The Media Mobilizing Project sends it support and solidarity to the Vermont Workers Center and to all the vermonters who stood up for human rights on their historic May 1st mobilization in Montpelier to Put People First!

  Today Media Mobilizing Project leaders from Philadelphia came together to strategize and plan for our own Put People First Campaign in the state of Pennsylvania.  As we see more and more of our communities struggling to get by, we know that we need to build our power and we look to the Vermont Workers Center as an example and an inspiration.   Keep up the good fight and let's Put People First!

Millones de personas son víctimas de la persecución, discriminación e intolerancia del estado por no tener un documento que los acredite como ciudadanos legales. Entonces nos preguntamos?... La dignidad y el respeto en este país lo determina el tener o no tener un documento. 

Escucha las experiencias humanas de la comunidad afectada por la cancelación de sus licencias de conducir.

Un reportaje de Jorge Vallejo para Radio Unidad

This MMPTV update features an informative discussion with Stan Shapiro, who spent 22 years as Chief Staff Attorney for Philadelphia City Council and currently co-chairs Neighborhood Networks.  Stan talked with us about the new city and state budgets and how working families and communities are being impacted by proposed cuts to public services and safety nets.  He also spoke with us about the ways that Philadelphia based institutions and corporations are contributing to the growing gap in the budget, and how this situation could be remedied.We are living in a time when families and communities are being asked to sacrifice basic needs and watch our public goods get dismantled; in this same moment, as we've learned in this interview, the wealthiest institutions and corporations, despite financial success, are contributing less than ever before.  We attribute this economic crisis to a deeply rooted problem of structural inequality.

Right now Pennsylvania is not putting people first.  That’s why Media Mobilizing Project has launched the Put People First campaign, which is all about putting peoples' basic needs first--such quality heath care, education, housing and jobs that pay a living wage.MMP wants to hear from people across the state to tell these untold stories.  We want to connect people and places around Pennsylvania so that we can work together and put people first in our state.  To fill out a survey or tell us your story, contact stories@putpeoplefirstpa.com

Entrepeneur Magazine

Despite the still uncertain economic outlook, small-business owners appear poised to recruit new employees this year.

In November, the net share of owners who said they plan to create jobs over the next three months rose four points to 7 percent, the highest level in more than three years, according to the latest monthly survey from the National Federation of Independent Business. And among fast-growth companies, the majority of entrepreneurs who responded to a September survey said they plan to hire in 2012, with 41 percent expecting to add more than 20 employees, according to the Kauffman Foundation, a Kansas City, Mo., research organization focused on entrepeneurship.

"Many small-business owners are thinking we're turning the corner on employment," says Rafael Pastor, the CEO of Vistage, an executive coaching firm that tracks CEO sentiment among small and midsize businesses.

The labor picture, while still subdued compared to pre-recession levels, has brightened thanks in large part to an uptick in sales projections, experts say. That's the case for Ted Scofield, co-founder of Icebreaker Entertainment, a New York maker of quirky consumer products, who is looking to hire 10 employees this year. He is encouraged by requests for new product designs this year from such retail customers as Wal-Mart, Kohl's and Dollar General.

His positive outlook represents a major shift from what Icebreaker's six-employee staff experienced during the recession and financial crisis. "The downturn was like pushing a big pause button on our business," Scofield says, noting that purchase orders were repeatedly delayed.

Still, risk factors such as the shaky housing market, the federal deficit and the European debt crisis could derail new hiring in 2012, says Mark A. Price, a labor economist at the Keystone Research Center, a think tank in Harrisburg, Pa. "Any one thing wouldn't [necessarily] drive the U.S. back into recession, but it could slow a growing economy" and crimp hiring plans.

Uncertainty in Washington clearly isn't helping to inspire confidence and spur hiring. Congress may allow the tax cuts ushered in by President George W. Bush to expire at the end of 2012, increasing the top rates for individuals and small-business owners with incomes above $250,000.

Furthermore, Congress could vote against extending the payroll tax holiday, which currently reduces the 6.2 percent Social Security taxby two percentage points. If that provision isn't extended within two months, the rate will spring back up and trigger an annual income loss of $1,000 for the average household. The higher Social Security tax could hurt consumer confidence, according to Alan Krueger, chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers. In a December speech in Charlotte, N.C., Krueger cautioned that if Congress doesn't extend thepayroll tax holiday through 2012, job losses could result, breaking the economy's recent strides.

In November, the U.S. unemployment rate fell to 8.6 percent from 9 percent in October. And businesses that employ fewer than 50 workers added 110,000 jobs in November, nearly double the 58,000 hired in October, according to payroll company Automatic Data Processing Inc. and consultancy Macroeconomic Advisers.

Small companies are likely to continue adding jobs if they believe Americans will increase spending. Based on recent data, consumers may in fact be ready to open their wallets. They expressed the greatest confidence in eight months in December, partly because of the improving labor market, according to the Conference Board's consumer confidence index.

"If you're optimistic about consumer spending, you can be optimistic about hiring," says Bill Dunkelberg, the chief economist for the National Federation of Independent Business.

That's how interior designer Kerry Ann Dame of Surfside Beach, S.C., feels. After the economic meltdown, her company Posh Living saw demand plummet. But sales have ticked up 20 percent in the last six months, Dame says. "People can live with their shabby sofa for a year or two, but now we are starting to see smaller to midlevel clients come back out."

Given the sales rebound, she plans to hire one of her freelance workers on part-time with more regular hours. "We're having this feeling that things are coming back," says Dame, adding that she doesn't hire if she has concerns about potential layoffs. "When you're a really small business, the people you work with are your friends, and you never want to see friends struggle or lose their jobs."

Publice News Service

HARRISBURG, Pa. - Close to three out of four school districts in Pennsylvania hire companies to run their bus service, and a new report says it's a decision that usually costs more than if districts ran their own buses. Stephen Herzenberg is an author of the report and an economist at the Keystone Research Center. He says privatization gives districts a cash infusion when they sell their bus fleet, but it's important to remember that school-bus companies are in it for the money.l "They have to cover the cost of higher executive and managerial salaries. And once a contractor is in place, if a school district has sold its buses, it can't easily go back into the business of bussing its own students." Another reason why so many districts in Pennsylvania hire private school-bus companies is because the state makes it attractive to do so, Herzenberg says. "Subsidies the state provides are more generous if a district contracts out than if it provides its own bus service. We did the numbers for one particular district and it was 9 percent more generous." Herzenberg says the road to a better system holds several possible avenues to explore, including eliminating the subsidy gap when a district self-provides and offering low-interest loans to help districts buy their own school bus fleets. "A lot of districts will continue to contract out, so that's where you need to provide technical assistance to make sure that districts are getting a good deal, using the most efficient and reliable contractors." The report estimates that if the average-size school district in Pennsylvania, with average student enrollment, operated school-bus service in-house, it would save $223,000 per year per district, compared to contracting out. The total savings if all districts eliminated their current contracting would be $78 million statewide. The Pennsylvania School Bus Association says its 400 members provide programs, education and services to transport students as safely as possible.

Essential Public Radio (Pittsburgh NPR Affiliate)

The key argument for privatization of any government-controlled operation is that it saves money. However, that argument may not hold much actual merit, at least when it comes to public school busing.

According to a new study released Tuesday by the Keystone Research Center, Pennsylvania school districts end up spending more tax dollars on transportation than districts that manage their own bus fleets.

According to the report, using contractors for busing grade school students on average costs $223,900 more than if the district controlled its own busing. If every school district in Pennsylvania “in-sourced” transportation services, the study claims taxpayers would save an estimated $78 million.

Study co-author Dr. Stephen Herzenberg believes school bus contracting to be a poor bargain.

“At a time when deep cuts to schools are driving up class sizes and limiting student opportunities, should we pay more to private companies to transport kids to school?” Herzenberg asked.

Across the nation, 4,000 different companies transport almost 25 million students to school each day. In Pennsylvania, 72 percent of school bus transportation was contracted out by school districts in 2008.

Contracting out to a private company does provide a district with a short-term infusion of money, said Herzenberg. This option is also alluring to many districts because the state provides higher reimbursement to districts that contract out bus services, essentially making in-house and contracted costs for districts the same, while transferring the cost to the state government.

Herzenberg says this transference of cost doesn’t solve anything.

“Pennsylvania should make every tax dollar count instead of giving school districts incentives to adopt inefficient transportation systems,” Herzenberg said. “We can change course now and use the savings to improve the quality of our children’s education.”

The Keystone Research Center is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization with the goal of promoting a more prosperous and equitable Pennsylvania economy.

One of the most dogged Wall Street reformers on Capitol Hill says there's a small but golden opportunity to close key loopholes in the 2010 financial reform law, which were exposed to the public last week when banking giant JPMorgan announced it had lost billions of dollars betting with customer funds.

But after the window closes, he admits, it'll be a very difficult to re-open; and he sees no political path forward for other popular measures to further regulate banks, limit their size, or break them up into smaller entities.

