Duvet-Dayz.com: use this bar code to access our RSS feeds and posts on your mobile phone
Archive for the 'Society' Category
Video: Did you know 2.0
This is the official update to the original “Shift Happens” video from Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod with new and updated statistics….
continue reading…
UK: What went wrong with the Civil Service
From a letter to the Daily Telegraph responding to the article “Why is the Civil Service a laughing stock?” by Philip Johnston
Sir – After a career of nearly 43 years in Westminster, I can tell Philip Johnston what has gone wrong with the Civil Service.
When I joined, it was a monolithic organisation, staffed by people who cared more for public service than for money, recruited with decent qualifications from an education system that worked, promoted in part by competitive examination, untainted by political bias and undiluted by endless useless management consultants.
Since then, the politicians have destroyed its public-service ethos by transferring so many to profit-making bodies, undermined its career structure by the wholesale importation of “here today, gone tomorrow” interlopers, forced party-political considerations to replace national ones and outsourced vital functions to private companies whose costs are exceeded only by their incompetence…
continue reading…
Data visualization: Supercities of the 21st century
Have a look at the 19.20.21 (19 cities in the world with 20 million people in the 21st century) web site.
It introduces a study on key aspects of the phenomenon of supercities. The project is managed by Richard Wurman who is also the author of one of the most stylish fact-books called “Understanding USA“. Already included are a few pages on the development of the world’s largest cities from 1000 to 2005…
continue reading…
Employment: ATT starts off-the-shelf “spy-casting” service
What for long seem to have been a domain for larger organizations (when did you last time read the small print in your employment contract written in”Enron Beelzebub”) – to extent the CCTV camera surveillance from public spaces into the corporate world – now, thanks to ATT, will become available as an off-the-shelf service to any corner-shop in town.
As the “NY Times” today reports ATT is planning to sell a standardized service to enable owners of SMEs to monitor their staff…
continue reading…
Quote of the day: Moderation
The moderation of happy people comes from the tranquility that good fortune gives to their disposition. Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims, 17, Reflections on Aphorisms and Moral Maxims
OLPC: Give One Get One
MIT Professor Nicholas Negroponte’s “OLPC program” has started delivering the long awaited One Laptop Per Child computers in the US and Canada.
We have recently seen how greatly these small computers were received by children in Africa and how cleverly features have been designed into it. They create mash networks between them automatically so that children can communicate with each other, can change from color to B&W so that the display is still readable outside in bright sunlight and you can – a key feature in many countries for which this computer is intended – recharge its batteries without electricity from the grid. But most importantly we’ve seen the joy and fun the children had while using the XO laptops.
So this month until November 26, OLPC is offering a “Give One Get One program” in the United States and Canada. And it works like this…
continue reading…
