Incase you’re wondering what I’m up to check out Carrboro Creative Coworking.

Carrboro Creative Coworking is a professional shared workspace with a community atmosphere. It is designed to be a welcoming environment for microbusiness, freelance professionals, home-office workers, entrepreneurs, start-up business owners, tech workers, graduate students, writers, architects, civil engineers, designers and others. Coworkers receive access to a reliable office space inside a unique modern community.

Welcome to Yesh.com. You might have come here in the past to look at the design “Portfolio of Brian C. Russell”. Well that’s still around. Its just over here now.

This is still the home of Brian C. Russell. Fact is I’ve had many online homes. Too many at this point to even list. Seriously. But here is a bit of info about this particular transition in my life.

From October 2004 to July 2006 I blogged over at AudioActivism.org. It has been more popular than I ever could have imagined. Not as big as some but still amazing to me. I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to communicate with people from all over the world. But mostly my reach as been because of audio podcasting.

I set out to interview activists and tell people about online activism tools. My tag line was (is) “Meta data about media activism”. I made a ton of audio files and share them via my RSS feed. You can still listen to them here.

Another part of AudioActivism.org that is popular and useful is the tutorials section. I wrote Podcasting Tutorial & Intro, How to Pocast with WordPress 1.5, HowTo Create a interview Podcast on the Cheap, DIY Radio: Or how I learned to stop worrying about the media and start podcasting, and more. I’m very proud of these writings. They aren’t going any where right now and I hope they continue to be useful to people.

Thanks to many factors I found that AudioActivism.org has amazing google juice. This is the ability to blog about something and see it as one of the top five hits in a Google search. Because I wrote about social justice issues and other progressive topics I was able to demonstrate the power of blogging and podcasting for communicating ideas to millions with few resources. I hope this has inspired people to blog and podcast so they can create positive change in the world. I can only hope I’ve been able to accomplish this. Sometimes its hard to measure or define success.

As you can probably tell I’m changing my home for blogging, and maybe podcasting. The main reason is I want to keep it personal. It other words all over the place. That’s how I think.

AudioActivism.org is a site with a mission. As it turns out its mission became rather focused. But because it was also my personal blog I wrote about stuff that was pretty diverse in subject matter. I became concerned it was too diverse. I hope AudioActivism.org can become better at its original mission of politically leftist media. I have some ideas for its future. We’ll see how it goes. I don’t want to abandon it completely.

So here I am. The ‘I’ part is important. Yesh.com is about me, Brian C. Russell. I have A LOT of interest. They ebb and flow. My life is changing a ton right now. Moving to another blog is only one. So if you want to keep up with what I think this is THE place to do it. My goal is make this a blog by an expert who really likes helping people.

BTW, if you don’t live in Chapel Hill you can sign the petition but the council would be most impressed by signatures from their constituents and people who live near and work in Chapel Hill. Lets continue speaking out! Thank you to everyone who has signed the petition already.

To: Chapel Hill Town Council

The time has come for the Town of Chapel Hill to build a free, community-owned, public municipal network. The network should have wireless access and provide an open, unfiltered, and unmonitored connection to the Internet available to ALL people. It must be maintained by a local nonprofit for the people of Chapel Hill. Not by a private business or corporation.

We request that the Chapel Hill Town Council act swiftly to bring this service to the people.

Sincerely,
The Undersigned

Its an internet tablet with wifi built in, 800×480 touch screen, Linux based OS, bluetooth, Opera web browser, GTalk (VOIP), IM, email client, word processor, and I’ve even seen a Citrix client for it. Keyboard is not included but has been known to work via bluetooth. Retails for $359.95 USD.

I haven’t used this device but I thought it could be handy. Here are more URLs about it.
http://maemo.org/maemowiki/ApplicationCatalog
www.internettablettalk.com/

Please register/login and comment.

via: Paul Jones and Ed Cone

This controversial telecommunications legislation would permit phone and cable companies to operate Internet and other digital communications service as private networks, free of policy safeguards or governmental oversight.

via: Democracy Now!

North Carolina

Source for data above

Video Comments looks like a neat WordPress plugin. It allows you to comment on a videos content. Not just the whole video but on a specific point in the videos time line. I wonder if this will work with audio too?

Via: Podcasting News

Chris Messina has put it into words the best I’ve seen so far.

… About how privacy is like sand between your fingers and that the more you try to hold on to it, the less you really can maintain control over. And subsequently, over time, more and more spills out into the hands of others, often those who you least expect or want to have information about you.

… a long time ago I decided that there is no privacy in anything digital (which is both a beautiful and a terrifying thing, depending on how much you know about technology). Knowing a bit myself, but not quite enough, I’ve decided to try and flood the network with as much information about myself as possible in the naive and desperate hope that by creating more positive and truthful information I can counter whatever lies may someday be advanced against what I’m really up to.

There is power in numbers. The more of us who control what the world knows about us by publishing it ourselves the harder it will be to distroy the truth. Hopefully this isn’t “naive and desperate”.

sidenote: incase your wondering how I came accross Chris’s blog, it was from a link on the BarCampRDU blog.

Oh yeah… here is my bio and ClaimID.

Side note: Remeber that post I wrote called Harnessing the Work of Bloggers? Well it seems Bora the professional negotiated a good deal. One he was happy with. That’s what matters. Why havn’t I heard more stories like this amongst the old school newspapers?

Problem is I have a bunch of money left over from the last event. Plus I think some folks might be looking forward to another PodcasterCon.