"We have felt like there's two of us against hundreds of Wall Street lawyers working on this all day, every day -- and that the public was disengaged from the issue," Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) told me during a Thursday interview in his Senate office. "Now the public is engaged. There's a chance here -- because the rules are supposed to go into effect in July -- there's a moment of possibility, we're trying to do all we can to press it forward, say 'seize this moment and get the rules right.' Because once they're put in place it's very hard to change them."

Merkley, along with Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), were the primary authors of the so-called Volcker Rule, meant to forbid federally insured banks from speculating with depositor money. But the regulators tasked with writing and implementing the rule, under pressure from the financial services industry, wrote exemptions into the draft that, if finalized, would allow firms to continue making the risky trades that got JP Morgan into trouble.

Between now and July, those regulators can close those loopholes -- and they'll be under intense pressure from members of Congress to do so.

"What's very helpful is that this has happened before the rules are final. Because it gives a chance for regulators to say, 'Oh, we are not going to let the rules go through with all the loopholes that we've stuck in for banks over the last two years,'" Merkley said. "One of these is portfolio hedging. The Volcker Rule statute that Carl and I wrote is very clear that you can only hedge specific risks, so you have a limited exposure due to a small portfolio that's legitimate under market making that involves, say, oil, and you'll be affected badly if the price of oil [rises], so you can do a proportional, specific hedge for the price of oil."

The JP Morgan debacle has reignited efforts both on and off Capitol Hill to impose blunter rules on Wall Street. During the Wall Street reform legislative process, efforts to reimpose so-called Glass-Steagall restrictions on banks and bank holding companies owning investment shops, to cap the size of banks, or to break them up all failed.

Merkley thinks the Volcker Rule, if properly implemented, accomplishes the most important goal underlying all of these measures, and doubts any effort, other than to strengthen the Volcker Rule, will succeed.

"[E]ssentially the Volcker Rule is the Glass-Steagall firewall," Merkley explained. "It is the most important firewall between hedge funds."

Merkley went on: If you want to take it past the Volcker Rule you need to ask the question, Should we take the banks out of the market making business? Should we eliminate their ability to do any risk mitigation at all, so that it's cleaner but they don't have the ability to set off risk? Should we get them out of the wealth management business? It was the judgment that Carl and I had during this process is that the one that posed the risk to banks was the hedge funds and that that's what we were going to get out. I don't think there is a political path, when I look at the House, when I look at the Senate, I don't think there's a political path to separate the banks from these other three categories, because they really don't pose substantial risk.

That'll disappoint Wall Street reformers like Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, and myriad outside advocates. But if they can bring enough public pressure to bear on Congress to force a new legislative process, Merkley will in some cases be on their side.

"My focus is all on making this firewall work," he said. "This is kind of the bird in the hand. We've got to make the most of it, but if the regulators punch holes in it, we've lost. ... I did support the bill [by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Ted Kaufman (D-DE)] to make banks smaller. But we're not -- because we're not in the middle of Dodd-Frank -- there's no path to that at this moment."

Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin defended himself Thursday from harsh criticism for having renounced his U.S. citizenship in time to avoid paying a large sum in taxes.

In a statement to TPM from his spokesman Tom Goodman, Saverin said he'll pay the taxes on his earnings while a U.S. citizen.

"My decision to expatriate was based solely on my interest in working and living in Singapore, where I have been since 2009," the 30-year-old billionaire said. "I am obligated to and will pay hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes to the United States government. I have paid and will continue to pay any taxes due on everything I earned while a U.S. citizen. It is unfortunate that my personal choice has led to a public debate, based not on the facts, but entirely on speculation and misinformation."

Having already renounced his citizenship and relocated to Singapore, Saverin is not obligated to pay U.S. taxes on any future earnings from Facebook's initial public offering, which is set to dramatically boost his share in the company.

Immigration experts say the circumstances of Saverin's move make him all but inadmissable to the United States from here on out, and the Facebook mogul appeared to bid farewell to the country he immigrated to from Brazil as a child.

"As a native of Brazil who immigrated to the United States, I am very grateful to the U.S. for everything it has given me," he said.

Saverin touted the economic and job-creation opportunities Facebook has initiated and said he hopes to continue investing in the United States.

Two senators on Thursday introduced legislation aimed at punishing Americans who follow in Saverin's footsteps and avoid taxes by giving up U.S. citizenship.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid raised eyebrows a week ago when, in a moment of frustration on the Senate floor, he acknowledged that he was mistaken to quash his junior members' effort early last year to rein in abuse of the filibuster.

Many observers assumed that Reid -- a fierce protector of Senate traditions -- was either bluffing or exasperated and would quickly reverse course. But one of the leaders of the failed filibuster reform effort notes that Reid has publicly acknowledged his error multiple times in recent weeks, and believes Reid will stand by his efforts in January, when he and his colleagues have an opportunity to change the rules again.

"We got one of the five passed, and the other four all still make sense -- the motion to proceed, the protocol for amendments, the talking filibuster and the limitation of hours on nominations," said Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), in an interview at his Capitol office.

Merkley pointed to several instances in which Reid has copped to being on the wrong side of the filibuster reform issue.

"Boy, if there were ever a time when Tom Udall and Jeff Merkley were prophetic, it is tonight," Reid said in floor remarks on May 10. "These two young, fine senators said it was time to change the rules in the Senate. We did not. They were right. The rest of us were wrong, or most of us anyway. What a shame."

For those who doubt Reid has truly had a change of heart, that wasn't an isolated incident.

"I am almost embarrassed to be saying this in front of the presiding officer," Reid said, as Merkley presided over the Senate on Feb. 29. "I say that because at the beginning of the year the presiding officer, along with the junior senator from New Mexico, thought maybe we should change how this place operates. A number of us, in good conscience, believed the few changes we had made would be sufficient to establish a better working situation. It hasn't been better. In fact, I am sorry to say, it is worse."

In an earlier moment of frustration last October, Reid actually used a parliamentary tool to establish a new precedent on the Senate floor -- an unusual move that required him to take the sort of steps Merkley and others want to use to limit the filibuster. On the floor that night, Reid alluded to his error, too.

"I see on the Senate floor the junior Senator from the State of Oregon," Reid said, alluding to Merkley. "He and a number of other Senators worked very hard at the beginning of this Congress to kind of change what was going on around here, to make things move more quickly, to make things move more fairly. There was a lot of talk about we are going to try to move things along, we are not going to hold up motions to proceed, and all that. But that hasn't worked too well."

Reid's admission is a bit of a strategic gamble from the narrow perspective of his own party's power. Control of the Senate is at stake in November, and if his party finds itself in the minority, Republicans can use his comments to box him in to ceding the power of the minority. But many top Congress scholars think the Senate is fundamentally broken and needs to be fixed no matter who's in power.

That's not how Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell sees it, though. He doesn't think the rules need to be changed -- at least not yet.

"When both sides have a chance to debate and amend, legislation tends to move," he said on the floor Tuesday. "But when the majority refuses any ideas they didn't come up with, things slow down. Let's hope it sticks."

By Mark Price, Third and State

On Tuesday Marty Moss-Coane, the host of WHYY's Radio Times, moderated a question-and-answer session with Governor Tom Corbett at an event sponsored by the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce. The Governor ran wild with analogies.

Corbett repeated a folksy analogy to the business suit-and-tie audience, saying that state revenue amounted to an eight-inch pizza pie before the 2008 financial crisis. Now, he said, it’s a six-inch pie “but with the same mouths to feed.”

Moss-Coane noted near the end of the hour-long conversation that Corbett could hear demonstrators beating drums and chanting slogans outside. What would he say to them, she asked.“I understand that you’re upset because we’ve had to put the state on a diet, for want of a better description,” Corbett said. “I haven’t met anybody who likes to go on diets. It is not easy. It is not what we want to do.”

read more

I showed here how we could raise $94 million for the School District from the property tax, as requested by the Mayor, and sequester it until the SRC abandons its privatization plan. But is the property tax the best place to get the money? If the City raised the $94 million from some other source, it could still sequester it until the SRC sees the light.

The 1% generally likes the property tax. It’s a regressive tax that falls most heavily on people who are property-rich, cash poor. How sweet it would be to make poor and working people not only pay more, but to make them pay more for destruction of one of their greatest assets, the public school system.

There has been dispute, however, whether a property tax increase as it’s been packaged this year would indeed hit poor people the hardest.

Some progressives think that a property tax increase this year would not be regressive because it would emerge out of the AVI initiative intended to correct the massive inequities in City property assessments. But even if assessments were accurate, and didn’t under-value richer neighborhoods, poor property owners would still get hit hardest from tax rate increases. It’s just the nature of the property tax. It taxes at a single rate that the rich can pay much easier than the poor.

AVI, if done right, is a good thing. Increasing rates, however, to generate more revenue from the tax, might still not be.

read more

Helen and Dan have laid bare the SRC’s plan to kill public education and to use the Mayor’s AVI initiative to fund the murder to the tune of $94 million. I have nothing to add to their brilliant exposure of the crime scene. However I do want to point out that Council does not have to collaborate. In fact Council can help prevent the sell-off of the School District through a simple carrot and stick approach.

