The PF HYPER Blog

NetRoots MN: The Blogasota Session with @RobinMarty

2009-11-21T09:41:00.002-06:00

We are discussing the nuts and bolts of blogging with Robin Marty. Some high-powered bloggers in attendance. Shaping up to be a great discussion! We are currently talking about how to make money with your blog.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

MPR on U of M and the increasing transfer population (mostly community colleges)

2009-11-13T10:31:00.001-06:00

via minnesota.publicradio.org

Interesting article by Tim Post (@posttim) looking at the increasing population of mostly community college transfer students. The cost of tuition is a prime reason for starting at a two-year college.

The article leaves me with several unanswered questions. Community college officials state their students do as well or better than students who do all four years at the U of MN but offer no evidence.

The U of MN has survey evidence that transfer students are less satisfied with their experience than students who start as freshmen. A national survey (National Survey on Student Engagement) finds that transfer students take part in fewer campus activities.

We need student ages to understand this better. What's the median and average age of the transfer students? If they are older -- say past 25 -- it would make sense that they might feel a bit out of it and this would make them less satisfied. I would also guess that many of these students are holding down jobs and going to school part-time which does not help in integrating them in campus life.

But really, I shouldn't have to guess. The U of MN should do the research and share it. This would make a great longitudinal study (and probably should have been started a few years ago).

Posted via web from Peter's posterous

Why I voted "No" on Minneapolis Charter Amendment #168

2009-11-03T10:51:00.001-06:00

Here's what the amendment reads:

Should the City of Minneapolis adopt a change in its charter to the composition of the Board of Estimate and Taxation so that the Board's membership consists of the members of the City Council, with the actions of the Board subject to the powers and duties of the Mayor?

Here's what Green Council Member Cam Gordon says:

As we begin the constructive discussion next year about how to improve the ways that the City Council works with the Park Board, we should do so with the BET in place and ready to be reformed and more fully utilized to help make our City government more responsive, accountable, transparent and fiscally prudent.

That pretty much sums up my own take on the amendment and BET.

I certainly agree with much of what Aaron Landry says about the BET including:

I strongly favor having our elected City Council be held responsible and accountable for these things, like almost every other major city in the country.

But I think we need to have more discussion on how to reform the process and not just jump off the current horse. While I don't think voting "yes" will spell the end of the independent Park Board, I do think BET is one of the very few places (maybe the only place) that the Park Board and City Council sit down together and talk.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Fluid for Wave: Instructions on building an app

2009-11-01T13:03:00.001-06:00

I use a Fluid app to engage with Google Wave. The TC Wave has links to how to do this but the TC Wave is becoming harder and harder to navigate and find things. So here's the blog post with links to how to integrate Fluid and Wave and Growl.

Download Fluid then drop by Guillermo Rauch's devthought blog for how to create the app (plus a link to a very nice Wave icon to use for your Fluid app). Then if you're interested in Growl notifications when new messages arrive at your waves, install Growl and then add this script to your Fluid app. (Guillermo's page describes how to install a script in a Fluid app.) Growl notifications only work when your Fluid Wave app is open.

I'm happy with the Fluid Wave app performance and I've had no serious problems. It can be slow but no slower than Firefox (3.0.15). I have heard Chrome is snappier but I don't think Google has released an official Mac OS X Chrome yet.

Please add any useful links about Fluid, Growl, Wave etc.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Jon Stewart on The Daily Show: From Here to Neutrality. Why we need that neutral Net & a look at the some of the silly arguments against neutrality.

2009-10-28T19:37:00.001-05:00

via thedailyshow.com

Jon Stewart nails why we need Net Neutrality and pokes fun at Pony Express McCain.

Posted via web from Peter's posterous

Followup to the kitty video posting: What happens with video at Posterous?

2009-10-25T14:58:00.001-05:00

Here is what happened when I emailed out my last Posterous kitty post with an attached .m4v video.

It took forever for Posterous to process the video. It took so long—from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.—that I started thinking it just didn't support m4v format. But Posterous handles the situation well and doesn't send out status or blog updates until the processing is done. For anyone that found the video (and "still processing" message) at my Posterous account, it did allow viewing.

Results from my Connected Services

YouTube and Flickr: Posterous processed the video and sent it along, adding it to my accounts.

Tumblr and my PF Hyper Blog: No embedded player. Provides link to download or to view on Posterous. Includes text of my Posterous blog post. I went back to both Tumblr and my blog and added the Youtube embed code.

Facebook: Status update with the embedded video. Includes start of the Posterous blog post and a link back to Posterous to finish reading the post.

