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Friday, October 25, 2013
Tech The best ghost town in the U.S.
Posted By Desiree Kane on Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 2:00 PM
There's something about the harsh, extreme climates that makes ghost towns gritty yet amazing in the Old American West. In perhaps one of the most remote places, Rhoylite, Nev., stands what is surely the best ghost town in the U.S.
Fires, floods, famine and attacks from pissed-off American Indians unhappy at the new people invading their land are all things early gold rushers had to face. Yet, the promise of gold, silver and other precious commodities from America's new, large swaths of unmined land was so alluring that it didn't matter. There's gold in them thar hills!
Wednesday, October 23, 2013
Tech Geeks <3 Altruism: Domains4Good
Posted By Desiree Kane on Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 5:00 PM
Built at a social good hackathon by four Bay Area do-good geeks, Domains4Good is a great idea, simply put. URL owners/cybersquatters set the CNAME record to Domains4Good.org, and charities benefit from the exposure. It costs nothing and takes no effort on the domain owner's part. Brilliant.
I caught up with the brilliant creator of numerous spiffy Web things, including Design4Good, Ben Roodman, and asked him to give me the skinny. Here's what he said:
Finally, here's this for good measure - because you can't write unicornfarts a bunch of times and not wonder what that looks like:
Teaser unicorn fart image credit: Chad Magiera
Photo credit: Design4Good website
I caught up with the brilliant creator of numerous spiffy Web things, including Design4Good, Ben Roodman, and asked him to give me the skinny. Here's what he said:
"We (Gabe Sanchez, Zac Witte, Amy Ziari, and I) felt that a lot of causes focused on monetary donations, where really you have to create social awareness first before most people will commit to donations. As dorks, we've all started projects where we had unused domain names or had gotten drunk and purchased silly domains; the idea started from UnicornFarts.com.
I had this domain for the longest time that I never quite had the right use for, so personally I started redirecting it daily to kickstarters and causes that I thought were interesting. At the #hack4good social good hackathon, I had the opportunity working with three friends to create a larger idea: redirect unused domains for good. Our presentation focused on the 282 million domains registered, nearly half unused.
We won the SF event, and we ended up taking 4th place globally! We didn't win any actual prizes; the grand prize was a trip for the winning team to Dublin for the Web Summit, but we've built some great connections out of it and are currently talking to Rackspace and other registrars to add Domains4Good.org as an option during the time of registration instead of some spammy parked domain advertising. It's been fun.
Right now, we're working on upgrading the management of onsite voting. We've had over 200-plus domains forwarded to us, 218 when I checked last. The biggest thing we can do is ask for more cause submissions and votes on site so we don't keep having to manually look up causes to promote daily, like I was doing with unicornfarts."
If you want to watch the demo that won them San Francisco's #hack4good, here's the video!:
Finally, here's this for good measure - because you can't write unicornfarts a bunch of times and not wonder what that looks like:
Teaser unicorn fart image credit: Chad Magiera
Friday, October 18, 2013
Tech BarCamp Charlotte's back, back again!
Posted By Desiree Kane on Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 11:35 AM
BarCamp Charlotte has seen a lot of growth over the last four years. It started as a bunch of nerds in a room, tired of the traditional conference model's stodginess, and has since grown to one of Charlotte's most valued conferences. From a courthouse in Fort Mill to Area 15 and now onto CPCC's campus, where THE Geek Fest happens every year, this event is getting bigger and better every time. Oct. 26's event will be no exception. Here's a video from 2010 at BarCamp Charlotte 3 that will get you up to speed.
The bar in BarCamp stems from the term foobar/fubar; for the unaware, FUBAR is an acronym for "fucked up beyond all recognition." Why? Well, where a traditional conference would have set speakers that attendees have no choice in choosing nor have a chance to be a speaker at the drop of a hat, all attendees at BarCamp Charlotte have these luxuries if they want them.
The approach to this event is refreshing: People come together to give pitches for the talks they want to share in the morning and afternoon, and their peers vote for the talks they actually want to hear. Everyone actually gets the unconference line-up they want. It's an amazing event to network with a ton of out-of-the-box thinkers as well.
Here's a smattering of what some of the past most popular talks have been:
How to ruin your personal brand in 15 minutes or less - Torgny B.Get on out to this super fun tech event at CPCC on Oct. 26!