All it has to do is sequester the $94 million and hold it over until the community gets what it wants and deserves.

Here’s how Council can do that:

1) Amend the pending Operating Budget Bill to appropriate $94 million to the City’s Sinking Fund Commission, a traditional place for parking money intended to be used later for other purposes. Putting the $94 million there would mean the School District couldn’t get it until Council passed another ordinance approving its transfer later in the year.

2) Amend the Mayor’s AVI bill to shift the revenue targets so that the City is getting $94 million more (the money that would go to the Sinking Fund) and the School District $94 million less.

3) Work with labor and the community to come up with a plan that works to keep the School District public and thriving, and refuse to send the $94 million until the SRC goes along.

What if the SRC doesn’t meet our demands by the end of the next fiscal year and insists on going forward with its fun and games? Well, then the $94 million merges back into the City’s General Fund to be allocated next year either for other purposes or to enable tax rates to be reduced. Or it could be used this year to reduce the pain from the Governor's social services cuts.

That’s it. It’s not rocket science; it’s just about Council’s sincerity in opposing the privatization of the District. They can fight it if they want.

read more

Patch for uuid

I'm only starting a module to provide the option to configure privacy settings for fields that have relation with an user.

add a field handler to views so that you can set destination of any link after submit.

This module provides integration between the and Ziptastic, so that users only have to zip code field, and all relevant information is retrieved from the Ziptastic API and filled in for the user.

Sandbox project for now, but will become a full project once it's better.

Small helper module to allow multiple mobile subdomains (and automatic mobile redirection) when using Domain Access and Mobile Tools. Eg example.com/m.example.com, example.fr/m.example.fr

The DrupalCon Munich team was excited about the interest for this year's scholarship award, with 57 applications submitted. The DrupalCon scholarship program allows Drupal Community members, who would otherwise not be able to attend DrupalCon, to benefit from the DrupalCon experience as the Drupal Community benefits from each scholar's attendance.

The scholarship committee has made the final selection, and we are proud to present these deserving Drupalistas with Scholarships. Scholarships give access persons who would like to attend DrupalCon but lack financial resources to do so. The following awardees will be attending this year's conference in Munich, where the theme will be 'Open Up! Connecting systems and people’.

Scholarship Recipients*:

*We will add more recipients to this list as we confirm.

We would like to thank everyone who applied for a scholarship, and congratulate those of you who were selected.

In creating the mobile application for the Chicago DrupalCon, our team learned quite a few things about iOS/Android Drupal-based mobile app development. This article will distill a couple of hundred hours of our work into a few lessons you can use on your next Drupal-based mobile application.

One thing we realized early on was that if we wanted this project to be a success we were going to need to treat it like a proper project. Proper meant actually bringing on a UX person to make sure the app made sense. It also meant that it should have a backend engineer and a front end developer.

Our engineer for the backend was Larry Garfield (known as Crell in the Drupal world), our UX person was Jen Simmons, and I brought up the front-end development side of things.

After determining our resources, we outlined our requirements and their importance. We found it helpful to break this down into three categories; must do, important but not critical, and nice to have.

For our project, the list of application requirements went like this:

Pat is an experienced Drupal front-end developer and mobile app enthusiast currently working for Palantir.net as a Senior Developer, building wicked cool things such as the DrupalCon mobile app.

Views are a massive part of Drupal and you can't experience the power of Drupal without the Views module.

read more

Have you walked into your favorite retail store, restaurant, or mall recently only to see a shiny new iPad staring back at you? Businesses around the world are starting to realize the many benefits putting an iPad in their store offers. iPad, along with other tablets, are revolutionizing so many different industries, and it appears that businesses are beginning to take notice. With the coming trend of using an iPad at a physical location to engage consumers taking shape, why not take this idea one step further?

Do you attend trade shows or industry conferences? Perhaps you even shell out the big bucks to rent booth space at these events? If so, then you know that most of the time the reason for spending the big bucks on booth space at these events is to capture attention for your products and services, as well as, to generate leads. What better way to capture attention than to set up an iPad Kiosk at your trade shoot booth.

An iPad Kiosk is simply an iPad contained within some sort of iPad enclosure or iPad stand. iPad Kiosks are designed to allow people to secure an iPad in a public location so that consumers can interact with the iPad as they are passing by. When using an iPad in a public location, your store, a trade show booth, etc. it is important to know that your iPad is not at any risk of theft. The three types of iPad Kiosks that you see most often used at Trade Shows are:

Floor stands allow for the most flexibility as they can be placed anywhere, while still offering security for the iPad owner and easy access for consumers. iPad Kiosk floor stands usually range in price from $300 – $600 depending on the type of stand you want to use. Floor Stands are usually the most expensive iPad Kiosk option, but they are also the most versatile. When using an iPad at a trade show, it’s important that you don’t take up your table space with an tabletop iPad Kiosk. Having a floor stand positioned next to your table will be much more convenient for both you and your booth visitors.

Tabletop iPad Kiosks are another great option. They can usually be purchased for a little less than the floor stands. The price range for a quality Tabletop iPad Kiosk is between $200 – $400. Although a tabletop iPad kiosk will take up some table space at your booth, it’s still a much better alternative than using an unsecured iPad at your trade show booth.

iPad Wall Mounts are your best option in terms of not needing a lot of space. That said, not all trade shows offer wall space for you to use. Except for your high-end trade shows, you normally only see an iPad mounted to a wall in a store, sports arena, college and university, or really any permanent location. We don’t recommend using an iPad Wall Mount for most trade shows. That said, if you’re in the market for a quality iPad Wall Mount you should budget around $200 – $400.

There are so many benefits of using an iPad at your trade show booth. Here are some of the top benefits that most people receive when using an iPad to engage trade show visitors at their booth:

The list above provides a snapshot of just a few of the top benefits that using an iPad at your trade show booth provides. Depending on how you use the iPad, which apps you run, and how many people show up, there are a lot more benefits that you’ll enjoy.

So now that you’ve read through all of the benefits of using an iPad at your trade show booth, let’s take some time to explain how you can actually put this theory into practice. It’s actually a lot easier than you might think. Follow the steps below and you will have an iPad up and running at your next trade show.

If you follow these steps you should be able to have an iPad Kiosk set up at your trade show booth in no time. Not only that, but you can feel confident that your iPad will function as you envisioned it.

Although more and more companies and individuals are using iPads to engage consumers at trade shows, in retail stores, at restaurants, and so on, the list of available apps to use for this purpose is still quite small. That said, I think we are on the verge of an explosion in these types of iPad apps. It’s only a matter of time before iPad app developers realize just how big a market this can be. For now, below is a list of some fo the best iPads to use at your trade show.

Collect Facebook Likes, Add Twitter Followers, and Collect Customer Email Addresses from Anywhere.

OnSpot Social is an iPad application that allows business owners to grow their social media community, as well as, collect email addresses for their email marketing list from a physical location. Simply set up an iPad Kiosk at your trade show booth, purchase a 1 week subscription from OnSpot Social, and convert trade show visitors into online connections.

One of the main goals for all trade show exhibitors is to collect leads. Usually this is done by having booth visitors write their email address down on a piece of paper. After the trade show someone then has to decipher each person’s handwriting and input each email address into the computer. With OnSpot Social this is all done for you. Booth visitors put their name and email address into your iPad, after the show you can log into OnSpotSocial.com and download a list of all of the email addresses you’ve collected. No more losing email addresses because you can’t read the person’s handwriting and now more wasting time retyping the information into your system.

Turn Your iPad into a Digital Billboard.

KioskPro allows you to turn your iPad into a Digital Billboard, run a photo slide show, or even display your website easily to your trade show booth visitors. Depending on what content you want to show on our iPad, KioskPro might make a lot of sense for your next Trade Show. If you want to show pictures of your products, show customer testimonials, or even your website, KioskPro allows you to set up a slide show or digital billboard to accomplish this task. Booth traffic can then interact with your iPad Kiosk right there at your booth.

Play Product or Service Videos for Trade Show Booth Visitors.

If you don’t want to pay to download an iPad app like OnSpot Social or KioskPro, you can always use YouTube to play videos for booth visitors. Simply open up the YouTube app on your iPad, navigate to your YouTube Channel or even to a specific video, and leave it up for people to play. This allows you to educate your trade show both visitors without you having to say a word. You can then be there to support the video by answering any questions that booth visitors might have after watching your videos on YouTube. One thing to note if you use the YouTube app, be sure to reset the video back to the beginning after each person, or group of people, is finished watching.

These are 3 of a number of iPad apps out there that you can leverage for your next trade show. Again, the list of apps is still small, but give it 6 months to a year and I think there are going to be plenty more hitting the app store.

Now that you’ve finished reading the article, what do you think? Do you believe using an iPad at your trade show booth can help you better achieve your goals? Have you ever used an iPad at a trade show before? What were your results? Please leave a comment below as we’d love to hear what you think.

