Kevin Bondelli's Tumblr

"Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Houston lawyer and Democratic candidate for attorney general, says that a..."

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 01:37:55 -0700

“Barbara Ann Radnofsky, a Houston lawyer and Democratic candidate for attorney general, says that a 22-word clause in a 2005 constitutional amendment designed to ban gay marriages erroneously endangers the legal status of all marriages in the state. The amendment, approved by the Legislature and overwhelmingly ratified by voters, declares that “marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman.” But the troublemaking phrase, as Radnofsky sees it, is Subsection B, which declares: “This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.” Architects of the amendment included the clause to ban same-sex civil unions and domestic partnerships. But Radnofsky, who was a member of the powerhouse Vinson & Elkins law firm in Houston for 27 years until retiring in 2006, says the wording of Subsection B effectively “eliminates marriage in Texas,” including common-law marriages.”

- Texas’ gay marriage ban may have banned all marriages - Politics AP - MiamiHerald.com

gary: I am really excited about the Vook and getting tons of...

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 22:40:52 -0700

gary:

I am really excited about the Vook and getting tons of feedback, What do you guys think of this platform?

https://read.vook.com/read?mode=1&v=crushit

DemocracyForAmerica.com » Netroots Nation Scholarships » Kevin Bondelli

Sat, 09 May 2009 09:07:41 -0700

DemocracyForAmerica.com » Netroots Nation Scholarships » Kevin Bondelli

"I want you to know that I am running for President of the Young Democrats of America. For more than..."

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 21:37:49 -0700

“I want you to know that I am running for President of the Young Democrats of America. For more than 75 years, YDA has served as an arena for young leaders to cut their teeth, learn politics and earn their first stripes. But for many of us, just playing politics isn’t enough. Over the last three election cycles, there has been a slow and steady push for YDA to be a people-powered organization that dedicates our time to doing the hard work it takes to build a bloc of progressive young voters. Like many of us, I have dedicated myself to this change and want to see YDA become a place that will continue to build and represent our generation. That’s why I am running for YDA President and hope I can earn your support. Through the inspired efforts of young people across America, we have generated unprecedented results; and we are now poised to become a sustained force for change and progress. We must open the doors and embrace this once-in-a-lifetime energy. We must ensure that the ineffective organizational politics of old are left behind so we can build upon our achievements and embrace the change our generation so desperately wants; and our country so desperately needs. We know change is never easy, but it is necessary for progress. With our talented and diverse membership, I am confident we have the power to make the changes we need to move YDA forward. I am running for YDA President so together we can make these changes and realize our collective potential. Working together, we can make progress; without all of our shoulders to the wheel, we cannot advance. We will change YDA by bringing more people into the room, not fewer–by making our programming serve and help our members grow at the local level–by making sure that we represent millions of young voters by directly advocating on the issues that impact them the most—and most importantly by holding each other accountable for getting the work done. From my time as a local chapter president, state chapter president and national officer, I have ideas on how we can get there—and I know you do, too. The future of YDA is in our hands. I look forward to talking with you, so we can share our ideas and plan how we move YDA forward, together. Last Tuesday night, our President said to a room of young people just like you and me: “The future will be in your hands…You will make it happen.” Let’s make it happen, together. Best, Crystal”

- Crystal Strait Announces Candidacy for Young Democrats of America President - Kevin Bondelli’s Youth Vote Blog

"From February 27th to March 2nd, 2009 thousands of young adults will converge on Washington, D.C...."

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:15:18 -0700

“From February 27th to March 2nd, 2009 thousands of young adults will converge on Washington, D.C. for Power Shift 2009, the second national youth summit to solve the climate crisis. At Power Shift 2009, young people from across the country will take a message of bold, comprehensive and immediate federal climate action to Washington, D.C. We will leverage the momentum we have built through the Campus Climate Challenge, Power Shift 2007 and Power Vote to pressure our politicians to take bold, comprehensive action.”