When I checked the video in Flickr, I found that a group of tags had been added: cleaning, stretching, cats, cat, licking, cleansing, and lick. I hadn't tagged anything myself and some of the tags were not from my blog post. Checking my Flickr Recent Activity, I found the footprints of that infamous cat and pizza lover, s4xton. Thanks Aaron.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Kitty Chronicles: The Cleansing (video)

2009-10-25T13:55:00.000-05:00

Two reasons for this post.

General cuteness in sharing our new kitties' life with you.
Testing video uploads to Posterous. I haven't done this before.

The video should get bundled up and sent to YouTube with an embedded player in Posterous. (Wonder if the video will also go to Flickr.)

The video was taken with my Canon SD850. I saved as a desktop video for the web out of Quicktime to get it smaller. Quality did not seem to suffer very much. It's still hit-or-miss with this video stuff for me.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Two new kitties at our place. First look.

2009-10-24T12:06:00.001-05:00

As some of you know, last year, our cat Marlmalade died. That made us catless after some 35 years and at least seven cats.

Marmalade

Last week, we saw a post in the Seward Community Forum that two kitties needed a good home. We tried to talk our nephew and his wife into becoming cat people with these kitties but they decided they weren't ready yet. So we finally decided to enlarge our family again and invited the kitties to our place.

Here's a first look and I'll have more pictures (and video) up soon.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

First thoughts on my Wave World adventure

2009-10-15T13:05:00.001-05:00

Somewhat random notes from my first visit to Google Wave.

"A wave is a hosted conversation." (from the Google Wave in Action video) Ah ha. That's a good description. A wave is also boring when you're all alone.

Video says you can drag and drop from iPhoto but neglects to mention that you have to install Gears. Wonder if I can do that directly from Flickr.

Installing Gears.

With Gears installed, I can drag photos from desktop or from iPhoto. I was not able to drag an image from a web page however. Very nice and Waves gives a full-screen display when you click the thumbnail.

SHIFT-ENTER closes or opens "blips" which are the things waves are made of.

Double-click a blip to reply/edit that blip.

You can edit someone else's blip as they are editing it. There was some highlighting indicating the other editor at one point but it went away. There doesn't seem a way to identify who typed what if you are in the same blip.

Easy to get lost in a Wave if you are replying to previous blips or editing old ones. Is there a way to manage or sort? Ah ha. Playback mode goes through the wave in chronological order and indicates edits with yellow highlights.

I'm using Firefox 3.0x. Friend using Safari. Compatibility seems fine.

When you mute a wave you can see it by choosing All from navigation pane. To "unmute," select wave and click the inbox tab.

Finding waves with a particular contact: The search box for the inbox area is not useful unless you know the wave email address. It won't give you a hit off the name (unless I'm missing the query term for it). So you would have to look for "pfhyper" for me and not "Peter". You can search on "Peter" from the contact search and the pop-up will reveal recent waves. (Checking Wave help and they mention you can't actually search on names yet.)

The Google Wave overview video is telling me I can link waves and publish them to my blog. Do you have to use blogger for that? Ah, you need a gadget or robot or something. Wavety.com has a list of robots and gadgets.

I finally found the Tweety robot (made by the Wave team) and installed it. Tweety will display your Twitter stream in Wave and allows you to tweet from Wave. Or at least it will do that when they finish with it. Right now, it will grab your current twitter stream but then not continue updating and you can't post to Twitter.

Check the Wave help forums if you are trying to get gadgets, robots, extensions to work. That's where I found out that Tweety is broken for now. When they get it ready to go, it will be put in the Extension Gallery located in the "Welcome to Google Wave" wave.

For the record, this is how you install the Tweety robot. The instructions may be useful for other robots and gadgets.

Add tweety-wave@appspot.com to your contacts.
Start a new wave.
Drag the tweety contact to the contact area above above the new wave.

That's all from my first Wave adventure. If you're on Wave, you can connect to me at pfhyper@googlewave.com.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Is Michael Pollan anti-agriculture? Agriculture critic's appearance angers university alumni (via @KTAndrea)

2009-10-15T08:15:00.001-05:00

via latimes.com

Although "agriculture" often means big farm enterprises, it can also simply mean "the practice of cultivating the land or raising stock." I don't think Mr. Pollan objects to that. For him, it's all in the means whereas for Big Ag, it's often more about the ends especially getting the animals to market really fast and increasing profits.

Posted via web from Peter's posterous

Support rural America! Call a sex chat line today! (AT&T, Google Voice, & Net Neutrality)

2009-10-15T07:56:00.001-05:00

Google Voice blocks calls to certain rural areas because of outdated regulations that require the big phone companies to pay access charges to the rural companies when calls are completed in the rural company's phone network. The original idea behind this regulation was to help in sustaining rural phone networks that may not have enough subscribers locally to pay for all their costs. AT&T, Verizon and the rest of the big telcos have no choice about paying these fees. At the moment, Google Voice does have that choice. AT&T is not happy about that and has raised a bogus charge of Google violating net neutrality.