Great service is the pillar of every business and one can achieve success and maintain it only through quality service. A host of techniques contributes to business success but the foundation of every business is quality work. Only quality can make a business move along. Offering great service is as important for employees as it is for an entire business. This is true for both salaried and freelance employees. As long as you are providing good quality service your value will be acknowledged; if you fail to maintain this quality you will go out of business. Even if one encounters a successful break by chance, to maintain that success you need great service because opportunities for success are not continuous.

The main goal of employees is to satisfy clients by offering good service. While good service helps salaried employees gain success in their growth within an enterprise, freelancers build their reputation and gain future projects through good service. Therefore, it is very important to offer good service to your clients. Only quality service can be the strong base of a successful business.

To start with, good quality is simple but maintaining that quality throughout your work is difficult. Sometimes too much work might hamper your quality, and at times less time dedication may lead to bad quality. This article discusses the importance of great service and guides you in delivering great service and maintaining it throughout.

Delivering quality service is a necessity for employees to satisfy their employers and keep their jobs. For freelancers, it is more important, as quality work can only get them good work and let them get going with their freelancing. Most freelancers work on a project basis from the cozy comfort of their homes. Therefore, only when they provide quality service to their clients and satisfy them, will they be able to gain future projects; the moment they fail to deliver great service, their chances of gaining future projects decrease. Below are some of the benefits a freelancer gains by delivering great service:

Therefore, all the basic needs for you to have control over your job depend on your work quality. It fulfills your client’s needs and helps you to earn future projects. Maintaining good quality is not that difficult unless you intentionally compromise your standards, which can ruin your standing. Once creating great quality becomes a habit, you will be familiar with the flow and move along well with it. You should be very careful in improving your quality; maintain consistency in your work at least so you continue to satisfy your clients’ requirements. While great work will bring you more work, failure to do so might also lose you potential projects. Therefore, delivering great service is not just important for you to gain success but also to maintain your job.

After realizing the importance of delivering good service it is clear that maintaining good service is a necessity for every job. Good service includes more than just good work. It goes beyond just offering good work and comprises maintaining professional etiquette, being conscious of deadlines, and maintaining a good client-employee relationship. For example: when a restaurant is said to offer good service, this means that along with good food, the restaurant offers a proper environment, hospitable staff, and food that is served with decorum. Similarly, when a freelancer is supposed to offer good service to a client, he or she has to offer good all-round service. Below are the major elements or factors that should be considered to ensure your clients get great service.

The above-mentioned elements are important for offering good service to clients and all should be followed. Even avoiding one factor is not an option as all seven are important. Now let’s discuss these elements in detail so you can understand how to offer great service and satisfy your clients.

Every employee should aim to satisfy clients. You should first understand your clients’ expectations and then satisfy them. Understanding a client’s expectations is very simple. Along with providing quality work in estimated time, your client will expect you to be honest and fair in business. You will be expected to be responsible towards the work and communicate actively. You will also be expected to offer new ideas and be creative. You should maintain all these and thus satisfy your clients’ expectations. Try to estimate the time you require to finish a particular job, then clearly inform your client about the timelines. Finish the job before the deadline and provide great quality work at the end of the project. In the meantime, be in regular contact with your clients and respond to their feedbacks and comments.

Be upfront about everything, whether it be a job, budget, or time issue. Don’t make fake promises because it will be difficult for you to continue with such promises. Therefore, remain honest in your business and maintain a healthy relationship with your clients. Be consistent with your service from the beginning until the end. Maintaining all these attributes will help you satisfy your clients’ expectations.

Maintaining work quality is very important to impress clients. Quality of work is vital to ensure great service; therefore make sure you provide perfect quality work throughout your tenure of a project. Do not compromise with your work because your reputation depends on the quality of work you provide. To maintain work quality, it is important you dedicate enough time and concentration to the work. When you are freelancing, you choose to work from your own comfort zone and therefore, unlike an office environment, you have to be responsible about your timelines. As you will be working from your own space, there can be many distractions. Therefore, make sure you divide your work time accordingly and maintain it strictly so you can concentrate fully on the job at hand. If you fail to manage it from the beginning, you will not be able to satisfy clients’ expectations. This might cause last-minute hurry, which will again hamper your work. Therefore, maintain your time properly and come out with quality work for your client.

Try to finish one job at a time, and then take on another job. This will help you focus on a particular job and not be distracted from producing quality work. However, if you feel you are capable of handling more than one project at a time, make sure you allocate separate working hours for both jobs and apply your dedication to the job you are working on. This will help you to maintain quality on both projects. Too much work and insufficient time are the main reasons why quality is compromised, so it is important to balance your work and time. Also develop the habit of monitoring the entire job after completing it, before you submit it to your clients. You should also keep backups of every job so you do not encounter any job-related problems during the project. Maintaining the quality of your work will build trust among your clients and enhance your future prospects. Ongoing quality is the real mantra for offering great service.

It is very important to offer high availability to clients in order to stay in the race of the professional world. Offering high availability means being responsive towards your clients’ emails and calls, and providing them service as they need it. To do this, you have to be active with your email check up and phone calls. Make sure you receive your clients’ calls, and if you miss any, make sure you get back to them soon. The same goes for emails. You have to be active with your inbox and be responsive to your clients’ queries and expectations. When you are dealing with a particular client make sure you make the client feel important and that you are solely at his/her service. You will be having more than one client and it is your responsibility to handle them in your ways.

All the above facts may sound that you are becoming a slave to work. But you can make the task easier by establishing an understanding between your clients and yourself. At the beginning of the job, make sure you are clear about your timelines. Check your emails at regular intervals and respond to your clients. Regarding phone calls, from the initial stage of the job divide your time between work and play and make this division clear to your client. Speak upfront about your timelines and do not hesitate to say you will not entertain calls during your play time unless they are urgent. This will help you by making your terms clear to your clients, and they will not hamper you with calls anytime. However, during peak times you might have to work beyond your normal times. Be prepared to compromise with such situations as they are the part of your work. Therefore, maintain high availability for clients without hampering your personal life.

To ensure you respond punctually to emails, set alarms for new emails and unsubscribe unwanted email notifications to avoid distractions from work. Also check your inbox at regular intervals to keep updated on any new developments with your clients’ requirements. Ensure you are not spending too much time on your emails. You should respond to your clients’ mails regularly and not make them feel ignored. Be sure you are at their service whenever they need it. You can adopt one easy way to create a balance between your work time and play time and still maintain availability to your clients. Mention your business time and email address on your voice mail messages. This will help your client know about your times and that you are not avoiding their work. This will help both you and your client. At times there will be real urgent work for clients; during such situations do not your clients down. Make sure you meet their needs ? your extra effort and work will count in building a healthy relationship. Whenever you are going on a planned holiday, make sure you inform your clients about such plans ahead of time. When the plan is an urgent one, try to leave a mail or message for your clients informing them about your unavailability, and mention the seriousness of your situation. Offer quality work and high availability to your clients without hampering your personal life.

Maintaining professional etiquette is very important for every person in the professional world. Professional etiquette includes attending to phone calls properly and responding to email queries on time. We mention above the need to respond to emails and calls. Now, let’s look at other etiquette that should be maintained in a profession. Make sure you respect your clients’ needs and their time. Maintain courtesy and respect towards your clients.

Suppose you have an urgent query, and you need to clarify it with your client, which requires you to call your client out of office hours. At such times, practice the courtesy of asking whether the client is free and comfortable to answer your queries at that particular time. If the client says yes, you can continue with your query; if the answer is no, contact the client at a more convenient time and accept the arrangement courteously. Be polite in your communication and make sure you never speak about your clients in a derogatory manner in front of anyone. If you are facing any problem, rather clarify it with your client than gossip about it behind the client’s back. Respect your clients’ demands and attend to their requirements properly. Be a good listener and attach importance to your clients’ talk. Do not make your clients feel you are not paying heed to their talk and are leaving them unattended. Practice humility, courtesy, and respect in order to provide great service.

It is very important to communicate well with your clients. In the above sections, we often refer to the importance of communicating frankly with clients. While communicating properly with your clients, there are certain aspects that should be followed. Below are these aspects:

These are aspects of communication you should maintain in dealing with your clients. Communication can never be one-sided and therefore, along with being an active speaker, be an active listener. Whenever you are communicating with your clients, make sure you build a conversation and allow your clients to have their say as well. Remember to be clear and straight in your conversation so there are no hindrances regarding your communication with your clients. Maintain all these aspects and communicate well with your clients.

To offer great service to clients it is important to be deadline conscious. Every project needs to be completed within a particular time. You need to understand the seriousness of deadlines and be particular about the fact that you complete clients’ work on time. Make sure you clarify your required time with your clients before taking on a project. After you commit to a job within a period of time, it becomes your responsibility to complete it within that time. Try to complete one job within a time and even if you are dealing with more than one job make sure you complete both jobs on time.

Make sure you maintain your work time strictly to avoid last-minute rushes. Do not compromise your work quality to complete work before deadline. Be deadline conscious and maintain work quality in order to offer great service to your clients.