This past month Fred Stutzman, PHD candidate and Claim ID co-founder, has organized a cool sounding event called BarCampRDU. Its a one day unconference event that’ll to be held on July 22. They’re holding it a Red Hat’s headquarters in Raleigh. Sadly I won’t be able to attend. But I will be doing something else pretty important.

The speed with which Fred and crew have organized BarCampRDU has convinced me that you don’t need more than three months to make a cool one day event happen. Matter of fact I think you can do it in 45 days or less. That seems to be about the amount of time it takes to really get the word out and make plans.

To organize a longer event, say three days, that is worth traveling a long distance for might take longer. Because each day you add to it the more complicated it becomes. But in this day and age of quick internet info searches who has the stamina to really really appreciate a three day conference? Many people are tired as hell on day three.

For some amazing reason people came from all over the world to hang out at PodCon 2006. I think it was mostly to do with the fact the Podcasting was (is?) HOT. Timing is everything!

With the money that some conferences raise we could organize 12 cool one day events every month for an entire year of fun! Now that would be interesting. Could we sustain interest in such a crazy thing? Would people get bored of going to a regular event once a month? Could we raise enough money to pull it off?

Damn… I feel exhausted just thinking about the work of organizing another PocasterCon and here I am proposing a string of twelve! (well maybe … I’m about to get BUSY AS HELL.) It will have to involve a lot more people than me. Login and comment on this people.

Over one hundred years ago armed white men overthrew the LEGALLY elected government of Wilmington, North Carolina killing many people, driving out the local Republican leadership, and terrorizing the Black community. (Lest we forget the Republican party of those days was supportive of equal rights. It was the Dixie Democrats who were the racist segregationist.) You can read more about this untold historic event in the book “Democracy betrayed: the Wilmington race riot of 1898 and its legacy” and the website For The Record.

An interesting part of this story is the suppression of African American free speech. During the attack the Daily Record, reported to be the only black newspaper in the country at the time, was burnt to the ground. Some say this action was the spark that lit the massive violence of November 10. The Commission report writes of the involvement of North Carolina newspaper editors like Josephus Daniels - founder of the Raleigh paper The News and Observer.

Involved in the conspiracy were men prominent in the Democratic Party, former Confederate officers, former officeholders, and newspaper editors locally and statewide rallied by Josephus Daniels of the Raleigh News and Observer.

- Wilmington Race Riot Commission [PDF], Summary, pg. 5

Its important to note that the beginning of many coups and military actions begin with the destruction of communications. First a rally cry to those sympathetic to the cause via racist newspaper articles. Then outright physical destruction of the source of the oppositions communications. In this case it was the destruction of a black owned newspaper.

So when the modern conservatives try and dispel this report saying it doesn’t have anything to do with people in the present, tell them, “This violence was committed in your white name. To preserve white dominance over politics and power. Help restore the damage of the past now!”

I second the recommendation of the Commission that an endowment be created for young black journalists in North Carolina.

Newspapers (News and Observer, Charlotte Observer, Wilmington Star, Washington Post, etc.) should acknowledge the role of media in the events of 1898 and work with the North Carolina black press association to prepare a summary of the Commission report for distribution statewide. The Commission calls upon said papers to study the effects of 1898 and impact of Jim Crow on the state’s black press and to endow scholarships at the state’s public universities.

Hopefully these funds will be available to all types of media makers. Not just for young men and women entering corporate media outlets. Community journalists in small magazines, blogs, podccasts, public access tv, vloggs, etc. should be included too. Fund the salaries of several committed black activists to mentor and encourage young media makers.

Read what other bloggers have to say about the report from Wilmington.
Eric Muller
Sally Green
Y. Carrington

Why is the release of Ubuntu Dapper Drake important?
For years Linux operating systems have been the sole domain of geeks, nerds, and brave souls. Only people who had the knowledge and courage to jump feet first dared try it. In the past five years or so this has changed dramatically. The holy grail for super geeks and newbies alike has been a free - as in beer and freedom - easy to use DESKTOP operating system (OS). There have been many attempts. Red Hat, Fedora, Linspire, Gentoo, etc. [all of these OS work very well BTW] But it wasn’t until I tried Ubuntu (THANK YOU COREY!) that I realized we were VERY close to finding the holy grail.

The official release of the newest Ubuntu Linux 6.06 - code named Dapper Drake - may very well be THE easiest and most powerful desktop Linux OS yet. I feel confident that even your grandmother could use this OS. Now of course we all have to be willing to try new things. I suspect its habit and love for the first thing we learn that keeps us shackled to bad software. No longer can we say Linux is too hard to use!

There are powerful political and social reason to use Linux. I’ve been convinced of this for almost ten years now. Its taken me this long to just get ready to let go of my old habits and loves. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel when I use Ubuntu Linux full time as my main OS. [Because I'm a tech support guy I'll probably always use windows and macintosh OS. ]

Check out this long review of Ubuntu Dapper Drake. More to come as the official release gets used more.

Download Ubuntu Linux here. Get free Ubuntu Cds mailed to you here!

By a 20-13 vote Thursday that partially followed party lines, the House Judiciary Committee approved a bill that would require broadband providers to abide by strict Net neutrality principles, meaning that their networks must be operated in a “nondiscriminatory” manner. All 14 Democrats on the committee–joined by 6 Republicans–supported the measure, while 13 Republicans opposed it.

I don’t think we’ve won this war yet, but this seems like a decisive victory.