- Power Shift 2009

Get a Moola Invitation

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 07:36:10 -0700

Get a Moola Invitation

Open Library -- all the books, free and wikified

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 19:27:16 -0700

Cory Doctorow: Rich Prelinger sez,

The Internet Archive has launched a demo of the Open Library, a project that seeks to gather all the information about all the world’s books and make it publicly available as a giant books wiki.
While many books are making their way online for free access, most still are restricted or cost money to touch. The Open Library combines links to open resources with information on in-copyright works and enables you and me to review, annotate, correct and convene.

I think this project (which right now seems to point to almost half a million books) is very cool — it’s going to be a major addition to the world’s open cultural infrastructure. I have a hunch that it’s going to be the primary way many if not most people access books, and I see it becoming an always-open window on the desk of every librarian.

Aaron Swartz led this project, which was conceived by Brewster Kahle — please send them support, critiques and book databases!

Link (Thanks, Rick!)

(via Kevin Bondelli’s shared items in Google Reader)

Book Price Comparison Shopping Tool

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 16:12:58 -0700

I buy and read a lot of books. If you do as well, you might find this handy little tool called Booksprice useful. The tool allows you to enter a book title or ISBN and then get a report of the current price from dozens of sources including sources like eBay.

Here an example search using Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide

You can also use the service to compare prices on CDs, DVDs, and games.

Ani DiFranco: copyright in an open source culture

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 10:20:14 -0700

I spent the morning removing Ani DiFranco lyrics from my book manuscript. I was obliged to do so because DiFranco had refused me permission to use them, despite two emails to Righteous Babe Records that were thorough, pointed and courtesy.

It’s not as if DiFranco had anything to fear from this anthropologist. My treatment was laudatory. I regard her as a transformational exemplar. Here’s my opening sentence for her from the book.

Ani DiFranco is a phenomenon, largely self taught, almost entirely self invented, the creator of a genre of music, the founder of her own record company, and probably the most gifted feminist performer at work in the U.S. today.

And it’s not like I was asking for the catalogue, probably around 130 words taken from a variety of songs. I think this represents a very nervous eye on the copyright watch.

DiFranco is entitled to control copyright in this way, but it is also worth observing that she has made a career mocking music labels for their narrow, controlling ways. Apparently, it’s ok for her to act this way.

And odd too. This is not the DiFranco you think you see on stage and in the ones and zeros. I guess this tells us that she never was what she contrived to seem, a champion of an open source culture.

DiFranco’s contribution to the open source culture came in the powerful argument that women should decide who they are, not men, and that individual women should decide who they are, not groups of women. Or to use the more particular language of open source, DiFranco seemed to say that every women has the right to do her own coding, to construct herself according to her own objectives out of our her scripts and routines, and that she is free to refuse “sealed code” from higher authorities and the originating software provider.

The second possibility is that DiFranco is aging, changing, narrowing, risking less and controlling more.

I guess the transformational career continues.

(via Kevin Bondelli’s shared items in Google Reader)

"Coming on the heels of protest-mascots such as the Anteaters and the Banana Slugs, the Artichokes..."

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 03:16:58 -0700

“Coming on the heels of protest-mascots such as the Anteaters and the Banana Slugs, the Artichokes was chosen by the students of Scottsdale Community College in the early 1970s as a protest against the school administration’s practice of using scholarships intended for Native Americans to attract out-of-state athletes.”

- Education & Careers | The 10 Strangest College Mascots

Answerbag is Extremely Addictive

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 15:35:25 -0700

Answerbag

I have found a new addiction. It is even more addictive than my previous addiction, StumbleUpon.

Answerbag is a website/community that has users ask questions and give answers to those questions. As the community progresses a large FAQ is created on a wide number of subjects.

Users have ranks based on how useful their questions and answers were to the other users. The higher the rank, the more points you can give or take from a Q or A.

Answerbag also has a Facebook group and a Facebook application.

