I've Identified Some Astounding Information Technology Talent in real NEO that has been harmed by our regional leadership, and I'm trying to find a nice way to deal with that. Each of these people have risen to positions of demonstrated excellence in their fields - have innovated our regional information technology landscape and had global impact - and each of them have been directly violated by leadership in our community - IT leadership and community development leadership. They have each done the right things - each taken the right steps - and each been blocked along the way. And each are "minority". How do I now give them the proper status they deserve in the community, where they have not been welcome or valued?

Meaning everyone in real NEO is "an artist" and wins the prize together. But how do we not nominate ourselves...

Who seconds?

Nominations

— CALL FOR NOMINATIONS —
Nominations Deadline February 28, 2010

 

realNEO visitors have probably noticed the "Who's Online/Online Users" block in the left-hand column of the REALNEO.US homepage, indicating the people who are online and logged in at realNEO at a particular time. Ever wonder about all those people, always on realNEO... who they are, where they are, and why they are visiting here...?

Props to Jeff Shuler, realNEO's tech administrator. He has been implementing an anti-spam strategy that seems to be working... meaning admins don't have to block a dozen spammers and delete their lame links, each day....! Thank you Jeff S!

If you are a real realNEO user and you have any trouble with accessing or posting to the site, it is not because an admin hates you - there is software now analyzing all the content posted to the site and running tests to rate how likely it is that the content is spam, and Jeff is adjusting settings to try and block out the spam, without impacting real users. The system must learn - a type of "artificial intelligence" - and it is learning - and it seems to be working. IF YOU ARE BLOCKED FOR ANY REASON AND SHOULD NOT BE BLOCKED, GO TO THE CONTACT LINK IN THE MENU BAR ABOVE AND LET US KNOW!

I attended an excellent Software Freedom Day event in Toronto in 2006, which I introduced on REALNEO here, and covered on REALNEO here - I actually needed a copy of Ubuntu that day, so it came in very handy.

I'd like to see Northeast Ohio celebrate Software Freedom Day 2010 in a BIG WAY - Saturday, September 18 - and follow the model I saw in use in Toronto, which included active, friendly engagement on a busy street, with workshops and light training/Q&A offered inside a receptive place. Of course, the Linux Penguin was out-front to draw attention to the event... we definitely need a penguin.

Transforming the economy of Northeast Ohio - real NEO - will take incredible guts, new creations, a commitment to real openness, and 1,000s of Big Bangs.

real NEO, say hello to your little friend - ICEarth Big Bang 1. Created and Manufactured in Old Brooklyn - that's in Cleveland, Ohio, Earth.

It has been exciting to watch, over the past week, as this beautiful video clip of my beautiful wife Evelyn giving birth to our beautiful daughter Clara has been viewed by nearly 6,000 people on YouTube - a companion video clip of my wife in hypno-birth, water-birth labor has received nearly as much global attention... in a week. In a week, those two clips attracted around 10,000 unique viewers... about as many unique viewers as come to our REALNEO community, in a week. The value of sharing these videos on YouTube is obvious - that is a good distribution channel to teach people about childbirth. So is REALNEO.

There is a very disturbing article in today's Cleveland Plain Dealer, written by their urban-planning-master-in-training at Cleveland State University, that is so full of conflicts-of-interests and halftruths it will take weeks to dismantle the mess.

I just received this email for cat lovers, from Iams Cats - the Iams cat lovers email newsletter - and thought I would share these tips with the community. Obviously, there are product promotions here - perhaps some useful information as well. This is not an endorsement of Iams, although I endorse their use of the Internet to serve their customers well... a best performer with ICE - Internet Communications Excellence.

Winter Weather Tips For Cat Owners

Winter is here - and so are snow, ice, and a biting wind. And even though your cat might not go outside, some do. So here are things people do to insure their cat’s safe and warm out there. Read on to learn more.

Women in labor under hypnobirth

This High Definition ambient film clip is of an expert hypnobirthing mother, during her third naturally-wonderful, perfect hypnobirth, January 31, 2010, in hard labor, fully dilated - no medications or medical intervantion, other than a midwife breaking her water, later - one hour and 10 minutes before the baby was delivered - where she falls asleep between strong contractions that are less than 2 minutes apart. She has been up the entire night before tiling a bathroom, has not slept, and was stressed until she began focusing on her hypnobirthing.