Honesty is one of the most important things that should be adopted to succeed in business. Try to be honest with your clients to create a healthy relationship with them. If you think the time given to you is not enough speak about it and be honest in expressing that the time is insufficient to complete the job. Avoid making fake promises because such promises will bring problems back to you in future. Therefore, be honest while dealing with your clients.

These are some of the considerations that should be borne in mind to offer great service to your clients. Besides these factors, be proactive in your service, manage your project well, and follow a well-planned schedule to complete your work. Also be sure to keep backups of your work. Do not hesitate to discuss your work plan with your clients and ask them for ideas whenever you feel the need to. Try to understand your clients’ requirements and resolve all their issues properly. Consider your clients’ expectations as the first priority. Always try to learn from your mistakes and try not to repeat them in future. Follow all these elements while dealing with your clients to ensure great service and satisfaction with the final result.

Even if information is highly out of ordinary and attention-grabbing, if your content contains lengthy plain text without illustration or images whatsoever, the entire page becomes dull and unimaginative. To sort this out, infographics help in routing information in a creative manner and in a style making your information easier to understand.

In a nutshell, infographics are visual representations involving data with applied design and style aspects to display written content. In forms of images plus text, some charts and other friendly resources, they extend the content of articles, usually of statistical data, and increase familiarity of readers in a way that elevates their comprehension. In this article, we will tackle how you can design effective infographics for your blog.

Infographics raise awareness whereby people can relate and understand the subject matter better. As attention span of the average user is increasing, it’s important then to limit the scope of information and draw boundaries to win the focus of their eyes. The display on the graphics should create much more imagination. Ask guide questions when creating an infographic.

Stick to one problem and solution that you want the graphic to address. For instance, if you want to talk about the results of polling in politics, you can the winning and losing percentages, and some relevant images (and captions) of candidates pertinent to the main concern.

In parallel to the first item above, there should be a good flow in the information you’re trying to show and process. Nothing goes into effect without a cause; therefore, in any information flow, cause and effect relationships must be present and highlighted significantly. To check whether these relationships in your infographics are accurately done, position yourself as a layperson who does not know anything about the message and facts you’re conveying.

Put together words, icons, charts and images with arrows and lines in a playful style to make something even a child could understand. Engage readers from start to finish by grouping related data by flowcharting to simplify the process and connect thoughts. If the topic is about economic recession, arrange the sequence of events leading to the industry slowdown with the different stakeholders involved (e.g. countries, organizations and other groups) and construct a good visual journey for their comprehension and entertainment as well.

Selecting colors is an important aspect of graphic design. Color is the most effective tool to guide authors and influence their readers. It pulls you into continuing to read whatever is presented. When used properly, the color motif may be the yardstick of the success in making the information more readable by giving the readers a variety of impressions, both conceptually and emotionally.

One good pointer is to have excellent contrast: the textual content should blend well with the background, design and other illustrations. Colors can also determine the hierarchy and concept of details. Assign colors and designate each one to its consequential use; do not blandly scatter them all over the place without tying to one thought.

Design is not just about colors; it is also widely about typography, as infographics consist of both text and images. Choose the right font face and size for your text.

Keep in mind that infographics should not look plainly like an excerpt of some serious news article in a newspaper. Rather, the design should be creative but not so wacky that it looks misleading. Just aim for the proper.

If your content is all great but design and images used are just the opposite, it is not worth doing infographics. For infographics to work well, it should have a great appeal toward the audience. Try different combinations of illustrations, images, graphics, diagrams, logos and icons. The effectiveness of the complete graphics will depend entirely on your creativity as a designer.

Also make the sizes just appropriate in proportion to the size of the infographics and consider applying the right scale for emphasis (e.g. bigger pictures may be signs that the items bring more impact and meaning). In any case, make sure that all the images you use are of high resolution.

Be responsible for the information found in your presentation. It should contain accurate and timely data. As infographics may lead readers to the wrong conclusion due to lack of verifiable information and misinterpretation of resources, it’s a good rule of thumb to always cite your sources of data and their relevant links and follow through providing captions. Allow visitors to explore the details if they wish.

Giving credit to sources also gives you an opportunity to contact the authors and webmasters behind and inform them that their work has been acknowledged, used and mentioned. There’s also greater probability that these influential sources link and share your infographic to their work which may later on give your poster an initial boost in sharing and traffic terms.

How do we ensure that the graphics effectively deliver complete information and knowledge to the public? Simplicity is the best policy. Ensure that the information transmitted is well arranged, organized and structured. Visual simplicity ensures that the charts, graphs and other representations will be easy for readers to understand.

Percentages can most of the time be represented with creative pie charts; mathematical principles in a set can usually be turned into a unique bar graph; and when numbers don’t fit on a scale, you might be able to place them in a visual diagrams.

Computer graphics should be simple, clean, clear and concise. Also, there should be consistency in the overall design. Every aspect should flow and make sense together.

Research and dig deep to find the most powerful and compelling facts to include in your design. How interesting is “interesting?” It should get viewers exclaim and say “What? I did not know that!” and make a mark that is so unforgettable that it urges a discussion among the members of a forum or some community.

For your infographic to be successful, it should be geared to a specific audience. Only when the shift of focus is known and precise can it be effective in communication. You should create the infographic with a concept that should suit the reader, as infographics can be made with different forms and topics (e.g. sports, food, modern science, financial, political, etc.) and relayed with different emotions and responses (e.g. humor, fear, shock, pity).

Infographics are cool cheat sheets of certain topics. Normally, these topics contain sections that people delve in. If you have an infographic that look like a messy page of a scrapbook, make sure that every section has its respective catchy title or description that can better explain what the following images or facts are about to deliver.

Just like in any book, magazine or web content, readers may feel confused or bored when they are overwhelmed with piles of colors and items put together wholly so define each one with a headline to clearly mark the main idea.

As much as audience should be exact, there should be a definite purpose in creating and showcasing an infographic. The purpose is the element used to provide direction for all objects to be placed inside the graphics.

Ask why you need to create the infographic in the first place before visualizing how you’re beautifully going to display data. After doing much research to back up your established facts, identify your point of conclusion as well. Condense and decide how you’re presenting it, and have the confidence to deduct to a single-sentence message tackling on what you want to really impart with your poster.

An infographic crowded with much images and text would still look presentable and understandable if the use of space is proportioned well. Usually, the more points of data you can clearly show in such small space, the better. Best examples of infographics shown on the net compile large amounts of data into a story that gives the viewer deeper levels of understanding. Maximize the space you have to fill that density of data; large white spaces don’t look good.

In this part, we give you some examples of infographics and we’d determine if they are effective in sharing their message as they should:

Infographic source

This visual is trying to show the history of Apple and reveal the record of Apple’s computer systems from the beginning of the organization in 1983 to the present. Its intended viewers may not also be specific to technical and smart people but also those who are interested in knowing the records of how Apple came to be such a giant company in the present. The graph used time (devices made from 1983 – 2011), category (how it uses different colors to represent different types of devices) and hierarchy (how some categories take up more space and are larger than others). Generally speaking, the visual reveals that Apple organization has had quite a few different computer systems over the years and is effective in making this statement. Segmentation of facts is done well with the many colors on the background.

Infographic source

The data present in this visual is associated to the various types of geeks in the world, where they originate and circulate, so to speak. The infographic’s objective, as its name indicates, is to demonstrate the development of how geeks progressed. It used a time flow chart to demonstrate the progression and categorization. Each geek is showed by a different symbol and is characterized by a cute cartoon. This visual definitely attracts interest, however, it does not do much else. On the other hand, aesthetics wise, it’s still eye-catching and effective as it provides details in a concise and clear way without beating around the bush.

Infographic source

This infographic provides interesting information about the 2010 World Cup tournaments mostly through graphs. Its potential target viewers are those people interested in the World Cup. As we view the graphic, we learn the broad statement here that there were 32 countries that competed and that Brazil has won the most World Cups. A lot shown in the infographic are composed of common information and facts, and this is okay. However, design opportunities are lost somehow in the sense that heavier images could have been incorporated (e.g. designs or themes inspired by sports like the field shape, goal netting, crowd ethnicity, soccer ball). Still, it’s an effective infographic with good numbers, giving a quick overview at how big the FIFA World Cup games really are.

Infographic source

This infographic was made by TermLifeInsurance.org, a non-profitable organization, to explain to everyone why we should stop drinking bottled water. It has followed most of the suggestions above. For one, the title is clear and catchy on its message. Secondly, it has listed the sources at the bottom of the graphic. Third, it had a mix of basic colors neat to the eyes: red, black and white, making the text easy to read. Fourth, the font face used matches the design. As for the drawbacks, there are no axis labels on the pie and bar charts. This may leave the viewer wondering how to match the values or percentages to the actual meaning. Moreover, there are lots of spaces not maximized in the infographic, where it should have contained more forms of graphs. Instead, the images that do not present anything of greater meaning (e.g. the water bottle) occupied much space. On other view, this graphic would most likely draw anyone’s attention as it captures our day-to-day living; almost every living person drinks bottled water. With interesting facts sectioned properly, this one is still counted as effective.

