After nearly two years in the making and tons of hard work, Tactical tech has finally released this booklet.

See http://www.tacticaltech.org/infodesign

Its been a thrilling couple of weeks, watching the protests in Burma continue to gain momentum. I've had a number of queries about good independent Burma news websites and now have two that I'm pretty much recommending to anyone who is interested. See:

- The Irrawaddy at http://www.irrawaddy.org
- Mizzima News at http://www.mizzima.com/

A few weeks back I was visited by Noel Hidalgo here in Brighton. Noel wanted to interview me in Tactical Tech's office and talk about the work I've done with organizing groups and how I came to work for such a great organization.

Noel is traveling around the world and conducting interviews with a wide range of folks working on the intersection between social justice and technology, particularly open source.

I'm currently working on a report about ICT use amongst sex worker advocates and I've come accross two more fabulous videos (also see http://www.fabrider.net/node/45).

The first is a redo of U2's One Whore that was put together by Asia Pacific Sex Worker Network for the Star Whore show they did at the Intl. AIDS Conference last year in Toronto. It can be found on Blip TV at http://www.blip.tv/file/199048/

We've just completed two days of staff meeting/retreat at Tactical Tech. It's a very exciting time, lots of cool projects and a strategy around helping advocates/activists from marganilized communities handle information more effectively. We are also about to make a bunch of new hires that will hopefully make all of our lives easier

One tool that came up during our Sex Worker training in Phnom Penh (thanks to Melissa Gira http://www.sexerati.com, who has been working with us on the project) is Twitter. Bettysnake got on Twitter after some exposure to Melissa as well.

I'm in Phnom Penh for a meeting of sex worker advocacy groups from around the globe. Tactical Tech is doing work on helping these groups exchange information for both their global advocacy work but also for local advocacy. We just completed a survey of organizations and one of the most striking examples of use of media for an advocacy strategy (and there's actually quite a few) is from a group in Taipei calle COSWAS that have produced an excellent video about the plight of Sex Workers.

I've been fascinated by discussions around copyright and intellectual property ever since I attended my first Source camp (Summer Source - Croatia, 2003).  The discussion of what should be "public" as opposed to "private" kind of makes me hot.  I could listen to these debates for hours.  I think the piece that always gets me about copyright is the Mickey Mouse case - whenever mickey's copyright is about to expire, the copyright laws change to leave him in the full blown control of Disney.  Never mind the fact that Disney has made a mint off of a slew of stuff that was in the public domain (Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, etc.).

I'm usually oblivious to World AIDS Day. For some reason, I've only noticed by hearing the odd news blurb on TV or seeing some sort of poster about it on the streets of New York City. Maybe this year is different because I'm currently in the UK (again) and its the headline of several major newspapers. I also got an email from a friend here in the UK this morning commenting on the fact that its World AIDS Day and maybe he should try to do something, rather than sit back and just take notice.

So, its hit me differently this year than it has in the past. The most significant way is that I found myself remembering all those friends and acquantainces I lost, so long ago. Then also thinking about the numbers in the newspaper and thinking about what 40 million AIDS cases really meant. Then I thought this is crazy. Should I only remember those that have succumb to AIDS once a year? It just seems so much bigger than that.

Now and then I listen to podcasts. I don't really get a chance to listen to the radio that much. I have a few select podcasts picked out, like NPR's On The Media, that automatically download to my iPod. I pretty much just listen to them when I'm in transit (planes, trains and the occasional automobile).

So Imagine my surprise when I'm travelling on the LIRR this week to hear my friend Alaa's voice in my headphone's talking about his recent imprisonment and the treatment of Egyptian bloggers on PRI's The World: Technology pocast. It's a pretty decent piece and also has a snippet or two of his wife Menal.