Technology and Social Action - Blog entry - Comments

Complimentary Services to VoIP

docsharp01 — Thu, 22 May 2008 00:33:53 +0100

There are several complimentary services to VoIP. They are T1 internet, PBX phone systems, high speed internet and satellite internet. More about these services can be found at http://www.1-satellite-tv-facts.com/Phone-Systems.html

http://www.1-satellite-tv-facts.com/T1-Internet-Service.html

http://www.1-satellite-tv-facts.com/Satellite-DSL.html

http://www.1-satellite-tv-facts.com/Satellite-Internet.html

DEMOCRATISING GOVERNANCE

jsaviri — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 07:30:14 +0000

Colleagues

I need some case studies and data to help me project trends in citizen participation in the UK. Are you able to assist? I need this data for a presentation at a closed roundtable meeting.

Thanks in advance

Joseph Savirimuthu

jsaviri@liverpool.ac.uk

Thank for this

mars — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 09:08:00 +0000

Thank for this, I browse this software, fring seem excellent, I had used raketu before, raketu use peer-to-peer (p2p) technology allows high quality VoIP calling and they claim the highest call-completion, without the security issues associated with supernodes (i.e. skype) and other traditional p2p technologies. I hope fring can be one competitor with raketu.

Theming and rendering refinements

alan dawson — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 22:40:58 +0100

The nodecomment module provides two views for comments

1. Threaded

2. Flat

There is a requirement to have a semi threaded view though. This is where replies indent one level, but no more after that. I've quickly done this the wrong way. By hacking the prebuilt views. :-(

Heres the diff

diff nodecomment_views.inc nodecomment_views.inc.drupal
368,371c368,369
< if ($last_depth < 1 ) {
< $divs++;
< $output .= '<div class="indented">';
< }
---
> $divs++;
> $output .= '<div class="indented">';
376,379c374,375
< if ($last_depth > 0) {
< $divs--;
< $output .= '</div>';
< }
---
> $divs--;
> $output .= '</div>';

Anyhow that works OK... until we need a full threaded view again.

The correct way would be to read the theming views documentation and create a new view and corresponding theme for the semithreaded view. .. later ;-)

Also there was a requirement to remove the "reply" link from the indented nodes. A change to the .tpl.php sorted this.

<?php
$node->depth = count(explode('.', $node->thread)) - 1;
if ($node->depth == 0): ?>
<div class="links clear-block"><?php print $links ?></div>
<?php endif; ?>

Ie only print the links at the bottom if the nodecomment is a first level, rather than a reply to a reply. This should probably be refined further, so that users with the correct access rights / roles ( administer nodes ? comments ? ) will still see the links.

This post comes out very strange

AndyDearden — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 14:46:23 +0100

Hi Steve

This contribution looks really strange here on the T&SA site. As it is out of its original context, it now appears like two videos of you showing us how nice the road to Margrove Park is - and it's kind of scary that the video is all driving down the right hand side of the road - do you always do that?

Andy

Andy Dearden
Reader in e-SocialAction
Communication & Computing Research Centre
Sheffield Hallam University
S1 1WB

Web services vs local free software

Paula Graham — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 14:43:37 +0100

Agree, this is exactly what the Hub should be doing, but won't. The Hub doesn't want to fund stuff which will require ongoing revenue funding but wants to set up self-sustaining networks and knowledge bases blah blah. In short, they want to throw some seed dosh at it over a short period and expect NOT to have to spend anything on actually developing service infrastructure.

What small orgs want is applications they don't have to maintain themselves (whether locally installed and remotely maintained or remotely hosted) -- and that's exactly what small orgs aren't going to get because it would involve providing revenue-funded services which is exactly what a neo-liberal government wishes to avoid.

If there's any way of funding it, the provision of either remotely-hosted apps or an 'outsourced' (remote-access) maintenance service is what SMO's actually WANT.

Agree, apps can be provided appropriate to bandwidth but what orgs want to do doesn't always mesh with what their connection will support.

Thanks

Bernard Clarke — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 09:53:24 +0100

Thanks for the list Kutoma - I was finding it hard to remember links, this is just what I needed today!

Bernard

This also dovetails well with...

Josef Davies-Coates — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 12:11:08 +0100

...our plans to organise a (series of) WTF's The Future?! -type event(s)

See http://wiki.espians.com/WTF_1 for an idea of what it'll be like.

The focus this time will be on Transition Towns, Relocalization, and The Great Turning from Empire to Earth Community (see http://transitiontowns.org http://relocalize.net and http://thegreatturning.net etc.)

The question might be something like "How can we prepare for the impact of Peak Oil, reduce our contribution to Climate Change and create a positive future?"

Josef.

Annalee Newitz on web tools

Paula Graham — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 18:34:22 +0100

http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/48883/

Structuring

David Wilcox — Tue, 29 May 2007 13:18:06 +0100

Here's how I've done stuff on a wiki
http://socialmedia.wikispaces.com/

Books in Drupal aren't great ...

Anthing else?

Can we start structuring this?

Paula Graham — Mon, 28 May 2007 12:46:06 +0100

Now that we can create content at will, maybe we should create a project area for this which can be structured by some kind of non-linear nav as we go along? I hate having to scroll miles down blogs to find stuff?

Thanks David!

Paula Graham — Mon, 28 May 2007 12:43:05 +0100

Very very useful indeed! I'll start chewing through and get back back to you when I catch up a bit . . .

I agree that from the outset

Steve Thompson — Sun, 27 May 2007 10:45:30 +0100

I agree that from the outset the most important thing is awareness raising and apart from having a broad list of many options perhaps people should be encouraged to spend a short period of experimentation, playing with as many different options as possible. Of course this depends on the time available to do this.

The reason I mention this is because once an individual or small org has settled on an app or platform it may be difficult to change as the learning curve for something new can seem steep when you've allready surmounted one mountain. Sometimes this has to be done when for instance your app of choice is suddenly no longer there or aquired by an operation who's ethics you disagree with or you find it's not as great as you thought it was.

For example PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS. [ok it's not FOSS] Great digital image tool - cut down from big brother/sister Photoshop and cheaper too. However from version 2 onwards it got steadily more crappy until at version 4 many people hate it and fear the imminent V5. To jump to the FOSS equivelent GIMP is difficult because there are many differences in how the two apps are laid out. (somewhat addressed by GIMPSHOP but I only heard about that oen recently)

What I try to do in my own work is teach people generic skills i.e. "image editing" rather than "Photoshop" - etc etc

Our focus

David Wilcox — Sat, 26 May 2007 10:56:00 +0100

Hannah - I think that in your last paragraph you pose the key issue for the group ... are we talking tools, or how tools can be used for collaborations and transformations. Inevitably both, I should think ... but it is the second option that interests me.
How do we do that? I think these issues only make real sense when they are in context ... where we have an idea of the people, their relationships, their history, the constraints they work under.
Can we take some examples for situations we are working in - perhaps anonymised to ensure confidentiality? Tell some stories, ask some questions? This blog-based system is a great way to do that, and to link to examples elsewhere.

PS - now posted something here http://www.technologyandsocialaction.org/node/37

Fring

David Wilcox — Thu, 24 May 2007 17:53:48 +0100

Sounds good - let's try it!