Clara Evelyn Roulet, 1 minute old

I was so busy yesterday having a beautiful baby girl (by waterbirth - by hypnobirth - amazing photos and video to come), I didn't have a chance to thank Ronn Richard and the Board of the Cleveland Foundation for a second great gift that day, showing they recognized the need to transform our regional redevelopment and transformation efforts at the core, after many years supporting and funding what we now have. I believe this opens up new world's of opportunity for our region, just when they are needed most.

Authorized bootleg recording of Deyora jamming in Parma, Cleveland-area, realNEO, Ohio.

Deyora is:

REALNEO is a cooperative, eternal, free, open source social network operating with the Drupal Content Management System (CMS) - it is designed to manage content for individuals, who are registered users, and who own the CMS, as a co-op, and own their individual content, as individuals. Members have traditionally used REALNEO to manage their personal thoughts and ideas, through blog postings and comments, along with events, polls, and links to the content of others. Some users use the CMS capabilities of the site more than others, adding files, photographs and video to their content.

Baby, it's cold outside. Time for Cleveland Plain Dealer Deputy Editorial Page Editor Kevin O'Brien's annual "It's snowing in Cleveland again this winter so Global Warming's a Hoax" editorial...

In compiling my list of "The 17 Worst 'Climate Killers' in Northeast Ohio", I've started with O'Brien, who everyone in real NEO well knows is one of the most outspoken critics of "Global Warming" in the world, reaching millions. As I was trying to determine if O'Brien was The Profiteer, The Disinformer, or The Drudge of Denial, in misinforming our community about the environment, I did not refer to the Cleveland Plain Dealer's portal Cleveland.com for source information on Mr. O'Brien's past writing on the environment, as I knew that it would not be at Cleveland.com.

I turned to REALNEO.

Citizen Ed Hauser, Victorious In The Battle Of Whiskey Island - "Ask Not What Your Planet Can Do For You..."

It has been a year since Northeast Ohio lost our selfless civic activist "Citizen" Ed Hauser, silencing the great voice in the community saying that "The Process is Broken".

November 14, 2009 - the one-year anniversary of Ed's death - a group of family and friends came together on the beautiful Whiskey Island Ed saved, before a late Autumn setting sun, to toast a glorious man, and mourn a most cursed and horrible year in Northeast Ohio without Ed.

What does the dawn hold for this long-suffering region, in the second year without Citizen Hauser?

Real NEO's favorite librarian, Laura McShane, recently posted on REALNEO "we can agree that aerosol art can be a thing of beauty", which made me think of the graffiti above, which inspired the first novel by Tony Vigorito, Just A Couple Of Days. 

From Wikipedia, "The title Just a Couple of Days comes from a piece of graffiti which appeared on both sides of an overpass just outside of Athens, Ohio on U.S. Route 33 and remained there for over two years. The open-ended tone of the declaration is related to the plot of the book, and the way the words can mean different things to each person who sees them."

We have had discussions on REALNEO about the antitrust of Microsoft, and the harm that has caused the world, but few people remember back to 1999, when the antitrust case United States vs. Microsoft determined Microsoft's dominance of the Intel-based personal computer operating systems market constituted a monopoly, and that Microsoft had taken actions to crush threats to that monopoly, including Apple, Java, Netscape, Lotus Notes, Real Networks, Linux, and others. The court's conclusion was Microsoft must be broken into two separate units, one to produce the operating system, and one to produce other software components... a decision weakened on appeal (see below).

A decade later, we have the opportunity to explore related antitrust in the computer industry further, and put Microsoft antitrust in new perspective, as the November 4, 2009, New York Times reports "Cuomo Files Intel Antitrust Suit" - "Following the lead of foreign regulators, New York's attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, filed a federal antitrust lawsuit Wednesday against Intel, the world's largest chip maker."

October 7, 2009, we began our sixth year of ongoing, expansive, free, open source content management and global knowledge sharing, community building, social networking and collaboration on REALNEO. See posting Number 1, REALNEO Development Plan, from October 7, 2004, here, for links to many source documents from the planning and development of REALNEO, since 2004.

Congratulations to all REALNEO members, from day one to today! We've come a long way, since 2004, and our outcomes run far deeper than is seen on the surface of REALNEO. Six years is an eternity, in the world of social computing - we're about 8 months younger than Facebook, and a paradigm beyond - we are Real Co-op!

I was reviewing emails from last week and read, from the EPA, "EPA Proposes Tightening Standards for Lead-Safe Renovation Practices and Lead Paint Dust to Protect Children", which reports "The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is marking National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week by announcing several actions the agency proposes to take to prevent lead poisoning."

Do you remember hearing anything in Northeast Ohio about last week being National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week?