laptop computers to students in a low-income area of Minneapolis, with tech support from student “tech teams” that have been trained in computer maintenance and operation.
PACER Center - $30,000 for technology access and literacy training for low-income people, people of color, people with disabilities, immigrants/refugees.
Patchwork Quilt - $30,000 for incorporation of computer literacy into all programs as well as computer software skills training for residents of North Minneapolis.
St. Paul Neighborhood Network - $20,000 for digital literacy training and workforce readiness preparation at nine Minneapolis agencies.

Upcoming: PFHyper presents New Times New Tech

2009-02-07T13:29:00.005-06:00

I will be presenting at the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits 2009 Nonprofit Tech & Communications Conference (New Times New Tech) on Friday, Feb. 20, 2009.

The title of my session is Using the Collaborative Internet for Engaging the Public in Policy & Planning and it will run from 10:30 to 11:45.

Here's the description:

Join your peers to share Web and social media strategies and techniques for involving members of groups, teams, organizations, and various stakeholders, including the public at large, in problem definition, policy or plan formulation, decision making, and implementation. Various tools will be considered for their usefulness in citizen engagement including blogs, wikis, Twitter, Facebook, Google and other social media and collaborative tools. This is not a primer but a group discussion about what's working for you today, what's working for your colleagues, and what you see in the future. Join this discussion to share and discover potential tools to try out, and gain a better understanding of the networked public sphere.

How the hell do we use all these wonderful tools to get our work done in terms of working with our internal groups and engaging stakeholders outside of our organizations? As noted, this will be a group discussion and I hope to learn more than any of you about how you have been using the web and internet in these processes. Is Facebook the answer? Should we just give up on the fancy tools and use email with all its spam and management difficulties? Or should we just drop email and Facebook and move everyone over to Twitter (or Friendfeed or Plaxo or NextGreatThing)?

What I want to find out from you is what's working. Where do you feel that you have some quantifiable success in enhancing your group work process with a collaborative tool. Or at least some glimmer of hope that we are all on the right path. Share with us whatever smart and promising practices that help with group process. Let's hear your stories as to what's working and what's not working and some dashes of humor as we go along would be lovely.

I told a friend about this workshop and she immediately jumped to the concept of lobbying and attempting to influence legislators. While lobbying will likely be part of any policy implementation plan, I want this workshop to look at how we can work as a team over the net to start right at the problem defining itself and move through planning, decision-making, and implementing.

I also want to talk about controlling messages and collaboration. Can you open up social media in your organization and trust everyone to act responsibly? Will social collaboration be successful if you try to control all signals or does that rub too much against the grain of the social media concept itself? Can you just let everyone Twitter and Facebook and hope for the best?

So I am hoping you will want to join me on February 20 at 10:30 and that we will all have a lively, friendly, and respectful discussion. I'd love to see comments here at the blog on your ideas for shaping the presentation! Whether you get to my show or not, stop me and introduce yourself if you see me wandering the halls.

My first draft of slides is up at Google docs. Although the first screen makes you think you must log-in, look center and down for the direct link to the slides with no authentication.

My slides from last year's presentation are at Slideshare.

MCN is also twittering conference information as @SmartNonprofits.

Minneapolis Unwired: Park Board decides to throw its weight around

2009-01-13T08:19:00.001-06:00

This is a follow-up to my last post about Wi-Fi in the Minneapolis parks.

Brandt Williams at Minneapolis Public Radio has an excellent update (Jan. 9) that covers the parks issue along with the issue with "dark" areas (where Wi-Fi won't work) which is limiting the usefulness of the network to the City of Minneapolis which is paying $1 million a year for a current service level worth $50,000.

Park Board Commissioner Scott Vreeland is interviewed in the piece and says that he is "not aware of any staff that knew about it.... It certainly wasn't brought to the commissioners." Scott, Wi-Fi in the parks has been discussed from the beginning of the implementation and it's part of the contract. What you are telling me here is that our Park Board Commissioners ignore anything that isn't officially presented to them to the point of now causing considerable delay in the full use of the Wi-Fi network here in Minneapolis and costing the City a significant amount of money. Thanks.

So the City makes a formal request and the Park Board turns it down "pending further study."

And by the way, I'm pretty sure we're talking free Wi-Fi in the parks. So the Park Board resistance is also holding back a valuable service for residents. Thanks again.

I hope this issue is raised as the campaigns for Park Board Commissioners gear up. I've talked about the Park Board before relating to the Red Bull bike route blockage. Our park system in Minneapolis is one of our most important assets and I want elected representatives who are paying attention to who they are representing.

Everyone welcome! Seward Co-op (re)opens today!

2009-01-08T19:00:00.003-06:00

[Update: Photos of the Ribbon-Cutting]

It's been a long time coming and loads of work (including a lot of financial twists and turns to secure the money) but today the newly built and designed Seward Co-op will rise up on the ashes of the old Riverside Market. (OK. I exaggerated that ashes part but this is the site of the old Riverside Market which was a grocery fixture in Seward Neighborhood.)

Cooking classroom

The ribbon-cutting is at 10 today. Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak is supposed to attend. I'm sure our Green CouncilMember Cam Gordon will be there. I will be there. Mary (the wife) will be there. My youngest grandson will be there. Will you be there? Probably not but make sure to drop by soon. I hope to have some pictures up today so you can vicariously relive the ribbon-cutting.

For now, you can check out the Seward Co-op web site, view my pictures from the preview day, and read a nice article by Deets man Ed Kohler. (Seward also has a Facebook page.)

Seward Co-op FTW!

Historical notes: Our family is very connected to the Co-op. Mary was an early employee and part of the collective management when we were still a worker's co-op. She was once known as the Seward Co-op Cheese Queen when she revamped the cheese display at the old store (where Welna Hardware currently resides). I served on the board of Seward Co-op during the transition from the Welna site to the current site and I was the editor and publisher of an early member newsletter called Whole Wheat News. I also organized my class at Minneapolis Community & Technical College to build a web site for the store and hosted it via my PF Hyper entity for several years. My daughter Hallie worked checkout at the Riverside Market and met her husband there while on-duty.