I’m telling you, this site is great. Now I am going to stop writing this post so I can go back to answerbagging.

(via KevinBondelli.com)

How to View and Edit New Microsoft Office Formats in Earlier Office Versions?

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 00:44:34 -0700

File extensions like .doc (for Word), .xls (for Excel) and .ppt (for Powerpoint) were used in earlier versions of Microsoft Office (Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003). But Microsoft Office 2007 comes with new file extensions like .docx (for Word), .xlsx (for Excel) and .pptx (for Powerpoint). By default these file extensions are not backward compatible with earlier Office versions.

Moving forward you are more likely to get Office files in the new format as they offer higher degree of formatting and options. For example, Excel 2007 can store upto 1 million rows and 16 thousand columns in a spreadsheet and Office also supports 16 million colors now.

With Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack, you can can view, edit and save files in these new Office formats in earlier Microsoft Office versions (Office 2000, Office XP, or Office 2003).

Download Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats

Note: This compatibility pack is installed as a separate program so that it can be uninstalled alone at any point of time. In case you are planning to install Office 2007 at a later point of time, make sure you uninstall ‘Compatibility Pack for the 2007 Office System‘ from the system through ‘Add or Remove Programs‘ before installing Office 2007.

Excel

, How To, microsoft, MS Office, Powerpoint, Software, tweaks, Word

The Transformers Movie: Totally Sweet

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 13:17:15 -0700

Last night I went to a preview showing of the new Transformers movie and I was very pleasantly surprised.

I’m not going to lie, I was a little worried about the Michael Bay thing, everyone was talking about how he was going to ruin the movie. Even I had to make a wisecrack when just as the movie was about to start the houselights turned back on and the film stopped rolling for a minute: “I new Michael Bay was going to ruin this movie.”

Well guess what, we were all wrong. These robots are pretty sweet. Some of the scenes were even met with cheers from the audience, and when the movie finally ended the entire theater erupted in applause.

You should definitely check out the movie, even if you weren’t a big Transformers fan. The visuals alone will make it worth your while, and I’m not just talking about Megan Fox.

(via KevinBondelli.com)

Facebook Applications: Survival of the Fittest

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 12:51:46 -0700

Since Facebook has allowed for the implementation of third-party applications, tons of them have been created and used by Facebook users. Facebook has recently limited users to sending 10 invites per day per application from the unlimited invitations allowed at the launch of the application platform. What does this mean for Facebook applications?

Well, first it is going to contribute to the inevitable application Darwinism. At the platform launch many users added all kinds of applications to their profiles, regardless of how useful it is. Now users are more likely to only add the applications that they see on their friends’ profiles that seem to be especially cool or useful. Only the best applications will continue to see steady growth in users.

As time goes on, even applications with large amounts of users will have a hard time retaining those users if the application isn’t worth the Facebook profile real estate that it consumes. It is extremely easy to remove an application from a profile, and those applications that may have seen a huge increase in users because of the unlimited invites may start to lose users if it is not good enough to keep on their profiles.

I think that as more time passes from the initial platform launch fewer Facebook applications will remain with a strong user base as weaker applications are removed to make way for better ones.

Do you think this is the case? And which applications do you think are going to be the winners/losers in the long run? Leave a comment!

(via KevinBondelli.com)

11 Things You Can Bet On (Legally)

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 09:01:20 -0700

Prediction markets allow you to speculate on many things today - from the success of the iPhone to the next US President. Knowing these things in advance can lead to riches - or at least extreme smugness.

To get you started with this under-rated form of social software, here’s a selection of sites that let you bet on outcomes and see what the community as a whole thinks will happen. Gambling laws mean you can’t necessarily win money, but many sites offer prizes, points and other perks. Not to mention the fact that you can take your newfound knowledge to the real stock market.

1. Websites

Urladex takes advantage of Alexa data and allows you to predict the popularity of websites. This will be of interest to you if you follow Alexa or think you know web sites well in general. If a site increases in rank, it will increase in value. So go out and find the next big site and make some money! Play money, that is.