Hackerspace (Loved it) - Yvette B.
Animal balloons and LOLcats - James W.
Skookum Digital Works - Richard B.
Mobile Framework - Jeremy S.
Google Analytics - Kristie H.
Learn to write Non-Fiction - Willie J.
Picking Locks - Brianna S.
Mobile Framework - Farhad J.
Power Kids - Mahte R.
Using Social media in a political grassroots campaign - Nichelle J.
Puppets! - Kevin H.
How to Make tech education suck less - Eric O.
Build an Ecobox - Mark L.
Source: BarCamp Charlotte's Website
For more commentary, follow me on Twitter @dbirdy, for more photos peep my Flickr and to see all videos, subscribe to my YouTube channel here!
Monday, October 14, 2013
Tech Loving the little things: Backwoods Antiques
Posted By Desiree Kane on Mon, Oct 14, 2013 at 3:10 PM
The store is broken out into three small buildings. Gloria and her border collie Scout maintain the grounds. Gloria refers to herself as a collector. Her passion for items of yore is obvious when you step into each of the intricate, seemingly never-ending tiny trailers, which are filled to the brim with carefully collected and specially placed furniture, glassware, china and other trinkets, each with its own story. The buildings' contents are organized by era. My favorite was the 1950s trailer with the mannequin in a full poodle skirt.
If I am ever reincarnated as a china bowl or porcelain figurine, I want to wind up here, in the care of Gloria. She takes good care of these items, which are very fairly priced, in my opinion. And by that I mean, none are priced. Make Gloria a fair offer and the item is yours. I should note that the store hours are listed as "by chance or appointment."
If you find yourself in the North Carolina Smoky Mountains, give Backwoods Antiques a visit. The shop, and Gloria, are definitely worth the stop.
For more commentary, follow me on Twitter @dbirdy, for more photos peep my Flickr and to see all videos, subscribe to my YouTube channel here!
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
#nerdgasm: Self-assembling robots
Posted By Desiree Kane on Wed, Oct 9, 2013 at 1:22 PM
As if the robots that will one day overthrow humans need any more of a proverbial leg up, here come the brains over at MIT with one of their newest innovations: self-assembling robots.
There are so many questions that come immediately to mind, so I'll cut right to the chase: When can we play 3D Tetris with these bad boys?
Someone hand me a tissue? I think I just #nerdgasm'd in my pants a little bit.
For more commentary, follow me on Twitter @dbirdy, for more photos peep my Flickr and to see all videos, subscribe to my YouTube channel here!
There are so many questions that come immediately to mind, so I'll cut right to the chase: When can we play 3D Tetris with these bad boys?
Someone hand me a tissue? I think I just #nerdgasm'd in my pants a little bit.
For more commentary, follow me on Twitter @dbirdy, for more photos peep my Flickr and to see all videos, subscribe to my YouTube channel here!
Friday, October 4, 2013
Tech Monumental panoramas of 5 places you can't visit right now
Posted By Desiree Kane on Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 12:33 PM
By now you've heard that the government is suspending all "non-essential" services thanks to bipartisan bickering in Washington.
1. Rocky Mountain National Park, Colo.
2. Grand Canyon National Park, Ariz.
3. Death Valley, Calif./Nev.
4.Yosemite National Park, N. Calif.
5. Shenandoah National Park, VA
For more commentary, follow me on Twitter @dbirdy, for more photos peep my Flickr and to see all videos, subscribe to my YouTube channel here!
The National Park Service will close more than 400 national parks and museums, including Yosemite National Park in California, Alcatraz in San Francisco, and the Statue of Liberty in New York. The last time this happened during the 1995-96 shutdown, some 7 million visitors were turned away.So, to fuel your rage and mine, here are some epic panoramas of five places you can't visit right now even if you wanted to, lest you be turned away like it's 1995 all over again:
Source: Washington Post
1. Rocky Mountain National Park, Colo.
2. Grand Canyon National Park, Ariz.
3. Death Valley, Calif./Nev.
4.Yosemite National Park, N. Calif.
5. Shenandoah National Park, VA
For more commentary, follow me on Twitter @dbirdy, for more photos peep my Flickr and to see all videos, subscribe to my YouTube channel here!
