i offer to the readers of memestreams a question: which one of these search results is more meaningful to you?

transparencydata.com analysis of robert parsons

opensecrets.com analysis of robert parsons

there are a couple of things i should point out.

* when searching opensecrets you *must* do it LASTNAME, FIRSTNAME (also note that caps are important)

* transparencydata.com returns results faster

i don't mean to beat up on OS or CRP, but seriously stop trying to sell me data and focus on making your data more useable. oh wait! the sunlightlabs already did it for ya!

sometimes i love my job

--timball

why i'm never using opensecrets again

Washington, D.C. - Sunlight Live, the Sunlight Foundation‘s innovative blending of data, streaming video, liveblogging and social networking - first used at February’s bipartisan health-care summit - is this year’s $10,000 Grand Prize winner in the Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism.

Sunlight Live attracted nearly 43,000 viewers, 9,800 livebloggers, and more than 1,300 tweets. The judges not only honored the project for its individual merits, but also because it highlights “the ethos that suffuses the Sunlight Foundation’s entire body of work,” said NPR’s Matt Thompson, one of this year’s judges.

“They showed how to add journalistic punch to a carefully orchestrated government event, adding context and insight to the proceedings. And they don’t stop at merely shedding light on the behind-the-scenes proceedings of government - they go a step beyond to make it fun and engaging, creating a social experience around the event.”

Six other projects that coalesced collaborations to foster unique levels of digital engagement were honored with $1,000 Special Distinction Awards. “We’re beyond the ‘wow’ phase of realizing that citizens can impact journalism and we’re now into the ‘how’ phase,” said Jan Schaffer, director of J-Lab, which administers the awards. “Welcome to the next chapter for online journalism.”

thank you knight foundation! now what can we do about test driving this talking Trans Am i hear so much about?

--timball

J-Lab | Sunlight Live’s Real-Time Participation Wins $10,000 Knight-Batten Innovation Award | About

www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/ns_tic.pdf

Imagine a world where individuals can seamlessly access information and services online from a variety of sources – the government, the private sector, other individuals, and even across national borders – with reduced fear of identity theft or fraud, lower probability of losing access to critical services and data, and without the need to manage many accounts and passwords. Individuals can conduct a wide variety of transactions online and trust the identities of the entities with which they interact. Individuals know what information service providers are collecting about them and how they are using it. They have choice in the number and types of user-friendly identity credentials they manage and use to assert their identity online. They have access to a wider array of online services to save time and effort.

imagine a world where papers like this were actually shared w/ the public before they're voted on!

http://www.nstic.ideascale.com/a/dtd/NSTIC-Should-Have-a-90-Day-Comment-Period/52669-9351

--timball

National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace

IDG News Service — Comcast (CMCSA) customers should reject a proposed settlement in a lawsuit filed against the broadband provider for throttling some Internet traffic, a critic of the company said Thursday.
The proposed settlement, announced last December, especially after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled this month that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission didn't have the authority to enforce its net neutrality principles on Comcast, said Robb Topolski, a veteran networking engineer who discovered Comcast's network management practices back in 2007
Topolski, in a blog post, called on Comcast customers to send a letter opting out of the settlement to the settlement administrator by May 13. Under the terms of the settlement, a Comcast customer who had used peer-to-peer software between April 2006 and December 2008 or used Lotus Notes to send e-mail between March and October 2007 would be entitled to a maximum of US$16.

$16 is not enough damage against a monopolistic company that overcharges customers AND underdelivers service all the while changing the terms of service.

i hate you comcast.. srykthxbye!

--timball

Critic: Customers Should Reject Comcast Throttling Deal - CIO.com - Business Technology Leadership

> The Print Magazine of Hacker News

They can do that?

--timball

Hacker Monthly

This is one of two kits for converting your typewriter into a USB-ready keyboard. It comes with two blank PCBs and all electronic parts (unassembled), so that you can have the knowledge and satisfaction that come with wiring up this fun electronics project by yourself. The boards consist of roughly 20 through-hole components and 30 through-hole metal contacts (which you will learn how to make). It should take an experienced solderer roughly 3 or 4 hrs to assemble the electronics, and another 3 hrs to install them on the typewriter.

gonna steam punk me up a keyboard. will miss the 1 key but who cares!

--timball

DIY USB Typewriter Conversion Kit by usbtypewriter on Etsy

My original smokehouse plan was to make something big enough to cold smoke two pigs worth of hams and bacon at a time. I only butcher pigs once or twice a year for curing,....but I cook several pigs a year on my cinderblock pit.

Really want to build a smokehouse for the fall. i need to smoke my own meat. (nohomo)

--timball

Cowgirl's Country Life: Building a cold smoker (smokehouse)

Readability™ is a simple tool that makes reading on the Web more enjoyable by removing the clutter around what you're reading. Follow the steps below to install Readability™ in your Web browser.

aah very clear readable webpages. Now all if i could just convince everyone that white backgrounds cause blindness i'll be set!

--timball

Readability - An Arc90 Lab Experiment

Recently, the Labs broke into teams and spent two days doing projects entirely of our own devising, given free rein. Our team consisted of two developers, a designer, and Sunlight's prized sysadmin. So for our project, we wanted to do something for the office, that blended software and design with the physical world. Inspired by some recent internal work in inventorying items using QR codes, we thought it'd be fun to make a system that lets Sunlighters print out QR codes for anything they wanted.

we did a thing my team did not win the overall prize but we did get the coolest effects.

--timball

Labs Olympics: Sunlight 2D - Sunlight Labs: Blog

Nanoloop is a mobile music software that provides all functionality you need to create nice electronic music. With its clear, minimalistic interface it plays almost like a game while still allowing for complex musical structures as well as sheer noise.

Music synth for gameboy!

--timball

nanoloop | nanoloop