It gets juicier. Some rural carriers figured out a lucrative business getting "popular" chat lines to use their local numbers. Each call that (mostly) men made to the (mostly) women at the chat service resulted in AT&T (Verizon, etc.) paying the access fees. This amounted to a lot of money. Enough money that the rural carrier chould just give the number to the chat service and in some cases kick back some of the wealth. In their defense, the rural carriers point to stimulating local economies, providing local jobs, and American entrepreneurial spirit. (I made up the part about "entrepreneurial spirit." The local jobs would come from potential chat lines and tech help centers located in the rural area.)

Google's Richard Whitt says it best at the Google Public Policy Blog: "This issue has nothing to do with network neutrality or rural America. This is about outdated carrier compensation rules that are fundamentally broken and in need of repair by the FCC."

Read Matthew Lasar's article, Is AT&T targeting Google Voice to stop "traffic pumping"?, over at ars technica for the deets.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Backyard Snow Photos

2009-10-13T14:22:00.001-05:00

See the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from We want your snow pictures!

Backing up is hard to do: A quick look at my OS X data backup plan

2009-10-13T08:59:00.001-05:00

Backing up is hard to do. OS X Time Machine makes it lots easier if you have a dedicated drive connected up to your Mac. But my main machine is a MacBook and I don't have a single workspace in the home where I can leave a hard drive ready to connect. I move around. Also not ready to spend the funds on any wireless backing up.

Second best (for me) is to turn Time Machine off and use on demand. I enable the TM status in my menu for this. Then connect the backup hard drive and choose "Back Up Now" from the menu. I try to do this every evening.

I just bought a 750GB Western Digital My Book drive from Amazon (+-$100). The My Book includes Firewier 400 ports along with USB 2.0 and I need the FW for compatibility with some older computers (an Apple Cube for one). Not crazy about the look and feel of the My Book and sometimes it won't mount immediately which I think has to do with its sleep mode. But I think it will do for the immediate future.

Time Machine is wonderful and restorable if your drive goes bad. It also keeps around old versions of files until you fill up your backup space. For that reason I backup my 150GB drive to a 230GB drive. TM will delete the oldest backup when the drive is full. You can also have it warn you before it deletes.

TM backups aren't bootable. If something goes wrong, you have to restore the backup. I want something bootable so if something goes wrong, I can reboot off the backup drive. SuperDuper ($27.95) accomplishes this and is very fast after the first full backup. It's been upgraded for Snow Leopard. I keep my Super Duper backup on a partition of the 750GB drive. It will only "grow" as big as the internal.

I use to use Carbon Copy Cloner by Mike Bombich and free. I switched to Super Duper because CCC was very slow even when only backing up changed files. I just visited Mr. Bombich's site and I'm curious if he's enhanced performance in the latest version. The site itself is much slicker than before and the ad blurbs make CCC sound pretty slick. I think I'll have to test it out.

There is an excellent user-generated Time Machine FAQ over at the Apple Discussion boards. For one thing, it explained clearly how to move my old Time Machine backup from one disk to another under Leopard (Snow Leopard lets you simply drag-and-drop.)

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Update on Seward Co-op Annual Meeting

2009-10-07T16:08:00.001-05:00

It was a tight election race for the Seward board of directors on Tuesday evening. Alas, I was short by some number of votes and won't be at the table in the next year. Thanks to all who voted for me. There's always next year.

Incumbents ruled with current board chair David Hoffman-Dachelet and Miriam Holsinger getting reelected. The third spot went to Seward employee Allison Meyer. (Allison served as the employee director this past year but ran at-large this year.) Greg Gustafson is the new employee director. Check the announcement here.

Some notes on the Co-op's health...

We have grown from 4,700 members to 6,300 members since January and continue to grow at the rate of 100 members per month
We have 50% growth in sales since January with 34.8% of our sales from local food
We created 55 new jobs for a total of 175 employees

The food at the meeting was excellent as usual including wonderful dessert treats at the table and a personal chocolate bar from Equal Exchange Chocolates. Adam Wozniak's band provided some great jazz music as we dined. (Find Adam on Facebook and MySpace.)

So become a member of the Co-op and you can join us for dinner next year (and vote for me!). It's a one-time $75 payment.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Unsummit: Pete & Jeff Talk Net Neutrality & Censorship

2009-10-05T14:58:00.001-05:00

Jeff Pesek and I are facilitating the Net Neutrality discussion at the Unsummit (@unsummit) at Minneapolis Central Library on Saturday, Oct. 10. We're scheduled for 10:40 in the Pohlad Room.

