Yummy Wakame

I can’t believe these are only $36.00! They look outrageously expensive.

For every cup of coffee sold by coffee chain stores, poor farmers in coffee-growing countries like Ethiopia only earn about 3 cents. Yet the coffee industry makes billions of dollars – Starbucks alone has already made more than $5.8 billion in net revenue this year.

To give its 15 million farmers a better cut of the profit, the Ethiopian government has asked Starbucks to sign a licensing agreement that recognises Ethiopia’s legal trademark ownership over its most famous coffee names – Sidamo, Harar and Yirgacheffe. Ethiopia wants to determine an export price on their coffees that makes sure farmers see a fairer share of the profits. Despite its much-publicised “commitments” to farming communities, Starbucks has not taken Ethiopia’s request seriously and has used the US legal system to block it.

ABC News article

Why is it important?

By owning the rights to its fine coffee names, Ethiopia can help its farmers negotiate a better price, potentially increasing income for the country’s coffee industry by an estimated $88 million a year. This would help lift millions of hard-working farmers and their families out of poverty, helping them to send their children to school and access healthcare.

Ask Starbucks to sign this agreement with Ethiopia by sending a message to CEO Jim Donald.

R Kelley’s ghetto soap opera.

Chapter 1

More chapters: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.
Thanks Pieter!

Control Arms has been campaigning for 3 years for tougher control over the arms trade with the help of ordinary people like you and me.

After three weeks of campaigning in New York and three years of campaigning around the world, the Control Arms campaign achieved a massive victory on Thursday when the UN General Assembly’s First Committee passed a resolution to finally start work on an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT).

Find out more about the resolution and Control Arms activities at the United Nations.

“In a highly significant display of support for establishing common standards on the international arms trade, 116 governments from around the world had officially endorsed the resolution entitled ‘Towards an Arms Trade Treaty’ before it was voted on. The resolution then received resounding support with 139 governments out of 164 voting in favour. Governments now have an opportunity to create a treaty that will help make a real difference to the hundreds of thousands of people whose lives are devastated by armed violence every year. more…

“Every choice you make defines you. Own your choice.”

The flash version is gorgeous too!

Despite worldwide outcry and a ban on whaling in place since 1986, Iceland, like Japan, continues to kill whales using cruel methods, saying it’s for “scientific” purposes. But now the government of Iceland has gone even further, launching a commercial whale hunt for the first time in more than two decades. Permits have been granted by Iceland’s Ministry of Fisheries for the hunting of 30 minke whales and nine endangered fin whales. In fact, whaling ships have already killed their first two endangered fin whales.

Yet few Icelanders eat whale meat regularly (only 1.1% of Icelanders say they eat whale meat once a week or more*); and there is limited, if any, world market for the meat. A growing number of jobs in Iceland also depend on the country’s thriving whale-watching industry.

Watch the latest video of Iceland’s cruel killing of endangered fin whales. Warning: Video contains graphic footage that may not be suitable for all viewers.

It’s quite rare for Iceland’s embassy to receive an outpouring of public comments on a political issue. That’s why it’s not too late to have an impact!
Please send a polite message today to protest Iceland’s terrible decision to resume commercial whale hunting.

*Gallup Poll, 2006

stylegala: “dobmobi has posted mobilized XHTML templates for download (free; see links at bottom). From what I see they’re mostly a cookie-cutter starter kit (of course), but perhaps a good place for mobile web dev newcomers to begin.”

For the next 48 hours.

Thanks Dan.

Andy Budd:
“7 Habits of a Highly Successful Freelance Web Designer“. Among other sound advice in the article is this: “It’s important not to specialise at the expense of your other skills. Clients and agencies like well rounded people with a wide set of interests. Your skills should resemble an inverted T. Generally very broad but with one (or preferably more) areas of deep knowledge.”

via stylegala

But especially the hand made ones!

Check this sweet instructable out! Using bits of lego you can make this awesome USB Lego stick! If that’s not your cup of tea, instructables has all sorts of goodies and gadgets you can make including this mad scientist light a Teddy Bear Remote Control and that USB monster thingy I posted yesterday.

See for yourself! Instructables.com

It can get exhausting explaining to clients over and over again how to work their new website, or having to keep calling your mom to remind her how to get the pictures of your dog’s Halloween outfit out of her email and onto the wall.

CamStudio has released freeware that allows you to record the steps directly from your computer and into an AVI or Flash file. As they put it:

“CamStudio is able to record all screen and audio activity on your computer and create industry-standard AVI video files and using its built-in SWF Producer can turn those AVIs into lean, mean, bandwidth-friendly Streaming Flash videos (SWFs)”

Check it out »

High action video!

draw play

Thanks nathan

The latest from Google: “Harness the power of Google search to create a free Custom Search Engine that reflects your knowledge and interests. Specify the websites that you want searched – and integrate the search box and results into your own website. “

Build your own!

COLORBUS

Thanks pp!

“Hello.

My name is Red.