Infographic source

This infographic seems to be not an infographic at all, as it failed to show information visually. The tweets per second should have been displayed through a bar graph or bar chart. By seeing the heights of the bars, readers would quickly gauge the measure in differences of the tweets per second and event without reading the textual content. With this image above, readers might not grasp the comparisons. To aid as a solution, a suggestion is while creating an infographic, put all the text in one layer and hide this layer to check if all other elements are still making sense. If yes, then you’re successful at that. Otherwise, you’re like doing too much telling and not enough showing. Texts are only to support what is presented and should not be the “main stars” in the scene.

Infographics are graphics used to provoke thoughts, align more understanding to the article base, entertain or market or sell products and ideas, and inspire when done right. But having an interesting and attractive design with good content is only half the battle in creating infographics. The most important is that it jives with the substance of your article and that data you present is dependable and worthy to be shared among peers.

World Press Freedom Day came and went earlier this month. While it’s important to take a day to recognize our right to speak and share information, threats to our First Amendment freedoms happen all the time, everywhere. It's a threat that will become very real on the streets of Chicago this weekend as a new breed of journalists and onlookers attempt to cover the protests surrounding the NATO summit.

read more

Seattle’s a great place to visit.

The Space Needle, Mount Rainier, good music, great coffee, the list goes on.

But if you’re the chair of the Federal Communications Commission, there’s another good reason to visit Seattle: Sen. Maria Cantwell’s personal request that the FCC hold a public hearing on media consolidation.

read more

World Press Freedom Day came and went earlier this month. While it’s important to take a day to recognize our right to speak and share information, threats to our First Amendment freedoms happen all the time, everywhere. It's a threat that will become very real on the streets of Chicago this weekend as a new breed of journalists and onlookers attempt to cover the protests surrounding the NATO summit.

read more

According to a recent investigation by the Swedish news show Uppdrag Granskning, Sweden’s telecommunications giant Teliasonera is the latest Western country revealed to be colluding with authoritarian regimes by selling them hih-tech surveillance gear to spy on its citizens. Teliasonera has allegedly enabled the governments of Belarus, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Georgia and Kazakhstan to spy on journalists, union leaders, and members of the political opposition. One Teliasonera whistle-blower told the reporters, “The Arab Spring prompted the regimes to tighten their surveillance. ... There’s no limit to how much wiretapping is done, none at all.”

The investigative report, titled “Black Boxes,” in reference to the black boxes Teliasonera allowed police and security services to install in their operation centers--which granted them the unrestricted capability to monitor all communications—including Internet traffic, phone calls, location data from cell phones, and text messages—in real-time. This has caused concern among Swedish citizens and Teliasonera shareholders, who had previously been assuaged by assurances from the telecommunications company that they follow the law in the countries in which they are operating. After a meeting with Peter Norman, Sweden’s Minister of Financial Markets, the chairman of Teliasonera’s board of directors issued a statement, announcing that they had launched “an action programme for handling issues related to protection of privacy and freedom of expression in non-democratic countries, in a better and more transparent way.”

Teliasonera’s declaration of good intentions may be too little too late after the damning evidence of abuse compiled by Uppdrag Granskning. Documents obtained by their investigators showed an Azerbaijani had his phone tapped after he published a piece about being beaten at the hands of government security agents while covering a story. The report also found that black-box surveillance was used in Belarus to track down, arrest, and prosecute protesters who attended an anti-government protest rally following the 2010 Belarusian presidential election. One Azerbaijani citizen says he was interrogated solely due to the fact that he voted for the Armenian representative in the 2009 Eurovision song contest.

In the post-Soviet state of Georgia, these recent revelations have prompted the Georgian Young Lawyers Association (GYLA) to challenge indiscriminate wiretapping in their country, alleging that far from complying with local statutes, Teliasonera was breaking Georgian law.

GYLA points out that the Georgian criminal code and constitution protect personal information such as private phone calls. Police must obtain a court order before they can listen in to a citizen’s private phone conversations. GYLA attorney Maya Khutsishvili says that companies can only provide private information about a person to investigative bodies based on such a court order—and that a court’s ruling must indicate why the investigative body needs to listen to a specific person or receive other kinds of personal information.

EFF believes that for Western countries providing telecommunications equipment or services, merely complying with the law is insufficient. Authoritarian regimes can interpret the law in ways that justify unlimited spying on journalists and political dissidents. Or, as is the case in Georgia, the laws on the books are not enforced—unrestricted surveillance is the order of the day. If tech companies want to avoid being repression’s little helper, they must know their customer and refrain from cooperating with governments that they believe will use their technology to facilitate human rights violations.

A series of events in the last two weeks have set the stage for how surveillance drones will be operated by local law enforcement in the United States and how citizens can demand privacy protections as domestic use escalates.

As EFF has previously reported, Congress passed a bill in February mandating the FAA must open national airspace to drones, despite the extensive and unprecedented civil liberties dangers they pose to every American. The FAA, in new rules announced on Monday, made the authorization procedure easier, stating they have “streamlined the process” for “public agencies”—which includes local law enforcement—to legally operate drones in U.S. skies.

We know that dozens of law enforcement agencies already have drones, based on information from EFF’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit over the FAA’s initial refusal to release the list of authorizations. And one of the biggest cities with a police department on the list was Seattle.

It turned out Seattle’s city council—which oversees the police department—was just as surprised as many citizens to see Seattle Police Department’s name on the list. The city council learned about the drones through a reporter asking questions related to EFF’s lawsuit, not through official channels. After front page stories in the Seattle Times and an official apology from the Seattle police department, Seattle is now the first city to consider privacy safeguards for drone use by law enforcement.

The ACLU of Washington has asked the city council to pass a legally binding ordinance detailing “what kind of information can be collected, who can collect it, how the information can be used, and how long it can be kept,” along with “an auditing process to make sure the policies are followed.”  The Seattle Times agreed. In an editorial written on May 6, the city’s largest paper urged city council to adopt “usage restrictions, image-retention limits, and regular audits and reviews of drones as a law-enforcement tool.”

Seattle’s Police Department has already pledged drones would not be used for surveillance, and only “for situations like crime scene photography, missing person searches, and barricaded person scenarios.” They’ve also indicated they would work with the FAA to develop privacy policies. But as the Seattle Times noted, privacy safeguards must be implemented by binding ordinance, “not by policy nods, promises and good intentions.”

In a similar incident just yesterday, after the Shelby County Tennessee sheriff’s office requested two drones as part of a $400,000 Homeland Security grant, the Shelby county commission questioned the Sheriff’s Office on how they would be using the drone and asked them to draw up privacy guidelines. The sheriff’s office promptly withdrew its request for drones. But encouragingly, the commission is still pushing the sheriff’s office for privacy policies. As the Memphis Daily News reported, “several commissioners said they might still pursue setting some guidelines on the use of such surveillance through a memorandum of understanding with the sheriff’s office.”

Responding to an EFF public records request, Miami-Dade County also released information about its drones earlier this week, which it bought using a grant from the Justice Department (DOJ).

The FAA itself estimates that there may be as many as 30,000 drones in the US by the year 2020, and with the loosened restrictions coupled with the Department of Homeland Security and DOJ issuing grants for local police forces to buy drones, it’s imperative that local governments act swiftly to ban surveillance drones outright or institute robust safeguards for their citizens. Americans cannot afford to wait for the FAA or Congress to act.

Does your local police department own and operate a drone? Check out our interactive map here to find out.

EFF would also like your help. In the coming days, we’re going to announce a crowd-sourcing campaign aimed at finding out as much information as possible on each law enforcement agency’s use of drones and how citizens can voice their concerns to their local governments. Right now, if you have any information on how your local law enforcement plans to use drones, email dronesinfo@eff.org. You can get this information by calling your local police department.

And stay tuned for more, as we plan on announcing a detailed campaign soon.

An upcoming treaty renegotiation process could prove to be the next great threat to online freedom in the international realm. As we have explained, the World Conference on International Telecommunications – “WCIT” for short, pronounced “wicket” by insiders – will be held in Dubai this coming December, and preparations for this important treaty-writing conference are in full swing. The forum is being organized by a bureaucratic United Nations agency called the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

The fear that’s been bouncing around the blogosphere amid civil society organizations this past week is that the WCIT could be used to push through expansion of the ITU’s mandate beyond telecommunications, to encompass Internet governance. 

This does not bode well for the future of the Internet.

At the WCIT, member states will hash out revisions to a set of regulations that make up a treaty called the International Telecommunication Regulations, or ITRs. Some proposed revisions to the ITRs have already been made, but they haven’t been made public. This renegotiation process could prove to have a serious impact on online civil liberties – yet the talks are being held in secret, without adequate input from the organizations that represent the public interest.

If negotiations continue down this path, we could end up with a treaty that allows for greater governmental control over the Internet.  

That’s why EFF and a host of organizations issued a letter May 17 demanding that ITU stop the secrecy. Along with the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), European Digital Rights (EDRI), the Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) and 28 other civil society organizations, we are calling for the immediate release of all the documents describing preparations for WCIT and proposed ITR revisions. Since it’s prohibitively expensive to obtain the planning documents that are being drafted in advance of the WCIT, it’s impossible for most public interest participants to review them and weigh in with informed opinions.