I'm working on the description of our session for posting to the Unsummit site. Here's what I have so far.

Net Neutrality & Censorship

Net neutrality has become a big deal since FCC Chair Julius Genachowski spoke in favor of it last month. How would net neutrality hurt or help the Internets as we know them? Will it be the end of innovation and the free net markets? Will a non-neutral net allow AT&T to spoon feed us "approved" data and censor what they don't like? Will a neutral net allow Google to dominate the world?

What the heck is "net neutrality" anyway?

Join us in a lively (and respectful) discussion on neutrality and whether it will help or hinder the Net.

Comments? Wonder if I can do the link to Genachowski's speech.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Join Mary and I at the Seward Co-op Annual Meeting for an awesome dinner (and consider voting for pfhyper!)

2009-10-02T14:49:00.001-05:00

You do need to be a member. Cost is $75 and it lasts a lifetime. The dinner is truly awesome and costs $5 (with tix in advance, $15 day of the meeting). It will be held next Tuesday, October 6, from 6-8 p.m. at Augsburg College, 720 22nd Ave., Christensen Center Commons, 3rd Floor.

After you become a member, you get to vote in some new board directors. I'm a former board director and I'm running for a spot this year. Read my candidate statement below and please consider voting for me.

You can download a PDF with all the candidate statements at the Seward Co-op web site. You need to bring your ballots to the store by noon on October 6. (You can also vote at the meeting itself until 6:30 p.m.)

Peter's Candidate Statement

Describe your experience with cooperatives. My wife and I have been members and employees of Seward Co-op, and we have lived in Seward Neighborhood for 30 years. I am a former editor and publisher of the co-op’s earlier newsletter, “Whole Wheat News.” I served on Seward Co-op’s board of directors in the ’90s and helped plan for the last new store on west Franklin Avenue. We have shopped almost exclusively at Seward for 30 years. We were also active in Seward Cooperative Daycare when we were raising our daughter.
Summarize your business experience. I have many years of business experience both in running my own successful computer consulting business (PF Hyper, based in Seward Neighborhood) and in sitting on the co-op’s board of directors during the last expansion to a new store. I have tracked budgets, allocated resources and planned major projects.
What do you believe are the primary challenges facing the co-op today, and how can you help Seward Co-op to meet those challenges? I believe the primary challenge facing the co-op and all small businesses today is a national—and global—economy in disarray. As the problems with mortgages and foreclosures play out over the next few years, the co-op must budget its resources carefully and watch for trends and falling profits. The board must stay vigilant as to how this is affecting our sales and the bottom line. I believe education is a key component in keeping our current members shopping at the co-op and in securing new members. The co-op currently does an excellent job with education and should continue this progress. We should look for ways to reach out beyond current membership and start conversations about sustainable agriculture, organics, and cooperative economics. We should also expand this discussion to the health care issue, as good nutrition is intrinsically linked to good health. The Internet is an excellent tool for education, and I have experience both with web develop- ment and social networking. Finally, we need to support the community we live in. Seward Co-op is already doing this well with the Seward Co-op Community Fund, the Eat Local initiative, and donations to the Groveland Food Shelf among other efforts. These efforts should be continued and expanded during this current economic downturn to even better meet our mission of sustaining a healthy community.
Why do you want to serve on Seward Co-op’s Board of Directors? Simply put, as a longtime Seward resident—including raising my daughter here and now shopping at the co-op with my three grandsons—I have a very personal interest in Seward Co-op continuing as a strong and viable busi- ness. I think I have skills and ideas that will help in this process.
How could the co-op better serve its members? The best way for the co-op to serve its members is to stay healthy and in- crease efficiencies to provide our food at competitive prices. A healthy and committed board will greatly aid in this effort. I would like to be a member of that board.

Thanks!

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Minneapolis Unwired: Test the Wi-Fi System for Free!

2009-10-01T20:15:00.002-05:00

First some background: Minneapolis is blessed with a municipal Wi-Fi network owned and operated by US Internet's (USI) USI Wireless (USIW) group. The City is the anchor tenant on the network. Businesses and residents of Minneapolis can purchase accounts and it's arguably the cheapest way to get broadband in Minneapolis. (It does give us a third choice for broadband which is one more than most cities.) Because of all the blogging I've done about the system, I'm often asked what I think of the service.

You don't have to ask me; you can check it out for yourself. As part of the community benefits in the Minneapolis-USI contract, USI has paid for a "Civic Garden." The Garden consists of community and City of Minneapolis sites. You can access the Wi-Fi network via the Civic Garden for free and browse. If access speeds are satisfactory, they should only get better once you have the USIW Ruckus modem which boosts the signal. Let's go through how you can access and test the system.

