Leaving Facebook Behind

Today marks seven years since I deleted my Facebook account. Since then, I’ve also deleted my Twitter account, leaving me merely with an Instagram and LinkedIn presence. While I don’t miss Facebook, I’m sometimes frustrated by the over reliance by organizations and businesses on its use as a community platform. This creates a barrier to communication with neighborhood groups and the like, a small price to pay, but nonetheless a sad note for those not using a specific product.

In my mind, a sound digital community should be established on a platform-agnostic framework, welcoming everyone regardless of their social network preferences. Sometime along the lines of WordPress, which is freely available to all would be a great solution to this problem. Unfortunately, many don’t see it as a problem at all.

Safecast Sensors Track Radiation Levels Around the World

Safecast

Wondering whether or not it’s a good idea to move into that house next to the old nuclear power facility? Well, believe it or not, there’s an app for that.

Fellow +Google Glass Explorer +Chris Sewell tipped me off on a new open-source project called +Safecast which is centered around collecting information on radiation levels in communities around the world to increase citizen awareness.

The project took off in April of 2011, just one month and one day after the chain reaction resulting from a 9.0 earthquake hit Japan, completely crippling the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

According to the information on the website about the various devices available to collect and share the data, only 117 have been deployed in the field so far. You can learn more here.