In addition to sending our letter demanding a more democratic and transparent process, civil society organizations around the world are sounding off. As MobileActive.org wrote in an open letter addressed to the ITU:

“The emergence of the ITU as the primary regulatory body for the Internet would represent a sea change in Internet governance and could undermine the success of the Internet as an open platform for innovation, economic growth, human development and democratic participation.” 

Jérémie Zimmermann, co-founder and spokesperson of citizen advocacy group La Quadrature du Net, has also joined the chorus against the closed-door process:

“This trend by governments to increasingly use trade agreements and treaties to try to control a free, open and universal Internet is alarming. Citizens must take action and expose their governments' roles in these negotiations, in order to protect the networked public sphere that we all share as a common good.”

Cynthia Wong of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) sounded a similar note. “The Internet has prospered because it is governed by a lightweight and decentralized framework,” she wrote in a recent post.

“Full and robust civil society participation is essential not only to ensuring human rights are respected in policy-making, but also to ensuring these policies are grounded in a solid evidentiary basis and not based on hyperbole and fear-mongering,” said Tamir Israel, Staff Attorney at CIPPIC.

Indeed, a truly multi-stakeholder participation model requires equal footing for all relevant stakeholders including civil society, the private sector, the technical community, and participating governments.

The secrecy surrounding these talks brings to mind the closed-door negotiations that civil society has condemned throughout negotiations of ACTA and the TPP, as Milton Mueller of the Internet Governance Project pointed out in a recent blog. Mueller noted that ACTA was negotiated in secret to appease the copyright and intellectual property lobbies, but this tactic ultimately backfired because “the closed process … gave the resulting treaty a lack of legitimacy,” triggering organized opposition.

The WCIT process may be destined for a similar fate, as civil society is now sounding alarm bells against ITU’s closed-door process.

It’s time for ITU to respect the multi-stakeholder process and let the sun shine in. All restrictions on sharing the preparatory materials and proposed ITR amendments should be lifted, and the documents should be released and subjected to public scrutiny.

We demand transparency, and call upon the ITR to open the process and disclose the WCIT preparatory documents and treaty proposals.  The public should not be kept in the dark.

by Andrew Leonard.

Grist is proud to present the Change Gang -- profiles of people who are leading change on the ground toward a more sustainable society and a greener planet. Some we've written about before; some are new to our pages. Some you'll have heard of; most you probably won't. Know someone we should add to the Change Gang? Tell us why.

For Ximena Prugue, being "young and naïve" is a strength, not a weakness.

"It makes you that much more powerful," says the 21-year-old. "You don't have all those years of experience deterring you from thinking that you can do something."

To support this thesis, Prugue offers herself up as Exhibit A. Born and raised in Miami, Fla., the daughter of Peruvian immigrants, she had no idea what she was getting herself into when she decided to attempt to alleviate "energy poverty" in rural India by distributing solar-powered flashlights.

She didn't know about the hassles involved in setting up a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization, or how Indian customs officers would react to a girl whose luggage was stuffed with $3,000 worth of lights. She didn't know how difficult it would be to fundraise, or make connections with on-the-ground aid workers in India who didn't understand why an American teenager was badgering them. She underestimated the difficulties inherent in simultaneously holding down a part-time job, attending full-time community college, and running her own nonprofit. Perhaps most daunting of all, she knew nothing whatsoever about India.

Before her first visit, she says, "I literally had not even eaten Indian food. I hadn't even seen Slumdog Millionaire."

All she knew, she says, is she wanted to "make a difference."

By the time she was a 19-year-old studying mechanical engineering at a community college in Miami, she already boasted a resume filled with socially meaningful work. In high school, she made a documentary about homeless sex offenders living under a bridge in southern Miami. She also helped raise money to support the construction of tilapia farms in Haiti. But she was looking for a project that would go beyond just fundraising -- something that she could sink her teeth into.

"I've always been into art and design," she recalls, "so I read a lot of design blogs and I stumbled across this article about the world's most affordable solar-powered light."

She proposed to one of her professors that the lights might be useful in Haiti. He told her to do some more research and encouraged her to apply for a grant from the Clinton Global Initiative University, a three-day conference that brings together thousands of young people interested in doing progressive work.

The conference was a life-changing event.

"There were people that were my age who already had their 501(c)(3) status," recalls Prugue. "That had already had gone to all these different places and done amazing things. I was just like, wow, I have absolutely no excuse to say, 'Well, oh well, I'm young. Oh well, I still have school.' There was absolutely no excuse for me to not be doing something."

She ultimately decided that Haiti didn't have a big access-to-cheap-energy problem. Rural India, she determined, was where conditions were worst -- where the lack of electricity was a major obstacle blocking people's escape from deep poverty. She won a grant from the Clinton Global Initiative, built a website, set up Giving the Green Light as a nonprofit, and started emailing. A year and a half later, she was headed to India with her bag of lights. And now she knows exactly what she wants to do with the rest of her life.

"I am studying mechanical engineering," says Prugue, "because I want to be the type of engineer that designs products that you can implement into developing countries to solve all sorts of problems."

Looking back, Prugue doesn't downplay the difficulties she faced.

"It doesn't come easy. It definitely doesn't come easy," she says. "But if you work hard and you are really doing it with genuine good intentions -- you're not doing it because you just want to put it on your resume and get into a good college -- it will come. It will happen. I believe in positive energy, and that that energy will come back to you, and all the karma will work out. And I really hope that other young people try to change the world too, because I feel that that is where the change is going to come from."

Related Links:

Heart to hearth: Darfur Stoves Project’s Andree Sosler makes survival sustainable

Ietef Vita: Rapping the righteousness of wheatgrass juice

Neverending nigiri: Kristofor Lofgren fights for sustainable sushi

by Ask Umbra.

Send your question to Umbra!

Q. Dear Umbra,

Generally speaking, sustainability advocates seem to be a serious crowd. Have you got any jokes or one-liners that can bring some levity to our work? Especially ones related to recycling? Robert D. Jefferson City, Mo.

A. Dearest Robert,

Have you heard the one about the aluminum recycling plant? It smelt.

Have you heard the one about the recycling bin with a sign that said, "Empty water bottles here"? Pretty soon the bin was full of water.

Know why environmentalists are bad at playing poker? They avoid the flush.

Chortle, chortle, chortle. Robert, you have touched upon a serious gap in our cultural lives, and I'm hoping your fellow readers will weigh in with some good jokes to keep our spirits up. To be honest, we at Grist have struggled with this since our founder got the oh-so-brilliant idea to launch an environmental news site infused with humor in 1999. Because it turns out "environmental humor" is not that funny, at least in the form of the classic jokes and one-liners. Please do not tell our auditors.

Others have found this a tricky topic, too. Bill Maher, for instance, once said the environment is "one of the hardest subjects to do in comedy." British comedian Marcus Brigstocke has called climate change "far and away the most difficult comedy subject I've ever dealt with." Some will be eager to blame this on the perceived earnestness of the movement and its members -- but shouldn't that make it all the funnier?

Back to our quest for one-liners. A few chestnuts from stand-up comedians might elicit a titter, depending how free you are with your titters: George Carlin remarked of national-park camping reservations that "when you have to wait a year to sleep next to a tree, something is wrong." Robin Williams compared clean coal to "wearing a porous condom -- at least the intention was there." Stephen Wright eschewed cars with his typically profound observation that "everything is within walking distance if you have the time." And Sam Levenson offered this take on overpopulation: "Somewhere on this globe, every 10 seconds, there is a woman giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped."

If late-night TV is your thing, you will find plenty of lukewarm climate gags in the collected works of Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, and Jimmy Fallon. Here is a compendium of somewhat dated examples. My favorite (and I use the term loosely): "According to a new U.N. report, the global warming outlook is much worse than originally predicted. Which is pretty bad when they originally predicted it would destroy the planet."

If you lean more toward literature, you might like this Mark Twain musing: "Learn to ride a bicycle. You will not regret it if you live." Or how about some Ogden Nash? There's this classic: "I think that I shall never see/A billboard lovely as a tree./Indeed, unless the billboards fall,/I'll never see a tree at all." And the produce-averse "Further Reflections on Parsley": "Parsley/Is gharsely" (yes, that's the entire poem). And "The Purist," which unintentionally offers a wee bit of insight into why scientists have a hard time speaking passionately about climate change:

I give you now Professor Twist, A conscientious scientist ...Camped on a tropic riverside, One day he missed his loving bride. She had, the guide informed him later, Been eaten by an alligator. Professor Twist could not but smile. "You mean," he said, "a crocodile."

I would also point you to The Onion, which offers some of the most incisive environmental humor around. (A couple of classics: Consumer product diversity now exceeds biodiversity and Suburban recycling program now accepting broken and discarded dreams .)

And needless to say, our very own Grist List is an insanely wonderful source of good guffaws, each and every day.

