Four short links: 10 September 2009

Hacktivism, Gov 2.0 Futures, Local Geodata, Cassandra Terminology

1. A Political Startup (Aaron Swartz) -- inside account of his grassroots activism efforts, with clever strategies he used to get the outcomes he wanted. A couple months later, frustrated that Norm Coleman wouldn’t drop his spurious legal challenges against Al Franken being named a Senator, we started NormDollar.com. We asked people to donate a dollar each day Norm Coleman didn’t drop out of the race, money we’d spend electing progressive candidates. It was featured on Hardball and throughout the political press. We also videotaped Norm’s donors’ reactions when we told them about the program. But my favorite was when we presented Norm with a big novelty check for him to sign, representing all the money he’d raised for progressives. Now we had money too.
2. What Gov 2.0 Is Making Me Think (Quinn Norton) -- two short and razor sharp observations on Gov 2.0. Like stages of grief, we need to figure out the stages of internet integration for institutions. I suspect grief is in there.
3. Northland Regional Council Maps in Koordinates -- a staggeringly clueful act by local government in New Zealand, releasing a pile of imagery and map layers under CC-BY license. As we hear about national governments' Gov 2.0 efforts, it's worth remembering many more local governments there are--with less money, a different revenue model, and no easy way to reach them all.
4. Ten Second iPhone Tethering -- just did this, and it is awesome. The "download" link takes you to a list of countries, which takes you to a list of telcos, which downloads a config file that gives your phone an "okay to tether" network config for that telco. Some report losing ability to MMS, which I for one won't notice! (via many, including Engadget)