Yule Heibel's Post Studio © 2003-2010

The Sunday Diigo Links Post (weekly)

• “The secret of success* *It’s not what you’d expect” (globeandmail.com)

  Interview with Malcolm Gladwell about his new book, Outliers. Rather depressing stuff in some ways. I gather that not only do I NOT work hard enough, but I was born at the wrong time of year, not to mention with the wrong background/ role models/ etc. On the other hand, while 10K hours (or 10 years) of practice seem daunting at my age, there must be something in my bag of talents/ tricks that I can leverage. Maybe. But the example of Chris Langan remains depressing, regardless.

  tags: globeandmail, malcolm_gladwell, outliers, interview, book_review, careerism, talent

• “Better Wind Turbines” (MIT Technology Review)

  QUOTE
  ExRo Technologies, a startup based in Vancouver, BC, has developed a new kind of generator that’s well suited to harvesting energy from wind. It could lower the cost of wind turbines while increasing their power output by 50 percent.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: turbines, wind_power, vancouver, technology, exro_technologies

• The Canadian Press: Canwest cuts 560 jobs in financial streamlining

  More grim news for newspapers (and MSM, including TV), this time the Canadian monopoly CanWest owned by Winnipeg’s Asper family.

  In Victoria, 18 people at CanWest-owned CHEK-TV were laid off, over lunch. Indigestion gratis…

  tags: canwest, newspapers

• LED Lamp is Powered by Dirt | PSFK – Trends, Ideas & Inspiration

  I wonder whether something like this could be used to power city streetlights? Just stick the poles in the ground, and …?
  QUOTE
  Sounding like something out of a science fair project, the Soil Lamp runs on mud. Designer Marieke Staps says that the metabolism of biological life within the soil produces enough electricity to power the lamp’s LED bulb. The mud is housed within copper and zinc cells that conduct the electricity produced within the wet soil. Maintenance is simple – pour a little water in the dirt, and the lamp will keep going.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: psfk, lighting, environment, innovation

• Stop Global Warming: Questions for Candidates in Victoria Municipal Election (’08)

  These are questions put together by UUs in James Bay, the first part directed at municipal candidates. They’re excellent and to the point, and give a concrete point-of-reference for how even municipal politicians might address the global climate issue without resorting to pie-in-the-sky or motherhood statements.

  tags: victoria, municipal_elections, questions, candidates

• The Future is Now (Joseph Boutilier): Google Maps

  This is a very cool implementation of Google maps, built by Joseph Boutilier (at 18 the youngest candidate in the current Victoria municipal election). He took a map of Victoria and added geo-links to connect specific sites with specific issues (and his proposed policies/ approaches). Very nice work.

  tags: maps, victoria, politics, apps, municipal_elections

• The Housing Affordability Problem Has Not Gone Away

  Excellent blog post by Donald Elliott on why and how (un)affordability is systemic, and what (little) steps municipalities can take to mitigate the problem.
  QUOTE
  What can local government do? It cannot solve the macro-economic problem, but it can remove barriers that drive housing prices even higher than they need to be. Minimum lot size and minimum house size requirements are two of the main culprits. Artificially low multi-family densities are another, and narrow definitions of allowable housing types are a third.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: affordability, housing, planning, urbanplanning, density, donald_elliott

• “Offshoring Audacity,” CEOs for Cities :: Blog, View Entry

  I would love to have attended the Chicago Humanities Festival conference. Carol Colletta’s summing up sounds intriguing, with lots of important issues and themes raised. The discussion around high-speed rail and how Chicago could be connected to a bunch of other great cities to maximize each one’s potential depressed me a bit, insofar as I’m reminded that my city (Victoria) sits on an island, which leaves us only with ferries and airplanes…

  tags: ceos_for_cities, conference, chicago

• Obama’s Seven Lessons for Radical Innovators – Umair Haque

  As usual, a brilliant essay by Umair Haque on Obama’s win and what business can learn from it in terms of innovation.
  QUOTE
  Barack Obama is one of the most radical management innovators in the world today. Obama’s team built something truly world-changing: a new kind of political organization for the 21st century. It differs from yesterday’s political organizations as much as Google and Threadless differ from yesterday’s corporations: all are a tiny handful of truly new, 21st century institutions in the world today.

  Obama presidential bid succeeded, in other words, as our research at the Lab has discussed for the past several years, through the power of new DNA: new rules for new kinds of institutions.
  UNQUOTE

  tags: obama, umair, umair_haque, management, innovation, business_model

• Welcome to the BC Liberals Web Site

  Portal page for BC Liberal party, intended to get citizen / community feedback. Will explore later.

  tags: bc, liberal_party, politics, community_platforms

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The The Sunday Diigo Links Post (weekly) by Yule Heibel, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.