I encourage you to keep your quest alive, with the warning that your average "environmental joke" search on the interweb will give you scintillating results such as this: "Your so hot you must've started all of globle warming." Sic.

Finally, because I care, Robert, I have come up with an Umbra Original: A recycling joke just for you. Are you ready?

"What's the worst way for glass to get around town?  By downcycling."

You may now toss rotten tomatoes in my general direction. Or leave a better joke below in comments.

Yukkily,Umbra

Related Links:

The most bare-chested grocery-bag video you’ll watch today

The Onion warns that global warming could be irreversible within negative five years

Wasting energy = blue balls, apparently

by Lionel Foster.

Forty-four years after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot dead while supporting sanitation workers in Memphis, his legacy is indisputable. Because of the way he mobilized the poor and the powerful, state-sponsored racial discrimination, a prominent factor in American life for nearly 200 years, is no more. As a result, it’s now hard to imagine a position of prominence in this country, including the presidency, that an African American could not obtain.

But Dr. King’s work is not complete. Today, we face continued attempts at voter suppression, attacks on collective bargaining rights, income inequality, a racially inflected discussion of illegal immigration, and one of the last great bastions of state-sponsored discrimination: the denial of marriage and other rights on the basis of sexual orientation. If Dr. King were alive today, I believe he would speak out about these issues. I believe, too, that in this era of globalization, he would talk about climate change, the North/South divide, and our moral duty to preserve the natural resources that are fundamental to human wellbeing.

Dr. King would be an environmentalist, but I think he would talk about the natural and man-made worlds in a way that resonates with everyone, especially the poor. Let me explain.

I spent most of my childhood on the eastside of Baltimore, part of a black family living paycheck to paycheck in the shadow of one of the world’s great medical research institutions, Johns Hopkins Hospital. Unfortunately, the health and prosperity of Hopkins rarely spilled over into the surrounding community. On our side of the invisible line, urban decay and drug-related crime defined the landscape. Three out of every ten houses in my neighborhood were vacant.

These two very different communities viewed each other warily. I attended Johns Hopkins University on scholarship as an undergrad, worked part-time as an office assistant in the department of anesthesiology and critical care medicine, and was there when a division chief within the department was robbed and assaulted on his way home. I can’t remember speaking to anyone else in that office who lived within the city limits, let alone near the hospital, and I think that attack reinforced the idea that Hopkins was by necessity a fortress, a place apart.

The fear ran both ways. My grandmother summed up many residents’ concerns about the hospital down the street. “I have friends who go into Hopkins,” she once told me, “but they don’t come out.” There was a lot to this statement. For people with little or no access to healthcare, an acute illness left untreated for years can become chronic and eventually irreversible. Add this to glaring disparities in wealth and cultural barriers, and it becomes plausible for a 70-year-old woman from the segregated South to believe that white men in lab coats might kill her if they had the chance.

After years of trying to solve the problem of the surrounding community, the hospital settled on a solution: They tore much of it down. Hopkins and the City of Baltimore formed a partnership called East Baltimore Development Inc., used eminent domain to relocate my grandmother and hundreds of other families, and cleared 88 acres to make room for a biotechnology park.

What does all this have to do with the environment? In 2006, when a local magazine asked me and a pair of artists to fill two pages of a special issue with anything we wanted, the story of my troubled neighborhood was on my mind. Why was the city so racially divided, we asked, and was there anything we could do about it? Our attempt to answer that question became a small environmental campaign called Black + White = Green. The idea was that even though the most outspoken proponents of environmentalism were white and the victims of environmental degradation were disproportionately black and brown, the environment could give us lots of common ground, especially if we expanded its definition to include the material and non-material factors that shape life everywhere, from untouched mountain tops to the streets of inner cities.

I don’t think any of us had much experience working on environmental issues, so we embarked on this project with no knowledge of people who were already doing what we had in mind in much bigger and better ways. There’s Will Allen, a Milwaukee-based MacArthur Foundation “genius” award winner who’s turning young people into urban farmers; former Obama administration green jobs advisor Van Jones, connecting environmentalism to community development and economic opportunity; and Majora Carter, another MacArthur “genius,” busy greening New York’s South Bronx.

Tactically and philosophically, these are some of the descendants of Dr. King. As if reading from King’s playbook, Jones in particular has made a point of empowering young people; fighting for economic opportunity; using collective action; helping those who might otherwise be written off as powerless turn their hands and feet into assets; and paying close attention to the way America thinks and talks about itself. In his latest project, cslled Rebuild the Dream, Jones is encouraging environmentalists, community activists, and average citizens to demand economic fairness. His timing was perfect. Rebuild the Dream was up and running as the Occupy movement kicked into full gear, and it soon became clear that Jones, the urban environmentalist, already spoke the demonstrators’ language.

Last October, when occupiers were making news daily, I attended a forum in Washington, D.C. A new monument to King had been erected in the National Mall and civil rights veterans gathered to remember King and his work. The speakers repeatedly drew connections between their departed friend’s push for economic equality and the Occupy movement. The parallels were striking.

King spent his last months organizing a Poor People’s Campaign that, just weeks after his death, saw the erection of a settlement in the capital full of people demanding an end to poverty. It’s impact was small. King was killed before the march took off on Mother’s Day 1968, the assassination of Robert Kennedy dampened spirits during the encampment’s third week, and in mid-June the Department of the Interior forced the demonstrators to leave after their permit expired.

Dr. King has now been dead for several more years than he ever spent walking, teaching, and preaching, but lots of people of different colors and backgrounds are still looking for a way forward. Now, as then, progress in some areas is still elusive, but the events of the past year show that thousands are willing to work for change.

Forty-four years after his death, Occupy, people like Van Jones, and the resonance with which King’s voice still reverberates through current events, all suggest that a movement that can unite people who care about patches of soil with those who know how cold and unforgiving a swath of concrete can be, could bring us that much closer to something that looks like justice.

Related Links:

How India is winning the future with solar energy

Guerilla Grafters make ornamental plants bear fruit

Here’s a parking garage that doubles as an urban farm

This is the email response readers are getting when they complain to Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Editor George Stanley:

We didn't change any headline due to pressure from any politician and we never would. That is the product of a blogger's imagination. It's no different than the stories cooked up by conservative talk radio hosts who say we slant the news to get Barrett elected. 

The jobs numbers ARE controversial right now. We're going to continue to dig out why. If these have been reasonably reliable indicators in the past, why not now? We're told that while the BLS survey does a decent job at the national level, there aren't enough collection sites at the state level to be accurate. That may be due to federal budget cuts in recent years -- we're trying to find out.

Stay tuned.

-George Stanley

Wow.  It sure is unusual that the Journal-Sentinel just suddenly and by their own volition decided to explore the validitly of the BLS monthly jobs survey-- just two weeks before the first recall election in Wisconsin history. The same jobs report that they've been reporting on for the last 30+ years without the slightest interest in their validity. The same one that had no problem touting when it showed Wisconsin gaining jobs under Walker and losing jobs under Doyle. 

Here's the bottomline, George:  There is no evidence that BLS jobs survey has ever been significantly different than the actual jobs numbers.  Ever.  Further, if you're going to report on Walker's more-favorable sandbox numbers, then let your readers know that even using those numbers, Wisconsin is still dead last job growth.

Today the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel demonstrated who is really in charge of the paper:  Scott Walker.

Initially, after the jobs report, they put up an article that had a headline and first paragraph that followed the same format as all of their other monthly BLS job report articles that they have been running for the last 30+ years:

State loses 6,200 private sector jobs in April

Wisconsin lost an estimated 6,200 private-sector jobs in April, according to preliminary data released Thursday by the state Department of Workforce Development.

Then, Scott Walker and Co. got their claws inton someone at the paper and the article suddenly changed to:

Controversial Survey Shows Estimated April Job Losses of 6,200

At a time when Wisconsin's jobs statistics are under scrutiny as never before, preliminary data released Thursday showed that Wisconsin lost an estimated 6,200 private-sector jobs in April.

Because of the intense pressure of this change, the paper compromised and changed "controversial" to "disputed." 

Sarcastic applause, please.

This is the first time in not only Wisconsin history, but national history, that the BLS monthly jobs report has been reported in a headline that contained "disputed" or "controversial." 

Please contact the Journal Sentinel and ask them to report the BLS jobs report the same way they've done the last 30+ years.

Evolution of a headline in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story saying the state Department of Workforce Development released the preliminary monthly figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, showing Wisconsin lost 6,200 private sector jobs in April.

Original headline: State loses an estimated 6,200 private sector jobs in April

Second version: Controversial survey shows estimated April job loss of 6,200

Third version: Disputed survey shows estimated April job loss of 6,200

This is the same report Scott Walker has bragged about in the past, when the numbers looked good for Wisconsin.  Now he is disputing them and announced his own numbers, showing Wisconsin was gaining, rather than losing jobs, since he took office.

The other 49 states in the union aren't disputing them,and they are not "questionable" anywhere else but in Wisconsin, where Scott Walker is scrambling to save his own job in a recall election three weeks from now.