“I’m not antitechnology at home, but it’s not a savior,” said Laura Robell, the principal at Elmhurst Community Prep, a public middle school in East Oakland, Calif., who has long doubted the value of putting a computer in every home without proper oversight. “So often we have parents come up to us and say, ‘I have no idea how to monitor Facebook,’ ” she said.” — New ‘Digital Divide’ Seen in Wasting Time Online - NYTimes.com
(via Life After BTOP: Philadelphia KEYSPOTs | NewAmerica.net)
It has been a year since the Freedom Rings Partnership (FRP) received $18.2 million in Broadband Technologies Opportunities Program (BTOP) federal stimulus funds to bring broadband opportunities to low-income Philadelphians. The Partnership’s accomplishments are already extraordinary. FRP launched 76 Public Computing Centers and dozens of digital literacy trainings that provide Philadelphia residents with the tools they need to achieve their educational and professional goals. But as the program enters the second and final year of its grant, program leaders are considering how to sustain what they have managed to build.
he Media Consortium’s Media for the 99 Percent May Day collaboration provided a template for independent media to cover events of national importance. It demonstrated that the independent media, working collaboratively, can provide the American people with a real alternative to the national media oligopoly (via MediaShift . The Media Consortium: Inside Our May Day Collaboration | PBS)
The story of how Simons, just two years removed from a Chicago high school, came to be living in AOL’s Palo Alto campus could well become part of Silicon Valley lore, especially because it highlights the lengths some entrepreneurs will go to make their dreams a reality. And though stories abound these days of startup founders barely old enough to drink swimming in venture capital, far more have to get by on packaged noodles and the good will of friends with extra couches. (via Meet the tireless entrepreneur who squatted at AOL | Bootstrap - CNET News)
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The high cost of running the local-news sites has fueled a campaign by dissident investor Starboard Value LP against AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong’s strategy of investing heavily in online content. Starboard, which is waging a proxy battle to win several seats on AOL’s board at next month’s annual meeting, says that Patch should be closed, sold or put into a joint venture, with a partner sharing the cost. (via AOL’s Bet on Local News Draws Trouble - WSJ.com)
“Many older Americans are falling into poverty as they age. In 2009, the most recent year included in the study, 6 percent of those age 85 older were new entrants in poverty, up from 4.6 percent in 2005. And while 3.3 percent of people ages 75 to 84 fell newly into poverty in 2005, that number increased to 5.6 percent by 2009. One of the biggest drivers of poverty in old age is failing health and the associated medical costs. Most retirees living below the poverty line (70 percent) have suffered acute health conditions such as cancer, lung disease, heart problems, or stroke, compared with 48 percent for those above the poverty line, according to health and retirement study data. And almost all senior citizens living in poverty (96 percent) have some sort of health condition, such as high blood pressure, diabetes, psychological problems, or arthritis, versus 61.7 percent of retirees with incomes above the poverty line.” —
Poverty Increasing Among Retirees - Yahoo! Finance
Think about working your whole life, having medical problems and becoming impoverished because of them. Scary.
“For Oaklanders, the most disappointing aspect of the Warriors’ anticipated move to San Francisco isn’t the loss of an NBA franchise, it’s the abysmal and desperate 11th-hour attempts by City Hall to persuade the team to stay. The Oakland City Council in March approved $3.5 million for the study of “Coliseum City,” a new stadium complex that would include retail, office and commercial development in the shadow of the O.co coliseum and Oracle Arena. But the proposal - Oakland’s version of the baseball village planned in 2007 to lure the A’s to Fremont - came much too late and lacked any specifics about how such a mega-deal would be paid for. And although the city retained a group led by HKS Inc., an architectural firm, to design a new stadium complex and help attract private investment for its financing, Oakland Mayor Jean Quan never did appear to make keeping the Warriors - or any of the professional sports teams - a top priority.” —
Warriors’ plan to bolt is a turnover by Oakland
OUCH
The spirit of Occupy? “Can’t Pay Bills” street art at N5th & Roebling in Williamsburg.
How do I choose? (Taken with Instagram at Ace Hardware Nursery)
“Kinsey Wilson, chief content officer for NPR, said “it sort of dawned on me” at last fall’s ONA conference that “we actually had quite a few people working on this kind of stuff and we hadn’t brought them together as a team … What I needed was a strong leader to bring those different parts together.” That will be Boyer, one of the first recipients of Medill’s scholarship to train software developers in journalism and currently the Tribune’s editor of news applications. Fittingly, Boyer said he gets most of his local and general-interest news from public radio. The team will be part of NPR’s digital news operation, overseen by managing editor Mark Stencel. He expects to see the news apps team enhance the work of its investigative team, Planet Money and StateImpact.” — NPR creates news applications team as part of strategy for ‘multimedia audio’ | Poynter.
Cuthulu?
(Source: soyallyson, via skorzeny)
What will happen to Armstrong? I’ve got plenty of people asking me if they should deploy ArmstrongCMS or stay away from it.
Now that the merger between CIR and The Bay Citizen has been finalized, our combined organization has almost instantly become home to one of the…
And that’s a great question….How many developers are maintaining the code base is another question I’d ask
(Source: skorzeny)
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