Finding Forrester (he’s not at JCCSF)

One of my favourite scenes from Finding Forrester is when Jamal corrects Professor Crawford: Prof. Robert Crawford: [to Jamal] Perhaps your skills do reach farther than basketball. Jamal: “Further” Prof. Robert Crawford: What? Claire Spence: [whispered to Jamal] Don’t… Jamal: [to Crawford] You said that my skills reached “farther” than basketball. “Farther” relates to distance, …

Excel is not a database

The New Organizing Institute Education Fund, in conjunction with the Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation released the 2nd Annual Survey of Civic Engagement Technology. The report is full of interesting information on how nonprofits (mis)(ab)use technology to manage their organizations. APIs Page 9 of the report discusses data integration: Data Integration Many of the data …

They don’t make things like they used to

Last year, I stayed with a friend in north Austin during SXSW. A bike was the best way to make the three-mile journey downtown. I had a few options: Renting I called Bicycle Sport Shop and a couple other stores. The problem is that people rent bicycles as entertainment, not transportation, and they’re priced accordingly. …

Think your airline joining Star Alliance helps you?

Last fall, Continental Airlines joined Star Alliance. Since I have most of my points/miles with Air Canada’s Aeroplan—also a member of Star Alliance—I thought that would be good news. It’s not. There’s no way to combine points from both programs to get an award, and no way to move points from from one Star Alliance …

More app store hypocrisy

Earlier this year, the nuns on Cupertino’s app store approval team removed 5000 applications for having sexual content. Fine. Be a prude. But what makes this funny is that Apple’s left hand doesn’t know what its right hand is doing: the music store will sell you D12’s Nasty Mind, which contains lyrical gems such as …