Chris Lehmann is the principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I love reading his education-related tweets because of his many interesting ideas, insights and observations. There's another side to Chris, though. Chris is a rabid sports fan, and he'll unleash a torrent of tweets during certain sporting events. I can appreciate his sports fervor, but to me those sports tweets are more noise rather than signal. I'd love to be able to tell Twitter, “give me all of Chris Lehmann's education-related tweets and none of his sports tweets.” (I also want Chris to continue tweeting his sports tweets, because those are an essential part of who he is.)

What I'm talking about here is metadata--data about data. I'd love for every tweet that's sent out to be categorized in some way by the tweeter. Tweets need metadata in the same way that books need a title. Is this tweet about an interesting new blog post by the sender of the tweet? Or about an interesting blog post by someone other than the sender of the tweet? A tweet about a useful free resource for educators? A new explanatory screencast about open-source software? A tweet about an inspiring video on YouTube? A tweet that'll make me chuckle?

One of the delights of YouTube is coming across music videos where musical artists bring alive a song in a way that surpasses the composer's performance of the song. Twice in the past month I've come across such videos.

Sam Draisey's rendition of Bruce Springsteen's 1970's classic, “Thunder Road,” is one such performance. His resonant singing digs deep into the soul of this song and his guitar playing is both facile and flawless.

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for consumers to declare their independence from large telcos, it's reassuring to know that wireless Internet service providers (WISP) are one possible option. Wireless ISP's (WISP) are usually located in rural areas not served by any other Internet service, but some urban WISP's have gained a foothold. One of these is DC Access, LLC (www.dcaccess.net) which serves sections of the Capitol Hill and Adams Morgan neighborhoods in the District of Columbia. DC Access provides a “fixed wireless” Internet service. You'll pay about the same as you would for Internet service from the big telcos (Verizon, Comcast, and so on), but you'll be treated a whole lot better when you call for support. Any small business that doesn't provide outstanding customer service is a small business on its way to being a former small business.

From all reports I've heard, the quality of customer service and tech support from DC Access is very high. Reviews on Yelp start out at the effusive level and go up from there.

Kio Stark designs and distributes blueprints. Not physical ones. Metaphorical blueprints that people can use to build their own lives. I first encountered Kio's blueprints when I read the remarkable Cult of Done Manifesto, co-authored with her partner, talented maker Bre Pettis.

The last statement in this manifesto, “Done is the engine of more,” should be chiseled in a huge font above the main door to the U.S. Department of Commerce, in Washington, D.C.. Can you think of anything more appropriate to write there? To my mind, if Benjamin Franklin and Ralph Waldo Emerson went to a restaurant together today, “done is the engine of more,” is the conclusion they would come to before shaking hands and returning to their respective centuries. Before doing that, though, both would join the Facebook group for The Cult of Done Manifesto. This group currently numbers over 2,800 “doners.”

As the unemployment crisis continues month after month, I'm tempted to climb to the roof of my house and yell at the top of my lungs, “The maker movement creates jobs.”

Homebrew Computer Club Newsletter, September 1976This so obvious a fact seems lost on national decision-makers. The entire personal computer industry was born when a small group of hobbyists, The Homebrew Computer Club, met at Stanford University in 1975. Other industries are on the verge of being born if only our nation did more to support hobbyists. What more could be done? Provide makers--hobbyists--spaces to gather and tinker.

I happened upon a YouTube video last week that got me thinking a lot about humility contests. Uploaded by O'Reilly Media, this video is a 5-minute Ignite Great Lakes presentation by a talented Detroit violinist named Dixon. I won't spoil the fun by telling you what you'll encounter in the video. Go watch it and return here when you're done.

What you might notice in this video is a person with great confidence, but also great humility. Those two human qualities don't often occur within one person. Confidence is vital, because nothing can move forward without a belief in one's own powers. Humility is vital because it is the steering wheel to wisdom.

Twitter is a powerful communications tool, but figuring out the best way to use it can be somewhat of a mystery. Twitter mastery can be especially daunting for nonprofits and other cause-based organizations, whose staffs have heard that Twitter can be a tool for changing the world. If that's true, then how does one go about doing so?

This guidebook, Twitter For Good, by Claire Diaz-Ortiz, the manager of social innovation and philanthropy at Twitter, seeks to provide answers. By and large it hits the mark. The book cites many case studies of successful Twitter campaigns and explains why those campaigns were successful. The book also explains the kinds of mistakes nonprofits make on Twitter, helping readers steer clear of those mistakes.

Coworking is a modern work innovation where people in various creative professions share a common work space, synergizing their talents and making best use of fixed-cost resources. Here is a portrait of how coworking might develop in public library spaces as public libraries transform themselves in coming years. Architects, take notice.

Do you work as a computer programmer, writer, editor, animator, or graphic designer? Would you like a free desk to do work at your public library? What's the catch? The catch is that you need to contribute 10 or 20 percent of your time to serving the public in some way. You can either set aside time to answering the public's questions or teach classes or work on public-oriented digital projects of various kinds. You might also mentor a youth or an adult. You might want to cowork at the public library just three days per week, in which case you need to contribute just 10 percent of your coworking time. If you cowork at the public library five days a week, you would need to contribute 20 percent of your time.

About 165 years ago, a young man in Massachusetts decided to simplify his life as much as possible by living in a shack in the woods, confronting only the essentials of life to determine firsthand what people need and don't need. The outcome of this experiment, documented in his book Walden, demonstrated Socrates' wise saying, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Thoreau invites each of us to reflect more deeply about our role on the planet, what it means to be true to oneself and how to avoid mindlessly following the herd. In his separate essay, “Civil Disobedience,” he explains why jail is the most logical place for a person to be who is subject to unjust laws.

Across the world a person named Mahatma Gandhi read Thoreau's writings, took them to heart, and showed how dignity could vanquish brutality. Back here in the United States, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. further developed Gandhi's methods of passive resistance to continue the long work of dismantling slavery.

The future of the world will be shaped by today's middle and high school students, so I always get a kick when a student comes up to me at my public library job and asks, “Do you want to hear about the app I designed?”

I've always got time to hear about a student's programming efforts.

CNN recently reported that Neanderthals were as smart as Homo Sapiens. (See the last sentence of this CNN article.) Sure, they were as smart, but they routinely shipped their products two years after Homo Sapiens did, with a minimum of usability testing. And Neanderthals depended on income from previous products, such as bowls, when fire first came out. Neanderthals' VP of Marketing freely admitted as much: “We didn't see fire coming. We were so focused on our new model of bowls, we missed fire completely.”

Meanwhile, Homo Sapiens packaged fire so elegantly – just two sticks in a box. That's it. Just two sticks in a sleek white cardboard box. Fire didn't even come with a user manual. People just intuitively started using it. When Neanderthals came out with fire, two years later, it came with five stone tablets of instructions. Honestly, who wants five stone tablets of instructions? The street reacted brutally to Neanderthals. Brutally.

Google Hangouts, the group videoconferencing part of Google+, has attracted some of the most creative minds on the Web – and these folks are putting their ingenuity to good use. One of the first out of the gate is Bruce K. Garber and his friends from the Southern New England Media Makers. They captured this video of their group videoconference by using Camtasia Studio and uploaded this video to Youtube. The sound quality is surprisingly clear considering that they were using the condenser mics built into their webcams. I'm wondering how clear their audio would sound if they each used a USB microphone, such as a USB Logitech headset or a Snowball microphone. Here are the other participants in this video chat.

Bruce Garber
http://bruceKgarber.com