Free public Wi-Fi is still a relative rarity in Australia’s major cities, so how is it possible to make it viable in a town with less than 400 people? Newstead offers some interesting lessons about Wi-Fi, the National Broadband Network (NBN), open source and how to manage community projects. More »
Got a graveyard nearby and a GPS device? Then you can help out with a global scientific project designed to track the impact of climate change and pollution. More »
Tap into the wisdom of the crowd for your health with community web site PatientsLikeMe. Using the site, you can read all about the experiences of other real people who are afflicted with certain illnesses as well as share your own experiences. The purpose, then, is to allow users to interact with one another, track how treatments are working for other members, and explore the side effects patients are seeing with certain treatments. The site’s motto is “Patients helping patients live better every day,” and it provides a tonne of tools to help you do just that. If you’ve given it a try, let’s hear your thoughts in the comments.
US-centric: Get detailed city demographics for any zip code in the United States with ZipSkinny, a site that serves up information based on the last U.S. census data. Just type in your zip, and you’ll get back general info, social and economic indicators, and how your town compares with neighbouring boroughs. Want more? Try checking for bad >> neighbours or finding out the neighbourhood walkability.
ZipSkinnySo you’ve always wanted to pump out that great American novel but never felt you had the time or motivation? Got brilliance bottled up inside of you just waiting for an outlet? It’s time to put those words to paper, because November is National Novel Writing Month (aka, NaNoWriMo). NaNoWhatMo? National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.
Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.
Whether you’ve walked the NaNoWriMo path in the past (like our very own Gina Trapani) or you think you might want to give it a try yourself, you’ve got exactly one day to prep yourself for the start. If you’re a NaNoWriMo vet, share your experience in the comments. More »
A couple of weeks ago Wendy posted a number of ideas on how to save a life with your computer. It was a great idea and a great list of ways you can use your computer or the net to make a difference in someone’s life. It inspired me to throw in my $0.02 worth on the topic, and mention some worthwhile Aussie ventures you can support online as well. More »
Webapp Jottit offers no-registration, one-click web publishing wiki-style plus lots of neat advanced features. One part Twitter (just a text box), four parts wiki, Jottit supports special markup for links, images and videos and tracks page revisions. Once you create your first page on Jottit, you can pick a custom Jottit subdomain for your site (like gina.jottit.com) , add new pages, and select page colours and fonts. More »
