Standardistas and accessibilitistas: This call to action via 456 Berea St concerns a disturbing direction the next HTML specification is heading in. Roger Johansson writes:

What is currently going on in the W3C HTML Working Group is very disappointing and something I never expected to see when I joined it. I was naive enough to think that everybody joining the HTML WG would be doing so out of a desire to improve the Web. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the case […]

In Roger's opinion, if nothing is done, "the next version of HTML will do nothing to improve the Web," and conscientious designers will be "better off sticking to HTML 4.01 Strict."

So, if you have an interest in improving the accessibility of HTML, want more semantic and less presentational markup, and are good at arguing your case, apply for HTML Working Group membership by following the instructions for joining the HTML Working Group. Do it now.

from Free Press:

Online music is in danger. A recent ruling by an obscure regulatory board threatens to put independent and public radio on the Internet out of business.

The "Copyright Royalty Board" is dramatically increasing the royalties "webcasters" must pay every time they stream a song online. Public Internet radio like NPR is especially at risk.

The rules could shut down nonprofit and smaller commercial Internet radio outlets and force larger webcasters to play the same cookie-cutter music as Clear Channel. So much for new online alternatives.

Rescue Internet Radio—Sign the Petition:
http://action.freepress.net/campaign/internetradio

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via dorkbot:

Attention, boys and girls: fans of DIY hardware, physical computing, circuit bending, hacked gear and gaming machines, custom code and patching, independent hardware makers, mad scientists, and even the casual fan of the above who want to check out some cool projects—if you're anywhere near the NYC area, we want you next week.

Thursday March 22, we'll be having the first informal get-together for a regular series of events, and we'd love to have you there. [Note that I went with the music angle to keep things simple, but motion-y projects are equally welcome.]

Musicmakers @ Etsy
Hosted by MAKE and Create Digital Music
Thursday, 22 March 2007 . 7 pm–whenever
At Etsy Labs in downtown Brooklyn, near the Manhattan bridge
→ more info about this event
→ more about Etsy Labs

via Donna Genzmer:

all right, this is what the labs like to see—power to the people, public participation style, open source applications! gCensus was built by a Ph.D. student in computer science at Stanford University who was fed up with the slowly rendered, crappy display of the Census Bureau's online mapping interface. his question [our question]—why can't people have access to dynamic, high-resolution maps without paying the ginormous bucks for professional GIS software? his answer—gCensus

it's "an effort to make geographic data freely and easily accessible to the public, without the need for expensive GIS software packages. With Google's excellent free mapping program Google Earth, you can use this site to visualize a wide variety of data best displayed on a map. Currently, only the US Census 2000's Summary File 1 (displaying population characteristics such as race and age) is available for mapping."

right now, though, gCensus is more proof-of-concept than ready-to-release application. it needs to integrate more datasets and it would probably benefit from other eyes looking at the code. so, here's the flipside to radical democracy—with free software comes great responsibilities. "the student" is looking for development help and hardware and hosting donations. contact him at gcensus [at] gmail [dot] com and let's make this happen!

The My Community, Our Earth Partnership will award six [6] stipends of $1,500 each to support student participation in community-based projects using geographic methods or technologies for sustainable development. Successful projects will comprise a constellation of undergraduate or graduate students, faculty, and extension personnel in land grant and/or sea grant universities to jointly conduct a set of research/outreach activities during the period between November 2006 and April 2007. Awardees will be invited to present a paper in a featured illustrated paper session at the AAG Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California, April 17–21, 2007 [see http://www.aag.org/annualmeetings/SF2007/ill_paper.cfm].

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