Categories
causes compensated not-for-profit

Joining Nokia’s SXSW Cause Marketing Experiment

As part of Nokia’s efforts this year at SXSW to raise awareness of the over 4 million acres of land burned in Texas wildfires last year, they’ve started a contest to generate some excitement and re-plant some of those trees.

I’ve been asked to participate as a blogger/twitterer in this friendly contest, called #IJustPlantedATree @SXSW 2012. For this participation, they’ve given me one of their slick Nokia Lumia 800s to use.*  From the site:

So, during our time at the Interactive portion of SXSW, we invited 50 of our favorite Twitter friends to help us out in our mission. They will take part in a 48 hour online Twitter challenge using the hashtag #ijustplantedatree. Each time they tweet with that hashtag, 5 trees will be planted locally by our friends at the Arbor Day Foundation. To make sure we keep up the pace, an online leaderboard has been established, and will start to keep track of who is planting the most trees.

There is a sub-contest where the tweeter who plants the most trees gets one of the shiny new Nokia Lumia 900 phones. Great if I win, but I’m not concerned about winning. If you re-tweet me, you’ll also be helping plant trees (not helping me win).

So if you see Tweets regarding “ijustplantedatree” you’ll know what I’m up to.

*Disclosure – it is my option to keep or return the phone – I have not decided yet what I will do. I will update this later.
Categories
geeky

Arduino, Xbee and Sparkfun shield issue

This is much geekier than my usual stuff (not that I post here much anymore.) Unless you’re good with Arduino and XBee this will not be interesting – and possibly seem like gibberish.

We have two Arduino Uno boards. Our board seem to transmit and receive each other, and we’ve tested the xbees – they work fine in an “echo” test we found that transmits from one and sends a signal back to the other. (Unwired).

As you can see in this video, we load up the two sketches (listed below) which we’ve simplified to be – one sketch sends an “A” character – the other, upon receiving any character, lights an LED. Very simple.

But even though the receiving board seems to be getting a signal from the transmitting board once a second, it does not trigger the rest of the sketch’s loop to run. If we wire the boards together without the xbees, the sketch runs. We are stumped.

Any advice is welcome.

int ledPin = 13;

void setup()
{
Serial.begin(9600);
pinMode(ledPin, OUTPUT);
delay(100);
while(!Serial.available());
}
void loop()
{
digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
delay(100);
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
delay(100);
}

transmit
//this is a program to see if the Xbees work
int ledPin = 13;

void setup()
{
pinMode (ledPin, OUTPUT);
Serial.begin(9600);
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
}

void loop()

{
// delay(1000);
//digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
// delay(9000);
Serial.println(‘a’);
delay(1000);
//digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
//while(1);
}

Categories
politics socialmedia

Still opposing SOPA and PIPA

We’re not going “Dark” here to protest SOPA. Instead, I’m leaving this post on the front of the site to give you links to some important places where you can take action. Please do take action, specifically, go to http://americancensorship.org/ and send a note to your Senator or Congressman.

A truly great summary of the SOPA issue from CopyBlogger.

C|Net’s SOPA FAQ

Inc. Magazine’s Stand on SOPA.

SOPA Protest image

Categories
Random Thoughts socialmedia

Opposing SOPA, Still Leaving GoDaddy

I haven’t blogged here in a while, but I felt compelled to do so recently by the controversy regarding the SOPA act in Congress.

Why is the bill so bad? You can read how the SOPA Bill violates the Constitution by creating blacklists and opposing free speech. Since the bill also allows sites to be shut down without an adversary proceeding (a court or administrative hearing) it effectively allows anything to be shut down first, with questions asked later (if the party can afford it.)

From a small business perspective,  a company could have their site on a server that is a “shared” server. If one of the other tennets has an infringing site, the entire server could be shut down, and you’d be collateral damage. I can’t support that in any case.

By creating this bill, our government would have the power we criticize in the “Great Firewall of China” and other oppressive regimes. Hey, remember when Pakistan blocked Youtube and YouTube became unreachable for almost all of the Internet? (The link documents that happened in 2008. Whoops, we just took down your company. Sorry.) That is the kind of thing we’re talking about here – and new measures are being created so governments and groups can’t do this intentionally or by accident. If this kind of power is legislated, it will leave technical holes in the Internet where all sorts of abuse can happen. Don’t take it from me, read the “father of the Internet” Vint Cerf’s position on SOPA.

I mean, if the right-wing Heritage Foundation can oppose SOPA at the same time the lefty EFF opposes SOPA, there is something seriously wrong with the bill.

Even though GoDaddy allegedly no longer supports SOPA, their support before they chose to change is enough to make me question working with this company going forward. That, and the fact they use women as sex objects to sell their services. As a father of a daughter, I’m voting with my feet and my wallet against this practice. I will be doing more as soon as I make sure I know where all the DNS entries go so I don’t mess up this blog, my email and other business-critical things. There are a bunch of different registrars who will take your business, and Lifehacker has a great piece on ditching GoDaddy.

So, goodbye GoDaddy. I’ve just started to transfer away 17 domains, more are coming.

SOPA and the Senate’s equivalent are bad laws.  I’ll stress again that I’m for businesses being able to protect their intellectual property, as long as they find methods that don’t break the Internet in doing this.

Categories
Random Thoughts

For all those we lost…

This is a very special poem we read at America’s Camp, and which I will be reading at a memorial in Suffern tomorrow.

In the rising of the sun and its going down,
We remember them.

In the blowing of the wind and in the chill of winter,
We will remember them.

In the opening buds and in the rebirth of spring,
We remember them.

In the blueness of the sky and in the warmth of summer,
We remember them.

In the rustling of leaves and in the beauty of autumn,
We remember them.

In the beginning of the year and when it ends,
We will remember them.

When we are weary and in need of strength,
We will remember them.

When we are lost and are sick of heart,
We remember them.

When we have Joys we yearn to share,
We remember them.

So long as we live, they too shall live,
For they are now a part of us,
As we remember them.