I’m a pig.

Recently I had a supporting role in a television commercial for a major international cellular telephone provider. The commercial was directed by the Perlorian Brothers and written by Mother NY.

Everyone was very nice to me, and I think I did a pretty decent job for my first time on set, but I’ve since learned that I’m scheduled to be slaughtered in a week. This is not good for an actor’s career. I knew it was a non-union job and the residuals weren’t anything to get excited about, but I wasn’t expecting to be hung by my foot and have my throat slit.

Fortunately, my new friends at Reginald Pike, Toronto, Biscuit, L.A., and Mother are working to find me a new home at a petting zoo (despite all this, I love humans). You can help me too by getting a limited edition t-shirt with my picture on it at www.reginaldpike.com

They’re only $20 and proceeds go to my care and feeding.

Please help.”

via Adrants

Vitaly Friedman has gone through the trouble of finding 20 beautiful, primarily professional looking fonts that are completely free. No more wading through thousands of movie logo ripoff fonts to find something decent to use, just check out his site.

Yay! I finally got an invite to join the Wallop beta community. Its very very purty. I have 7 invites left to give out if anyone wants one… otherwise you can wait on a long long list and feel sorry for yourself for weeks like I did. The really fun part Im looking forward to is developing some widgets (called mods) when I can rustle together some free time.

Come and join me!

Nathan found this great article:

“Why do I see a message prompting me to ‘click to activate and use this control’ when I roll my mouse over a Flash animation?

This is a result of the latest Internet Explorer update.

Microsoft recently lost a legal battle with a patent holder about the way Internet Explorer displays OBJECTs and EMBEDs in webpages. Microsoft then decided to update its Internet Explorer browser with changes requiring user input to display and activate ActiveX based media. This affects all Flash animations but also other files such as QuickTime, RealPlayer, Java and Adobe Acrobat among others. It means users have to click the object first in order to activate its functions.

Luckily, there are ways for website developers to modify their website so that the user experience is not impacted by Microsoft’s changes. I have selected the easiest and most user-friendly option available at this time…”

Herewith a snippet of JavaScript code to fixeth the problem.

The epic tale of Savior and Judas, Good and Stupid, Fire and Ice, is being played out in the browser world today, and Internet Explorer’s new release has nothing to do with it…

Ice Weasel is a completely open source version of Firefox, which, purportedly, has copyrighted and licensed material in its code. According to the Wikipedia article (which is seemingly intended to be biased for Ice Weasel) the guys who have built the browser are bummed because Mozilla won’t let them use the Firefox name without using the Firefox logo, and they can’t use the logo because of their own rules. Vizzavi, Ice Weasel.

Right now Im so swamped with work the only way I can get it all done is to make sure my stress levels are super low. I’ve discovered it makes me feel very content to work from my bed instead of the desk especially on those days when Im going to be doing an all-nighter. And to make things perfect I like to listen to a good story while Im working so I dont get bored and frustrated working the long hours…

I found the perfect solution on Chapel Perilous – TV Links – a list of some of the major TV shows where you can watch reruns of Lost, Rome, Scrubs, The Office, X-Files and many others including some great cartoon shows. I started with Weeds and watched Season 1 and 2 over the last two days. Once I’ve gone through the whole list its going to be really hard returning to talk radio.

Happy watching!

If your siamese fighting fish keeps getting fin rot and youre trying to medicate it but it keeps coming back – here is a great article explaining why its happening and what you need to do to cure your fish and avoid reinfection.

Click here if you can’t see the video above.

Every time an online store is contacted by a bank and notified that fraudsters used someone elses card to purchase goods on a website, the store owner has to pay a huge chargeback fee for each fraudulent transaction.

My brother who works the backend for a large online store and monitors illegal activity says that bank effectively get the chargeback and the original fee and refund fee. Banks make a fortune off chargebacks – that’s why they all offer online fraud protection on their cards.

I think this is outrageous and should be totally illegal. The onus should be on the bank to monitor illegal activity on their own customers accounts and they should pay if they miss anything – anything else should be covered by the banks insurance.

If a transaction is cleared by a bank to purchase completely legal items on a legal online store, then the store owner should be paid what they are owed by the bank. You’d think it should be that simple… dream on.

Did you know that the the USA banking system has massive fraud problems – apparently many US banks dont even do a complete security check for the transaction online. The name could even be wrong and the transaction would still clear. Its absolutely shocking that banks are getting away with this and small businesses are paying for it.

The whole system is so screwed up and if we dont keep an eye on it, it could devastate online businesses.

Licorice Surprise

Ingredients:
1 black extension cord
1 wall outlet
5 mg. Ambien

Plug extension cord into wall socket near bed.

Plug other end of extension cord into clock radio on nightstand.

Take Ambien, fall asleep.

Sleep 3-4 hours.

Roll out of bed, wake up on floor.

See extension cord, think, What a big delicious licorice rope that is!

Chew on essentially flavorless cord until you get to the metallic center, where the surprise is.