2. Blogs

Blogs are becoming ever so popular nowadays. Their traffic can rival some of the best news sites on the web. If you want to make predictions on weblogs, then Blogshares is sure to please. Recent upgrades to the site and the servers provide you with an even better experience.

3. Videos

VideoIPO takes Internet videos and puts them head to head. Your goal in this game is to find the best videos on the Internet before others do. If you do this correctly, you are rewarded with play money.

4. Technology

For high tech geeks everywhere, Yahoo gives us the Buzz Game. Think of it as a stock market for technology. In this game you can buy and sell shares of popular tech products and services and see if you can make the best predictions to come out on top.

5. Movies

The Hollywood Stock Exchange is just the ticket for all you movie and entertainment fanatics. You can bet on actors, movies and more. Feel free to give Transformers some love, and Paris Hilton the cold shoulder.

6. Stocks

If you are interested in some serious stock market action, then this Investopedia Simulator is for you. It’s as close to real life as you can get without risking real money. You can get data for all US stocks that is only 20 minutes behind. A great tool for the future investor in you.

Also in this category: PredictWallStreet. As the name implies, this allows you to make predictions on US stock markets. Your ability to correctly determine if a particular market will go up or down will determine your ranking and score within the game.

7. Sports

Wagerline allows you to predict scores of sports events and make bets on those events. Sports betting for fun, essentially.

Also great for sports fans: PicksPal. This site provides most of the functions that you would see in a regular sports betting site. It’s completely free and most major sports are included.

8. Media

MediaPredict allows you to make predictions on many forms of media. From bands to movies and beyond, you can make bets on the whole media landscape.

9. Amazon Items

Smarkets takes items from Amazon and allows you to predict their popularity. The worth of each product on the site is determined by its Amazon rank. We’re getting a few errors today, but it was previously pretty slick.

10. Video Games

Pushing current technology to the bleeding edge and spurring on new technological advances, the simExchange gives you the opportunity to make predictions on video game industry.

11. Words

Trendio is a prediction market that allows you to trade words based on their popularity in search engines. Your gains and losses depend on the popularity of the word . “iPhone” should be your first purchase, although you may already be too late!

Free Bonuses!

Foresight Exchange is a prediction market that allows you to predict all kinds of outcomes: it’s not focused like other sites, and it acts in a similar fashion to a stock exchange.

Inkling takes on various speculative topics. There is not really a specified topic, but the standout feature is that you can also create your own games to play with friends, coworkers, and others. In essence, it’s a “build you own prediction market” tool.

Are there any we missed? Add them in the comments. (more…)

Recommended: Piczo Stuff at Mashcodes!

via www.keithwhite.us

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 03:43:24 -0700

via www.keithwhite.us

Video Beatbox Fame Game - beatbox, recipe, kitchen - Alice Video Share Your Videos

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 11:11:48 -0700

Video Beatbox Fame Game - beatbox, recipe, kitchen - Alice Video Share Your Videos

via www.boingboing.net

Sat, 30 Jun 2007 00:03:57 -0700

via www.boingboing.net

via 13gb.com

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 12:59:57 -0700

via 13gb.com

80 Online Resources for Book Lovers [1]

Fri, 29 Jun 2007 02:52:54 -0700

My earlier post on book resources was fairly popular, so I have expanded the list quite a bit.

Social Networking for Book Lovers

1. LibraryThing is probably my favorite book-related resource on the web. I use it to catalog my personal library, as well as discover new books, find people with similar reading interests, discuss books, and more. Membership is free for a library of up to 200 books, and they offer annual memberships as well as a lifetime membership for a mere $25 (I’m a life member). A paying member can have an unlimited number of books in their library and full functionality of the site. If you are a book lover it is a must. You can visit my LibraryThing profile here.

