Thank you Google, for giving Larry the opportunity to talk to the Googlers, for giving the Google a change to hear Larry Lessig and for sharing his talk with the rest of the internet.

I discovered the talk online via Matt Cutts’ blog, so Thank you Matt for you part in introducing Larry at Google and for spreading the video of the talk across the web.

Watching the talk I felt somewhat proud to be Australian, particularly the first question of the audience. In Australia we are lucky enough to have parenteral voting systems, where I can vote for the candidate who I most agree with without the possibility that my vote will be “wasted”. The technical aspects of voting systems, like this, are often something that interest geeks.

NearMap, an Australian based map/aerial photography company, was remarkable quite in updating their site with very recent aerial photography showing the extent floods. The ABC, who regularly make excellent use of the web, have used the NearMap images before and after the flooding to created an excellent infographics of the devastation.

• Brisbane floods: before and after (part 1)
• Brisbane floods: Up close (part 2)

I also think it is worth noting that the inactive infographics are made using HTML and JavaScript not Flash.

via Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing

Sergei Larenkov has photoshopped together modern images of St Petersburg with photos taken during the brutal Siege of Leningrad during WWII.

Sergei Larenkov’s images.

Very powerful and amazing images.

• The technical hurdles that needed to be over come in laying cable in a harsh environment including under a crocodile infected river.
• The positive social impact for education and health resulting from broadband.
• How culturally  sensitively the whole project was managed, with traditional owners from the local Aboriginal communities being consulted and involved in the project.

Telecom revolution for Arnhem Land (video from abc.net.au)

ABC Radio National has launched Pool:

It’s a place to share your creative work with the Pool community and ABC producers – upload music, photos, videos, documentaries, interviews, animations and more. It’s a collaborative space where audiences become makers. – About Pool

One aspect of Pool that got my attention is the use of Creative Commons licences. It is great to see the ABC exposing Creative Commons, RSS feeds and the like to their audience. The, government funded, ABC and particular Radio National and Triple J, have often been early to embrace aspects of new media. Radio National were one of the first old media organisations to offer podcasts of their programs.

I, an Australian, discovered the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Pool via post on Boing Boing, a North American blog, by Cory Doctorow, who lives in the UK. The web is truely global medium.

“The NSW Department of Education has put Microsoft on notice after it agreed to extend its software licensing agreement for just one year instead of renegotiating a new three-year contract.” — Prepares to deploy OpenOffice.org on 41000 PCs by end of 2008

Very interesting, I am big supported of the use of open source and open standards in education. The purpose of education should not be to teacher kids particular commercial software, it should be to teach kids how to use technology to empower them to learn. I look forward to further developments.

note: I am a casual employee of the NSW DET, my comments do not represent my employers, past. present or future.

Negroponte:

“Then the biggest decision in retrospect that we made was to do it as a non-profit and everybody advised me the opposite.”

I see this as an example of how in a purely capitalist system some great things will never eventuate, I can see parallels with FLOSS here. Negroponte also speaks of how on the OLPC they used the rapid pace of technology advancement not to make a product with more feature but one at a lower price.

A transcript and mp3 (for a limited time) of the talk are available from the Science Show site, I highly recommend reading/listening. It is people who work on things like OLPC who change the world for the better.