Find the access point. On the Mac, you can pop down a menu that shows all the wireless access points in range (see picture). On the PC, you can open a window that shows you the same. (Sorry, I'm a Mac guy so I don't have a PC picture.) The SSID or identifying name will be "USI Wireless," "City of Minneapolis Public Wi-Fi," or "Welcome to Minneapolis." (That last one is rare but I've seen it.) Once you see it, connect to that network and open your browser.

Wi-Fi Menu on the Mac
Your browser will open to the USIW terms of service. Read them and accept. (If you don't accept, that will be the end of your testing.)
Once you have accepted the agreements, you are at the Civic Garden.
You can browse a variety of community sites or use the "Get City of Minneapolis News" link to access the City's site.

If you are unable to even see the USIW network in your home (stucco homes are very problematic), try access from outdoors, even walking up and down the block. You can see the USIW antennas on electric poles—some look like kegs and others are flat panels. (The picture at the top of my blog is the keg style.) If you get access outside, inside access may be acceptable once you buy or lease one of the booster (Ruckus) devices from USIW. If there is no access inside or outside, let USIW know and see if they can do anything. Your mileage will vary. There are problem ("challenge") areas in the City where you just can't get a signal.

Ordering Wi-Fi

USIW now sends a technician installer person out for every install whether you think they need to come to your house or not. They charge $25 for this. I've heard there is currently a wait period of a week or so.

I'm not a USIW subscriber (yet). I do get a good signal where I live without any special antennas or devices to boost reception.

Wi-Fi Issues

The Wi-Fi spectrum is subject to all kinds of interference including microwave ovens, cordless phones, and other Wi-Fi access points. Trees with leaves will also cause interference so your reception will usually be better during our Minnesota winters. Sometimes your signal just goes away or gets so weak as to resemble the old days of the dial-up modems.

Good luck. I hope these instructions are clear and if they aren't, please let me know how I can improve them. Also I'd like to know your experiences if you test the system and whether or not you decide to subscribe to USIW.

Minneapois Unwired: Updated Community Benefits Status

2009-09-19T18:00:00.003-05:00

I recently posted on the status of community benefits included in the City of Minneapolis contract with US Internet (Minneapolis Unwired: Status of Our Community Benefits). Since then, the Minneapolis Digital Inclusion Fund Advisory Committee (DIFAC) has met and the City and US Internet provided further updates and answered some of my questions. (I'm a member of the Committee.)

I want to be clear that our committee is solely involved with the Digital Inclusion Fund and in making grants to nonprofits. We are not a regulatory group in relation to all the community benefits.

Bold/Italic indicates statements (slightly edited) from my previous post. I use US Internet and USIW interchangeably.

USIW is required to provide monthly payments of five percent (5%) of their "Pre-tax Income from the operation of the Network within the City." DIFAC has not seen any of that money yet and I haven't heard when payments are supposed to begin.

The payments will be yearly and the contract will be amended to reflect that. The logistics of monthly payments with the City verifying USIW's financials would be a nightmare. (USIW is privately held so financial information is not public.) The donation will be based on net income. There was no profit thus no net income in the past year (their fiscal year ends April 30) mainly because the network did not get built out as quickly as hoped and subscriber counts aren't as great as projected. If all goes well, USIW should have a donation for DIFAC this current year in the third quarter of 2010. (After the close of the fiscal year USIW will have an outside review and then forward financial statements to the City for confirmation.)

USIW is still building out around the lakes ("challenge areas") and expect an influx of subscribers once they are finished. USIW announced at the meeting that they were just finishing implementation in Prospect Park. That area should be "unwired" as of this writing.

USIW "will offer free 1 megabit broadband Internet access service in public locations (Parks, Plazas) defined by City up to a maximum of five percent (5%) of the geographic area throughout the City."

There is not yet any free access but the City wants to move forward on this soon. The plan is to convene an ad hoc committee to make recommendations as to best location for the free areas. I'm sure parks and plazas will be in the mix and I would like to see major entertainment areas: Uptown, downtown, parts of Northeast, and maybe around the downtown riverfront. Another site I believe ripe for free Wi-Fi is City Hall itself.

USIW is also supposed to sponsor an annual DIF fundraising event.

USIW is planning a fundraiser. We are hopeful that something will be in place soon.

USIW is supposed to be seeking "additional contributions and/or matching funds from community businesses, foundations and charities to increase the amount available in the DIF."

No report on any activity.

USIW is supposed to conduct community meetings twice per year around the City "to ensure continued encouragement and support for the inclusion into the digital age of the maximum number of citizens, households and businesses in the City."

No report on any activity.