2. What’s On My Bookshelf is also a book trading site that works on a point system.

3. Listal is a social network based on the things you like, including books, movies, music, etc.

4. Shelfari let’s you create a virtual shelf to share with friends, get recommendations, and all the stuff you expect a book-centric social network to do.

5. Good Reads is another social network for sharing book recommendations with friends.

E-books

6. WikiBooks has open-source/open-content textbooks that anyone can edit. The have over 25,000 modules in their variety of textbooks and serves as a great companion piece to Wikipedia.

7. The Rare Book Room contains photographs and scans of some great and rare books from libraries around the world. Currently there are about 400 complete scans on a variety of subjects, but the Rare Book Room is focused on quality over quantity, so the material they do have is superb.

8. The Poetry Archive is an online collection of recordings of poets reading their own poetry. Listening to the recordings is free of charge.

9. ManyBooks.net contains about 17,000 ebooks for your PDA, iPod, or ebook reader. All of the ebooks are free of cost. They also show PSP and cell-phone friendly ebooks.

10. Project Gutenberg is the founding father of public-domain ebooks online. There is a large number of ebooks available through the site that is operated on voluntary donations. You can also volunteer to help the project by proofing captured text from books to ensure accuracy as well as greater roles once you have established yourself as a reliable contributor to the project.

11. Google Book Search allows you to search the full text of books online using the Google search algorithms. It can be a useful research tool.

12. Bartleby is another large resource for free public domain electronic books and resources.

13. Bookrags has over 5.7 million pages of literature summaries, biographies, literary criticism, essays, encyclopedias, and eBooks sourced from over 100 respected education databases.

14. E-Book Searchr is a Google powered search for e-books.

15. Bookyards has a total of 14,550 books, 38,945 external web links, 4,197 news & blogs links, 384 videos and access to hundreds of online libraries (800,000 eBooks) for your reading pleasure.

16. Memoware has a lot of free e-books in a number of different genres.

17. Just Free Books allows you to search for free e-books.

18. Rackhub Books has free e-books on computers and IT.

19. Classic Bookshelf has free e-books of classic literature.

20. Athena has a large selection of links to e-books.

21. Yale Avalon Project has e-books and documents on law and history.

22. Bibliomania has more than 2000 classic e-books as well as study guides and summaries.

23. Christian Classics Ethereal Library is a collection of classic Christian writings.

24. Diesel E-Books has free e-books formatted for Microsoft Reader. The Diesel Gratis Collection includes classic American and British fiction, American history, children’s literature, Shakespeare, African-American documents, and more.

25. Digital Book Index provides links to more than 134,000 title records from more than 1800 commercial and non-commercial publishers, universities, and various private sites. About 94,000 of these books, texts, and documents are available free, while many others are available at very modest cost.

26. UVA Electronic Text Center has a large selection of e-books from the University’s library.

27. Eserver is an e-publishing co-op based at Iowa State University where hundreds of writers, editors and scholars gather to publish over 35,000 works free of charge.The site is dedicated to clear, accessible writing in the humanities.

28. Famous Poets and Poems has a large
collection of poems and quotes from over 627 poets.

29. FreeBooks.org has free e-books and audio books.

30. Free Science has a collection of science e-books.

31. Great Books and Classics has a large collection of classic literature, especially Latin.

32. Sacred Texts has religion and spirituality e-books.

33. Knowledge Rush has e-books and poems, as well as user submitted writing.

34. Perseus Digital Library is the digital library of Tufts University with a number of free e-books.

35. FlazX has computer and IT e-books and textbooks.

36. Baen Free Library has a selection of e-books sorted by author and title.

37. Penn Digital Library is the digital library of U Penn.

38. Wowio has a large collection of free e-books.

39. CHM PDF E-books is a directory of computer and programming e-books.

40. BooksDB has mostly computer e-books.

41. Free Tech Books features computer and technology e-books.

42. Daily Lit has email and RSS feeds that sends you chunks of a book each day until you finish it.

Online Bookstores

43. Amazon.com is the biggest online bookstore there is.

44. Alibris is my favorite online bookstore for finding out-of-print books. I discovered them a few years ago after I purchased some books from them on ebay, and I have been coming back ever since.

