The Smarmy Carny

One Economy Corporation's Digital Connectors program has young people helping their community through technology. Here are two brothers who worked in the program:

Jeremy and Justin Smith have enjoyed working with computers for years. Now the 16-year-old twins from south Chicago are learning enough to teach others – thanks to One Economy’s Digital Connectors program. In the fall of 2005, the engaging teenagers enrolled in the One Economy Digital Connectors course to prepare them for A+ certification in computer set-up and troubleshooting. Participants in the program received a small stipend and One Economy paid the fee for taking the A+ certification test.
Jeremy and Justin are already using their skills to help others – friends in the neighborhood, teachers at their school and even an occasional paying client who needs assistance with a computer problem.
“The Digital Connectors program is really great,” says Jeremy. “It gets kids involved with the community. I like giving back and this program gives me an opportunity to do that.”
Adds Justin: “It gives kids alternatives to just standing around on the street. It teaches them something that will be useful to their futures.” Despite a busy schedule that includes the computer training, coaching a little league team and participating in a robotics competition, the twins are already thinking about their future. Both are taking a course at a nearby college and they’re making plans for the computer business they hope to open someday. Also in the boys’ plans: a community center in Chicago to offer technology training to people in the area. “It’s something we really want to make happen,” says Jeremy.
One Economy’s work in Chicago has been generously supported by the Chicago-based John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

There are dozens of stories like this that come out of the Digital Connectors program. When you help kids to learn to help others, it's always a win-win situation.

In 2004, One Economy launched the Bring IT Home campaign, which has brought broadband Internet access into the homes of 200,000 low-income individuals.

One Economy accomplished this task by pushing to change affordable housing policies so that residents there could have low-cost or no-cost broadband in their home. This campaign resulted in 42 states and the District of Columbia changing their housing policies.

As I mentioned previously, many charities simply give cheap computers to low-income families and let them fend for themselves. If a family cannot afford a $300 computer, what's the chance they will be able to pay the monthly cost of broadband internet? This is why One Economy impresses me — they don't look at the obvious solutions, but instead they attack the real problems to create effective solutions.

In my mind, the Atari 2600 is the best video game console of all time. You either had a joystick or a paddle — both of which had just one button. Modern day consoles have nothing on the Atari 2600 with their 80-button, vibrating controllers and frequent crashes. The Atari 2600 blows these out of the water with its 128 bytes of RAM and 1.19 MHz processing speed.

• Basketball: D- I know that the graphics weren't top-notch on the Atari 2600, and that's fine. But playing basketball with a square ball? Something's just not right with that.
• Combat: B It came with the console, so everyone had it and knew how to play it. Somehow, they managed to turn two games (tanks and planes) into 27 games — really just different options on the two themes. For such a basic game, though, getting those tanks to move and shoot the way you needed them to really became an art.
• Missile Command: C- In retrospect, I probably played Missile Command far more than I should have. This game, though entertaining, quickly becomes repetitive. Gee, I wonder what the next level will bring me — perhaps more missiles I'll have to shoot down in the same manner? You basically played until the game outplayed you.
• Pac-Man: A- Pac-Man was the game. Easy to understand but difficult to master, I don't know a kid who was yelling at their television because of this yellow dude.
• Pitfall!: B+ I don't know how many times poor Pitfall Harry fell down holes or got eaten by a crocodile, but this game was addictive. The game used a combination of timing skills and just a bit of strategy that made you want to come back for more.
• Space Invaders: A+ Simple, easy, and perfectly designed for the platform. You have shields, you have bad guys. They inch closer, and you try and pick them off. And just when that might have started to get boring, you've got a UFO to aim at! It even spawned quite a few 80s song, which actually might not have been a good thing.

Please feel free to leave a comment. What do you agree or disagree with, and why? Which Atari 2600 games do you wish were included that I didn't cover here?

Another program that One Economy Corporation uses to reach low-income communities is Digital Connectors.

Digital Connectors are young people, ages 14 to 21, who accelerate the use of technology in a region by providing training and support to members of their communities. Usually the program runs for up to eight weeks during summer vacation, though some programs vary from this schedule.

Since younger people have grown up around much more technology than the older generations, these young people are an obvious method for pushing technology awareness and education out. 150 Digital Connectors in 10 cities provided technology training and support to more than 3,000 families with an emphasis on basic computer and Internet use and guided instruction on the Beehive.

Digital Connectors are rewarded with stipends or personal computers in exchange for their services to their community.

One entertaining game that can easily waste an hour of your day is Guess the Google. Head over to the site and click "Launch Project" to play.

In Guess the Google, you play 20 rounds. In each round, 20 pictures appear. What they have in common is that they are the results for a Google Image search on a particular word. You have 20 seconds to guess that word. You get a bonus point for each unused second left after you guess the word.

This is a fun little game. I've come back to it a few times and still enjoy it. Perhaps in a couple weeks I will post about a similar set of Google-based games that require two-player competitive/collaborative efforts.

There's a ringtone floating around the internet specifically for teenagers.
Is it the latest Billboard Top 100 hit? No.
Is it the Ask a Ninja ringtone? No.
Is it a ringtone that kids can hear, but older adults cannot hear? Absolutely!

The ringtone, assuming you can hear it, is awfully annoying. The recent usage of this ringtone, however, is that students can hear their banned cell phone ringing without their teacher harping on them to turn their phone off.

Download and listen to the Mosquito Ringtone.

The New York Times wrote an article on the ringtone noting that one student was surprised that his 28-year-old teacher was able to hear the ringtone. (The ringtone's range is generally inaudible to those in their 40s and older.)

The ringtone is adapted from the Mosquito alarm, a device intended to keep loitering teenagers away from shopfronts while not disturbing older passersby.

smarmycarny.com

Head over to Websites As Graphs and punch in any website. Watch as the script forms a graph of the site. The result? You'll get a graph of the site, just like the one of The Smarmy Carny pictured here. More accurately, the graph is of that webpage not the entire site. Based on the definitions for the colors, it is less like a network map and more like a graph of the webpage layout. Each dot refers to a different tag on the page, including links, images, tables, quotes, etc.

The bottom of the page informs you about what type of tag each color refers to, but I wish I could hover over the dots and see exactly what I'm looking at. I'd like to be able to say, "That dot right there is the picture about Websites As Graphs," but I can't.

Many people have posted their pictures on Flickr under the tag websitesasgraphs. In fact, the site claims that this was the #1 tag on Flickr over the last full week of May. Good times.