(end update)

I'm very glad to have the updates on community benefits and I feel we are moving forward (albeit more slowly than some of us might like to see). I think I can speak for all of our committee in saying that we really would have liked to see a contribution from USIW to the fund in time for another round of grants this fall. We do have $100,000 and the plan right now is to keep that money, possibly until fall, 2010, when we expect the next contribution from USIW.

In the meantime, we are working on governance issues for the DIFAC including length of member terms and replacing members who have left. We may be recruiting new members by early 2010. Watch my blog for announcements.

Other items at this meeting included information on the City of Minneapolis application for federal stimulus funds. One project would provide broadband to 41 public housing high rises and the other would involve training users on how to use the Internet. The broadband system would use a rooftop antenna system to connect to the USIW wireless system and then provide wired connections to high rise residents. I'm trying to get more information for a future blog post (like what's the bandwidth and what's the cost to users).

We also discussed the creation of a long-term group or committee to steer the City on technology issues and digital inclusion and to oversee the community benefits. This could be part of the Neighborhood and Community Engagement Commission or a separate group and possibly even ad hoc and formed as needed with members chosen with expertise to address specific issues.

The next DIFAC meeting will be in early December.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Hearing tonight: Should we block the Greenway with an LRT station?

2009-09-17T07:35:00.001-05:00

[This is from the Midtown Greenway Coalition September E-News. An LRT station disrupting the Greenway does not seem sensible to me and it costs more. Find out more at the Midtown Greenway site.]

There is much hullabaloo about the route that the proposed Southwest Light Rail Transit (LRT) line will take through Minneapolis, and the outcomes have enormous impact on the Midtown Greenway.

Your voice is needed at:

A Public Hearing on SW LRT
September 17, 2009 (6:30 pm - 8:30 pm)
Hosted by the Hennepin County Regional Railroad Authority
on behalf of the Southwest Policy Advisory Committee
at the Eisenhower Community Center Theater
1001 Highway 7 in Hopkins

Of the two possible routes for the SW LRT once it enters Minneapolis on its way downtown from the suburbs, the one that passes through the Greenway to Nicollet Avenue is not favored by the Midtown Greenway Coalition. This Greenway/Nicollet route would block the bike trail at Nicollet Avenue, requiring bikers, joggers and walkers to come up out of the Greenway, cross Nicollet Avenue, and then go back down into the Greenway. In addition, 60% to 80% of the south bank of the Greenway west of Nicollet Avenue would be replaced with a high concrete retaining wall. Instead, the Midtown Greenway Coalition prefers modern streetcar vehicles as the way to bring rail transit into the Greenway alongside the trails. This streetcar line would connect with the Southwest LRT on the west and the existing Hiawatha LRT on the east, all as part of the “Network Alignment (see image above). Unbelievably, the cost for the Network Alignment that includes both the SW LRT through Kenilworth and the Greenway streetcar would be $400 MILLION LESS THAN the SW LRT Greenway/Nicollet alignment by itself! Learn more about the two LRT options and a streetcar in the Greenway at southwestlrt.wordpress.com and please attend the September 17 public meeting to raise your voice in favor of the SW LRT Kenilworth alignment.

[This text refers to the image.] The Network Alignment: Kenilworth 3A + the Midtown Greenway Streetcar (the “Green Line”) would serve more Minneapolis population, employment, commerical nodes, growth centers, transit-oriented development, and transit-dependent riders than any other SW LRT alignment.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

GiveMN.org for ZERO transaction fees for Minnesota charitable giving

2009-09-14T11:30:00.003-05:00

Last week the Kari Ruth from St. Paul Foundation and GiveMN.org spoke at the Tuesday NetSquared event about GiveMN.org. GiveMN.org is a new charitable-giving platform for Minnesota nonprofits. The site goes public in November but it's up now and you can add your nonprofit's online profile. That's not a bad idea as they are planning a Minnesota Match Day in November which I assume means that your nonprofit can somehow tap into some matching funds for contributions.

To get your profile on GiveMN.org, you first find your profile at www.razoo.com (or create a profile there). Minnesota profiles at Razoo will automatically be transferred to GiveMN.org.

The site will offer nonprofits zero transaction fees. That's why your nonprofit should be at the site and why donors should give via the site. For donors, it will also offer a profile page for tracking your giving to any nonprofit in the U.S. that accepts credit card donations. (I'm assuming you have to contribute via Razoo if the nonprofit is not Minnesota-based.) There are other features for donors too like engaging "in an active, donor-centric online community with opportunities for collaborative giving and tools that integrate with other social media." That sounds interesting.

The site includes the Razoo nonprofit search engine tweaked for Minnesota nonprofits. Feelings at the presentation were mixed as to how valuable a giving search engine really is in terms of seeking a nonprofit to give to. Most of us already know who we want to support and if not, Google offers an easy (and likely more comprehensive) way to find organizations.