45. AbeBooks has new, used, and rare books as well as some great features and newsletters.

46. BookSense is a family of independent booksellers online in case you don’t want to give your money to the big corporate bookstores.

Find the Best Prices for Books

47. ISBN Spy lets you enter an ISBN for a book and find the cheapest place to purchase it.

48. Book Burro is another book price comparison site.

49. BookFinder also offers a similar service.

Audiobooks

50. LibriVox is a resource for public domain audio books. You can listen to the audio books from the site or you can volunteer to record your own audio book for the site.

51. Ejunto is a collection of free audio books on the subjects of history and philosophy. There is only a small catalog of audiobooks currently but the titles are very good.

52. Podiobooks has podcasts of audiobooks.

53. Well Told Tales is a collection of audiobooks of pop fiction.

Study Guides and Summaries

54. Pink Monkey is a place where you can download summaries of literature or get study guides.

55. Litsum is an alternative to Pink Monkey.

Library Resources

56. Library Elf lets you keep track of the books that you have checked out of the library and when they are due.

57. WorldCat lets you search libraries near you to find the books that you want to check out and read.

Bibliography and Research

58. BibMe is a free online bibliography creator that is extremely useful is you are writing research. It is extremely easy to use an works with books, journals, websites, magazines, films, newspapers, etc.

59. Zotero is an online research tool with a bookmarklet for keeping track of your research.

60. Wikindx is a free bibliographic and quotations/notes management and article authoring system

61. Snipitron keeps track of your online research and lets you display it as a web page or work on it in a group setting.

Book Exchanges/Swapping

62. BookCrossing is something I haven’t personally used (I never get rid of my books) but a lot of people really like it. Once you read a book you mark it yourself or with BookCrossing’s bookplates that you can buy in their online store and place it out in the public somewhere. When someone finds the book they see the bookplate and do the same thing. This is essentially a Where’s George? for your books but more robust.

63. Bookins is a general book-swapping site.

64. Title Trader is a swapping site for books, cds, and dvds.

65. Zunafish allows you to swap books, movies, music, and video games.

66. Swap Simple is similar to Zunafish.

67. Swapthing is more designed for swapping general items but people do use it for book-swapping.

68. The Book Cart is bookswapping for paperbacks.

69. SF Books is bookswapping for readers of Science Fiction.

70. Paperback Swap is for swapping any books, not just paperbacks.

71. Frugal Reader is another bookswapping site.

72. Book Mooch is too.

Online Documents

73. Scribd allows you to upload your own documents for anyone to read as well as view the documents of other users. It keeps track of how many views your documents have, how many people marked that they liked it, and allows commenting on documents. You can view my Scribd profile here.

74. FreeIQ is similar to Scribd though it also lets you sell your content as well as submit free content. My work on Youth Targeted Voter Mobilization is available on FreeIQ.

What to Read

75. WhichBook.net is another resource to help you decide what to read next, but with a very different approach. The site features a number of slider bars like “happy sad” and “funny serious.” Based on where you place the slider for each of these ranges will give you a list of books that fulfill that criteria.

76. What Should I Read Next? allows you to enter a book that you enjoyed and gives you recommendations for the book that you should read next based on the book lists of its users.

77. BookBrowse is a fairly comprehensive website for readers. You can browse the site for free but their are a number of features that are only available to paid members.

Miscellaneous

78. Bookslut is an online magazine published monthly on the subject of books, reading, and literature. There is also a blog that is updated more frequently. It is one of the most popular book-related sites on the web.

79. ROMAN Reading by Nick Senger is an ebook that helps readers get more out of their reading. I found this book really useful in helping me improve my style of annotating. The book is free to read and share.

80. Library Books is a Mac OS X application that tracks the library books you have borrowed.

(via KevinBondelli.com)