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Search results for Austin Hill
DarkGreenPC seeks to save the environment one screensaver at a time
May 30th
Using spare computing cycles to search for extra terrestrial life is so passé. DarkGreenPC thinks you can put those cycles to better use by powering down. The initiative falls under the umbrella of Zerofootprint, the non-profit which funds tree-planting and other programs on behalf of Al Gore and others who want to negative the adverse impact of their activities on the environment — and perhaps ease their guilty conscience at the same time.
The projects proponents claim that just by powering down all the world’s computers, enough energy would be saved to power the entire Czech Republic. (Granted, their math is dubious, since the entire world does not leave their computers on 24 hours per day, but I digress.)
See the video below where Ron Dembo and Austin Hill talk about the project.
Tags: DarkGreenPC, Zerofootprint, Austin Hill, Ron Dembo, Al Gore, SETI@Home.
BumpTop woos DemoCamp Montreal crowd
Mar 31st
This post was originally going to be a round up of this past Thursday’s DemoCamp Montreal, but others beat me to it, so I decided instead to focus on one presentation in particular.
[For those of you who don't know, DemoCamp is an informal gathering of people who have interesting technology or products to showcase and which have not yet reached the mainstream. Of course some of them never will, but part of the fun is getting to see things that are still "raw" before they either make it or sink into oblivion.
Kudos go to Austin Hill for helping organize this event and for the significant increase in the quality of the presentations this event (not to mention for throwing a cool party, which he's always excelled at).]
By far the most impressive presentation of the night was BumpTop from UofT Master’s student Anand Agarawala. BumpTop is a user interface which renders your PC’s workspace as 3-D desktop where you can push, throw, flip, pile and even crumple documents, just as you would in the physical world. Here’s a demo.
Different people have different ways of organizing their workspace. Some people a virtually naked desk with everything neatly labelled and stored away in alphabetically sorted folders. I, on the other hand, have a somewhat more cluttered desk and work area (at times refered to by epithets such as messy or disorganized). There’s no right or wrong organizational system, just different ones for different people.
A BumpTop desktop would let me organize my computer the way I think and work, rather than the other way around. Judging from the reaction from the audience – which burst into spontaneous applause at several points in the presentation – I’m not alone.
Blogging for a good cause
Dec 22nd
My friends Austin Hill and Alex Eberts have launched Gifter.org, an experiment in social giving. Visitors to the site can either make a wish, or sponsor one. To sponsor a wish, you simply donate an amount of your choosing to a charity of your choice — what can be simpler? Each dollar you donate sponsors one wish.
The goal is to raise a million dollars for charity. After trying to figure out the site’s business model (there isn’t one) or the future business model of Austin and Alex’s Project Ojibwe, I realized I was missing the point. Who cares? They’re encouraging people to give to charity, and that’s good enough for me.
So here’s my receipt. $500 for Seeds of Peace. The organization runs a camp in Maine which brings together teenagers from conflict regions and equips them with leadership skills to promote reconciliation and coexistence. After graduating from the camp, alumni continue to contribute towards advancing these goals in their respective communities.
A recent trip to Israel and Egypt reinforced my belief that a lasting, durable peace (however difficult or far off it may seem under the current circumstances) cannot be achieved by politicians alone but also needs to involve grassroots links between everyday citizens of different countries. Think of it as crowdsourcing for a good cause.
Please take a few moments to visit Gifter.org to either sponsor or make a wish. Happy holidays, everyone, and see you in 2007.
Updated: As a Canadian, I can’t benefit from the tax deductibility of this donation, but that’s tempered by the fact that board member David Avital has offered to match any donations received by December 31st of this year.