Many nonprofits use Network for Good as their online donation site. It's free to list there but there is a transaction fee for each donation (in the area of 4%, I think). GiveMN.org will use Network for Good's donation engine on the back end but no fees will be deducted. It's really a no-brainer (my opinion, at least) for nonprofits as to whether or not to participate and then to promote giving at GiveMN.org. There's no reason you can't leave all your other donation sites in place (even at Network for Good) and add (and promote) GiveMN.org.

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Minneapolis Unwired: Status of Our Community Benefits

2009-08-31T09:15:00.004-05:00

[I have been on the Minneapolis Digital Inclusion Fund Advisory Committee since the beginning. The Committee disburses the money in the Digital Inclusion Fund via an RFP system to nonprofits.]

In drafting the contract in 2006 for the deployment of the municipal Wi-Fi network, the City of Minneapolis negotiated a number of community benefits with US Internet (now US Internet Wireless or USIW). This "community benefits agreement" (CBA) is one of the first nationally between a city and private vendor and has become somewhat famous in the policy world.

Minneapolis is now three years into the contract with USIW. This would seem a good time to evaluate the benefits and whether Minneapolis is getting its "moneys worth," so to speak.

I dug out the contract so I could see the original language. Community Benefit portion starts on page 6 with payment and pricing information on page C-1. The DIF group has a meeting Wednesday so if you have any feedback, please send it along and I'll do my best to bring it to the meeting.

You will note references in the contract to the Digital Inclusion Task Force (DITF). The DITF "retired" after forming the Digital Inclusion Fund Advisory Committee (DIFAC) of which I am a member. That's the "governing" body now monitoring portions of the CBA. (What we exactly are monitoring is up to interpretation.)

USIW was required to fund the DIF with an initial $500,000. That money is paid and accounted for. The DIFAC has given out $400,000 of it over the last two years. We have about $100,000 on account.

USIW is further required to provide monthly payments of five percent (5%) of their "Pre-tax Income from the operation of the Network within the City." DIFAC has not seen any of that money yet and I haven't heard when payments are supposed to begin. USIW does have a representative on DIFAC and we are supposed to learn more this week. According to early estimates by USIW and listed in Attachment C of the contract, USIW should be giving the DIF $467,207 in "Year 3." That would be 2009 if we are counting from the year the contract was signed. (By Year 10, the DIF is supposed to receive $1749,387.)

There is other revenue sharing around the Walled Garden/Community Portal advertising but as far as I can tell, there is no advertising yet. The DIF will also share in revenues from any local municipality Wi-Fi deployments but that hasn't happened yet either (and wouldn't that municipality want its own CBA and share of revenues?).

Walled Garden

USIW is required by contract to build a "walled garden" portal page with free access to whoever can get the signal and access to some City and neighborhood/community sites. That's in place. I don't know how much engagement the City or USIW has with individual communities but you can go to the portal site free and access the City of Minneapolis web site free. That's cool. The contract also specifies content management systems for communities. I'm not sure if that's in place yet. Link to Community Portal.

Free Accounts

The City negotiated 100 free accounts for community technology centers (CTC) in the contract. Applications were sent out this year and 51 groups replied and should have free accounts soon. The City will follow-up with another round of application requests in case some groups missed the first round. If you know of a nonprofit that has public access to computers or tech literacy classes, you should have them contact the City. (You can download the application here.) Organizations will also receive monthly Wi-Fi subscription vouchers for volunteers.

Missing Pieces

The biggest missing piece of course, is the monthly payments to the DIF. I am hopeful that this will be addressed this week.

There are a couple of other items that are missing (or that I'm not aware of).

Free 1MB access

USIW "will offer free 1 megabit broadband Internet access service in public locations (Parks, Plazas) defined by City up to a maximum of five percent (5%) of the geographic area throughout the City." I don't know of any free access. The City press release for the agency free wireless makes it sound like this is in place. It's possible it is. It would certainly seem a good marketing move on the part of USIW. I'll update this after our meeting.

Fundraising

USIW is supposed to be seeking "additional contributions and/or matching funds from community businesses, foundations and charities to increase the amount available in the DIF." This is really important as the volunteer DIFAC doesn't really have the time to do serious fundraising.

USIW is also supposed to sponsor an annual DIF fundraising event. Unless I wasn't invited, as of today, there has been no event.

They are also supposed to conduct community meetings twice per year around the City "to ensure continued encouragement and support for the inclusion into the digital age of the maximum number of citizens, households and businesses in the City." I don't think these have taken place yet either.

We are three years in on the contract. I think we need to address where all the benefits are and USIW should let us know when to expect them. Maybe the City is aware of the issues and has a satisfactory response from USIW. Since I'm a member of DIFAC, you'd think I'd know that but sometimes big cities move in mysterious ways.

