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"These six short testimonials point to one simple truth: There are few moments in time more exciting than this one in the news industry."

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The web has revolutionized many aspects of our everyday life, from media to education and business. But even though the web was invented by scientists, we still have not yet seen it change scientific practice to nearly the same extent. In scientific research, we’re dealing with special circumstances, trying to innovate upon hundreds of years of entrenched norms and practices, broken incentive structures and gaps in training that are dramatically slowing down the system, keeping us from making the steps forward needed to better society.

The aim of the Science Lab is to foster an ongoing dialogue between the open web community and researchers to tackle this challenge. Together they'll share ideas, tools and best practices for using next-generation web solutions to solve real problems in science, and explore ways to make research faster, more agile and collaborative.

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A billion people worldwide live in slums, largely invisible to city services and governments — but not to satellites. A global movement is putting mapping technology in the hands of slum dwellers to persuade governments and the residents themselves to see these shadow cities in a whole new light. NPR's Gregory Warner visits one slum in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

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"Welcome to LadyBits on Medium, a collection of literary musings about technology, science, business, culture, sex, and politics curated by me, Arikia Millikan. Here I’ll feature content from writers who actively engage in intelligent discourse about how technology is shaping the future of our civilization and, yeah, most of them will be women. I hope guys will like LadyBits too, though, and will want to contribute — especially those who understand that everyone wins when women are treated as equals in life and business."

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Open Source Ecology - Open-sourced blueprints for civilization

Marcin Jakubowski

(piece on NPR)

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Why Libraries Should Be the Next Great Start-Up Incubators

Taken from The Atlantic:

Co-working spaces are often treated today as a novelty, as a thoroughly modern solution to the changing needs of a workforce now more loyal to their laptops than any long-term employers. But the idea is actually as old as the public library.

One of the world’s first and most famous libraries, in Alexandria, Egypt, was frequently home some 2,000 years ago to the self-starters and self-employed of that era. “When you look back in history, they had philosophers and mathematicians and all sorts of folks who would get together and solve the problems of their time,” says Tracy Lea, the venture manager with Arizona State University’s economic development and community engagement arm. “We kind of look at it as the first template for the university. They had lecture halls, gathering spaces. They had co-working spaces.”

Libraries also provide a perfect venue to expand the concept of start-up accelerators beyond the renovated warehouses and stylish offices of “innovation districts.” They offer a more familiar entry-point for potential entrepreneurs less likely to walk into a traditional start-up incubator. Public libraries long ago democratized access to knowledge; now they could do the same in a start-up economy.

Click here to read the rest of this story.

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Today the City of New York manages over 11,000 payphones kiosks across the five boroughs – and we know that with the rise of mobile phones and digital media, the way that New Yorkers share information is changing rapidly. In order to modernize our powerful communications infrastructure, the City of New York is hosting Reinvent Payphones, a public design challenge that seeks to rally urban designers, planners, technologists and policy experts to create physical and/or virtual prototypes that imagine the future of payphones.

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Tech Lady Mafia 4 lyfe!

Original Thread here...

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SolidarityNYC is an organization that connects, supports, and promotes economic justice in NYC.  Check out the new website, interactive map, and videos.

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Using Facebook Timeline to Teach History [VIDEO]

Absolutely BRILLIANT. I can’t explain how much I love this!

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Great apps! My favorite by far is #5, Sana...

Want a healthy and sustainable urban lifestyle? These 5 apps could help.

想追求健康永續的都會生活嗎？五項應用程式都能幫忙。

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Some of my favorite content from them so far:

Preserving linguistic diversity around the world

IREKIA 2.0, AN OPEN GOVERNMENT PLATFORM DEVELOPED BY VIZZUALITY

HTML5 FOR RICH GEOSPATIAL APPLICATIONS ON THE WEB

Their projects focus on conservation, open data, citizen science...I'm swooning.

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Talks@Google: AXSMap - Mapping the wheelchair accessibility of buildings and places

This project is amazing. Crowd-sourcing accessibility data.

There is another site very similar...http://wheelmap.org/

Wheelmap seems to be a bit more established, based off OpenStreetMap.

Both are great examples of using technology to benefit society. 

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A tour through Open Source creative tools.

This is a great video showcasing some of the best open source programs available. I have used Gimp for a couple years now, and just started working with Inkscape since I saw this video last week.

With the price of Adobe Creative Suite these days, it only seems right to have other more accessible and useful options.

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Help the WeOwnTV ladies of Sierra Leone  get their own dedicated camera to raise awareness of women’s issues in Freetown and beyond.

(via)