I'd love feedback on this especially before the Wednesday meeting.

Posted via email from Peter's posterous

Day at the Fair (photos)

2009-08-30T20:55:00.001-05:00

We went to the Minnesota State Fair today starting with the Milk Run 5K (sorry, no photos), then returning for a family day with the daughter and her family. It was a beautiful day for it (if a bit cool in the morning).

Notes

Paul is the singing guy in the video and my son-in-law.

That's Robbie the Oldest Grandson showing off some autographs he got over by Fan Chatter.

Crayfish are by the DNR building (although I bet they put different critters out each day).

The fish. If you aren't from around here, you may not know that our fish pond is one of the most popular spots at the fair.

Trash sculpture. Always an interesting art piece. They make a scavenger hunt out of it as you try to find particular pieces of trash in the sculpture. I can't find the 2009 artist's name at the State Fair site. Looks like they will tell us after the fair is over.

Seth the Middle Grandson is eating a turkey leg. His father ate most of it but lets him gnaw on the bone.

How the hell long has Spamville been at the fair?

Lego Nation leaves the Fair today (and travels to Colorado State Fair). Very busy with lots of kids.

The art show. Does anyone anywhere put on an art show like this one? 2,105 artists from all over the state submitted work this year and 382 pieces were accepted. A wonderful show! (I did think photography was a bit weak this year but it was made up for by some incredible photo-realistic pencil work.) I photographed a few pieces.

Alligator Alley is by Denise M. Rouleau

Check out Morning Ritual the necklace by Elizabeth M. Garvey. Those aren't shells.

The lure is entitled Fish Story and by Michael A. Hall.

Bone Doggy is by Mark Davidson

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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City of Minneapolis seeks BTOP grants to get broadband to public housing

2009-08-24T14:33:00.001-05:00

Business Information Systems at the City of Minneapolis is applying for NTIA Broadband Technology Opportunity Program (BTOP) grant money to bring broadband to Minneapolis Public Housing highrises. The request was approved at the August 10 Ways & Means meeting. Full text of the request is below.

Since they are looking at using Wi-Fi, I will surmise that US Internet Wireless (USIW) will be involved in the deployment. Did anyone consider broadband via fiber which would be much faster and not require any Wi-Fi cards? Another option would be a community wireless system using Open Source hardware and software. I would guess that it would be far cheaper than USIW's equipment. I know of at least one non-profit that might be interested in working on something like that.

Here's the request (also available at the City's site):

The Recovery Act directed The Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) to expand broadband access to unserved and underserved communities across the U.S., increase jobs, spur investments in technology and infrastructure, and provide long-term economic benefits. The result is the NTIA Broadband Technology Opportunity Program (BTOP). BTOP will provide grants to fund broadband infrastructure, public computer centers and sustainable broadband adoption projects.
BIS has partnered with the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority (MPHA) and seeks approval to apply for two grants:
1. Infrastructure - to bring broadband into Minneapolis Public Housing highrises
2. Sustainable Adoption - to develop and deploy an awareness campaign; provide training; purchase and distribute hardware to connect with mobile and WiFi (iTouch, Netbooks); and to update the Minneapolis Civic Garden portal to provide multi-lingual support, mobile accessibility, and ideation software. The sustainable adoption project will reach out to all MPHA residents including Section 8.
In addition to MPHA, BIS is partnering with area organizations.

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Meet Mr. Slim: New AC unit downstairs

2009-08-01T14:15:00.001-05:00

We live in (and own) a duplex in Minneapolis. We're on the second floor. We have baseboard electric heating so no ductwork for a central AC system. We have an older industrial AC unit mounted in the wall which does an adequate job of cooling about half of our unit. There's no installed AC in the tenant's unit. Or there wasn't. Now there is. We just had a Mitsubishi Mr. Slim Split-ductless Heat Pump installed. (Never mind that this is a record-breaking COOL summer in Minneapolis.)

It's really, really quiet. Besides cooling to 12,000 BTU, it will also provide heating at a 13,600 BTU rating which installer said would give enough heat down to freezing temps. It was pricey but we can get some stimulus money to cover 30% of the install charges. (It is Energy-Star rated.)

We are considering (and have a bid) on having one installed upstairs next year.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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Greek-themed Dinner (pictures)

2009-08-01T13:47:00.001-05:00

We had an excellent meal the other evening with tabouli, hummus, and a
simple Greek salad. (Taouli wouldn't hold still for a picture.) Wish I
could claim credit for its creation but it was all Mary's doing.

(I'm also testing some photo quality in posting to posterous)

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted via email from Peter's posterous